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Daily Archives: July 17, 2024

The Risks of Botshit

Harvard Business Review: “Hot off the heels of OpenAI releasing their GenAI chatbot ChatGPT to the public in November 2022, Google released their own chatbot called Bard (now Gemini). During Bard’s first public demonstration, it generated a major factual error in response to a question about the discoveries made by the James Webb Space Telescope. This wrong answer by the chatbot led to a 9% drop in the stock price of Alphabet, Google’s parent company —  at the time, $100 billion in market value. Incidents that demonstrate the risks of chatbots are occurring across different professions, too. In 2023, two lawyers were fined by the Federal District Court of New York for submitting legal briefs containing fictional cases and legal citations generated by the chatbot ChatGPT. And in journalism, a number of well-known publications have been embarrassed after using content generated by chatbots. For instance, Sports Illustrated featured several articles published by authors with fake names with headshots generated by AI. In both of cases, professionals and companies uncritically used chatbot content, and they are only the tip of the iceberg. In the rush to release large language model (LLM) chatbots to the public, there have been numerous issues with these tools generating falsehoods and misinformation. As a result, managers and organizations are beginning to see an increasing array of new risks based on expectations and professional standards around the accuracy of information. In this article, we look at nature of these risks, and offer some informed guidance based on our research for how to manage them.”

Descrybe.AI On A Mission To Democratize Legal Research

Artificial Lawyer: “In this week’s AL TV Product Walk Through we take a tour of descrybe.ai a free genAI-powered legal research tool built by Richard DiBona and Kara Peterson, a husband and wife team who share an interest in technology, the law, and the democratization of information. By April 2024 they already had over 3 million… Continue Reading

Proton Mail is adding an AI writing assistant

“Introducing Proton Scribe, a private writing assistant that writes and proofreads emails for you: Most of us send emails every day. Finding the right words and tone, however, can take up a lot of time. Today we’re introducing Proton Scribe, a smart, privacy-first writing assistant built right into Proton Mail that helps you compose and… Continue Reading

UNESCO raises global alarm on the rapid degradation of soils

“UNESCO is warning that 90% of the planet’s land surface could be degraded by 2050, with major risks for biodiversity and human life. At an international conference in Agadir (Morocco), Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, appealed to the Organization’s 194 Member States to improve soil protection and rehabilitation. UNESCO is also undertaking a number of… Continue Reading

Making sense of rumors about the Trump assassination attempt

2024 U.S. ELECTIONS RAPID RESEARCH BLOG This is part of an ongoing series of rapid research blog posts and rapid research analysis about the 2024 U.S. elections from the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. Key Takeaways After the assassination attempt on presidential candidate Donald Trump, people converged online to make sense of available… Continue Reading

Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism

U.S. Department of State -“Concerned states, special envoys, national coordinators, and representatives tasked by their governments to counter antisemitism, in cooperation with international bodies, offer the following best practices, which have proven to be effective guidelines in formulating public policy. These legally non-binding guidelines, adopted in Buenos Aires, Argentina, include policies to monitor and combat… Continue Reading

The Fraud of Plastic Recycling

Center for Climate Integrity – “Underpinning the plastic waste crisis is a campaign of fraud and deception that fossil fuel and other petrochemical companies have created and perpetuated for decades. Through new and existing research, “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling” shows how Big Oil and the plastics industry have deceptively promoted recycling as a solution… Continue Reading