Even after his arrest due to charges of rape and human trafficking, Tate continues to create content in his personal channels, gaining sympathy from his followers. This type of content is part of the online social circle called the ‘manosphere’ – an assortment of pages, groups, and forums focusing on masculinity but also tend to have conversations that tend to be misogynistic in nature. 

‘Subspheres’ of the manosphere

Communities in the manosphere have already been active for a long time. There is no single organization maintaining this entity, but subcommunities trace their origins from individuals or other groups. 

Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) advocates for gradual disengagement from society and rejects the notion of gender equality. They regard themselves as having taken the “red pill” (referencing the movie The Matrix where the protagonist is given a red pill to learn the truth) 

Pick-up Artists (PUA) pose themselves as personal development coaches. Being vastly dominated by heterosexual men, PUAs teach techniques of flattery, gaslighting, and manipulation to convince women to have sex with their students. Branding themselves as mentors makes it the perfect setup for online audiences to subscribe to their beliefs without question.

A Voice For Men (AVFM), in principle, aims to fight for laws that were designed to protect women, such as anti-sexual assault laws, be applied to men as well. Members often congregate in-person and have evolved into a support group for those who have experienced being harassed and assaulted. They distance themselves from other men’s rights’ groups and pose themselves with a somewhat less radical approach.

Incels, a shortened term for “involuntary celibates”, believe that they have not been given the genetic characteristics that make them attractive to others. A community consisting mostly of men, surrendering to the fact that women would not like them results in a sense of isolation and frustration, as well as jealousy towards those that do have these relationships.

Although its subcommunities are diverse and at times counter each other, individuals tend to have shared experiences and values. The manosphere is bound together by the common narrative that society has made men the victim, and that proper action must be done to counter this. 

Unlike the feminist movement and other movements, the manosphere tends to keep conversations and interactions online, but its on-ground impacts to individuals give them the propensity to harm.

To establish their brand and success rate, PUAs oftentimes post their “lays”, proving that through their seduction techniques, men can end up having sexual intercourse with women they met in a bar that day. This has resulted in women reporting cases of rape and PUAs bragging about it in their group.

The hashtag #Gamergate became viral in 2014, of which female game developers were subject to gender-based online harassment. Those that defended the women, particularly gaming websites run by women, have had their ad sponsors be pressured to pull-out from them.

In 2021, Jake Davison fatally shot five people, including his mother, in Plymouth, United Kingdom. It was discovered that Davison had been part of forums about incels, where he searched a thread on why incels felt the need to end their lives. 

Manospheres in the Philippines

Local versions of these groups also exist online. A Facebook search for ‘MGTOW’ or ‘Red Pill’ would recommend pages and groups maintained by entities based in the Philippines. Content by these entities is similar to that of their international counterparts – critiquing women’s rights while heavily encouraging a certain standard for men to live by.

The pages and groups as well as their posts currently have a relatively low reach and interaction rate, though. Online communities with the same characteristics can be considered as fringe groups, where interactions are limited only to a few loyal individuals. 

Dr. Teresa Paula De Luna, anthropologist and professor at the College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines – Diliman, posits historical reasons as to why such radical communities form in the Philippines. 

“It is ingrained in our mindset that men have the burden of providing for their families. Frustration then arises if they are not able to provide. It is easiest to blame women for these, since western culture has led to the notion that women are less powerful than men.” Men tend to subscribe to the manosphere because it is here where their frustrations are validated.

The harm that fringe groups pose come in two layers: societal micro-aggressions in the short-term, and widespread normalization of their narratives in the long-term. 

Online communities form around content that they sympathize with. It only takes a few individuals actively sharing content to form a solid group that constantly interacts around their shared experiences. They continue to thrive even without any external influences or any increase in membership.

For fringe groups in the manosphere, this just means that there is no stopping members from sharing stories about how gynocentric modern society is and how the feminist movement has ‘gone too far’. However, the characteristics of these individuals shouldn’t be considered in a vacuum.

Just like every individual, humans are members of several different groups, which also means that a young man who subscribes to the manosphere can also be part of communities based on religion, hobbies, and occupation. It is in these communities that ideas and thoughts can be shared with relative confidence.

“With words like ‘kapatid’ (sibling) and ‘kaibigan’ (friend), Filipinos derive their identity from other people, showing that communities are very tight-knit.”, De Luna adds.  “With the advent of the internet and social media, individuals can now define their identity from even more communities. Too many identities tend to have individuals negotiate the better reality, one where their struggles are exclusively heard.”

The influence also goes both ways. Far-right groups have used anti-feminism values to extract sympathy from the manosphere and have since radicalized them to the point of doing harm.

The effects of the manosphere become increasingly harmful once it penetrates mainstream communities. Even if these values have been existing before the internet, several other institutions such as the church, school, and local community have served as regulating mechanisms. De Luna then recommends that social media platforms can act as a regulator to moderate content being spread.

In the grassroots level, De Luna is optimistic in the fact that as long as public opinion views manosphere values as negative, then these communities remain in the fringes.

“Before the introduction of western values, people in the Philippines viewed women as strong icons. We view our mothers as our role models. With sayings like ‘ ‘di ako pinalaki ng mama ko ng ganyan’ (my mother didn’t raise me like that), we are constantly reminded to oppose actions and values that disrespect our mothers, and women in general.” – Rappler.com

Various government agencies and development organizations launched on Friday, May 26, the Oky Philippines app, highlighting the need to provide young Filipinos with accurate and reliable information about menstrual health.

Oky Philippines was developed based on Oky, a menstruation education and period tracker app developed by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef). The new app is a joint project of the Department of Education (DepEd), the Department of Health (DOH), the Commission on Population and Development (PopCom), the National Youth Commission (NYC), and Unicef, and is specialized to the context of Filipino girls.

The project team consulted with girls living with different backgrounds across the Philippines. These included indigenous peoples, out-of-school youth, and children with disabilities.

Adolescent health experts, government agencies, and development organizations vetted the results from the consultations.

The project team also partnered with the local government in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao to produce reproductive health information from an Islamic perspective.

Some core features of the app include a period tracker, an encyclopedia with information about menstrual health, and daily cards that have quizzes, mood tracking, activities, and a journal.

The app was launched ahead of Menstrual Hygiene Day, which is commemorated globally every May 28.

The app also received support from the Australian government and had Plan International as a partner.

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Information for empowerment

According to the DepEd, 8 out of 10 schools provided access to sanitary pads to girls during school year 2020-2021. Schools providing menstrual products have increased since school year 2017-2018, when 6 out of 10 schools were providing them.

In a joint release from the project team, the entities noted that while it is positive that more schools are providing access to menstrual products, menstruation and sexual and reproductive health rights remain “sensitive topics” for discussion.

The team also noted the myths and misconceptions surrounding menstrual health. Some misconceptions include how it is not possible to get pregnant while on one’s period, or that a tampon will cause a girl to lose her virginity. Young girls may also stress over period symptoms, such as dysmenorrhea.

“We recognize the need of adolescent girls to access accurate information about their menstrual health and are happy to have the Oky Philippines app as a new digital platform that can help them make informed, healthy choices for themselves. Ensuring the health of our adolescents takes us one step closer to achieving a Healthy Pilipinas,” said DOH officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire.

PopCom executive director Lisa Grace Bersales said it would promote the app in local government units and schools. “Physical changes during adolescence could be stressful but with appropriate information, young girls can be guided to ensure their hygiene and physical wellness,” she said.

Meanwhile, NYC chairperson Ronald Cardema noted that the app could serve as a “catalyst to empower girls in our country, breaking down the barriers that impede their ability to realize their full potential for personal growth, family well-being, and community development.”

Oky Philippines is available on the Google Play Store. – Rappler.com

“The tech has gone exponential, exponential. And we’re still moving at glacial speed…The window to act is closing,” Ressa said during the closing remarks of the first day of the 2023 Nobel Prize Summit in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, May 24 (Thursday, May 25, in Manila).

This year’s summit gathered laureates and experts in a three-day event to discuss ways to “combat misinformation, restore trust in science and create a hopeful future.”

During the event, Ressa presented the 10-Point Plan, which she created with fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, to urge governments to put a stop to the harms created by Big Tech. The plan was first launched at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, in 2022.

Watch her presentation in the video below, starting at the 7:31:35 mark.

Play Video

What’s at stake

Much has been shared about the grave impact of Big Tech around the world. 

Social media platforms have become a breeding ground for disinformation, playing a massive role in elections, the whitewashing of history, and the constant shaping and reshaping of public opinion as seen in the administrations of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte and current leader, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. 

“We, with our information ecosystem, are electing illiberal leaders democratically. I know it in my country. And they are crunching, they are crippling the institutions from within,” Ressa said.

Violence has also run unabated in and due to these platforms. 

Ressa cited a 2021 study from UNESCO that traced online violence against women journalists: 73% reported experiencing it on the job, and 20% of those experienced the violence in real life.

Ressa also noted the siege on the US Capitol by supporters of former president Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, as well as the riots in Brazil led by supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro on January 8, 2023.

Both Trump and Bolsonaro lost to their opponents, US President Joe Biden and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in their respective presidential elections a few months prior. Both Trump and Bolsonaro also sowed doubt into election results.

Ressa attributed these to the business model of tech platforms, which she dubbed “surveillance for profit,” where users are tracked and targeted to maximize engagement online and influence behavior offline.

“It’s almost like you went to a psychiatrist and then you told your psychiatrist your deepest, darkest secret, and the psychiatrist went out and said, ‘Who wants Maria’s deepest, darkest secret?’ [and sells it] to the highest bidder,” Ressa illustrated.

Meanwhile, multiple sectors are on alert as artificial intelligence (AI) tools grow on unprecedented levels, triggering concern on how these tools can spread disinformation further at scale, make people lose their jobs, and promote bias in healthcare, among others.

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Ressa cited the 2020 documentary Coded Bias, which showed how human biases can be integrated into tools powered by artificial intelligence. The film features a study by Black researcher Joy Boulamwini, who investigated why her face is unrecognizable by facial recognition systems. She found out the systems worked when she wore a white mask.

“If you’re a woman, LGBTQ+, if you’re from the Global South… If you are marginalized, you are further marginalized,” she said.

Ressa also pointed out the spate of attacks against media workers and organizations. These attacks have paved the way to the erosion of democratic institutions globally. (READ: IN NUMBERS: Filipino journalists killed since 1986)

“The question really is, where are the governments that have abdicated responsibility for protecting the public sphere?” she added.

Solutions  

In presenting the 10-Point Plan, Ressa proposed solutions to stop surveillance for profit, prevent coded bias, and protect journalists and democracy.

These solutions – endorsed by over 200 Nobel laureates, journalists, activists, and experts – include mandatory independent human rights impact assessments of tech platforms, laws to protect citizens’ data and ban surveillance advertising, funding and assistance to vulnerable independent media, and others.

European Union lawmakers in 2022 expanded the Digital Services Act package in an attempt to protect citizens in digital spaces. (READ: New tech rules: A primer on EU’s Digital Services Act package)

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The International Fund for Public Interest Media, co-chaired by Ressa and former New York Times CEO Mark Thompson, was also organized to support public interest media organizations worldwide.

Ressa emphasized the power of public participation to address Big Tech harms.

“It’s about your courage. It’s about your ability to look at the world, listen to all the problems and all the nuances of it, and then just say, ‘This is what I stand for,’” she addressed the audience.

“We organize in a different way. Stop being a user and become a citizen. Identify what civic engagement means in the age of exponential lies.”

Visit this page to find out how you can support the 10-Point Plan. – Rappler.com

As an AI researcher, I often worry about the energy costs of building artificial intelligence models. The more powerful the AI, the more energy it takes. What does the emergence of increasingly more powerful generative AI models mean for society’s future carbon footprint?

“Generative” refers to the ability of an AI algorithm to produce complex data. The alternative is “discriminative” AI, which chooses between a fixed number of options and produces just a single number. An example of a discriminative output is choosing whether to approve a loan application.

Generative AI can create much more complex outputs, such as a sentence, a paragraph, an image or even a short video. It has long been used in applications like smart speakers to generate audio responses, or in autocomplete to suggest a search query. However, it only recently gained the ability to generate humanlike language and realistic photos.

Using more power than ever

The exact energy cost of a single AI model is difficult to estimate, and includes the energy used to manufacture the computing equipment, create the model and use the model in production.

In 2019, researchers found that creating a generative AI model called BERT with 110 million parameters consumed the energy of a round-trip transcontinental flight for one person.

The number of parameters refers to the size of the model, with larger models generally being more skilled. Researchers estimated that creating the much larger GPT-3, which has 175 billion parameters, consumed 1,287 megawatt hours of electricity and generated 552 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, the equivalent of 123 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year.

And that’s just for getting the model ready to launch, before any consumers start using it.

Size is not the only predictor of carbon emissions. The open-access BLOOM model, developed by the BigScience project in France, is similar in size to GPT-3 but has a much lower carbon footprint, consuming 433 MWh of electricity in generating 30 tons of CO2eq. A study by Google found that for the same size, using a more efficient model architecture and processor and a greener data center can reduce the carbon footprint by 100 to 1,000 times.

Larger models do use more energy during their deployment. There is limited data on the carbon footprint of a single generative AI query, but some industry figures estimate it to be four to five times higher than that of a search engine query. As chatbots and image generators become more popular, and as Google and Microsoft incorporate AI language models into their search engines, the number of queries they receive each day could grow exponentially.

AI bots for search

A few years ago, not many people outside of research labs were using models like BERT or GPT. That changed on November 30, 2022, when OpenAI released ChatGPT. According to the latest available data, ChatGPT had over 1.5 billion visits in March 2023.

Microsoft incorporated ChatGPT into its search engine, Bing, and made it available to everyone on May 4, 2023. If chatbots become as popular as search engines, the energy costs of deploying the AIs could really add up. But AI assistants have many more uses than just search, such as writing documents, solving math problems and creating marketing campaigns.

Another problem is that AI models need to be continually updated. For example, ChatGPT was only trained on data from up to 2021, so it does not know about anything that happened since then. The carbon footprint of creating ChatGPT isn’t public information, but it is likely much higher than that of GPT-3.

If it had to be recreated on a regular basis to update its knowledge, the energy costs would grow even larger.

One upside is that asking a chatbot can be a more direct way to get information than using a search engine. Instead of getting a page full of links, you get a direct answer as you would from a human, assuming issues of accuracy are mitigated.

Getting to the information quicker could potentially offset the increased energy use compared to a search engine.

Ways forward

The future is hard to predict, but large generative AI models are here to stay, and people will probably increasingly turn to them for information.

For example, if a student needs help solving a math problem now, they ask a tutor or a friend, or consult a textbook. In the future, they will probably ask a chatbot. The same goes for other expert knowledge such as legal advice or medical expertise.

While a single large AI model is not going to ruin the environment, if a thousand companies develop slightly different AI bots for different purposes, each used by millions of customers, the energy use could become an issue. More research is needed to make generative AI more efficient.

The good news is that AI can run on renewable energy. By bringing the computation to where green energy is more abundant, or scheduling computation for times of day when renewable energy is more available, emissions can be reduced by a factor of 30 to 40, compared to using a grid dominated by fossil fuels.

Finally, societal pressure may be helpful to encourage companies and research labs to publish the carbon footprints of their AI models, as some already do. In the future, perhaps consumers could even use this information to choose a “greener” chatbot. – Rappler.com

This article originally appeared on The Conversation.

Kate Saenko, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Boston University

Its impressive capabilities paired with explosive growth have caused worry and concern over several aspects – how it may be used to boost disinformation, and cause job loss faster than it can create new opportunities, among other disruptions. 

For that reason, Altman found himself facing the US Congress on May 16, before his company had come close to anything like Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. In the social media era, the likes of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, and Google’s Sundar Pichai made their Congressional debuts after the fact, after the world had come to realize the power or influence these tech companies held over matters of society. 

Altman’s appearance preempts scandal. One reason can be gleaned from US Senator Richard Blumenthal’s opening statement in the Altman hearing: “Congress has a choice. Now. We had the same choice when we faced social media. We failed to seize that moment. The result is predators on the internet, toxic content exploiting children, creating dangers for them…But Congress failed to meet the moment on social media. Now we have the obligation to do it on AI before the threats and the risks become real.”

Second, public opinion is matching sentiment in the halls of power. A majority, 61% of US citizens, believe that AI could threaten civilization, according to a Reuters survey. 

Altman is the current face of generative AI – AI able to create new content out of mountains of data – and what he thinks and says are crucial to how the technology will continue to evolve. Whether it will be more to society’s benefit or more to its detriment will also be dependent on how world governments put the legislative safeguards, and how the public are taught to be critical. 

A call for licensing and testing requirements 

“For example, the US government might consider a combination of licensing and testing requirements for development and release of AI models above a threshold of capabilities. There are several other areas I mentioned in my written testimony where I believe that companies like ours can partner with governments, including ensuring that the most powerful AI models adhere to a set of safety requirements, facilitating processes to develop and update safety measures, and examining opportunities for global coordination,” Altman said. 

Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Chris Wylie has already stressed how safety evaluations and ethical standards for digital products are non-existent. Altman is directly expressing a willingness to put together such requirements for products, although it is a little belated as ChatGPT, like the Facebooks and Twitters before it, also came out without those. 

Altman expounds further later on in the session on specific steps:

“Number one, I would form a new agency that licenses any effort above a certain scale of capabilities, and can take that license away, and ensure compliance with safety standards. 

Number two, I would create a set of safety standards focused on what you said in your third hypothesis as the dangerous capability evaluations. One example that we’ve used in the past is looking to see if a model can self-replicate…

And then third, I would require independent audits. So not just from the company or the agency, but experts who can say the model is in compliance with these stated safety thresholds, and these percentages of performance on question X or Y.”

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Altman’s biggest nightmare: job loss

The CEO was asked what his “biggest nightmare” was, and he proceeded to talk about job loss. 

“Like with all technological revolutions, I expect there to be significant impact on jobs, but exactly what that impact looks like is very difficult to predict…I believe that there will be far greater jobs on the other side of this, and that the jobs of today will get better…I think it’s important to understand and think about GPT-4 as a tool, not a creature, which is easy to get confused, and it’s a tool that people have a great deal of control over and how they use it. And second, GPT-4 and other systems like it are good at doing tasks, not jobs.”

Gary Marcus, an AI expert and Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience at New York University, warned though that what’s not clear is the timescale over which new opportunities can cover for immediate jobs lost. 

He said, “Past performance history is not a guarantee of the future. It has always been the case in the past that we have had more jobs, that new jobs, new professions come in as new technologies come in. I think this one’s gonna be different. And the real question is over what time scale? Is it going to be 10 years? Is it going to be a hundred years? And I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that question.”

Marcus added, “I think in the long run, so-called artificial general intelligence really will replace a large fraction of human jobs. We’re not that close to artificial general intelligence, despite all of the media hype and so forth. I would say that what we have right now is just a small sampling of the AI that we will build in 20 years.”

Election disinformation: one of Altman’s areas of greatest concern

“It’s one of my areas of greatest concern – the more general ability of these models to manipulate, to persuade, to provide, sort of, one-on-one interactive disinformation… When Photoshop came onto the scene a long time ago, you know, for a while people were really quite fooled by photoshopped images and then pretty quickly, developed an understanding that images might be photoshopped. This will be like that, but on steroids, and the interactivity, the ability to really model, predict humans, as you talked about, I think it’s going to require a combination of companies doing the right thing, regulation and public education.”

“A single player experience”: Generative AI needs a different response from social media

“[Generative AI] is different. And so the response that we need is different. This is a tool that a user is using to help generate content more efficiently than before. They can change it. They can test the accuracy of it. If they don’t like it, they can get another version. But it still then spreads through social media or other ways. ChatGPT is a single-player experience where you’re just using this. And so I think as we think about what to do, that’s, that’s important to understand that there’s a lot that we can and do there. “

Use ChatGPT less

“To be clear, OpenAI does not [have an] ad-based business model. So we’re not trying to build up these profiles of our users. We’re not trying to get them to use it more. Actually, we’d love it if they use it less because we don’t have enough GPUs. But I think other companies are already, and certainly will, in the future, use AI models to create, you know, very good ad predictions of what a user will like. I think that’s already happening in many ways.”

Altman didn’t close the door, however, on an ad-based business model.

Asked by Senator Cory Booker if the company would ever do ads, Altman says, “I wouldn’t say never. I don’t think, like, I think there may be people that we want to offer services to, and there’s no other model that works. But I really like having a subscription based model. We have API developers pay us and we have ChatGPT.”

Altman on content creators, and content owners

“Again, to reiterate my earlier point, we think that content creators, content owners, need to benefit from this technology. Exactly what the economic model is, we’re still talking to artists, and content owners about what they want. I think there’s a lot of ways this can happen, but very clearly, no matter what the law is, the right thing to do is to make sure people get significant upside benefit from this new technology. And we believe that it’s really going to deliver that – but [as for] content owners, likenesses, people totally deserve control over how that’s used, and [how] to benefit from it.” 

Altman on news organizations

“It is my hope that tools like what we’re creating can help news organizations do better. I think having a vibrant national media is critically important. And let’s call it: round one of the internet has not been great for that…” Altman says. 

Senator Amy Klobuchar points out to Altman, “But do you understand that this could be exponentially worse in terms of local news content if they’re not compensated? Because what they need is to be compensated for their content and not have it stolen.”

Altman: “Again, our model, the current version of GPT-4 ended training in 2021. It’s not a good way to find recent news. And it’s, I don’t think it’s a service that can do a great job of linking out, although maybe with our plugins, it’s possible. If there are things that we can do to help local news, we would certainly like to. Again, I think it’s critically important.”  

Altman has trust that people will be able to tell inaccurate information generated by ChatGPT

“We find that people, that users are, are pretty sophisticated, and understand where the mistakes are, that they need to be responsible for verifying what the models say, that they go off and check it,” Altman says. 

Questions that Altman needs to be asked are, in the era of disinformation, how many people have actually learned to tell fiction from fact? Especially when information is taken out of ChatGPT – which makes it easier for people to produce convincing, professional-sounding text content – and re-posted and spread on social media, what drives him to trust that people will be able to discern then? 

Altman does add that as these systems get better, it would be even harder to tell the fake from the truth. He explained, “I worry that as the models get better and better, the users can have, sort of, less and less of their own discriminating thought process around it. But I think users are more capable than we often give them credit for, in conversations like this. I think a lot of disclosures, which if you’ve used ChatGPT, you’ll see about the inaccuracies of the model are also important.” 

ChatGPT and similar tools allow for faster content generation, and that can include disinformation, not to mention, hallucinations by the system. Few have changed on social media, only that disinformation peddlers have a new toy to play with. 

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On working with other languages with fewer speakers

“We think this is really important. One example is that we worked with the government of Iceland, which is a language with fewer speakers than many of the languages that are well represented on the internet to ensure that their language was included in our model… 

And I look forward to many similar partnerships with lower resource languages to get them into our models. GPT-4 is unlike previous models of ours, which were good at English and not very good at other languages. Now, [it’s] pretty good at a large number of languages. You can go pretty far down the list ranked by number of speakers and, and still get good performance. But for these very small languages, we’re excited about custom partnerships to include that language into our model run.” – Rappler.com

It can be remembered that he said last December 2022 that he will resign as soon as he finds someone who is “foolish enough to take the job.” That person turned out to be Linda Yaccarino, a former global advertising chief at NBCUniversal.

Yaccarino is set to take over business operations while Musk focuses on product design and new technology.

Who is Yaccarino and what can be expected from her?

Background

Considered as “probably the best known salesperson” in Madison Avenue, Yaccarino has proven her expertise in the advertising industry with more than a decade of experience in being an advertising executive for NBCUniversal, and with almost two decades as the head for advertising sales in Turner, too. 

During the course of her leadership in NBCUniversal, her LinkedIn profile stated her 2,000-member global team “generated more than $100 billion in ad sales” among all her other achievements.

“She was responsible for stewarding and monetizing the company’s industry-leading portfolio of linear networks, digital and streaming platforms, distribution and commerce partnerships, and client relationships,” it went on to say. 

During her leadership in the advertisement sales of NBCUniversal, she was able to forge partnerships with Apple News, BuzzFeed, Snapchat and Twitter, among others.

Ad sales expertise

This Italian-American ad sales expert is known for creating a unified advertising sales system, and for advocating for the improvement of audience measurement. 

In 2015, she remarked that audience measurement in media was in “an absolute acute crisis” during an interview, as she explained the unmeasured NBCUniversal’s viewership that resulted in a loss of ad sales. 

Not satisfied with using an external audience measuring company, NBCUniversal released their own metric tool in 2018 called CFlight. They take pride in it as the “industry’s first cross-platform, unified advertising currency metric.”

Based on its website, it does the following: measures across all screens, implements a uniform, impressions-based metric, counts digital impressions viewed to completion only, provides co-viewing on over-the-top measurement-enabled platforms, and creates consistent post-campaign reporting – all considered essentials in the ad sales industry.

The launch of this tool came three years after Yaccarino expressed her dismay in third-party audience measurement, citing concerns on the following: no out-of-home measurement, inadequate sample size, lengthy turnaround time for basic ratings, and no reliable cross-platform measurement tools variable. 

Four years after launching their first-party metric tool, Yaccarino led the launch of platforms that aim to produce targeted ads for consumers, whose results will then be measured across both linear television and digital platforms. 

She led the development of the company’s enterprise data and identity platform, called NBCUnified in November 2022. Through this platform, advertisers would be able to “reach and better understand” their audiences by providing them access to their first-party data, which can be used for more targeted and personalized campaigns.

Not soon enough, still under her leadership, they launched the NBCUniversal One Platform in February 2023.

Her profile says this is a “unified, tech-enabled trading system” for advertisers by offering them an “audience-first approach” through an automated and interoperable campaign process.

Take against digital media

Aside from her innovative ideas to boost ad sales, Yaccarino is also known for her fight with social media companies to win over advertisers. Wired reported that she “spent her years fighting social media companies for the billions of dollars that advertisers divide up every year between old and new media.”

They also wrote that Yaccarino once pointed out the following to prove advertisers must choose broadcasting companies, like NBCUniversal, over social media: families don’t gather around newsfeeds compared to when they watch the television, social media “grade their own homework” for not using independent auditors, and TV networks have always produced high-quality content, which internet companies have been struggling with. 

Ironically enough, Yaccarino herself went against her own views as she is set to lead Twitter, a widely-used social media platform.

Bringing back advertisers

Yaccarino is expected to bring her extensive experience in the ads industry to Twitter in order to re-establish relationships with advertisers.

Twitter is suffering from a plunge in advertising revenue since Musk took over the social media platform. 

According to a report from The Infromation, over 500 of Twitter’s top advertisers have paused spending on Twitter, causing the company’s daily revenue to drop “40% lower than the same day a year ago,” with the company even starting to offer free ads in an attempt to bring back advertisers.

The Wall Street Journal reported the newly appointed Twitter boss will handle the business side of the platform, while Musk said in a tweet that he will transition to being the company’s executive chairman and chief technology officer (CTO).

Just two days after Musk announced that Yaccarino will take the helm of Twitter, top ad agency GroupM said it no longer considers Twitter “high risk,” the Financial Times said in a report. GroupM designated the social media platform as “high risk” last November following Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, warning its clients against buying ads on the platform.

Pushback from Musk’s fans

Not everyone is happy with Yaccarino leading Twitter, however.

Despite Musk saying the newly picked Twitter CEO will focus on the business side of the platform, a Forbes report said Musk’s right-leaning supporters are cautious with what the new Twitter CEO is planning for the company in terms of censorship policies.

The Washington Post said in an article Musk’s fans think that Yaccarino’s past occupation holds signs that she will “tamp down on Musk’s free-speech initiatives.”

According to Reuters’ profile of Yaccarino, she is also the chairperson of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Taskforce on Future of Work and is a member of WEF’s Media, Entertainment and Culture Industry Governors Steering Committee. 

Yaccarino’s connection with WEF, appears to “irk Musk’s right-leaning or anarchist base,” a Forbes report said. The report also said that Musk’s supporters suggest that her background “undermines the platform’s commitment to free speech.”

A Daily Mail report also said Yaccarino has “collaborated with the Biden administration to promote the COVID vaccine rollout as chair of the Ad Council.” The report said her “pro-mask” and “pro-vaxx” stance have led Twitter users to accuse Musk for “selling out” on his promise of free speech on the platform. 

To quell his supporters’ worries of Yaccarino bringing back stricter policies against mis- and disinformation, Musk said in a tweet he was “adamant about defending free speech.”

Questioning Musk head-on

During an on-stage interview at NBCUniversal’s MMA’s POSSIBLE Miami Event, Yaccarino showed she can also be tough on Musk who, at the time of the event, had yet to announce her as Twitter’s new CEO. 

During the event, Yaccarino pressed Musk on some issues such as free speech on Twitter, Musk’s controversial tweets, and the future of marketing on the social media platform.

The then soon-to-be Twitter CEO asked Musk to explain his new content moderation policies, saying that he’ll implement free speech and allow users to “post hateful content” in the platform but will reduce its reach and “put a warning label” on these kinds of content.

The Wall Street Journal reported that throughout the interview, the two “both shared the kind of vision of what Twitter is going to be.”

“If freedom of speech, as he says, is the bedrock of this country, I’m not sure that anyone in this room who could disagree with that,” Yaccarino said during the interview.

The two also gave priority to user and stakeholder feedback during the interview, which Yaccarino also emphasized in a tweet she made in reply to Musk’s announcement of her new position.

“Your feedback is VITAL to that future. I’m here for all of it. Let’s keep the conversation going and build Twitter 2.0 together!” Yaccarino said. – Rappler.com

Its first main landmass was a New England fishing village taken over by Lovecraftian horrors, and was my favorite setting of the available places to visit in the game, as it was essentially modern-day horror made palatable, and easier to enjoy because the RPG mechanics made exploring and reading stories of people in palpable existential danger fun.

Redfall, developed by Arkane Austin and published by Bethesda Softworks, released earlier this May, and I received review code to play the game and put it through its paces.

I was excited by the prospect of playing it, because I felt that the setting – vampire gods taking over a town and threatening humanity – brought back feelings I had towards The Secret World. I was stoked at the idea of someone taking on the idea of an accessible spooky RPG-shootergame.

Unfortunately, despite initial excitement, I had to temper myself after some hours and eventually stopped playing Redfall, not because the setting was uninviting, but because there were aspects of the game that detracted from the experience so badly as to make it a frustrating slog even in the opening bits.

Only turrets want you dead

One of my main issues with Redfall is that the enemy behaviors do not mesh well with the type of gameplay it wants to invoke.

As a first-person character-based shooter, you expect this game to be something like an RPG explorer’s FPS. Do you get to shoot human baddies? Yes. Can you shoot vampires, then stab them with a stake or expose them to fire or ultraviolet radiation? Quite so.

However, the gun-toting enemies, even on the Midnight difficulty setting (aka the highest difficulty before unlocking an even higher setting in a future playthrough) seem hesitant to shoot you. They fire infrequently, and oftentimes have a tendency to miss.

The vampires are predictable as well, as the primary vampire enemy fodder tries to speedily run past you and then attack from behind while you’re trying to look for them, but sometimes their pathing just causes them to not move or not attack at all.

The most egregious offense to my survivability, as a result, was not the vampires, the cultists supporting them, or any other armed enemies. Instead, it was the turrets placed down by some enemies that have lasers targeting you at all times and are relentless in their gunfire, without a seeming need to reload at all.

A practical audiovisual mess

There are aspects of the user interface – like the map and the compass system – that feel like a mess. The game doesn’t give you very good indicators of where you are as there’s no heads-up display giving you real-time location information. Instead, you pull up your map, which tells you where you are on the landmass, and what direction you’re facing.

Landmarks for missions you take are highlighted, but the exploration comes in when you figure out that there’s poisonous gas or some other impediment getting in the way of a direct beeline to an objective, forcing you to find an alternate means of getting to an area.

Worse still, the user interface for the compass in safe zones, most especially the firehouse you liberate at the start of the game, shows all the contextual shops and people you can interact with in a confusing circle around the player, which is a bit of a turn-off.

Also of unfortunate note is that some audio logs you pick up can at times play in unison with any other audio log you pick up while it’s playing. If you have subtitles turned on, it shows both subtitle sets for those both audio bits on the screen as well, but luckily, they’re not superimposed over each other at least.

A feeling of limited replayability

Lastly, there’s also a feeling of limited replayability from Redfall.

The game is set up with a strange sort of mission structure wherein mission completion of branching paths opens up new primary story missions… but there don’t seem to be a lot of them in total.

You’re basically diving into a mystery, but all primary story missions with branching paths have to be done eventually to open up new story missions that lead to the conclusion.

Based on this, and the fact the games tell you these are all non-repeatable missions, leads me to believe that you’ll want to play this on whichever of the four characters – cryptid hunter Devinder, college psychokinetic Layla, engineer Remi, and the sniper Jacob – you find most interesting or whose battle skills you enjoy most, then just consider playing through the whole slog again for more audio snippets from the new character you’re trying out.

Worse still, and I had to search this online just to be sure, you don’t get to do anything after defeating the final boss as the game just chucks you at the beginning again, so you lose out on any unfinished business you had going on.

Closing thoughts

Now, these aren’t my only issues, but these were the most glaring issues I had with the game.

I played Redfall by myself, but it’s an always-online game you can play with friends as different characters, but there’s no matchmaking to smooth out the process of multiplayer, so I didn’t try it anymore.

The game doesn’t appear to allow for pausing, so things can happen even when things are happening in the real world and you could die and lose progress (respawn at a safezone and redo traveling) just because the wild called and they wanted you in the bathroom.

I also hate how the characters seem to glide around when they run, as if they were vampires themselves, which was really off-putting, but that seemed so minor to be a legitimate concern… unless you take everything in its totality.

Redfall is a $70 game, and I cannot recommend it at that price point unless you’re willing to enjoy an unenviable slog through a horror-infused small town. It’s not going to be everyone’s horrorful good time, but if you have a hankering for inoffensive vampire god-slaying, this is your funeral, take that as as you will.

The Secret World it is not, and while I wanted it to be more than what it is, I chose to drop it from my gaming rotation till they could smooth out the rough edges and it warranted a revisit with prayed-for fixes.

So far, they’ve only done a minor patch, with no announcements regarding a post-launch roadmap to date.

My recommendation? Much like a good cryptid hunter, you should wait and see: Wait for performance patches, and see if the price is lowered significantly to warrant that fabled revisit. That said, it’s also on PC and Xbox Game Pass, if you wanted to consider it as a game to rent for a playthrough or test run than to own. – Rappler.com

I’m an astronomer who studies and has written about cosmology, black holes and exoplanets. Astronomers have been using AI for decades. In fact, in 1990, astronomers from the University of Arizona, where I am a professor, were among the first to use a type of AI called a neural network to study the shapes of galaxies.

Since then, AI has spread into every field of astronomy. As the technology has become more powerful, AI algorithms have begun helping astronomers tame massive data sets and discover new knowledge about the universe.

Better telescopes, more data

As long as astronomy has been a science, it has involved trying to make sense of the multitude of objects in the night sky. That was relatively simple when the only tools were the naked eye or a simple telescope, and all that could be seen were a few thousand stars and a handful of planets.

A hundred years ago, Edwin Hubble used newly built telescopes to show that the universe is filled with not just stars and clouds of gas, but countless galaxies. As telescopes have continued to improve, the sheer number of celestial objects humans can see and the amount of data astronomers need to sort through have both grown exponentially, too.

For example, the soon-to-be-completed Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile will make images so large that it would take 1,500 high-definition TV screens to view each one in its entirety. Over 10 years it is expected to generate 0.5 exabytes of data – about 50,000 times the amount of information held in all of the books contained within the Library of Congress.

There are 20 telescopes with mirrors larger than 20 feet (6 meters) in diameter. AI algorithms are the only way astronomers could ever hope to work through all of the data available to them today. There are a number of ways AI is proving useful in processing this data.

Picking out patterns

Astronomy often involves looking for needles in a haystack. About 99% of the pixels in an astronomical image contain background radiation, light from other sources or the blackness of space – only 1% have the subtle shapes of faint galaxies.

AI algorithms – in particular, neural networks that use many interconnected nodes and are able to learn to recognize patterns – are perfectly suited for picking out the patterns of galaxies. Astronomers began using neural networks to classify galaxies in the early 2010s. Now the algorithms are so effective that they can classify galaxies with an accuracy of 98%.

This story has been repeated in other areas of astronomy. Astronomers working on SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, use radio telescopes to look for signals from distant civilizations. Early on, radio astronomers scanned charts by eye to look for anomalies that couldn’t be explained. More recently, researchers harnessed 150,000 personal computers and 1.8 million citizen scientists to look for artificial radio signals. Now, researchers are using AI to sift through reams of data much more quickly and thoroughly than people can. This has allowed SETI efforts to cover more ground while also greatly reducing the number of false positive signals.

Another example is the search for exoplanets. Astronomers discovered most of the 5,300 known exoplanets by measuring a dip in the amount of light coming from a star when a planet passes in front of it. AI tools can now pick out the signs of an exoplanet with 96% accuracy.

Making new discoveries

AI has proved itself to be excellent at identifying known objects – like galaxies or exoplanets – that astronomers tell it to look for. But it is also quite powerful at finding objects or phenomena that are theorized but have not yet been discovered in the real world.

Teams have used this approach to detect new exoplanets, learn about the ancestral stars that led to the formation and growth of the Milky Way, and predict the signatures of new types of gravitational waves.

To do this, astronomers first use AI to convert theoretical models into observational signatures – including realistic levels of noise. They then use machine learning to sharpen the ability of AI to detect the predicted phenomena.

Finally, radio astronomers have also been using AI algorithms to sift through signals that don’t correspond to known phenomena. Recently a team from South Africa found a unique object that may be a remnant of the explosive merging of two supermassive black holes. If this proves to be true, the data will allow a new test of general relativity – Albert Einstein’s description of space-time.

Making predictions and plugging holes

As in many areas of life recently, generative AI and large language models like ChatGPT are also making waves in the astronomy world.

The team that created the first image of a black hole in 2019 used a generative AI to produce its new image. To do so, it first taught an AI how to recognize black holes by feeding it simulations of many kinds of black holes. Then, the team used the AI model it had built to fill in gaps in the massive amount of data collected by the radio telescopes on the black hole M87.

Using this simulated data, the team was able to create a new image that is two times sharper than the original and is fully consistent with the predictions of general relativity.

Astronomers are also turning to AI to help tame the complexity of modern research. A team from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics created a language model called astroBERT to read and organize 15 million scientific papers on astronomy. Another team, based at NASA, has even proposed using AI to prioritize astronomy projects, a process that astronomers engage in every 10 years.

As AI has progressed, it has become an essential tool for astronomers. As telescopes get better, as data sets get larger and as AIs continue to improve, it is likely that this technology will play a central role in future discoveries about the universe. – Rappler.com

This article originally appeared on The Conversation.

Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona

The two movie trilogies that came after the original trilogy, which ended with Return of the Jedi in 1983, are nothing if not divisive. Fan expectations for them were almost insurmountable, being continuations of a much-beloved franchise.

These movies had the tall task of bringing something new and fresh to the table, while recapturing the magic of the originals. And in the eyes of a lot of the more passionate and vocal fans online, neither of the sequel trilogies managed to do that successfully. 

For Star Wars game fans though, it’s a different story as Jedi: Survivor, the sequel to 2019’s Jedi: Fallen Order, understands the assignment.

It fulfills the expectations of a sequel, which involves expanding the formula, correcting mistakes, and making a bold attempt at surpassing the original, all while preserving its essence and feel.

But what sets Jedi Survivor apart is that it confidently embraces its nature as a sequel in ways that creatively influence the story and gameplay. 

Jedi Padawan no more

Anyone who’s played Fallen Order might notice that protagonist Kal Cestits starts Survivor with almost all his abilities from the end of his first outing, which only makes sense. Survivor picks up five years after the events of Fallen Order, so from a story perspective, Kal is no longer an inexperienced Padawan.

He’s already seen a lot of battles and has honed his skills with the lightsaber at the point in the story Survivor starts from. 

Sequels typically choose to restart the protagonist’s powers from scratch, and the story would be written around that decision. It’s usually done to keep the gameplay balanced, where the protagonist doesn’t feel too overpowered to play.

But Survivor goes the opposite direction, and it manages to do so without causing any balance issues. 

Developers Respawn Entertainment said instead of starting Kal from scratch, the enemies for Survivor have been tweaked to handle his powers from the start.

They also gave Kal a whole host of new abilities to learn and skills to master throughout the game, which further the notion that he’s a Jedi who’s still growing in power. These decisions not only remedy balance-related concerns but also make combat engaging from the get-go.

It’s so refreshing and fun to play a sequel that sees the same protagonist progressing forward from one game to the next rather than backward. 

Open spaces 

Survivor also sticks to sequel tradition by expanding its scope. The world here is not only bigger but richer as well. Kal has more to do and side characters to interact with, making the different planets he visits throughout the game feel more lived-in and connected to the wider Star Wars universe. 

Meanwhile, the world itself is more dynamic than that of the Fallen Order’s, with many of the landscapes and platforming puzzles being built on verticality. It’s a clever design decision that helps convey the scale of the game’s maps without departing from the first-game’s semi-open world design.

What’s great about these changes is that they improve the overall gameplay experience of Survivor in a way that’s respectful to the core formula of Fallen Order.

There’s a fine line with sequels, wherein too many changes can make it feel like a different game from the original, while too few can make it a cash-grab that could pass as a downloadable expansion.

Survivor masterfully treads that thin middle ground, bringing just enough to move the franchise forward and satisfy returning players at the same time. 

A lot of that has to do with the talent behind the game, the folks at Respawn Entertainment. These developers knew they already had something good with Fallen Order, and it was a matter of how they could improve it further for the sequel.

Even then, development likely wasn’t easy as they had to find a balance between fan feedback and their own creative visions. Yet, they pulled it off, delivering on both fronts to a certain degree. 

That’s likely why Survivor is receiving almost universal praise from outlets and fans alike. It manages to do what many sequels fail to do, and that’s to achieve a delicate balance between the fresh and the familiar and fan expectations and the developers’ own creative visions. – Rappler.com

It debuted its Search Generative Experience (SGE) for people by allowing the Google search engine to do a lot of the work required for answering the complex query, “What’s better for a family with kids under 3 and a dog, Bryce Canyon or Arches.”

It came back with a detailed response that tried to answer the question in its totality, rather than letting the human do the work of sifting through information to get to an acceptable answer.

This “AI Snapshot” as its called, summarizes the information it’s indexed to help get at an acceptable answer for the person asking the question.

While Google poses this as being beneficial for people, the company doesn’t quite explain what’s at stake in terms of harms caused by such a product.

I believe it’s a harmful disruption to the way journalism and knowledge-seeking works, leaving publishers and websites filled with the actual information people can use untapped amid Google’s search for profit.

Regurgitation

To recap, Google’s SGE is scouring the internet for information on websites related to one’s query, and then indexing and summarizing the results using its Large Language Models.

Essentially, this means its regurgitating information that’s already available online, changing how search works by keeping one’s attention on the search engine’s AI output, instead of initially listing websites that would help a person make their own decision.

While this can potentially help the person doing the searching – remember that generative AI doesn’t really “know” if its correct, and only vomits what appears to be informative words strung together that can actually be disinformation – this does nothing to compensate the websites that have done the hard work of getting news and helpful data out to the public.

An even more unwelcome change to search behavior

According to 2019 research material from the Nielsen Norman Group, the behavior of people using search engines has already markedly changed from the early days of search, as those websites with the proper search engine optimization (SEO) normally get attention, and most searchers don’t even check beyond page one of a search query.

Once SGE is perfected and becomes more commonplace, it stands to reason you can expect readership on informational websites to further lessen as search engines gobble up the hard work of millions of writers on a myriad of subjects – my own work included – without any compensation, much less fleeting acknowledgement on a sidebar.

Speaking with Futurism, Google had little in response to the question of compensation to publishers for AI-regurgitated content. “We don’t have plans to share on this, but we’ll continue to work with the broader ecosystem,” the Google spokesperson said.

Support human work

As you can expect, that doesn’t quite track well with writers in general.

A lack of compensation can spell the end of an era for digital publishing, and a lack of credit can be disheartening for many people trying to actually get their start as a budding writer earnestly discussing information about their hobbies or interests.

Search was bad enough when algorithms changed the landscape to force people to focus on SEO over quality, informative writing. This new experience, left uncontrolled, may bring about something worse.

You see, if people aren’t enthused about writing anymore, and no one’s left writing about anything, what do you expect will Google’s generative search to be regurgitating information from?

This leads to the possibility that, without any guardrails in place to properly credit and compensate writers and publishers, the search generative experience will eventually stagnate, or even cannibalize itself out of new information on a broader range of topics.

In the end, an uninhibited AI-enabled search experience that does not support the writers it gobbles up information from will spit out disaster for a knowledge-seeking public. – Rappler.com