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Opinion | A Creator (Me) Made a Masterpiece With A.I. - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/opinion/ai-art-intellectual-property.html

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I’ve got 99 problems with A.I., but intellectual property ain’t one.

Media and entertainment industries have lately been consumed with questions about how content generated by artificial intelligence systems should be considered under intellectual property law. Last week a federal judge ruled against an attempt to copyright art produced by a machine. In July another federal judge suggested in a hearing that he would most likely dismiss a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by artists against several artificial intelligence art generators. How A.I. might alter the economics of the movie and TV business has become one of the primary issues in the strike by writers and actors in Hollywood. And major news companies — including The Times — are weighing steps to guard the intellectual property that flows from their journalism.

In the face of all the possible actions against A.I. and its makers, I’d suggest caution. I’ve been thinking a lot about whether musicians, painters, photographers, writers, filmmakers and other producers of creative work — including, on good days, myself — should fear that machines might damage their livelihoods. After extensive research and consultation with experts, I’ve arrived at a carefully considered, nuanced position: meh.

Controversies over A.I. are going to put a lot of copyright lawyers’ kids through college. But the more I use ChatGPT, Midjourney and other A.I. tools, the more I suspect that many of the intellectual property questions they prompt will prove less significant than we sometimes assume. That’s because computers by themselves cannot yet and might never be able to produce truly groundbreaking creative work.

History offers one clue: Technologies that made art easier to produce have rarely ended up stifling human creativity. Electronic synthesizers didn’t eliminate the need for people who play musical instruments. Auto-Tune didn’t make singing on pitch obsolete. Photography didn’t kill painting, and its digitization didn’t obviate the need for professional photographers.

Then there’s the content I’ve seen A.I. produce: Unless it’s been heavily worked over by human beings, a lot of the music, images, jokes and stories that A.I. has given us so far have felt more like great mimicry than great art. Sure, it’s impressive that ChatGPT can write a pop song in the style of Taylor Swift. But the ditties still smack of soulless imitation. They’re not going to go platinum or sell out stadiums. A.I. might undermine some of the more high-volume corners of photography — stock photos, for instance — but will you use it to capture your wedding or to document a war? Nope.

Lemley is one of the lawyers representing the A.I. firm Stability AI in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by artists. At the heart of that suit is the issue of how A.I. systems are trained. Most gain their smarts by analyzing enormous amounts of digital content, including lots of copyrighted work. Which prompts the question: Should the artists be compensated for their contributions, and if so, how?

To me, the answer is no. When a machine is trained to understand language and culture by poring over a lot of stuff online, it is acting, philosophically at least, just like a human being who draws inspiration from existing work. I don’t mind if human readers are informed or inspired by reading my work — that’s why I do it! — so why should I fret that computers will be?

Of course, one reason I might mind is if the machine uses what it learns from reading my work to produce work that could substitute for my own. But at the risk of hubris, I don’t think that’s likely in the foreseeable future. For me, a human creator’s very humanity feels like the ultimate trump card over the machines: Who cares about a computer’s opinion on anything?

#Intelligence_artificielle #Droit_auteur

Howard S. Becker, Who Looked at Society With a Fresh Eye, Dies at 95 - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/books/howard-s-becker-dead.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20230823

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By Elsa Dixler
Aug. 21, 2023

Howard S. Becker, an eminent American sociologist who brought his wide-ranging curiosity, sharp observation and dry wit to subjects as diverse as the art world, marijuana use and the meaning of deviance, died on Wednesday at his home in San Francisco. He was 95.

The death was confirmed by his wife, Dianne Hagaman.

Dr. Becker was probably best known for “Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance,” a groundbreaking book published in 1963. “The central fact about deviance: It is created by society,” he wrote, arguing that “deviance” is inherent not in certain behaviors but in the way those behaviors are viewed by others.

The book presents two “deviant” groups, marijuana smokers and dance musicians, and examines their cultures and careers. It is rich with the language of its subjects. The notion that deviance is a label applied by the larger society gave rise to what is called “labeling theory.” Dr. Becker was one of its pioneers, and the book’s perspective was especially innovative, appearing at the end of the conformist and moralistic 1950s.

Profiling Dr. Becker in The New Yorker in 2015, Adam Gopnik was fascinated by the “strange second act” of Dr. Becker’s career: renown in France. “Outsiders” became a staple of the French social science curriculum, and he became a force in French sociology. He spent several months a year in France, and Alain Pessin wrote two biographies and a sociological work about him (translated into English as “The Sociology of Howard Becker,” published in 2017). Collections of Dr. Becker’s articles were also published there.

Mr. Gopnick attributed Dr. Becker’s appeal as an intellectual hero in France to “three highly American elements — jazz, Chicago and the exotic beauties of empiricism.” (Dr. Becker had been a jazz piano player since his teens; “Paroles et Musique,” a collection of his papers about art and related subjects, included a CD of his duets with a French bass player.)

#Howard_Becker #Sociologie

Opinion | Mary Gabriel : Happy Birthday, Madonna - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/15/opinion/madonna-career.html

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Un beau papier pour fêter les 65 ans de Madonna.

At that crucial moment, she forced mainstream society — globally — to see gay men as she did, with admiration, not scorn. Madonna also helped gay men view themselves differently, with pride. In the years since, her embrace of and by the queer community is undiminished. As the journalist Anderson Cooper said in 2019: “No single ally has been a better friend or had a bigger impact on acceptance for the L.G.B.T.Q. community than Madonna. It’s that simple.”

In the 1980s, when Madonna was in her late 20s, the press began musing aloud about when she might retire. Women in pop music had a use-by date, and hers was seen as fast approaching. With each decade, the same question persisted with varying degrees of cruelty. During a 2017 interview with the writer Roxane Gay (now a contributing Opinion writer for The Times), Madonna called it out for what it is: sexist. “Does somebody ask Steven Spielberg why he’s still making movies? Hasn’t he had enough success?” she said. She added: “Did somebody go to Pablo Picasso and say, ‘OK, you’re 80 years old. Haven’t you painted enough paintings?’ No.”

Madonna isn’t finished. The battle against bigotry that she has fought throughout her career is far from over, and she has something to say about it. As she prepares to begin her “Celebration” tour in October, that’s great news for us. If her past is any indication, we can expect to be shocked, inspired, challenged and entertained. We will also be enlightened.

So happy birthday, Madonna, and thank you.

#Madonna #Pop_culture #Musique #Sida

Book Review: ‘Birth Control,’ by Allison Yarrow - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/19/books/review/birth-control-allison-yarrow.html?smtyp=cur

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Yarrow systemically makes the case that the dominant methods of childbirth in America are the clumsy evolution of earlier medical practices that were designed to protect the privilege, status and convenience of 20th-century male doctors. Labor can be a tedious waiting game, but modern medical interventions like pitocin, a synthetic oxytocin that triggers uterine contractions to help induce labor, are often followed by a cascade of further interventions that might not have been needed otherwise. And although supine deliveries, Yarrow writes, “are associated with more perineal trauma and difficulty birthing than upright positions” (such as squatting), more than 90 percent of hospital deliveries are performed on the patient’s back, a position that “allows doctors visibility, makes it easier for them to catch babies.” She also calls out examples of some common but outrageous obstetric violations — internal rummaging and surreptitious snippings performed unnecessarily and without consent — that can haunt their patients for years to come. Yarrow convincingly recasts this country’s maternal health care system as needlessly dehumanizing, prioritizing expediency and profit over the best interests of a population of women rendered vulnerable.

Opinion | Our Economy Thrives on Bad Feelings - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/opinion/inequality-insecurity-economic-wealth.html

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As the British political theorist Mark Neocleous has noted, the modern word “insecurity” entered the English lexicon in the 17th century, just as our market-driven society was coming into being. Capitalism thrives on bad feelings. Discontented people buy more stuff — an insight the old American trade magazine “Printers’ Ink” stated bluntly in 1930: “Satisfied customers are not as profitable as discontented ones.” It’s hard to imagine any advertising or marketing department telling us that we’re actually OK, and that it is the world, not us, that needs changing. All the while, manufactured insecurity encourages us to amass money and objects as surrogates for the kinds of security that cannot actually be commodified — connection, meaning, purpose, contentment, safety, self-esteem, dignity and respect — but which can only truly be found in community with others.

#capitalisme #insécurité

Something Has Changed on City Streets, and Amazon Is to Blame
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/opinion/amazon-delivery-trucks-urban-planning.html

Bikes are another example. Based on fleeting declines in car traffic during the Covid lockdowns, many zealous city councils made a big bet on bike lanes. To put it less delicately, they cynically transferred the benefit of lots of public property from car commuters and small retail businesses to bike-riding elites and corporate e-businesses.

Ça va, les « bike-riding elites », bien privilégiés sur vos vélos, vous avez pas l’impression de déranger les pauvres automobilistes ?

Judge Rules in Favor of Montana Youths in a Landmark Climate Case
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/14/us/montana-youth-climate-ruling.html?unlocked_article_code=erJqxS2QJGDGDp0zoB8

A group of young people in Montana won a landmark lawsuit on Monday when a judge ruled that the state’s failure to consider climate change when approving fossil fuel projects was unconstitutional.

[...] The ruling means that Montana, a major coal and gas producing state that gets one-third of its energy by burning coal, must consider climate change when deciding whether to approve or renew fossil fuel projects.

The Montana attorney general’s office said the state would appeal, which would send the case to the state Supreme Court.

[...] The Montana case revolved around language in the state Constitution that guarantees residents “the right to a clean and healthful environment,” and stipulates that the state and individuals are responsible for maintaining and improving the environment “for present and future generations.”

A handful of other states have similar guarantees, and young people in Hawaii, Utah and Virginia have filed lawsuits that are slowly winding their way through courts. A federal case brought by young people, which had been stalled for years, is once again moving, heading toward a June trial in Oregon.

[...] Montana has 5,000 gas wells, 4,000 oil wells, four oil refineries and six coal mines. The state is a “major emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, in absolute terms, in per person terms, and historically,” Judge Kathy Seeley of Montana District Court wrote. Adding up the amount of fossil fuels extracted, burned, processed and exported by the state, the court found that Montana is responsible for as much carbon dioxide as produced by Argentina, the Netherlands or Pakistan.

In her ruling, the judge found that the state’s emissions “have been proven to be a substantial factor” in affecting the climate. Laws that limited the ability of regulators to consider climate effects were unconstitutional, she ruled.

She added that Montanans “have a fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which includes climate as part of the environmental life-support system.”

The trial, which took place in June, involved testimony from climate scientists who detailed how increases in greenhouse gas emissions as a result of human activity were already causing health and environmental damage, and how those effects were likely to accelerate unless action was taken.

#Montana #procès #climat #pétrole #charbon #environnement

Supreme Court Pauses Purdue Pharma Opioid Settlement Pending Review - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/us/supreme-court-purdue-pharma-opioid-settlement.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=e

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The Supreme Court on Thursday temporarily blocked a bankruptcy deal for Purdue Pharma that would have shielded members of the billionaire Sackler family, which once controlled the company, from additional civil lawsuits over the opioid epidemic and that capped the Sacklers’ personal liability at $6 billion.

The order is likely to delay any payments to the thousands of plaintiffs who have sued the Sacklers and Purdue, the maker of the prescription painkiller OxyContin, which is widely blamed for igniting the opioid crisis. Under the deal, the Sacklers had agreed to pay billions to plaintiffs in exchange for full immunity from all civil legal disputes.

That is because the Purdue agreement involves a popular but controversial practice: resolving lawsuits about mass injuries through bankruptcy courts, rather than allowing the cases to make their way through the traditional court system. In many of these agreements, third parties — in this instance, the Sacklers — are shielded from liability without being required to declare bankruptcy.

“What are the Sacklers getting out of this?” said Lindsey Simon, an associate professor at Emory University School of Law and a bankruptcy expert. “They’re getting one deal to be done. Whereas if they didn’t get it, individuals could still sue them forever.”

Put simply, Ms. Simon said, “they get all the benefit with none of the costs.”

“They’re taking on a question that’s literally the basis for billions of dollars in mass torts, from cases involving not just opioids, but the Boy Scouts, wildfires and allegations of sexual abuse in the church diocese — where third parties get a benefit from a bankruptcy they themselves aren’t going through,” said Adam Zimmerman, a law professor at the University of Southern California.

Experts cited Johnson & Johnson, which has sought to use bankruptcy court to resolve mass claims about its talcum-based baby powder.

The company faces about 40,000 lawsuits that have been on hold since 2021 over allegations that the powder contained asbestos and caused ovarian cancer. The company denies those allegations, and has said it needs the bankruptcy process to resolve current and future lawsuits.

Although companies routinely seek bankruptcy protection to be shielded from legal claims, this particular agreement was unusual because it extended liability protection to the company’s owners. Sackler family members have said they would not sign on to a settlement without an agreement protecting them from lawsuits.

The Supreme Court has been skeptical of some aggressive litigation tactics, notably in cases involving class actions and patents, suggesting that it may be wary of allowing bankruptcy courts to provide legal immunity to rich and powerful people accused of grave wrongdoing who have not themselves declared bankruptcy.

#Opioides #Sackler #Responsabilité

Ouragan sec. L’archipel d’Hawaï en proie à de violents incendies, des évacuations sont en cours
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2023/08/09/l-archipel-d-hawai-en-proie-a-de-violents-incendies-des-evacuations-sont-en-

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Le réseau hospitalier à Maui était « dépassé » par les patients souffrant de brûlures ou ayant inhalé de la fumée, selon la vice-gouverneure de l’archipel, et le service d’appel d’urgence 911 ne fonctionne pas dans certaines régions.

Des habitants sautant dans l’océan pour échapper aux feux, d’autres observant, terrifiés, les flammes entourer le véhicule à bord duquel ils fuyaient : des incendies brûlent mercredi 9 août l’archipel américain d’Hawaï, où l’état d’urgence a été déclaré et des évacuations ont été ordonnées. Alimentés par des vents violents, les incendies sur les îles de Maui et Hawaï ont dévoré des maisons et des commerces, notamment dans la ville touristique de Lahaina (...)

Les garde-côtes ont déclaré avoir secouru douze personnes dans les eaux au large de Lahaina et qu’ils envoyaient des navires vers Maui. Une témoin interrogée par Hawaii News Now a affirmé que « tous les bateaux dans le port de Lahaina [avaient] brûlé ». « On dirait un film, un film de guerre », a-t-il encore dit.

Selon la vice-gouverneure, le fait que les #incendies aient été indirectement alimentés par de forts vents exacerbés par l’#ouragan Dora est « sans précédent », car ces phénomènes météorologiques apportent d’ordinaire pluies et inondations à Hawaï, a-t-elle expliqué. Presque 15 000 foyers et commerces étaient sans électricité dans l’archipel, selon le site PowerOutage.

comme pour Rhodes récemment, on entendra probablement davantage parler des touristes que des habitants, pourtant Américains.

edit et pendant ce temps des cactus centenaires meurent en Arizona, non pas à cause du manque d’eau, mais de la chaleur nocturne.

#climat #tourisme
édit vu ce qui suit sur « l’incendie de forêt le plus meurtrier aux États-Unis depuis plus de 100 ans. »
#pompiers #eau #alimentation_en_eau #hélicoptères_cloués_au_sol