“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
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Category Archives: Knowledge Management
The Public Domain Review
“Founded in 2011, The Public Domain Review is an online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas. As our name suggests, the focus is on works now fallen into the public domain, that vast commons of out-of-copyright material that everyone is… Continue Reading
New Ways to Search Archived Music News
Internet Archive Blogs: “When MTVNews.com went offline in late June, Internet users were quick to discover that some (but sadly, not all) of the site had been archived in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. While you can no longer browse MTV News directly on the web, the archived pages are available via the Wayback Machine,… Continue Reading
TikTok Content Farms Use AI Voiceovers to Mass-Produce Political Misinformation
“In September 2023, NewsGuard identified what appeared to be the first of its kind: a network of 17 TikTok accounts using AI text-to-speech software to create videos advancing conspiracy theories about celebrities, amassing hundreds of millions of views. Now, the phenomenon appears to be growing and shifting its focus to politics. NewsGuard has identified 41… Continue Reading
Everyone Has A Price And Corporations Know Yours
The Lever – “Digital surveillance and customer isolation are locking us into a consumer hell of personalized prices. Six years ago, I was at a conference at the University of Chicago, the intellectual heart of corporate-friendly capitalism, when my eyes found the cover of the Chicago Booth Review, the business school’s flagship publication. “Are You… Continue Reading
Peer review is essential for science. Unfortunately, it’s broken.
Ars Technica: “Rescuing Science: Restoring Trust in an Age of Doubt was the most difficult book I’ve ever written. I’m a cosmologist—I study the origins, structure, and evolution of the Universe. I love science. I live and breathe science. If science were a breakfast cereal, I’d eat it every morning. And at the height of… Continue Reading
Even Disinformation Experts Don’t Know How to Stop It
The New York Times – “Researchers have learned plenty about misinformation and how it spreads. But they’re still struggling to figure out how to stop it…Holding the line against misinformation and disinformation is demoralizing and sometimes dangerous work, requiring an unusual degree of optimism and doggedness. Increasingly, however, even the most committed warriors are feeling… Continue Reading
Not Everyone Has an Inner Voice Streaming Through Their Head
Scientific American [unpaywalled]: “Most of us have an “inner voice,” and we tend to assume everybody does, but recent evidence suggests that people vary widely in the extent to which they experience inner speech, from an almost constant patter to a virtual absence of self-talk. “Until you start asking the right questions you don’t know… Continue Reading
NewsGuard Launches Monthly AI News Misinformation Monitor
Creating Benchmark for Comparing the Trustworthiness of Leading Generative AI Models – “NewsGuard today launched a monthly AI News Misinformation Monitor – see the July 2024 issue here, setting a new standard for measuring the accuracy and trustworthiness of the AI industry by tracking how each leading generative AI model is responding to prompts related… Continue Reading
When implementing AI, first train your managers
ZDNET: “Businesses are rushing into GenAI before establishing adequate systems of governance, which could result in serious issues with quality and compliance down the road. Dropping artificial intelligence into an organization requires more than a working knowledge of AI — this is only the first step. A recent survey shows most organizations and their IT… Continue Reading
Requesting Your Support For BeSpacific
Dear Readers, Colleagues, Friends – I have not reached out for quite a while, but perhaps you are indoors during the heat wave and will take a moment to read and respond. Thank you to the readers who currently support BeSpacific on a regular basis. I am hopeful that more readers will join them and… Continue Reading
Washington Post Chatbot in Beta Responds to Questions About Climate
Washington Post – Your climate questions, answered. This is an experiment from The Washington Post to use AI to help answer your climate questions. Responses are based solely on published reporting by Post journalists. Please verify any information with the underlying articles. See also the site’s Feedback Form – Did you find what you were… Continue Reading
