Recommended reading
Recommended reading
Links for people who care about the future of restaurants
Hey team.
I have, like many freelance writers who work alone, found myself in what I’ll call a creative downturn. It’s no fun, but after almost 20 years (ack!) in the business of thinking creatively, I know I can’t force good content.
While I’m stuck here in slumptown, I’ve been looking for inspiration by reading great words written by other people. So I made this list of interesting content that piqued my interest this week, and now I’m sharing it with you.
Read anything good lately? Paid subscribers can leave a comment below, and that’s the best way to share.
Until next week,
Kristen
Faux ScarJo and the descent of the AI vultures — The New Yorker
By now you know: OpenAI wanted Scarlett Johansson to voice its bot, a nod to her voice role in Her, the 2014 movie about a lifelike AI. She said no. So OpenAI hired a voice actor with a similar voice and ran with the idea anyway. I am both angered and happy that happened. To state the obvious: stealing from creatives to build a tech product with the potential to crush said creatives is Very Bad. Currently, Open AI faces a slew of lawsuits from large media companies who say the company’s bots were trained on their copyrighted material. But the company is also cutting deals with other publishers to use their content in certain ways.
The thing is, as Kyle Chayka writes in his piece:
“What leaves me so depressed is the fact that Google and OpenAI are training their machines using the Internet’s decades-old trove of material with no apparent concern for the sources of that material—that is, the people who did the work of putting it online in the first place, the minds and faces and voices which generated it.”
Hard agree.
Nilay Patel’s interview with Sundar Pichai on the Decoder podcast — The Verge
This is a listen, not a read, but it’s a good one. Patel, editor-in-chief of the Verge, questions Google CEO Pichai about the debut of AI-generated overviews in search results. He pushes Pichai on policy, asking well-crafted questions about people and businesses — like independent, niche publishers, hi — who stand to lose livelihoods because of this great artificial intelligence experiment. It’s worth noting the search giant has wasted no time monetizing these results; it’s already introducing ads into the experience.
Also relevant: Pichai ducks a question by offering a restaurant analogy instead: A small site complaining over lost search traffic due to AI is like a restaurant saying that no one’s coming in the door anymore, deducing it’s because people don’t eat anymore, he says.
Why members-only clubs are everywhere — GQ
Did Instagram ruin the secret and serendipitous New York social scene? Did Resy ruin restaurants? Maybe! In a feature for GQ, writer Emily Sundberg (who also writes the creative and fun
business newsletter on this platform) goes inside many — but not all — exclusive members-only clubs in New York to figure out exactly what makes them so appealing. Can we blame the influencers for this one?Tech bro podcasts are obsessed with alpha men, and it’s dangerous for the rest of us. — Fast Company
This energy has become pervasive across media, but the podcast business is the best example. “There is a foundational assumption underpinning this theory and its media moment: that the best way to help humans is to cede greater power to a select group of already rich and powerful men,” writes Ainsley Harris.
If you need more proof of this phenomenon, read the comments under the Instagram post linking to the story. (How many commenters read the article before spitting criticism? I don’t know the answer, but… I kind of do.) In the comments, Harris is accused of various things, including jealousy. But her sharp coverage lands more than a few blows with terms like “paid-shill,” “ego-fueled,” and “tentative banter.”
Funny (not funny) enough, Wired writer Lauren Goode posted a similar sentiment on Threads this week. “I am once again asking newsletter writers (men) to not just cite the same other newsletter writers (men) over and over and over again,” she posted.
Is Uber Eats killing hotel room service? — Thrillist
It’s not a spoiler alert to say that third-party delivery platforms have changed the way we eat in hotels. Why wouldn’t they? The choice of a mediocre club sandwich — which, by the way, remains the perfect room service order when necessary — or an entree from a well-reviewed local restaurant is clear. It is a great use case for delivery services, many of whom have signed exclusive deals with hotel chains.
This reminds me of my own great room service experience during a stay with my best friend at the Beverly Wilshire hotel over a decade ago. (Her job was footing the bill.) After an evening of too much wine and late-night poutine at Animal on Fairfax (RIP), I woke up craving a greasy grilled cheese but was in no state to leave the room to acquire one, and the hotel’s room service menu lacked anything resembling a cheese sandwich. I whined about it on Twitter (also RIP), as one did in the early 2010s. The hotel saw the tweet and delivered a giant platter of diner-quality grilled cheese sandwiches to our door. It was epic. Those days, it seems, are over.
Notes from the kiosk — John Birdsall,
A quick read about two very different New York City dining experiences from a writer I admire, including this line: “The future promises us no human friction, except the exhausted looking cook in whites and paper cap … he kind of wrecks the frictionless illusion, because he looks absolutely pumiced.”
