Transforming the future of media with artificial intelligence
Allegedly “With the ability to analyze large datasets to identify patterns and predict outcomes, all at the click of a button, artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing how we live and work. From offering personalized recommendations to automating tedious tasks, AI can help us make better decisions, work smarter and reduce the likelihood of errors.“
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-02-future-media-artificial-intelligence.html
There has been discussion recently on the question of essay-writing for students, now that AI is there to do it for them. Scholars should always be required to “write essays because it demands research skills, improved communication skills, critical thinking, and domain knowledge. No matter what ChatGPT offers, these skills will still be needed, even if we spend less time developing them.
And it isn't only schoolchildren cheating with AI. Earlier this year, a US judge fined two lawyers and a law firm US$5,000 for a court filing written with ChatGPT that included made-up legal citations.”
A year of ChatGPT: 5 ways AI has changed the world
When it comes to research, at any level, there is a simple way to verify material provided by AI. I find most universities address this in a general way, but not as a universal protocol.
And apparently the offence in the legal world continues. The first time I read of false (hallucinatory) case citations I thought “fine, use AI, but surely you check the returned results” - apparently not!
I find myself wondering if that is how the ridiculous situation arose concerning the “Windrush”. More and more civil servants seemed to believe “it was all on the Internet” and libraries were a waste of space.
The Home Office library, a once impressive collection of holdings of the annual statistics relating to crime and justice, publications of the Home Office Research Unit, history, relevant journals, Bill Books and relevant criminological studies from both the UK and overseas is now only a shadow of itself.
We were told by the head of the Home Office Knowledge and Information Management Unit that the creation of the Ministry of Justice in 2007 saw its criminal justice material being transferred to that Ministry’s library.
Two years later, and following what was called a restructure at the Home Office, it was decided to move to an electronic library service with a range of online
material being made available to staff through their desktop computers.
'The dreadful flood of documents': the 1958 Public Record Act and its aftermath: part 2: after-effects Rock, Paul (2017) 'The dreadful flood of documents': the 1958 Public Record Act and its aftermath: part 2: after-effects. Archives: the journal of the British chrome-extension://oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm/
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/96716553.pdf
Use of artificial intelligence in government - UK Government Report, 15 March 2024
https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/use-of-artificial-intelligence-in-government/
AI is creating fake legal cases and making its way into real courtrooms, with disastrous results
The best known generative AI "fake case" is the 2023 US case Mata v Avianca. ..... The lawyers, unaware that ChatGPT can hallucinate, failed to check that the cases actually existed. The consequences were disastrous. Once the error was uncovered, the court dismissed their client's case, sanctioned the lawyers for acting in bad faith, fined them and their firm, and exposed their actions to public scrutiny.
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-03-ai-fake-legal-cases-real.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_camp
It should also be part of learning at high school level, and certainly at all levels of government, commercial and business interests.
Referencing Is there a glitch in the matrix? Artificial intelligence and management education
I have a curiosity about AI, and experimented using both ChatGPT and Bard (now Gemini) as soon as they were available for research..
My first enquiry was about the 19th Century Italian community in my local town. Somewhat to my amazement I was informed they had come here to join the fishing community. As this was news to me, I went back and asked for citations. Bard provided 5, two by the same author, I checked them all out, none of them existed! One was even listed as published by the Charity for which I volunteer (and for whom I was pursuing the information)
So it seems a simple test (currently, in a few years it may no longer be necessary) to always ask for citations and check them out.
My next query, about lions at Battle Abbey in the 1830’s (which Anne Lister had recorded visiting in 1832, so I knew was true). Of the three answers provided, one said there were no lions, one said there were lions later in the 19th century and the other one rambled.
I went back with the same query about six weeks later and was informed that yes, there were lions at Battle Abbey when the Duke of Wellington was in charge there. It was news to me that he had been.
I checked the citations, which I now routinely asked for. One was for the Illustrated London News, so I went to British Newspaper Archives and did a search. I found an article which told me when the Duke of Wellington was in charge at the Tower of London there were lions there. Further on was an article suggesting places to visit, including Battle Abbey - but no mention of lions at Battle Abbey!
Worse was to come, the volume and issue details of ILN were not the same as those cited by AI.
The Google Effect - When checking citations do not rely on the initial search results from an Internet search. A search looks for the terms asked for, for instance, if you ask is the Atlantic the largest ocean, the results will include both terms similar to ….largest ocean… Atlantic…. Pacific.. All terms found in the resulting source, but not saying the Atlantic is the largest ocean, but if you are expecting it to confirm your thought, you may very well accept it. (I know of this happening.)
But even when you do go to the actual result, be careful! One of my favourite stories, which is now repeated as a truth on the Internet - someone suggested that the Battle of Hastings (14th October, 1066, if you didn;t know) should be called the Battle of Battle, because that was fought at Battle. Obviously, most of us know it was fought in the Rape of Hastings, and afterwards the area was named Battle, to reflect this.
All of this may sound rather daunting, but in today’s world it should be offered as an integral part of Education at any level. Check your sources!
One day, of course, you may find you are checking needlessly because the answers are not in question, and the information given is totally reliable - but I fear this is some years off.
Another Google Effect - The Gemini Debacle "can create an entirely new reality based on the world that social-justice activists want to see’, he writes, ‘and have it front-loaded onto every schoolchild’s research project’.
The debacle also showed that AI is actually neither artificial nor intelligent. Much of what is called AI is really content generated by a module that has undergone ‘supervised machine learning’. Supervised machine learning is akin to training a dog, in that the outcome is heavily determined by who is doing the supervising. If the dog is trained not to bite anyone, the dog is unlikely to bite. If, on the other hand, you train your dog to bite certain kinds of people, the dog is almost certain to obey its training. In the case of Gemini, Google trained its dog to bite white people – its coding simply would not allow Gemini to produce images that were not racially diverse.
Franklin, Dr Cory: The tech overlords want to reshape reality. 15 March 2024
Q&A: Researchers warn of danger, call for pause in bringing AI to schools
In K-12 schools across the country, a new gold rush of sorts is underway: Classrooms nationwide are racing to bring the latest artificial intelligence tools, such as platforms powered by the chat bot ChatGPT, or Google's Gemini, into the classroom.
This article, written by an experienced IT, research librarian, was submitted to ChatGPT and toGemini, to be "refined". In this particular case, Chat GPT won, and its work is above.
