Thursday, September 05, 2024

When A.I.’s Output Is a Threat to A.I. Itself

Countries can raise $2 trillion by copying Spain’s wealth tax, study finds


Feed your fish remotely with this Raspberry Pi-powered feeding system Tom’s Hardware


Ancient disease from 3,800 BC is making a comeback in children – causing crippling pain and making their teeth fall out Daily Mail


Appliance and Tractor Companies Lobby Against Giving the Military the Right to Repair 404 Media


ANALYSIS: TRUE.  “Many law schools operate in a manner that reinforces ideological orthodoxy and chills dissenting views.”


I heard years of Grenfell testimony. Here’s why the disaster could have been prevented BBC. See NC on Grenfell hereherehereherehere, and here


Labour chooses austerity: the black hole is an illusion Counterfire




Digital twins are making companies more efficient Economist 


The Problem with AI

Why AI is likely to have more limited use than boosters anticipate, particularly in replacing professionals like teachers and accountants.


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AI analyzes interviewing styles, in this case with CWT with Nate Silver.



When A.I.’s Output Is a Threat to A.I. Itself

The New York Times – As A.I.-generated data becomes harder to detect, it’s increasingly likely to be ingested by future A.I., leading to worse results. ” The internet is becoming awash in words and images generated by artificial intelligence. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, wrote in February that the company generated about 100 billion words per day — a million novels’ worth of text, every day, an unknown share of which finds its way onto the internet. A.I.-generated text may show up as a restaurant review, a dating profile or a social media post. And it may show up as a news article, too: NewsGuard, a group that tracks online misinformation, recently identified over a thousand websites that churn out error-prone A.I.-generated news articles. In reality, with no foolproof methods to detect this kind of content, much will simply remain undetected. All this A.I.-generated information can make it harder for us to know what’s real. And it also poses a problem for A.I. companies. As they trawl the web for new data to train their next models on — an increasingly challenging task — they’re likely to ingest some of their own A.I.-generated content, creating an unintentional feedback loop in which what was once the output from one A.I. becomes the input for another. In the long run, this cycle may pose a threat to A.I. itself. Researchhas shown that when generative A.I. is trained on a lot of its own output, it can get a lot worse…”


Americans’ Experiences With Local Crime News

This is the third report in a series focused on local news. Read our first report, “Americans’ Changing Relationship With Local News,” and our second report, “How Americans Get Local Political News.”  Crime has long been a major area of focus in local news coverage. In fact, more Americans get news and information about crime than any other local topic except the weather. 

But how they get that news – and how they react to it – varies widely, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Among the key findings: Around three-quarters of U.S. adults (77%) at least sometimes get news and information about local crime.

 This includes 34% who do so often. Americans are about as likely to get information about crime from people they know as they are to get it from local news outlets. About seven-in-ten U.S. adults (71%) often or sometimes get news and information about local crime from friends, family and neighbors. 

A nearly identical share (70%) get this kind of news and information from local news outlets. Like we find with several local news topics, relatively few Americans are highly satisfied with the local crime news they get. Among those who get local crime news, one-third say they are extremely or very satisfied with the quality of this news. 

About half (48%) say they are somewhat satisfied, and 18% say they are not too or not at all satisfied. Many people experience negative emotions after consuming local crime news. Most Americans who get news about local crime say they at least sometimes feel concerned or angry about what is happening after seeing or hearing about it…”



Three days for a pint? The wilderness walk to Britain's remotest pub