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MIT Technology Review – no paywall: “Millions of images of passports, credit cards, birth certificates, and other documents containing personally identifiable information are likely included in one of the biggest open-source AI training sets, new research has found. Thousands of images—including identifiable faces—were found in a small subset of DataComp CommonPool, a major AI training …
Washington Post – no paywall – How to turn off AI in Google and DuckDuckGo web search results — plus a no-AI nuclear option: ” Let’s say that you’re worried about artificial intelligence turning us into mushy-brained monsters, draining resources from the planet, slurping all your data and human knowledge, preying on vulnerable minds, wiping …
“The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is launching DesignVision, the first artificial intelligence (AI)-based image search tool available to design patent examiners via the Patents End-to-End (PE2E) search suite. DesignVision is the latest step in the agency’s broader efforts to streamline and modernize examination and reduce application pendency. DesignVision is an AI-powered tool that …
The Pudding: “This is possible because media artist Yufeng Zhao fed millions of publicly-available panoramas from Google Street View into a computer program that transcribes text within the images (anyone can access these Street View images; you don’t even need a Google account!). The result is a search engine of much of what’s written in …
Ars Technica: “The flagship health journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has grown quiet this year, and a report from MedPage Today indicates that a variety of actions by the Trump administration may be to blame for hamstringing the critical resource. Most strikingly, sources told MedPage that the journal’s scientific articles …
IEEE Spectrum: “The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), part of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), is leading an experimental project, Thunderforge, to build a custom agentic AI system with multiple digital “agents” critiquing war plans across different military domains, running parallel analyses, and flagging potential weaknesses neglected by human planners. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) …
Reddit/privacy: “You do not have to be famous or break any laws to end up under digital watch. New reports confirm that a US agency is expanding its contracts with private firms to quietly track internet activity. This includes what you post, what you like, what you share, and even how you express emotion. The …
Campaign View: Dive into the records, learn about candidates, and explore their policies. Data to help facilitate a more informed public and advance social science research. Explore Data Our Methodology Download Data Candidate Bios – Read how candidates describe their backgrounds and qualifications in their own words. Read how candidates describe their backgrounds and qualifications …
Semafor – [reg. required to read all articles] “Trump on Wednesday [July 23, 2025] unveiled his long-awaited AI Action Plan, a national strategy accompanied by a trio of executive orders meant to replace his predecessor’s safety-first directives. The new roadmap focuses on deregulation and industry growth to better compete against China. In response, left-center policy …
“How a storm of false and misleading claims about extreme weather events spread unchecked on social media putting lives at risk CCDH’s new research shows that social media companies are letting falsehoods about extreme weather events like the LA Fires and Hurricane Helene spread unchecked on their platforms. CCDH found that X, YouTube, and Meta …
AboveTheLaw: “At AALL’s annual meeting, the research profession searches for its war footing. Librarians don’t come across as folks who storm the Bastille. But when the 118th annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries met in Portland this week under a banner exhorting the group to “Be Bold,” deep thoughts about the Dewey …
Internet Archive Blogs – July 24, 2025. “Announced today, the Internet Archive has been designated as a federal depository library by Senator Alex Padilla. The designation was made via letter to Scott Matheson, Superintendent of Documents at the U.S. Government Publishing Office. Senator Padilla explained the designation in a statement to KQED: “The Archive’s digital-first …
