Scientific American [unpaywalled]: “It’s important that we use accurate terminology when discussing how AI chatbots make up informatio. Right now artificial intelligence is everywhere. When you write a document, you’ll probably be asked whether you need your “AI assistant.” Open a PDF and you might be asked whether you want an AI to provide you… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: July 2024
The Risks of Botshit
Harvard Business Review: “Hot off the heels of OpenAI releasing their GenAI chatbot ChatGPT to the public in November 2022, Google released their own chatbot called Bard (now Gemini). During Bard’s first public demonstration, it generated a major factual error in response to a question about the discoveries made by the James Webb Space Telescope.… Continue Reading
Descrybe.AI On A Mission To Democratize Legal Research
Artificial Lawyer: “In this week’s AL TV Product Walk Through we take a tour of descrybe.ai a free genAI-powered legal research tool built by Richard DiBona and Kara Peterson, a husband and wife team who share an interest in technology, the law, and the democratization of information. By April 2024 they already had over 3 million… Continue Reading
Proton Mail is adding an AI writing assistant
“Introducing Proton Scribe, a private writing assistant that writes and proofreads emails for you: Most of us send emails every day. Finding the right words and tone, however, can take up a lot of time. Today we’re introducing Proton Scribe, a smart, privacy-first writing assistant built right into Proton Mail that helps you compose and… Continue Reading
UNESCO raises global alarm on the rapid degradation of soils
“UNESCO is warning that 90% of the planet’s land surface could be degraded by 2050, with major risks for biodiversity and human life. At an international conference in Agadir (Morocco), Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, appealed to the Organization’s 194 Member States to improve soil protection and rehabilitation. UNESCO is also undertaking a number of… Continue Reading
Making sense of rumors about the Trump assassination attempt
2024 U.S. ELECTIONS RAPID RESEARCH BLOG This is part of an ongoing series of rapid research blog posts and rapid research analysis about the 2024 U.S. elections from the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. Key Takeaways After the assassination attempt on presidential candidate Donald Trump, people converged online to make sense of available… Continue Reading
Maripedia online database of hundreds of Marimekko print patterns
“Explore prints [browse by designer, decade or style or search by image] – Since the early 1950s, Marimekko designers have created some 3,500 prints. At the moment, the number of patterns in Maripedia is limited. We’re constantly adding more designs to our virtual print library.” Continue Reading
Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism
U.S. Department of State -“Concerned states, special envoys, national coordinators, and representatives tasked by their governments to counter antisemitism, in cooperation with international bodies, offer the following best practices, which have proven to be effective guidelines in formulating public policy. These legally non-binding guidelines, adopted in Buenos Aires, Argentina, include policies to monitor and combat… Continue Reading
A Reporter Who Sees Meaning in the Stars
The New York Times: “Katrina Miller was in her final year of a seven-year Ph.D. program in physics when she thought journalism might be written in the stars for her. When she began her degree, she thought she might become a researcher or even a tenured professor one day, like many graduates of her program… Continue Reading
The Fraud of Plastic Recycling
Center for Climate Integrity – “Underpinning the plastic waste crisis is a campaign of fraud and deception that fossil fuel and other petrochemical companies have created and perpetuated for decades. Through new and existing research, “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling” shows how Big Oil and the plastics industry have deceptively promoted recycling as a solution… Continue Reading
The MAGA Plan to End Free Weather Reports
The Atlantic [unpaywalled]: “In the United States, as in most other countries, weather forecasts are a freely accessible government amenity. The National Weather Service issues alerts and predictions, warning of hurricanes and excessive heat and rainfall, all at the total cost to American taxpayers of roughly $4 per person per year. Anyone with a TV,… Continue Reading
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Visits Had Dozens of Potential Threats, Secret Service Docs Show
Bloomberg: Jason Leopold July 17, 2024 [also read via Twitter Thread] “Long before the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on Saturday, I spent years looking into the way the Secret Service responded to threats against its protectees. In 2022, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the agency for records of… Continue Reading
