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Monthly Archives: July 2024

Unlocking History: How a Small Group of Researchers Dominates the Declassification Appeals Process

Via LLRX – Unlocking History: How a Small Group of Researchers Dominates the Declassification Appeals Process – Attorney and FOIA expert Michael Ravnitzky shines a spotlight on people, process and procedural challenges with his illuminating article. A small core group of researchers and historians have filed most of the declassification appeals being reviewed by the responsible appellate body. While these individuals are working diligently to facilitate public access to long-classified records that shed light on our nation’s history, their efforts also highlight weaknesses in the declassification framework.

The Quiet Power of Car-Free Neighborhoods

Bloomberg: Restricting or banning vehicles in congested city centers pays off with cleaner air and safer streets. “We need to talk more about the other big benefit — less noise. Although still rare in North America, car-free and car-light neighborhoods have grown common in Europe, established in cities like Paris, Brussels and Pontevedra, Spain. Boosters… Continue Reading

AI in Finance and Banking, July 31, 2024

Via LLRX – AI in Finance and Banking, July 31, 2024 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and… Continue Reading

Can ChatGPT-4o Be Trusted With Your Private Data?

Wired – OpenAI’s newest model is “a data hoover on steroids,” says one expert—but there are still ways to use it while minimizing risk. [unpaywalled]: “…On the face of it, OpenAI’s privacy policy does show a large amount of data collection, including personal information, usage data, and content provided when you use it. ChatGPT uses… Continue Reading

A CIO canceled a Microsoft AI deal

Business Insider – The reason should worry the entire tech industry. [unpaywalled] “AI models and tools look great when researchers measure success with their own wonky benchmarks. When paying customers try this technology in the real world, things can get ugly. That’s what happened when an IT executive at a pharmaceutical company tried out Microsoft’s… Continue Reading

Access to Justice as Access to Data

Rostain, Tanina, Access to Justice as Access to Data (July 25, 2024). Forthcoming in the Northwestern Law Review, Volume 119, 2024., Georgetown University Law Center Research Paper Forthcoming, (2024). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 2619., Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4905900 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4905900 This Keynote Address, delivered in celebration of the launch of SCALES, discusses… Continue Reading

Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2024 report of the Lancet standing Commission

“The 2024 update of the Lancet Commission on dementia provides new hopeful evidence about dementia prevention, intervention, and care. As people live longer, the number of people who live with dementia continues to rise, even as the age-specific incidence decreases in high-income countries, emphasising the need to identify and implement prevention approaches. We have summarised… Continue Reading

DOE Public Database Featuring Intellectual Property from DOE National Labs and Sites

“Thousands of the treasures developed by scientists working for the Department of Energy—ideas, methods and software created to address some of the world’s biggest challenges—are now available in one place for entrepreneurs, researchers and others interested in learning more and developing them for commercialization.  DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) has created the Visual Intellectual… Continue Reading

OpenStreetMap provides map data for thousands of websites, mobile apps, and hardware devices

OpenStreetMap is built by a community of mappers that contribute and maintain data about roads, trails, cafés, railway stations, and much more, all over the world. OpenStreetMap emphasizes local knowledge. Contributors use aerial imagery, GPS devices, and low-tech field maps to verify that OSM is accurate and up to date. OpenStreetMap’s community is diverse, passionate,… Continue Reading

An open copyright casebook, featuring AI, Warhol and more

Pluralistic: “Few debates invite more uninformed commentary than “IP” – a loosely defined grab bag that regulates an ever-expaning sphere of our daily activities, despite the fact that almost no one, including senior executives in the entertainment industry, understands how it works. Take reading a book. If the book arrives between two covers in the… Continue Reading

The AI Search War Has Begun

Follow up to Perplexity is cutting checks to publishers following plagiarism accusations See also The Atlantic [unpaywalled] – And tech companies might not be the winners. “Every second of every day, people across the world type tens of thousands of queries into Google, adding up to trillions of searches a year. Google and a few… Continue Reading