Something strange happened during our recent Times Opinion focus group, the 18th and final one of 2023. When we asked the participants (13 Democrats, Republicans and independents) how they felt about the economy, we didn’t hear the same chorus of complaints that our other groups pretty consistently intoned all year. Our participants were by no means cheery, but several were upbeat, and even the Trump voters in the group weren’t aggrieved about the economy — so much so that our focus group moderator, Frank Luntz, looked a little surprised and said, “OK, this is not that bad. In fact, this is reasonably good.”

Our intent with this focus group was to bring together people who voted for Joe Biden or Donald Trump in 2020 and explore areas where they agreed or disagreed about the year we just went through. The usual partisan divisions fell away in a few places: In addition to seeing some upsides on the economy, several of the Biden and Trump voters expressed concern about ongoing aid to Ukraine, worry about the U.S. border with Mexico and a desire for Mr. Biden not to run for re-election. The group was more divided over Israel and Gaza and over the prosecutions of Mr. Trump.

We asked what the participants would say to Mr. Biden if he had been listening to the group. Angela, a 56-year-old Black woman from Califonia who supported him in 2020, said, “Thank you for your many years of service in politics. Go home. Enjoy your wife. Enjoy your life.” Sean, a 39-year-old white man from Georgia who voted for Mr. Biden last time, said, “You got to let somebody else step in. He’s not going to have a good run at this point.”

When we asked what they would say to Mr. Trump, Betsy, a 42-year-old white woman from Colorado who backed him in 2020, said, “Please bow out. You’re the best get-out-the-vote machine for the Democratic Party.” At the same time, there were more Trump and Biden voters who said at this point that they thought Mr. Trump would win in November than participants who said they thought Mr. Biden would win.

And asked what they thought the country would look like and be like in 2030, there was a mix of optimism and pessimism, but the reactions did not break down strictly along partisan lines. The biggest worry of all was not about the country’s politics but about the health of our culture and the values of younger Americans.

Patrick Healy and Frank Luntz

posted by f.sheikh

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/29/opinion/2023-america-focus-group.html

New artificial intelligence tools are the latest reason to be cautious about leaving minor’s images on the internet.

By now, we’re familiar with the risks of sharing photos and videos of minors to websites or social media apps,where they can be used for bullying or misused by strangers. An evolving threat is artificial intelligence tools, which are improving at a dizzying pace. They can be fed real images and photos to make “deep fakes.”

It’s already happening. New Jersey high school students allegedly used AI tools to make sexualized images of their classmates using “original photos” last summer. A high school student in Issaquah, Wash., allegedly used real photos of classmates to make sexualized images, which were then shared around. And in Spain, parents of more than 20 girls between the ages of 11 and 17 say photos of their children were altered using AI tools to create sexual images.

AI tools “need as little as one picture now,” says Wael Abd-Almageed, distinguished principal scientist and research director at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute. “You can train AI to pick up the facial features of somebody, so if the AI can pick up the facial features for a child, you can replace them in a video.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/27/remove-photos-kids-online/

posted by f.sheikh

Millions of articles from The New York Times were used to train chatbots that now compete with it, the lawsuit said.

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Wednesday, opening a new front in the increasingly intense legal battle over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies.

The Times is the first major American media organization to sue the companies, the creators of ChatGPT and other popular A.I. platforms, over copyright issues associated with its written works. The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, contends that millions of articles published by The Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information.

The suit does not include an exact monetary demand. But it says the defendants should be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.” It also calls for the companies to destroy any chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times.

Representatives of OpenAI and Microsoft could not be immediately reached for comment.

The lawsuit could test the emerging legal contours of generative A.I. technologies — so called for the text, images and other content they can create after learning from large data sets — and could carry major implications for the news industry. The Times is among a small number of outlets that have built successful business models from online journalism, but dozens of newspapers and magazines have been hobbled by readers’ migration to the internet.

Full article

posted by f.sheikh

It’s become emphatic, exhausting, scheduled, hyped, forced and performative

Fun is often emphatic, exhausting, scheduled, pigeonholed, hyped, forced and performative. Adults assiduously record themselves appearing to have something masquerading as “fun,” a fusillade of Coachellic micro social aggressions unleashed on multiple social media platforms. Look at me having so much FUN!

Which means it is nothing of the sort. This is the drag equivalent of fun and suggests that fun is done.

When there are podcasts on happiness (“The Happiness Lab,” “Happier”); a global study on joy (The Big Joy Project); David Byrne offering reasons to be cheerful; workshops on staging a “funtervention”; fun coaches; and various apps to track happiness, two things are abundantly clear: Fun is in serious trouble, and we are desperately in need of joy.

Consider what we’ve done to fun. Things that were long big fun now overwhelm, exhaust and annoy. The holiday season is an extended exercise in excess and loud, often sleazy sweaters. Instead of this being the most wonderful time of the year, we battle holiday fatigue, relentless beseeching for our money and, if Fox News is to be believed, a war on Christmas that is nearing its third decade.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/of-interest/2023/12/23/fun-is-dead/

posted by f.sheikh