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Daily Archives: July 6, 2023

Don’t Use A.I. to Cheat in School. It’s Better for Studying

The New York Times – Generative A.I. tools can annotate long documents, make flashcards, and produce practice quizzes. “…First, let’s explore one of the most daunting studying tasks: reading and annotating long papers. Some A.I. tools, such as Humata.AI, Wordtune Read and various plug-ins inside ChatGPT, act as research assistants that will summarize documents for you. I prefer Humata.AI because it answers your questions and shows highlights directly inside the source material, which allows you to double check for accuracy. On the Humata.AI website, I uploaded a PDF of a scientific research paper on the accuracy of smartwatches in tracking cardio fitness. Then I clicked the “Ask” button and asked it how Garmin watches performed in the study. It scrolled down to the relevant part of the document mentioning Garmin, made highlights and answered my question. Most interesting to me was when I asked the bot whether my understanding of the paper was correct — that on average, wearable devices like Garmins and Fitbits tracked cardio fitness fairly accurately, but there were some individuals whose results were very wrong. “Yes, you are correct,” the bot responded. It followed up with a summary of the study and listed the page numbers where this conclusion was mentioned….”

Why Does the U.S. Copyright Office Require Libraries to Lie to Users about Their Fair Use Rights? They Won’t Say.

The Scholarly Kitchen, Rick Anderson: “If you’ve ever made a photocopy in a U.S. library or received a copy of an in-copyright document supplied by your library, you’ve likely seen a notice that looks like this: The copyright law of the United States (title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other… Continue Reading

Nine British Banks Sign Up to New AI Tool for Tackling Scams

Bloomberg [alt free link]: “Mastercard Inc. is selling a new artificial intelligence-powered tool that helps banks more effectively spot if their customers are trying to send money to fraudsters.  Nine of the UK’s biggest banks, including Lloyds Banking Group Plc, Natwest Group Plc and Bank of Scotland Plc, have signed up to use the Consumer… Continue Reading

Goodreads was the future of book reviews. Then Amazon bought it.

Washington Post: “A prominent author’s decision to pull her new novel from publication after being ‘review bombed’ highlights Goodreads’s power in publishing — and raises questions about its longtime owner. Goodreads — an Amazon-owned review site beloved by the bookish — has grown beleaguered. The site is built on outdated technological infrastructure, which made the… Continue Reading

Tap Water Study Detects PFSA ‘Forever Chemicals’ Across the US

“At least 45% of the nation’s tap water is estimated to have one or more types of the chemicals known as per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances, or PFAS, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey. There are more than 12,000 types of PFAS, not all of which can be detected with current… Continue Reading

Top Knowledge Management Use Cases (with Real World Examples)

Zach Wahl, Enterprise Knowledge: “Knowledge Management (KM) is presently experiencing a rebirth, with greater executive interest and organizational commitment. Driven by the post-Covid transition to hybrid and remote work, the employee churn during the great resignation, and the explosion of AI driven by knowledge graphs and large language models, the value that KM offers is… Continue Reading

Scaling Trust on the Web

“Risk and harm are set to scale exponentially and may strangle the opportunities generational technologies create. We have a narrow window and opportunity to leverage decades of hard won lessons and invest in reinforcing human dignity and societal resilience globally. That which occurs offline will occur online, and increasingly there is no choice but to… Continue Reading