Digit_al Society

"A rise in online racism driven by fake images is "just the start of a coming problem" after the latest release of X's AI software, online abuse experts have warned. Concerns were raised after computer-generated images created using Grok, X's generative artificial intelligence chatbot, flooded the social media site in December last year. Signify, an organisation that works with prominent groups and clubs in sports to track and report online hate, said it has seen an increase in reports of abuse since Grok's latest update, and believes the introduction of photorealistic AI will make it far more prevalent."

"LEAKED META RULES: USERS ARE FREE TO POST "MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS ARE TRASH!" OR "TRANS PEOPLE ARE IMMORAL" Under Meta's relaxed hate speech rules, users can now post "I'm a proud racist" or "Black people are more violent than whites.""

"Umi is a digital wellness platform and personalized family wellness coach that integrates AI and a community of experts. By consolidating wellness data into personalized, actionable pathways for every family, Umi helps people build healthy habits and connect through wellness routines that work for everyone. And by leveraging the power of Anthropic's Claude AI model, Umi benefits from the advanced reasoning capabilities to navigate the unique challenges faced by individuals and families."

"Not everyone is excited for the change. Publishers are completely freaked out. The shift has heightened fears of a "zero-click" future, where search referral traffic-a mainstay of the web since before Google existed-vanishes from the scene.  I got a vision of that future last June, when I got a push alert from the Perplexity app on my phone. Perplexity is a startup trying to reinvent web search. But in addition to delivering deep answers to queries, it will create entire articles about the news of the day, cobbled together by AI from different sources. "

"The promise of Community Notes lies in its transparency and its ability to crowdsource moderation from across ideological divides. By emphasizing consensus, the system avoids the mistrust or perception of bias with platform-driven fact-checking or content removal. Last year YouTube adopted this approach, but as a complement to other products such as information panels, or their recent disclosure requirement when content is altered or synthetic."

"Zuckerberg has said that the platform, which has more than 3 billion people worldwide logging on to its apps every day, will be adopting an Elon Musk-style community notes format for policing what is and isn't acceptable speech on its platforms. Starting in the US, the company will be dramatically shifting the Overton window towards whoever can shout the loudest. The Meta CEO all but admitted that the move was politically motivated. "It's time to get back to our roots around free expression," he said, confessing that "restrictions on topics like immigration and gender […] are out of touch with mainstream discourse". He admitted to past "censorship mistakes" - here, probably meaning the past four years of tamping down political speech while a Democratic president was in office - and said he would "work with President Trump to push back against foreign governments going after American companies to censor more"."

"Mats Steen's double life was first explored in 2019 by Norwegian public broadcaster NRK and then in a BBC News article, which inspired Norwegian film-maker Benjamin Ree to tell the story as a documentary. "I think his story asks some questions that are really relevant today," he says. "Is it possible to become friends with someone you've never met? Is it possible to experience love with somebody you've never met? And how close a friendship can you have with someone you've never spoken to, just written to? And at the same time, I think it says something about the generational gap, about my generation's fascination for gaming - I'm 35 years old - and being in a virtual world. Mats really came of age within that game. Also, both Mats's friends and family have told me that towards the end of his life, he really wanted to have mattered. He seemed to have lived such a short life, but he wanted to be remembered.""

"Meet the Tokyo candidate for governor who live-streamed for 17 days straight, answering 8,600 questions from potential voters. How? Enter 'AI Takahiro', an avatar created by 33-year old candidate Anno Takahiro. The avatar's livestream on YouTube was just one part of this former software engineer-turned-science-fiction writer's ground-breaking campaign, born out of frustration with the one-sided nature of political communication."

"Halfway through their three-hour conversation, Brown said something that caught me off-guard. In hindsight, it isn't all that surprising-as long as you're aware of the latest advances-but it may still shock you coming from a physics university professor: A lot of physics professors are using [large language models] just as personal tutors.1"

"The research refers to tech executives discussing how AI models will be able to predict a user's intent and actions. It quotes the chief executive of the largest AI chipmaker, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, who said last year that models will "figure out what is your intention, what is your desire, what are you trying to do, given the context, and present the information to you in the best possible way"."

"But we're not entirely to blame if technology is making us less intelligent. After all, it was designed to captivate us totally. Silicon Valley's dirtiest design feature - which is everywhere once you spot it - is the infinite scroll, likened to the "bottomless soup bowl" experiment, in which participants will keep mindlessly eating from a soup bowl if it keeps refilling. An online feed that constantly "refills" manipulates the brain's dopaminergic reward system in a similar way. These powerful dopamine-driven loops of endless "seeking" can become addictive."

"I. Neither AI nor other people will take your job: While fears have shifted from AI taking jobs to people using AI replacing others, the reality is that you will most likely replace your non-AI-using self by adopting AI tools."

"Her intervention emerged after Sir Paul McCartney became the latest star to back calls for laws to stop mass copyright theft by generative AI companies, warning the technology "could just take over". Bush, who shot to fame with Wuthering Heights in 1978 but whose last album was released in 2011, gave a rare interview this year in which she said she was "very keen" to make a new album, saying: "I've got lots of ideas … it's been a long time.""

Humans process thoughts at just 10 bits per second, according to a recent paper published by Caltech researchers. In contrast, a human's sensory organs gather data at a billion bits per second. So, if you ever feel overwhelmed by what is going on around you, it's only natural. The research paper, dubbed 'The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?' ponders the human neural substrate which limits thoughts to such a slow pace, and proposes new research to look into this 'bottleneck' now that it has been quantified.

The British-Canadian computer scientist often touted as a "godfather" of artificial intelligence has shortened the odds of AI wiping out humanity over the next three decades, warning the pace of change in the technology is "much faster" than expected. Prof Geoffrey Hinton, who this year was awarded the Nobel prize in physics for his work in AI, said there was a "10% to 20%" chance that AI would lead to human extinction within the next three decades. Previously Hinton had said there was a 10% chance of the technology triggering a catastrophic outcome for humanity.

Is it possible there are modes of attention that a younger generation is developing that might be difficult for those of us who are older to value, but which bring new types of benefit? What of the rapid, quick-fire, written exchanges of instant messaging? The art of the pithy, witty expression condensed into 140 or 280 characters? What of the dexterity and reflex-training physical and mental movement of the video game, or the socially dispersed forms of collective attention that are possible in online environments?

The moral of that story is clear. The spreadsheet was a revolutionary technology when it first appeared in 1978, just as ChatGPT was in 2022. But now it's a routine, integral part of organisation life. The advent of AI "agents" built from GPT-like models looks like following a similar pattern. In turn, the organisations that have absorbed them will also evolve. And then the world may eventually rediscover that famous adage attributed to Marshall McLuhan's colleague John Culkin: "We shape our tools and then the tools shape us."

Albania has announced a one-year ban on TikTok following the killing of a teenager last month that raised fears over the influence of social media on children. Edi Rama, the prime minister, confirmed the ban, part of a broader plan to make schools safer, after meeting parents' groups and teachers from across the country. "For one year, we'll be completely shutting it down for everyone. There will be no TikTok in Albania," Rama said. TikTok, asked to comment on Saturday, requested "urgent clarity from the Albanian government" on the case of the stabbed teenager. The company said it had "found no evidence that the perpetrator or victim had TikTok accounts, and multiple reports have in fact confirmed videos leading up to this incident were being posted on another platform, not TikTok".

Instead, affiliate charter schools seek applicants for positions like a "High School Guide." These $50/hr employees will help design "creative, immersive learning experiences that teach students to leverage cutting-edge AI tools and innovative strategies," among other responsibilities. "Think of yourself as a brand consultant for 50 startups simultaneously, guiding diverse branding needs from business to personal expertise positioning," reads one job listing. Apart from students' brand development, the opening also stipulates candidates must possess "demonstrated expertise in social media management, content creation, and audience engagement."