The 212th Block: We are heading toward monolingualism due to globalisation and modernisation
And other pressing matters
This week…
Your reading time is about 8 minutes. Let’s start.
I had a little chat with my old friend ChatGPT. I’ve not kept in touch in a while and wanted to know how much Manglish it spoke.
What sparked this thought was an article I read earlier in the week, which was about Kuala Lumpur, written in Spanish. As a Malaysian, I always get excited to read about my country from other people’s perspectives. But, I was in so much distress after reading just the first paragraph.
In this article, Elisa Baños described the meaning of Kuala Lumpur as a muddy confluence, which is accurate. But what followed right after was the claim, without any source, that the Malays (sic) called the city KL to avoid the derogatory meaning of its name. The author did not explain why many other Malaysian cities, such as Johor Bahru (JB), Petaling Jaya (PJ), and Kota Kinabalu (KK) are also called by their initials.
My distress stemmed from being unsure if I misunderstood the author (Spanish is not my first language! Or second! Or third!) and being unable to express my upset in the author’s language. As I now work in a multilingual newsroom, I know my colleagues can relate. But sometimes I wish to have the blissful ignorance of the monolinguals.
To unwind (lol), I turned to ChatGPT, wondering, if it would clarify the article. But somehow our conversation got derailed (by me). I was curious how much Manglish it has picked up from the Internet. Interestingly, when I asked for a response in Manglish, it first wrote in Chinese Malay—the kind of Malay spoken by Malay-as-a-third-language spoken by Malaysian Chinese (where English is the second language) or what we sometimes call slang cina (which is also spoken by some non-Chinese, particularly Malay gangs, for some reason?). When I pointed that out, ChatGPT immediately rectified its response.
Sometimes it would revert to standard English, and would, as we say in Manglish, kena scolded by me.
I also asked for the distinction between Singlish and Manglish (ambiguous response), what to order at the mamak (unsatisfactory response), and why when I watch TikToks by Singaporeans or Malaysians who speak Singlish or Manglish, there will always be Nigerians in the comments claiming that the TikTokers are speaking Nigerian English. ChatGPT, frustratingly, simply repeated the question in Singlish, Manglish and Naija without answering it. Read the full convo here.
And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
ICYMI: The Previous Block was about the death of search engines as the focus moves away from web results and toward chatbots. FWIW:
Spam, junk … slop? The latest wave of AI behind the ‘zombie internet’ by Alex Hern and Dan Milmo for The Guardian.
Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search by Kylie Robison for The Verge.
Google Search to be even more unuseable by Frank Landymore for Futurism.
CORRECTION NOTICE: None notified.SLOPPY AI
Indonesia has more than 700 languages. Can AI save them?
Adi Renaldi for Rest of World:
Popular large language models (LLMs), such as OpenAI’s GPT, Google’s Gemini, and Meta’s Llama are largely trained in English, excluding billions of people who speak languages that are not commonly found online. Non-English-speaking nations are trying to bridge the gap by building their own multilingual LLMs in low-resource languages — which are widely spoken but do not have a lot of data on the internet — as well as endangered languages.
“We are heading toward monolingualism due to globalization and modernization,” Endang Aminudin Aziz, head of the language development agency at the Ministry of Education and Culture, told Rest of World. “We are working on revitalizing languages to keep them from extinction. AI technology and LLMs, I think, will help.”
To train LLMs, large quantities of high-quality data are needed, including books, media, and academic papers, as well as public code repositories such as GitHub, and other data sets. As these are in short supply in regional languages, there are concerns around whether the available data best represents the cultures, Nuurrianti Jalli, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University’s media school, told Rest of World. “You have to ask: Where does the data come from? Who is behind them?”
Loosely linked:
How news coverage, often uncritical, helps build up the AI hype by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen for Reuters Institute.
ChatGPT suspends Scarlett Johansson-like voice as actor speaks out against OpenAI by Nick Robins-Early for The Guardian.
Use of a soundalike Scarlett Johansson reflects troubling history of gender-stereotyping in tech by Alex Borkowski (York University) for The Conversation.
Why China is building its own AI chatbots by Celeste Biever for Nature.
ChatGPT has a huge problem in Chinese by Maggie Harrison Dupré for Futurism.
The fan site profiting from the exploitation and sexualisation of children by Carla Hildebrandt, Jessica Longbottom and Dunja Karagic for ABC News. The Four Corners documentary, Kidfluencers, is below.
PRESSING MATTERS
A citizen journalist imprisoned for ‘provoking trouble’ by reporting on COVID in China is released
Huizhong Wu for AP:
Zhang Zhan, a citizen journalist, was released from prison after serving four years for charges related to reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China, according to a video statement she released Tuesday, eight days after her sentence ended, though there are concerns about how much freedom of movement she has.
Zhang was sentenced to four years in prison on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a vaguely defined charge often used in political cases, and served her full term. Yet, on the day of her release, her former lawyers could not reach her or her family. Shanghai police had paid visits to activists and her former lawyers in the days leading up to her release.
Loosely linked:
Israel says it will return video equipment seized from AP by Josef Federman and Danica Kirka for AP.
Who’s using Threads? Young Taiwan protesters by Viola Zhou for Rest of World.
The personal sacrifice of revealing a K-pop scandal by Luis Barrucho and Kai Lawrence for BBC. The investigation into three K-pop stars who were sharing evidence of sexual crimes in secret chat groups is below.
NO PRIVACY
Is it ever okay to film strangers in public?
Rebecca Jennings for Vox:
It’s been a decade and a half since social media made it possible for anyone’s camera phone video to go viral. But it’s TikTok, a platform where overnight fame is more achievable than ever, that has turned filming strangers in public into a controversial cottage industry. While influencers on Vine, YouTube, and Instagram have long used passersby as unwilling background actors to gain clout, TikTok has also allowed those people to offer their sides of the story and actually get heard. This is, in part, because of editing tools like stitching or dueting, and also because you don’t necessarily need to have a large account in order to go viral on the app. Viewers are invested in watching all sides of the drama unfold.
Thanks to these responses and a handful of watchdog accounts, a major backlash against public filming has been brewing: Outlets from the Guardian to The Verge to Vice have issued pleas to quit filming strangers, while BuzzFeed christened the unsettling genre with an equally unsettling name: “panopticontent.” Ask pretty much anyone in the world if they’d like to have someone film them without their permission and post it on the internet, and it’s difficult to imagine a normal person saying yes.
Loosely linked:
UK watchdog looking into Microsoft AI taking screenshots by Imran Rahman-Jones for BBC.
Librarians are waging a quiet war against international “data cartels” by Tara García Mathewson for The Markup.
Investigation shows how easy it is to find escorts, oxycodone on Eventbrite by Matt Burgess and Dhruv Mehrotra for Wired via Ars Technica.
What I read, listen, and watch…
I’m reading Off The Edge (2022), a book about flat earthers and conspiracy culture by extremism and disinformation journalist Kelly Weill.
I’m listening to There Are No Girls on the Internet hosted by Bridget Todd about the Open AI-Scarlett Johansson controversy.
I’m watching an FT Film about the far-right surge in Europe.
Other curious links, including en español et français:
Toxic gaslighting: How 3M executives convinced a scientist the forever chemicals she found in human blood were safe by Sharon Lerner for ProPublica.
South Korea bans TikTok hit ‘idolising’ Kim Jong Un by Kelly Ng for BBC.
The world's most common cockroach is a monster of our own creation, study finds by Sheena Goodyear for CBC Radio.
Why is New York University making protesters watch The Simpsons as punishment? by Arwa Mahdawi for The Guardian.
Was Cate Blanchett’s Cannes dress a pro-Palestinian protest – or an optical illusion? by Alaina Demopoulos for The Guardian.
La extrema derecha en la Unión Europea: de minoritaria e irrelevante a omnipresente y decisiva por Daniel Flores y Miguel Charte en RTVE.
El Gobierno apaga las redes sociales y sitios web de los medios públicos para cercenar el acceso a la información por Emanuel Respighi en Pagina 12.
Biographies des journalistes : comment engager son lectorat en incarnant son média ? par Agathe Kupfer dans Méta-Media.
Actualité européenne : la grande timidité de nos journaux télévisés par Camille Pettineo dans La revue des médias.
Projet de fusion de l'audiovisuel public : France 24 en grève par France 24.
Chart of the week
More than a third of the Internet is gone. Athena Chapekis, Samuel Bestvater, Emma Remy and Gonzalo Rivero on link rot in this Pew Research Center piece.
That meme is too funny rofl 🤣 I hope Elisa Banos is a good sport and doesn't get upset by it. As for you, my commiserations 😬