Meta to shut off data access to journalists

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Sara Fischer: “Meta plans to officially shutter CrowdTangle, the analytics tool widely used by journalists and researchers to see what’s going viral on Facebook and Instagram, the company’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg told Axios in an interview.

Why it matters: The company plans to instead offer select researchers access to a set of new data tools, but news publishers, journalists or anyone with commercial interests will not be granted access to that data.

The big picture: The effort comes amid a broader pivot from Meta away from news and politics and more toward user-generated viral videos.

  • Meta acquired CrowdTangle in 2016 at a time when publishers were heavily reliant on the tech giant for traffic.
  • In recent years, it’s stopped investing in the tool, making it less reliable.

The new research tools include Meta’s Content Library, which it launched last year, and an API, or backend interface used by developers.

  • Both tools offer researchers access to huge swaths of data from publicly accessible content across Facebook and Instagram.
  • The tools are available in 180 languages and offer global data.
  • Researchers must apply for access to those tools through the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan, which will vet their requests…(More)”

A typology of artificial intelligence data work

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by James Muldoon et al: “This article provides a new typology for understanding human labour integrated into the production of artificial intelligence systems through data preparation and model evaluation. We call these forms of labour ‘AI data work’ and show how they are an important and necessary element of the artificial intelligence production process. We draw on fieldwork with an artificial intelligence data business process outsourcing centre specialising in computer vision data, alongside a decade of fieldwork with microwork platforms, business process outsourcing, and artificial intelligence companies to help dispel confusion around the multiple concepts and frames that encompass artificial intelligence data work including ‘ghost work’, ‘microwork’, ‘crowdwork’ and ‘cloudwork’. We argue that these different frames of reference obscure important differences between how this labour is organised in different contexts. The article provides a conceptual division between the different types of artificial intelligence data work institutions and the different stages of what we call the artificial intelligence data pipeline. This article thus contributes to our understanding of how the practices of workers become a valuable commodity integrated into global artificial intelligence production networks…(More)”.

How artificial intelligence can facilitate investigative journalism

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Luiz Fernando Toledo: “A few years ago, I worked on a project for a large Brazilian television channel whose objective was to analyze the profiles of more than 250 guardianship counselors in the city of São Paulo. These elected professionals have the mission of protecting the rights of children and adolescents in Brazil.

Critics had pointed out that some counselors did not have any expertise or prior experience working with young people and were only elected with the support of religious communities. The investigation sought to verify whether these elected counselors had professional training in working with children and adolescents or had any relationships with churches.

After requesting the counselors’ resumes through Brazil’s access to information law, a small team combed through each resume in depth—a laborious and time-consuming task. But today, this project might have required far less time and labor. Rapid developments in generative AI hold potential to significantly scale access and analysis of data needed for investigative journalism.

Many articles address the potential risks of generative AI for journalism and democracy, such as threats AI poses to the business model for journalism and its ability to facilitate the creation and spread of mis- and disinformation. No doubt there is cause for concern. But technology will continue to evolve, and it is up to journalists and researchers to understand how to use it in favor of the public interest.

I wanted to test how generative AI can help journalists, especially those that work with public documents and data. I tested several tools, including Ask Your PDF (ask questions to any documents in your computer), Chatbase (create your own chatbot), and Document Cloud (upload documents and ask GPT-like questions to hundreds of documents simultaneously).

These tools make use of the same mechanism that operates OpenAI’s famous ChatGPT—large language models that create human-like text. But they analyze the user’s own documents rather than information on the internet, ensuring more accurate answers by using specific, user-provided sources…(More)”.

AI-enhanced Collective Intelligence: The State of the Art and Prospects

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Hao Cui and Taha Yasseri: “The current societal challenges exceed the capacity of human individual or collective effort alone. As AI evolves, its role within human collectives is poised to vary from an assistive tool to a participatory member. Humans and AI possess complementary capabilities that, when synergized, can achieve a level of collective intelligence that surpasses the collective capabilities of either humans or AI in isolation. However, the interactions in human-AI systems are inherently complex, involving intricate processes and interdependencies. This review incorporates perspectives from network science to conceptualize a multilayer representation of human-AI collective intelligence, comprising a cognition layer, a physical layer, and an information layer. Within this multilayer network, humans and AI agents exhibit varying characteristics; humans differ in diversity from surface-level to deep-level attributes, while AI agents range in degrees of functionality and anthropomorphism. The interplay among these agents shapes the overall structure and dynamics of the system. We explore how agents’ diversity and interactions influence the system’s collective intelligence. Furthermore, we present an analysis of real-world instances of AI-enhanced collective intelligence. We conclude by addressing the potential challenges in AI-enhanced collective intelligence and offer perspectives on future developments in this field…(More)”.

Youth Media Literacy Program Fact Checking Manual

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Internews: “As part of the USAID-funded Advancing Rights in Southern Africa Program (ARISA), Internews developed the Youth Media Literacy Program to enhance the digital literacy skills of young people. Drawing from university journalism students, and young leaders from civil society organizations in Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, and South Africa, the program equipped 124 young people to apply critical thinking to online communication and practice improved digital hygiene and digital security practices. The Youth Media Literacy Program Fact Checking Manual was developed to provide additional support and tools to combat misinformation and disinformation and improve online behavior and security…(More)”.

How to Run a Public Records Audit with a Team of Students

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by By Lam Thuy Vo: “…The Markup (like many other organizations) uses public record requests as an important investigative tool, and we’ve published tips for fellow journalists on how to best craft their requests for specific investigations. But based on where government institutions are located, public record laws vary. Generally, government institutions are required to release documents to anyone who requests them, except when information falls under a specific exemption, like information that invades an individual’s privacy or if there are trade secrets. Federal institutions are governed by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but state or local government agencies have their own state freedom of information laws, and they aren’t all identical. 

Public record audits take a step back. By sending the same freedom of information (FOI) request to agencies around the country, audits can help journalists, researchers and everyday people track which agency will release records and which may not, and if they’re complying with state laws. According to the national freedom of information coalition, “audits have led to legislative reforms and the establishment of ombudsman positions to represent the public’s interests.” 

The basics of auditing is simple: Send the same FOI request to different government agencies, document how you followed up, and document the outcome. Here’s how we coordinated this process with student reporters…(More)”.

Riders in the smog

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Zuha Siddiqui, Samriddhi Sakuna and Faisal Mahmud: “…To better understand air quality exposure among gig workers in South Asia, Rest of World gave three gig workers — one each in Lahore, New Delhi, and Dhaka — air quality monitors to wear throughout a regular shift in January. The Atmotube Pro monitors continually tracked their exposure to carcinogenic pollutants — specifically PM1, PM2.5, and PM10 (different sizes of particulate matter), and volatile organic compounds such as benzene and formaldehyde.

The data revealed that all three workers were routinely exposed to hazardous levels of pollutants. For PM2.5, referring to particulates that are 2.5 micrometers in diameter or less — which have been linked to health risks including heart attacks and strokes — all riders were consistently logging exposure levels more than 10 times the World Health Organization’s recommended daily average of 15 micrograms per cubic meter. Manu Sharma, in New Delhi, recorded the highest PM2.5 level of the three riders, hitting 468.3 micrograms per cubic meter around 6 p.m. Lahore was a close second, with Iqbal recording 464.2 micrograms per cubic meter around the same time.

Alongside tracking specific pollutants, the Atmotube Pro gives an overall real-time air quality score (AQS) from 0–100, with zero being the most severely polluted, and 100 being the cleanest. According to Atmo, the company that makes the Atmotube monitors, a reading of 0–20 should be considered a health alert, under which conditions “everyone should avoid all outdoor exertion.” But the three gig workers found their monitors consistently displayed the lowest possible score…(More)”.

The New Fire: War, Peace, and Democracy in the Age of AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie: “Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the modern world. It is ubiquitous—in our homes and offices, in the present and most certainly in the future. Today, we encounter AI as our distant ancestors once encountered fire. If we manage AI well, it will become a force for good, lighting the way to many transformative inventions. If we deploy it thoughtlessly, it will advance beyond our control. If we wield it for destruction, it will fan the flames of a new kind of war, one that holds democracy in the balance. As AI policy experts Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie show in The New Fire, few choices are more urgent—or more fascinating—than how we harness this technology and for what purpose.

The new fire has three sparks: data, algorithms, and computing power. These components fuel viral disinformation campaigns, new hacking tools, and military weapons that once seemed like science fiction. To autocrats, AI offers the prospect of centralized control at home and asymmetric advantages in combat. It is easy to assume that democracies, bound by ethical constraints and disjointed in their approach, will be unable to keep up. But such a dystopia is hardly preordained. Combining an incisive understanding of technology with shrewd geopolitical analysis, Buchanan and Imbrie show how AI can work for democracy. With the right approach, technology need not favor tyranny…(More)”.

Advancing Equitable AI in the US Social Sector

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Kelly Fitzsimmons: “…when developed thoughtfully and with equity in mind, AI-powered applications have great potential to help drive stronger and more equitable outcomes for nonprofits, particularly in the following three areas.

1. Closing the data gap. A widening data divide between the private and social sectors threatens to reduce the effectiveness of nonprofits that provide critical social services in the United States and leave those they serve without the support they need. As Kriss Deiglmeir wrote in a recent Stanford Social Innovation Review essay, “Data is a form of power. And the sad reality is that power is being held increasingly by the commercial sector and not by organizations seeking to create a more just, sustainable, and prosperous world.” AI can help break this trend by democratizing the process of generating and mobilizing data and evidence, thus making continuous research and development, evaluation, and data analysis more accessible to a wider range of organizations—including those with limited budgets and in-house expertise.

Take Quill.org, a nonprofit that provides students with free tools that help them build reading comprehension, writing, and language skills. Quill.org uses an AI-powered chatbot that asks students to respond to open-ended questions based on a piece of text. It then reviews student responses and offers suggestions for improvement, such as writing with clarity and using evidence to support claims. This technology makes high-quality critical thinking and writing support available to students and schools that might not otherwise have access to them. As Peter Gault, Quill.org’s founder and executive director, recently shared, “There are 27 million low-income students in the United States who struggle with basic writing and find themselves disadvantaged in school and in the workforce. … By using AI to provide students with immediate feedback on their writing, we can help teachers support millions of students on the path to becoming stronger writers, critical thinkers, and active members of our democracy.”..(More)”.

Power and Governance in the Age of AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Reflections by several experts: “The best way to think about ChatGPT is as the functional equivalent of expensive private education and tutoring. Yes, there is a free version, but there is also a paid subscription that gets you access to the latest breakthroughs and a more powerful version of the model. More money gets you more power and privileged access. As a result, in my courses at Middlebury College this spring, I was obliged to include the following statement in my syllabus:

“Policy on the use of ChatGPT: You may all use the free version however you like and are encouraged to do so. For purposes of equity, use of the subscription version is forbidden and will be considered a violation of the Honor Code. Your professor has both versions and knows the difference. To ensure you are learning as much as possible from the course readings, careful citation will be mandatory in both your informal and formal writing.”

The United States fails to live up to its founding values when it supports a luxury brand-driven approach to educating its future leaders that is accessible to the privileged and a few select lottery winners. One such “winning ticket” student in my class this spring argued that the quality-education-for-all issue was of such importance for the future of freedom that he would trade his individual good fortune at winning an education at Middlebury College for the elimination of ALL elite education in the United States so that quality education could be a right rather than a privilege.

A democracy cannot function if the entire game seems to be rigged and bought by elites. This is true for the United States and for democracies in the making or under challenge around the world. Consequently, in partnership with other liberal democracies, the U.S. government must do whatever it can to render both public and private governance more transparent and accountable. We should not expect authoritarian states to help us uphold liberal democratic values, nor should we expect corporations to do so voluntarily…(More)”.