Blog by David Friedman: “This is a story about data manipulation. But it begins in a small Nebraska town called Monowi that has only one resident, 90 year old Elsie Eiler. The sign says “Monowi 1,” from Google Street View. There used to be more people in Monowi. But little by little, the other residents of Monowi left or died. That’s what happened to Elsie’s own family — her children grew up and moved out and her husband passed away in 2004, leaving her as the sole resident. Now she votes for herself for Mayor, and pays herself taxes.... (More >)
Are Evidence-Based Medicine and Public Health Incompatible?
Essay by Michael Schulson: “It’s a familiar pandemic story: In September 2020, Angela McLean and John Edmunds found themselves sitting in the same Zoom meeting, listening to a discussion they didn’t like. At some point during the meeting, McLean — professor of mathematical biology at the Oxford University, dame commander of the Order of the British Empire, fellow of the Royal Society of London, and then-chief scientific adviser to the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense — sent Edmunds a message on WhatsApp. “Who is this fuckwitt?” she asked. The message was evidently referring to Carl Heneghan, director of the... (More >)
Air Canada chatbot promised a discount. Now the airline has to pay it
Article by Kyle Melnick: “After his grandmother died in Ontario a few years ago, British Columbia resident Jake Moffatt visited Air Canada’s website to book a flight for the funeral. He received assistance from a chatbot, which told him the airline offered reduced rates for passengers booking last-minute travel due to tragedies. Moffatt bought a nearly $600 ticket for a next-day flight after the chatbot said he would get some of his money back under the airline’s bereavement policy as long as he applied within 90 days, according to a recent civil-resolutions tribunal decision. But when Moffatt later attempted... (More >)
Community views on the secondary use of general practice data: Findings from a mixed-methods study
Paper by Annette J. Braunack-Mayer et al: “General practice data, particularly when combined with hospital and other health service data through data linkage, are increasingly being used for quality assurance, evaluation, health service planning and research.Using general practice data is particularly important in countries where general practitioners (GPs) are the first and principal source of health care for most people. Although there is broad public support for the secondary use of health data, there are good reasons to question whether this support extends to general practice settings. GP–patient relationships may be very personal and longstanding and the general practice... (More >)
Data, Privacy Laws and Firm Production: Evidence from the GDPR
Paper by Mert Demirer, Diego J. Jiménez Hernández, Dean Li & Sida Peng: “By regulating how firms collect, store, and use data, privacy laws may change the role of data in production and alter firm demand for information technology inputs. We study how firms respond to privacy laws in the context of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by using seven years of data from a large global cloud-computing provider. Our difference-in-difference estimates indicate that, in response to the GDPR, EU firms decreased data storage by 26% and data processing by 15% relative to comparable US firms, becoming... (More >)
University of Michigan Sells Recordings of Study Groups and Office Hours to Train AI
Article by Joseph Cox: “The University of Michigan is selling hours of audio recordings of study groups, office hours, lectures, and more to outside third-parties for tens of thousands of dollars for the purpose of training large language models (LLMs). 404 Media has downloaded a sample of the data, which includes a one hour and 20 minute long audio recording of what appears to be a lecture. The news highlights how some LLMs may ultimately be trained on data with an unclear level of consent from the source subjects. ..(More)”. ... (More >)
Could AI Speak on Behalf of Future Humans?
Article by Konstantin Scheuermann & Angela Aristidou : “An enduring societal challenge the world over is a “perspective deficit” in collective decision-making. Whether within a single business, at the local community level, or the international level, some perspectives are not (adequately) heard and may not receive fair and inclusive representation during collective decision-making discussions and procedures. Most notably, future generations of humans and aspects of the natural environment may be deeply affected by present-day collective decisions. Yet, they are often “voiceless” as they cannot advocate for their interests. Today, as we witness the rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI)... (More >)
Handbook of Artificial Intelligence at Work
Book edited by Martha Garcia-Murillo and Andrea Renda: “With the advancement in processing power and storage now enabling algorithms to expand their capabilities beyond their initial narrow applications, technology is becoming increasingly powerful. This highly topical Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on work, assessing its effect on an array of economic sectors, the resulting nature of work, and the subsequent policy implications of these changes. Featuring contributions from leading experts across diverse fields, the Handbook of Artificial Intelligence at Work takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding AI’s connections to existing economic, social,... (More >)
Data Science, AI and Data Philanthropy in Foundations : On the Path to Maturity
Report by Filippo Candela, Sevda Kilicalp, and Daniel Spiers: “This research explores the data-related initiatives currently undertaken by a pool of foundations from across Europe. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that has investigated the level of data work within philanthropic foundations, even though the rise of data and its importance has increasingly been recognised in the non-profit sector. Given that this is an inaugural piece of research, the study takes an exploratory approach, prioritising a comprehensive survey of data practices foundations are currently implementing or exploring. The goal was to obtain a snapshot of the... (More >)
Language Machinery
Essay by Richard Hughes Gibson: “… current debates about writing machines are not as fresh as they seem. As is quietly acknowledged in the footnotes of scientific papers, much of the intellectual infrastructure of today’s advances was laid decades ago. In the 1940s, the mathematician Claude Shannon demonstrated that language use could be both described by statistics and imitated with statistics, whether those statistics were in human heads or a machine’s memory. Shannon, in other words, was the first statistical language modeler, which makes ChatGPT and its ilk his distant brainchildren. Shannon never tried to build such a machine,... (More >)
