NEW RESOURCES

Farming Online: New insect genome database to boost nature friendly pest control. “A new database of 19 insect genomes encompassing some of the most damaging pests of crops worldwide has been made publicly available. It includes some of the most common pest threats faced by UK farmers including wireworm, cabbage stem flea beetle and pollen beetle, as well as other globally important species.”

Analytics India: Find the Real AI Artists with This Powerful New Tool . “[Stable Attribution] works on reverse engineering principles to extract the images that were used to create an AI image. The platform also allows attribution to the artists whose images were used for the creation.”

Joe: New app pairs food with ‘soilmates’ to help combat waste. “Swipe right – a new tool is helping the nation to combat food waste by finding ‘soilmates’ for their leftover veg. The site lets people choose the unwanted vegetables sitting in their fridge drawers and produces tasty and waste-free recipe suggestions which put them to good use.” I tried it briefly and it’s adorable.

Smithsonian Magazine: Hundreds of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Designs Were Never Built. Here’s What They Might Have Looked Like . “Despite his celebrity status, less than half of Wright’s designs were ever built. Over the years, some of his existing works have been demolished. But now, Spanish architect David Romero is using computer-generated models to see what Wright’s unrealized structures might have looked like.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Google will soon default to blurring explicit image search results. “Google has debuted a new default SafeSearch setting, somewhere between ‘on’ and ‘off,’ that automatically blurs explicit images in search results for most people.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

ABC News (Australia): Deepfake ‘news anchors’ appear in pro-China footage on social media, research group says . “The fake anchors – for a fictitious news outlet called Wolf News – were created by artificial intelligence software and appeared in footage on social media that seemed to promote the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, US-based research firm Graphika said in its report.”

Engadget: Microsoft’s new Bing and Edge hands-on: Surprisingly well-integrated AI. “I was able to briefly check out a full demo here with Dena Saunders from Bing Engineering. It was nice to see everything at a more comprehensible pace, but it was unfortunately restricted to a set of scripted examples. I gained access to the preview version of Bing at about 2:15pm PT today, and also had to install the Developer channel version of Edge to see today’s new features.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Chicago Sun-Times: Feds’ child porn sweep on Telegram app leads to arrest of Chicago man, more than a dozen others. “The work of Homeland Security Investigations in Arizona, dubbed Operation Swipe Left, led to Norris ‘Nick’ Stauffer. It also resulted in criminal charges against more than a dozen people elsewhere — including at least two with political ties — amid allegations of livestreamed abuse, kidnapping threats and the production and distribution of child pornography.”

Reuters: Nigeria asks social media giants to curb fake news ahead of election. “Nigeria has asked Google and Meta to control the spread of fake news on their platforms ahead of a presidential election this month, Information Minister Lai Mohammed said on Friday. Nigerians go to the polls on Feb. 25 to elect a new president, with three frontrunners promising to deal with the rising cost of living, insecurity and a slow-growing economy.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Western University: Mapping the stories of formerly enslaved Black Londoners focus of new research. This is London Ontario, not London England. “In 1856, Benjamin Drew, a U.S. abolitionist, travelled to Canada to transcribe the oral stories of formerly enslaved Black refugees…. But what of their lives afterwards? With Drew’s accounts as their starting point, Western researchers Miranda Green-Barteet and Alyssa MacLean are working to trace the paths these self-liberated individuals took after arriving in London.”

University of Michigan: Robot: I’m sorry. Human: I don’t care anymore!. “Humans are less forgiving of robots after multiple mistakes—and the trust is difficult to get back, according to a new University of Michigan study.”

The Conversation: ChatGPT is a data privacy nightmare. If you’ve ever posted online, you ought to be concerned. “ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. Within two months of its release it reached 100 million active users, making it the fastest-growing consumer application ever launched. Users are attracted to the tool’s advanced capabilities – and concerned by its potential to cause disruption in various sectors. A much less discussed implication is the privacy risks ChatGPT poses to each and every one of us.” Good morning, Internet…

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