Wrapping up September, we're reading up on thoughtful recommendations from Center for American Progress on how social media should handle the 2024 elections, the decline of local journalism and parallels between AI evangelists and religion. Also, a quirky use of AI to create futuristic soft drinks.
Death of the Daily News: How Citizen Gatekeepers Can Save Local Journalism | Andy Conte
We're thoroughly enjoying this book from our friend and partner Andy Conte, director of Point Park University's Center for Media Innovation. Conte documents the profound consequences of the loss of local journalism across the US through the story of one Pennsylvania city. But he and the residents of McKeesport leave us with hope for ways forward.
Anticipating the risks that social media poses to elections in 2024, Center for American Progress's new report provides specific recommendations for social media platforms, touching on product changes, election misinformation policy and process, external researcher access and staffing. Unfortunately, reporting suggests that BigTech is taking the opposite approach.
A fascinating effort by University of Oxford Internet Institute professor Vili Lehdonvirta, author of Cloud Empires, maps global compute resources. The resulting map shows a concentration of power in a limited number of countries and companies, giving them disproportionate leverage.
This piece from Vox explores the ways in which AI evangelists echo recycled religious ideas, promising salvation while threatening doom (human extinction). It’s an interesting and thought-provoking look at the historical overlaps of technology and religion and raises questions about the values driving AI development.
In one of the weirder corporate uses of AI to date, Coke announced that "Coca‑Cola® Y3000 Zero Sugar was co-created with human and artificial intelligence by understanding how fans envision the future through emotions, aspirations, colors, flavors and more." According to Coke, we're unfortunately still using high fructose corn syrup in the year 3000.