At the beginning of 2024, TechCrunch started publishing a series of #interviews with notable #women in #AI – to give them their "well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight."
So far, 20+ interviews have been published, and this overview page is certainly worth a bookmark:
Women in tech are still victims of toxic "bro culture", microaggressions, and mistreatment. Melinda French Gates is aiming to change that – and Julia Bort at TechCrunch is rooting for her:
"[N ]ewsrooms across #India have been trying to build out a process for #deepfake detection. (...) [T]his often requires building relationships with academic researchers, #disinformation-focused nonprofits, and developers behind commercial AI detection tools (...). A coalition of Indian #factchecking organizations (...) launched a WhatsApp hotline in March (...) to try and centralize this work of authenticating political media across the country."
Re: The dark side of social media, AI, and big tech.
"A typical workday for African tech contractors (...) involves 'watching murder and beheadings, child abuse and rape, pornography and bestiality, often for more than 8 hours a day.' Pay is often less than $2 per hour (...) and workers frequently end up with post-traumatic stress disorder, a well-documented issue among content moderators around the world."
"Generative artificial intelligence (#GAI) adds a new dimension to the problem of #disinformation. Freely available and largely unregulated tools make it possible for anyone to generate (...) fake content in vast quantities. (...) But there is also a positive side. Used smartly, GAI can provide a greater number of content consumers with trustworthy information"
European nations grapple with a wave of public spending needs (energy transition, industry reinvestment, social programs etc.) in a sluggish economy. To get by, they face a stark choice: cut spending (as many are) – or increase #tax revenue by targeting the wealthy, who currently pay relatively little.
This EDJNET investigation explores the #wealth disparity across #Europe and the potential benefits of systematically taxing the super-rich.
Here's an #AI tool that arrives just in time: The PRISA media group has created an audio #verification and #deepfake detection service for voices in Spanish.
Their goal: Support #journalists (e.g. when covering election campaigns) and foster trust in the face of #disinformation.
Remarkable: The creators also address the problem of powerful people claiming their voices have been cloned after saying something embarrassing.
"In 1838 Charles Wheatstone published a paper describing a curious illusion he’d discovered. If you drew two pictures of something – say, a cube, or a tree – from two slightly different perspectives, and then viewed each one through a different eye, your brain would assemble them into a three-dimensional view. Wheatstone created a table-size device to demonstrate the effect: the world’s first stereoscope."
Nice post on the history of #immersion & #VR (from 2017):
Zach Seward, new editorial director of #AI initiatives at the New York Times, recently published his SXSW '24 talk in his private blog. It's about what AI can (and cannot) do for #journalism, and it's worth your time:
Techies all over the world discuss AI, XR, and high speed mobile web 24/7, but relatively few people are aware of critical old #infrastructure that's falling apart.
Did you know that in #Africa, a total of 13 (!) countries are currently facing an #InternetBlackout, caused by undersea cable damage?