Victor Rozek
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As I See It: The Tells
November 4, 2024 Victor Rozek
In its early incarnations, AI-generated media was often easy to spot: groups of the same people appearing multiple times in a crowd scene; multi-directional light sources in outdoor settings; mouths moving out-of-sync with the words being spoken; people whose anatomy mysteriously sprouted extra fingers or additional limbs.
But things quickly improved to the point that deepfake images and manipulated video are no longer obvious constructions. Misinformation from both domestic and foreign sources is now rampant on the Internet, especially during the election cycle and, at a glance, it’s difficult to know if what we’re seeing is real.
Which is why …
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As I See It: Unintended Consequences
September 9, 2024 Victor Rozek
In the classic movie Inherit the Wind, Spencer Tracy plays a character fashioned after Clearance Darrow in a re-enactment of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. It acquired that reductive moniker because the defendant was a teacher accused of teaching evolution.
In his closing summation Tracy, as the defense attorney, argues that there has always been a price for achieving progress. New knowledge often challenges old beliefs; progress inevitably displaces what came before; and, more often still, it leaves in its wake a wash of unintended consequences. “Mister,” says Tracy, “you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose …
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As I See It: Sainthood
August 5, 2024 Victor Rozek
I’ve been pondering sainthood lately. Not my own, just to be clear, but rather the concept and qualifications for such a venerable designation. The most notable modern-day example would doubtless be Mother Teresa who, after a lifetime of service and sacrifice, was canonized in 2016.
The Catholic Church holds the franchise for saintly designations with over 10,000, many of whom were martyred for their faith. But it was the newest entrant who caught my attention. His name is Carlo Acutis, and he died in 2006 of acute leukemia at the tender age of 15. I have to admit he beat …
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As I See It: Communication Fail
July 22, 2024 Victor Rozek
If there is one frequently overlooked source of workplace discontent it involves the quality of communication. Or the lack of it. On a corporate level, pronouncements seem predictably boilerplate lacking authenticity if not veracity, more suited to limiting liability than guiding behavior. Everyone, for example, touts their commitment to customer service. But customers must often navigate draconian phone trees and endure excessive wait times before being connected to a helpful human.
The disconnect between what is said and what is experienced is based on two sets of competing values: Professed Values, and Operational Values. Professed Values are the ones companies …
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As I See It: Mind Hacks
May 20, 2024 Victor Rozek
When I first saw the video, it felt a bit like watching science fiction. There were rows of little children, sitting in a classroom, dressed identically, seemingly concentrating on their school work in compliant silence. It reminded me of 20th century newsreel footage of obedient Hitler youth, except that the kids were Asian. And it had a distinctly dystopian feel to it punctuated by an electronic headband on each child’s forehead.
But it wasn’t fiction. The headband monitored the children’s brainwave activity, to identify those who were concentrating and those who were not. The results were transmitted in real time …
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As I See It: Upgrade Exhaustion
May 13, 2024 Victor Rozek
Several decades ago I recall seeing a 60 Minutes episode about an arms transfer (or perhaps it was a sale) of state-of-the-art American fighter jets to Israel. The interviewer traveled to the Middle East to see how Israeli pilots were adapting to the latest in American military technology. After being assured that the jet performed as advertised, the interviewer looked into the cockpit and marveled at all the screens, dials, switches, and gadgetry confronting the pilot. A deluge of supposedly useful information was available to the pilot in real time. But the sheer volume of it seemed daunting. Curious about …
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As I See It: With Deepfakes, Nothing Is Real Except The Consequences
April 15, 2024 Victor Rozek
With an election looming that promises to be conducted with snake-oil ethics, the Congress recently turned its attention from its usual dysfunctional finger pointing to hear testimony about the growing plague of deepfakes.
The usual suspects were represented, in this case Google and Meta, by a spokesman from the industry-funded lobbying group NetChoice. Not surprisingly, they wrapped themselves in the First Amendment and accepted little or no responsibility for what their users post online. They argued that existing laws governing fraud and harassment were sufficient to protect targets (aka victims) of deepfakes.
Standing against the “it’s-not-our-fault” brigade was the mother …
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As I See It: Doctor AI
February 26, 2024 Victor Rozek
AI has been getting a lot of press and chatter lately, its vast potential for good and ill spawning prodigious debate. It’s not surprising that a technology predicted to impact 40 million jobs engenders a wide range of possible outcomes. But whether the future tilts toward transformational or apocalyptic depends, in part, on which profession is doing the assessment.
One of the more ardent transformationalists is Eric Topol. To say Topol is over-accomplished would be an understatement. He is a cardiologist, a scientist, and an author. In his spare time he became the founder and director of the Scripps Research …
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As I See It: The Other Eight Hours
January 29, 2024 Victor Rozek
In 1594, Philip II of Spain issued a royal edict establishing an 8-hour workday for construction workers in the Spanish colonies. As far as we know, there were no time restrictions on pillaging.
It took another 223 years for the notion of an 8-hour workday to find a supportive voice in England, albeit not a royal one. Robert Owen was something of an oxymoron in his day. He was both a textile manufacturer and a social reformer. As early as 1810 he proposed and instituted a 10-hour workday in a Scottish cotton mill. But by 1817 he had revised his …
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As I See It: Riffing On Retirement
December 11, 2023 Victor Rozek
It didn’t take long after my father retired for him to start getting bored. There were suddenly lots of unstructured hours to fill and no prescribed way to fill them. So, he did what many retired men do: He stayed home and annoyed his wife. But after several months of straining my mother’s tolerance for togetherness, he settled on a novel solution.
The back of our property was bordered by a very tall hedge which shaded portions of the lawn. During the rainy season the shaded areas never fully dried and became saturated. So my father decided to replace patches …
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