The phrase "shit the bed" is used regularly in this newsletter but never has it been more appropriate than to describe today's Optus network incident. At around 4am, something went very wrong that caused a nationwide outage of all mobile and data/internet services on Australia's 2nd biggest telco. The leading theory seems to a BGP fuck up, but considering how long services have been offline it's likely more than a simple oopsie, probably a series of cascading errors. As a result there are many businesses and organisations unable to login to services (because their SMS based 2FA runs on Optus) or take payments (because their EFTPOS terminal is on the Optus network). As of 2:30pm the only statement Optus has made is "some internet and phone services are gradually being restored", that's it. Apparently the entire Singtel board is in Sydney right now. Perfect timing.
OpenAI held their first ever developer conference and CEO Sam Altman gave a 45 minute keynote going over a bunch of new features. The two main features are GPTs and GPT-4 Turbo. GPTs are "custom versions of ChatGPT that you can create for a specific purpose" that can be made using ChatGPT, no code necessary. Canva and Zapier have already made GPTs you can use now in ChatGPT Plus and a GPT "store" is coming soon along with a revenue sharing program. The new GPT-4 Turbo model has "knowledge of world events up to April 2023", "a 128k context window so it can fit the equivalent of more than 300 pages of text in a single prompt" and "a 3x cheaper price for input tokens and a 2x cheaper price for output tokens compared to GPT-4". I recommend watching the entire presentation if you have time. It feels like an old school Apple keynote, without the Steve Jobs panache of course.
A freedom of information request by Ariel Bogle at the Guardian has uncovered that since 2021, the Department of Home Affairs has had access to a platform called Locate X. This tool "allows investigators to draw a digital fence around an address or area, pinpoint mobile devices that were within that area, and see where else those devices have travelled, going back months". Locate X gets this data from "commercially available apps that may collect location information to serve ads and mapping services". It appears to be a bit hit or miss too, with Home Affairs asking Locate X why they were seeing "the exact location for a device ... on a variety of different days and times" in a residential area. We all kinda knew it was a thing that happens, but there you go, that's what's happening with the data we feed into these devices.
Authory has a story about an AI detector tool backfiring spectacularly for a freelancer writer: "Michael's main client informed him that they had started to use an AI detector, and the results were supposedly damning for him: his most recent articles flagged a 95% likelihood of being AI generated. His client started to look at all of his previous articles, many written before ChatGPT was even widely available, and Michael was notified that all his articles showed a likelihood of being AI generated of 65-95%. They terminated his contract with immediate effect. A decision solely based on a single number (or range) that the AI detector spit out". I don't know if this story is true but damn, that's fucked. It's not the first time someone's had their life upended by a dumb AI tool in the hands of dumb people and it probably won't be the last.
In March 2022, Jude Rae heard Sydney-born inventor and engineer Saul Griffith on the radio. He was talking about using electricity to replace technologies that still run on combustion, such as petroleum, coal and gas. The new technologies powered by renewable energy would dramatically cut emissions and – with Australia's natural advantages – help our economy, not hurt it. She contacted his San Francisco office, offering to paint his portrait for the Archibald Prize if he was in Australia, to find that he had just relocated his family to Wollongong in NSW. "My portraits are always collaborations but this one went to the next level. We only had a month and the solar panels were quite an adventure. When we tried to cut them with a water jet, the toughened glass fractured but they were so beautiful we went with it," says Rae. "Like this portrait, Australia's climate policy is now going right down to the wire. It is crazed and cracked but the recipe is simple – electrify everything with renewables. We have to stop having debates, develop policies and hand the plans to engineers who are ready and waiting to get it done. Like Saul, they want to plug Australia into an abundant future." (Art Gallery of NSW / I took this photo)
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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.