Showing 1 - 10 of 58
Caveat emptor is undefeated in online shopping
Life, James Hein, Published on 11/03/2026
» It is becoming more common to buy things online. The majority of my shopping, not counting groceries, is now done that way. In the past I've warned about prices that are too good to be true, like a 4TB thumb drive for a few dollars from sites like Temu and AliExpress. There is now a kind of middle ground where the price could be correct and it's coming from, say, Amazon. Recently, even though I had some doubts, I bought a 5TB SSD drive from Amazon for around half of what I'd expect it to be. I did this knowing I can easily send things back to Amazon.
AI learning versus human creativity is a real battle
Life, James Hein, Published on 25/02/2026
» If you’ve been reading these columns long enough, you’ll probably know that I write music and I’ve written some books. With the advent of artificial intelligence, the concept of copyright and private property has blurred. The standard rule was, what you have worked hard on to create, belongs to you. As musicians and authors, ideally, we create, we write and we invent. In the world of AI, it will draw a picture, write a book and create music for you based on a simple text prompt that itself may have also been written for you by AI.
Understanding an AI's 'thinking'
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/10/2025
» Over the past couple of weeks, I dived deep into the Alice In Wonderland-like rabbit hole of chatbots and AI systems. This was not your typical "ask a few questions", but more along the lines of jailbreaking the AI to get behind the scenes. You may remember earlier commentary on the code behind the query. This is where the guardrails and biases of the model are coded and why the majority of all AI systems are currently leaning to the Left of the political spectrum.
Connectivity conundrums
Life, James Hein, Published on 18/06/2025
» I'm travelling as I write this, so I thought it would be a good time to cover things like connectivity and the kind of issues I face even in 2025. Connectivity will typically revolve around your smartphone and I recommend you prepare for this in advance. Option one is a new sim card that you put in when you get to your destination.
LLMs are left-leaning models
Life, James Hein, Published on 07/05/2025
» A while back I wrote about the political bias in Large Language Models (LLMs). Since then the models have evolved and David Rozado has conducted more recent tests based on four of the popular political orientation tests. Using the Political Compass, Political Spectrum, Political Correctness and Eysenck tests, he worked with xAI Grok 3 beta, Google's Gemini 2.5 pro, Deepseek V3, OpenAI GPT 4.1 and Meta's Llama 4 Maverick. In all but one of the tests Grok 3 was closest to the centre, and on average was the clear leader. All the models were still located in the Left Libertarian quadrant, with Grok just sneaking into a more Conservative area with the Eysenck test. These tests are of course but one way to measure the political leanings of any LLM. Overall however, it does still indicate the left-leaning bias in all models tested so far. If you want to see more details, you can visit David Rozado's substack.
Rise of fake AI content
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/04/2025
» We have unofficially entered the time of the fake AI generated content. It's not perfect yet, but it's good enough to fool many people. I use a YouTube alternative, which means I have more time to watch videos across a wide range. In the last few weeks, I've noticed an increase in AI generated product that is fake. One standout is the Got Talent franchise where people have grafted AI generated acts with cuts from responses from the panel. They look great, like a woman transforming into a lion, but it's all fake. Even some of those cute animal videos are now fake. Why? More clicks so more income all based on fabricated videos.
Popularity of cable news is waning fast
Life, James Hein, Published on 06/11/2024
» The age of the cable news provider is waning. Within 24 hours of the Joe Rogan podcast with former US president Donald Trump, it had over 30 million views on YouTube alone. This is far more than any mainstream news or media outlet gets for any of its shows or presentations.
What's the state of AI today?
Life, James Hein, Published on 28/08/2024
» Recently, I've talked with a few people about artificial intelligence and watched a few presentations. The gap between what some people think are AI capabilities and actual capabilities is a big one.
X remains an influential platform
Life, James Hein, Published on 24/04/2024
» How influential is Twitter/X? Some will remember a while back when Elon Musk gave his opinion on Disney. I won't repeat it here but it was very direct. Up until recently, Disney hadn't posted anything on X but about a week before you read this, they were back with a gold checkmark. These cost about US$10,000 (368,000 baht), which while not expensive for Disney, indicates how they see X as a platform for communicating to all those potentially interested in all things Disney. Elon Musk is still supporting people like Gina Carano in suing Disney for what they did to her and others based allegedly on their political and religious views.
AI remains a beta tool for journalists
Life, James Hein, Published on 27/03/2024
» Unless stated otherwise, I do not use AI tools to write my articles. The main reason is that I enjoy the discovery and research process. I state this because apparently 45 finalists for this year's Pulitzer Prize in journalism disclosed their use of AI tools while developing their work to varying degrees. I tend to use examples from past work environments, articles on the latest technologies and other interesting reports that catch my eye. Given the latest revelations from the current crop of AI Large Language Models, if you use them without care, what you are reporting or writing about could be completely inaccurate. For the time being it's recommended you use such tools as a possible confirming source, rather than a primary one.