Catherine Flick: Publications, Media, and Thoughts

media

Well, the new job has had me pretty busy! But I've been doing some media stuff which I want to just record here for posterity (and when I ultimately need to look back on what I've done this year and feel like I accomplished something).

2024-01-26 What the hell is going on with the U.K. Post Office?

2024-02-29 AIs get better at maths if you tell them to pretend to be in Star Trek

2024-03-01 Elon Musk asks court to decide if GPT-4 has human-level intelligence

2024-03-07 Why Elon Musk’s lawsuit could slow down AI 

2024-03-08 Women in Games – Level of Detail S2 EP4

2024-03-17 Letter in The Guardian, The impact of screen time on parent-child relationships

2024-03-18 Ady Dayman, BBC Radio Leicester, talking about cyber security in Leicester’s schools and Leicester City Council

2024-04-15 Educating AI, Crossed Wires Podcast

Coming soon: I’ll be doing a TEDxStaffordshireUniversity talk in May, and I’ll be rustling around @emf@emfcamp.org for the weekend running Content and the Arcade!

#media #podcast #radio #newspaper #ai #cybersecurity #postoffice #games #screentime

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This afternoon I was interviewed by Ben Jackson at BBC Radio Leicester about the ups and downs at Twitter in the last couple of days. I love chatting with Ben because he's a great interviewer, and usually has some really interesting questions that go beyond the “explain what's happening for a lay audience” type questions I often get asked as an expert.

You can have a listen to me prattling away for a bit (and trying to avoid coughing) on the topic of where Twitter is at 3h40 min in, for a limited time only!

BBC Radio Leicester (2023). Ben Jackson, 8 March 2023. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0f47jz8 (3h40 in)

#media #radio #twitter

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This article is about how ChatGPT is being used by grifters to flood Amazon with terrible books. It was in the paper copy of The Independent as well, featuring a picture of me, which is cool!

An image of the paper version of the news article linked below.

Generally I think this is likely to shake up the grift associated with pumping out terrible self help books as brought to light by Dan Olson in his great video about this particular grift. I feel bad for publishers :(

Stokel-Walker, C. (2023) ChatGPT-generated books are flooding Amazon, and experts warn they could drown out books written by humans. The Independent, 24 February 2023. Also available online at https://inews.co.uk/news/chatgpt-books-amazon-drown-out-written-humans-2168855

#media #newspaper #ai

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Another article by the most hard working tech journalist in town, Chris Stokel-Walker (@stokel@infosec.exchange), in which I rubbish greeting card messages (I mean really who reads those, apart from my husband, because he doesn't like to write his own?). Sorry greeting card writers, really :( Seriously though, I suspect the use of AI will not matter so much for these sorts of generic type messages – this and things like website copy – and we'll come to appreciate real human effort going into things more. And humans won't be stuck writing horribly boring and/or repetitive copy.

Stokel-Walker, C. (2023) ChatGPT will write your Valentine’s Day cards, but we are not ready for the AI advancement. i news, 31 Jan 2023. https://inews.co.uk/news/science/chatgpt-moonpig-trials-ai-cards-experts-warn-not-ready-2118814

#media #newspaper #ai

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This article in New Scientist was written by Chris Stokel-Walker (@stokel@infosec.exchange) and featured me talking about the likelihood that Web3 would be at all great. (Of course, in my opinion it is Going Just Great.) My key quote is that people don't like to “faff about” when they want to get their work done, so it's unlikely that Web3 will be too likely to catch on in the workplace at least. Apparently you can also pick this article up in the physical edition, which I really should do before it disappears from shelves.

Stokel-Walker, C. (2023) Web3 promises to reclaim the internet from tech giants – will it work? New Scientist, 17 Jan 2023. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25734220-200-web3-promises-to-reclaim-the-internet-from-tech-giants-will-it-work/

#media #newspaper #crypto

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I was honoured to receive a medal and listing as part of the OpenUK New Years Honours List which recognises “the 100 top UK open source influencers” of 2023. I'm not exactly sure how I managed to come on Onalytica's radar there but considering I have been on maternity leave since June I'd say I've done pretty well!

Anyway thanks to OpenUK and it seems I'm in great company so it's also a nice way to meet some new and interesting people :)

In terms of open source/open technology I've been using Linux since the late 90s, and have “grown up” a lot of the discussions about things like licencing, etc. I'm not a huge fan of the Free Software approach, but I respect the ideals of it. I wrote my 2004 Honours year thesis on the incoming Trusted Computing initiative from Microsoft and how its lack of openness would be bad for computing – you can read that here, and I've always dabbled in writing and using open source software (though I tend to release my terrible stuff under the MIT licence). I used to work for Freshmeat as an editor too, for those who remember The Old Days before App Stores. So yeah I have a rich history in this space, but what have I been talking about recently that might have picked me up for this list? Maybe it's the criticism of augmented reality, Web 3 and the cryptosphere that has flagged me up. Maybe they have some idea of what I might be doing this coming year, since I'm “Generation Next”. Anyway, if you know, let me know! I'd like to know!

Happy new year!

An image of a medal engraved with: OpenUK Generation Next Honouree 2023 Catherine Flick

#awards #media #openukhonours23

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I was interviewed at my university for this episode of a new crypto documentary back in March this year while 5 months pregnant, it was a lot of fun as I've never been filmed for a documentary before! I decided to splash out on a fancy Seraphine maternity dress and spent about an hour ironing all the damned pleats on the dress, and I actually put on lipstick and had a proper pamper session beforehand, so it was nice just for that! (I never wear makeup!)

Anyway they asked a lot of questions, at the time the Ethereum merge was highly unlikely, but they seem to have not put in most of the questions that I was asked about that/the environmental cost, so that's good. I think it's actually a reasonably measured tone they take. I'm not the only “voice of reason”, fellow crypto sceptic David Gerard says some very sensible things in there too, and given what's happened to the market since I sort of end up feeling a bit bad for the more purist artists, but I note that Stoner Cats are still selling for a minimum of about $65 worth of ETH so I suppose that isn't too bad, though it is an order of magnitude less than what they started at.

Another behind the scenes thing from my perspective – they wanted me to give a lecture to a group of students and film that. But my computer science/computing/business computing students are all shy and so didn't want to show up (I literally invited over a thousand students, 2 showed up). Instead the press officer and I managed to wrangle in a few students who were hanging around the building – most of the students in the film are either fashion or pharmacy students who had NO idea what I was talking about. They also did a great job of not looking too bored when the camera was on them. Thanks students!

To watch, you can sign up for an Insight TV subscription here: https://watch.insight.tv/the-blockchain-life or you can watch for free without signing up on a “web3” platform “MyCo” which has some silly “get paid to watch stuff” type thing going on which I'm pretty sceptical of, but you can ignore all of that and just watch it on their streaming site at https://myco.stream/videohome?v=639d6d419e602d711e4636dd

#media #documentary #NFTs #crypto #TV

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This is a record of my media appearances from 2021-2022 and before I started this blog.

2022

2022-11-27 Sunday Sequence, about crypto/FTX. BBC Radio Ulster, 1h17 in 2022-11-21 Twitter collapse, BBC Radio Leicester, Jack Rafferty 2022-11-26 Scientists' view on Twitter v Mastodon Swiss national radio, in German 2022-10-11 Should I join Mastodon? A scientists’ guide to Twitter’s rival Nature Magazine Chris Stokel-Walker 2022-10-11 Crypto/FTX crash Radio 5 Live, 2h21 in 2022-10-07 People are fleeing to Mastodon from Elon Musk’s Twitter, but is it ready for Prime Time? i news. Chris Stokel-Walker 2022-10-01 Twitter/Musk BBC Radio Leicester, 2h08 in 2022-09-24 LinkedIn Ran Social Experiments on 20 Million Users Over Five Years New York Times. Natasha Singer 2022-09-17 Crypto Speculation Falls Out of Favor With Game Studios Bloomberg. Emily Nicolle 2022-06-13 BBC News 24, on LaMDA AI bot “sentience” (8.45pm) 2022-06-13 BBC Radio Ulster, on LaMDA AI bot “sentience” 2022-07-06 Podcast “Ethics and Video Games” on Why video game companies need ethicists (also on Apple and Spotify) 2022-05-19 BBC Radio 5 Live for a whole hour (!) talking about Bitcoin and sports club NFTs/coins. 2022-11-05 BBC Radio 4, Today programme, on Elon Musk/twitter 2022-11-05 BBC Radio 5 Live, Wake up to Money, on Elon Musk/twitter 2022-10-05 Bitcoin BBC World Service, Business Matters, 26 mins in 2022-04-27 The problems with Elon Musk’s plan to open-source the Twitter algorithm MIT Tech Review, Chris Stokel-Walker 2022-04-26 Significant contributions to Climate Replay's Games Industry Guide to NFTs including a pledge for individuals/studios/publishers in games to not implement NFTs 2022-04-26 BBC Radio Leicester – Ben Jackson – on Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter (5:05pm) 2022-04-26 BBC Radio 5 Live “Wake up to Money” on Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter 2022-09-04 British Museum’s carbon splurge on ‘demeaning’ NFT scheme The Telegraph. Olivia Rudgard. 2022-01-04 NFTs in video games Doing our Bit podcast, IGDA Climate SIG 2022-02-04 Who Hurts Most in $600 Million Axie Heist? ‘Not the Venture Capitalists’ Bloomberg Kristine Servando, Emily Nicolle, and Jamille Tran 2022-03-31 An artist claims an Andrew Yang–backed NFT project screwed him over Input Magazine. Chris Stokel-Walker. 2022-03-25 The Edited Latecomer's Guide to Crypto – a collaborative annotation of the NYT article The Latecomer's Guide to Crypto by Kevin Roose, by 15 leading critics of crypto, led by Molly White. 2022-03-22: Want fries with that Ape? NFT restaurants are officially a trend. Input Magazine. Chris Stokel-Walker. 2022-03-20: Crypto isn't decentralised. It's actually run by a handful of big wigs exploiting low-paid workers, says long-time internet academic. Markets Insider. Natasha Dailey. 2022-02-22: An NFT Bubble Is Taking Over the Gig Economy, Wired UK. Chris Stokel-Walker. 2022-02-19: NFTs, Cryptocurrencies and Web3 Are Multilevel Marketing Schemes for a New Generation, Wall Street Journal. Christopher Mims. 2022-02-12: Andreessen's Dixon Spies Riches in Web3. Others See “Rubbish”, Bloomberg. Emily Nicolle. 2022-02-04: WWF's decision to fundraise via NFTs puts capitalism above conservation, The New Statesman. India Bourke. 2022-02-02: WWF UK faces backlash over 'destructive' plans to sell 'eco-friendly' NFTs, Sky News. Victoria Seabrook. 2022-01-24: Metaverse and Apple AirTags, BBC Radio Leicester, 08:30am, Jimmy Carpenter. 2022-01-20: Apple AirTags, BBC News 24, 12:30pm, Geeta Guru-Murthy.

2021

2021-11-03: Cryptocurrency scams, BBC Radio Leicester, Jimmy Carpenter 2021-11-02: Cryptocurrency scams, BBC Radio 5 Live 2021-10-14: Cryptocurrency not worthless enough? Coinbase launches NFT marketplace, Verdict UK. Eric Johansson. 2021-08-01: Bitcoin, BBC Radio Ulster “Sunday Sequence” 2021-06-02: NFTs, BBC Radio Leicester, Jimmy Carpenter 2021-05-28: Bitcoin, BBC Scotland “The Seven” (TV) 2021-05-21: The iMac revolutionised our world – and now it's back to do it again, The Telegraph. Stephen Armstrong. 2021-04-21: “Britcoin”, BBC Radio 5 Live, “Wake up to Money” (prerecorded) 2021-04-20: “Britcoin”, BBC Radio 5 Live, “Wake up to Money” 021-04-20: “Britcoin”, BBC Radio Leicester, Jimmy Carpenter 2021-02-17: Dogecoin, BBC Radio 5, “Wake up to Money” 2021-01-29: WhatsApp is adding eye, fingerprint, and face scanning – but says it won't have any access to biometric data, Business Insider. Isobel Asher Hamilton 2021-01-26: Bitcoin, BBC Radio Leicester, Jimmy Carpenter

#media #radio #tv #podcast #newspaper

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