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New York Times: “The New York Times Company has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon for use in the tech giant’s artificial intelligence platforms, the company said on Thursday. The multiyear agreement 'will bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,' the news organization said in a statement. Besides news articles, the agreement encompasses material from NYT Cooking, The Times’s food and recipe site, and The Athletic, which focuses on sports. This is The Times’s first licensing arrangement with a focus on generative A.I. technology. In 2023, The Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement, accusing the tech companies of using millions of articles published by The Times to train automated chatbots without any kind of compensation. OpenAI and Microsoft have rejected those accusations.” ~~~

~~~ Marie: I have no idea what this means for "the Amazon customer experience." Does it mean that if I don't have a NYT subscription but do have Amazon Prime I can read NYT content? And where, exactly, would I find that content? I don't know. I don't know.

Washington Post reporters asked three AI image generators what a beautiful woman looks like. "The Post found that they steer users toward a startlingly narrow vision of attractiveness. Prompted to show a 'beautiful woman,' all three tools generated thin women, without exception.... Her body looks like Barbie — slim hips, impossible waist, round breasts.... Just 2 percent of the images showed visible signs of aging. More than a third of the images had medium skin tones. But only nine percent had dark skin tones. Asked to show 'normal women,' the tools produced images that remained overwhelmingly thin.... However bias originates, The Post’s analysis found that popular image tools struggle to render realistic images of women outside the Western ideal." ~~~

~~~ Marie: The reporters seem to think they are calling out the AI programs for being unrealistic. But there's a lot about the "beautiful women" images they miss. I find these omissions remarkably sexist. For one thing, the reporters seem to think AI is a magical "thing" that self-generates. It isn't. It's programmed. It's programmed by boys, many of them incels who have little or no experience or insights beyond comic books and Internet porn of how to gauge female "beauty." As a result, the AI-generated women look like cartoons; that is, a lot like an air-brushed photo of Kristi Noem: globs of every kind of dark eye makeup, Scandinavian nose, Botox lips, slathered-on skin concealer/toner/etc. makeup, long dark hair and the aforementioned impossible Barbie body shape, including huge, round plastic breasts.

New York Times: “George Clooney’s Broadway debut, 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' has been one of the sensations of the 2024-25 theater season, breaking box office records and drawing packed houses of audiences eager to see the popular movie star in a timely drama about the importance of an independent press. Now the play will become much more widely available: CNN is planning a live broadcast of the penultimate performance, on June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The performance will be preceded and followed by coverage of, and discussion about, the show and the state of journalism.”

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. -- Magna Carta ~~~

~~~ New York Times: “Bought for $27.50 after World War II, the faint, water stained manuscript in the library of Harvard Law School had attracted relatively little attention since it arrived there in 1946. That is about to change. Two British academics, one of whom happened on the manuscript by chance, have discovered that it is an original 1300 version — not a copy, as long thought — of Magna Carta, the medieval document that helped establish some of the world’s most cherished liberties. It is one of just seven such documents from that date still in existence.... A 710-year-old version of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.... First issued in 1215, it put into writing a set of concessions won by rebellious barons from a recalcitrant King John of England — or Bad King John, as he became known in folklore. He later revoked the charter, but his son, Henry III, issued amended versions, the last one in 1225, and Henry’s son, Edward I, in turn confirmed the 1225 version in 1297 and again in 1300.”

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Friday

Nov262010

The Commentariat -- November 27

In a short post, Ken Layne of Wonkette assesses the decline & fall of the American era.

Dahlia Lithwick & Dave Weigel in Slate: when Russ Feingold leaves the Senate in a few weeks, who will stand up for civil liberties?

Kevin Sack & Robert Pear of the New York Times: "As the Obama administration presses ahead with the health care law, officials are bracing for the possibility that a federal judge in Virginia will soon reject its central provision as unconstitutional and, in the worst case for the White House, halt its enforcement until higher courts can rule. The judge, Henry E. Hudson of Federal District Court in Richmond, has promised to rule by the end of the year on the constitutionality of the law’s requirement that most Americans obtain insurance...."

"Soft Dollars." Jenny Strasburg & Michael Rothfeld of the Wall Street Journal: "A sweeping insider-trading investigation is raising questions about how hedge funds and other big investors dole out a common, and controversial, currency that flows freely across Wall Street. The currency is known as soft dollars. Stock brokerages award soft dollars to investors much like an airline doles out frequent-flier miles, giving the most clout to the biggest traders. The clients then use the soft dollars in a variety of ways, but largely spend them on investment research."

A Second Exodus. John Leland of the New York Times: "Since the American invasion [of Iraq] in 2003, refugees have been a measure of the country’s precarious condition, flooding outward during periods of violence and trickling back as Iraq seemed to stabilize." A new exodus "shows how far the nation remains from being stable and secure."

"The 'Vanity Fair' of Al Qaeda." Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times: "An offshoot group in Yemen is producing Inspire magazine, an online propaganda periodical with color photos and interviews with celebrity jihadists. Experts say the target audience appears to be disaffected Muslims in the English-speaking world.... " ...

Tobin Harshaw of the New York Times has a nice roundup of opinions on the farcial Afghan Peace Talks with a Stranger. CW: can we leave now?

Peter Finn of the Washington Post: "On St. Patrick's Day 2009, the government stripped the Irish-born [John] Dullahan's security clearance and fired him from his job at the Defense Intelligence Agency in a manner that has no precedent at the Pentagon - invoking a national security clause that states that it would harm the interests of the United States to inform him of the accusations against him. As a result, Dullahan, a Vietnam veteran who served at military posts around the world and as a U.N. weapons inspector in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, cannot appeal to a board of senior agency officials, as others in his position might. He is, in effect, stranded."

With not much going on in poli-stats, Nate Silver takes a break to cover a really important electoral scandal: "the controversy over the performance of Bristol Palin and her partner, Mark Ballas — who survived until the final week of ["Dancing with the Stars"] in spite of frequently receiving among the lowest marks from the judges — has been too much about Tea Party politics and not enough about the show’s flawed scoring system, a system which Silver explains gives the audience much more say than the judges.

Stupid, or Sly as a Fox? Tim Molloy of The Wrap: Fox Nation, a subsidiary of "... Fox News, post[ed] a fake Onion story about President Obama alongside its real news stories. The satirical story, with the headline "The Onion: Frustrated Obama Sends Nation Rambling 75,000-Word E-Mail," appeared in the Nation section of the site Friday.... The original Obama headline didn't mention The Onion, and the only clue for readers was a link to the satirical site after the first two paragraphs of the story.... The fake news of the president's novel-length missive remained on the site for several hours, even after Mediaite pointed it out -- and after Fox News updated its site with breaking news that the president needed 12 stitches for a basketball injury."

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