Mary Branscombe

What AX can do to deliver cohesion and uniformity to AI agents CIO

As usual, I collect my threads and comments about my articles on Leaflet

Maybe the people who write the headlines shouldn't be involved in betting markets. Who can say. This is even more corrupt than Trump's administration doing it. These people make the news.

I suggest finding a more accurate and less venal source than the Daily Heil though

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps says the Strait of Hormuz is now closed and any vessel attempting to pass through it will be attacked.

That’s one of the world’s major transit routes for oil and gas.

given the proximate (I mean, without going back to the Persian Empire) causes of the state of the middle east, it's apposite that's a fake curse created by someone in the British civil service ;)

for a while US orgs were using the phrase 'work life blend' and as it was when frappuccinos were new, I referred to it as getting work ice all through the coffee of your life

If content generated by humans with AI tools either isn't copyrightable or loses enough copyright protection that it can be trivially reproduced, then the economic case for industrial rightsholders to replace human creators with AI evaporates.

In this case, a computer scientist attributes authorship of an artwork to the operation of software. Dr. Stephen Thaler created a generative artificial intelligence named the “Creativity Machine.” The Creativity Machine made a picture that Dr. Thaler titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” Dr. Thaler submitted a copyright registration application for “A Recent Entrance to Paradise” to the United States Copyright Office. On the application, Dr. Thaler listed the Creativity Machine as the work’s sole author and himself as just the work’s owner.

Second, Dr. Thaler argues that he is the work’s author because he made and used the Creativity Machine. Thaler Opening Br. 42-51. We cannot reach that argument. The district court held that Dr. Thaler forwent any such argument before the Copyright Office. Thaler, 687 F.Supp.3d at 150. And in his opening brief, Dr. Thaler did not challenge the district court’s finding of waiver. Dr. Thaler offered only a single sentence in his opening brief, in which he describes the district court’s conclusion as “based on a misunderstanding of the record below.” Thaler Opening Br. 43. That “bare and conclusory assertion” is insufficient to preserve an argument for resolution on the merits. Abdullah v. Obama, 753 F.3d 193, 199 (D.C. Cir. 2014).

Just so folks don't overread this: Thaler is a narrow case. Someone initially attributed sole authorship of an image to an AI tool and asserted ownership over the copyright, only later asserting authorship based on using the tool. The court refused to consider the tool argument.

In non-WWIII news, the Supreme Court has denied cert in Thaler v. Perlmutter, leaving in place the DC Circuit’s decision denying copyright to wholly AI-generated works. This will leave for another day hard labor and industrial policy questions about hybrid works generated in part by AI.

this is huge! it's a big lift just to do the backfill indexing, but even more to get it operational and chase down all the little product affordances.

blacksky ships.

Greg Bovino, other federal agents investigated for Operation Metro Surge actions Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said her office is already investigating 17 incidents involving potential unlawful conduct by federal agents.

The DA in Minneapolis is investigating Bovino and others.

Brandon Straka: I’m at the Pentagon this morning for a briefing with @SecWar @PeteHegseth on the Iran strikes. Session starts in 10 minutes.

Here's a Jan. 6 rioter posing with a press pass before Pete Hegseth's press conference, just to give you a sense of the type of "journalists" who were in the Pentagon briefing room this morning.

People tend to think of functional illiteracy as just being unable to read words aloud or such.

What it *really* means is such as not being able to perceive subtext, context, understand who the audience of something may be, etc.

Media illiteracy is fundamentally part of functional illiteracy.

yeah, how is that not an Onion headline

Microsoft: we're consolidating all the Windows settings into Settings
Me: why is my simple volume control now a whole new control panel?

Wie der luxemburgische Staat klammheimlich Trumps Willen vollstreckt Die Spuerkeess hat aus Angst vor US-Repressalien die Konten des von Trump sanktionierten Internationalen Strafgerichtshofs geschlossen – und die Regierung sah tatenlos zu.

Exclusive revelations: The Luxembourg state bank has closed the ICC's institutional bank accounts in the aftermath of Trump's sanctions against the court.

full story via @wort.lu

www.wort.lu/politik/wie-...

I think the way electricity prices are so often pegged to the gas turbine generation cost tends to mask the issue with gas because it looks like electricity gets more expensive as well and it doesn't look like a gas problem

Russia's invasion of Ukraine was a huge shout in the face, through a megaphone, that we need to replace gas boilers with heat pumps and gas-fired power stations with solar, wind, interconnection and batteries.

Perhaps two "shocks" in four years might get the message through?

Khamenei was given a martyr's death instead of facing justice for the crimes of his regime; instead of standing before his accusers. Hardliners stand vindicated through America and Israel's unprovoked war. We have robbed them for 47 years of their rights to self-determination.

I'm sure you'll be delighted to learn that Microsoft's best idea since the ribbon has been A rebuild the 15 places settings live into one but also introduce 2 new places B the users can just ask Copilot how to do it

for sure; software companies have OPINIONS about how people should use their stuff. I've spent three decades telling Microsoft to put more options into settings & when they're not complaining that it expands the test matrix too much (so what, that's kind of their job) they say people don't use them

the thing I was fascinated (and should not have been surprised) to hear from @daveon.bsky.social about how malleable and self-updating MCP tools are: which is nice when it means they get better and not at all nice when it means they stop working or spontaneously switch you to a different vendor

What AX can do to deliver cohesion and uniformity to AI agents UX and DX are about making users and developers more effective by building systems and interfaces that fit the way they work. AX could be the equivalent for agents.

especially if you're one of the 30% of IDC clients working to modernise your software portfolio to work better with AI, APIs are key - and not always well implemented: @seanblanchfield.bsky.social tells me about the problems with common APIs that can derail agents and the Jentic tool to spot that

What AX can do to deliver cohesion and uniformity to AI agents UX and DX are about making users and developers more effective by building systems and interfaces that fit the way they work. AX could be the equivalent for agents.

I asked @biilmann.blog how to build good AX; @daveon.bsky.social tells me how to manage & monitor MCP, @cote.io and @knime.com bring up data architecture, @amandaksilver.bsky.social talks me through how to set up agentic AI to pay attention to your AX work - and how that's working out at Microsoft

What AX can do to deliver cohesion and uniformity to AI agents UX and DX are about making users and developers more effective by building systems and interfaces that fit the way they work. AX could be the equivalent for agents.

as I've suggested before, when there's an AI budget around, using some of it for things that help the humans and do the IT housekeeping as well doing what @charlestbetz.bsky.social reminds me is needed to make the AI work well, will pay dividends however the AI side of things works out long term

What AX can do to deliver cohesion and uniformity to AI agents UX and DX are about making users and developers more effective by building systems and interfaces that fit the way they work. AX could be the equivalent for agents.

when @biilmann.blog first started talking about AX like UX and DX, I had philological objections but we definitely need a term for how you get other systems and services ready so agentic AI can work with them effectively, including stopping agents using up too many resources by trying over and again

ICYMI, here is a survey from the BBC, asking what you want from them. It's a good opportunity to tell them to STOP PLATFORMING FAR RIGHT MONSTERS like Farage. dcms.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

The savings we're getting here by annihilating decades of American science will pay for whole minutes of the operation to create decades of death, immiseration, and chaos in Iran.

Renewable Energy Defies Trump’s Attacks, Reaching a New Record Wind, solar and other green sources generated more than a quarter of all US energy last year.

Despite Trump's frantic efforts to stop it, the renewable energy revolution rolls on:

"93% of new generation capacity expected to be added to the grid this year will come from wind, solar and batteries"

Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

“‘This is really an economic disaster, a public health disaster, a moral disaster,’ said Esteban Wood, director of advocacy and legislative affairs at the advocacy group AIDS Healthcare Foundation.”