Ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Stephen Goforth
According to a new survey, 83 percent of political professionals say they use AI tools for work at least once a week. That’s up from 59 percent a year ago. Even more striking: 48 percent now say they use AI multiple times a day – a 57 percent increase over 2025 levels and significantly more than the 26 percent who say they use AI a few times a week. -Campaigns & Elections
Congress Is Doing Little to Prepare for Potential A.I. Job Losses – New York Times
Will AI lead to more accurate opinion polls? – BBC
Maryland Is First to Ban A.I.-Driven Price Increases in Grocery Stores – New York Times
AI Use Among Political Consultants is Booming. Here’s How. – Campaigns & Elections
White House Considers Vetting A.I. Models Before They Are Released – New York Times
South Africa withdraws AI policy due to fake AI-generated sources – Semafor
Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media - New York Times
Domestic Surveillance Is Expanding With New, AI-Powered Tools – Wall Street Journal
A violent reaction to AI is bubbling. But this isn’t the Luddites’ era. – Washington Post
Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media – New York Times
GOP campaigns go all-in on AI — Dems not so much – Axios
The Federal Government Is Rushing Toward AI. Our Reporting Offers Three Cautionary Tales. – ProPublica
The Team Behind a Pro-Iran, Lego-Themed A.I.-generated video Campaign – New Yorker
New pro-AI group preps $100M midterm blitz to boost Trump's agenda - Axios
Iran Is Winning the AI Slop Propaganda War – 404 Media
As the US midterms approach, AI is going to emerge as a key issue concerning voters - The Guardian
AI-generated ads are trickling into political campaigns, sparking big worries – NBC News
One Issue Uniting Democrats and Republicans? Worries About A.I. - New York Times
The Age of Eerie A.I. Political Ads Is Here - New York Times
Humans — not AI — are to blame for deadly Iran school strike, sources say – Semafor
Cascade of A.I. Fakes About War With Iran Causes Chaos Online - New York Times
AI money is already influencing the midterms. And more is coming. - The Washington Post
The Future We Feared Is Already Here - New York Times
Fake Iran images show AI used as a weapon of ‘public opinion,’ USF experts say – The Hill
The Cost of the A.I. Boom: A Trade Deficit the President Detests – New York Times
‘It's clearly fake': Olympic hockey star disavows AI-generated White House video – Politico
Senators F Brady Tkachuk objects to 'fake' AI-generated White House TikTok – Reuters
Pentagon leverages AI in Iran strikes amid feud with Anthropic - The Washington Post
ChatGPT, Other Chatbots Approved for Official Use in the Senate - New York Times
Why fake AI videos of UK urban decline are taking over social media – BBC
How AI fakes are turning satellite images into war misinformation – Financial Times
"Roughly one in 10 participants in a study said they would change their vote in highly contested national elections in Canada and Poland after talking with a chatbot. The AI models took the role of a gentle, if firm, interlocutor, offering arguments and evidence in favor of the candidate they represented. 'If you could do that at scale,' the senior author on the study said, 'it would really change the outcome of elections.'” -The Atlantic
New York Signs AI Safety Bill Into Law, Ignoring Trump Executive Order - Wall Street Journal
Israel reportedly using facial recognition and Google Photos to conduct mass surveillance in Gaza - Mashable
“Tinder for Nazis” hit by 100GB data leak, thousands of users exposed with the help of AI - CyberNews
If U.S.-China AI Rivalry Were Football, the Score Would Be 24-18 – Wall Street Journal
Chatbots Are Surprisingly Effective at Swaying Voters - The Atlantic
Senators Investigate Role of A.I. Data Centers in Rising Electricity Costs – New York Time
Trump Clears Sale of More Powerful Nvidia A.I. Chips to China - New York Times
Cheap and powerful AI campaigns target voters in India – Rest of World
Putin Wanted AI Supremacy. Now Russia Is Struggling to Stay in the Race. - Wall Street Journal
AI may discriminate against you at work. Some states are making it illegal. – Washington Post
A growing share of America’s hottest AI startups have turned to open Chinese AI models – NBC News
How China’s new AI systems are reshaping human rights - Australian Strategic Policy Institute
New rule targets AI discrimination. Here’s what workers need to know. - Washington Post
Silicon Valley’s Man in the White House Is Benefiting Himself and His Friends - New York Times
China’s AI warpath – Politico
AI Enters the Classroom at the Marine War College – Military.com
US to mandate AI vendors measure political bias for federal sales – Reuters
AI-generated political videos are more about memes and money than persuading and deceiving – The Conversation
Foreign disinformation enters AI-powered era - Axios
China Turns to A.I. in Information Warfare - New York Times
Illinois blocks AI from being your therapist - Axios
Trump Wasted No Time Derailing His Own AI Plan – The Atlantic
China is betting on a real-world use of AI to challenge U.S. control – Washington Post
Trump’s AI plan calls for more open-sourcing despite China concerns – Semafor
DOGE builds AI tool to cut 50 percent of federal regulations - Washington Post
Trump Says He’s ‘Getting Rid of Woke’ and Dismisses Copyright Concerns in AI Policy Speech – Wired
Trump’s AI plan: Pull back restraints on tech - CNN
White House AI plan focuses on beating China – Axios
China tops the world in artificial intelligence publications, database analysis reveals - Science
Trump’s A.I. Challenge: Focus on World’s Most Dangerous Weapons or Woke-ism? - New York Times
Truth Social’s new AI search engine basically just pushes Fox News – The Verge
The Chatbot Culture Wars Are Here - New York Times
"China has taken a commanding lead in the exploding field of artificial intelligence (AI) research, despite U.S. restrictions on exporting key computing chips to its rival, finds a new report. In 2000, China-based scholars produced just 671 AI papers, but in 2024 their 23,695 AI-related publications topped the combined output of the United States (6378), the United Kingdom (2747), and the European Union (10,055). U.S. influence in AI research is declining, with China now dominating." -Science.org
AI is being used by the US State department to find foreign students who it perceives to be Hamas supporters. Their visas will be revoked. News reports of anti-Israel demonstrations and Jewish students' lawsuits are being checked for evidence that "foreign nationals allegedly engaged in antisemitic activity." Read more from Axios
Washington lawmakers weigh new artificial intelligence regulations - PBS
Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance - Washington Post
AI systems with ‘unacceptable risk’ are now banned in the EU – Tech Crunch
Will AI Regulation “Avoid Past Mistakes” or Just Make Different Ones? - Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
Legal challenges await OpenAI chief as he visits India on global tour – Washington Post
The Manhattan Project Was Secret. Should America’s AI Work Be Too? - Wall Street Journal
Is China winning the AI race? – Washington Post
Stunning breakthroughs from China's DeepSeek AI alarm U.S. rivals – Axios
The global struggle over how to regulate AI – Rest of World
South Carolina to Reboot Giant Nuclear Project to Meet AI Demand - Wall Street Journal
Trump Announces Private-Sector $500 Billion AI Infrastructure Investment – Unite
Google rushed to sell AI tools to Israel’s military after Hamas attack – Washington Post
China's AI keeps getting better — and cheaper – Axios
Joe Biden signs executive order to speed AI data center construction – The Verge
Sam Altman on ChatGPT’s First Two Years, Elon Musk and AI Under Trump – Bloomberg
A Book App Used AI to ‘Roast’ Its Users. It Went Anti-Woke Instead – Wired
Israel built an ‘AI factory’ for war. It unleashed it in Gaza. – Washington Post
Don’t Look Now, but China’s AI Is Catching Up Fast - Wall Street Journal
Behind the Curtain: A chilling, "catastrophic" warning – Axios
House AI Report Lays the Foundation for a Clear, Credible U.S. Vision on AI Governance – Data Innovation
Generative AI bias poses risk to democratic values, research suggests – Phys.org
Demand for computer chips fuelled by AI could reshape global politics and security – The Conversation
Trump supporters target black voters with faked AI images – BBC
Belarusian opposition endorses AI candidate in parliamentary elections - Semafor
Tech firms sign ‘reasonable precautions’ to stop AI-generated election chaos – The Guardians
OpenAI suspends maker of a ChatGPT-based bot mimicking Democratic presidential nominee Dean Phillips – Axios
Imran Khan’s ‘Victory Speech’ From Jail Shows A.I.’s Peril and Promise – New York Times
Parents of gun violence victims use AI to bring kids’ voices to Capitol Hill - Washington Post
New Era of AI Deepfakes Complicates 2024 Elections – Wall Street Journal
Tech companies sign accord to combat AI-generated election trickery – Courthouse News
AI concerns grow as billions of people worldwide prepare to vote this year – NPR
Technology group hopes to help Democrats win with AI-generated ads and emails – NBC News
Chatbots are generating false and misleading information about U.S. elections – Fast Company
When researchers analyzed almost 6,000 political news stories produced by partisan and nonpartisan media outlets in 2021, three things became clear:
Media outlets with extreme biases — regardless of whether it was a conservative or liberal bias — tended to use shorter sentences and less formal language than nonpartisan outlets.
Mainstream news organizations, as a whole, wrote at a higher reading level.
Far-right and far-left outlets took a more negative tone than nonpartisan outlets. They generally had a lower ratio of positive to negative words.
The researchers describe their findings in a paper forthcoming in Journalism Studies, “At the Extremes: Assessing Readability, Grade Level, Sentiment, and Tone in US Media Outlets.”
Read the full article from Journalist’s Resources here.
The strongest bias in American politics is not a liberal bias or a conservative bias; it is a confirmation bias, or the urge to believe only things that confirm what you already believe to be true. Not only do we tend to seek out and remember information that reaffirms what we already believe, but there is also a “backfire effect,” which sees people doubling down on their beliefs after being presented with evidence that contradicts them. So, where do we go from here? There’s no simple answer, but the only way people will start rejecting falsehoods being fed to them is by confronting uncomfortable truths.
Emma Roller writing in the New York Times
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