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Daily Archives: July 15, 2024

AI tools help journalists assess authenticity of images in immediate aftermath of Trump shooting

GeekWire: “Journalists used artificial intelligence to check the authenticity of images from the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday night — demonstrating both the potential and the limitations of AI technology in minimizing the spread of misinformation online. AI tools offered by Seattle-based non-partisan nonprofit organization TrueMedia.org were used by reporters to assess images that spread on social media after the shooting, including a photo that appeared to capture a bullet in mid-air behind Trump’s head. That picture was taken by New York Times photographer Doug Mills. But the tendency of social media users to post images without attribution can make it difficult to determine the origins of content, especially when news is breaking. While cautioning that its results were experimental, TrueMedia.org correctly indicated that photo was likely not manipulated, according to Oren Etzioni, the organization’s founder. In a similar way, responding to a query from another journalist, the TrueMedia AI tools also found little evidence of manipulation in what turned out to be an Associated Press photograph of Trump raising his fist after the incident. That picture also circulated widely on social media…”

AI In Finance and Banking – July 15, 2024

AI In Finance and Banking – July 15, 2024 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, papers by NGO/IGO organizations and economists, speeches, and industry white papers on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources,… Continue Reading

How to avoid falling for misinformation and conspiracy theories

Washington Post [unpaywalled] – There’s a flood of real, misleading and fake breaking news and information online. Proceed with caution: “Anyone with an internet connection can watch breaking news unfold in real time, or at least some version of it. Across social media, posts can fly up faster than most fact-checkers and moderators can handle,… Continue Reading

Governing in the Age of AI: A New Model to Transform the State

Governing in the Age of AI: A New Model to Transform the State is a joint report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and Faculty.”…In this report, we describe an AI-enabled model of government in which every citizen has their own digital public assistant to help manage their relationship with the government, freeing… Continue Reading

The World’s Power Grids Are Failing as the Planet Warms

Bloomberg [unpaywalled] – Outages from Albania to Texas show how electricity networks aren’t ready for climate change. “…The climate crisis exposes electricity networks to flash floods ripping down transmission towers, droughts drying up hydro reservoirs and demand spikes from cooling during searing heat. “The whole power system was built and designed in one climatic era… Continue Reading

Answers – What’s Project 2025?

Unpacking the Pro-Trump Plan to Overhaul US Government “…The Forces Behind Project 2025 – Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts launched Project 2025 in April 2022, a few months before Trump officially announced his reelection campaign. Since then, the number of groups backing the initiative has grown. As of now, Project 2025’s advisory board and so-called… Continue Reading

(Almost) 200 Years of News-Based Economic Sentiment

(Almost) 200 Years of News-Based Economic Sentiment Jules H. van Binsbergen, Svetlana Bryzgalova, Mayukh Mukhopadhyay & Varun Sharma – Working Paper 32026. DOI 10.3386/w32026  Issue Date January 2024. “Using text from 200 million pages of 13,000 US local newspapers and machine learning methods, we construct a 170-year-long measure of economic sentiment at the country and state… Continue Reading

Fake Local News Sites Tracker: 1,268 Sites and Counting

“In June 2024, NewsGuard reported that so-called pink slime websites — sites posing as independent news outlets but secretly funded by partisan groups — now outnumber daily newspapers in the U.S. Below, we track the spread of pink slime websites, as compared to Northwestern Local News Initiative’s count of daily newspapers. (Northwestern’s tracker was last… Continue Reading