The New York Times [unpaywalled]: Instagram’s Uneasy Rise as a News Site – In this year’s presidential election, more people are turning to Instagram for news, even as the platform tries de-emphasizing “political content.” Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Legal Research
Stanford HAI Tests Westlaw But The GenAI Results Look Worse
Artificial Lawyer: “Ok this story is getting into unusual territory now. Artificial Lawyer just got an email from the spokespeople for the Stanford University HAI team who told this site the researchers had updated their genAI study of hallucinations in case law tools to include Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw. And guess what….? Westlaw has come out… Continue Reading
WTF is AI?
TechCrunch: “So what is AI, anyway? The best way to think of artificial intelligence is as software that approximates human thinking. It’s not the same, nor is it better or worse, but even a rough copy of the way a person thinks can be useful for getting things done. Just don’t mistake it for actual… Continue Reading
Network of local news sites publishing AI written articles under fake bylines
CNN: “The articles on a local news site popping up around the country appear to cover what any community outlet would focus on: crime, local politics, weather and happenings. “In-depth reporting about your home area,” the outlet’s slogan proudly declares. But a closer look at the bylines populating the local site and a national network… Continue Reading
Why Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong
MIT Technology Review: “When Google announced it was rolling out its artificial intelligence-powered search feature earlier this month, the company promised that “Google will do the googling for you.” The new feature, called AI Overviews, provides Search users with AI-generated snapshots highlighting key information and links to help you find what you’re searching for faster… Continue Reading
The Trump Manhattan Criminal Verdict
Via Scott McFarlane – For the history books ===> Supreme Court of the State of New York. The People of the State of New York against Donald J. Trump, defendant The New York Times – Jury Hands Down Historic Conviction in Hush-Money Case Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying records to… Continue Reading
Piecing Together the Secrets of the Stasi
The New Yorker [no paywall]: “After the Berlin Wall fell, agents of East Germany’s secret police frantically tore apart their records. Archivists have spent the past thirty years trying to restore them…Dictatorships depend on the willing. They can’t rule by compulsion alone. People support them to gain power or advance their careers, because they like… Continue Reading
A Devil’s Bargain With OpenAI
The Atlantic via MSN: The Atlantic’s CEO, Nicholas Thompson, announced in an internal email that the company has entered into a business partnership with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. (The news was made public via a press release shortly thereafter.) Editorial content from this publication will soon be directly referenced in response to queries in… Continue Reading
Evaluating Generative AI for Legal Research: A Benchmarking Project
Via LLRX – Evaluating Generative AI for Legal Research: A Benchmarking Project – It is difficult to test Large-Language Models (LLMs) without back-end access to run evaluations. So to test the abilities of these products, librarians can use prompt engineering to figure out how to get desired results (controlling statutes, key cases, drafts of a memo, etc.).… Continue Reading
SUVs are setting new sales records each year so are their emissions
IEA: “The large, heavy passenger vehicles were responsible for over 20% of the growth in global energy-related CO2 emissions last year SUVs accounted for 48% of global car sales in 2023, reaching a new record and further strengthening the defining automobile trend of the early 21st century – the shift towards ever larger and heavier… Continue Reading
Nvidia denies pirate e-book sites are “shadow libraries” to shut down lawsuit
Ars Technica: “Some of the most infamous so-called shadow libraries have increasingly faced legal pressure to either stop pirating books or risk being shut down or driven to the dark web. Among the biggest targets are Z-Library, which the US Department of Justice has charged with criminal copyright infringement, and Library Genesis (Libgen), which was… Continue Reading
Lawyers to Plastics Makers: Prepare for ‘Astronomical’ PFAS Lawsuits
The New York Times [no paywall]: “At an industry presentation about dangerous “forever chemicals,” lawyers predicted a wave of lawsuits that could dwarf asbestos litigation, audio from the event revealed…A wide swath of the chemicals, plastics and related industries are gearing up to fight a surge in litigation related to PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl… Continue Reading
