🗞️ TikTokers are in trouble; ChatGPT isn’t creative; Inventors are biased.

PLUS: Give the gift of Untangled!

Hi, it’s Charley, and this is Untangled, a weekly-ish newsletter on technology, people, and power. A few things before getting into it:

• 🧠 Two weeks ago, I published the essay, “AI alignment isn’t a problem — it’s a myth” and offered a tour of unordered and ordered systems.

• 🗞️ Last week, I Untangled the News, synthesizing the best academic papers and news articles I read over the week.

• 📈

  Dave Karpf
  , who writes
  The Future, Now and Then
  recommended Untangled this week. I’ve long enjoyed Karpf’s newsletter and am grateful for the recommendation. Read his response to Noah Smith on techno-optimism vs. tech pragmatism. It’s great, and you won’t be surprised to learn that I agree with Karpf when he writes that “Techno-optimism is, and has always been, a political project.”

• A wintery welcome to new Untangled subscribers from Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the U.K. Government, and Harvard University.

🎁 Want to simultaneously give you and me a gift for the holidays?

🎄 Or perhaps you’d like to give a friend or colleague the gift of Untangled?

On to the show, where I contextualize research and news about:

• 💡 ‘Inventor bias’ and how it impacts algorithmic systems.

• 🔍 The researchers who caused ChatGPT to reveal its training data.

• 💫 The relationship between AI and creativity.

• 🤖 How ChatGPT is actually being used.

• ☠️ How TikTok dances became training data for a new problematic AI tool.

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Let’s Untangle the News

Image from 404 Media. Edited by me.

💡Are the inventors of technology positively biased toward the technologies they create?