AI Definitions: Artificial Intelligence

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) – AI typically refers to computers that imitate the human thinking process, so they that are able to make some decisions on their own without the need of human intervention. The defining feature of artificial intelligence is that the behavior is learned from data rather from being explicitly programmed. AI can effectively mimic and mix established patterns in creative ways. However, it does not perform as well at breaking expectations and conventional forms to create entirely new things.   

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Your self-evaluations

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Your self-evaluations are important because they influence most areas of your behavior, defining the limits of what you will attempt. You avoid an activity if your self-concept predicts you will perform so badly as to humiliate yourself. For instance, if your self-concept includes the belief that you would be a poor ice skater, you might never try it, and will indeed remain a poor ice skater. Often people excuse themselves with “That’s just the way I am.” By using this excuse, they deny themselves opportunities for personal growth.

Sharon and Gordon Bower, Asserting Yourself

The Question that Will Predict How AI Impacts Your Job

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A clarifying question: does AI look like it is going to do the most highly skilled part of your job or the low-skill rump that you’ve not been able to get rid of? The answer to that question may help to predict whether your job is about to get more fun or more annoying — and whether your salary is likely to rise, or fall as your expert work is devalued. -Tim Harford

23 Surprising Things AI can do now

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Google DeepMind unveils an AI-powered model that creates interactive 3D worlds in real time - Google DeepMind

Parkland Shooting Victim Recreated as AI for Jim Acosta Interview.- The Guardian

AI can now beat polygraph tests to tell when you're lying – 311 Institute

The rise of AI tools that write about you when you die - Washington Post

AI Comes Up with Bizarre Physics Experiments. But They Work. – Quanta Magazine 

Missionaries using tech to contact Amazon's Indigenous people – The Week

An AI-Generated Protein Helps T Cells Kill Cancer – The-Scientist  

AI helps traditional Japanese fish-killing method get a robotic upgrade – Semafor

Google and OpenAI are vying for top AI mathlete – Axios

AI comes to California’s electric grid – Union-Tribune

AI is helping patients fight insurance company denials – NBC News

Dubai to debut restaurant operated by an AI chef – Reuters

Drones, AI and Robot Pickers: Meet the Fully Autonomous Farm – Wall Street Journal

ChatGPT Tells Pregnant Woman To 'Call an Ambulance'—Saves Their Lives - Newsweek

Large language models are proficient in solving and creating emotional intelligence tests – Nature  

How A.I. Is Transforming Wedding Planning – New York Times  

ChatGPT Is Changing the Words We Use in Conversation – Scientific American

Welcome to Your Job Interview. Your Interviewer Is A.I. – New York Times  

LooksMapping, an A.I.-powered website, rates not the food, but the attractiveness of the diners. – New York Times  

AI tool diagnoses nine types of dementia with 88% accuracy using a single PET scan – MIT Tech Review 

AI Can Keep Truck Drivers Awake - Wall Street Journal

Finding viable sperm in infertile men can take days. AI did it in hours. - Washington Post 

Everyone Is Using A.I. for Everything. Is That Bad? - New York Times

Using AI for Writing Obituaries

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Two days after Jeff Fargo’s mother died, he lay in bed, crying, at home in Nevada and opened his laptop to ChatGPT. Her friends had asked about an obituary, so for nearly an hour he typed about her life. “I just … emptied my soul into the prompt,” said Fargo, 55. “I was mentally not in a place where I could give my mom what she deserved. And this did it for me.”  - Washington Post

20 Articles about AI & Academic Scholarship

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Why a hybrid AI-human approach is necessary to uphold research integrity – The Hindu  

AI research journal with sham board, metrics holds researcher’s paper hostage – Retraction Watch

Artificial intelligence and the death of the academic author – Taylor & Francis

Springer Nature launches new tool to spot awkward, tortured phrases – Chemistry World

AI will soon be able to audit all published research – what will that mean for public trust in science? – The Conversation  

AI, originality, and attribution: Researchers’ perspectives on distinguishing contributions– Taylor & Francis Online

AI-Enabled Cheating Points to ‘Untenable’ Peer Review System – Inside Higher Ed

AI, bounties and culture change, how scientists are taking on errors – Nature

China tops the world in artificial intelligence publications, database analysis reveals - Science.org

Researchers are cheating peer review by hiding AI prompts in papers - The Washington Post

AI ‘scientists’ joined these research teams: here’s what happened - Nature

The accuracy-bias trade-offs in AI text detection tools and their impact on fairness in scholarly publication - PeerJ

Delving into LLM-assisted writing in biomedical publications through excess vocabulary -  Science.org 

'Positive review only': Researchers hide AI prompts in papers - Nikkei Asia

Springer Nature book on machine learning is full of made-up citations – Retraction Watch  

454 Hints That a Chatbot Wrote Part of a Biomedical Researcher’s Paper – New York Times

Are AI Bots Knocking Digital Collections Offline? - The Scholarly Kitchen 

AI, peer review and the human activity of science - Nature

Elsevier journal under fire over ‘AI-generated’ review comments – Times Higher Ed

How AI is shaking up scientific publishing - LeMonde

There’s a tiger over there! (according to my phone)

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“Everybody is fighting for your attention, so your only real defense is to make it so that those stimuli don’t come in the door,” says Boston University cognitive neuroscientist David Somers. The idea that your technology should alert you when it thinks you should pay attention is relatively new, and, frankly, it’s a big step backward. You’re letting the bushes rustle nonstop, and telling yourself there’s a tiger over there.

“It’s so important that we define where we want to go as opposed to letting technology drive us and we’re just hanging on for dear life,” says author Amy Blankson, who works in the field of positive psychology, specifically on maximizing happiness.

Still, everyone gets a buzz from this high-octane news environment. Literally. Every notification, every tweet, every beep and buzz releases dopamine and other neurochemicals, providing a moment’s elation. As with any drug, your brain gets used to it. Perhaps even craves it.  

Reclaim control of what you read.

Emily Dreyfuss, Wired

AI definitions: Generative AI

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Generative AI (GenAI) - Artificial intelligence that can produce media content (text, images, audio, video, etc.) by predicting patterns based on huge amounts of data. It doesn’t actually think or create in the way humans do, but it mimics the human brain. As a statistical prediction engine, it operates like the “type ahead” feature on smartphones that makes next-word suggestions. You might say it is like autocomplete at scale that remembers what you've written or said, so the interaction between the user and the AI has a dynamic conversational feel. The ability for it to go back and forth allows users to refine and tweak the requests. Like Wikipedia, it mashes together various sources using statistics. The key difference between generative AI and other types of AI is that generative AI focuses on creating new data, rather than simply analyzing or processing existing data.

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25 Recent Articles about AI & Journalism

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Traffic Apocalypse  Google’s AI Overviews are killing click-throughs to news sites. – Columbia Journalism Review

How journalists can spot and mitigate AI bias - Reuters

What Tools Can Newsrooms Use to Evaluate Generative AI Prompts? – Generative AI Newsroom

Amazon to Pay New York Times at Least $20 Million a Year in AI Deal - Wall Street Journal 

Meta Exec Joins BBC News For Key Artificial Intelligence Role- Deadline 

What Legacy Newsrooms Can Learn from Social Media Creators – Nieman Reports  

iOS 26 beta 4 arrives, with Liquid Glass tweaks and AI news summaries – Tech Crunch 

What news sources AI chat bots read – Axios

Beyond the Hype: What AI Can and Can’t Do for Journalism – What’s New in Publishing 

The struggle over AI in journalism is escalating – Blood in the Machine

How Google AI Overviews is fuelling zero-click searches for top publishers – Press Gazette

Argentina’s President Joins A.I.-Fueled Smear Campaign Against Journalist – New York Times  

ChatGPT referrals to news sites are growing, but not enough to offset search declines - Tech Crunch 

The Media's Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work – 404 Media

Law360 mandates reporters use AI “bias” detection on all stories - Nieman Lab 

AI, Search and the Future of News Once again, distinctiveness is the best defense – Second Rough Draft 

News Sites Are Getting Crushed by Google’s New AI Tools – Wall Street Journal  

A new tool lets your favorite AI model talk with 2 million articles from The Guardian - Nieman Lab

The Newspaper That Hired ChatGPT – The Atlantic  

AI is giving local news a second chance. Will it be ready this time? – Poynter 

Journalist says 4,000 fake AI news websites created to game Google algorithms – Press Gazette 

AI is polluting truth in journalism. Here’s how to disrupt the misinformation feedback loop. – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Politico's Owner Is Embarrassing Its Journalists With Garbled AI Slop – Futurism

Generative AI models love to cite Reuters and Axios, study finds - Nieman Lab

When AI Gives an Answer, No One Cares About the Source: News outlets get left out when AI turns a search engine into an answer engine. – US News

TV channel launches Germany's first completely AI-generated news programme - NotebookCheck.net

Using AI to Flesh Out Half-Baked Ideas

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I’ve always found it easier to work out my ideas through dialogue, but not many people are interested in hearing my half-baked ideas. That is why I’ve found that talking through ideas is one of the best uses of AI for writers. NotebookLM takes the idea of talking to the archive to the next level: The archive you chat with is one you assemble yourself with sources for a particular project, which the AI can also help you collect to get started. -Jonathan D. Fitzgerald on Mashable 

AI Citing News Outlets

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"AI responses to fact-based queries and prompts are more likely to cite news outlets. The outlets most cited include Reuters, the Financial Times, Time, Axios, Forbes and the Associated Press. In this new GEO [generative engine optimization] world, recent content or news stories are what's driving the answers. LinkedIn, Reddit and Glassdoor — places where user-generated content and reviews can be found — can also influence an LLM's response." -Axios