9 Free Webinars This Week about Design, Journalism, Social Media, Public Records, & More  

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 Mon, March 11 - Human-Centered Design in CX

What: Learn: What human-centered design is and how it can be applied to CX; To use cases of successful human-centered design CX projects; Find out where human-centered design can encounter barriers.    

Who: Jonathan Rubin, User Research Team Lead, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

When: 4 pm, Eastern 

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: GovLoop

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Mon, March 11 - A Sunshine Week talk with Laura Mollo, ‘the FOIA lady’

What: The SPJ Freedom of Information Committee will lead a Sunshine Week talk with Laura Mollo, also known as the ‘FOIA lady’ to talk about how to change your community using FIOA.

Who: Laura Mollo, also known as the ‘FOIA lady’ of Richlands, Virginia. Mollo, a stay-at-home mom, discovered that residents of her small Tazewell County town were put on hold when they called 911. Mollo used FOIA to change how her town handled 911 calls in her community despite the threats and intimidation she received.

When: 7:30, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists New England.

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Tue, March 12 - 30 Minute Skills: Campaign Reporting 102

What: How to follow the money being received and spent by specific campaigns. How to report responsibly on current polling. How to handle opposition research. 

Who: Ted Nesi, WPRI-Providence 

When: 11 am, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The New England First Amendment Coalition

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Tue, March 12 - FOIA 101: A Public Records Primer for Everyone

What: Whether someone has never filed a request before or if they’re trying to pick up some additional tips and tactics, this FOIA 101 training will help file smarter requests that get responded to more quickly while releasing more information. Covering the basics of both federal FOIA and state records laws, participants will leave with a solid approach for turning their questions and story ideas into concrete requests. They will also be introduced to a range of techniques to help them research and file while also solid first steps to overcoming common points of resistance.

When: 1 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists

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Tue, March 12 - How to use Ocean Data for Journalism

What: Regular collection and analysis of data related to the ocean is essential for monitoring the health of the ecosystem and identifying trends and changes over time. By highlighting issues such as overfishing and plastic pollution, journalists can foster public engagement and support the body of knowledge related to ocean governance and management.

Who: Alexandra Talty is a multi-media journalist based in the US; Alexander More is a climate and health scientist at Harvard University; Georgios Hatzimanolis is the head of global communications and branding at Kpler; Jean-Charles Gordon is the ship tracking director at Kpler.

When: 10:30 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Pulitzer Center

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Wed, March 13 - Can You Prepare Today for the Digital Opportunities of Tomorrow?

What: We’ll talk about how brand managers, sales professionals, entrepreneurs and marketers need to be looking at a new digital landscape that will: Create fully immersive experiences that optimize revenue for brands, users and consumers Help consumers make better-informed purchasing decisions Enable companies to create virtual stores to sell digital and physical goods.

Who: Shurick Agapitov Founder, Xsolla.

When: 12 noon, Pacific

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Training Magazine Network

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Thu, March 14 - Using Social Media To Build Your Brand and Connect With Your Audience

What: Some tips, tricks, and examples of how him and others have used social media to grow their digital presence while also using that to develop a reciprocal relationship with an audience.

Who: Ty Rushing, co-founder and president of the Iowa Association of Black Journalists and senior editor of Iowa Starting Line.

When: 2 pm

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Virginia Press Association

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Thu, March 14 - FOIA rights and guidelines for college students

What: If you’re a college journalist who is unfamiliar with Freedom of Information (FOI) laws or need help submitting a records request, SPJ and SPLC will give you a step-by-step guide.

Who: Student Press Law Center senior legal counsel Mike Hiestand.

When: 4 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsors: The Student Press Law Center and the Society of Professional Journalists

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Fri, March 15 - The Appeals Process: Steps to take when your FOIA requests are denied

What: Practical advice on the records appeals process: how to start, how to track, and how to succeed with your open records requests. Whether you are seeking federal, state, or local records, you’ll learn how to get the information you’re after. 

Who: Nate Jones FOIA director, Washington Post; Gunita Singh Staff attorney, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; Mark Walker Investigative reporter, New York Times.

When: 11 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The National Press Club’s Journalism Institute

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17 Articles about The Impact of AI on Business

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In search of the digital facelift

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Unsurprisingly, a large body of research shows that viewing idealised or retouched images adds to the dissatisfaction that many people already feel towards their body. Research by Kristen Harrison, a media psychologist at the University of Michigan, shows that even disclosing that celebrity and advertising images are retouched makes many of us feel worse about ourselves. Becoming more aware of what others edit may heighten our awareness of our own supposed flaws. That may encourage us to spend longer using digital tools to repair them. And once you start it’s hard to stop. I felt better about posting my first FaceTuned photo than I would have if I hadn’t edited it. And since we’re more inclined to post images of ourselves that we like, says Harrison, “it’s self-sustaining because you want to do it again and again and again.” Beauty is attainable for all. Just don’t expect it to be more than a pixel deep. 

Amy Odell writing in 1843 magazine

14 Recent Articles about AI & Politics

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Filling Up on Digital Junk Food

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We’re becoming quite intolerant of letting each other think complicated things. To hear someone else out, you need to be able to be still for a while and pay attention to something other than your immediate needs. So if we’re living in a moment when you can be in seven different places at once… on a phone here, on a laptop. How do we save stillness?

Erik Erickson talks about the need for stillness in order to fully develop and to discover your identity and become who you need to become and think what you need to think. Stillness is one of the great things in jeopardy.

When we’re texting, on the phone, doing e-mail, getting information, the experience is of being filled up. That feels good. And we assume that it is nourishing in the sense of taking us to a place we want to go. And I think that we are going to start to learn that in our enthusiasm and in our fascinations, we can also be flattened and depleted by what perhaps was once nourishing us but which can’t be a steady diet. If all I do is my e-mail, my calendar, and my searches, I feel great; I feel like a master of the universe. And then it’s the end of the day, I’ve been busy all day, and I haven’t thought about anything hard, and I have been consumed by the technologies that were there and that had the power to nourish me. If kids feel that they need to be connected in order to be themselves that’s quite unhealthy. They’ll always feel lonely, because the connections that they’re forming are not going to give them what they seek.

Sherry Turke, Alone Together

9 Free Webinars this week about Journalism, AI, Ethics, & More

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Mon, March 4 – What is Service Journalism?

What: Want to learn everything you need to know about service journalism? This workshop is about  finding, reporting, writing, and pitching better service stories.

Who: Tim Herrera, former editor of NYT's service desk Smarter Living for a wide-ranging discussion on all things service journalism.

When: 2 pm, Pacific

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Freelancing With Tim

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Mon, March 4 - Journalism Ethics: Not Just a Local Thing

What: The discussion will look at how news organizations with journalists from many different countries share and enforce basic rules of journalism ethics that we can all agree to.

Who: Fred Brown Chair of the SPJ Professional Standards and Ethics Committee and former Denver Post editor and columnist; Kathy English, former Toronto Star public editor/ombudsman and current chair of the Canadian Journalism Foundation; Steven Springer, former editor for standards and best practices at Voice of America and Eric Wishart, Standards and Ethics Editor for AFP. 

When: 7pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists, Washington, DC chapter

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Tue, March 5 – The Path Forward: Artificial Intelligence

What: Adobe’s suite of creative software incorporating AI, the company’s work to tackle misinformation and the balance between innovation and risk with the advent of new technologies.

Who: Shantanu Narayen, chair and CEO of Adobe

When: 11 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Washington Post

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Tue, March 5 - Introduction to AI for Nonprofits

What: Learn how to use AI to enhance your nonprofit's website and basic marketing strategies, making it easy to understand and apply.

Who: Tapp Network’s Jon Hill and web developer Tareq Monaur.

When: 10 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: TechSoup

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Wed, March 6 - Using Microsoft Copilot (AI) in PowerPoint

What: We'll cover creating a presentation from scratch or from a document, editing a presentation, getting help from Copilot, including how to do a task in PowerPoint, summarizing a presentation, and finding content Best practices for getting the best results, including prompt engineering What Copilot can't do (at least not yet) and how to give Microsoft feedback.

Who: Ellen Finkelstein, President, Ellen Finkelstein Inc.

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Training Magazine Network, Presentation Guild

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Wed, March 6 - The Art of Color Grading: The Impact on Visual Storytelling

What: The nuances of color grading, demonstrating how this essential process can transform the visual appeal and emotional impact of your digital content.

Who: Gabriela Fialova, Coordinator of Digital Media; David Ziegler, Media and Post-Production Specialist.

When: 6 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Small Business Development Center Kutztown University of Pennsylvania

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Thu, March 7 - Integrating Artificial Intelligence: Creating Video & Audio Projects

What: An immersive session exploring how Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing the landscape of content creation. Discover cutting-edge tools and techniques that leverage AI to streamline video and audio production processes.  We will guide you through hands-on demonstrations, showcasing the seamless integration of AI in video and audio projects. Learn how AI can enhance creativity, automate repetitive tasks, and open new frontiers in storytelling. Whether you’re a content creator, podcaster, or just an entrepreneur who lacks creativity, this webinar is tailored to help you harness the power of AI for captivating and innovative projects.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Small Business Development Center Kutztown University of Pennsylvania

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Thu, March 7 - How Journalists Can Support the PRESS Act

What: An off-the-record virtual panel discussion explaining the PRESS Act, and why reporters and editorial boards should cover it. The panel will be followed by an on-the-record Q&A session with audience members.

Who: Alex Bertschi Wrigley, legislative assistant for Sen. Ron Wyden; Fred Brown, chair of the ethics committee of the Society of Professional Journalists and former journalist for The Denver Post; Caitlin Vogus, deputy director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation; Larry Wilson, member of the Southern California News Group editorial board.

When: 12 noon, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Society of Professional Journalists

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Fri, March 8 - Online Harassment & Privacy Protections: What journalists need to know

What: From doxing to hacking, journalists around the world are subject to online harassment and abuse every day. While some of these attacks have been aimed at political journalists and those working to hold power to account, all reporters need to be on the alert for potential online harassment and attacks. This webinar will offer instruction on how to minimize your personal risk of online harassment and protect your private information.

Who: David Huerta, senior digital security instructor for the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

When: 11:30 am

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: National Press Club Journalism Institute

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11 articles about the business of running an AI

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Giving Your Best

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Expecting the best means that you put your whole heart (i.e., the central essence of your personality) into what you want to accomplish. People are defeated in life not because of lack of ability, but for lack of wholeheartedness. They do not wholeheartedly expect to succeed. Their heart isn’t in it, which is to say they themselves are not fully given. Results do not yield themselves to the person who refuses to give himself to the desired results.

A major key to success in this life, to attaining that which you deeply desire, is to be completely released and throw all there is of yourself into your job or any project in which you are engaged. In other words, whatever you are doing, give it all you’ve got.

A famous Canadian athletic coach, Ace Percival, says that most people, athletes as well as non-athletes, are “holdouts,” that is to say, they are always keeping something in reserve. They do not invest themselves 100 percent in competition. Because of that fact, they never achieve the highest of which they are capable.

Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking

25 AI & Data Science Articles from Feb 2024

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Generative AI can improve -- not replace -- predictive analytics

The NGA is supercharging its use of commercial satellite imagery & analytics with a new program dubbed “’Luno’”

China is building its own Starlink—even as questions surround Musk's constellation

This machine learning study tests the transformer’s ability of length generalization using the task of addition of two integers

Understanding transformers, how they've advanced LLMs—and what may replace them

Scale AI to set the Pentagon’s path for testing and evaluating large language models

How to solve binary classification problems using Bayesian methods in Python 

A quick rundown of the impact AI will have on data roles across the organization

Some of the top R packages every data scientist should be familiar with them 

Python Libraries for Geospatial Data Visualization: Transform Your Maps into Stories 

A list of premier YouTube channels exploring large language models

Python code commenting as a data scientist

New intelligence related to Russia’s attempts to develop a space-based antisatellite nuclear weapon 

The excitement surrounds large language models to the detriment of other equally valuable machine learning methodologies 

10 Prominent Data Science Predictions 2024

Bayesian Analysis with Python

Tech Companies turned Ukraine into an AI War Lab

The pace of innovation in the space sector is picking up thanks in part to AI and machine learning 

What a data scientist looks like in 2032 is likely to be starkly different than today

What an AI-powered future of data science looks like

Sony AI’s tech predictions for the year ahead 

10 emerging data science trends 

A machine learning engineer and data scientist has applied for more than 1,000 roles without any success

An empirical analysis about whether ML models make more mistakes when making predictions on outliers 

How a Surge in Satellites Will Revolutionize Intelligence

Overclaiming

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Research reveals that the more people think they know about a topic in general, the more likely they are to allege knowledge of completely made-up information and false facts, a phenomenon known as "overclaiming." The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

In one set of experiments, the researchers tested whether individuals who perceived themselves to be experts in personal finance would be more likely to claim knowledge of fake financial terms.

As expected, people who saw themselves as financial wizards were most likely to claim expertise of the bogus finance terms.

"The more people believed they knew about finances in general, the more likely they were to overclaim knowledge of the fictitious financial terms," psychological scientist Stav Atir of Cornell University, first author on the study, says. "The same pattern emerged for other domains, including biology, literature, philosophy, and geography."

"For instance," Atir explains, "people's assessment of how much they know about a particular biological term will depend in part on how much they think they know about biology in general."

In another experiment, the researchers warned one set of 49 participants that some of the terms in a list would be made up. Even after receiving the warning, the self-proclaimed experts were more likely to confidently claim familiarity with fake terms. 

from Science Daily

17 Articles about AI & Legal Issues

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Judge Blasts Law Firm for using ChatGPT to Estimate Legal Costs – Futurism  

AI Use in Law Practice Needs Common Sense, Not More Court Rules – Bloomberg

How Generative AI's Growing Memory Affects Lawyers – Law 360

China court says AI broke copyright law in apparent world first – Semafor 

Generative AI in the legal industry: The 3 waves set to change how the business works – Reuters

Harvard Law Expert Explains How AI my Transform the Legal Profession in 2042 – Harvard Law School 

How Artificial Intelligence is making its way into the legal system – The Marshall Project

AI Will Soon Streamline Litigation Practice for Patent Attorneys – Bloomberg  

How AI-Assisted Research helps legal professionals complete quality research faster and create revenue opportunities – Reuters

Chief Justice Roberts casts a wary eye on artificial intelligence in the courts  - NPR

AI’s Billion-Dollar Copyright Battle Starts With a Font Designer – Bloomberg

Boom in A.I. Prompts a Test of Copyright Law – New York Times

The New York Times’s OpenAI lawsuit could put a damper on AI’s 2024 ambitions – Fast Company  

OpenAI Pleads That It Can’t Make Money Without Using Copyrighted Materials for Free – Futurism

What If We Held ChatGPT to the Same Standard as Claudine Gay? The problem with generative AI is plagiarism, not copyright – The Atlantic

The New York Times’ Copyright Lawsuit Against OpenAI Threatens the Future of AI and Fair Use – Data Innovation  

We Asked A.I. to Create the Joker. It Generated a Copyrighted Image.  – New York Times

Social media is Evolving

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As we hit the 20-year anniversary of Facebook, we’re finding that social media usage is changing in a fundamental way. The platforms are evolving:

 from displaying personal information publicly (“Here’s where I went on vacation”; “This is the food I ate at a fancy restaurant.”)

to a place to watch and listen to curated content (often resembling TV and streaming in short form)

Curated & Closed

Instead of status updates, there are algorithmically curated videos. Many of the users who were creating and posting are now just consuming—at least, in the public sphere. This is particularly pronounced among first-gen social media users, that is, millennials between the ages of 27 and 42. This is why Instagram has seem the most growth in the last five years in DMs and stories limited to friends. The type of content they used to share in public posting is moving into private messaging and closed groups.

The advantage of closed groups is:

  • Greater privacy

  • Less sensationalism

  • Improved mental health of users

The downside of closed groups includes:

  • The lack of moderation

  • The spread of misinformation

  • The spread of new ideas suffers

  •  The support of news outlets weakens   

Social media is becoming less social. There is less emphasis on connections and greater focus on individual consumption of media produced by content creators. This focus toward engagement amplifies extreme content, which (among other things) hinders the sharing of actual news content and accurate information.

 Read more:

The end of the social network – The Economist

People are posting a lot less on public social media – Fortune

First-Gen Social Media Users Have Nowhere to Go – Wired

Why the Internet isn’t Fun Anymore – The New Yorker

Don’t Wait for Inspiration

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Chuck Close said, “Inspiration is for amateurs. Us professionals, we just go to work in the morning.”  One thing I really love about that quote is it relieves you a lot of pressure. It’s not about waiting for hours for this moment where inspiration strikes. It’s just about showing up and getting started. All that matters is that you enable the chance for something amazing to happen.

Christoph Niemann

18 Articles about AI & Academic Research

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Could AI Disrupt Peer Review?  Publishers’ policies lag technological advances - Spectrum

The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Writing Scientific Review Articles - Springer

‘Obviously ChatGPT’ — how reviewers accused me of scientific fraud - Nature

AI could accelerate scientific fraud as well as progress - Economist  

Researchers plan to release guidelines for the use of AI in publishing - Chemical & Engineering News

ChatGPT use shows that the grant-application system is broken - Nature   

Detecting fraud in scientific publications: the perils and promise of AI - Science Pod 

The Science family of journals is adopting the use of Proofig, an artificial intelligence (AI)–powered image-analysis tool- Science Magazine  

Can ChatGPT and Other AI Bots Serve as Peer Reviewers? - ACS Publishing  

AI Use in Manuscript Preparation for Academic Journals - Cornell University 

As scientists face a flood of papers, AI developers aim to help New tools show promise, but technical and legal barriers may hinder widespread use - Science Magazine  

Is AI leading to a reproducibility crisis in science? – Nature  

Affiliation Bias in Peer Review of Abstracts by a Large Language Mode - JAMA

AI copilots and robo-labs turbocharge research - Axios 

Editing companies are stealing unpublished research to train their AI - Times Higher Ed 

How journals are fighting back against a wave of questionable images - Nature  

Can ChatGPT evaluate research quality? - Cornell University   

The JSTOR Daily Sleuth - Jstor