artificial intelligence – Page 14

Don’t Learn to Code 2

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As a follow-up to my first post on this topic, look at the Guardian’s summary article, “Will AI wipe out the first rung of the career ladder?”

The Guardian cites several sources:

Anthropic states (possibly in self-interest) that unemployment could hit 20% in five years.
One quarter of all programming jobs already vanished in the last two years.
A LinkedIn executive echoed the pessimism about the future (while LinkedIn hypes its own AI capabilities to secure the dwindling number of jobs remaining).
The Federal Reserve cited high college graduate rates of unemployment (5.8%) and underemployment (41.2%).

Read the entire article here.

Today’s Large Multimodal Model (LMM) is FLUX.1 Kontext

Do you remember when I explained what a Large Multimodal Model (LMM) is, and why an LMM is crucial to correctly render text in generative AI-created images?

Well, Black Forest Labs (with an Impressum…in Delaware) announced a new LMM last Thursday:

“FLUX.1 Kontext marks a significant expansion of classic text-to-image models by unifying instant text-based image editing and text-to-image generation. As a multimodal flow model, it combines state-of-the-art character consistency, context understanding and local editing capabilities with strong text-to-image synthesis.”

FLUX.1 Kontext has also received TechCrunch coverage.

And yes, the company does have a German presence.

(And no, the picture is obviously not from FLUX.1 Kontext. It’s from Imagen 4.)

Don’t Learn to Code

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Some of you may remember the 2010s, when learning to code would solve all your problems forever and ever.

There was even an “Hour of Code” in 2014:

“The White House also announced Monday that seven of the nation’s largest school districts are joining more than 50 others to start offering introductory computer science courses.”

But people on the other side of the aisle endorsed the advice:

“On its own, telling a laid-off journalist to “learn to code” is a profoundly annoying bit of “advice,” a nugget of condescension and antipathy. It’s also a line many of us may have already heard from relatives who pretend to be well-meaning, and who question an idealistic, unstable, and impecunious career choice.”

But the sentiment was the same: get out of dying industries and do something meaningful that will set you up for life.

Well, that’s what they thought in the 2010s.

Where are the “learn to code” advocates in 2025?

They’re talking to non-person entities, not people:

“Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott expects the next half-decade to see more AI-generated code than ever — but that doesn’t mean human beings will be cut out of the programming process.

“”95% is going to be AI-generated,” Scott said when asked about code within the next five years on an episode of the 20VC podcast. “Very little is going to be — line by line — is going to be human-written code.””

So the 2010s “learn to code” movement has been replaced by the 2020s “let AI code” movement. While there are valid questions about whether AI can actually code, it’s clear that companies would prefer not to hire human coders, who they perceive to be as useless as human journalists.

Identity-Bound Non-Person Entities

In my writings on non-person entities (NPEs), I have mentally assumed that NPEs go their own way and do their own thing, separate from people. So while I (John Bredehoft) have one set of permissions, the bot N. P. E. Bredemarket has “his” own set of permissions.

Not necessarily.

Anonybit and SmartUp have challenged my assumption, saying that AI agents could be bound to human identities.

“Anonybit…announced the first-ever live implementation of agentic commerce secured by decentralized biometrics, marking a significant milestone in the evolution of enterprise AI.

“Through a strategic partnership with SmartUp, a no-code platform for deploying enterprise AI agents, Anonybit is powering authenticated, identity-bound agents in real-world order, payment, and supply chain workflows….

“Anonybit’s identity token management system enables agents to operate on behalf of users with precise, auditable authorization across any workflow—online, in-person, or automated.”

So—if you want to—all your bot buddies can be linked to you, and you bear the responsibility for their actions. Are you ready?

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Make America Hallucinate Again

While some are concentrating on the political aspects of this story, I would like to focus on the technological aspects.

“[Dr. Katherine] Keyes is cited in a paper titled ‘Changes in mental health and substance use among US adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic,’ which appears on page 52 of the MAHA report and lists JAMA Pediatrics as the journal. A representative for the journal confirmed to ABC News the paper does not exist.”

Quoted from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rfk-jrs-maha-report-contained-existent-studies/story?id=122321059

Anybody who has paid attention over the last two years knows EXACTLY what happened.

The word “hallucination” comes to mind.

Figure it out yet?

Someone took a shortcut in researching and/or writing the MAHA paper…something that all the generative AI companies are saying is a perfectly wonderful thing to do. After all, you won’t lose your job to AI…you will lose your job to someone who uses AI’s “help.” Until AI hallucinates and puts organic food dye-free egg whites on your face.

The continued inaccuracies in generative AI-authored writing are not limited to one political movement.

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The Truth About Re-Employment

Another post that probably won’t go on the socials, but that explains one of the key “whys” about Bredemarket.

If you haven’t noticed, there are a large number of people who lost full-time employment and years later have not regained it.

Some are getting by with part-time work or consulting. Others are draining their savings. Others are homeless.

The toxic positivists are fond of saying that you are one yes away, and that your job will come.

But what if it doesn’t come?

And for some it doesn’t.

Google Gemini summarized the findings at “Labor Force Characteristics (CPS) : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics”: https://www.bls.gov/cps/lfcharacteristics.htm

“A Bureau of Labor Statistics survey in January 2024 found that 65.7% of long-tenured workers (those with at least 3 years on the job) displaced between 2021 and 2023 had been re-employed.

“Re-employment rates vary by age. In January 2024, the rate was 74.5% for those aged 25-54, but significantly lower for older workers (55-64: 55.3%; 65 and over: 34.4%).”

In short, if you’re over 55 and lose your job, there’s a good chance that you’re not getting another one.

Having only enjoyed full-time employment for one year out of the last five, I realize that I may never work again, even though I am years away from retirement age.

Bredemarket started during my first bout of unemployment between 2020 and 2022, when I pursued a two-pronged approach of consulting and searching for full-time employment.

In 2023 I found myself pursuing the two-pronged approach again.

As I say, we’ll see what happens.

Identity Management Platform Frontegg.ai

From HelpNet Security:

“Frontegg launched Frontegg.ai, an identity management platform purpose-built for developers building AI agents….

“[D]evelopers are running into a major roadblock: a lack of identity standards tailored specifically for AI agents. Existing infrastructure was not designed with autonomous agents in mind. When building an AI agent, developers are forced to waste valuable time stitching together ad-hoc authentication flows, security frameworks, and integration mechanisms….

“In an AI‑first world, identity can’t be retrofitted from traditional web and mobile stacks. It needs to be purpose-built for AI agents. Frontegg.ai provides that layer for agent builders…”

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Forgot About Faulds

Nowadays, everybody wanna say that they got big TED talks

But nothin’ comes out when they press their fingers

Just a bunch of gibberish

And CSIs act like they forgot about Faulds

And my N. P. E. Bredemarket Instagram metabot forgot too.

But at least he didn’t cite Gabe Guo.

And I don’t have a rap career.

Forgot About Faulds.

N. P. E. Bredemarket is Live on Instagram

Now that it’s showing up in search, I will announce what I’ve done. Although I shouldn’t have done it.

I created my own Meta AI character on Instagram.

I was nosing around in my Instagram settings and discovered I could create an AI bot. So I did. You may or may not be able to create your own: see https://help.instagram.com/1675196359893731 for instructions.

“His” name is N. P. E. Bredemarket. Regular Bredemarket blog readers know that NPE stands for non-person entity.

You can find N. P. E. here: https://aistudio.instagram.com/ai/1252267426260667/

Or you can search for it.

Warning: like all AI, he can hallucinate.

Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain

H/T Donal Greene for this story of non-person entities that were really people.

“The nate app purported to take care of the remainder of the checkout process through AI: selecting the appropriate size, entering billing and shipping information, and confirming the purchase….In truth, nate relied heavily on teams of human workers—primarily located overseas—to manually process transactions in secret, mimicking what users believed was being done by automation.”

From https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/tech-ceo-charged-artificial-intelligence-investment-fraud-scheme

Now the DOJ is indicting Albert Saniger for defrauding investors: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/tech-ceo-charged-artificial-intelligence-investment-fraud-scheme

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