AI Definitions: Algorithms

Algorithms - Direct, specific instructions for computers created by a human through coding that tells the computer how to perform a task. Like a cooking recipe, this set of rules has a finite number of steps. More specifically, it is code that follows the algorithmic logic of “if”, “then”, and “else.” An example of an algorithm would be: IF the customer orders size 13 shoes, THEN display the message ‘Sold out, Sasquatch!’; ELSE ask for a color preference.     

Algorithms make one of two approaches:

1. Rule-based algorithms – direct, specific instructions are created by a human.  

2. Machine-learning algorithms – The data and goal is given to the algorithm, which works out for itself how to reach the goal. There is a popular perception that algorithms provide a more objective, more complete view of reality, but they often will simply reinforce existing inequities, reflecting the bias of creators and the materials used to train them.

More AI definitions here.

How to Grieve

There are recovery programs for people grieving the loss of a parent, sibling, or spouse. You can buy books on how to cope with the death of a beloved pet or work through the anguish of a miscarriage. We speak openly with one another about the bereavement that can accompany a layoff, a move, a diagnosis, or a dream deferred. But no one really teaches you how to grieve the loss of your faith. You’re on your own for that.

Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday 

18 Articles about AI & Academic Scholarship

What are the best AI tools for research? Nature’s guide - Nature

Exploring the Impact of Generative AI on Peer Review: Insights from Journal Reviewers – Springer

OpenAI unveils a new ChatGPT agent for ‘deep research’ – TechCrunch

AI-Generated Junk Science Is a Big Problem on Google Scholar, Research Suggests – Gizmodo 

What happens when you let ChatGPT assess impact case studies? – London School of Economics  

Generative AI in the research process – A survey of researchers’ practices and perceptions – Science Direct 

Springer Nature offers to sell authors “AI Summaries of Their Own Work” – Futurism

Teens Are Doing AI Research Now. Is That a Good Thing? - Chronicle of Higher Ed

How is content generated by ChatGPT infiltrating scientific papers published in premier journals? – Wiley

Elsevier denies AI use in response to evolution journal board resignations – Retraction Watch  

Springer Nature reveals AI-driven tool to 'automate some editorial quality checks' – The Bookseller 

Nvidia unveils $3,000 desktop AI computer for home researchers - ArsTechnica 

Generative artificial intelligence and academic writing: friend or foe? - Elsevier

Detecting Research Misconduct in the Age of Artificial Intelligence – The Scientist

Can AI-generated podcasts boost science engagement? – Nature

AI-Authored Abstracts ‘More Authentic’ Than Human-Written Ones – Inside Higher Ed

Scholars Are Supposed to Say When They Use AI. Do They? - Chronicle of Higher Ed 

Will ChatGPT Get Tenure? - Leiden Vladtrice

Do You Know what an AI Cannot Do? Try this Multiple Choice Question

If you write a prompt asking an AI to do each of these things, which would it be good at doing? 

a. Give me a cube root of a seven-digit number.

b. Write text backwards.

c. Give me a 5x12 animated GIF of green, falling Matrix letters in Python code.

d. I have a stack of Fiesta ware plates of these colors: green, yellow, orange, red, purple. Two slots below the purple one, I placed a yellow one, then one slot above the green one, I placed a black one. What is the final stack of plates?

e. Give me a list of 10 examples of something.  

Riley Goodside, lead prompt engineer for Scale AI gives the answer in a conversation with Semafor

The Secret

Perhaps the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing the unanswerable questions in good company.  - Rachel Naomi Remen

The intersection of Science & AI in 18 Articles

AI Is Coming Up With Brand New Molecules, Fueling Drug Discovery  - Science Friday

Blurry Authorship: Originality in Science before and after Large Language Models – University of California Press 

How are researchers using AI? Survey reveals pros and cons for science – Nature  

Google’s X spins out Heritable Agriculture, a startup using AI to improve crop yield – Tech Crunch 

OpenAI’s ‘deep research’ tool: is it useful for scientists? – Nature

AI Comes to the Apple Orchard—From Pollinating to Picking – Wall Street Journal

With generative AI, MIT chemists quickly calculate 3D genomic structures – MIT 

How should the advancement of large language models affect the practice of science? – PANS 

Scientists trained AI to predict gene activity, a potentially powerful tool – Washington Post

Using AI to talk to animals – Axios

How Hallucinatory A.I. Helps Science Dream Up Big Breakthroughs – New York Times

Can AI-generated podcasts boost science engagement? - Nature 

New methane monitoring AI tool unveiled - Axios

AI helps uncover hundreds of unknown ancient symbols hidden in Peru’s Nazca Desert – CNN  

AI Scientists Have a Problem: AI Bots Are Reviewing Their Work – Chronicle of Higher Ed 

Two biotech companies claim they use AI to design drugs from scratch. Do they? – Stat News  

Exploring the Impact of Generative AI on Peer Review: Insights from Journal Reviewers – Springer  

Scientists Harness AI to Help Protect Whales, Advancing Ocean Conservation and Planning – Rutgers

AI Reveals Hidden Interior Design Rules of the Cell - IEEE Spectrum

I believe

I believe in the sun when it's not shining, I believe in love even when I feel it not, I believe in God even when he is silent.  – Irish Saying

Imagination

Imagination is more important than knowledge. – Albert Einstein

Janitor AI

"People are increasingly falling for their favorite chatbots, spending hours each day building relationships with their artificial lovers. Chatbot site Janitor AI says users have started 2.1 million conversations with its Valentine’s Day bots." -Read more on Semafor

20 Recent Articles about AI Fakes

Russian TV falls for fake report on DeepSeek's 'Soviet code' -  Reuters 

DeepSeek hallucinates alarmingly more than other AI models – Semafor

Low quality books that appear to be AI generated are making their way into public libraries – 404 Media  

Trump deepfake message to Putin fooled Russians - VOA News 

Meta’s fake AI users are here and they’re giving everybody the creeps – Sherwood  

YouTube launching new tools to help celebrities manage AI copycats - Semafor

Apple urged to axe AI feature after false headline - BBC

Instagram’s head says social media needs more context because of AI – The Verge

How to identify AI-generated text: 7 ways to tell if content was made by a bot – Mashable  

Stanford Professor Accused of Using AI to Write Expert Testimony Criticizing Deepfakes – Gizmodo  

Experts fail to reliably detect AI-generated histological data – Nature    

A Survey on the Use of Large Language Models (LLMs) in Fake News - MDPI    

Combating misinformation in the age of LLMs: Opportunities and challenges – Wiley  

A meta-analysis of correction effects in science-relevant misinformation – Nature  

Meta Moves to End Fact-Checking Program – New York Times 

AI and Social Media Fakes: Are You Protecting Your Brand? – Law.com

Cyber expert weighs in on spotting fake, AI-generated information on social media and online – ABC

Phishing with AI is cybersecurity’s new hook – McKinsey  

No. 42 law firm by head count could face sanctions over fake case citations generated by AI – ABA Journal 

Fake AI hedge fund manager admits fraud in U.S. – Investment Executive

AI Definitions: Imitation Learning

Imitation Learning – This is a popular method for training robots, along with reinforced learning. The robots learn by watching humans or by being given data on other robots which are being operated by humans. Out of fashion for decades, it has recently come back into favor in robotics as a result of AI. The downside to this technique is the need for large amounts of data in order for the robots to imitate new behaviors.

More AI definitions here

What does she see in him?

It happened years ago, but I've never forgotten it. I was singing and speaking at a small Midwestern college. During an informal seminar in one of the dorm lounges, a couple came in late.

I couldn't help noticing something odd about them. The girl was very attractive, close to cover-girl standards. The guy looked as if he had just walked off the set for The Nerds. He was short, wore thick horn-rimmed glasses and a plaid short-sleeved shirt. He was definitely a candidate for getting sand kicked in his face.

But the strangest thing of all was that these two were obviously in love. What could she possibly see in him? I asked myself. Suddenly I realized — she was blind.

But what did she see in him? Everything. Everything that's important about who a person is, what love is, and what a real man is. She saw everything she needed to know about him.

Blessed are the blind, for they can see people as they really are. Woe to those who can see, for they will constantly be tripped up by the image.

John Fischer

19 Articles about AI Bias

Autocorrect, Other AI Applications, Are Biased Against Rural Language Like Hunting And Fishing Terms – Above the Law 

Bias in Large Language Models—and Who Should Be Held Accountable – Stanford Law

AI’s Racial Bias Claims Tested in Court as US Regulations Lag – Bloomberg  

How AI Bias Shapes Everything from Hiring to Health Care – Oklahoma University   

AI Bias Through the Lens of Antidiscrimination Law – Vanderbilt Law  

I talked to Meta’s Black AI character. Here’s what she told me. – Washington Post 

Inducing anxiety in large language models can induce bias - Arxiv 

As AI-powered health care expands, experts warn of biases – Semafor

Meta’s AI image generator really struggles with the concept of interracial couples – CNN 

How AI reduces the world to stereotypes – Rest of World 

Tests show AI acting on Subtle stereotypes – arXiv

Black teenagers twice as likely to be falsely accused of using AI tools in homework - Semafor

Microsoft's Copilot AI Gladly Generates Anti-Semitic Stereotypes – Futurism

AI generated images are biased, showing the world through stereotypes - Washington Post 

Team develops a new deepfake detector designed to be less biased - Techxplore

What AI thinks a beautiful woman looks like – Washington Post

The Voices of A.I. Are Telling Us a Lot: stubborn stereotypes about women are re-encoded again and again – New York Times

Generative AI bias poses risk to democratic values, research suggests – Phys.org

Is AI Biased against Some Groups and Spreading Misinformation and Extreme Views? – The Brink

Expert Performance

Expert performance is built through thousands of hours of practice in your area of expertise, in varying conditions, through which you accumulate a vast library of such mental models that enables you to correctly discern a given situation and instantaneously select and execute the correct response.

At the root of our effectiveness is our ability to grasp the world around us and to take the measure of our own performance. We are constantly making judgments about what we know and don't know whether we're capable of handling a task or solving a problem. As we work at something, we keep an eye on ourselves, adjusting our thinking or actions as we progress.

Monitoring your own thinking is what psychologists call metacognition (meta is Greek for "about".) Learning to be accurate self-observers helps us stay out of blind alleys, make good decisions, and reflect on how we might do better next time. An important part of this skill is being sensitive to the ways we can delude ourselves. One problem with poor judgment is that we usually don't know when we've got it. Another problem is the sheer scope of the ways our judgment can be led astray.

Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

13 articles about how Companies are using AI

Turns Out AI Is More Empathetic Than Allstate’s Insurance Reps - Wall Street Journal  

Lyft is using Anthropic’s Claude AI for customer service – The Verge   

How Are Companies Using AI Agents? Here’s a Look at Five Early Users of the Bots – Wall Street Journal  

New AI tool could redefine book charts and bestseller lists – Jerusalem Post  

25 experts predict how AI will change business and life in 2025 – Fast Company   

Oreo Owner Mondelez Taps AI to Tweak Its Classic Snacks - Wall Street Journal

AI lets us ‘punch above our weight class’ – Press Gazette

Meta rolls out internal AI tool as it pushes into business market – Financial Times 

New AI tech can spot fake Lacoste products from a photo – Semafor

The Path to AI Everywhere: New Study Unveils Human-First Strategy for AI-Fuelled Future of Work – Inside AI News

I'm the CEO of an AI company, and this is the BS behind AI – Fast Company 

What Businesses Can Do With Generative AI Right Now - Wall Street Journal

Report Investigates Workforce Implications of AI - Carnegie Mellon University

AI meets poultry: The science behind Targan’s WingScan innovation – Poultry World

The origins of our anger

Problems of anger begin as seed thoughts of self-pity, discouragement, jealousy, or some other negative thought. One’s thought life is the key ingredient in behavioral and emotional control; therefore thoughts prior to and during times of anger are important. Thoughts give emotional feelings prolonged existence and strength, and lead interpretation to vague emotions.

When anger feelings begin, people should “listen” to themselves think. Their minds are constantly making value judgments, decisions, and comparisons. Therefore, there always exists the opportunity to intercept anger by changing these thoughts.

Gary Collins, Counseling and Anger

19 Articles about the Dangers of AI

Low quality books that appear to be AI generated are making their way into public libraries – 404 Media  

AI Hallucinations: What Designers Need to Know - NN Group

AI systems with ‘unacceptable risk’ are now banned in the EU – Tech Crunch

Ultra-efficient AI won’t solve data centers’ climate problem. This might. – Washington Post

Citing ‘Shadow of Evil,’ Vatican Warns About the Risks of A.I. – New York Times  

South Carolina to Reboot Giant Nuclear Project to Meet AI Demand – Wall Street Journal  

Arrested by AI: Police ignore standards after facial recognition matches – Washington Post

AI agents’ promise to arrange your finances, do your taxes, book your holidays – and put us all at risk – The Conversation  

The soldier who exploded a Cybertruck at Trump hotel in Vegas used AI to help plan the attack – Associated Press  

A Book App Used AI to ‘Roast’ Its Users. It Went Anti-Woke Instead – Wired

The cognitive cost of AI – Fast Company  

Ex-Google CEO warns there's a time to consider "unplugging" AI systems – Axios  

Their Job Is to Push Computers Toward AI Doom - Wall Street Journal 

An AI companion suggested he kill his parents. Now his mom is suing. - Washington Post   

New Book Explores Promise and Perils of AI for Scientific Community – Anne Berg Public Policy Center  

Labelers training AI say they're overworked, underpaid and exploited by big American tech companies - CBS News

AI-generated influencers based on stolen images of real-life adult content creators are flooding social media – Wired  

The phony comforts of AI skepticism - Platformer 

Google AI chatbot responds with a threatening message: "Human … Please die." - CBS News

Restlessness and discontent

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress. —Thomas A. Edison (Born Feb. 11, 1847)

Taking Sides

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.  -Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel

10 Free Webinars in the Next 10 Days about AI, Journalism, & more

Mon, Feb 10 - The Growing Threats to Press Freedom in the USA

What: A discussion of threats to press freedom in the United States.

Who: Kirstin McCudden, Vice President of Editorial at Freedom of the Press Foundation and Managing Editor at US Press Freedom Tracker

When: 6 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists

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Tue, Feb 11 - AI Innovator Collaborative

What: What’s on the horizon for AI and emerging tech and how it could touch newsrooms’ work over the next few years.

Who: Independent journalist Lindsey Mastis.

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Online News Association

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Tue, Feb 11 - Why Blue Sky and Threads Matter for News Organizations Right Now

What: We’ll explore the unique opportunities Blue Sky and Threads offer for newsrooms, including reaching new audiences, diversifying traffic sources, and building community engagement in a post-Twitter world. 

Who: David Arkin, CEO of David Arkin Consulting and Emilie Lutostanki, content strategist, David Arkin Consulting.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: New England Newspaper & Press Association

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Mon, Feb 17 - Throughlines: New Formats in Journalism

What: Fandoms in Sports & Fashion, The New Economy of Video, Innovative News Formats, and AI’s Impact on Archives.

Who: Yasir Khan Patricia Echeverria Liras Tierney Bonini.

When: 10 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Video Consortium

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Tue, Feb 18 - 30 Minute Skills: Covering Marginalized Communities

What: Advice on covering marginalized communities in news reporting.

Who: Auditi Guha, a northwest & equity reporter/editor at VTDigger.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: New England First Amendment Coalition

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Wed, Feb 19 - Brief, but Descriptive: Writing Effective Alt Text

What: Effective alt text can be tricky. How detailed does one need to be? Would context change the alt text? And if alt text is supposed to be brief, how does one describe complex images like artwork and research data?  This webinar will help participants learn to write effective alt text for different contexts and types of content, from simple social media posts to complex scientific and artistic materials.

Who: Melissa Wong, adjunct instructor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Niche Academy

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Wed, Feb 19 - Reporting on Children Exposed to Violence

What: Practical, implementable strategies for conducting interviews with children and young people across different age groups. Understanding the distinct ways children process and respond to trauma—which differ significantly from adult responses—is fundamental to making more informed and protective choices when working with young subjects.

Who: Katherine Porterfield is a consulting psychologist at the Bellevue Hospital Program for Survivors of Torture and a founding staff member of the Journalist Trauma Support Network; Irene Caselli, a senior advisor for the Early Childhood Reporting Initiative at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University.

When: 8 am, Eastern.

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

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Wed, Feb 19 - New Breed of Journalism Watchdogs, Blending GenAI, History, and a “Writing Coach” Approach

What: The Journalism Watchdogs is a way to test the efficacy and usefulness of Large Language Models and AI interfaces in a context of Journalism education.

Who: Brett Oppegaard, a professor at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, researches media-production processes and products at intersections of Journalism, Artificial Intelligence, Technical Communication, Rhetoric, Human-Computer Interaction, and Disability Studies.

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Online News Association

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Thu, Feb 20 - Immigration and Border Coverage

What: Immigration and border reporting will be a key area for reporting in 2025. Here we will hear from some programs tackling these stories, approaches they are using and some of the stories that are out there and are evolving.

Who: Kate Gannon, University of El Paso who directs BorderZine; Luis Ferré-Sadurní, an immigration reporter at the New York Times; Lourdes Cardenas, from San Francisco State University.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: University of Vermont

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Thu, Feb 20 - Diversifying Revenue Series: Empowering sales teams in news organizations

What: How news organizations can leverage individual strengths to support sales teams and boost revenue. We’ll talk about: How to nurture a high-performing sales team by leaning into individuals’ strengths; The importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence in news media sales; Strategies to help navigate hurdles, enhance client communication and drive higher conversion rates.

Who: Media consultant and revenue sustainability coach Richard E. Brown; The community manager for Table Stakes alumni on the API journalism strategy team, Jan Ross Sakian.

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: American Press Institute

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