Ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Stephen Goforth
The sheriff’s department in a country just southwest of Nashville has deployed AI-powered dashcams despite the limited budget for law enforcement in the sparsely populated county, according to GovTech. Meanwhile, police in a California town are using AI tech “to transcribe video recordings taken on officers' body-worn cameras and create a first draft of a police report,” according to another GovTech report.
Research on why so many incompetent men rise to leadership positions found there’s a lot of antimeritocratic and implicit positive discrimination going on that favors not just men but overconfident, narcissistic, and incompetent men when it comes to leadership roles.
Often, even when women are appointed to very senior leadership roles, it isn’t because people have embraced what they bring to the table in terms of EQ, self-awareness, self-control, integrity, humility, people skills, et cetera. Rather, it’s because they go for a profile of somebody who may be biologically female but out-males males in masculinity. So there’s a queen bee or Margaret Thatcher phenomenon. In fact, there are many countries in the world that are run by women who look more alpha male than their male competitors. The point is not to have more biological women in charge but to have better leaders in charge.
Should You Write with Gen AI – Harvard Business Review
To Use AI or Not to Use AI? A Student’s Burden – Inside Higher Ed
The distinct human writer becomes more essential – Harvard’s Nieman Lab
How Indigenous engineers are using AI to preserve their culture – NBC News
Harvard Is Releasing a Massive Free AI Training Dataset of nearly 1 million public-domain books – Wired
How to identify AI-generated text: 7 ways to tell if content was made by a bot – Mashable
Over half of longer English-language posts on LinkedIn are AI-generated – Wired
TV Writers Found 139,000 of Their Scripts Trained AI – The Ankler
Is Grammarly AI? Notre Dame Says Yes – Inside Higher Ed
Stanford Professor Accused of Using AI to Write Expert Testimony Criticizing Deepfakes – Gizmodo
AI Companies Are Trying to Get MIT Press Books – 404Media
There’s No Longer Any Doubt That Hollywood Writing Is Powering AI – The Atlantic
What genre of writing is AI-generated poetry? - Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
What Kind of Writer Is ChatGPT? – New Yorker
HarperCollins Confirms It Has a Deal to Sell Authors' Work to AI Company - 404Media
Why Watermarking Text Fails to Stop Misinformation and Plagiarism – Data Innovation
National Novel Writing Month faces backlash over allowing AI: What to know – Washington Post
How to Tell If What You're Reading Was Written By AI - Lifehacker
Can a Start-Up Help Authors Get Paid by A.I. Companies – New York Times
Google unveils invisible ‘watermark’ for AI-generated text – Nature
The Difference Between Editing Human vs AI Writing - Rebecca Dugas on Substack
Writer Ted Chiang on AI and grappling with big ideas – NPR
AI is My Research & Writing Partner. Should I disclose it? – Wired
Writers Guild Calls on Studios to Take “Immediate Legal Action” Against AI Companies – Hollywood Reporter
You can now ask Claude to mimic your writing style – Tech Radar
University of Reading researchers “slipped 63 AI-generated submissions into the school’s examination system. Even with no editing or efforts to hide the AI usage, 94 percent of those went undetected, and nearly 84 percent got better grades than a randomly selected group of students who took the same exam. The issue with such tools is that they usually perform well in a lab, but their performance drops significantly in the real world. ArsTechnica
At some point we all decline the opportunity to discover what really is the case. We willingly give up a shot at learning the truth about the world out of fear that it will expose truths about ourselves, especially our insufficient courage for self-examination. We prefer the illusion of self-reliance and embrace our ignorance for no other reason than it is ours. It doesn’t matter that reliance on false opinion is the worse sort of dependence. It doesn’t matter that through stubbornness we might pass up a chance at happiness. We prefer to go down with the ship rather than have our names scraped off its hull.
Mark Lilla, Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know
What: This webinar series will help you discover open and hidden sources, refine your investigative skills, and learn how to navigate information challenges in climate journalism.
Who: Iryna Ponedelnik Project Manager
When: 6 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Network for Border Crossing Journalism
What: We'll explore the fascinating neuroscience behind chatbot learning, walk you through the step-by-step process of designing your own chatbot, and equip you with essential dos and don'ts for effective implementation.
Who: Margie Meacham is an expert in adapting AI technology to accelerate learning and support performance. She teaches training organizations around the world how to leverage AI for education and training.
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Training Magazine Network
What: This webinar series will help you discover open and hidden sources, refine your investigative skills, and learn how to navigate information challenges in climate journalism.
Who: Iryna Ponedelnik Project Manager
When: 6 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Network for Border Crossing Journalism
What: Share your questions about Bluesky, what you’re thinking about in this space, the successes/challenges of your experimentation on it.
Who: Bluesky’s Emily Liu
When: 4 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Online News Association
The highest thing that one man can do for another is simply to make him restless.
The GPT era is already ending something has shifted at OpenAI – The Atlantic
Harvard Is Releasing a Massive Free AI Training Dataset of nearly 1 million public-domain books – Wired
Their Job Is to Push Computers Toward AI Doom – Wall Street Journal
Google Unveils A.I. Agent That Can Use Websites on Its Own – New York Times
Former OpenAI researcher raises $40 million to build more empathetic audio AI – Reuters
Meta rolls out internal AI tool as it pushes into business market – Financial Times
Perplexity expands its publisher program – Tech Crunch
The UC Berkeley Project That Is the AI Industry’s Obsession – Wall Street Journal
The Furious Contest to Unseat Nvidia as King of A.I. Chips – New York Times
OpenAI looks at chatbot ads – Axios
Amazon Announces Supercomputer, New Server Powered by Homegrown AI Chips – Wall Street Journal
OpenAI explores advertising as it steps up revenue drive – Financial Times
Amazon eyes news partners for revamped AI Alexa voice assistant – Axios
Labelers training AI say they're overworked, underpaid & exploited by big US tech companies - CBS News
Who's winning the AI race – Axios
OpenAI hits pause on video model Sora after artists leak access in protest – Washington Post
The AI War Was Never Just About AI – The Atlantic
Stanford’s AI Center names US the top AI ecosystem, China follows – Semafor
The future of Windows is cloud and AI – The Verge
TV Writers Found 139,000 of Their Scripts Trained AI – The ankler
Five Canadian news media outlets sue OpenAI for copyright breach – Al Jazeera
Biden’s Farewell to China’s Tech Sector: A New Type of Forbidden Chip - Wall Street Journal
When failure becomes invisible, the difference between failure and success may also become invisible. -David McRaney
Creative people who can “think out of the box” are prized in the business world, the arts, and science. But a new study has found that creative thinkers are also more likely to cheat to get ahead, and to rationalize away less-than-ethical behavior. Harvard Business School researchers gave personality quizzes to hundreds of study participants and then asked them to perform quick games or other tasks for cash. Participants who scored high on a creativity test were more likely to falsify their results so they could earn more prize money. People who were merely high in intelligence, however, were not more dishonest. It appears that the same “divergent thinking” and “cognitive flexibility” that enable creative people to come up with innovative ways of looking at things also equip them to circumvent ethical norms—and to justify their cheating to themselves. “When you’re a creative person, you can use that creativity to come up with reasons for why unethical behaviors may be okay,” researcher Francesca Gino tells The Boston Globe. These “self-serving rationalizations,” she said, can include deciding that “other people would cheat under the same circumstances or that a little cheating will not hurt anyone.”
The Week magazine
Researchers Use AI To Turn Sound Recordings Into Accurate Street Images – University of Texas
Samsung has developed an audio eraser feature for smartphones that will allow users to erase unwanted sounds from videos – Data Company
Former OpenAI researcher raises $40 million to build more empathetic audio AI – Reuters
The Most Hyped Bot Since ChatGPT Remember Sora? – The Atlantic
OpenAI’s video generator, Sora, aims to kickstart the AI video era – Washington Post
NVIDIA's new AI model Fugatto can create audio from text prompts & modify existing sound files - Engadget
Randy Travis’s beautiful baritone was lost. AI helped him sing again. - Washington Post
Polish radio station ditches DJs, journalists for AI-generated college kids – The Register
Adobe Firefly Video Model: How AI is Changing the Future of Video Editing - Unite
There’s a New Hit Podcast That Will Blow Your Mind: The hosts aren’t human. – Wall Street Journal
Podcast: AI and Voice Replication - Illusion of More
Adobe’s AI video model is here, and it’s already inside Premiere Pro – The Verge
Talking through AI and the future of music with will.i.am – Semafor
Amazon is allowing Audible narrators to clone themselves with AI - The Verge
This Hit Music Radio Station Is Fully AI-Generated – Radio World
Amazon's AI Generator Tool Can Now Create Audio Ads – AdWeek
How To Create And Customize An AI Podcast With Google’s NotebookLM – Forbes
Zoom will let AI avatars talk to your team for you - The Verge
Mariah Carey Responds to Claims Her Spotify Wrapped Video Was Made With AI – Hollywood Reporter
Happiness doesn't depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude toward them. -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (born Dec. 11, 1918)
Natural language processing - This is type of machine learning that makes human language intelligible to the machines. The first step is tokenization. Text is divided into units called tokens and then transformed into vectors—where the words are represented by numbers. These word vectors are lists of numbers. More than 1,000 numbers can be used to represent a single word—meaning that word vector has a high dimension—it’s very nuanced. A low dimension for a word vector means the list of numbers is low—not as nuanced but easier to work with. A deep learning model (typically a transformer model) uses these vectors to understand the meaning of words and determine how they relate to one other. For instance, king would relate to man while queen would relate to woman.
More AI definitions here
I dwell in possibility… –Emily Dickinson (born Dec. 10, 1830)
Our brains mix real imagery with mental and emotional baggage, which affects performance. Slugger Mickey Mantle is reported to have once said after hitting a long home run, "I just saw the ball as big as a grapefruit." In contrast, poor hitters may see the baseball as small. It’s not just out of reach for them physically but emotionally as well.
A Purdue University study tested the kicking ability of more than 20 athletes who don't play football. They were asked to estimate the size of the goalposts before and after each of 10 attempts to kick a field goal. The more successful the athlete, the more likely they were to overestimate the size of the posts and underestimate the distance.
Success biased the kickers’ perception of the difficulty of their task. Professor Jessica Witt says, “Before you kicked, you really didn’t know what your abilities were going to be.’’ She found the same effect in past experiments with softball players and golfers. University of Virginia psychologist Dennis Proffitt has put together tests that show the effect holds true even when it comes to dangerous situations.
Which are you imagining in your life—success or failure?
Stephen Goforth
For the foreseeable future, we’ll still need pro video editors who master the technical details of visual storytelling. But for many everyday situations — trimming a meeting recording, pulling social media clips, or gathering quick highlights — natural language editing may soon be a widely-adopted accelerator of the process. It’s not mature yet, but it’s poised to make video editing accessible to everyone who can describe what they want. AI is beginning to democratize creative work that used to require technical expertise.
Jeremy Caplan of WonderTools
Tokenization - The process where an LLM creates a digital representation (a token) of a real thing—everything gets a number; words are translated into numbers. Think of a token as the root of a word. “Creat” is the “root” of many words, for instance, including Create, Creative, Creator, Creating, and Creation. “Create” would be an example of a token. Examples
More AI definitions here
When you look at a person, any person, remember that everyone has a story. Everyone has gone through something that has changed them, and forced them to grow. Every passing face on the street represents a story every bit as compelling and complicated as yours. We meet no ordinary people in our lives. If you give them a chance, everyone has something amazing to offer. So appreciate the possibility of new relationships as you naturally let go of old ones that no longer work. Trust your judgment. Embrace new relationships, knowing that you are entering into unfamiliar territory. Be ready to learn, be ready for a challenge, and be ready to meet someone that might just change your life forever.
What: Learn: What to expect when working as an independent photographer. How you can attract clients and build your portfolio. The best business practices for new freelance photographers.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The New England First Amendment Coalition
What: Ways that teachers can build classroom structures and culture that promote the ethical use of AI.
Who: Paul Cancellieri, a National Board-Certified science teacher.
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Solution Tree, Education Week
What: Hear from a panel of accomplished alumni discussing their work within the field of writing, editing, and publishing, including advice on getting hired and rewards and challenges of the industry. Participate in a lively Q&A session with the full range of panelists. Engage in interactive breakout sessions for personalized advice and valuable networking.
Who: Lucy Feldman, Senior Editor at TIME; Suzy Becker, Author & Illustrator; Natasha Noel AM Writer, Poet & Educational Leader; Taylor Michael Freelance Journalist & Adjunct Instructor.
When: 6 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Brown University Women's Network (BWN) and the Women's Launch Pad
What: A webinar looking at how journalists can make use of technologies and techniques within forensic audio analysis to enhance their investigations.
Who: Founder and Director of Investigations of Earshot, Lawrence Abu Hamdan; Beauregard Tromp,
convenor of the African Investigative Journalism Conference.
When: 7 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The Wits Centre for Journalism, International Fund for Public Interest Media
What: Three senior reporters based in countries that have faced key elections during 2024 will discuss innovative techniques, cross-border collaborations, and the critical importance of investigative journalism in fostering transparency and accountability in elections. The panel will address why investigative journalists should remain hopeful and how their work is more essential than ever to protect the integrity of democracies worldwide.
Who: Poonam Agarwal is an acclaimed investigative journalist from India; Ewald Scharfenberg is an award-winning investigative journalist and co-founder of Armando.info, a leading investigative journalism outlet in Venezuela; Thandi Smith has worked for Media Monitoring Africa for about 12 years and is currently Head of Programmes for the organization; The moderator is Sheila Coronel, director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia Journalism School and a pioneering investigative journalist from the Philippines.
When: 9 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Global Investigative Journalism Network
What: Discover how AI is shaping the future of marketing, from content to experience and everything in between. You’ll find out: What brand-aware AI is, and how to leverage it for better content; Strategies to enhance your brand voice, rather than flatten it, using AI; Tips for integrating this approach into your existing workflows.
Who: Michele Fisher, Global Director, Business Strategy, Microsoft; Kelly Masters Senior Product Marketing Manager, Sitecore.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: AdWeek
What: The December meeting of the AI Innovator Collaborative, a regular gathering for ONA members already using AI in journalism to connect and share ideas.
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free to ONA members
Sponsor: Online News Association
What: Global trust in news, the pace of technological change and the future of journalism.
Who: Bill Gross CEO, ProRata & Chair, Idealab; Faye D’Souza Journalist & Entrepreneur.
When: 10:30 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Washington Post, The Ey Organization
What: We will explore what conversational AI is as well as the risks, benefits, and considerations when utilizing this technology. Key learning objectives for this session include: Understanding what conversational AI is and looking at examples, such as ChatGPT; Recognizing what responsible use of conversational AI looks like; Identifying strategies for educating adult patrons about the implications of using conversational AI.
Who: Michael Spikes, Director of the Teach for Chicago Journalism project and a lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism; Kristen Calvert serves as the Events & Programs Administrator for Dallas Public Library.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: American Library Association
What: We'll explore the fascinating neuroscience behind chatbot learning, walk you through the step-by-step process of designing your own chatbot, and equip you with essential dos and don'ts for effective implementation.
Who: Margie Meacham is an expert in adapting AI technology to accelerate learning and support performance. She teaches training organizations around the world how to leverage AI for education and training.
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Training Magazine Network
What: How to integrate new technologies like virtual reality, 3D printing, and podcasting equipment to foster equitable content creation. The session will highlight ways to ensure these technologies are accessible to all users and how they can be used to elevate underrepresented voices in media production. Following the presentation, attendees will join breakout rooms for further discussion and connection.
Who: Paris Whalon is the Student Success Librarian for Media Literacy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Media Education Lab
What: We’ll explore ways to fight back against misinformation and disinformation during post-election coverage. We’ll use tools such as Google Fact-Check Explorer to track fact-checked images and stories. We’ll use reverse image search and other Google tools to check election claims. We’ll break down doctored video and audio with WatchFramebyFrame and Deepfake-o-meter. We’ll also look at the innovative Rolliapp.com to track disinformation spreaders on social channels. Participants get a handout with links to tools and exercise materials.
Who: Mike Reilley Senior Lecturer, University of Illinois-Chicago.
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: RTDNA/Google News Initiative
What: Members of the National Council of Innovative Instructional Leaders will identify challenges, offer suggestions, and discuss the necessary mindsets and critical components of a successful AI launch and implementation. They’ll also highlight key takeaways from NCIIL’s recent report, Shaping Education for Generation Alpha in an Era of AI.
Who: Jeff McCoy, Associate Superintendent for Academics, Greenville County Schools (SC); Kimberley Markus, CEO, Education Advisors; Casey Rimmer, Executive Director of K-12 Curriculum and Instruction, Union County Public Schools (NC); Shawn Bird, Deputy Superintendent, San Antonio Independent School District (TX); and Jennifer Ferrari, CEO and President, ERDI.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Education Research and Development Institute
What: This session will provide valuable insights into the current media landscape, Gen Z’s news consumption habits, and practical strategies for local newsrooms and independent publishers to effectively reach and engage this crucial demographic.
Who: Award-winning journalist and digital consultant Adriana Lacy.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free (though you have to sign up for a newsletter)
Sponsor: Indiegraf
What: Should educators adapt and find ways to increasingly incorporate generative AI in the classroom? How do schools educate students about this ever-growing technology, its language models, prompt engineering, and the possible positive uses? Should an “Introduction to AI” course be incorporated into curricula? If so, what would be its content? We will explore these emerging questions during this session.
Who: Karen Rezach, Director of the Ethics Institute, Kent Place School (NJ); Kimberly Pearson, Director of Technology, Kent Place School (NJ); and a Panel of High School Students.
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The Ethics Institute at Kent Place School, Artificial Intelligence in Education
What: This session is designed to show you how to harness the power of ChatGPT, an advanced AI language model, to craft compelling gamification concepts and storylines that captivate your audience.
Who: Monica Cornetti, Founder and President, Sententia Inc.; Rasha Morsi, Ph.D. Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Creative Gaming and Simulation (CGS) Lab, Norfolk State University; Musbah Abdulgader, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Norfolk State University.
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Training Magazine Network
What: How to recognize the types of online harassment journalists face most often; When to ignore online harassment and when to take action; What to do when online harassment crosses into illegal territory; Steps you can take right now to help protect your digital presence.
Who: Tat Bellamy-Walker, Program Manager of Digital Safety Training and Resources (Media) at PEN America; María Salazar Ferro, Director of Newsroom Safety and Resilience at The New York Times; Greg Lipper, a D.C.-based litigator with extensive experience in criminal defense and investigations, and First Amendment and media law.
When: 11 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: National Press Club Journalism Institute
What: Learn how to find work in content marketing, branding, communications and other fields that are adjacent to journalism, and how to adjust to the different demands of this work. Panelists will discuss how to network to good clients, handling yourself ethically, and what kinds of organizations are eager to hire journalists
Who: Ricardo Baca, founder and CEO of Grasslands; Mary Melton, Editor-at-Large, Alta Journal; Stacy Brooks Whatley, Chief Communications & Marketing Officer, American Counseling Association.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The Institute for Independent Journalists
Research shows just about all of us think we are more competent than our coworkers, more ethical than our friends, friendlier than the general public, more intelligent than our peer, more attractive than the average person, less prejudiced than people in our region, younger-looking than people the same age, better drivers than most people we know, better children than our siblings, and that we will live longer than the average lifespan.
(As you just read that list, maybe you said to yourself, “No, I don’t think I’m better than everyone.” So you think you’re more honest with yourself than the average person? You are not so smart.)
No one, it seems, believes he or she is part of the population contributing to the statistics generating averages. You don’t believe you are an average person, but you do believe everyone else is. This tendency, which springs from self-serving bias, is called the illusory superiority effect.
In 1999, Justin Kruger at the New York University Stern School of Business showed illusory superiority was more likely to manifest in the minds of subject when they were told ahead of time a certain task was easy. When they rated their abilities after being primed to think the task was considered simple, people said they performed better than average. When he then told people where were about to perform a task that was difficult they rated their performance as being below average even when it wasn’t .
No matter the actual difficulty, just telling people ahead of time how hard the undertaking would be changed how they saw themselves in comparison to an imagined average. To defeat feelings of inadequacy, you first have to imagine a task as being simple and easy. If you can manage to do that, illusory superiority takes over.
David McRaney, You are Not so Smart
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