The News: “Scientists warn that, in 20 years time, humans may not be able to see a starry sky at night at all due to increasing light pollution. British astronomer Martin Rees, while talking with The Guardian, said that light pollution conditions have “rapidly worsened” over the past few years, quite significantly since 2016 when… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: May 2023
Book removals may have violated student civil rights
Washington Post – free link: “In a move that could affect how schools handle book challenges, the federal government has concluded that a Georgia school district’s removal of titles with Black and LGBTQ characters may have created a “hostile environment” for students, potentially violating their civil rights. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights released… Continue Reading
Stop the Presses? Newspapers in the Digital Age
CRS Report – Stop the Presses? Newspapers in the, Digital Age, Updated May 24, 2023: “During the past 20 years, more than 200 local daily newspapers have either reduced thei rpublication frequency or ceased publishing altogether. Among those that survived, many employa fraction of the journalists that they did at the turn of the 21st… Continue Reading
Generative Artificial Intelligence and Copyright Law
CRS Legal Sidebar, Generative Artificial Intelligence and Copyright Law, Updated May 11, 2023: “Recent innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) are raising new questions about how copyright law principles such as authorship, infringement, and fair use will apply to content created or used by AI. So-called “generative AI” computer programs—such as Open AI’s DALL-E 2 and… Continue Reading
AI has social consequences, but who pays the price? Tech companies’ problem with ‘ethical debt’
Via LLRX – AI has social consequences, but who pays the price? Tech companies’ problem with ‘ethical debt’ – As a technology ethics educator and researcher, Carey Fiesler has thought about AI systems amplifying harmful biases and stereotypes, students using AI deceptively, privacy concerns, people being fooled by misinformation, and labor exploitation. Fiesler characterizes this… Continue Reading
Google Search starts rolling out ChatGPT-style generative AI results If you opt-in to generative AI
Google Blog, May 25, 2023 – “3 new ways generative AI can help you search. We’re starting to open up access to new generative AI capabilities in Search. Here are three ways to try it out. Today, we’re starting to open up access to Search Labs, a new program to access early experiments from Google.… Continue Reading
LegalHTML: a Representation Language for Legal Acts
LegalHTML: A Representation Language for Legal Acts. May 2023. DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-33455-9_31 In book: The Semantic Web (pp.520-537) Armando Stellato, Manuel Fiorelli. “The Publications Office (OP) of European Union (EU) expressed the need to simplify the Official Journal production workflow, which required different formats and, consequently, document instances at different stages of the process. We met this… Continue Reading
A Judge’s Perspective on the Science and Rhetoric of the Written Word
Dysart, Tessa, “I Can [Read] Clearly Now” Legal Writing: A Judge’s Perspective on the Science and Rhetoric of the Written Word (December 31, 2022). 22 J. App. Prac. & Proc. 157 (2022) , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4414268 “Audience. Comprehension. Recall. Those three words sum up Judge Robert E. Bacharach’s recent book, Legal Writing: A Judge’s… Continue Reading
See why AI like ChatGPT has gotten so good, so fast
Washington Post- free link]: “Artificial intelligence has become shockingly capable in the past year. The latest chatbots can conduct fluid conversations, craft poems, even write lines of computer code while the latest image-makers can create fake “photos” that are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. It wasn’t always this way. As recently as two years… Continue Reading
U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism May 2023
FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Releases First-Ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism [May 25, 2023] the Biden-Harris Administration is releasing the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. This strategy includes over 100 new actions the Administration will take to raise awareness of antisemitism and its threat to American democracy, protect Jewish communities, reverse the… Continue Reading
Google Flood Hub is expanding to 80 countries
Google Blog: “Natural disasters, like flooding, are increasing in frequency and intensity due to climate change, threatening people’s safety and livelihood. It’s estimated that flooding affects more than 250 million people globally each year and causes around $10 billion in economic damages. As part of our work to use AI to address the climate crisis,… Continue Reading
We’ve Got Google. So why can’t we find the research that we need?
YouTube video of May 23, 2023 presentation and alternate link: “Content democratization has led to an explosion in research content: hundreds of thousands of high-quality reports, working papers, briefs, and data sets vital to the global research community. But – yes, there is a “but” – this research is tedious and time-consuming to find, buried… Continue Reading
