My Silences
/Let my silences become more eloquent. -Andrew Boyd
ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Outsourcing to AI Agents
/What tasks you can outsource to these AI assistants depend on your job, your workflow and, most importantly, the AI’s capabilities. It’s a lot like hiring—you want the candidate with the right skills. - Joanna Stern writing in the Wall Street Journal
Making Progress
/We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. -C.S.Lewis
18 Recent Articles about AI & Journalism
/What DeepSeek may mean for the future of journalism and generative AI – Reuters
How journalists in the Global South and emerging economies are using AI – Editor & Publisher
Inside a network of AI-generated newsletters targeting “small town America” – Harvard’s Nieman Lab
Google signs deal with AP to deliver up-to-date news through its Gemini AI chatbot – Associated Press
Apple Intelligence: iPhone AI news alerts halted after errors - BBC
Fake CBC ads have flooded X with sketchy headlines. We looked for the source - CBC News
Key AI concepts to grasp in a new hybrid journalism era: transparency, autonomy, and authorship - Reuters
How Journalism Will Adapt in the Age of AI – Bloomberg
A Year of AI Experimentation in Nonprofit News - Christina Bruno in Medium
Apple urged to withdraw 'out of control' AI news alerts – BBC
Dow Jones negotiates AI usage agreements with nearly 4,000 news publishers - Harvard’s Nieman Lab
How AI can help journalists rebuild a fraying connection with their audience - Reuters
Time unveils new AI chatbot - Axios
Who owns the AI tools journalists use? A new study exposes a dangerous transparency gap - Reuters
AI slop is already invading Oregon’s local journalism – Oregon Public Broadcasting
Perplexity expands its publisher program – TechCrunch
Business Insider tech chief: AI lets us ‘punch above our weight class’ – Press Gazette
When the Word Is Not Just Flesh: Reporting on A.I. in Religion – New York Times
Attitude
/I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude. It is more important than my past, my education, my bankroll, my successes or failures, fame or pain, what other people think of me or say about me, my circumstances, or my position. – Charles Swindoll
Copyright & AI Use in the Creative Process
/The US Copyright Office says “the use of artificial intelligence tools to assist in the creative process does not undermine the copyright of a work. The announcement clears the way for continued adoption of AI in post-production, such as in the enhancement of Hungarian-language dialogue in “The Brutalist.” https://variety.com/2025/biz/news/copyright-ai-tools-filmmaking-studios-office-1236288969/
8 Webinars This Week about AI, Journalism & Media
/Mon, Feb 3 - AI ChatBot Ethics
What: We examine how children and teens engage with AI tools, from companionship to questionable information sources. Drawing on the BBC TechLife podcast “Dating a Chatbot” and recent high-profile stories, we’ll discuss media literacy strategies to identify risks, navigate misinformation, and foster responsible AI use. Don’t miss this timely conversation on the opportunities and challenges chatbots bring to families today.
Who: Wesley Fryer, an educational technology early adopter / innovator who teaches middle school STEM and media literacy.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Media Education Lab
Wed, Feb 5 - The Playbook for GenAI in the News Media Business
What: How best to harness this GenAI technology, common mistakes made, and insights from working on GenAI solutions worldwide. Our guests will present guidelines for those just getting started with GenAI, those with some experience, and those who are now advanced users, ensuring that this session is valuable for news brands at different stages of technological maturity.
Who: Justin Kosslyn, an AI consultant who was previously Director of News Ecosystem products at Google and has also been head of digital products at TED conferences; Lukas Görög, an AI consultant who works extensively on GenAI implementation across industries and draws on his experience as AI and data strategy lead at NZZ, data strategist at Die Presse, and AI consultant for The Thomson Foundation.
When: 10 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free to members
Sponsor: International News Media Association
Wed, Feb 5 - Mini-Lab: AI Tools for Video Creation
What: We’ll experiment with prompts in Sora to build lengthy videos that will have some journalistic value. We’ll start building a prompt library for Sora videos and tweak/test them as we build videos. We’ll cover how to post them properly online (YouTube) and disclose the AI use to readers when posting. Participants will be given a handout with links to all the tools and exercises on how to use them. Prior to the session, have an account set up at Sora and have access to a YouTube account if we want to post the videos there afterward.
Who: Mike Reilley Senior Lecturer, University of Illinois-Chicago.
When: 11 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Online News Association
Wed, Feb 5 - Demystifying AI Agents
What: Real-world examples of how generative and agentic AI can help you work smarter, streamlining workflows, enhancing proactive threat detection, and automating key tasks.
Who: David Irwin, Director of Product Management - AI, Swimlane; Katie Bykowski, Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Swimlane.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Swimlane
Thu, Feb 6 - Journalism and Technology Trends and Predictions 2025
What: We unpack the findings for 2025 of the Study of Journalism, the Journalism and Technology Trends and Predictions report—including the transformative role of generative AI in newsrooms, the rise of 'creator-fication' of news and more.
Who: Tom Platt, Global Head of Newsgathering & Video at Reuters; Nic Newman, Senior Research Associate Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
When: 10 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Reuters
Thu, Feb 6 - Creating Action-FIrst Learning Through AI-Generated Avatars
What: Explore how AI-driven avatars can transform traditional training by simulating real-world conversations, decision-making challenges, and interactive scenarios, Plus learn how to create your own AI avatar using several different AI software tools in a matter of mere minutes. If you have ever wanted to create your own digital twin, this webinar will teach you how to quickly create a digital copy of yourself for use in training, delivering messages, or even just to have a little fun.
Who: Karl Kapp, Director, Institute for Interactive Technologies, Bloomsburg University.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: OpenSesame
Thu, Feb 6 - SEO Basics 2.0: Strategies and Tools to Write Winning Headlines
What: Agentic AI vs. generative AI - what’s the difference? The do’s and don’ts for using AI in your SOC. Tips for getting (and quantifying) the business value of AI. Meet Hero, Swimlane’s private AI companion for SecOps.
Who: Jessie Willms & Shelby Blackley cofounders of SEO for journalists.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Indiegraf
Fri, Feb 7 - Trust and The Government: What journalists need to know to guide political coverage
What: This briefing that will prepare journalists to cover politics with their audience in mind, while noting their unique role in how the public perceives — and trusts — their federal government.
Who: Max Stier, founding president and CEO, Partnership for Public Service; Elliot C. Williams, training coordinator for the National Press Club Journalism Institute.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: National Press Club
Love and Death
/In the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day,” Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a reporter who, confronted with living the same day over and over again, matures from an arrogant, self-serving professional climber to someone capable of loving and appreciating others and his world. Murray convincingly portrays the transformation from someone whose self-importance is difficult to abide into a person imbued with kindness.
But there is another story line at work in the film, one we can see if we examine Murray’s character not in the early arrogant stage, nor in the post-epiphany stage, where the calendar is once again set in motion, but in the film’s middle, where he is knowingly stuck in the repetition of days. In this part of the narrative, Murray’s character has come to terms with his situation. He alone knows what is going to happen, over and over again. He has no expectations for anything different. In this period, his period of reconciliation, he becomes a model citizen of Punxsutawney. He radiates warmth and kindness, but also a certain distance.
The early and final moments of “Groundhog Day” offer something that is missing during this period of peace: passion. Granted, Phil Connors’s early ambitious passion for advancement is a far less attractive thing than the later passion of his love for Rita (played by Andie MacDowell). But there is passion in both cases. It seems that the eternal return of the same may bring peace and reconciliation, but at least in this case not intensity.
And here is where a lesson about love may lie. One would not want to deny that Connors comes to love Rita during the period of the eternal Groundhog Day. But his love lacks the passion, the abandon, of the love he feels when he is released into a real future with her. There is something different in those final moments of the film. A future has opened for their relationship, and with it new avenues for the intensity of his feelings for her. Without a future for growth and development, romantic love can extend only so far. Its distinction from, say, a friendship with benefits begins to become effaced.
There is, of course, in all romantic love the initial infatuation, which rarely lasts. But if the love is to remain romantic, that infatuation must evolve into a longer-term intensity, even if a quiet one, that nourishes and is nourished by the common engagements and projects undertaken over time.
The future is open. Unlike the future in “Groundhog Day,” it is not already decided. We do not have our next days framed for us by the day just passed. We can make something different of our relationships. There is always more to do and more to create of ourselves with the ones with whom we are in love.
This is not true, however, and romantic love itself shows us why. Love is between two particular people in their particularity. We cannot love just anyone, even others with much the same qualities. If we did, then when we met someone like the beloved but who possessed a little more of a quality to which we were drawn, we would, in the phrase philosophers of love use, “trade up.” But we don’t trade up, or at least most of us don’t. This is because we love that particular person in his or her specificity. And what we create together, our common projects and shared emotions, are grounded in those specificities. Romantic love is not capable of everything. It is capable only of what the unfolding of a future between two specific people can meaningfully allow.
Todd May writing in the New York Times
I'm bored
/I am quite happy when my kids whine that they are bored. Finding ways to amuse themselves is an important skill. -Sandi Mann
Lucky in Life
/According to psychologist Richard Wiseman, luck – bad or good – is just what you call the results of a human beings consciously interacting with chance, and some people are better at interacting with chance than others.
Over the course of 10 years, Wiseman followed the lives of 400 subjects of all ages and professions. He found them after he placed ads in newspapers asking for people who thought of themselves as very lucky or very unlucky. He had them keep diaries and perform tests in addition to checking in on their lives with interviews and observations. In one study, he asked subjects to look through a newspaper and count the number of photographs inside. The people who labeled themselves as generally unlucky took about two minutes to complete the task. The people who considered themselves as generally lucky took an average of a few seconds. Wiseman had placed a block of text printed in giant, bold letters on the second page of the newspaper that read, “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” Deeper inside, he placed a second block of text just as big that read, “Stop counting, tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $250.” The people who believed they were unlucky usually missed both.
Wiseman speculated that what we call luck is actually a pattern of behaviors that coincide with a style of understanding and interacting with the events and people you encounter throughout life.
Unlucky people are narrowly focused, he observed. They crave security and tend to be more anxious, and instead of wading into the sea of random chance open to what may come, they remain fixated on controlling the situation, on seeking a specific goal. As a result, they miss out on the thousands of opportunities that may float by.
Lucky people tend to constantly change routines and seek out new experiences. Wiseman saw that the people who considered themselves lucky, and who then did actually demonstrate luck was on their side over the course of a decade, tended to place themselves into situations where anything could happen more often and thus exposed themselves to more random chance than did unlucky people. The lucky try more things, and fail more often, but when they fail they shrug it off and try something else. Occasionally, things work out.
23 Articles about Social Media & AI
/10 Best AI Tools for Social Media – Unite AI
Instagram Begins Randomly Showing Users AI-Generated Images of Themselves – 404 Media
Here’s what to know before using AI to craft your brand’s social media posts - Technical.ly
Meta plans to flood social media with AI-generated users and content - SiliconANGLE
AI Social Media Users Are Not Always a Totally Dumb Idea – Wired
Instagram Ads Send This Nudify Site 90 Percent of Its Traffic - 404 Media
TikTok owner ByteDance plans to spend $12 billion on AI chips in 2025 - Reuters
Instagram’s head says social media needs more context because of AI – The Verge
Meta Permits Its A.I. Models to Be Used for U.S. Military Purposes - The New York Times
Does Anyone Need an AI Social Network? – NY Mag
The rise of fake influencers – Axios
Will AI Suck the Humanity Out of Social Media? – Social Media Today
Elon Musk’s X is a haven for free speech — and noxious AI images – Washington Post
Meta Launches Custom AI Bot Creation Platform in the US - Social Media Today
Facebook Is Already Mistakenly Tagging Real Photos as "Made With AI" – Futurism
Hot AI Jesus Is Huge on Facebook – The Atlantic
Meta Is Offering Hollywood Stars Millions for AI Voice Projects – Bloomberg
How Reddit Fits Into the AI World – Wall Street Journal
Meta Moves to End Fact-Checking Program – New York Times
Is it still 'social media' if it's overrun by AI? – CBC
AI and Social Media Fakes: Are You Protecting Your Brand? – Law.com
23 Articles from January about Data Science & AI
/Are geospatial foundation models all hype - Spatial Edge
Remote sensing image dehazing using a wavelet-based generative adversarial networks
Top 6 Examples of AI Guidelines in Design Systems
These Are The Soft Skills You Will Need As A Data Scientist in 2025
A Step-by-Step approach of satellite image xlassification with deep learning
AI Definitions: Deep Neural Networks
New training paradigm prevents machine learning models from learning spurious correlations
The geospatial sector unpacked in six questions
AI Definitions: Explainability
AI still doesn’t have the reasoning capabilities required to do 90% of my data science job
AI is Getting Smarter, But It Still Can’t Do My Data Science Job
AI Definitions: Unsupervised training
Challenges in data-driven geospatial modeling
AI can improve on code it writes, but you have to know how to ask
With AI Agents on the Scene, Structured Data is Back in Vogue
This coming May Nvidia’s Project DIGITS will launch
Bridging Foundational Machine Learning and Generative AI
IBM said it now generates revenue from deploying quantum systems and services
The Future of AI and Machine Learning in the Geospatial Sector
Getting Clarity
/We are too often motivated by a craving to put an end to the inevitable surprises in our lives. This is especially true of the biggest "negative" of all. Might we benefit from contemplating mortality more regularly than we do? As Steve Jobs famously declared, "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way that I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose."
Oliver Burkeman
11 Articles about AI & Coding
/The second wave of AI coding is here – MIT Tech Review
OpenAI's new o3 model freaks out computer science majors – Axios
AI can improve on code it writes, but you have to know how to ask – The Register
What is the Best Language for Machine Learning? – Unite AI
The best AI for coding in 2025 (and what not to use) – ZD Net
An Anthropic scientist broke his hand on a bike and it forced him to write all his code with AI for two months. He is never going back.- Erik Schluntz
In the age of AI, there's no future for workers content with being code monkeys — and they know it – Business Insider
The best Large Language Models (LLMs) for coding in 2024 – Tech Radar
AI and Design Systems – Brad Frost
AI Coding Assistants: 12 Do’s and Don’ts – The New Stack
AI’s coding promises, and OpenAI’s longevity push - MIT Tech Review
Taking Beauty Seriously
/If all experience of beauty is merely subjective, we find ourselves in a position in which some people like rice pudding and other people do not like rice pudding, which is then the conclusion of the matter. In short, it would mean that no two people have ever differed or ever can differ on a question of beauty. When one person says the Philadelphia City Hall is more beautiful than the Parthenon and another person denies this, they are not, on the subjectivist theory, arguing at all.
One man is telling about his insides and the other is telling about his insides. If someone wishes to contend that the works of a contemporary leader of a dance band are aesthetically superior to the works of Beethoven, there is, subjectively speaking, no suitable rejoinder.
This situation, however, is too absurd to be accepted by thoughtful critics as the last word on the question. The fact is that people do argue about aesthetic judgments, and the subjectivists argue as much as anybody else.
Regardless of their philosophical position, those who take beauty most seriously tend to hold that those who fail to see what they see really ought to see it, and with sufficient clarification of sight would see it.
Kant goes beyond the mere rejection of the familiar maxim and points out the imperative note which is essential to aesthetic judgment, a note similar to that which we found in moral judgment. To assert that a thing is beautiful is to blame those who do not agree. If I am right, they are wrong.
It would be laughable of a man to justify himself by saying, "This object is beautiful for me."
Elton Trueblood, Philosophy of Religion
22 Articles about Amazing Things AI can do now
/Using AI & computer vision to diagnose greenhouse crops with diseases or pests – Tech Crunch
OpenAI introduced a new tool, called Operator, that can autonomously perform tasks on the internet – New York Times
AI brings better odds and betting concerns to sports gambling – Semafor
AI model that can distinguish between Scotch and American whiskeys with 100 percent accuracy (better than humans)– New Scientist
Engineers Develop AI Tool to Automate Finding Defects in Sewer Lines – CU Denver
Google’s new AI tool uses image prompts instead of text - CNN
This new AI technology enhances video analysis by detecting human actions in real time – Tech Radar
Researchers Use AI To Turn Sound Recordings Into Accurate Street Images – Univ of Texas
New methane monitoring AI tool unveiled – Axios
AI helps uncover hundreds of unknown ancient symbols hidden in Peru’s Nazca Desert – CNN
Google's DeepMind unveils an AI model capable of predicting the weather more accurately than existing forecasting systems – MIT Tech Review
How Indigenous engineers are using AI to preserve their culture – NBC News
Explore the World’s First 3D Replica of St. Peter’s Basilica, Made with AI – Open Culture
New Microsoft Teams AI promises to translate speech in real time – Semafor
Can a fluffy robot really replace a cat or dog? My weird, emotional week with an AI pet – The Guardian
Want to speak Italian? Microsoft AI can make it sound like you do. – Washington Post
Google's AI Tool Big Sleep Finds Zero-Day Vulnerability in SQLite Database Engine – The Hacker News
AI’s Impact on Insurance Innovation – Expert AI
Anyone Can Turn You Into an AI Chatbot. There’s Little You Can Do to Stop Them – Wired
AI Definitions: Open Source AI
/Open Source AI – This is when the underlying source code of an AI is available to the public, including other businesses and researchers. It can be used, modified, and improved by anyone. Closed AI means access to the code is tightly controlled by the company that produced it. The closed model gives users greater certainty as to what they are getting, but open source allows for more innovation. Of course, once it’s out in the wild open-source AI is impossible to corral. It could be used to spread disinformation or cause other serious harm. Open-source AI would include Stable Diffusion, Hugging Face, Llama (created by Meta), and DeepSeek (from China). Closed Source AI would include Google’s Bard and, despite its name, OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT).
More AI definitions here
The Halo Effect
/If you like the president’s politics, you probably like his voice and his appearance as well. The tendency to like (or dislike) everything about a person–including things you have not observed–is known as the halo effect. The term has been in use in psychology for a century, but it has not come into wide use in everyday language. This is a pity, because the halo effect is a good name for a common bias that plays a large role in shaping our view of people and situations. It is one of the ways the representation of the world that system one generates is simpler and more coherent than the real thing.
You meet a woman named Joan at a party and find her personable and easy to talk to. Now her name comes up as someone who could be asked to contribute to a charity. What do you know about Joan's generosity? The correct answer is that you know virtually nothing, because there is little reason to believe that people who are agreeable in social situations are also generous contributors to charities. But you like Joan and you will retrieve the feeling of liking her when you think of her. You also like generosity and generous people. By association, you are now predisposed to believe that Joan is generous. And that you believe she is generous you probably like Joan eve better than you did earlier, because you have added generosity to her pleasant attributes.
The sequence in which we observe characteristics of a person is often determined by chance. Sequence matters, however, because the halo effect increase the weight of the first impressions, sometimes to the point that subsequent information is mostly wasted.
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
23 Articles about AI & Health Care
/What to know about an AI transcription tool that ‘hallucinates’ medical interactions – PBS
Manchester virtual reality blood transfusion training programme could help save lives – About Manchester
Lethal snake venom may be countered by new AI-designed proteins - Science News
Why isn’t AI transforming biopharma as fast as we’d like? – Stat News
AI will now read your medical school application - AAMC
Machine learning reveals how metabolite profiles predict aging and health - News-Medical.Net
AI could transform health care, but will it live up to the hype? – Science News
Trump, and tech tycoons, stoke health AI hype with Stargate - Stat News
AI-powered app accurately detects high blood pressure through voice recordings – The Brighter Side
AI trial to spot heart condition before symptoms – BBC
What Your ‘Face Age’ Can Tell Doctors About Your Health – Wall Street Journal
Should you trust an AI-assisted doctor? I visited one to see. – Washington Post
The companies paying hospitals to hand over patient data to train AI - Stat News
New algorithm is twice as accurate at predicting stroke timing compared to the standard of care – Health Imaging
AI-powered blood test spots earliest breast cancer signs - University of Edinburgh
When A.I. and Doctors Make the Diagnosis – New York Times
Researchers use AI to define new subtypes of common brain disorder – Washington University Medical
How AI is shaping the future of the healthcare industry – Data Science Central
AI predictive modeling of survival outcomes for renal cancer patients undergoing targeted therapy – Nature
A.I. Chatbots Defeated Doctors at Diagnosing Illness – New York Times
Should a Student Reporter Face Prosecution for Embedding with Protesters? – Columbia Journalism Review
Why AI in Healthcare Harkens Back to Early Social Media Use – Bank Info Security
AI Definitions: Interpretability
/Interpretability (or interpretable AI which is similar but not the same as explainability and explainable AI) – The study of how to understand and explain the decisions made by artificial intelligence (AI) systems in order to audit them for safety and biases. It is a key ingredient of human-centered design because a more transparent model is usually more trustworthy—it's easier (than explainable AI) to verify and evaluate as well as easier and quicker to debug and optimize. However, this transparency through its inner workings can impact performance, especially when dealing with complex models, like neural networks. Interpretability techniques include decision trees, linear regression, scalable Bayesian rule lists, etc.
More AI definitions here