thehill | I asked an AI chatbot to tell me about myself. (11.06.24)
I spoke to a friend who uses AI all the time for her tech job. Her advice was to "use it like an intern." So I thought about what I would ask an intern—if I ever had one—to do. I'm planning to go to Spain, so I asked it to find me a price on business-class tickets to Barcelona. No dice. Apparently that's not in its repertoire (and any other "intern" activities I could think of, like ordering lunch or sorting files, obviously weren't either). At first it said it hadn't heard of me, which seemed odd; not that I'm famous, but I have an unusual enough name and my own website, so I thought I'd be findable. I then told it that I've written for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. And with those crumbs of information, we were off to the races. Suddenly it generated a whole biography.

Is this GDPR compliant?
A company or an organisation can process personal data when it has grounds of "legitimate interest," according to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Meta mentioned this legal basis, adding the data would be used "to develop and improve [computer programming]".
[...]
The tech company also advised the DPC that "only that personal data (posts not comments) shared by users based in the EU to a public audience on Instagram and Facebook at the time of training will be used and that this will not include personal data from accounts belonging to users under 18".
[...]
Push for AI
Meta has said it is investing "aggressively" to support [machine learning] research and [software] product development efforts, according to a press release from last month.
[...]
The company is also working on the infrastructure necessary for [computer processing] and introduced last month its custom-made chips.

Facebook. How video selfie age verification works on Facebook. Change your birthday on Facebook and choose who can see it.

Instagram
• age verifiction: birth date and photo ID or video selfie
optional user settings
• private accounts
• direct messaging
• audience controls
• protections from suspicious adults
• sensitive content control
• content restrictions
• Family Center

the [computer programming] sector will be solely responsible for 3.5 percent of global electricity consumption by 2030.
[...]
Sasha Luccioni, researcher of ethics at the open-source machine learning platform Hugging Face, told the Guardian last year. "It doesn't make sense to burn a forest and then use AI to track deforestation."

According to the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), data centers will consume up to 9% of total electricity generated in the United States by the end of the decade, up from ~1.5% currently thanks to the rapid adoption of power-hungry technologies such as generative AI.
[...]
3 Stocks To Play The AI Power Boom

(comment: Back in the stone age 70s, I pitied an extremely white boy who literally blistered over a week of cloudless Peloponnese sky, because...zinc oxide hadn't yet been invented?)

culture | tourist bot | "heat dome": ekathimerini | Greece shuts schools and Acropolis as heat wave hits 43°C, "bringing hot air and dust from North Africa" o'er the Acropolis
gov disaster response | ERP | private sector: Fire breaks out in northern Athens factory "after multiple explosions at a cookware factory in the northern Athenian suburb of Kifissia, prompting an emergency message from civil protection authorities urging residents indoors"

< checks watch >

seasonal AI-enabled wild fire "training" with California "context window" forthcoming

Things are so bad, fake scientists pay professional cheating services who use AI to create papers and torture the words so they look "original". Thus a paper on 'breast cancer' becomes a discovery about "bosom peril" and a 'naïve Bayes' classifier became a 'gullible Bayes'. An ant colony was labeled an 'underground creepy crawly state'.

"We're launching a party, we're going to be recruiting more computer programmed candidates across the country after this election, and we see this as the launch building block for something big and something democratic."

Victor Miller, who is seeking the Cheyenne mayor's office, said Wednesday on NewsNation's "Dan Abrams Live" he plans to fully cede decision-making to a customized [computer programmed] bot he dubbed "Vic" if voters choose him.

AI Overviews were introduced to Google's search engine on May 14, 2024, taking the beta Search Generative Experience and making it live for everyone in the U.S. The feature was supposed to give an AI-powered answer at the top of almost every search. Google Search VP Liz Reid explained. Unlike chatbots and other LLM products, the model misread what's on the web, because there are "data voids" on certain topics.
...
• We built better detection mechanisms for nonsensical queries that shouldn't show an AI Overview, and limited the inclusion of satire and humor content.
• We updated our systems to limit the use of user-generated content in responses that could offer misleading advice.
• We added triggering restrictions for queries where AI Overviews were not proving to be as helpful.
• For topics like news and health, we already have strong guardrails in place. For example, we aim to not show AI Overviews for hard news topics, where freshness and factuality are important.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly evolved from future promise to present reality. Generative AI has emerged as a powerful technology applied across countless contexts and use cases—each carrying its own potential risks and involving a diverse set of stakeholders. As enterprise adoption of AI accelerates, we find ourselves at a crucial ChatGPT juncture.

"We must acknowledge and address the differences between
enterprise and consumer AI."

Proactive policies and smart governance are needed to ensure AI develops as a trustworthy, equitable force. Now is the time to shape a policy framework that unlocks AI's fullest beneficial potential while mitigating risks.

boozallen v.28.05.24
An AI-savvy nation requires human intelligence.

..."AI is already playing a critical role in our society and for our nation, and we have a profound responsibility to think about how we're going to realize our vision for AI," says John Larson, executive vice president of artificial intelligence for Booz Allen. "The scale and speed of AI deployment is truly astonishing, but the speed of AI adoption has outstripped the supply of talent needed to meet today's rapid rise of use."

To keep up, it's imperative that employers place more value on professional skills—or "soft" skills—such as asking thoughtful questions, making informed decisions, and adapting to change, versus focusing on technical skills—or "hard" skills—which can be taught. In that vein, some major employers have removed college credential requirements from job postings to attract more applicants. This opens the door for a greater talent pool that can validate their skills with credentials from two-year degree programs, certifications, or apprenticeships, for example. In fact, according to research from Morning Consult, 68 percent of employers show a desire to hire from non-degree pathways, focusing rather on skills-based hiring and other forms of credentials assessment.

"It's the soft skills that are becoming increasingly valuable in today's workforce," said Eric Eversole, vice president with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and president of Hiring Our Heroes. "It's the soft skills that are becoming increasingly valuable in today's workforce." Among veterans, he says those skills include understanding nuance, learning new skills quickly, leveraging technology and adapting.