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Daily Archives: September 14, 2023

Data Commons is using AI to make the world’s public data more accessible and helpful

Google Paper on Data Commons, September 12, 2023: “Publicly available data from open sources (e.g., United States Census Bureau (Census) [1], World Health Organization (WHO) [2], Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [3]) are vital resources for policy makers, students and researchers across different disciplines. Combining data from different sources requires the user to reconcile the differences in schemas, formats, assumptions, and more. This data wrangling is time consuming, tedious and needs to be repeated by every user of the data. Our goal with Data Commons (DC) is to help make public data accessible and useful to those who want to understand this data and use it to solve societal challenges and opportunities. We do the data processing and make the processed data widely available via standard schemas and Cloud APIs. Data Commons is a distributed network of sites that publish data in a common schema and interoperate using the Data Commons APIs. Data from different Data Commons can be ‘joined’ easily. The aggregate of these Data Commons can be viewed as a single Knowledge Graph. This Knowledge Graph can then be searched over using Natural Language questions utilizing advances in Large Language Models. This paper describes the architecture of Data Commons, some of the major deployments and highlights directions for future work.”

Data Sources Data in the Data Commons Graph comes from a variety of sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys. Some sources/surveys include a very large number of variables, some of which might not yet have been imported into Data Commons. The sources have been grouped by category and are listed alphabetically within each category.

  1. Agriculture
  2. Biomedical
  3. Crime
  4. Demographics
  5. Economy
  6. Education
  7. Energy
  8. Environment
  9. Health
  10. Housing
  11. We also maintain a list of upcoming data imports

Amazon launches generative AI to help sellers write product descriptions

Amazon: “Generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) is helping people tackle tasks like building spreadsheets, captioning images, and writing essays, poems, and presentations. Now, Amazon is using the latest advancements in AI to dramatically improve the listing creation and management experience for sellers. A new set of generative AI capabilities will simplify how Amazon sellers create… Continue Reading

International report confirms record-high greenhouse gases, global sea levels in 2022

NOAA – “Greenhouse gas concentrations, global sea level and ocean heat content reached record highs in 2022, according to the 33rd annual State of the Climate report offsite link. The international annual review of the world’s climate, led by scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and published by the Bulletin of the… Continue Reading

NASA UFO report finds no evidence of ‘extraterrestrial origin’ for UAP sightings

NASA Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena  Independent Study Team Report FRAMEWORK OF RECOMMENDATIONS – “Although AARO leads the whole-of-government response to UAP, the panel recommends that NASA play an essential role within that framework. NASA should leverage its core capabilities and expertise to determine whether it should take a leading or supporting role in implementing a given… Continue Reading

Artificial Intelligence and Law

Oladipo, John, Artificial Intelligence and Law (June 19, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4562175 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4562175 “…The rise of artificially intelligent machines has certainly made many tasks easier, faster, and more efficient. However, it has also raised concerns about the impact on the labour market and the potential for job displacement. As AI technology continues to… Continue Reading

A Viable Alternative to Conventional Lawn? Cornell May Have Found One

The New York TImes: “It’s a grail of contemporary horticulture, a subject of inquiry for scientists and landscape designers alike: how to reinvent the estimated 40 million acres of lawn in the United States, shifting the emphasis toward native plants. The promise? Less environmental damage and more biodiversity. Because traditional lawn care is, at its… Continue Reading