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Monthly Archives: September 2024

UNESCO Data Browser

“The UIS is excited to introduce the new UIS Data Browser which brings together all our data on education, science, and culture, making it a convenient resource for everyone, from policymakers to researchers. With a refreshed interface, users can easily view and download customized data for their needs. The new browser also offers better tools for exploring metadata… Continue Reading

Art words

Data is Plural: “The Getty Vocabularies, published by the Getty Research Institute, “contain structured terminology for art, architecture, decorative arts, archival materials, visual surrogates, art conservation, and bibliographic materials.” They provide definitions, relationships, translations, and disambiguations for a broad range of terms and entities. Their Art & Architecture Thesaurus, for example, describes 57,000+ generic concepts… Continue Reading

DuckDuckGo Joins AI Chat, Promises Enhanced Anonymity

Tech Republic: “DuckDuckGo, a search company, launched a free and anonymous AI Chat service in June 2024. AI Chat joins DuckAssist, which generates answers based on Wikipedia, as a way to explore topics with AI. AI Chat operates with the widely used prompt-and-response process popularized by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. But DuckDuckGo’s AI Chat… Continue Reading

(Dis)Information Wars

(Dis)Information Wars. Adrian Casillas, Maryam Farboodi, Layla Hashemi, Maryam Saeedi, and Steven Wilson NBER Working Paper No. 32896 September 2024 Over the past decade, social media platforms have emerged as prominent vehicles for displaying dissent. In response, various actors have increasingly spread fake news on these platforms to impair the opposition—the (dis)information war. We analyze… Continue Reading

Scientists just figured out how many chemicals enter our bodies from food packaging

Washington Post: “Shrink-wrap sealed around a piece of raw meat. Takeout containers filled with restaurant leftovers. Plastic bottles filled with soft drinks. These are just a few types of food packaging that surround humans every day. And a new study released Monday shows the chemical toll of all that wrapping — and how it might… Continue Reading

FBI Publishes 2023 Cryptocurrency Fraud Report

“The FBI on September 9 released its Cryptocurrency Fraud Report for 2023. In 2023, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 69,000 complaints from the public regarding cyber-enabled crime and financial fraud involving the use of cryptocurrency, with over $5.6 billion in reported losses. Criminal actors exploit cryptocurrencies for all schemes, to include tech… Continue Reading

Omnipresent AI cameras will ensure good behavior

Ars Technica: “On Thursday, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison shared his vision for an AI-powered surveillance future during a company financial meeting, reports Business Insider. During an investor Q&A, Ellison described a world where artificial intelligence systems would constantly monitor citizens through an extensive network of cameras and drones, stating this would ensure both police and… Continue Reading

Atlas of Intangibles

“Atlas of Intangibles is a data experience designed to highlight the rich, interconnected web of sensory information that lies beneath our everyday encounters. Showcasing sensory data collected by me around the city of London through score-based data walks, the digital experience allows viewers to choose specific themes and explore related data as views — journeys,… Continue Reading

Google Serves AI Slop as Top Result for One of the Most Famous Paintings in History

404 Media: “The first thing people saw when they searched Google for the artist Hieronymus Bosch was an AI-generated version of his Garden of Earthly Delights, one of the most famous paintings in art history. Depending on what they are searching for, Google Search sometimes serves users a series of images above the list of… Continue Reading

“Model collapse” threatens to kill progress on generative AIs

Big Think: When AI eats its own product, it gets sick. Key Takeaways Generative AI exploded in popularity when OpenAI released ChatGPT. A paper published in Nature looked at what happens when AI is trained on “synthetic data,” or content created by an AI rather than humans. Flaws in the synthetic data led to even… Continue Reading