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It’s not just Hollywood that’s been grappling with how to deal with AI-generated characters. Wikipedia editors are figuring all this out as they go along, too. Following reports this week that an AI “actress” named Tilly Norwood is attracting interest from talent agents and rattling real-life performers who make their living in movies and on TV, Wikipedia editors moved quickly to create a page for the characterand almost immediately began arguing over how to describe it. Is it a synthetic actress? Is it even a she? Can Tilly Norwood, despite having 45,000 followers on Instagram, be accurately described as doing anything? These are the types of questions that have been plaguing the dutiful volunteers who are tasked with editing the world’s largest crowd-sourced encyclopedia. While few would argue that the AI character doesn’t meet Wikipedia’s notability guidelines, no one seems quite sure what exactly to say about it. “I’m not comfortable with asserting that Tilly Norwood exists, actually,” one editor wrote on Tuesday, the day the page was created. “I’m also not comfortable with the article using gendered pronouns for the Tilly construct.” Do AI actresses dream of electric Oscars? The discussions this week among Wikipedia editorswhich are visible via the website’s “talk” pagesoffer a fascinating window into the semantic debates that our society is facing more broadly at a time when we’re sharing more and more of our screen time with AI-generated objects designed to look and act like us. An early revision of Tilly Norwood’s page described the character as an “artificial intelligence-generated actress” who “starred” in an AI-generated sketch comedy show. The current version of the page has toned down the anthropomorphic language, although the gendered pronouns remain intact: “Tilly Norwood is an artificial intelligence-generated character marketed as an actress.” A review of talk pages reveals that editors debated passionately about whether to refer to Tilly Norwood as an actress at all, with some arguing that Wikipedia’s language should merely reflect common usage. “‘Actress’ is how the vast majority of reliable sources describe her,” one person wrote. ‘Trained on the work of professional performers’ Tilly Norwood is the brainchild of Xicoia, an AI talent studio launched by Dutch comedian and producer Eline van der Velden. The studio is a division of production company Particle6. The character, whose social media feed includes a mix of AI-generated modeling shots, selfies, and epic movie scenes, made a splash recently at the Zurich Film Festival and has since sparked industry backlash. SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents screen actors, issued a blistering statement, calling Tilly Norwood a “computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performerswithout permission or compensation.” A report last year from consulting firm CVL Economics found that more than 203,000 entertainment-related jobs in the United States could be disrupted by generative AI technologies by 2026. Fortunately, where Wikipedia is concerned at least, this is not entirely new territory. After all, the site has hosted a page for Mickey Mouse since 2001. For the record, Mickey is described as a he.
Category:
E-Commerce
The government shutdown that began Wednesday will deprive policymakers and investors of economic data vital to their decision-making at a time of unusual uncertainty about the direction of the U.S. economy.The absence will be felt almost immediately, as the government’s monthly jobs report scheduled for release Friday will likely be delayed. A weekly report on the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits a proxy for layoffs that is typically published on Thursdays will also be postponed.If the shutdown is short-lived, it won’t be very disruptive. But if the release of economic data is delayed for several weeks or longer, it could pose challenges, particularly for the Federal Reserve. The Fed is grappling with where to set a key interest rate at a time of conflicting signals, with inflation running above its 2% target and hiring nearly ground to a halt, driving the unemployment rate higher in August.The Fed typically cuts this rate when unemployment rises, but raises it or at least leaves it unchanged when inflation is rising too quickly. It’s possible the Fed will have little new federal economic data to analyze by its next meeting on Oct. 28-29, when it is widely expected to reduce its rate again.“The job market had been a source of real strength in the economy but has been slowing down considerably the past few months,” said Michael Linden, senior policy fellow at the left-leaning Washington Center for Equitable Growth. “It would be very good to know if that slowdown was continuing, accelerating, or reversing.”The Fed cut its rate by a quarter-point earlier this month and signaled it was likely to do so twice more this year. Fed officials said they would keep a close eye on how inflation and unemployment evolve, but that depends on the data being available.A key inflation report is scheduled for Oct. 15 and the government’s monthly retail sales report is slated for release the next day.“We’re in a meeting-by-meeting situation, and we’re going to be looking at the data,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said during a news conference earlier this month.The economic picture has recently gotten cloudier. Despite slower hiring, there are signs that overall economic growth may be picking up. Consumers have stepped up their shopping and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta estimates the economy likely expanded at a healthy clip in the July-September quarter, after a large gain in the April-June period.A key question for the Fed is whether that growth can revive the job market, which this Friday’s report might have helped illustrate. Economists had forecast another month of weak hiring, with just 50,000 new positions added, according to a survey by FactSet. The unemployment rate was projected to stay at a still-low 4.3%.On Wall Street, investors obsess over the monthly jobs reports, typically issued the first Friday of every month. It’s a crucial indicator of the economy’s health and provides insights into how the Fed might adjust interest rates, which affects the cost of borrowing and influences how investors allocate their money.So far, investors don’t seem fazed by the shutdown. The broad S&P 500 stock index rose slightly Wednesday to an all-time high.Many businesses also rely on government data to gauge how the economy is faring. The Commerce Department’s monthly report on retail sales, for example, is a comprehensive look at the health of U.S. consumers and can influence whether companies make plans to expand or shrink their operations and workforces.For the time being, the Fed, economists, and investors will likely focus more on private data.On Wednesday, the payroll provider ADP issued its monthly employment data, which showed that businesses cut 32,000 jobs in September a signal the economy is slowing. Still, ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said her firm’s report “was not intended to be a replacement” for government statistics.The ADP data does not capture what’s happening at government agencies, for example an area of the economy that could be significantly affected by a lengthy shutdown.“Using a portfolio of private sector and government data gives you a better chance of capturing a very complicated economy in a complex world,” she said.The Fed will remain open no matter how long the shutdown lasts, because it funds itself from earnings on the government bonds and other securities it owns. It will continue to provide its monthly snapshots of industrial production, which includes mining, manufacturing, and utility output. The next industrial production report will be released Oct. 17. Christopher Rugaber and Paul Wiseman, AP Economics Writers
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E-Commerce
Its the dream: You finish a huge project that wins widespread acclaimfrom your boss, your peers, your clients, your friends and family. Youre flying high. The world should be your oyster. And yet? You cant find the inspiration to follow up. Your productivity dries up. Youre afraid lightning wont strike twice. You fear being a one-hit wonder. Maybe not in the obsolete pop star sensebut in the professional, creative, successful sense. Its a horrible, limiting feeling that kills your productivity, not to mention confidence. But according to research from the Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands, theres a cause for the feelings of inadequacy following a big accomplishment. And better understanding this phenomenon can help to break through that mental block. In this paid Premium story, youll: Better understand why success makes you scared How to trick your brain out of the paralyzing thought loop Learn how to knock it out of the park a second time Feeling marked by success The research points to something called a creative identity threat, in which you become so attached to your reputation for genius (or, well near genius), that you fear putting it at risk with another project. This paralyzes original thinkingmaking a sophomore slump almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Dirk Deichmann, one of the researchers behind the Rotterdam study, says that the inspiration for this project was the product of living in a flat above a cookbook store. He was fascinated by the sheer variety of titles in their window. You can do endless combinations with new categories [of cuisine], new techniques, and materials, he says. So as a creativity researcher, he immediately started wondering what kinds of factors would influence a cookbook authors success. Working with Markus Baer, a professor of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis, he turned to data from the U.K.s cookbook market, looking at detailed records of year-by-year sales. They found that around 50% of first-time authors fail to write another book in the five years following their debut. Now, this could occur for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the sales of the first book were dreadful. But in many cases, it was the opposite: It was often the people with the most original ideas and the greatest acclaim who failed to publish a second title. The phenomenon, they suspected, could be explained by an area of psychology known as role identity theory: how certain roles become embedded in our sense of who we are. If we have received extraordinary praise for our ingenuity, then our reputation for creativity may become central to our identity. We fear that crown slipping, and so we (counter-intuitively) avoid new creative adventuresin case we fail to meet the same acclaim a second time. Fear of a jeopardized reputation Deichmann and Baer decided to test this hypothesis and explore this phenomenon of self-sabotage. They measured how novel each cookbook on their list was (by analyzing publishers online descriptions of its contents), as well as how many awards each book received, if any. Sure enough, the more creative someones debut had beenand the more acclaimed they had receivedthe less likely they were to publish a sequel. Success, it seems, can be a poisoned chalice. For further evidence, Deichmann and Baer decided to recreate the phenomenon with participants in the lab. In one experiment, the participants were asked to come up with a concept for a new cookbook. Some were told that they had shown great originality, while the rest were told their idea was solid and traditional. These two groups were divided again, with roughly half from each receiving additional recognition by being told their idea was likely to make a big splashleading them to be featured on the cover of the universitys magazine. Finally, all participants were offered the chance to pitch a second cookbook concept. As expected, the people who had been singled out for their creativity, and won the additional recognition of the magazine cover, were significantly less likely to propose a follow-up idea. Crucially, a questionnaire about their feelings confirmed that this reluctance stemmed from their fears of losing their creative identity. They were more likely to agree with the statement the thought of coming up with a new idea for a second book makes me feel like I could jeopardize my reputation as a creative producer, for instance. A creative identity threat may be prevalent in many domains, Deichmann suggests. Any time you allow your ego to depend on the acclaim you hope to receive for a project, be it a killer marketing campaign, an ingenious design or an outstanding product line, you could find yourself struggling to come up with more new ideas. Escaping the trap If you worry about suffering from creative identity threat, Deichmann has a couple of suggestions. The first is collaboration. Find someone, or a group of people, who might be able to contribute to your next project. That way, the creative identity threat doesnt lie so heavily on you, but you share it. The second is to try to focus your mind on the creative process, rather than obsessing about the end goal, which inhibits the free-flowing thoughts that are essential for idea generation. This fits with research by Ella Miron-Spektor, professor of organizational behavior at the INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau, France. Shes examined how peoples goal orientation can influence their creativity. Some people are performance oriented (worried about how their results compare to their peers); others are learning oriented (focused on building skills). In one study, Miron-Spektor looked to seven years of data from a tech company that had introduced an innovation program asking employees to suggest ways to improve their processes or products, which were then judged by an expert panel. She found that learning-oriented people produced more ideas, and the quality of those ideas tended to grow over time. Meanwhile, the performance-oriented people tended to dry up quickly. Finally, Deichmanns third piece of advice: Establish a creative routine. After a big success, you may feel especially anxious if you simply wait for your next eureka! moment to land by change. But you may feel greater confidence if you can find a systematic process to find and test ideas. An inventor or designer, for example, might start out by interviewing and observing their potential customers to suggest new markets to exploit: You define a problem, you generate different ideas for that problem, and you prototype. There is no guarantee that inspiration will strike the same mind twicebut a little courage, perseverance, and strategy can greatly enhance the chances that your genius will burn long into the future.
Category:
E-Commerce
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