The Guardian – It looks more like five years than 50’: meet the neo-luddites warning of an AI apocalypse: “It’s January. I have set out to meet and talk to a small but growing band of luddites, doomsayers, disruptors and other AI-era sceptics who see only the bad in the way our spyware-steeped, infinitely doomscrolling… Continue Reading
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Author Archives: Sabrina I. Pacifici
OpenAI shows off life-like videos made with AI
OpenAI – “Creating video from text. Sora is an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions. Read the Technical Report – Video generation models as world simulators. We explore large-scale training of generative models on video data. Specifically, we train text-conditional diffusion models jointly on videos and images of variable… Continue Reading
Why the Most Educated People in America Fall for Anti-Semitic Lies
The Atlantic [read free] “By now, December’s congressional hearing about anti-Semitism at universities, during which the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT all claimed that calls for the genocide of Jews would violate their university’s policies only “depending on the context,” is already a well-worn meme. Surely there is nothing left to… Continue Reading
How the Smithsonian Is Helping Black Americans Trace Their Roots
Smithsonian Magazine – Free sessions hosted by the National Museum of African American History and Culture offer visitors advice on researching their genealogy..Genealogy researchers use military records, birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, wills, legal and court documents, and census records to help piece together the past. The resources referenced by NMAAHC’s team don’t currently… Continue Reading
How to Make Calls and Texts From Your Smartphone Without Cell Service
How to Geek: “Key Takeaways Use Google Voice to make calls and send texts using only Wi-Fi, eliminating the need for a cellphone carrier. Android’s Wi-Fi Assistant feature and Wi-Fi hotspots can make it easier to always have access to Wi-Fi. Google Voice is not the only option; other apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp… Continue Reading
OMB stands up first online database of all federal programs
Federal News Network: “It took 13 years — with some stops, starts and stumbles in between — but as of today, the federal government now has a single website designed to deliver detailed, searchable information about all federal programs. The Office of Management and Budget flipped the switch Thursday on the new Federal Program Inventory,… Continue Reading
Service Jobs Now Require Bizarre Personality Test From AI Company
404 Media: “Applying to some of the most common customer and food service jobs in the country now requires a long and bizarre personality quiz featuring blue humanoid aliens, which tells employers how potential hires rank in terms of “agreeableness” and “emotional stability.” If you’ve applied to a job at FedEx, McDonald’s, or Darden Restaurants… Continue Reading
Directory of Police Department Social Media Policies
Brennan Center for Justice – “While many departments have policies addressing the use of social media data, most are too permissive or provide little transparency about actual practices. Surveys and anecdotal reports suggest that the use of social media by state and local law enforcement is widespread, with a number of police departments reporting that they… Continue Reading
Books and looks: gen Z is ‘rediscovering’ the public library
The Guardian – Young people are using the hallowed institutions at higher rates than older generations. “And they’re not just there to read. Gen Z seems to love public libraries. A November report from the American Library Association (ALA) drawing from ethnographic research and a 2022 survey found that gen Z and millennials are using… Continue Reading
Translate a webpage with Firefox
“One of the best things about the internet is that we can access content worldwide. Whether it’s news articles, blogs, or even a review of your latest tech gadget, you can find it all on the seemingly never-ending web. With Firefox’s latest translation feature, this tool will continuously translate a webpage in real-time. While other… Continue Reading
The Top 100 Documentaries We Can Use to Change the World
Films for Action: “Documentaries have an incredible power to raise awareness and create transformative changes in consciousness both at the personal and global levels. Over the last [16] years, we’ve watched hundreds of social change documentaries and cataloged the best of them in this library. There are now so many that we realized we needed to… Continue Reading
The impact of generative AI in a global election year
Brookings – Valerie Wirtschafter: “The influence of the online ecosystem in shaping democratic discourse is well-documented, with the expanded reach of generative artificial intelligence (AI) representing a novel challenge in a historic election year. Generative AI enables the creation of realistic images, videos, audio, or text based on user-provided prompts. Given the potential exploitation of… Continue Reading
