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☆ I'm an AI ethicist. I make sure the tech is safely deployed to the world, but I am not an oracle.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-13 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Giada Pistilli, 31, is the principal ethicist at Hugging Face and helps ensure AI is safely deployed. Here is what Pistilli's job as an AI ethicist entails, as told to Insider's Aaron Mok. I'm a full-time AI ethicist making sure the tech is safely deployed to the world. I first approached Hugging Face to understand how I could help build Bloom, its large language model. For example, a journalist approached Hugging Face after he claimed one of his articles was plagiarized by the company's language model.

☆ You can earn up to $25 an hour training AI to write better in other languages
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Data-labeling company Scale AI is looking for writers to train AI models to become better writers. Scale AI has job listings for training AI in languages including Spanish, Mandarin, and German. Scale AI, a data-labeling company, has job listings for writers to train generative AI models to become better writers in different languages. For example, on the listing for a Spanish writer, the job description says Spanish-experts in Spain can make $18.50 an hour, but US-based candidates can make $25 an hour based on experience. The position involves contracting with a Scale AI affiliate, the listing says.

☆ Opinion | The Evidence Is In: Science Should Be Judged on the Merits
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Pamela Paul | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Consider the increasingly widespread practice of appending a “positionality statement” to one’s research. This is an explicit acknowledgment by the author of an academic paper of his or her identity (e.g., “nondisabled,” “continuing generation”). Positionality statements were first popular in the social sciences and are now spreading to the hard sciences and medicine. The purpose of a citation in an academic publication is to substantiate claims and offer the most relevant supporting research. Many prominent science journals now recommend that before submission, authors run their papers through software programs that detect any citation bias.

☆ In Berkeley, a Library Protest Is a Fight for Anthropology in an A.I. Age
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Tim Arango | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Charles Hirschkind, the chair of the anthropology department, said that the university had reduced the number of graduate students it accepts into the anthropology since 2004 by a little more than half, reflecting, he said, the department’s “weaker financial situation” and the rise in costs to support graduate students. “When we’re talking about budgetary restraints, we are also talking about priorities and where one decides to invest,” he said. And the occupation of the library, to some, is reminiscent of an earlier activist era at Berkeley. Worried that the university is trying to run out the clock until summer break and then dismantle the library, the students say they will stay as long as it takes. “They can give us the library tomorrow,” Mr. Molloy said, “and we’ll all be happy to go home.”

☆ Abraham Verghese’s Sweeping New Fable of Family and Medicine
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Andrew Solomon | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

THE COVENANT OF WATER, by Abraham VergheseAbraham Verghese occupies a curious place in the modern literary landscape. A doctor who decided midcareer to train at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has gone on to achieve distinction in both fields. His last novel, “Cutting for Stone,” spent more than two years on this newspaper’s best-seller list. By projecting his own best self, he hopes to coax out the best selves of others. The lack of ill intent or even ambivalence among the book’s many heroes can become cloying.

☆ 5 signs your kid is 'highly gifted,' according to neuroscience experts—'they're not always well-behaved'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-15 | by ( Megan Cannella | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Most gifted kids can learn and process information faster than kids their age and comprehend material several grade levels above their peers. I manage student applications at the Davidson Institute , where we've helped thousands of profoundly gifted children (or kids who score in the 99.9th percentile on IQ tests) reach their highest potential. It's common for gifted children. Emotional depth and sensitivity at a young ageNeuroscientists suggest that gifted children experience more intense emotional reactions to the world around them. Due to their asynchronous development, they may not yet have the emotional regulation skills to navigate those big feelings.

☆ India’s BJP Is the World’s Most Important Party
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Walter Russell Mead | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Walter Russell Mead is the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute, the Global View Columnist at The Wall Street Journal and the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College in New York. He is also a member of Aspen Institute Italy and board member of Aspenia. Before joining Hudson, Mr. Mead was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations as the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy. He has authored numerous books, including the widely-recognized Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). Mr. Mead’s next book is entitled The Arc of A Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Future of the Jewish People.

☆ Mindy Kaling, Bruce Springsteen, Colson Whitehead Are Among Recipients of National Arts Awards
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Jennifer Calfas | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Colson Whitehead and Mindy Kaling will both be honored this week. President Biden will honor actors, artists, authors, musicians and scholars Tuesday with the federal government’s highest awards for contributions to the arts and humanities. Recipients of the National Medal of Arts will include comedians and actors Mindy Kaling and Julia Louis-Dreyfus , legendary singers Gladys Knight and Bruce Springsteen , and fashion designer Vera Wang . Authors including Bryan Stevenson , Amy Tan and Colson Whitehead , and academics including Henrietta Mann are among those who will receive the National Humanities Medal.

☆ Biden honors Springsteen, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mindy Kaling
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Steve Holland | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueWASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden made an observation when conferring the National Medal of Arts on rocker Bruce Springsteen on Tuesday: "Bruce, some people are just born to run, man." Springsteen and a host of actors, authors, singers and other artists joined Biden in the White House East Room where they received either a National Medal of Arts or National Humanities Medal for their contributions to American society. Comedian Julia Louis-Dreyfus, whose "Veep" show made light of the vice presidency - an office Biden once held - was also honored. Actress Mindy Kaling, a main character on the long-running television show, "The Office," set in Biden's hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, received a medal as well. "I'm trying to go back to back myself," said Biden, who has said he intends to run for re-election in 2024.

☆ ‘The Transcendent Brain’ Review: Beyond Ones and Zeroes
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Danny Heitman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

For much of the year, Alan Lightman lives less than a mile from Walden Pond, the Massachusetts spot where Henry David Thoreau popularized transcendentalism and its ideas about a direct connection to the divine through nature. Mr. Lightman, a theoretical physicist and professor of humanities at MIT, has had some vivid experiences with nature himself. In “Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine,” his 2018 essay collection, he recalled immersing himself in a starry sky as his small boat bobbed off the shore of his summer home in New England. “I felt an overwhelming connection to the stars, as if I were a part of them,” he wrote. “And the vast expanse of time—extending from the far distant past long before I was born and then into the far distant future long after I will die—seemed compressed to a dot.”

☆ Spain's Princess Leonor to do military training for three years
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/2] Spain's Princess Leonor speaks during the ceremony of the 2021 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities at Campoamor Theatre in Oviedo, Spain October 22, 2021. REUTERS/Vincent West/MADRID, March 14 (Reuters) - Princess Leonor, 17 and the heir presumptive to the Spanish throne, will undergo three years of military training starting in August, Defence Minister Margarita Robles said on Tuesday. "As in all parliamentary monarchies (the heir) has to have a military background and a military career," Robles said after a cabinet meeting. The princess will receive her first year of training at the Army Military Academy in Zaragoza, then go to a naval school, which includes sailing the Juan Sebastian Elcano training tall ship, and finish her studies at the General Air Academy. The government and the Royal House have agreed her "very intense" military training will precede university studies, following in the footsteps of her father in the 1980s.

☆ How universities became giant piggy banks for hedge-fund billionaires
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Catherine Liu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +14 min

The move also marked the beginning of a new way to manage endowment funds. The arrangement has been a boon for the hedge-fund managers who received university endowment cash, but the benefits for the schools are trickier to parse. As Eaton put it in his book, universities directed funds to "wherever those allocations would generate the largest further investment returns." Eaton estimated in 2017 that tax breaks for university endowments cost federal coffers up to $19 billion a year. As the influence of billionaires and hedge-fund managers has grown, universities have moved further away from their ultimate goal: educating people.

☆ College Should Be More Like Prison
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Brooke Allen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Enrollment in these subjects is plummeting, and students who take literature and history classes often come in with rudimentary ideas about the disciplines. Interviewed in a recent New Yorker article, Prof. James Shapiro of Columbia said teaching “Middlemarch” to today’s college students is like landing a 747 on a rural airstrip. Never have I been more grateful to teach where I do: at a men’s maximum-security prison. My students there, enrolled in a for-credit college program, provide a sharp contrast with contemporary undergraduates. The classes are often the most interesting part of these men’s prison lives.

☆ Clinics are trying to sell trendy weight-loss injections by flooding TikTok with videos about semaglutide
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | Alex Bitter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

The video, which has nearly 60,000 likes, is among a proliferation of TikTok posts tagged with the names of semaglutide weight-loss drugs, including Wegovy and Ozempic. "What drives the video to go viral is if you can generate some kind of discussion," he told Insider. Unlike official ads, partnerships, or promotions, TikTok posts receive little oversight from government agencies or medical boards. All four said the TikTok posts are driving an influx of patients to their clinics. Oden told Insider that her videos are "drumming up quite a bit of new business" among patients of all ages.

☆ The College Board claps back at DeSantis, calling Florida's reasoning for banning AP African American studies 'slander'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( Taiyler Simone Mitchell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The College Board clapped back on Saturday, defending the course. Instead, the College Board said the administration has leaned into spreading misinformation: "We need to clear the air and set the record straight." The College Board maintained that the course framework was just an outline for the pilot course. The organization also slammed the administration for taking credit for changes that the College Board made to the course and said that there have not been any negotiations between the College Board and the FDOE. "The College Board condemns this uninformed caricature of African American Studies and the harm it does to scholars and students," the statement continues.

☆ Here's everything you need to know about the history and meaning of drag
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-28 | by ( Yelena Dzhanova | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Drag culture has centuries of history behind it, from Ancient Greece to the Harlem Renaissance. Here's a guide to drag culture in the US and how what it means today. But in drag, cis men don't have to present as women, and cis women don't have to present as men. But at the end of the day, Giuliani wasn't actually participating in drag culture, Walsh said. There's been a lot of grassroots-level organization around drag recently, Walsh said, partly in response to the uptick in violence against drag culture.

[1/4] U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and South Africa's Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana attend bilateral talks, at the treasury offices in Pretoria, South Africa, January 26, 2023. Nevertheless Lavrov made a stopover after visiting South Africa, which his counterpart Thulisile Dladla described as a "profound honour." Eswatini relies on the United States for aid, but its absolute monarchy has suffered U.S. criticism on human rights. South Africa, alongside Russia and China, is pushing for a "multipolar" world in which geopolitical power is less concentrated around the United States. "It hasn't delivered the kind of benefits South Africa was hoping to get."

☆ The DeSantis administration's ban on AP African American studies 'is eroding traditional public education' in Florida, state school board member says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-22 | by ( Taiyler Simone Mitchell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

"It just feels like there's an erosion of democracy," a school board member told Insider. Ron DeSantis' administration banned the teaching of Advanced Placement African American Studies classes in Florida schools this week. Hillsborough County School Board member Jessica Vaughn, who represents District 3 in Tampa, told Insider the decision made her feel "extremely upset and horrified, but not surprised." I mean, aside from the erosion of traditional public education, it just feels like there's an erosion of democracy," Vaughn told Insider. DeSantis' office, the College Board, and the Florida Department of Education did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

☆ Florida 'proudly' teaches African American history, official says, as he defends rejecting AP course
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-21 | by ( Sharon Bernstein | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

"We proudly require the teaching of African American history," Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz, Jr. posted on Twitter. On Jan. 12, Florida sent a letter to the College Board saying the AP course violated Florida law and lacked educational value. Diaz called the White House comments "lies" and released a chart showing the state's objections to the course. But on Thursday, it said in a statement to Reuters that the course aims to "explore the vital contributions and experiences of African Americans." It is a humanities course and as such does not teach theory, the statement said.

☆ Florida blocks high school AP African American studies class
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +3 min

Ron DeSantis’ administration has blocked a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies from being taught in high schools, saying it violates state law and is historically inaccurate. The state education department rejected the program in a letter last week to the College Board, which oversees AP classes. The College Board website describes the course as interdisciplinary, touching on literature, arts, humanities, political science, geography and science. Sharon Courtney, a high school teacher in Peekskill, New York teaching the African American studies course, said her students were “shocked” to learn Florida blocked the class. She described it as a factual African history course that also details what Africans experienced upon their arrival in North America.

☆ Florida schools will not offer AP African American Studies course
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Sharon Bernstein | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Jan 19 (Reuters) - Florida will not allow high school students to take a new Advanced Placement (AP) class in African American Studies, saying in a letter to College Board, the nonprofit that develops the courses, that the pilot version "lacks educational value." The College Board administers the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and Advanced Placement tests that help students gain college credit while in high school. It is developing its first African American Studies course through a pilot program at 60 high schools. loading"The State of Florida will allow AP European and American studies — but AP African-American studies is 'contrary to Florida law'?" The College Board said in a statement to Reuters that the course aims to "explore the vital contributions and experiences of African Americans."

☆ The Davos Crowd Sees Republicans as the Enemy
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Walter Russell Mead | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ Portuguese climate activists must pay fine over protest, says court
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

LISBON, Dec 16 (Reuters) - A Portuguese court ordered four climate activists to pay a fine on Friday for occupying a university building to protest what they perceived as political inaction around climate change. According to the judge's decision, each activist must pay a fine of 295 euros ($312.61). If they are not able to pay it in one go they can either pay in instalments or do community service. "We think it's not fair that we are being criminalised for fighting for the environment," one of the sentenced students, Ana, told RTP broadcaster outside the court. The Faculty of Humanities was one of several universities and high schools in the city that young people angry about the climate crisis occupied last month.

One technologist went as far as saying that with ChatGPT, "College as we know it will cease to exist." Artificial intelligence company OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding cheating concerns. In reality, AI tools like ChatGPT could actually be used to enhance education, according to Paul Fyfe, an associate professor of English at North Carolina State University. Computer-assisted writing tools, such as Grammarly or Google Doc’s Smart Compose, already exist — and have long been utilized by many students. For now, he suggested an older technology to combat fears of students using ChatGPT to cheat.

☆ Global Tensions Spur a Sea Change in Japan
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Walter Russell Mead | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

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