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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.”

Page Links

Monday

Jan102011

Mass Media Meet a Mass Murderer
(And Are Totally Flummoxed, According to Our Mr. Brooks)

David Brooks opines on Jared Loughner's mental state & faults the media, including the New York Times, for blaming the tea party and Sarah Palin for the Tucson shooting rampage. The Times moderators have scrambled the comments again, so here's mine, which for once has some nuance:

Mr. Brooks, you have set yourself up as an expert in psychology or psychiatry. Not only are you able to diagnose Jared Loughner from afar, you imply you know a lot more than the rest of the media about psychology: you write, "We have a news media that is psychologically ill informed." Except for you, I guess. Okay, I'm going to buy your set-up argument.

I have no idea what Mr. Loughner's political views might be. A classmate cited by the Times saying Loughner was "a liberal." Others have linked him with tea party-type politics. For a while there was an attempt to associate him with a radical anti-Semitic group. To confound all the political-motivation theories, the Washington Post reports that Loughner was a registered independent who didn't vote in 2010.

We do know this. Loughner thought Gabrielle Giffords was "stupid" and "a fake" because she didn't properly answer a question of his in 2007. And among the evidence found by law enforcement officers was an envelope from her office on which he wrote the words "My assassination."

But we know something more important, something larger than a young man in Tucson. George Packer of the New Yorker put his finger on it: "... for the past two years, many conservative leaders, activists, and media figures have made a habit of trying to delegitimize their political opponents. Not just arguing against their opponents, but doing everything possible to turn them into enemies of the country."

There's a second element which I would add, one well-illustrated by Dick Armey when he went on the teevee Sunday supposedly to calm the waters. But he didn't do that. He stirred things up. Armey said during an ABC New roundtable that tea partiers must "continue to do their duty and defend our liberties." Defend our liberties? That is a loaded phrase that the is standard tea party code. "THEY" are going to take your "liberties" away. "THEY" are going to enslave you. "WE" must "defend" ourselves against this peril.

Here is where pop psychology and politics collide. Mainstream politicians tell the gullible & impressionable that the government is illegitimate and that this illegitimate government is going to take away their natural and Constitutional freedoms. (That's why the Republicans read an expurgated version of the Constitution on the House floor -- to establish THEIR legitimacy as defenders of the Constitution against -- the OTHERS.) You really don't need to be an unbalanced individual to be worried about that frightening scenario.

So whatever combination of psychological aberrations motivated Jared Loughner to murder and maim 20 innocent people, he did so, I would guess, at least partly because he lives -- as to the rest of us -- in a culture where a crackpot theory about THEM has achieved mainstream legitimacy. So he targeted one of THEM, one who had "failed" to understand him and therefore provided "proof" that the government was illegitimate.

As long as there are people like you, Mr. Brooks, who aid and abet, and therefore legitimize, the crackpot theory of an illegitimate government that seeks to deprive Americans of their natural rights, the nation's psychological landscape is not going to improve.

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