Category «Internet»

How Google shifted from a bastion of accurate information to a steward of free expression

CNBC: “Google long touted the need for factually accurate information on its platforms, but a letter submitted to Congress this week demonstrates how the tech company is shifting to prioritize “free expression.” The company’s YouTube division on Tuesday said it will soon allow accounts that were previously banned for spreading misinformation related to Covid-19 and …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Congress, Education, Free Speech, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines

US Government will use Musk’s Grok AI

BoingBoing – regardless of over concerns of “inaccuracies, hate speech, and ideological bias: “Some House and Senate Democrats, along with dozens of left-leaning advocacy groups, have criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to deploy Grok. They claim the chatbot produces inaccuracies, hate speech, and ideological bias, among other concerns, making it unsafe and untrustworthy for federal …

Subjects: AI, Congress, E-Records, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

The Story of DOGE, as Told by Federal Workers

Wired – no paywall – “In August, months after Elon Musk left the federal government, the director of the Office of Personnel Management offered the first hard estimate of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s impact on the civil service. The government would likely end 2025 with about 300,000 fewer employees than it had at …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Mail, E-Records, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

AI hate speech detectors show major inconsistencies, new study reveals

PsyPost: “A new large-scale analysis has found that the artificial intelligence systems used by technology companies to filter online hate speech are profoundly inconsistent. The research demonstrates that the same piece of content can be flagged as hateful by one system while being considered acceptable by another, with these disagreements being particularly pronounced for speech …

Subjects: AI, Internet, Knowledge Management

SCOTUS majority says Trump can ignore precedent if the majority doesn’t like it

Law Dork: “A 90-year-old precedent meant nothing to the majority allowing Trump to fire an FTC commissioner during litigation. This is no way to run a court, let alone a country. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Republican appointees on Monday issued an order allowing President Donald Trump’s purported firing of Rebecca Slaughter as a Democratic commissioner …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Congress, Courts, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

The 22 Very Online Upstarts Changing the Face of Politics

Wired [no paywall] – subscription access: “Donald Trump’s second term has ushered in a new era in American politics. It’s brasher, crueler, more direct, more super online, and certainly more dystopian. Democrats and sometimes even Republicans have struggled to compete with Trump’s monopoly on the attention market. But the leaders of both parties are only …

Subjects: Congress, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

A history of the Internet, part 3: The rise of the user

Ars Technica: “Welcome to the final article in our three-part series on the history of the Internet. If you haven’t already, catch up with part one and part two. As a refresher, here’s the story so far: The ARPANET was a project started by the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Project Agency in 1969 to network …

Subjects: Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines

Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence

Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence, Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar, Ruyu Chen. August 26, 2025. This paper examines changes in the labor market for occupations exposed to generative artificial intelligence using high-frequency administrative data from the largest payroll software provider in the United States. We present …

Subjects: AI, E-Records, Economy, Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

From Googlebot to GPTBot: who’s crawling your site in 2025

Cloudflare: “A new category, AI crawlers, has emerged in recent years. These bots collect data from across the web to train AI models, improving tools and experiences, but also raising issues around content rights, unauthorized use, and infrastructure overload. We aimed to confirm the growth of both search and AI crawlers, examine specific AI crawlers, …

Subjects: AI, Copyright, E-Records, Intellectual Property, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Social Media

AI models are using material from retracted scientific papers

MIT Technology Review: “Some AI chatbots rely on flawed research from retracted scientific papers to answer questions, according to recent studies. The findings, confirmed by MIT Technology Review, raise questions about how reliable AI tools are at evaluating scientific research and could complicate efforts by countries and industries seeking to invest in AI tools for …

Subjects: AI, Education, Health Care, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Medicine, Search Engines