Chaos & Amazement #2505 MrDeepfakes Exposed, Deepseek AI’s Launch and the Inverse Turing Test
This week in Chaos & Amazement: deepfakes and their dangers 🎭, China's AI breakthrough 🤖, a mind-bending twist on the Turing test 🌀, and the usual mix of weird and wonderful discoveries.
Tech News
This essay links TikTok’s addictive design to thinkers like Wang Huning and Nick Land, sparking debate on tech’s role in attention spans, youth, and intellect. The real issue: reclaiming control over our attention. https://unherd.com/2025/01/tiktok-weapon-of-mass-distraction/
The excellent MrDeepfakes documentary exposes the dangers of deepfakes and how they can be used to harm people. It raises important questions about ethics and the need for regulation. Watch it with English subtitles to fully understand the story and nuances.
Fresh AI
Hot Take: DeepSeek didn’t crash Nvidia’s stock—Trump’s Taiwan tariff plans probably did. But DeepSeek’s AI models do rival OpenAI’s, proving China can build world-class AI despite US chip bans. Also, it trained a top-tier model cheaply—which changes the AI game.
Barely a week after its viral R1 model launch, DeepSeek shook up the AI world again. They launched Janus-Pro, a new AI image model that outperforms DALL-E 3 and Stable Diffusion in key benchmarks. It’s open-source and free to use for commercial projects! https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/Janus-Pro-7B
From my blog
I joined the ZNConsulting Podcast to talk about the flood of low-quality AI content, "Enshittification" (yes, that’s a thing), and Big shifts on X & Bluesky. Listen now: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/zn-consulting1/episodes/The-ZNL-Podcast-with-Clo-Willaerts-e2u38jq/a-abohrsl
Marketing: Insights from My Keynote at KdG’s Hogeschoolcongres https://bnox.be/2025/01/ai-in-marketing-insights-from-my.html
Weird and Wonderful
Ever wondered about the mysteries we still can't solve? Wikenigma is an encyclopedia of 'Known Unknowns'—scientific & academic puzzles with no answers (yet). Wrap you head around 1,142+ unsolved questions, like the Travelling Salesman Problem. https://wikenigma.org.uk/start
botsbotsbots is an inverse Turing test: prove that you’re a bot, not a human
Google Search added a new ‘Block Breaker’ game https://g.co/kgs/1hGY53f
Gorillaz presents: NOSTALGIAZ - their own tribute video. I can’t believe it’s been 25 years since Gorillaz released their first album.
Feel a little overwhelmed? Here’s a 3 Hours Heavy Rain Walk in Harajuku（原宿）Tokyo Japan.
How a fish works. So now you know!
Witnessing an octopus effortlessly open a jar is always a mind-blowing experience. Their intelligence is truly fascinating, almost otherworldly.
French Fuse hears music in everything
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserWhen this donkey wants a hug from its keeper, it comes to its store and waits at the door to be let in. Que du love!
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