Mr Zander is an artist, a musician, a teacher, philosopher, an entertainer all at once. But most of all, he is a fearless, wise and wonderful man.
Life Lessons From Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 | Benjamin Zander | TED
Most readers want publishers to label AI-generated articles but trust outlets less when they do
Nieman Lab: “An overwhelming majority of readers would like news publishers to tell them when AI has shaped the news coverage they’re seeing. But, new research finds, news outlets pay a price when they disclose using generative AI.
That’s the conundrum at the heart of new research from University of Minnesota’s Benjamin Toff and Oxford Internet Institute’s Felix M. Simon. Their working paper “‘Or they could just not use it?’: The paradox of AI disclosure for audience trust in news” is one of the first experiments to examine audience perceptions of AI-generated news. More than three-quarters of U.S. adults think news articles written by AI would be “a bad thing.” But, from Sports Illustrated to Gannett,
it’s clear that particular ship has sailed. Asking Google for information and getting AI-generated content back isn’t the future, it’s our present-day reality. Much of the existing research on perceptions of AI in newsmaking has focused on algorithmic news recommendation, i.e. questions like how readers feel about robots choosing their headlines. Some have suggested news consumers may perceive AI-generated news as more fair and neutral owing to the “machine heuristic” in which people credit technology as operating without pesky things like human emotions or ulterior motives.
For this experiment, conducted in September 2023, participants read news articles of varying political content — ranging from a piece on the release of the “Barbie” film to coverage of an investigation into Hunter Biden. For some stories, the work was clearly labeled as AI-generated. Some of the AI-labeled articles were accompanied by a list of news reports used as sources…”
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, December 23, 2023 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness.
Four highlights from this week: Google brings privacy washing to Android; Xfinity discloses data breach after recent Citrix server hack; How to Check If Something Online Was Written by AI; and Artificial intelligence can find your location, alarming privacy experts.
Washington Post [read free]: “If you’ve got a few days this holiday season to help your family with tech chores, embrace an awkward but necessary task:
Assign someone to take over a loved one’s online accounts after they die. “Legacy contacts” are trusted individuals who can manage an online account after the owner dies. Maybe you want to download your mom’s Facebook photos when she’s gone, or you need to access her Gmail account to find a bill. In either scenario, legacy contacts make things easier during a difficult time.
The average internet user is estimated to have anywhere from dozens to hundreds of online accounts. Not all of them are important for estate planning, so focus on the big ones: finance, health, cloud storage and social media.”
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No matter how many times I explained all this, the same question kept coming, over and over. ‘Why do you care so much?’ All I could say was: ‘Why do you not?’
The intercession of the most famous children’s writer in the world in the trans debate was a moment when I thought the argument would shift decisively in my direction. So beloved were the Harry Potter books, so impeccable were J. K. Rowling’s socialist credentials, so compelling her backstory, she would be listened to.
But no, not a bit of it. HMS Rowling – which had piped on board generations of children, and taught them to read for their pleasure and then for their children’s pleasure – was deserted faster than a plague ship, so taboo were the author’s perfectly commonplace views on women’s rights.
The young actors from the Harry Potter series of films instantly betrayed her. If I were a star who had never shown any ability to act past the pre-pubescent level that got me into the business, I’d be keeping my head down, not signing statements insinuating that my old mentor was a bigot.
Those actors – Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint – deserve to be remembered as symbols of the most remarkable arrogance, cowardice and ingratitude. But asking what Rowling actually said that was so terrible produces nothing. You’ve never seen a transphobic statement from J. K. Rowling because none exists.
Women’s tears! Worth a sniff?
