michellemanafy

michellemanafy, 2 days ago to journalism

The latest in a series of stories examining how utilities and fossil fuel interests impersonate local news sites to manipulate information and attack public officials to get their way. https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/05/how-npr-and-floodlight-teamed-up-to-uncover-fossil-fuel-news-mirages-across-the-country/
#journalism #news

michellemanafy, 6 days ago to news

Data from the US Federal Reserve shows the same tell-tale pattern we have grown used to with crime: people assess their own financial situation to be relatively healthy, and this changes very little from year to year, but their assessment of the national economy has cratered, opening up a huge gulf. It seems increasingly likely news coverage shoulders part of the blame. (subscription) https://www.ft.com/content/8cd76cde-7694-4674-99a7-188c18257530
#news

michellemanafy, 15 days ago to news

About half of Americans, 53%, say they are extremely or very concerned that news organizations will report inaccuracies or misinformation during the election. Some 42% express worry that news outlets will use generative artificial intelligence to create stories, according to a poll from the American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. https://apnews.com/article/news-organizations-trust-poll-misinformation-18235eaef4fdfbdc9c1f7e8693744b21
#news #research

michellemanafy, 20 days ago to Futurology

Journalism has a responsibility to say when something just isn’t true, and it’s hard to argue against accurately and empathetically portraying the struggles of people long excluded. But objectivity means many other things besides “both sides” and “white and male” — it covered a range of virtues that still ring true.
https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/04/objectivity-in-journalism-is-a-tricky-concept-what-could-replace-it/
#research #journalism #media #news

michellemanafy, 22 days ago to nature

This year we have had a huge flock of turkeys roosting in the trees near my office. We came back from a few days away and I wondered why I've not heard them. Well, this fellow came by under the bird feeders at breakfast today. I'm guessing the turkeys did not like their new neighbor, though I'm sure bobcat found them delightful (or delicious).
#Nature

A wild bobcat walking through a yard in Connecticut

michellemanafy, 1 month ago to medical

We. Need. Laws.
And school boards must have policies now

A.I.-generated images to harass, humiliate and bully young women can harm their mental health, reputations and physical safety as well as pose risks to their college and career prospects.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/08/technology/deepfake-ai-nudes-westfield-high-school.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jE0.brhY.4jioUi-PupSq&smid=url-share
#policy #AI

michellemanafy, 1 month ago to ai

Oh um, sure. This seems fine:
Elon Musk's X pushed a fake headline about Iran attacking Israel. X's AI chatbot Grok made it up. https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-x-twitter-ai-chatbot-grok-fake-news-trending-explore
#AI #news

michellemanafy, 1 month ago to ai

The Amazon story is a stark reminder that “artificial intelligence” still often requires armies of human babysitters to work properly. (In case you'd not heard, Amazon's "automated" Just Walk Out shopping tech relied in part on more than 1,000 people in India to verify purchases.) https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-03/the-humans-behind-amazon-s-just-walk-out-technology-are-all-over-ai?srnd=technology-vp
#AI

michellemanafy, 1 month ago to random

On April 2, TrueMedia.org released free tools for identifying digital disinformation, with a plan to put them in the hands of journalists, fact checkers and anyone else trying to figure out what is real online.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/technology/an-ai-researcher-takes-on-election-deepfakes.html?ugrp=c&unlocked_article_code=1.hk0.8OTg.JWsusc-3bK_9&smid=url-share

michellemanafy, 1 month ago to news

NewsGuard, which rates the quality and trustworthiness of news sites, has identified 1,197 pink slime sites operating in the US as of April 1 — about as many as the estimated 1,200 real news sites operated by daily local newspapers. The number of these sites has nearly tripled since 2019 but ebbs and flows with American electoral cycles. https://www.ft.com/content/ce6f8b43-8b0f-4081-a13c-47e58640253e
#news #research #elections

michellemanafy, 1 month ago to Dragonlance

For the past 20 years, one man has been releasing album after album of songs with the object of producing a result to match nearly anything anybody could think to search for. “You have to understand,” he said, apologetically. “I’ve written over 24,000 songs. I wrote 50 songs yesterday.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/magazine/spotify-matt-farley.html
#audio #search #SEO

michellemanafy, 1 month ago to ai

Here’s Proof You Can Train an AI Model Without Slurping Copyrighted Content
OpenAI claimed it’s “impossible” to build good AI models without using copyrighted data. An “ethically created” large language model and a giant AI dataset of public domain text suggest otherwise.
https://www.wired.com/story/proof-you-can-train-ai-without-slurping-copyrighted-content/
#AI #Copyright

michellemanafy, 2 months ago to journalism

Report for America has been in the news this week after it announced that it is phasing out support of hedge fund and private equity-owned newsrooms. While journalists placed in those settings produced good work, the pursuit of profit sometimes produced difficult working conditions for journalists whose careers they're helping launch, and are not great fits for the business sustainability tools RfA has been so successful in helping communities build. https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2024/report-for-america-kim-kleman-hedge-fund-private-equity/
#journalism

michellemanafy, 3 months ago to TwitterMigration

The BBC has "had really encouraging levels of engagement (i.e. replies, re-posts and likes) on Mastodon. For some equivalent posts we’ve seen significantly larger engagement numbers for Mastodon compared to X/Twitter, particularly given the relative sizes of different platforms. We think this is partly due to the culture of Mastodon, and partly because of some of the topics we’ve posted about." https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2024-02-extending-our-mastodon-social-media-trial
#twittermigration

michellemanafy, 3 months ago to ai

Artificial intelligence image-generating company Midjourney is considering banning people from using its software to make political images of Joe Biden and Donald Trump as part of an effort to avoid being used to distract from or misinform about the 2024 US presidential election.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/feb/10/ai-political-images-ban-trump-biden-midjourney
#AI

michellemanafy, 3 months ago to ai

Can This A.I.-Powered Search Engine Replace Google?
Even though Perplexity isn’t perfect, it’s very good. And while I’m not ready to break up with Google entirely, I’m hopeful that A.I.-powered search engines like Perplexity could loosen Google’s grip on the search market
Perplexity doesn’t return a list of links. Instead, it scours the web and uses A.I. to write a summary of what it finds. These answers are annotated with links to the sources used.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/01/technology/perplexity-search-ai-google.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SU0.Xq_4.0IiVqFho0-Ek&bgrp=t&smid=url-share
#AI #search

michellemanafy, 3 months ago to random

The New York Times introduces a new format to its bylines
Research shows that the more readers know about our reporters, the more likely they are to understand the rigors of the journalistic process and trust the results. To that end, NYT published hundreds of byline pages in a new format that highlights the experience, expertise and ethics of its reporters, photogs, editors, audio, video & data journalists from across the newsroom and Opinion https://www.nytco.com/press/our-redesigned-byline-pages/
https://www.nytco.com/press/our-redesigned-byline-pages/

michellemanafy, 3 months ago to ai

Most Top News Sites Block AI Bots. Right-Wing Media Welcomes Them
My knee-jerk reaction was that this might be ideological; an effort to shift bots right. However, it appears some right-leaning outlets were caught unawares: Daily Caller admitted that its permissiveness toward AI crawlers had been a simple mistake. “We do not endorse bots stealing our property. This must have been an oversight, but it's being fixed now,” cofounder & publisher Neil Patel
https://www.wired.com/story/most-news-sites-block-ai-bots-right-wing-media-welcomes-them/
#AI #journalism

michellemanafy, 3 months ago to ai

Test Yourself: Which Faces Were Made by A.I.? See if you can identify which of these images are real people and which are A.I.-generated. [😳 I did not do well...]
Open link:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/19/technology/artificial-intelligence-image-generators-faces-quiz.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Pk0.IfVZ.jjowuXZ6t0DE&smid=url-share
#AI #generativeAI #photography

michellemanafy, 4 months ago to random

Thoughts? From algorithms firing staff without human intervention to software keeping tabs on bathroom breaks, technologies including artificial intelligence are already upsetting workers and unsettling workplaces...At call centers, AI systems record and grade how workers handle calls, often giving failing grades for not sticking to the script. Some corporate software spies on workers to see whether they ever write the word “union” in their emails. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/07/artificial-intelligence-surveillance-workers