While I used to joke about most of us having jobs because these systems can’t talk to one another—and albeit there have always been keyboard macros and batch scripts and more recently sophisticated programmes, without the fraughtness of AI hallucinations after repetitive, reflex tasks—relatably getting bored at one point and surfing the internet, for more complex, multistep routines, news that Anthropic (makers of large language models Haiku and Claude) has
publicly released a tool that can accept any number of procedures to finish tasks by looking at the contents of a screen, moving the mouse, clicking buttons and typing text. Though still being trialled in the wild, automation of menial jobs, quality-control and optimisation—if it proves effective (and more than hype and cheerleading) and relatively reliable could make a significant number of jobs that involve translating and transcription from one platform to another something of the past in terms of human labour.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Happy Mole Day (with synchronoptica)
seven years ago: assorted links worth revisiting
eight years ago: a mock crime scene real estate open house, the slowest, punch-cardiest computer in government, social media choking off news sources, more links to enjoy, a Trumpian typeface plus Brexit and Northern Ireland
nine years ago: nine life lessons distilled from years of reading plus history through flour-sack dresses
ten years ago: author Paul Auster
