Michael Fitzpatrick

Freelance journalist.
i news, BBC, NYTs, Guardian, Fortune, Tgraph, FT and many more. Prof. journalism, Vienna. Mostly Tokyo based now.

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

@BrianRoemmele Brian, if you know anything about the ethos of the BBC from those days is that they liked to save money. And so wiped those tapes to use them again. They did it to both classics and dregs. There is no conspiracy. TV progs were seen as yesterday's newspapers.

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

@nick_routledge That will be https://t.co/iDtGeiOb4f the wolf in sheep's clothing. The lamb being publicly funded https://t.co/bl7ZJr18lo.

.com is another entity entirely and mostly mercantile in nature, and what you get outside the UK.

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

McLuhan knew all along the effects of the medium itself would have on mankind. This excellent wireless programme on him will explain all: https://t.co/ET5ZqRTw3J

[Will Self @wself]

https://t.co/2TTLj4ehZe

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

@culturaltutor Let "the series Travels with Pevsner" from the BBC be your guide. Find them on YouTube.

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

@nick_routledge Sorry, forgot Auntie now churlish in her old age has strict rules about Johnny Foreigner listening to the BBC outside the UK. Best use a VPN for BBC content or find another source.

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

You could argue we writers do the same. Philip Roth famously compared a writer's process to "a man who feeds his dog its own tail." While we all know Picasso's : "Great artists steal!"

[Alex Prompter @alex_prompter]

Let me trace the timeline here because nobody's connecting it.

Step 1: Scrape the entire internet. Every book, every article, every conversation, every piece of art, every forum post. Do it without asking. Do it without paying.

Step 2: Train a model on all of it. Call it "artificial intelligence."

Step 3: Go to BlackRock's Infrastructure Summit and announce: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."

Step 3 is where you sell people's own knowledge back to them. On a meter.

They took the collective output of human thought, compressed it into a model, and now they want to charge you by the token to access a version of what you and everyone you know already created.

One Reddit user put it perfectly: "They stole all this data from us, the people, our life's work, creativity, art, by devouring the internet and blowing through all copyright laws. Now they want to sell it back to us in the form of a utility."

Imagine if someone photocopied every book in the public library, burned the library down, and then opened a subscription service for the copies.

That's the metered intelligence business model.

And they're pitching it to infrastructure investors as though they invented water.

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

@james_riney I can not see any of this going global if you do not engage with the media outside of Japan.

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

@takaichi_sanae You must be joking. "driving Japanese startups toward global markets." Better start seriously requiring fluent English first in all such roles. Otherwise this will go the same route of "Internationalisation" that fell flat on its face.

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

It's taken 25 years since we had the first inklings from the Far East that mobiles and children would spell disaster. Glad the message was finally received. https://t.co/LeQ6pT3UNk

[Jonathan Haidt @JonHaidt]

Thanks to my friend and co-author @glukianoff for laying out what we actually wrote in The Coddling of the American Mind, and applying it in response to seven arguments made by those who objected to my selection as a commencement speaker:

https://t.co/3pGmtJp6NC

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

@USSY_AD Yes please, I understand that you might be reluctant to share your details. But your insights might be invaluable.

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

@USSY_AD I could anonymously quote you, but I need your real name and work place as my source. I protect all my sources this way and the BBC retains its credibility.

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

@USSY_AD A clarification on the post you made that I commented on: "In the caregiving industry, at my care facility, we're having a dispute over storage space for the massive amount of paperwork. It's like the Stone Age." if yu would care to be identified that would be a great help. Thnx.

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

@taishiyade 私自身でそれを観察いたしました。BBC向けに、日本と職場のAIに関する私のストーリーにコメントしていただけますか？

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

@taishiyade I have observed that myself. Care to comment for my story on Japan and AI in the workplace for the BBC?

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

@mikanoshidari Hello Shinobu, I'm a British journalist who wants to write about people like you who prefer flip phones in Japan. Would you be willing to be featured in my article for a magazine?

[Scott Santens @scottsantens]

https://t.co/oc31jp84gX

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

@scottsantens Did my piece in the Daily Telegraph in May 2008 get the ball rolling? I'd like to think so. To read without subs just download the webpage and save file as text or send postal orders -- not UB40s. https://t.co/f7ohDk9Y8j

[Steve Skojec @SteveSkojec]

He’s dead on.

[Michael Fitzpatrick @fitzp]

@funakin Visiting as a journalist I found it wasn't too bad. Needs a guide -- someone who knows what would appeal to the Anglo press.