The Impact of AI on Creativity in 19 Articles

Technical Debt & Ethical Debt

Technical Debt - A software development term referring to the cost of choosing fast solutions now and putting off fixing issues until a future time. The benefit of a rush to market is matched with a hope that bugs will be found later, and repairs made. It can result from limited testing during the development process.

Ethical Debt - The result of not considering societal harms and unintended consequences. This can happen in the fast-moving production of AI tools. The people who incur it are rarely the people who ultimately pay for it.

More AI definitions here.

18 Articles about How AI is Affecting Jobs

Want to Know if AI Will Take Your Job? I Tried Using It to Replace Myself - WSJ

AI-powered robotics will fuel jobs disruptions in ways we don’t realize - Semafor

The human side of generative AI: Creating a path to productivity - McKinsey

An Analysis of 5 Million Job Postings Showed These Are the 3 Jobs Being Replaced by AI the Fastest – Inc.

Gen AI is here to stay — here are 5 skills to help you stay relevant in the changing job market – CNBC

Swedish fintech Klarna says its AI assistant does the work of 700 people—after it laid off 700 people – Fast Company

Oops! Replacing Workers With AI Is Actually More Expensive, MIT Finds – Futurism

AI Is Starting to Threaten White-Collar Jobs - Wall Street Journal

The AI machines are not coming for your job – MarketWatch

 AI Talent Is in Demand as Other Tech Job Listings Decline - Wall Street Journal 

AI's job threat extends to CEOs who move too slowly in adapting to it – Axios 

AI hiring tools may be filtering out the best job applicants - BBC

10% of US workers are in jobs most exposed to artificial intelligence, White House says - CNN

Will A.I. Take All Our Jobs? This Economist Suggests Maybe Not. – New York Times

AI could help ending the dominance of the credentialed classes – Washington Post

9 AI jobs you can get without being an expert coder – Business Insider

Amid Fears of AI Job Losses, This MIT Professor Thinks It Can Fix the Labor Market – Inc. 

AI Can't Do All Our Jobs for Us. But We Can Make It a 'Superhero Sidekick' - CNBC

Slicing Projects

Rather than looking at tasks, projects or decisions as items that must be completed, slice them into the smallest possible units of progress, then knock them out one at a time. This strategy relieves the pressure of thinking we need a perfect plan before we begin something — after all, if your first step is “open a new Google Doc for this week’s newsletter” and not “pick a perfect topic, write a perfect lede and have a perfect organization,” you either have achieved that micro-goal or you haven’t. There’s no gray area.

Tim Herrera writing in the New York Times 

23 Amazing Things AI Can Do Now

Artificial intelligence might revolutionise coaching based on football research – Cosmos

OpenAI reveals artificial intelligence tool to re-create human voices - Axios 

NASA is releasing its first open-source geospatial artificial intelligence foundation model for Earth observation data - EarthData 

Advances in AI and satellite imagery allowed researchers to create the clearest picture yet of human activity at sea – The Verge 

AI Is Telling Bedtime Stories to Your Kids Now - Wired

Why AI will help IT workers get more sleep - Semafor

New study finds ChatGPT gives better advice than professional columnists – PsyPost

LinkedIn Tests New AI-Based Learning Elements In-Stream – Social Media Today

AI platform demonstrates ability to autonomously plan and execute a chemistry experiment after taking input prompts from researchers – Engineering   

Can AI Predict What Shoppers Will Buy? – Business of Fashion

AI is speeding up scientific discoveries and helping to spot new ideas - Axios

Google Chrome will summarize entire articles for you with built-in generative AI - The Verge

AI is helping cut the carbon footprint of online shopping returns - Semafor

Elvis Evolution: Presley to be brought to life using AI for new immersive show - BBC

How an AI robot smashed human world record in Labyrinth, a classic marble maze game – Fox News  

George Carlin has a new AI-generated comedy special – USA Today 

This AI game controller can predict which button you'll press next - BGR

This AI learnt language by seeing the world through a baby’s eyes – Nature   

AI program “can train neural networks using just a handful of satellite and drone images - Phys.org 

How AI Can Find the Perfect Movies, TV Shows and Books for You – Wall Street Journal  

Ex Zillow exec launches AI-powered home search platform - Axios

A Celebrity Dies, and New Biographies Pop Up Overnight. The Author? A.I. – New York Times

The AI art generator Midjourney is the favored tool in architecture - Bloomberg

Labels can be People Shortcuts

Labels are shortcuts. They allow us to easily dismiss the people we associate them with. They give us an excuse not to invest in others because we think we already know them. We avoid treating them as people.

If you ask a blind person what he would like more than anything else in the world (aside from regaining his sight) you’ll invariably get an answer like this: “I want people to accept me as a person in spite of my handicap. I don’t want to be defined as a blind person. I want to be known first as a person — a person who happens to blind. 

What the blind person is asking sounds like something from the Sermon on the Mount”: “Don’t label, and then you won’t be labeled.”  

Labels not only can be turned outward, but they can also be turned inward. Labeling ourselves can propel the user down a pessimistic spiral. “I can’t tell good jokes at parties” soon becomes “I’m no fun at parties” and eventually “People don’t want me around.”  

People who overeat soon find themselves saying, “I’m the kind of person who overeats.” Or it might be, “I’m the kind of person who has to keep smoking.” The shift toward letting a label become our identify is a subtle but damning shift. The label becomes a shortcut way to deny the possibility of change.

Stephen Goforth

5 Free Webinars this week about Journalism, AI, Teaching & Branding

Mon, April 1 – Covering the 2024 Election

Who: Media critic and author Margaret Sullivan, formerly executive editor of The Buffalo News, and Barton Gellman, a three-time Pulitzer-prize winner, author and journalist who is now a senior advisor to the Brennan Center for Justice.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists, Wash., DC chapter

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Tue, April 2 - Meet The Generative AI Moment With Authentic Learning

What: This one-hour workshop will both provide a high-level explanation of how these tools work, along with insights from colleagues across disciplines at UChicago about how they’ve been approaching this change in the educational landscape. Attendees will receive context to make an informed decision about how to approach these tools and address the topic with their students. By providing examples of how they might design assignments and communicate their expectations in this new context, we hope to provide attendees with everything they need to feel confident that learning remains authentic even in a time that computer-generated text may approach the quality of human intellectual work.

Who: University of Chicago faculty

When: 1 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: University of Chicago

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Tue, April 2 - Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in K-12 Schools

What: What are the best practices in crafting AI policies—should schools ban the technology, wholly embrace it, or something in between? What are the questions district and state leaders should ask themselves as they chart their course on AI? And where does AI literacy and professional development for teachers fit in this picture? This webinar will explore those questions, offering practical tips from educators and experts on how to approach this rapidly evolving technology while remaining mindful of core principles such as student privacy and academic honesty.

Who: Pati Ruiz is a Senior Director of Edtech and Emerging Technologies at Digital Promise where she leads the Edtech and Emerging Technologies team; Dr. Kip Glazer is a proud Principal of Mountain View High School in Mountain View California, home of Google and in the heart of Silicon Valley; Vera Cubero, an experienced educator with a wide range of experience in K12 education at the school, district, and state levels; Jerry Almendarez’ career in education spans over 30 years and includes experience as a classroom teacher, assistant principal, and principal.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Education Week

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Tue, April 2 - Solutions Journalism 101 Webinar

What: This webinar will explore the ins and outs of solutions journalism, talk about why it’s important, explain key steps in reporting a solutions story, and share tips and resources for journalists interested in investigating how people are responding to social problems. We will also explore additional resources we have on hand for your reporting, including the Solutions Story Tracker, a database of more than 15,000 stories tagged by beat, publication, author, location, and more, a virtual heat map of what’s working around the world.

When: 6 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Solutions Journalism Network

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Wed, April 3 - Measuring Brand: Navigating Video's New Terrain

What: How to navigate through the maze of brand measurement in this new environment, providing you with actionable insights to optimize your marketing strategies and drive tangible results. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just starting out, this webinar is your gateway to mastering brand measurement in the ever-evolving video landscape.

Who: Tinuiti’s Client Strategy experts: Harry Browne, VP, Client Strategy & Analytics; Hanah Choi, Vice President, Client Strategy & Analytics.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Tinuiti & Media Post

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37 Articles about Data Science & AI from March

The current limitations of ML and AI systems suitable for use in adversarial environments 

11 Articles about the Ethics of AI

Space Force: needs to “improve how it harnesses AI & ML tools” 

The European Space Agency plans to build a ChatGPT-style digital assistant  

The role of transformers in how chain-of-thought reasoning helps neural networks compute

AI teaching AI 

A record number of objects went into space last year

The adoption of new AI capabilities is making the benefits of geospatial intell more accessible

AI definitions: Training Data   

TimeGPT a generative pre-trained model specifically designed for predicting time-series data

AI definitions: Extractive summarization

Meet the 8 Google employees credited with inventing modern AI

SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites  

Google DeepMind has developed an AI model that outperforms techniques for quantum circuits

Here are five ways to use LLMs on your laptop

Shrinking the distance between acquisition of data to actionable insights from multiple geospatial modalities

Build an AI application with Python in 10 easy steps 

AI Terms: Transformers  

A mathematical formula can explain how neural networks detect relevant patterns

12 Recent Articles about AI’s future

NASA's first open-source geospatial artificial intelligence foundation model for Earth observation data

Generative AI Landscape: Trends of 2024 and Beyond

Understanding the similarities and differences between data science and applied statistics

AI Terms: Abstractive summarization

How to Succeed With Predictive AI: An MIT webinar

A breakthrough in storing quantum data without the need for cryogenic cooling

How Large X Models (LXMs) can help generative AI complete new tasks 

The role of Large Language Models in enhancing the process of extractive summarization

The Role of Satellite Technology in Protecting Critical Infrastructure

Google Cloud adds vector support to all its database offerings

Google just entered the race of foundation models for time-series forecasting

How To Use A Vector Database

“Some of the ways we’re applying AI to the world of design systems”

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

The Dept of Defense is reportedly working with startup Scale AI to test generative AI models for military use

NGA launches National GEOINT Operations Center

The White House wants developers to abandon C and C++ over memory management security concerns

Regret is overrated (a quote from Daniel Kahneman who passed away yesterday at the age of 90)

Regret is an emotion, and it is also a punishment that we administer to ourselves. The fear of regret is a factor in many of the decisions that people make (‘Don’t do this, you will regret it’ is a common warning), and the actual experience of regret is familiar. The emotional state has been well described by two Dutch psychologists, who noted that regret is “accompanied by feelings that one should have known better, by a sinking feeling, by thoughts about the mistake one has made and the opportunities lost, by a tendency to kick oneself and to correct one’s mistake, and by wanting to undo the event and to get a second chance.” Intense regret is what you experience when you can most easily imagine yourself doing something other than what you did.

Decision makers know that they are prone to regret, and the anticipation of that painful emotion plays a part in many decisions.

We spend much of our day anticipating, and trying to avoid, the emotional pains we inflict on ourselves. Susceptibility regret, like susceptibility to fainting spells, is a fact of life to which one must adjust.

You can take precautions that will inoculate you against regret. Perhaps the most useful is to be explicit about the anticipation of regret. If you can remember when things go badly that you considered the possibility of regret carefully before deciding, you are likely to experience less of it. You should also know that regret and hindsight bias will come together, so anything you can do to preclude hindsight is likely to be helpful. You should not put too much weight on regret; even if you have some, it will hurt less than you now think.

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

It's a never-ending cycle

You start a project determined to execute it perfectly. You avoid it until you can “do it right,” but then you don’t do it at all. You feel frozen, stuck, incapable. You are paralyzed by the fear that you will be bad at the thing you want to accomplish. Which, of course, makes it impossible to accomplish anything.

It's a never ending cycle: perfectionism, procrastination, paralysis.

At my best, I am an efficient and organized person. I thrive off of hard work and high pressure, always ambitious, always reaching for the next thing to do or make or achieve. I am productive and full of ideas. I take charge and take action. I keep a clean house and read at least a book a week.

At my worst, I am flighty and frazzled. I spend far more time thinking about how I want to do something than I do actually doing it. I doubt every choice I make, every thought that flits across my mind. I let my apartment get increasingly messy, even though I know how much I need a clean space in order to be happy. I just can’t confront the glaring imperfection of a sink full of dishes, baskets of dirty laundry.

I recede further and further inside of myself.

Jenni Berrett writing in Ravishly

Using Peer Pressure to our advantage

In a 1994 Harvard study that examined people who had radically changed their lives, for instance, researchers found that some people had remade their habits after a personal tragedy, such as a divorce or a life-threatening illness. Others changed after they saw a friend go through something awful... Just as frequently, however, there was no tragedy that preceded people's transformations. Rather, they changed because they were embedded in social groups that made change easier… When people join groups where change seems possible, the potential for that change to occur becomes more real.

Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

The Soul of Science

Pseudoscience, which are beliefs or practices that look like science on the outside — they ape or mimic many of the qualities of science — but they miss the central components of science that make it so powerful.

Science isn’t about the jargon. It’s not about the mathematics. It’s not about the lab coats and the experiments and the orbiting observatories. 

Science is about curiosity. It’s about rigor. It’s about doubting yourself. It’s about doubting your peers. It’s about applying a strict methodology to problem solving, to arrive at results. That’s the soul of science. That’s what science is really all about. And that’s what many, or all, pseudoscientific beliefs lack.

Astrophysicist Paul M. Sutter quoted in Undark

6 Free Webinars this week about AI, Journalism, Women in Media, & More

Mon, March 25 - Inspiring women in media and journalism  

Who: Anushka Joshi, a working journalist who is on the 2024 Forbes 30 under 30 list and founder of GEN-ZiNE and Nikki Walker,a video journalist at the Wall Street Journal.

When: 5 pm, Pacific

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Women's Leadership Society at USC Annenberg

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Mon, March 25 - Sikhi & AI

What: We will explore both the potential benefits and challenges that AI presents within the context of Sikh philosophy and ethics.

Who: Arvinder Singh, technology leader with 15 years experience; Balwinder Kaur, Women in Tech Champion -CTO; Muntek Singh, CTO with 15 years experience; Tarsem Singh, Former Global Director of Software.

When: 6 pm, Pacific

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Khalis Foundation

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Wed, March 27 - Follow the Money: Using HospitalFinances.org and other tools to tell important stories

What: This webinar will equip you with the tools you need to tell the story of the big business of health care. How to use AHCJ’s site and other tools to report stories about hospitals’ financial health.   

Who: Longtime AHCJ member Karl Stark, Director of Content Strategy & Editor in Residence at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ), Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE)

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Wed, March 27 - Revising The Media Literacy Critical Questions

What: The Media Literacy Smartphone is a teaching game, build on a long history of critical reflection of media messages. It has now been improved for practitioners of media literacy in K-12 and post-secondary education.

Who: Yonty Friesem is the Executive Director of Media Education Lab and an Associate Professor of Communication at Columbia College Chicago;  Mark Davis is a digital literacy educator with over twenty years of K-12 public service. He advocates for inclusive practices supporting media education and computational thinking.

When: 12 noon, 7 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Media Education Lab

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Thu, March 28 - AI, misinformation, and other threats in the 2024 elections

What: Topics: Tackling misinformation; The use of artificial intelligence to mislead voters; The effects of conspiracy theories on local elections; Security vulnerabilities and foreign interference; Threats faced by election workers.

Who: Christina A. Cassidy, national voting and elections reporter for AP; Ali Swenson, election misinformation reporter for AP; Christine Fernando, state and local misinformation reporter for AP

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: American Press Institute, Associated Press

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Thu, March 28 - Empowering Journalists with AI and Tech Innovation

What: How you can best use AI for content creation and what pitfalls to avoid. Since González-Cotto is a lawyer, he’ll include some of the legal and ethical aspects of using AI.

Who: Rafelli González-Cotto, Digital Reporter, Lawyer and Professor, Universidad del Sagrado Corazón

When: 4 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The National Association of Hispanic Journalists

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Are you smarter than a pigeon?

In the 1950s, Skinner began putting the birds in a box and training them to peck on a piece of plastic whenever they wanted food. Then the Harvard psychology researcher rigged the system so that not every peck would yield a tasty treat. It became random — a reward every three pecks, then five pecks, then two pecks. 

The pigeons went crazy and began pecking compulsively for hours on end.

Fast forward six decades. We have become the pigeons pecking at our iPhones, scrolling through news feeds, swiping left/right on Tinder for hours, the uncertainty of what we might find keeping us obsessed by design.

In the modern economy of tablets and apps, our attention has become the most valuable commodity. Tech companies have armies of behavioral researchers whose sole job is to apply principles like Skinner’s variable rewards to grab and hold our focus as often and long as possible.

Market research shows the average user touches their cellphone 2,617 times a day.

William Wan in the Washington Post