Surprising Real Journalism News: The Chilling Claws of AI
February 6, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I wanted to highlight two interesting items from the world of “real” news and “real” journalism. I am a dinobaby and not a “real” anything. I do, however, think these two unrelated announcements provide some insight into what 2024 will encourage.
The harvesters of information wheat face a new reality. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Good enough. How’s that email security? Ah, good enough. Okay.
The first item comes from everyone’s favorite, free speech service X.com (affectionately known to my research team as Xhitter). The item appears as a titbit from Max Tani. The message is an allegedly real screenshot of an internal memorandum from a senior executive at the Wall Street Journal. The screenshot purports to make clear that the Murdoch property is allowing some “real” journalists to find their future elsewhere. Perhaps in a fast food joint in Olney, Maryland? The screenshot is difficult for my 79-year-old eyes to read, but I got some help from one of my research team. The X.com payload says:
Today we announced a new structure in Washington [DC] that means a number of our colleagues will be leaving the paper…. The new Washington bureau will focus on politics, policy, defense, law, intelligence and national security.
Okay, people are goners. The Washington, DC bureau will focus on Washington, DC stuff. What was the bureau doing? Oh, perhaps that is why “our colleagues will be leaving the paper.” Cost cutting and focusing are in vogue.
The second item is titled “Q&A: How Thomson Reuters Used GenAI to Enable a Citizen Developer Workforce.” I want to alert you that the Computerworld article is a mere 3,800 words. Let me summarize the gist of the write up: “AI is going to replace expensive “real” journalists., My hunch is that some of the lawyers involved in annotating, assembling, and blessing the firm’s legal content. To Thomson Reuters’ credit, the company is trying to swizzle some sweetener into what may be a bitter drink for some involved with the “trust” crowd.
Several observations:
- It is about 13 months since Microsoft made AI its next big thing. That means that these two examples are early examples of what is going to happen to many knowledge workers
- Some companies just pull the pin; others are trying to find ways to avoid PR problems and lawsuits
- The more significant disruptions will produce a reasonably new type of worker push back.
Net net: Imagine what the next year will bring as AI efficiency digs in, bites tail feathers, and enriches those who sit in the top one percent.
Stephen E Arnold, February 6, 2024
Journalism Is … Exciting, Maybe Even Thrilling
January 31, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Journalism is a field in an unusual industrial location. It is an important career because journalists are dedicated to sharing current and important information. Journalism, however, is a difficult field because news outlets are fading faster than the Internet’s current meme. Another alarming problem for journalists, especially those who work internationally, is the increasing risk of incarceration. The Committee To Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that according to a “2023 Prison Census: Jailed Journalists Near Record High; Israel Imprisonments Spike.”
Due to the October 7 terrorist attack by Palestinian-led Hamas and the start of a new war, Israel ranked sixth on the list countries that imprison journalists. Israel ironically tied with Iran and is behind China, Myanmar, Belarus, Russia, and Vietnam. CPJ recorded that 320 journalists were incarcerated in 2023. It’s the second-highest number since CPJ started tracking in 1992. CPJ explained the high number of imprisonments is due to authoritarian regimes silencing the opposition. One hundred sixty-eight, more than half of the journalists, are charged with terrorism for critical coverage and spreading “false news.”
China is one of the worst offenders with Orwellian censorship laws, human rights violations, and a crackdown on pro-democracy protests and news. Myanmar’s coup in 2021 and Belarus’s controversial 2020 election incited massive upheavals and discontentment with citizens. Reporters from these countries are labeled as extremists when they are imprisoned.
Israel ties with Iran in 2023 due to locking up a high number of Palestinian journalists. They’re kept behind bars without cause on the grounds to prevent future crimes. Iran might have less imprisoned journalists than 2022 but the country is still repressing the media. Russia also keeps a high number of journalists jailed due to its war with Ukraine.
Jailed reporters face horrific conditions:
“Prison conditions are harsh in the nations with the worst track records of detaining journalists. Country reports released by the U.S. Department of State in early 2023 found that prisoners in China, Myanmar, Belarus, Russia, and Vietnam typically faced physical and sexual abuse, overcrowding, food and water shortages, and inadequate medical care.”
They still face problems even when they’ve served their sentence:
“Many journalists face curbs on their freedom even after they’ve served their time. This not only affects their livelihoods, but allows repressive governments to continue silencing their voices.”
These actions signify the importance of the US Constitution’s First Amendment. Despite countless attempts for politicians and bad actors to silence journalists abroad and on home soil, the First Amendment is still upheld. It’s so easy to take it for granted.
Whitney Grace, January 31, 2024
Online Journalism Reveals the Omnispert Mentality in Full Bloom
January 23, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
PREAMBLE
I am a dinobaby. I worked in big, rapacious outfits. I worked for a family-owned newspaper. I worked for a giant, faceless professional publisher. I worked alone, serving as the world’s ugliest Kelly Girl (a once-proud rental agency). Over the last couple of decades, I have watched as “real” journalists have broken from a run-down stable and headed toward the green, shimmering pasture on the horizon. Some died and became Wal-Mart greeters. Others found their way to the promised land.
The journey and its apparently successful conclusion caused a change in the mindset of some “real” journalists. A few morphed into YouTube-type video stars; a smaller number became talking heads on a cable or broadcast channel with fewer viewers than the iconoclastic NoAgenda.com podcast. Others underwent an intellectual transformation. From reporting the news, these fortunate (possibly chosen) individuals became what I call “omnisperts”; that is, my word for an “everything” expert. The shift is fascinating, mostly because I observed “real” news people in the companies for which I worked either as an officer or a consultant.
An expert on everything is usually self-appointed. These “everything experts” or “omnisperts” can find fault and simultaneous emit entitlement. The idea is that “you are stupid” and “I am smart.” The approach is often a key component of “real” journalism today. Social media has, like radiation, altered the DNA from reporter to source of divine wisdom. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. Definitely good enough and illustrative of the system’s biases: White, mail, big city, and money.
The shift in the DNA of a “real” journalist from a person assigned a story or, in the case of a feature writer, a finder of a story in alignment with the “desk” issuing the work order, has been caused by the flow of digital bits via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media conduits. Bombard a rat with enough gamma radiation, and what happens? Well, the rats — before their life force takes a vacation can exhibit some interesting behavior and a lucky few output some baby rats. These can be objects of radiation specialists’ learning trajectory. Surprised because I relate radiation to bits from social media? Some are; some are not.
I thought about my experiences with “real” journalists when I read “The 20-Year Boondoggle.” The boondoggle is the Department of Homeland Security. The subtitle to the write up asks, “So What the Hell Happened?”
MY APPROACH
Now before I address, the language in the headline, the “real” news in the write up, or the confusion of doing what I thought journalists in the organizations at which I worked years ago did, I want to comment on the presentation of the textual information.
The publication in which this “real” news story appears is the Verge. Some of the stories are difficult for me to read. An essay about Google was a baffler. I just gave up because blocks of text and graphics jumped around. This Boondoggle piece is a mix of flickering background images and text. (I made a note of the illustrator. I don’t want to be involved with this fellow, his firm, or his “school” of graphics for business information in the future.) The essay (because I am not sure it is “real” news) features a puppet. I don’t think a puppet is a positive, but it does a good job of communicating the idea that “someone” is pulling strings. There is a big graphic showing people sliding down something and into flickering water. Remember, please, that this is a “real” news article, but it is trying, really trying, to be a TikTok-meme machine I think. Then there is an illustration of people with their heads either in the “clouds” (which are vibrating like a DaVinci Fusion effect or a giant swarm of blue bees). The image is not a positive one in my opinion. The illustration which troubled me is one that shows people falling out of the fourth floor of an office building to their death. A sketch of a motion picture or made-for-streaming spy story surveillance room suggests that the world outside of the office and on the computer monitors is a chaotic mess. That’s okay. Has the world ever been something other than a chaotic mess?
These illustrations make clear that the 8,000 or so words in the “real” news report that the author and the publisher find a US government agency to be a problem. I know this because the subhead “The Problem Is” is used six times. Helpful. The repetition makes clear that the article itself is revealing information that is definitely super problematic. If a grade school teacher or an entitled Google-type executive says “The problem is” to someone six times, it’s safe to say that you are [a] going to have a chance to find your future elsewhere, [b] what you and your agency have done is really, really bad and you must be punished, and [c] we know better than anyone else how to do your work. “Listen up, losers” the article shouts, jiggles, and repeats more than Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” or a knock off disco tune in a bar in Ibiza.
But what about the information in the write up. Okay, okay. Let me offer three comments, and invite you to read the 8,000 word original, award winning, knock out “real” news story yourself. (I had to down this puppy in three separate sessions because it exemplifies the journalist as omnispert in a top shelf way. (I think I should spell omnispert as omnispurt to better capture the flood of “real” news.)
THREE IRRITATIONS
First, the write up points out that the US Department of Homeland Security sucks. I find it fascinating that those who have not had an opportunity to work in either law enforcement, intelligence, or allied fields find that a Federal agency is a failure. I don’t have an easy way to address this “certain blind spot.” Maybe a couple of ride alongs or working on a project focused on locating a bad actor would provide some context. I know that words won’t do it. The gulf between “real” journalists and the individuals who work to enforce applicable laws is a wide one. I will not suggest that “real” journalists fall to their deaths from an office window. I am a dinobaby, not a “real” journalist criticizing the work of people who — believe it or not — are in harm’s way every single day. Think about that when ordering a cinnamon latte tomorrow morning.
Second, no one pays any attention to DHS. Once again, it would be helpful for a “real” journalist to step back and ask, “Are large government agencies in the UK, France, Germany, or Japan functioning in a materially different way? With perspective, one can appreciate the problem of a work force cut free from the social norms, shared beliefs, and willingness to compromise once part of industrial societies’ culture. The “government agencies” reflect the people who work there. And guess what, “real” journalist, those people are like you. They exhibit the same strengths and weaknesses. I would submit that you are providing more information about your weaknesses, preferences, and biases than actionable information about a government agency.
Third, the cherry picking of examples is part of the “real” news game. I get it. What I don’t get is the sense of entitlement oozing from the word choice, the dorky headlines, and the boy, these people are stupid approach. Here’s one example and not the most egregious one by the way:
The lack of control starts at headquarters and trickles down.This means DHS has trouble keeping track of what’s in its warehouses, from electronic equipment to antiviral medication, as well as what warehouses it even controls. It means that there have been times when a single deportation officer has been assigned to supervise nearly 10,000 non-detained migrants. It means the department lacks consistent, enforceable requirements for subcontractors around price, schedule, and capability, such that in 2015, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found only two of 22 major programs at DHS were on track — racking up an estimated $9.7 billion more than expected.
A POSSIBLE FIX
Wow, DHS is supposed to “fix” this problem. Maybe the “real” journalists would like to apply for a job, rise through the ranks, and make everything better. Fat chance.
Net net: How quickly can AI replace certain human “real” journalists? Answer: Not soon enough.
Stephen E Arnold, January 23, 2024
The Future of One Kind of Publishing: It Is Unusual (Sorry, Tom Jones)
January 23, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Today’s equivalent of a famous journalist like Walter Winchell, Paul Harvey, or (bow down now) Edward R. Murrow owe their fame to Twitter.com. Now that service has changed, so the new ink stained celebrities take their followers and move to aggregation platforms. Some of these notables charge subscriptions. Unencumbered by the miserable newsroom management ethos, these super stars of wordsmithing want things like their online vehicles to be just so.
Now in an X.com world, a duel of influencers is playing out in the blogosphere. At issue: Substack’s alleged Nazi problem. The kerfuffle began with a piece in The Atlantic by Jonathan M. Katz, but has evolved into a debate between Platformer’s Casey Newton and Jesse Singal of Singal-Minded. Both those blogs are hosted by Substack.
To get up to speed on the controversy, see the original Atlantic article. Newton wrote a couple posts about Substack’s responses and detailing Platformer’s involvement. In “Substack Says It Will Remove Nazi Publications from the Platform,” he writes:
“Substack is removing some publications that express support for Nazis, the company said today. The company said this did not represent a reversal of its previous stance, but rather the result of reconsidering how it interprets its existing policies. As part of the move, the company is also terminating the accounts of several publications that endorse Nazi ideology and that Platformer flagged to the company for review last week.”
How many publications did Platformer flag, and how many of those did Substack remove? Were they significant publications, and did they really violate the rules? These are the burning questions Sengal sought to answer. He shares his account in, “Platformer’s Reporting on Substack’s Supposed ‘Nazi Problem’ Is Shoddy and Misleading.” But first, he specifies his own perspective on Katz’ Atlantic article:
“In my view, this whole thing is little more than a moral panic. Moreover, Katz cut certain corners to obscure the fact that to the extent there are Nazis on Substack at all, it appears they have almost no following or influence, and make almost no money. In one case, for example, Katz falsely claimed that a white nationalist was making a comfortable living writing on Substack, but even the most cursory bit of research would have revealed that that is completely false.”
Sengal says he plans a detailed article supporting that assertion, but first he must pick apart Platformer’s position. Readers are treated to details from an email exchange between the bloggers and reasons Sengal feels Newton’s responses are inadequate. One can navigate to that post for those details if one wants to get into the weeds. As of this writing, Newton has not published a response to Sengal’s diatribe. Were we better off when such duels took place a hundred characters at a time?
I am looking forward to the next turn of the journalistic wheel. Exciting because “real” journalists are morphing into pundits, consultants, gurus, predictors of the future, and T shirt vendors. What happened to the good old days of “yellow journalism”?
Cynthia Murrell, January 23, 2024
Has a Bezos Protuberance Knocked WaPo for a Loop?
January 12, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I thought the Washington Post was owned by one of the world’s richest me with a giant rocket ship and a really big yacht with huge protuberances. I probably am wrong, but what’s new? I found the information in “Washington Post Newsroom Is Rattled by Buyouts” in line with other organizations layoffs, terminations, RIFs, whatever. My goodness, how could an outfit with some Bezos magic be cutting costs. I think that protuberance obsessed fellow just pumped big money into an artificial intelligence start up. To fund that, it makes sense to me in today’s business environment to accept cost cutting and wild and crazy investments in relatively unproven technology amusing. No, it is not interesting.
An aspiring journalist at a university’s whose president quit because it was easier to invent and recycle information look at the closed library. The question is a good one, even if the young journalist cannot spell. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. Three tries. Bingo.
The write up in Vanity Fair, which is a business magazine like Harvard University’s Harvard Business Review without the allegations of plagiarism and screwy diversity battles, brings up images of would-be influencers clutching their giant metal and custom ceramic mugs and gripping their mobile phones with fear in their eyes. Imagine. A newspaper with staff cuts. News!
The article points out:
Scaling back staff while heading into a pivotal presidential election year seems like an especially ill-timed move given the _Post_’s traditional strengths in national politics and policy. Senior editors at the _Post_ have been banking on heightened interest in the election to juice readership amid slowed traffic and subscriptions. At one point in the meeting, according to two staffers, investigative reporter Carol Leonnig said that over the years she’d been told that the National team was doing great work and that issues on the business side would be taken care of, only for the problems to persist.
The write up states:
In late December, word of who’d taken a buyout at _The_ _Washington Post_ began to trickle out. Reporters found themselves especially alarmed by the hard cost cutting hit taken by one particular department: news research, a unit that assists investigations by, among other things, tracking down subjects, finding court records, verifying claims, and scouring documents. The department’s three most senior researchers—Magda Jean-Louis and Pulitzer Prize winners Alice Crites and Jennifer Jenkins—had all accepted buyouts, among the 240 that the company offered employees across departments amid financial struggles. That left news research with only three people: supervisor Monika Mathur and researchers Cate Brown, who specializes in international research, and Razzan Nakhlawi.
The “real news” is that research librarians are bailing out before a day of reckoning which could nuke pensions and other benefits. Researchers are quite intelligent people in my opinion.
Do these actions reflect on Mr. Bezos, he of the protuberance fixation, and his management methods? Amazon has a handful of challenges. The oddly shaped Bezos rocket ship has on occasion exploded. And now the gem of DC journalism is losing people. I would suggest that management methods have a role to play.
Killing off support for corporate libraries is not a new thing. The Penn Central outfit was among the first big corporate giant to decide its executives could live without a special library. Many other firms have followed in the last 15 years or so. Now the Special Library Association is a shadow of its former self, trampled by expert researchers skilled in the use of the Google and by hoards of self-certified individuals who proclaim themselves open source information experts. Why wouldn’t an outfit focused on accurate information dump professional writers and researchers? It meshes quite well with alternative facts, fake news, and AI-generated content. Good enough is the mantra of the modern organization. How much cereal is in your kids’ breakfast box when you first open it? A box half full. Good enough.
Stephen E Arnold, January 12, 2024
The American Way: Loose the Legal Eagles! AI, Gray Lady, AI.
December 29, 2023
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
With the demands of the holidays, I have been remiss in commenting upon the festering legal sores plaguing the “real” news outfits. Advertising is tough to sell. Readers want some stories, not every story. Subscribers churn. The dead tree version of “real” news turn yellow in the windows of the shrinking number of bodegas, delis, and coffee shops interested in losing floor space to “real” news displays.
A youthful senior manager enters Dante’s fifth circle of Hades, the Flaming Legal Eagles Nest. Beelzebub wishes the “real” news professional good luck. Thanks, MSFT Copilot, I encountered no warnings when I used the word “Dante.” Good enough.
Google may be coming out of the dog training school with some slightly improved behavior. The leash does not connect to a shock collar, but maybe the courts will provide curtail some of the firm’s more interesting behaviors. The Zuckbook and X.com are news shy. But the smart software outfits are ripping the heart out of “real” news. That hurts, and someone is going to pay.
Enter the legal eagles. The target is AI or smart software companies. The legal eagles says, “AI, gray lady, AI.”
How do I know? Navigate to “New York Times Sues OpenAI, Microsoft over Millions of Articles Used to Train ChatGPT.” The write up reports:
The New York Times has sued Microsoft and OpenAI, claiming the duo infringed the newspaper’s copyright by using its articles without permission to build ChatGPT and similar models. It is the first major American media outfit to drag the tech pair to court over the use of stories in training data.
The article points out:
However, to drive traffic to its site, the NYT also permits search engines to access and index its content. "Inherent in this value exchange is the idea that the search engines will direct users to The Times’s own websites and mobile applications, rather than exploit The Times’s content to keep users within their own search ecosystem." The Times added it has never permitted anyone – including Microsoft and OpenAI – to use its content for generative AI purposes. And therein lies the rub. According to the paper, it contacted Microsoft and OpenAI in April 2023 to deal with the issue amicably. It stated bluntly: "These efforts have not produced a resolution."
I think this means that the NYT used online search services to generate visibility, access, and revenue. However, it did not expect, understand, or consider that when a system indexes content, that content is used for other search services. Am I right? A doorway works two ways. The NYT wants it to work one way only. I may be off base, but the NYT is aggrieved because it did not understand the direction of AI research which has been chugging along for 50 years.
What do smart systems require? Information. Where do companies get content? From online sources accessible via a crawler. How long has this practice been chugging along? The early 1990s, even earlier if one considers text and command line only systems. Plus the NYT tried its own online service and failed. Then it hooked up with LexisNexis, only to pull out of the deal because the “real” news was worth more than LexisNexis would pay. Then the NYT spun up its own indexing service. Next the NYT dabbled in another online service. Plus the outfit acquired About.com. (Where did those writers get that content?” I know the answer, but does the Gray Lady remember?)
Now with the success of another generation of software which the Gray Lady overlooked, did not understand, or blew off because it was dealing with high school management methods in its newsroom — now the Gray Lady has let loose the legal eagles.
What do I make of the NYT and online? Here are the conclusions I reached working on the Business Dateline database and then as an advisor to one of the NYT’s efforts to distribute the “real” news to hotels and steam ships via facsimile:
- Newspapers are not very good at software. Hey, those Linotype machines were killers, but the XyWrite software and subsequent online efforts have demonstrated remarkable ways to spend money and progress slowly.
- The smart software crowd is not in touch with the thought processes of those in senior management positions in publishing. When the groups try to find common ground, arguments over who pays for lunch are more common than a deal.
- Legal disputes are expensive. Many of those engaged reach some type of deal before letting a judge or a jury decide which side is the winner. Perhaps the NYT is confident that a jury of its peers will find the evil AI outfits guilty of a range of heinous crimes. But maybe not? Is the NYT a risk taker? Who knows. But the NYT will pay some hefty legal bills as it rushes to do battle.
Net net: I find the NYT’s efforts following a basic game plan. Ask for money. Learn that the money offered is less than the value the NYT slaps on its “real” news. The smart software outfit does what it has been doing. The NYT takes legal action. The lawyer engage. As the fees stack up, the idea that a deal is needed makes sense.
The NYT will do a deal, declare victory, and go back to creating “real” news. Sigh. Why? Microsoft has more money and can tie up the matter in court until Hell freezes over in my opinion. If the Gray Lady prevails, chalk up a win. But the losers can just up their cash offer, and the Gray Lady will smile a happy smile.
Stephen E Arnold, December 29, 2023
Forget AI Borrowing: Human Writers Take Stuff Too
December 20, 2023
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I am beginning to think that most people take short cuts, assuming no one will know or take the time to do old-fashioned research. To the embarrassing actions at Stanford University and Harvard College, I can add the work of a person identified as Kristin Loberg. How do I know about this individual. I read the LA Times’s story “Nine Months after Scandal, Publishers Are Still Sorting Out a Plagiarism Mess.”
Boiling down a fairly long write up, it seems that some famous authors need people to help them write their books. These people are ghostwriters. Ms. Loberg is one of these individuals, and it appears that she borrowed information from others. The article includes this statement from Ms. Loberg:
“I accept complete responsibility for any errors my work may have contained,” Loberg said at the time in a statement that acknowledged “allegations of plagiarism” and apologized to writers whose work was not properly credited.
That’s clear enough. But the issue that concerns me is that the article includes this factoid:
Publishers pledged to review all of her books and take corrective steps where necessary. In the nine months since, they have been quietly cleaning up an editorial mess that some industry observers say is partly of their own making.
A famous 16th-century author ponders this question, “Should I rip off Kit Marlowe or that rowdy Ben Jonson character?” Thanks, MSFT Copilot. I did not know Shakespeare was a forbidden word. Poor Will. I am glad I did not ask about Nick Bottom’s wall comment.
I asked myself, “What do publishers do if they don’t check what the authors write for accuracy and the absence of legal time bombs?” And what about the “author,” the person who craves appearing on podcasts and possibly getting five minutes with a cable news talking head? The author is supposed to be informed about a topic, have great insights, and be someone who does not pay another person to do the work. My hunch is that my expectation of an ink-stained wretch is out of date.
The LA Times’s article reports on good news. Here is an example from the write up:
Simon & Schuster said it has released updated versions of six books by Agus and Gupta with the problematic passages either reworked or excised. Loberg’s name is scrubbed from the credits and acknowledgments in the latest editions on Amazon’s Kindle store.
Classic modern management: Take action after the horse has fled and the barn burned, leaving ashes and evidence of sub-standard construction methods.
The LA Times took action. An illustration in the article says:
A Times investigation of books by Dr. David Agus found more than 120 passages that are virtually identical to the language and structure of previously published material from other sources.
It is amazing what a journalism professional can accomplish with a search engine, some time, and patience. Apparently ghost writers, publishers, authors, and other people in the publishing chain are too busy to do actual work to ensure that a book is not chock full of pirate material.
Have the publishers learned their lessons? Have the authors who don’t write their semi-original books? Does anyone care?
That last question is the best one I asked. I know the answer, however. Not too many care and an increasing number of people could not find plagiarism or fabricated information.
Encouraging.
Stephen E Arnold, December 20, 2023
A Soft Rah Rah for a Professional Publisher
December 8, 2023
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Predictive modeling and other AI capabilities have the potential to greatly accelerate scientific research. But since algorithmic research assistants are only as good as their data, time spent by humans rigorously sourcing the best data can cause a bottleneck. Now, reports New Zealand’s IT Brief, “Elsevier Launches ‘Datasets’ to Assist Research with Predictive AI Models.” Journalist Catherine Knowles writes:
“Elsevier, a global expert in scientific information and analytics, has launched Datasets, a new research product to assist a range of industries including life sciences, engineering, chemicals, and energy. The product utilizes generative AI and predictive analytics technologies, addressing the frequent challenge of data scientists having to dedicate significant time to source quality data for well-trained AI models. Datasets speeds up the digital transformation process by providing comprehensive, machine-readable data derived from trusted academic sources. With the ability to be fully integrated into private and secure computational ecosystems, its implementation helps safeguard intellectual property. The product aims to accelerate innovative thinking and business-critical decision-making processes in sectors heavy in research and development. Elsevier’s Datasets have a range of potential applications. These vary from determining the appropriate material for the development of a product by accessing sources such as Elsevier’s 271 million chemical substance records, to predicting drug efficacy and toxicity using advanced neural networks. Additionally, businesses can uncover company-wide expertise in specific disciplines through Elsevier’s 1.8 billion cited references and 17 million author profiles.”
This reminds us of the Scopus upgrade we learned about over the summer, but the write-up does not mention whether the projects are connected. We do learn Datasets can be incorporated into custom applications and third-party tools. If all goes well, this could be one AI application that actually contributes to society. Imagine that.
Cynthia Murrell, December 8, 2023
Bogus Research Papers: They Are Here to Stay
November 27, 2023
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
“Science Is Littered with Zombie Studies. Here’s How to Stop Their Spread” is a Don Quixote-type write up. The good Don went to war against windmills. The windmills did not care. The people watching Don and his trusty sidekick did not care, and many found the site of a person of stature trying to gore a mill somewhat amusing.
A young researcher meets the ghosts of fake, distorted, and bogus information. These artefacts of a loss of ethical fabric wrap themselves around the peer-reviewed research available in many libraries and in for-fee online databases. When was the last time you spotted a correction to a paper in an online database? Thanks, MSFT Copilot. After several tries I got ghosts in a library. Wow, that was a task.
Fake research, non-reproducible research, and intellectual cheating like the exemplars at Harvard’s ethic department and the carpetland of Stanford’s former president’s office seem commonplace today.
The Hill’s article states:
Just by citing a zombie publication, new research becomes infected: A single unreliable citation can threaten the reliability of the research that cites it, and that infection can cascade, spreading across hundreds of papers. A 2019 paper on childhood cancer, for example, cites 51 different retracted papers, making its research likely impossible to salvage. For the scientific record to be a record of the best available knowledge, we need to take a knowledge maintenance perspective on the scholarly literature.
The idea is interesting. It shares a bit of technical debt (the costs accrued by not fixing up older technology) and some of the GenX, GenY, and GenZ notions of “what’s right.” The article sidesteps a couple of thorny bushes on its way to the Promised Land of Integrity.
First, the academic paper is designed to accomplish several things. First, it is a demonstration of one’s knowledge value. “Hey, my peers said this paper was fit to publish” some authors say. Yeah, as a former peer reviewer, I want to tell you that harsh criticism is not what the professional publisher wanted. These papers mean income. Don’t screw up the cash flow,” was the message I heard.
Second, the professional publisher certainly does not want to spend the resources (time and money) required to do crapola archeology. The focus of a professional publisher is to make money by publishing information to niche markets and charging as much money as possible for that information. Academic accuracy, ethics, and idealistic hand waving are not part of the Officers’ Meetings at some professional publisher off-sites. The focus is on cost reduction, market capture, and beating the well-known cousins in other companies who compete with one another. The goal is not the best life partner; the objective is revenue and profit margin.
Third, the academic bureaucracy has to keep alive the mechanisms for brain stratification. Therefore, publishing something “groundbreaking” in a blog or putting the information in a TikTok simply does not count. In fact, despite the brilliance of the information, the vehicle is not accepted. No modern institution building its global reputation and its financial services revenue wants to accept a person unless that individual has been published in a peer reviewed journal of note. Therefore, no one wants to look at data or a paper. The attention is on the paper’s appearing in the peer reviewed journal.
Who pays for this knowledge garbage? The answer is [a] libraries who have to “get” the journals departments identify as significant, [b] the US government which funds quite a bit of baloney and hocus pocus research via grants, [c] the authors of the paper who have to pay for proofs, corrections, and goodness knows what else before the paper is enshrined in a peer-reviewed journal.
Who fixes the baloney? No one. The content is either accepted as accurate and never verified or the researcher cites that which is perceived as important. Who wants to criticize one’s doctoral advisor?
News flash: The prevalence and amount of crapola is unlikely to change. In fact, with the easy availability of smart software, the volume of bad scholarly information is likely to increase. Only the disinformation entities working for nation states hostile to the US of A will outpace US academics in the generation of bogus information.
Net net: The wise researcher will need to verify a lot. But that’s work. So there we are.
Stephen E Arnold, November 27, 2023
ACM Kills Print Publications But Dodges the Money Issue
November 6, 2023
This essay is the work of a dumb humanoid. No smart software required.
In January 2024, the Association for Computing Machinery will kill off its print publication. “Ceasing Print Publication of ACM Journals and Transaction” says good bye to the hard copy instances of Communications of ACM, ACM InRoads, and a couple of other publications. It is possible that ACM will continue to produce print versions of material for students. (I thought students were accustomed to digital content. Guess the ACM knows something I don’t. That’s not too difficult. I am a dinobaby, who read ACM publications for the stories, not the pictures.)
The perspiring clerk asks, “But what about saving the whales?” The CFO carrying the burden of talking to auditors, replies, “It’s money stupid, not that PR baloney.” Thanks, Microsoft Bind. You understand accountants perspiring. Do you have experience answering IRS questions about some calculations related to Puerto Rico?
Why would a professional trade outfit dismiss paper? My immediate and uninformed answer to this question is, “Cost. Stuff like printing, storage, fulfillment, and design cost money.” I would be wrong, of course. The ACM gives these reasons:
- Be environmentally friendly. (Don’t ACM supporters use power sucking data centers often powered by coal?)(
- Electronic publications have more features. (One example is a way to charge a person who wants to read an article and cut off at the bud the daring soul pumping money into a photocopy machine to have an article to read whilst taking a break from the coffee and mobile phone habit.)
- Subscriptions are tanking.
I think the “subscriptions” bit is a way to say, “Print stuff is very expensive to produce and more expensive to sell.”
With the New York Times allegedly poised to use smart software to write its articles, when will the ACM dispense with member contributions?
Stephen E Arnold, November 6, 2023
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