7 Webinars this Week about AI, Journalism, Writing & More

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Tue, July 16 - Introduction to Reporting on AI

What: This course is designed for reporters interested in getting started but with minimal or no knowledge of artificial intelligence. We will begin with the basics, covering the history of AI, how the technology works, and key technical concepts such as “neural networks” and “deep learning.” We will also dissect what makes a good AI accountability story, from quick turnaround stories to more ambitious investigations, and dig deeper into a few examples. At the end of the course, those who are interested in learning more are encouraged to register for the AI reporting intensive.   

Who: An Amsterdam-based AI and technology reporter Gabriel Geiger

When: 7 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Pulitzer Center

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Tue, July 16 - Trauma-Informed Storytelling in Action

What: This session will explore trauma-informed storytelling, a safe and healthy process for your beneficiaries, audiences, and even storytellers. You’ll be equipped with actionable insights and tools to tell trauma-informed and ethical stories that have a huge impact. Participants can expect to gain an understanding of why trauma-informed storytelling matters, learn about the three kinds of people impacted by a story, and leave with resources, tools and actionable steps to integrate trauma-informed practices into your role.

Who: Maria Bryan, Kindsight

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Nonprofit Learning Lab

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Tue, July 16 - 5 Ways to Improve Your Website For Better Marketing And Sales

What: This webinar is tailored to business owners at all stages and will delve into strategies to elevate and automate your online presence. He will offer practical tips on an easy-to-understand level, covering topics such as his favorite website platform and theme, as well as how to harness the power of video marketing, optimize user experience, and implement effective sales funnels. Whether you’re just starting out or seeking to refine your digital strategy, this webinar offers practical insights to enhance your website and drive business growth.

Who: Jeff Long, founder of True Focus Media  

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Temple University Small Business Development Center

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Tue, July 16 - How to amp up your reporting using LexisNexis tools

What: You’ll learn how award-winning journalists conduct deep-dive backgrounding on people and subjects, how they get names and numbers from LexisNexis’ list of 800 million profiles, and how they use paywalled content and trade journal expertise to generate story ideas and fresh angles. You don’t have to be a LexisNexis subscriber to attend or benefit from this webinar. Our expert panelist will share his screen and walk you through this trove of source material. If you are a LexisNexis subscriber, you can follow along on your own computer.

Who: Barbara Mantel is AHCJ’s health beat leader for freelancing. Brad Hamilton runs an award-winning digital newsroom, The Hatch Institute.

When: 1:30 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Association of Health Care Journalists

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Wed, July 17- How to use AI to help with grant writing

What: A live demo and tips on using generative AI tools to brainstorm and refine grant applications. Participants will learn how AI can facilitate the grant writing process, with a focus on practical applications and examples, particularly from small local newsrooms that have successfully used AI to help with their grant applications.

Who: ICFJ Knight Fellow and Newsroom Robots Podcast Host Nikita Roy.

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Online News Association

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Wed, July 17- Dashboards: Making Your Data Work for You  

What: Learn how to make your data – from community impact to financial information – more digestible and useful for making decisions. In this webinar, we’ll discuss the purpose and use of dashboard reports, learn the components of useful dashboard reports, and share some examples.  

Who: Catherine Menick

When: 11 am, Pacific

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Propel Nonprofits

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Thu, July 18 - Harnessing AI & Machine Learning in Customer Data Platforms for Dynamic Campaign Activation

What: Explore CDP data integration empowered by AI and ML technologies. Through real-world examples, we'll explore how AI and ML enhance the functionality of CDPs, enabling marketers to extract actionable insights, personalize campaigns, and optimize customer experiences.

Who: Frances Davis, Vice President, Integrated AI Marketing & Analytics, Excelligence Learning Corporation Stephen Easter, Director, Analytics Services, Anteriad

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Association of National Advertisers

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14 Articles about How Companies are using AI

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11 Articles about the History of AI

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Fulfilling Our Purpose

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God creates each person as an individual and in effect says to each human being: “Become yourself, be the person I made you to be.” The person who is conscious that he lives “before God” thus gains the possibility of an identity that is not exhausted by human relations. Such a person is not forced simply to live like “the others,” but has the potential to say, “I need to live my life this way, since it is what God desires for me, even if it means that I have to break with my society’s accepted ways of doing things.”

C. Steven Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction

AI-created Video vs Human-made Video

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Researchers recently tested how audiences liked three types of video: human-made, partly automated and fully automated video. The human-made video did best with audiences, but only slightly better than the partly AI video. Both did much better than the fully AI-made video. The researchers think this supports the use of the hybrid form over fully automated since "audiences like their videos to have a human touch." A key part of making this work, I believe, will be identifying what the audience perceives as indicating a piece of media is AI or human-made. For instance, the researchers note that the audience associated nat sound with video that was (at least partly) human-created. This may translate to other forms of media creation as well. The study is published here and read more about it here.

Stephen Goforth

Learning Wisdom

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Taking our cue from the machinery and the data that dominate our world, we usually view knowledge as something that accumulates piecemeal over time. You start out with a little, and then you gradually pick up more and more. It’s like possessions: they pile up over time. But passive accumulation isn’t the way that you learn the most important things that you know about the world. First you are immersed in the knowledge, then you get distance from it (and even deny it) and then you return to a new relation with it.

William Bridges, The Way of Transition

The Impact of AI on Creativity in a Dozen Recent Articles

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10 Webinars This Week: Journalism, AI, Fake News, & More

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Mon, July 8- Media Literacy Practices with Resilience

What: How various visual expression techniques can be used in media literacy education.

Who: Maria Leonida, film director and media tutor. She is also Co-founder and Director of Karpos, an NGO focusing on media literacy and running European projects.

When: 12 noon, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Media Education Lab

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Tue, July 9 - Journalist safety covering the election: protests, policing and crowds

What: This training equips journalists with knowledge to safely cover election-related protests, civil unrest, and crowded events. The training will focus on physical safety and include information on situational awareness, assessing risk, dealing with aggression, police tactics, personal protective equipment, and protest management weaponry.

Who: Lucy Westcott, director of CPJ’s Emergencies Department; Colin Pereira, CPJ’s journalist safety specialist.

When: 12 noon, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Committee to Protect Journalists, Pen America, International Women's Media Foundation

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Tue, July 9 - AI and Verification, Fact-checking, Copyright and Media Law

What: In this webinar, we will look at the types of content you need to be on the lookout for in your newsroom, including deepfake and AI-manipulated images, audio and video and methods and tools you can use to verify and fact-check multimedia. The session will also explore copyright and media law implications of using AI content.

Who: Sam Gregory is the Executive Director of WITNESS, a global organisation that helps people to use video and technology to defend and protect human rights; Grant McAvaney is the Head of Litigation at News Corp Australia; Antonia Rosen is currently legal counsel at News Corp Australia (NCA), one of Australia’s largest media organisations.

When: 8 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Walkley Foundation

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Tue, July 9 - Video Production on a Shoestring Budget

What: Learn how to improve your audio and video quality by optimizing your recording workflow and making smart equipment purchases that won’t break your budget, whatever it may be. See exactly which pieces of equipment are critical for professional quality results and what settings you should focus on to get the most out of your equipment.

Who: William Everhart, Lead Developer, Artisan Learning

When: 12 noon, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Training Magazine Network

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Tue, July 9 - How Latin America Connects to Your Story: Investigating the Region’s Global Reach of Illicit Money, Illegal Mining, Drug Trafficking, and Environmental Destruction

What: This session will delve into stories about deforestation, drugs, and mining, providing tips and tools to pursue groundbreaking investigations. From transnational criminal networks to financial maneuvers used to conceal illicit gains, the webinar will highlight recent investigations that have tracked illegally mined gold from the Amazon to India, cocaine from Colombia to European ports, and unmasked the hidden owners of offshore companies based in Panama and other Latin American countries.

Who: Bianca Padró Ocasio, an independent journalist working in both the US and Peru; Joseph Poliszuk, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Armando.info, a trailblazing news website dedicated to investigative journalism; Lilia Saúl is an investigative reporter with OCCRP, based in Mexico; Luiz Fernando Toledo is a Brazilian investigative and data journalist.

When: 11 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Global Investigative Journalism Network

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Wed, July 10 - How GenAI Can Help News Media Companies Go Farther and Faster

What: How generative AI can help newsrooms deliver important, impactful work. Use cases will cover automated hyper-local, personalised newsletters, newsroom assistants, and chatbots.

Who: Nadia Kohler, Head of the AI Lab at Tamedia, Angélica (Momi) Peralta Ramos, Data Team Leader at La Nación,Sonali Verma, INMA's Generative AI Initiative lead.

When: 10 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: International News Media Association

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Wed, July 10 - Why do we fall for misinformation?

What: Learn about several research-based strategies that can supplement and expand on your existing information literacy approaches with patrons. Researchers from the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP) will unpack how online information environments influence what we see and believe online. Come explore opportunities to increase capacity for public library staff and community members to address and navigate problematic information.

Who: Jevin West, Co-Founder, Center for an Informed Public and Associate Professor, University of Washington Information School; Chris Coward, Co-Founder, Center for an Informed Public and Senior Principal Research Scientist, University of Washington Information School; Kate Lapinski, Director of Adult Services, Chicago Public Library.

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsors: Institute of Museum and Library Services, Center for an Informed Public

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Thu, July 11 - Digital Trends for Newsrooms in 2024

What: 2024 is almost halfway over—do you feel like you're still getting caught up on what's new and changing in digital news? In this session, we'll cover a variety of topics—from AI and ChatGPT to Twitter/X and SEO—to help you get up to speed on the latest trends in digital journalism.

Who: Tyson Bird is the Digital Product Manager for Texas Highways magazine.  

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: $35

Sponsor: Online Media Campus

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Thu, July 11 - Artificial Intelligence for Journalists with AI expert and digital guru Sree Sreenivasan

Who: Sree Sreenivasan has been teaching generative AI workshops worldwide for the past year. He was a full-time journalism professor at Columbia University for 20+ years and served as the chief digital officer at Columbia. He is the 2024 president of the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), which he co-founded in 1994.

When: 7 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists

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Thu, July 11 - FUNdamentals of Ethical Marketing: Strategies for Reaching Older Adults

What: Senior staff from the ANA Center for Ethical Marketing will highlight relevant guidelines from the soon to be released ANA Ethical Code of Best Practices. They will also share insights on prevalent frauds targeting older adults and provide tips to identify, prevent, and report scams.   

Who: Senny Boone SVP, ANA Center for Ethical Marketing; Lisa Brown Shosteck Consulting Director, ANA Center for Ethical Marketing ANA; Jessica Prell, AARP Fraud Watch Network

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Association of National Advertisers

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The experiment that got out of control

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Philip Zimbardo is one of the most controversial figures in psychology, said Katie Kilkenny in Pacific Standard. In 1971, the Stanford professor conducted a now notorious psychological experiment that placed 24 student volunteers as prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. The experiment quickly spun out of control, as the student guards became increasingly sadistic toward their prisoners and Zimbardo—who acted as prison superintendent—was accused of subjecting his volunteers to psychological torture. Four decades on, Zimbardo stands by his study—if only because it taught the world that anyone can be seduced by evil under the right circumstances. “[We like to think] our personality is relatively fixed, we are who we are, that we are not influenced by things around us,” says Zimbardo, 82. “This study says no, that might be true sometimes, but other times when you’re put in an unfamiliar situation where you don’t have any guidelines or rules that contain who you are, you could be anything.” He insists we’ve all witnessed this phenomenon: “Somebody you know suddenly begins to change because they’ve been given a certain role or authority.” Zimbardo admits that he, too, was corrupted by his prison role. “I lost my sense of compassion,” he says. “I totally lost that.”

The Week Magazine, August 7, 2015

14 Recent Articles about AI Deepfakes

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17 Articles about Running an AI Company

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The Residue of the Relationship

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When individual members leave a family, whether through death, marriage, relocation, or a cutoff, the system will generally be quick to replace the person who is lost. Whoever the replacement is, new child or new spouse, new in-law or new boarder, clergyman or clergy woman, in the same generation or the next, he or she will replace in all the family triangles the person who has left. They will have grafted onto them all the expectations associated with the predecessor, and the un-worked-out problems that may have contributed to the predecessor’s leaving (or becoming symptomatic) are likely to resurface in the new relationships. Replacement is a function of grief, and grief is always proportional to the un-worked-out residue of the relationship that was lost.

Edwin Friedman, Generation to Generation

What to let go of

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What it is time to let go of is not so much the relationship or the job itself, but rather the hopes, fears, dreams, and beliefs that we have attached to them. If you let go only of the job or the relationship, you’ll just find another one and attach the same hopes, fears, dreams and beliefs to it. A loss is best seen as the cue that it is time to let go of the inner thing.

William Bridges, The Way of Transition

Where AI Might Take Journalism

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Imagine having a written news story converted into a video by AI. The AI would not be taking away from the journalism but providing more options to access the information. Perhaps the story can be adjusted based on preferences. For instance, perhaps the reader doesn’t know much about economics and wants the material delivered in simple economic terms. Or the reader might want more detail in a story related to their field. AI would be used to adjust the complexity of the delivery. This may be the kind of journalism we are headed toward.

27 Articles about AI & Data Science from June 2024

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The best Large Language Models (LLMs) for coding in 2024

Air Force leaders appear to be having second thoughts on the “Next-Generation Air Dominance

Has the era of Graph Foundation Models already begun?

Neural Algorithmic Reasoning for Transformers: The TransNAR Framework

The US Army is launching a pilot project that will allow its acquisition and contracting staff to use generative AI to streamline tasks like contract writing and data analysis

Researchers say they have developed a new machine learning model that allows individual artificial neurons to receive feedback and adjust in real-time, making AI models more efficient and energy-saving when processing data

A EU tech company says it has successfully implemented its first quantum communication network in existing fiber optic infrastructure

Data centers around the world could consume more than 800 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2026, roughly twice the amount consumed in 2022

A short and simple definition of “big data”

NGA launches new training to help personnel adopt AI responsibly

“Generative AI is very good at replicating parts of software programs but what if you want to create something new smart human coders will still be needed.”

China’s Geespace deploys a satellite constellation in the Middle East

Recurrent quantum embedding neural network and its application in vulnerability detection

Could data science soon face a reproducibility crisis?

Meta on training its large language models at scale

AI Definitions: Synthetic Data

5 Free University Courses to Learn Coding for Data Science

Machine learning solutions can miss the mark when data scientists don’t check their assumptions. Adopting a beginner’s mindset in any domain can help.

New technique can automate data curation for self-supervised pre-training of AI datasets

“The space architecture adopted by the Space Development Agency — small satellites in a proliferated constellation — is being emulated across the Space Force.”

Selection bias leads to confusion about the relative stability of deterministic & stochastic algorithms

“The US is warning allies that China has stepped up its support for Russia, including by providing geospatial intelligence”

AI company launches coding assistant trained on over 80 programming languages

How data scientists can leverage ChatGPT

8 new data science roles created by AI

A Dozen Recent Articles about AI & Coding

How I Use ChatGPT as A Data Scientist (paywall)