New York Times: Don’t quit Facebook. Change laws.. “There was a predictable backlash this week when celebrities like Kim Kardashian West stopped social media posts for a day on Instagram, the photo-sharing site owned by Facebook, to protest the social network. This is a stunt, some people said. If you think Facebook worsens misinformation and hate speech, just quit the social network. Dear readers, you too might have felt guilty for still being on Facebook. A recent book by the leftist lawyer and activist Zephyr Teachout short-circuited this narrative for me.”
Research & Opinion
University of Washington: Who’s tweeting about scientific research? And why?
University of Washington: Who’s tweeting about scientific research? And why?. “Scientists candidly tweet about their unpublished research not only to one another but also to a broader audience of engaged laypeople. When consumers of cutting-edge science tweet or retweet about studies they find interesting, they leave behind a real-time record of the impact that taxpayer-funded research is having within academia and beyond.”
MIT Technology Review: AI ethics groups are repeating one of society’s classic mistakes
MIT Technology Review: AI ethics groups are repeating one of society’s classic mistakes. “International organizations and corporations are racing to develop global guidelines for the ethical use of artificial intelligence. Declarations, manifestos, and recommendations are flooding the internet. But these efforts will be futile if they fail to account for the cultural and regional contexts in which AI operates.”
MIT Technology Review: Why kids need special protection from AI’s influence
MIT Technology Review: Why kids need special protection from AI’s influence. “Algorithms are also increasingly used to determine what their education is like, whether they’ll receive health care, and even whether their parents are deemed fit to care for them. Sometimes this can have devastating effects: this past summer, for example, thousands of students lost their university admissions after algorithms—used in lieu of pandemic-canceled standardized tests—inaccurately predicted their academic performance. Children, in other words, are often at the forefront when it comes to using and being used by AI, and that can leave them in a position to get hurt.”
Enterprise AI: AI and IBM Watson Score to Make ESPN Fantasy Football Trades More Fair
Enterprise AI: AI and IBM Watson Score to Make ESPN Fantasy Football Trades More Fair . “Millions of ESPN Fantasy Football team ‘owners’ are now able to get help from IBM and its Watson AI computing services to ensure that the player trades they make using ESPN’s mobile apps can be completed more fairly and equitably.”
The Walrus: How Algorithms Are Changing What We Read Online
The Walrus: How Algorithms Are Changing What We Read Online. I hate those articles that end up being sneakily horribly depressing. “LAST NOVEMBER, I stopped writing a regular column on art and culture for the Globe and Mail, my job for almost twenty years. Nobody noticed. I did not receive a single reader’s letter. I had a polite message from my section editor. He was sorry things didn’t work out and hoped we could stay in touch. The note contained no sense of symbolic occasion. I knew what I did was no longer important, either to the national culture or to the newspaper’s bottom line.”
The Tyee: Misinformation Was Always Dangerous. Social Media Has Turned It into a Viral Sickness
The Tyee: Misinformation Was Always Dangerous. Social Media Has Turned It into a Viral Sickness. “In 1486, a German priest named Heinrich Kramer published a manual called Malleus Maleficarum or the Hammer of Witches. Kramer wrote the book as an act of revenge following his expulsion from Innsbruck by the local bishop after he tried — and failed — to convict a woman he was sexually obsessed by of satanic practices. Eventually reaching 30,000 copies, Kramer’s book detailed the theory and practice of witch persecution that catalyzed a frenzy of female torture throughout Europe and claimed at least 40,000 victims. History teaches us that indulging petty ignorance can be decidedly deadly, a lesson we ignore at our peril.”
Stony Brook Statesman: SBU researchers use social media to study unhealthy drinking habits
Stony Brook Statesman: SBU researchers use social media to study unhealthy drinking habits. “The study, in collaboration with professors from the University of Pennsylvania, is led by H. Andrew Schwartz, assistant professor of computer science at Stony Brook University. Schwartz’s team is trying to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) program that can scan social media data and use the recorded information to understand the users’ habits in order to predict their future behavior. In this case, the team is focusing on the ability to understand how mood and environment lead to unhealthy drinking behavior. Such behavior is defined as 14 drinks in a single week for a man, or seven drinks for a woman.”
EurekAlert: SUTD researchers develop simple method to 3D print milk products
EurekAlert: SUTD researchers develop simple method to 3D print milk products. “Researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) developed a method to perform direct ink writing (DIW) 3D printing of milk-based products at room temperature, while maintaining its temperature sensitive nutrients.”
TechCrunch: The TikTok deal solves quite literally nothing
TechCrunch: The TikTok deal solves quite literally nothing . “After debasing the idea of free commerce in the U.S in the name of a misplaced security concern, stringing along several multi-billion dollar companies that embarrassed themselves in the interest of naked greed, and demanding that the U.S. government get a cut of the profits, the TikTok saga we’ve been watching the past few weeks finally appears to be over. A flurry of announcement late Saturday night indicate that the TikTok deal was actually a politically-oriented shakedown to boost the cloud infrastructure business of key supporters of the President of the United States.”
Watching over whales: Online tool detects whales and ships in California’s Santa Barbara Channel in near real-time (University of Washington)
University of Washington: Watching over whales: Online tool detects whales and ships in California’s Santa Barbara Channel in near real-time. “Whale Safe combines several technologies: an underwater acoustic system that automatically detects whale calls; near real-time forecasts of whale feeding grounds; and whale sightings by scientists reported through a mobile app. These sources of information are combined into a daily ‘Whale Presence Rating’ on the Whale Safe website — an indicator that describes the likelihood of whales from ‘low’ to ‘very high.'”
The Elm (Washington College): Facebook’s removal of political ads prior to the 2020 election is too little too late
The Elm (Washington College): Facebook’s removal of political ads prior to the 2020 election is too little too late. “In October of 2019, multiple Facebook employees sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg detailing concerns about political ads. Since then numerous employees have expressed their concern about Facebook becoming an unreliable app. They recognized the mistakes made in 2016 and decided that the company needed to change its fact-checking policies. Although Facebook took some of the recommendations from the letter seriously, it’s too little, too late.”
The Next Web: Mozilla needs your help to expose YouTube’s recommendation algorithm
The Next Web: Mozilla needs your help to expose YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. “After installing the RegretsReporter and playing a YouTube video, you can click the frowning face icon in your browser to report the video, the recommendations that led you to it, and any extra details on ‘your regret.’ Mozilla researchers will then search for patterns that led to the recommendations.”
EurekAlert: Human Brain Project launches ‘Brain Matters’ webinar series
EurekAlert: Human Brain Project launches ‘Brain Matters’ webinar series. “The hour-long sessions will focus on different areas of brain research and feature expert speakers, with the goal of highlighting the HBP’s scientific achievements and the state-of-the-art services offered by its new infrastructure for brain research, EBRAINS.” The webinars are free and open to the public.
Google It: Quantum Chemistry Problem Solved (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: Google It: Quantum Chemistry Problem Solved. “We are a bit closer to an era where quantum computers will provide answers to questions too difficult for conventional computers, according to new research featured on the cover of the journal Science. A large research team that included Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) quantum computing pioneer Nathan Wiebe and colleagues at Google AI Quantum published the proof-of-concept for quantum computing of tough chemistry problems.”
