"research consistently shows that social media is exploited to facilitate political intimidation and violence. What's more, certain features of social media platforms make them particularly susceptible to such exploitation, and some of those features can be changed to reduce the danger. "
"Russia propaganda group behind fake Kamala Harris hit-and-run story, says Microsoft
Microsoft researchers found that the group created a video, paid an actor to appear as the alleged victim, and spread the claim through a fake website"
"But historians of the future may struggle to understand fully how we lived our lives in the early 21st Century. That's because of a potentially history-deleting combination of how we live our lives digitally - and a paucity of official efforts to archive the world's information as it's produced these days.
However, an informal group of organisations are pushing back against the forces of digital entropy - many of them operated by volunteers with little institutional support. None is more synonymous with the fight to save the web than the Internet Archive, an American non-profit based in San Francisco, started in 1996 as a passion project by internet pioneer Brewster Kahl. The organisation has embarked what may be the most ambitious digital archiving project of all time, gathering 866 billion web pages, 44 million books, 10.6 million videos of films and television programmes and more. Housed in a handful of data centres scattered across the world, the collections of the Internet Archive and a few similar groups are the only things standing in the way of digital oblivion."
"Data center emissions probably 662% higher than big tech claims. Can it keep up the ruse?
Emissions from in-house data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple may be 7.62 times higher than official tally"
"National police agency says it is investigating 513 cases of deepfake pornography as a new scandal grips the country
Raphael Rashid in Seoul and Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Fri 13 Sep 2024 21.00 BST
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The anger was palpable. For the second time in just a few years, South Korean women took to the streets of Seoul to demand an end to sexual abuse. When the country spearheaded Asia's #MeToo movement, the culprit was molka - spy cams used to record women without their knowledge. Now their fury was directed at an epidemic of deepfake pornography."
"Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that Turkish high school students who had access to ChatGPT while doing practice math problems did worse on a math test compared with students who didn't have access to ChatGPT. Those with ChatGPT solved 48 percent more of the practice problems correctly, but they ultimately scored 17 percent worse on a test of the topic that the students were learning. "
"Australia plans to ban children from social media. Is checking and enforcing an age block possible?
As the Albanese government pledges a ban, age verification trials in the UK and US show possible hurdles and privacy concerns"
"The internet, including social media, was not made with children and young people in mind. This is why online experiences are not always good for children and sometimes even exploitative, risky, and deeply problematic. No wonder parents are worried, educators are at a loss and the government feels compelled to act. But banning children from social media is not the answer."
"Students using ChatGPT solved 48% more of the problems correctly, and those with the AI tutor solved 127% more problems correctly, according to the report.
But their peers who did not use ChatGPT outscored them on the related tests. In fact, students using ChatGPT scored 17% worse on tests.
Kids working on their own performed the same on practice assignments and tests.
Researchers told The Hechinger Report that students are using the chatbot as a "crutch" and that it can "substantially inhibit learning.""
"In 1987, economist Robert Solow famously observed that the computer age was evident everywhere except in productivity statistics. Manyika warned that we could face a similar scenario with AI.
"We could have a version of that-where we see this technology everywhere, on our phones, in all these chatbots, but it's done nothing to transform the economy in that real fundamental way," he told the FT."
"What do people really ask chatbots? It's a lot of sex and homework.
AI chatbots are taking the world by storm. We analyzed thousands of conversations to see what people are really asking them and what topics are most discussed."
"How China's internet police went from targeting bloggers to their followers
In recent months, followers of influential liberal bloggers have been interviewed by police as China widens its net of online surveillance"
"Access to the platform must now be blocked "throughout the Brazilian territory," the source said on condition of anonymity, confirming media reports citing the judge's ruling."
"The tablets are scheduled to be introduced next year, and by 2028, teachers are supposed to be using these AI textbooks for all subjects except music, art, physical education and ethics. The government hasn't shared many details about how it will all work, except that the material is supposed to be customized for different speeds of learning, with teachers using dashboards to monitor how students are doing.
In response, more than 50,000 parents have signed a petition demanding that the government focus less on new tech and more on students' overall well-being: "We, as parents, are already encountering many issues at unprecedented levels arising from [our children's] exposure to digital devices."
Lee Sun-youn, a mother of two, told FT, "I am worried that too much usage of digital devices could negatively affect their brain development, concentration span and ability to solve problems - they already use smartphones and tablets too much.""
"So we've entered a world in which the CEOs of major social network are arrested and detained. That's quite a shift - and it didn't come in a way anyone was expecting."
"Aussies bothered by their bosses at home can now rest assured they cannot be punished for ignoring such after-hours demands. Lawmakers there passed a "right to disconnect" bill designed to end the creep of work into home life-and an explosion of unpaid overtime."
