ms_atoz | News, Reviews & More

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/09/05/media-roundup-anthropic-agrees-to-pay-1-5-billion-to-settle-lawsuit-with-book-authors-about-3000-per-work/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167035

Primary Document: Settlement Agreement (39 pages; PDF) (via CourtListener)

From The NY Times:

In a landmark settlement, Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence company, has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to a group of authors and publishers after a judge ruled it had illegally downloaded and stored millions of copyrighted books.

The settlement is largest payout in the history of U.S. copyright cases. Anthropic will pay $3,000 per work to 500,000 authors.

[Clip]

As part of the settlement, Anthropic said that it did not use any pirated works to build A.I. technologies that were publicly released. The settlement also gives anyone the right to still sue Anthropic if they believe that the company’s technologies are reproducing their works without proper approval. Anthropic also agreed to delete the pirated works it downloaded and stored.

Read the Complete Article

From Reuters:

Anthropic and the plaintiffs in a court filing asked U.S. District Judge William Alsup to approve the settlement, after announcing the agreement in August without disclosing the terms or amount.

“If approved, this landmark settlement will be the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history, larger than any other copyright class action settlement or any individual copyright case litigated to final judgment,” the plaintiffs said in the filing.

Read the Complete Article

From WIRED:

Anthropic is not admitting any wrongdoing or liability. “Today’s settlement, if approved, will resolve the plaintiffs’ remaining legacy claims. We remain committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems,” Anthropic deputy general counsel Aparna Sridhar said in a statement.

It’s unclear how the literary world will respond to the terms of the settlement. Since this was an “opt-out” class action, authors who are eligible but dissatisfied with the terms will be able to request exclusion to file their own lawsuits. Notably, the plaintiffs filed a motion today to keep the “opt-out threshold” confidential, which means that the public will not have access to the exact number of class members who would need to opt out for the settlement to be terminated.

[Clip]

This is not the end of Anthropic’s copyright legal challenges. The company is also facing a lawsuit from a group of major record labels, including Universal Music Group, which alleges that the company used copyrighted lyrics to train its Claude chatbot. The plaintiffs are now attempting to amend their case to include allegations that Anthropic used the peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent to illegally download songs, and their lawyers recently stated in court filings that they may file a new lawsuit about piracy if they are not permitted to amend the current complaint.

Read the Complete Article

From the Associated Press:

As part of the settlement, the company has also agreed to destroy the original book files it downloaded.

[Clip]

On Friday, Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, called the settlement “an excellent result for authors, publishers, and rightsholders generally, sending a strong message to the AI industry that there are serious consequences when they pirate authors’ works to train their AI, robbing those least able to afford it.”

The Danish Rights Alliance, which successfully fought to take down one of those shadow libraries, said Friday that the settlement would be of little help to European writers and publishers whose works aren’t registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

“On the one hand, it’s comforting to see that compiling AI training datasets by downloading millions of books from known illegal file-sharing sites comes at a price,” said Thomas Heldrup, the group’s head of content protection and enforcement.

On the other hand, Heldrup said it fits a tech industry playbook to grow a business first and later pay a relatively small fine, compared to the size of the business, for breaking the rules.

Read the Complete Article

From Variety:

A hearing has been set for Sept. 8 for preliminary approval of the agreement. A website, AnthropicCopyrightSettlement.com, has been established to enable class members to participate in the settlement. The website is expected to add a searchable database of affected works, which were contained in the Library Genesis (LibGen) and Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi) databases.

Read the Complete Article

Statements

Association of American Publishers: Statement and Q&A
Authors Guild: Statement/Resources
Human Artistry Campaign: Statement
Re:Create: Statement on the Settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/09/05/media-roundup-anthropic-agrees-to-pay-1-5-billion-to-settle-lawsuit-with-book-authors-about-3000-per-work/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167035

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/09/05/darpa-research-project-dont-just-ask-a-chatbot-have-it-push-useful-info-right-when-its-needed/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167033

From the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA):

Asking a chatbot for help on any number of issues has become part of daily life for many. But today’s query-based AI tools built on large language models (LLMs) are limited to responding to questions users ask.

These tools can pull queried info from a database, but they can’t automatically push insightful and contextualized knowledge to help a user complete a task without being asked.

DARPA’s Knowledge Management at Scale and Speed (KMASS) program, which kicked off in 2022 and recently held its final principal investigator meeting, has developed a variety of new tools that can automatically ingest knowledge sources and disseminate specific “nuggets” of info relevant to a workflow — whether the user requests the knowledge or not — exactly when needed, while avoiding irrelevant or already known information. This personalized knowledge sharing concept is a core tenet of KMASS referred to as “JustINs” — i.e., just in time, just enough, and just for me.

[Clip]

“Using LLMs is like casting a magical spell; you need to find the right words to get the model to do what you want. Popular LLMs give you a haystack of info to search through when you ask a question, whereas KMASS will push the needle in the haystack to you as you’re working on a task, even if you don’t know the right question to ask,” said Matthew Marge, a leading AI expert at DARPA and KMASS program manager. “KMASS overcomes the input/output knowledge bottleneck, which occurs when knowledge producers don’t have easy ways to document knowledge and knowledge consumers don’t have easy ways to get at that knowledge.”

Source: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

Read the Complete Article

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/09/05/darpa-research-project-dont-just-ask-a-chatbot-have-it-push-useful-info-right-when-its-needed/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167033

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/09/05/journal-article-ai-for-scientific-integrity-detecting-ethical-breaches-errors-and-misconduct-in-manuscripts/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167032

The article linked below was recently published by Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence.

Title

Journal Article: AI For Scientific Integrity: Detecting Ethical Breaches, Errors, and Misconduct in Manuscripts

Authors

Diogo Pellegrina
University of Saskatchewan

Mohamed Helmy
University of Saskatchewan
Idaho State University
Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore

Source

Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence
Volume 8 (2025)

DOI: 10.3389/frai.2025.1644098

Abstract

The use of Generative AI (GenAI) in scientific writing has grown rapidly, offering tools for manuscript drafting, literature summarization, and data analysis. However, these benefits are accompanied by risks, including undisclosed AI authorship, manipulated content, and the emergence of papermills. This perspective examines two key strategies for maintaining research integrity in the GenAI era: (1) detecting unethical or inappropriate use of GenAI in scientific manuscripts and (2) using AI tools to identify mistakes in scientific literature, such as statistical errors, image manipulation, and incorrect citations. We reviewed the capabilities and limitations of existing AI detectors designed to differentiate human-written (HWT) from machine-generated text (MGT), highlighting performance gaps, genre sensitivity, and vulnerability to adversarial attacks. We also investigate emerging AI-powered systems aimed at identifying errors in published research, including tools for statistical verification, citation validation, and image manipulation detection. Additionally, we discuss recent publishing industry initiatives to AI-driven papermills. Our investigation shows that these developments are not yet sufficiently accurate or reliable yet for use in academic assessment, they mark an early but promising steps toward scalable, AI-assisted quality control in scholarly publishing.

Direct to Full Text Article

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/09/05/journal-article-ai-for-scientific-integrity-detecting-ethical-breaches-errors-and-misconduct-in-manuscripts/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167032

bookwormsworld_feed

Posted by Luanne

http://luanne-abookwormsworld.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-wrong-sister-claire-douglas.html

Woohoo! A new book from Claire Douglas - The Wrong Sister.

I adore domestic suspense novels. There are so many ways that a story can unfurl. A stranger trying to get into a family, or someone try to get out. Or both?...

Another must 'haves' are twists and turns! I really enjoy being surprised! Is it a clue, truth or lies?

There's one of every kind of personality populating the pages of The Wrong Sister. Tasha is the one I was drawn to. Douglas does a great job with creating other players. And a hard to crack whodunnit!

Another great read from Claire Douglas! I'm looking for her next book.

http://luanne-abookwormsworld.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-wrong-sister-claire-douglas.html

libofcongressblog_feed

Posted by Neely Tucker

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2025/09/cassandra-gardner-life-is-too-short-not-to-enjoy-yourself/

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/?p=32027

Cassandra Gardner is an administrative specialist in the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate. She is retiring this month after a 40-year career at the Library. Sahar Kazmi conducted this interview.

Tell us about your background.

I was born and raised in Maryland and attended Prince George’s County schools. My parents bought their first house two years before I was born, and I still live in that house. I’m the only person I know who has never moved in their lifetime.

What brought you to the Library?

I was a work-study student at Northwestern High School in 1985. I would go to school for four hours, leave and then go to the Library and work for four hours. I was offered a permanent job after graduation. Little did I know that I would spend the rest of my work career here. I started as a clerk in the Copyright Office. I stayed there for four years until I accepted a position in what was then called Library Services. Library Services is now Library Collections and Services Group, and I work in the Acquisitions, Fiscal and Support Section as an administrative specialist. In my current position, I’m responsible for all administrative duties in AFOS, which include time and attendance, travel, entering performance documents, etc. I also assist the director of the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate and the chief of the Network Development and MARC Standards Office with hiring actions such as submitting vacancy requests, scheduling interviews and initiating onboarding activities.

What achievements are you most proud of?

I’m most proud of being here for 40 years and forming lifelong friendships. I’m also proud of all the outstanding appraisals I’ve received and the awards for my performance throughout the years.

What are some standout moments from your time at the Library?

My standout moments are milestones that I made for myself. Before retiring, I wanted to be a seat filler at the Gershwin Prize, attend a Nationals game on Library Night and volunteer at the National Book Festival. I’m proud to say I’ve done all three! I’ve also enjoyed working with the Library’s overseas offices and being able to go to the different embassies here in D.C. to apply for visas for the field directors and for Library employees that had to travel to the field offices on business.

What’s next for you?

As a lifelong Redskins/Commanders fan, I will be going to Atlanta for the Commanders/Falcons game in September. In the immediate future after retirement, I have trips planned to Nashville, Connecticut, Las Vegas to see the New Kids on the Block’s residency and a cruise to Aruba and Curacao. I’m also looking forward to not having to wake up at 4:30 a.m. for work. Next year, I will look for a parttime job to give me something to do while also earning travel and casino money. Life is too short not to enjoy yourself.

Subscribe to the blog— it’s free!

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2025/09/cassandra-gardner-life-is-too-short-not-to-enjoy-yourself/

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/?p=32027

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/09/03/report-the-hbcu-digital-library-trust-preserves-history/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167027

From the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative:

Launched in 2023, the HBCU Digital Library Trust is on a mission to reach the next generation of students, researchers, and information seekers through one digital platform with materials showcasing the history of Black academia in the United States post-emancipation.

Funded by the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative, the work of the Trust is built on the strong foundation of the digital preservation movement, which began in the 1970s. This movement gained momentum in the United States in the 1990s. In the early 2000s, Janice Franklin and Loretta Parham led the way in introducing collective digital preservation to HBCUs, co-founding the HBCU Library Alliance, a group committed to supporting the sustainability of historically Black colleges and universities libraries at large. In 2006, the Mellon Foundation provided a $375,000 grant to Cornell University and the HBCU Library Alliance. This grant supported the launch of the HBCU Digital Collection.

[Clip]

In 2008, the Atlanta University Center Woodruff Library became the host of the digital collection, an early digitization program that aimed to expand access to the archival collections at historically Black colleges and universities.

As part of a four-year commitment, Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery (H&LS) Initiative contributed six million dollars in 2023 to launch the HBCU Digital Library Trust with Harvard Library, working in partnership with the HBCU Library Alliance and the Atlanta University Center Woodruff Library. The Trust is a priority for Harvard Library in its efforts to improve the discovery and accessibility of special archival and digital collections for all. To expand the HBCU Digital Collection, the Trust both broadens access and builds capacity so that institutions can benefit from advanced technology and digitization expertise and support.

By 2027, the Trust hopes that all 102-plus HBCUs are contributors. To date, the Trust has digitized over 16,000 materials.

Learn More, Read the Complete Article (about 1020 words)

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/09/03/report-the-hbcu-digital-library-trust-preserves-history/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167027

bookwormsworld_feed

Posted by Luanne

http://luanne-abookwormsworld.blogspot.com/2025/09/a-baby-for-home-front-girls-susanna.html

A Baby for the Home Front Girls is the fifth and final book in Susanna Bavin's wonderful series. You could read this as a stand alone as well.

Manchester. 1942.

Sitting down with one of Bavis’s books feels like getting caught up with your friends. A core group have been in every book and some come and some go. But each one has their own story to tell. In this book, a blanket is found on the steps of a building. With a small infant inside….

The war is still raging and again Bavis details the bombings the crashes and so much more. The war is a character on its own.

I’m fascinated by how women made something last a little longer, come up with recipes to fit what they do have to eat and amongst all this, they have fun. Keep Calm and Carry On.

I’m sad that the series is ending, but I’m looking forward to Bavis’s next series. A Bookworm's World was one of today's tour stops. See below for what other bloggers thought.

http://luanne-abookwormsworld.blogspot.com/2025/09/a-baby-for-home-front-girls-susanna.html

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/09/02/indiana-libraries-prepare-for-financial-hit/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167026

From the Indiana Capital Chronicle:

Much of the discussion surrounding property tax reform has focused on schools, law enforcement and local government having to cut services due to reduced funding. But libraries are also in line to see impacts from Senate Enrolled Act 1 – legislation passed in April cutting property taxes.

Several Indiana librarians expressed uncertainty about the exact effects of SEA 1, a complicated law that impacts both property and income taxes.

“I wish I knew exactly what all this was going to mean,” said Kim Porter, director of the Batesville Memorial Public Library. “I don’t understand it.”

Two major concerns raised by SEA 1, according to Indiana Library Federation President Julie Wendorf are property tax revenue and the local income tax (LIT) distribution formula. Hoosier homeowners are expected to save an average of $300 in property taxes – the primary funding source for most libraries, according to Wendorf. Paired with changes to LIT formulas, many library’s budgets will feel the strain.

“Library funding across Indiana is not standardized,” Wendorf explained, “each public library receives tax support in a unique manner, influenced by its local property tax rate and access to local income tax revenue.”

The full effects of SEA 1 likely won’t be seen until 2028, by which point many will face “significant reductions to their overall funding,” said Wendorf, “due to both diminished property tax growth and decreased LIT allocations.”

Learn More, Read the Complete Article (about 1500 words)

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/09/02/indiana-libraries-prepare-for-financial-hit/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167026

marycatelli posting in

books

The Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine, Vol. 2 by Grrr and Irinbi

The isekai continues. Spoilers for the first one ahead.
( Read more... )

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/09/01/journal-article-on-the-open-road-to-universal-indexing-openalex-and-open-journal-systems/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167024

The article linked below was recently published by Quantitative Science Studies (QSS)

Title

On the Open Road to Universal Indexing: OpenAlex and Open Journal Systems

Authors

Diego Chavarro
Juan Pablo Alperin
John Willinsky

Source

Quantitative Science Studies (QSS)

DOI: 10.1162/qss.a.17

Abstract

This study examines OpenAlex’s indexing of Journals Using Open Journal Systems (JUOJS), reflecting two open-source software initiatives supporting inclusive scholarly participation. By analyzing a data set of 47,625 active JUOJS, we reveal that 71% of these journals have at least one article indexed in OpenAlex. Our findings underscore the central role of Crossref DOIs in achieving indexing, with 96% of the journals using Crossref DOIs included in OpenAlex. However, this technical dependency reflects broader structural inequities, as resource-limited journals, particularly those from low-income countries (47% of JUOJS) and non-English language journals (55–64% of JUOJS), remain underrepresented. Our work highlights the theoretical implications of scholarly infrastructure dependencies and their role in perpetuating systemic disparities in global knowledge visibility. We argue that even inclusive bibliographic databases like OpenAlex must actively address financial, infrastructural, and linguistic barriers to foster equitable indexing on a global scale. By conceptualizing the relationship between indexing mechanisms, persistent identifiers, and structural inequities, this study provides a critical lens for rethinking the dynamics of universal indexing and its realization in a global, multilingual scholarly ecosystem.

Source: 10.1162/qss.a.17

Direct to Access Article

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/09/01/journal-article-on-the-open-road-to-universal-indexing-openalex-and-open-journal-systems/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167024

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/09/01/report-the-large-gender-gap-in-who-uses-ai/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167023

From The Wall Street Journal (via The Hindustan Times)

Are men more likely than women to use generative artificial intelligence?

The answer, according to a recent working paper, is yes. The authors looked at generative AI adoption globally and found a pronounced gap in men’s and women’s usage of AI, both professionally and in everyday life.

For example, in one part of the study the authors found that women made up 42% of the roughly 200 million average monthly users at ChatGPT, 42.4% at Perplexity and 31.2% at Anthropic’s Claude. This data was collected between November 2022 and May 2024 and reflects monthly averages.

The gender gap was even more pronounced when the authors looked at AI usage on smartphones. Between May 2023 and November 2024, only 27.2% of total ChatGPT application downloads are estimated to have come from women. Similarly low shares of mobile downloads by women were seen on Anthropic’s Claude and Perplexity.

Direct to Full Text Article

Note: An archived copy of the full text article is available here.

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/09/01/report-the-large-gender-gap-in-who-uses-ai/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167023

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/31/report-bring-your-own-brain-why-local-llms-are-taking-off/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167022

From The Register:

Companies that advocate for local LLMs also cite technological democracy as a driver. “AI is one of the greatest sources of leverage humanity has ever had,” says Emre Can Kartal, growth engineer and lead at Jan, a project from Menlo Research to build locally run models and the tools that manage them. “Our mission is to make sure it remains open and in people’s hands, not concentrated [among] a few tech giants.”

Cost is also a factor. AI companies selling compute power at a loss tend to rate-limit users. Anyone who pays more than $100 a month to one of the foundational model vendors only to get cut off during a marathon AI-powered coding session will understand the issue.

[Clip]

Foundational AI model-as-a-service companies charge for insights by the token, and they’re doing it at a loss. The profits will have to come eventually, whether that’s direct from your pocket, or from your data, you might be interested in other ways to get the benefits of AI without being beholden to a corporation.

Increasingly, people are experimenting with running those models themselves. Thanks to developments in hardware and software, it’s more realistic than you might think.

[Clip]

“I was experimenting extensively with GPT-3 (before ChatGPT), and was building programs you might call ‘agents’ today,” says Yagil Burowski, founder of LM Studio, a tool that allows users to download and run LLMs. “It was a real bummer to remember that, every time my code runs it cost money, because there was just so much to explore.”

[Clip]

Ollama, one of the most popular CLI platforms for running your own LLMs, is a developer layer built atop llama.cpp. It offers single-line installation of over 200 pre-configured LLMs, making it easy for LLM developers to get up and running with their own local generative AI.

Learn More, Read the Complete Article (about 2000 words)

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/31/report-bring-your-own-brain-why-local-llms-are-taking-off/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167022

michaelgeistsblog_feed

Posted by Michael Geist

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2025/09/grocery-shopping-while-jewish/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=grocery-shopping-while-jewish

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/?p=21124

In my family, it was always the “kosher Loblaws.” Featuring Ottawa’s only large kosher food section, the Loblaws location at College Square in the west end of the city is our destination several times per week for everything from groceries, to prescription refills, to challah bread for Shabbat. My Globe and Mail opinion piece published this weekend notes that as the only such store in Ottawa, it serves as both a place to see familiar faces and a reminder of the small size of the Jewish community here.

Last week, a 71-year-old man from Cornwall, Ont., is alleged to have entered the store and stabbed a Jewish grandmother multiple times in the back. The grandmother, well known in the Jewish community here, is thankfully now at home recovering. But the initial fears that this might be an antisemitic attack appear to have been borne out, as a review of the alleged attacker’s social media feed reveals a steady stream of antisemitic hate stretching back years. On Friday, Ottawa police announced they will be investigating the incident as a hate-motivated crime.

For the Jewish community, this means yet more security measures as grocery stores get added to a list that now includes synagogues, community events, schools, senior homes and campus lectures – a growing number of places requiring added security and secrecy to keep the community protected. For individuals, it means rethinking placing mezuzahs on the outside of doors, wearing a kippah or Star of David, or participating in Jewish events, given fears of heightened safety risks. The cumulative effect is the gradual erasure of a visible Jewish presence in Canada.

This event hits very close to home, raising the question of how it can happen in a country like Canada in 2025. There is no single answer – antisemitism has been a scourge for thousands of years – but the failure of Canadian leaders in confronting it must surely be at the very top of the list.

No politician can single-handedly prevent antisemitic attacks, just as no community or campus leader can guarantee the safety of all community members. But for nearly two years, the rise of antisemitism has too often been met with inaction and generic statements against all forms of hate, or assurances that this behaviour wasn’t reflective of Canadian values. Unfortunately, this has proven nowhere near enough.

The words themselves have been wholly inadequate. Fearing political blowback, too many leaders have been unwilling to lean into support for the Jewish community with unequivocal condemnation of antisemitism without caveats or references to other forms of hate. Too many have avoided community events, leaving the unmistakable impression that the Jewish community is on its own.

The result is a torrent of hate online and in our streets that targets Jews directly, or is thinly disguised with claims that the opposition is only to Zionists, who represent the vast majority of the Jewish community supporting self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland.

Despite promises of more effective legislation and mandates for police to enforce the laws, far more can be done. Bubble-zone legislation to protect vulnerable community institutions is still needed, alongside the enforcement of existing laws so that the rights of all members of the community are respected.

And these issues are not merely a local matter. Last week, Australia expelled the Iranian ambassador after evidence emerged that two violent antisemitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne were state-sponsored by Iran. In other words, this is now a national security matter and should be treated as such.

Into the void of inaction comes an escalation of risk. Legitimate political protests outside of government consulates have morphed into actions at campus buildings, hospitals, synagogues, community parades and senior homes, blurring the line between political opposition and the direct targeting of the Jewish community. And as politicians remain silent and law enforcement stays on the sidelines, the language becomes more violent in nature amidst allegations of criminality directed at an entire community. Viewed in that light, an elderly man shifting hateful words to violent action becomes not only understandable, but seemingly inevitable.

As I reviewed the accused attacker’s social media feed, I was struck by more than just the open antisemitism. Several of the posts sparked banal responses from others. Some cheered him on while others merely asked how he was doing and paid no mind to the hate they had just read. Whether you are a politician, a community leader, or just an average citizen, we all must play a part to bring this normalcy of antisemitism to an end.

The post Grocery Shopping While Jewish appeared first on Michael Geist.

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2025/09/grocery-shopping-while-jewish/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=grocery-shopping-while-jewish

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/?p=21124

rocky41_7 posting in

books

This review will be briefer than I wish, because I’ve got two fingers taped up (injury) and it makes typing a pain. This morning I finished book #12 from the “Women in Translation” rec list, which was Siblings by Brigitte Reimann, translated from German by Lucy Renner Jones.

This book was published in 1963, just two years after the Berlin Wall went up, but takes place in 1960, before the Wall. It’s a book about three siblings, but really it’s a book about Germany’s future. The core of the novel is the relationship between the protagonist, Elisabeth (“Lise”) and her brother, Uli; and their views on the German state.

Lise is an adamant supporter of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; aka communist East Germany) and communism as a whole. She views it as her generation’s chance to right the injustices of a capitalistic world. Uli, on the other hand, while supportive of communism, resents the GDR for what he views as a lack of opportunity and its petty politics. At the start of the novel, Uli has decided to defect to the west, and Lise and her partner Joachim are trying to convince him to stay.

Throughout these efforts, the shadow of their eldest brother Konrad hangs over them—Konrad has already defected, years earlier, and is firmly settled in West Germany, though not without struggle.

This book is very politically philosophical. As mentioned, it’s about Uli and Lise (and Konrad), but it’s really about the future of Germany. Not yet 20 years out from the end of WWII, this is not an easy question (and there is a lot of finger-pointing to go around about who did what for the Nazis while they were in power). The book definitely leans in favor of supporting the GDR. While Uli and Konrad have their gripes about it, these are generally cast, through Lise’s viewpoint, as self-centered, or fig leaves for their real issue, which is that they cannot let go of a capitalist ownership mindset. Even where she acknowledges their complaints as valid—such as Uli’s frustration at the stunted opportunities for anyone who is not a Party member—her attitude is essentially that they need to tough it out for the sake of making the communist experiment work, or that it’s a reasonable trade off to avoid what she sees as the cruelties of capitalist West Germany.

It's the closest I’ve ever come to reading a pro-communism book (even Soviet authors I’ve read have been pretty staunchly against the Party, a la Lydia Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna), which made it interesting in that respect, as well as in how it addresses the ways the split of Germany affected individual Germans and German families.

However, the prose is very “tell not show” and this, combined with the highly philosophical nature of it, kept me at arm’s length from the characters and their lives.

Nevertheless, it’s fascinating from a historical perspective.

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/30/abraham-lincoln-presidential-library-and-museum-adds-nearly-500-images-to-its-online-collection-of-high-resolution-lincoln-pictures/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167015

From the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum:

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum has added nearly 500 images to its online collection of high-resolution Lincoln pictures, including photos of Lincoln’s assassin, the nation grieving Lincoln’s death and the places he lived throughout his life.

The ALPLM’s “Picturing Lincoln” collection now offers 1,485 photos, illustrations and cartoons related to America’s 16th president. The collection is hosted by the Secretary of State’s Illinois Digital Archives.

Source: ALPLM

Highlights of the newly posted images include:

Photos of assassin John Wilkes Booth and illustrations portraying him with the devil or showing him as a ghostly fugitive.

Images of the many places Lincoln lived, from log cabins to the White House.

Scenes related to Lincoln’s death, including photos of mourning crowds and illustrations of him in heaven with George Washington.

[Clip]

“Picturing Lincoln” was made possible by a $100,000 grant funded through the Illinois State Library. Several thousand other Lincoln images have already been scanned and will be added to the website over the coming months.

If there’s a thread running through the newly available images, it is the nation’s reaction to the assassination of the president. Viewers will find illustrations of Lincoln on his deathbed, ascending to heaven to take his place alongside Washington and being crowned with laurels by Liberty. Other images heap scorn on Booth. One shows him as a literal empty space defined by snakes, alligators and a grasping claw. In another, the fleeing assassin is haunted by a ghostly image of Lincoln.

Direct to Picturing Lincoln Digital Collection

Direct to Complete Post

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/30/abraham-lincoln-presidential-library-and-museum-adds-nearly-500-images-to-its-online-collection-of-high-resolution-lincoln-pictures/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167015

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/30/journal-article-new-sources-of-inaccuracy-a-conceptual-framework-for-studying-ai-hallucinations/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167013

The article (full text) linked below was recently published by Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review.

Title

New Sources of Inaccuracy? A Conceptual Framework For Studying AI Hallucinations

Author

Anqi Shao
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Source

Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review (2025)

DOI: 10.37016/mr-2020-182

Summary

In February 2025, Google’s AI Overview fooled itself and its users when it cited an April Fool’s satire about “microscopic bees powering computers” as factual in search results (Kidman, 2025). Google did not intend to mislead, yet the system produced a confident falsehood. Such cases mark a shift from misinformation caused by human mistakes to errors generated by probabilistic AI systems with no understanding of accuracy or intent to deceive. With the working definition of misinformation as any content that contradicts the best available evidence, I argue that such “AI hallucinations” represent a distinct form of misinformation requiring new frameworks of interpretations and interventions.

Source: 10.37016/mr-2020-182

Direct to Full Text Article

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/30/journal-article-new-sources-of-inaccuracy-a-conceptual-framework-for-studying-ai-hallucinations/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167013

marycatelli posting in

books

The Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine, Vol. 1 by Grrr and Irinbi

An isekai.

( Read more... )

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/29/research-article-preprint-do-students-rely-on-ai-analysis-of-student-chatgpt-conversations-from-a-field-study/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167011

The article (preprint) linked below was recently posted on arXiv.

Title

Do Students Rely on AI? Analysis of Student-ChatGPT Conversations from a Field Study

Authors

Jiayu Zheng (Johns Hopkins University), Lingxin Hao, Kelun Lu, Ashi Garg, Mike Reese, Melo-Jean Yap, I-Jeng Wang, Xingyun Wu, Wenrui Huang, Jenna Hoffman, Ariane Kelly, My Le, Ryan Zhang, Yanyu Lin, Muhammad Faayez, Anqi Liu

Source

via arXiv

DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2508.20244

Abstract

This study explores how college students interact with generative AI (ChatGPT-4) during educational quizzes, focusing on reliance and predictors of AI adoption. Conducted at the early stages of ChatGPT implementation, when students had limited familiarity with the tool, this field study analyzed 315 student-AI conversations during a brief, quiz-based scenario across various STEM courses. A novel four-stage reliance taxonomy was introduced to capture students’ reliance patterns, distinguishing AI competence, relevance, adoption, and students’ final answer correctness. Three findings emerged. First, students exhibited overall low reliance on AI and many of them could not effectively use AI for learning. Second, negative reliance patterns often persisted across interactions, highlighting students’ difficulty in effectively shifting strategies after unsuccessful initial experiences. Third, certain behavioral metrics strongly predicted AI reliance, highlighting potential behavioral mechanisms to explain AI adoption. The study’s findings underline critical implications for ethical AI integration in education and the broader field. It emphasizes the need for enhanced onboarding processes to improve student’s familiarity and effective use of AI tools. Furthermore, AI interfaces should be designed with reliance-calibration mechanisms to enhance appropriate reliance. Ultimately, this research advances understanding of AI reliance dynamics, providing foundational insights for ethically sound and cognitively enriching AI practices.

Visualizing Reliance Taxonomy. Based on our identification of the 4 labels as the reliance code, we classify student-AI conversation into 12 scenarios. If the answer given by AI is factually wrong at the first place, the answer is irrelevant to student’s question by definition. Source: 10.48550/arXiv.2508.20244

Direct to Abstract + Link to Full Text

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/29/research-article-preprint-do-students-rely-on-ai-analysis-of-student-chatgpt-conversations-from-a-field-study/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167011

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/29/journal-article-reimagining-the-humanities-book-bringing-living-with-machines-to-life-through-experimental-publishing-workflows-and-open-research-practices/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167010

The article linked below was recently published by Learned Publishing.

Title

Reimagining the Humanities Book: Bringing Living With Machines to Life Through Experimental Publishing Workflows and Open Research Practices

Authors

Emma Gallon
University of London Press, School of Advanced Study, University of London

Jamie Bowman
University of London Press, School of Advanced Study, University of London

Source

Learned Publishing
Volume 38, Issue 4 e2025

DOI: 10.1002/leap.2025

Summary

Limited options currently exist for humanities researchers looking to engage with open research practices and experimental forms in book publishing.

The adapted publishing workflows and formats used for the experimental open access book project, Living with Machines, offer a model for reuse by publishers and authors.

Iterative publication, open peer review and multimedia integration increased community engagement with the book and maximised the research data and other outputs generated by the research project.

Closer coordination between editorial and production functions, new forms of collaboration between publishers, authors and reviewers, and clear process documentation were key learnings in the effective running of this experiment.

Direct to Full Text

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/29/journal-article-reimagining-the-humanities-book-bringing-living-with-machines-to-life-through-experimental-publishing-workflows-and-open-research-practices/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167010

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/28/the-value-of-rda-for-national-persistent-identifier-pid-strategies-white-paper-report-from-the-research-data-alliance/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167007

From the Research Data Alliance (RDA) White Paper:

The Research Data Alliance (RDA) organised workshops on 15 and 20 May 2025, to demonstrate the RDA’s policy impact and encourage implementation of RDA recommendations and outputs in different policy contexts. The workshops focused on critical policy areas that form essential research infrastructure including National Persistent Identifier (PID) Strategies for reliable tracking and citation of research outputs. The workshops featured lightning talks presenting policy statements and ‘Adoption Stories’ that showcased practical applications of RDA recommendations, followed by Q&A sessions to facilitate participant engagement with the speakers. During the workshops, co-chairs of the RDA National PID Strategies Interest Group, Hana Heringová and Natasha Simons, provided an overview of the value of the RDA for national persistent identifier (PID) strategies. They each provided a policy statement, explaining the importance of national PID strategies, and how the related RDA National PID Strategies Working Group recommendation, the National PID Strategy Guide and Checklist, has been successfully adapted and adopted by various countries and regions around the world.

Direct to White Paper: National PID Strategies
14 pages; PDF.

Direct to Complete Workshop Report:
13 pages; PDF

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/28/the-value-of-rda-for-national-persistent-identifier-pid-strategies-white-paper-report-from-the-research-data-alliance/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167007

libofcongressblog_feed

Posted by Neely Tucker

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2025/08/visit-a-library-of-wonders/

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/?p=31971

With an introduction by Page Harrington, chief of the Visitor Engagement Office, this is a guest post by several members of that office. It also appears in the July-August issue Library of Congress Magazine.

The nation’s capital is a visitor’s delight: Few places in the United States, if any, pack so many binge-worthy historical and cultural sights into such a compact area.

And few places in Washington, if any, can match the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building for sheer beauty and inspiration. The Jefferson opened in 1897 as the Library’s first stand-alone building, the largest library building in the world. Its dazzling decoration and soaring architecture made it a source of national pride, and its program of sculpture and painting made it a monument to civilization, imagination and knowledge. It’s easy to find out how to visit us, and we hope you do.

Meanwhile, here are some of the VEO staff favorites.

Main Reading Room Statues

*A visitor stands on the balcony of the Main Reading Room, flanked by two statues. Photo: Shawn Miller.*

One of the most impressive features of the Main Reading Room are the statues that adorn the room’s balconies and columns. Atop each of the eight marble columns surrounding the room stands a 10-foot allegorical figure representing an area of thought: religion, commerce, history, art, philosophy, poetry, law and science.

These allegorical figures are draped in symbolic clothing and props to communicate their discipline: The history figure holds a book and a mirror facing backward to reflect the past; science holds a globe and a mirror facing forward to reflect progress.

Each figure is flanked by bronze statues (16 in total) representing major contributors to that field. Beethoven, for example, stands on one side of art and Michelangelo on the other.

Together, these symbolic and representative statues convey an 1897 perspective on global contributions to eight core disciplines of knowledge.

—Colette Combs, Visitor Engagement Technician

“Evolution of the Book”

Mural painted into the arch of a building shows a painting of three men in 15th century attire. Two are gazing at a printed sheet and the other is working at a printing press. — *John White Alexander’s “Printing Press” mural in the Jefferson Building. Photo: Shawn Miller.*

On the east side of the Great Hall, you will see six lunette paintings that make up “The Evolution of the Book,” by com American painter John White Alexander in 1895.

The series begins on the south end with “The Cairn,” depicting an ancient civilization building a ceremonial mound to commemorate its dead or mark an important location. “Oral Tradition” and “Egyptian Hieroglyphics” follow, portraying early storytelling in two forms. In “Oral Tradition,” a storyteller speaks to a crowd; in “Egyptian Hieroglyphics,” two figures chisel written words into a building exterior.

The north side of the Great Hall houses “Picture Writing,” which shows Native Americans drawing on animal hides that could be easily transported and traded. Finally, “Manuscript Book” and “Printing Press” work in tandem to portray how Johannes Gutenberg revolutionized book production with the creation of metal movable type.

—Shannon McMaster, Visitor Engagement Technician

Minerva Mosaic

The Mosaic of Minerva, by Elihu Vedder, is on the seccond floor and east corridor of the Jefferon Building. It is within an central arched panel leading to the visitor’s gallery. Photo: Shawn Miller.

In vibrant mosaic tiles, Minerva, the Roman goddess of learning, knowledge and defensive warfare, stands atop the staircase outside the Main Reading Room.

She is at peace: Her spear points to the ground, and her helmet and shield lie at her feet. If there’s peace, learning can advance. In her left hand, Minerva holds a scroll that lists fields of study important to civilization. The scroll is not fully unfurled, suggesting that we always are adding new fields of study to what we consider important.

Just behind sits Minerva’s owl. We all know the owl to be a symbol of wisdom. I like to think this is because an owl can turn its head 270 degrees. It is constantly learning new pieces of information, adding them to its fund of knowledge and changing its mind when called for — this is what makes it wise.

—Rod Woodford, volunteer specialist

Stained-glass Ceiling

When you are in the Great Hall, look up at the stained-glass windows of the ceiling. These six beautiful, Tiffany-era glass suns reflect the mosaic on the floor below.

Surrounding the glass, you see metallic leaf. Often mistaken for silver, this is actually aluminum. During the construction of the Jefferson Building, aluminum was rare because of the electricity required to produce it, making it one of the most valuable metals in the world.

Adding to the opulence of the Jefferson Building, aluminum leaf was used alongside gold leaf to accent the Great Hall artwork.

—Danielle Brown, Visitor Engagement Technician

Thomas Jefferson’s Library

Tall wooden bookcases, formed into a circle and protcted by plexiglass, house Jefferson's book collection. A mosaic tile floor and an ornate domed ceiling make it a beautiful setting. — *Thomas Jefferson’s personal library, carefully preserved but on public view, is one of the Library’s most popular exhibits. Photo: Shawn Miller.*

Thomas Jefferson’s personal library is an essential part of the Library’s early history — and, today, it’s one of our most sought-out exhibitions.

British troops burned the Capitol Building in 1814, destroying the Library and all of its holdings. The following year, Congress purchased 6,487 books from Jefferson for $23,950 to help rebuild the Library’s collections.

Then, in 1851, devastating fire then destroyed two-thirds of those books. But the remaining volumes are on permanent display today in the building named after Jefferson, allowing visitors to see what is considered the core foundation of the Library’s modern-day collections.

As you go around the circular room, be sure to note some of Jefferson’s interests in literature, including books on beekeeping and winemaking!

—Jessica Castelo, Visitor Engagement Technician

“Touch History” Tours

A Library volunteer, wearing an "Ask Me About the Library" vest, helps several visitors touch scale models of Library buildings and layouts. — *A docent assists visitors on a “touch history” tour of the Library. Photo: Shawn Miller.*

You can also experience the Library through a sense of touch – visually impaired visitors get a sense of the Jefferson Building’s grandeur through our “Touch History” tours.

In the Great Hall, tactile learning opportunities abound: incised brass sun and zodiac symbols embedded in the floor, smooth busts of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, wall-mounted brass faces reminiscent of Medusa. The sleek Carrara marble walls and columns, interrupted by raised, decorative moldings, offer a contrast of surfaces. Docents provide detailed descriptions of each, putting the items in context.

Most captivating are the marble putti — sculpted chubby little boy figures cascading down both balustrades of the grand staircases. These 16 figures represent common professions and pursuits when the building opened in 1897.

Two putti are within arm’s reach: The gardener, equipped with a hoe and rake, and the mechanic, holding a long-necked oil can and cogwheel. Most visitors can easily reach the statues’ toes – and the adjacent sculpted storks – while docents describe their size, posture, attire and expressions, enriching the tactile experience.

— Kathy Tuchman, Robert Horowitz and Karyn Baiorunos are volunteer docents.

Subscribe to the blog— it’s free!

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2025/08/visit-a-library-of-wonders/

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/?p=31971

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/28/research-paper-preprint-deepscholar-bench-a-live-benchmark-and-automated-evaluation-for-generative-research-synthesis/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167005

The preprint linked below was recently posted on arXiv.

Title

DeepScholar-Bench: A Live Benchmark and Automated Evaluation for Generative Research Synthesis

Authors

Liana Patel
Stanford University

Negar Arabzadeh
UC Berkeley

Harshit Gupta
Stanford University

Ankita Sundar
UC Berkeley

Ion Stoica
UC Berkeley

Matei Zaharia
UC Berkeley

Carlos Guestrin
Stanford University

Source

via arXiv
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2508.20033

Abstract

The ability to research and synthesize knowledge is central to human expertise and progress. An emerging class of systems promises these exciting capabilities through generative research synthesis, performing retrieval over the live web and synthesizing discovered sources into long-form, cited summaries. However, evaluating such systems remains an open challenge: existing question-answering benchmarks focus on short-form factual responses, while expert-curated datasets risk staleness and data contamination. Both fail to capture the complexity and evolving nature of real research synthesis tasks. In this work, we introduce DeepScholar-bench, a live benchmark and holistic, automated evaluation framework designed to evaluate generative research synthesis. DeepScholar-bench draws queries from recent, high-quality ArXiv papers and focuses on a real research synthesis task: generating the related work sections of a paper by retrieving, synthesizing, and citing prior research. Our evaluation framework holistically assesses performance across three key dimensions, knowledge synthesis, retrieval quality, and verifiability. We also develop DeepScholar-base, a reference pipeline implemented efficiently using the LOTUS API. Using the DeepScholar-bench framework, we perform a systematic evaluation of prior open-source systems, search AI’s, OpenAI’s DeepResearch, and DeepScholar-base. We find that DeepScholar-base establishes a strong baseline, attaining competitive or higher performance than each other method. We also find that DeepScholar-bench remains far from saturated, with no system exceeding a score of across all metrics. These results underscore the difficulty of DeepScholar-bench, as well as its importance for progress towards AI systems capable of generative research synthesis. We make our code available at https://github.com/guestrin-lab/deepscholar-bench.

Direct to Abstract + Link to Full Text

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/28/research-paper-preprint-deepscholar-bench-a-live-benchmark-and-automated-evaluation-for-generative-research-synthesis/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167005

marycatelli posting in

books

Dutchman's Flat by Louis L'Amour

A collection of his short stories. Several with the sort of plot familiar from the novels -- one in fact later was expanded into a novel -- and a few ones where the smaller compass let him do some quirky plots.

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/27/generative-ai-and-libraries-applications-and-ethics-part-ii-recent-issue-of-library-trends-14-articles/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167002

Articles from Library Trends (Volume 73, Number 4; May 2025) were posted online today via Project Muse.

Note: Articles from Generative AI and Libraries: Applications and Ethics, Part I are available here.

Direct to Articles: Generative AI and Libraries: Applications and Ethics, Part II

Introduction to Generative AI and Libraries: Applications and Ethics, Part II
by Melissa A. Wong

This is the second of two Library Trends issues that examine generative artificial intelligence (AI) in libraries. As with the first issue, the articles in 73 (4) provide original research, case studies, and thought pieces and were selected to inform, caution, and inspire readers.

Students’ Perceptions and Uses of ChatGPT: Implications for Teaching AI Literacy
by Stefanie Havelka, Claire McGuinness, Páraic Kerrigan

An Exploration of Faculty and Student Perceptions of Generative AI
by Kaitlin Springmier

Fostering AI Literacy in Undergraduates: A ChatGPT Workshop Case Study
by Susan Gardner Archambault, Nicole Lucero Murph, Shalini Ramachandran

The Bias Is Inside Us: Supporting AI Literacy and Fighting Algorithmic Bias
by Beth Carpenter

Critical Information Literacy as a Compass: Using Generative AI in Academic Research and Writing
by Gabriel Cunha Leal de Araujo, Marco André Feldman Schneider

Disciplinary Responses to Generative AI: Implications for Academic Librarians
by Lauren Hays

The Impact of Generative AI on the LIS Ecosystem: Threats and Opportunities
by Amanda S. Hovious, Andrew J. M. Smith

Facing the Questions Together: Faculty and Student Perspectives on Integrating Generative AI in LIS Education
by Rebecca J. Morris, Annie Malady

AI and the Material Conditions of Instruction
by Laura M. Bernhardt, Becca Neel

Against AI: Critical Refusal in the Library
by Kailyn “Kay” Slater

Beyond Information Literacy: Exploring AI’s Impact on Labor in Academic Libraries
by Nicole Lucero Murph

Chatting with the Decolonized Digital Library
by Andrew Cox, Andrea Jimenez

Beyond “If We Use It Wisely”: Character Ethics, the Virtue of Wisdom, and GenAI in Libraries
by Rea N. Simons

Direct to Table of Contents

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/27/generative-ai-and-libraries-applications-and-ethics-part-ii-recent-issue-of-library-trends-14-articles/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=167002

bookwormsworld_feed

Posted by Luanne

http://luanne-abookwormsworld.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-battle-of-bookshops-poppy-alexander.html

If the word 'bookshops' is in the title - then I want to read it! I worked many years as a bookseller.

Poppy Alexander bring us a wonderful tale in her latest book, The Battle of the Bookshops.

Jules is back home as her Aunt Flo can't manage the one hundred year family store. Jules has to make it work! She is doing okay until someone else opens a new modern book store....

Karen Cass was the narrator. She a great job in presenting Alexander's work. I find sometimes that I become more enamored of the story when listening. That was the case in The Battle of the Bookshops. Cass created believable voices that easily let the listener know who's talking. Cass uses her voice to easily depict the emotion, anxiety and ..... I'll let you find out wins the Battle!

http://luanne-abookwormsworld.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-battle-of-bookshops-poppy-alexander.html

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/27/report-how-students-and-teachers-worldwide-are-adapting-to-ai/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166998

Title

How Students and Teachers Worldwide are Adapting to AI: A Report From the USC Center For Generative AI and Society

Authors

Stephen J. Aguilar
Benjamin D. Nye
William Swartout
Alfredo Macı́as
Yuqing Xing
Rosie Le Xiu

Source

USC Center for Generative Al and Society (via EdArXiv Preprints)
August 2025

DOI: 10.35542/osf.io/wr6n3_v2

Abstract

Introduction

This report presents findings from three complementary studies exploring how generative AI (GenAI) tools are reshaping teaching and learning in higher and K–12 education. Together, these studies highlight how students and educators engage with GenAI tools, what drives or hinders their use, and the opportunities and challenges these technologies present for fostering meaningful learning

Abstract

Generative AI (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot are transforming how students and educators engage with teaching, learning, and (especially) writing. From personalized feedback to automated content generation, these tools have opened new possibilities about how educational practices are evolving, while also raising important questions about what it means to teach and learn. College students have emerged as early adopters of GenAI, using it to brainstorm ideas and clarify difficult concepts. Unfortunately, they have also used it to outsource their thinking on assignments and act in ways that are academically dishonest. At the same time, educators across the globe are exploring how these tools might streamline their work, enhance instruction, and support student learning. This report presents findings from ongoing work from the USC Center for Generative AI and Society.

The work below examines GenAI’s educational impact from multiple vantage points: student help-seeking behavior, AI-augmented writing support, and international teacher perspectives. Together, these studies show the different ways GenAI is being used in real educational settings.

The first study explores how over 1,000 U.S. college students use GenAI when seeking academic help. It distinguishes between instrumental help-seeking (using AI to understand and learn) and executive help-seeking (using AI to get quick answers). Key findings suggest that students who feel confident in their abilities or have strong internet search skills are less likely to rely on GenAI. Those who avoid peer interaction or trust AI, however, more tend to seek executive help. Notably, when professors encourage thoughtful GenAI use, students are more likely to engage in learning-oriented behaviors.

The second study evaluates ABE (AI for Brainstorming and Editing), a GenAI tool designed to promote reflection and revision during the writing process. Unlike AI systems that generate full essays, ABE guides students through structured, interactive activities such as strengthening arguments, clarifying claims, and considering counterarguments. Students reported that ABE helped them organize their thoughts, broaden their perspectives, and improve their writing—positioning ABE as a “learning companion” rather than a shortcut.

The final study surveyed over 1,500 teachers from five countries (India, the United States, Qatar, Colombia, and the Philippines) to understand how educators are integrating GenAI into their teaching. While many see its value for task automation and personalized learning, concerns about plagiarism, creativity loss, and uneven institutional support remain.

These perspectives highlight the global diversity of GenAI use and the pressing need for professional development and ethical guidance. Taken together, these studies underscore the importance of intentional, reflective integration of GenAI in education—guided by research, design, and policy.

Direct to Full Text Report

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/27/report-how-students-and-teachers-worldwide-are-adapting-to-ai/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166998

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/26/allen-institute-for-artificial-intelligence-ai2-announces-launch-of-asta-accelerating-science-through-trustworthy-agentic-ai/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166986

Ed. Note: For the many Ai2 users already out there:

Paperfinder is part of the Asta ecosystem. It’s now the “Find Papers” tool/service.
ScholarQA is also part of the Asta ecosystem. It’s the “Summarize Literature” tool/service.

From Ai2:

Today we announce Asta, our bold initiative to accelerate science by building trustworthy and capable agentic assistants for researchers, alongside the first comprehensive benchmarking system to bring clarity to the landscape of scientific AI. As AI use expands across the sciences, researchers in every field need helpful systems they can understand, verify, and trust. Asta is designed to fill this need.

The Asta ecosystem brings together three essential components to advance scientific AI. At its center are the Asta agents, tools to assist (not replace) human researchers performing complex, real-world scientific tasks.

To promote transparency and raise the bar across the broader landscape of scientific AI, AstaBench provides a rigorous, domain-relevant benchmarking framework for evaluating and comparing any agent—not just Asta.

And for AI developers,Asta resources offers a set of software components and standards to help build, test, and refine scientific AI agents.

Scientists remain skeptical—and AI researchers face a different challenge: without trusted standards, it’s hard to evaluate whether models are truly capable of the deep reasoning science demands.

For researchers, Asta offers agents designed to work the way scientists think—helping frame research questions, trace ideas to evidence, and clarify what’s established or still unresolved in a field. AstaBench ensures these agents are evaluated against real-world tasks, building trust and scientific rigor.

For those building scientific AI agents who need a reliable way to evaluate and improve their work, AstaBench and Asta resources provide a complete agent evaluation environment and tools to facilitate the creation of production-ready, state-of-the-art agents. AstaBench offers leaderboards and real-world benchmarks that make it easy to test, compare, and iterate on AI agents.

Asta resources includes our own open-source and baseline agents ready to fork and compare against, open language models post-trained on science, and modular tools enabling agents to perform scientific research tasks. These tools are easy to use via the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and support both reproducible, time-fixed evaluation and up-to-date real-world usage.

[Clip]

Our initial release of Asta includes three core functions:

Find papers helps you discover relevant research using an LLM-powered search experience, like Google Scholar on steroids, that mirrors the multi-step reasoning process of expert researchers. It reformulates queries, follows citations, and explains why each paper is relevant, making it easier to find exactly what you’re looking for—even when keywords fail.

Summarize literature turns complex research questions into structured, comprehensive summaries—every claim backed by a clickable citation and often an inline excerpt. It scans millions of abstracts and full-text papers, clusters evidence, and distills findings into clear sections that highlight key results, disagreements, and open questions.

Analyze data (available in beta for select partners) turns natural language questions into structured, reproducible analyses. It explores your dataset, generates hypotheses, runs statistical tests, and explains the results—making data-driven discovery faster, clearer, and accessible across disciplines.

Learn Much More, Read the Complete Launch Announcement

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/26/allen-institute-for-artificial-intelligence-ai2-announces-launch-of-asta-accelerating-science-through-trustworthy-agentic-ai/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166986

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/26/new-data-from-the-association-of-american-publishers-aap-publishing-revenues-totaled-32-5-billion-for-calendar-year-2024-publ/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166984

From AAP:

Today, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) released the StatShot Annual report covering the calendar year 2024, estimating that the U.S. publishing industry generated a robust $32.5 billion in aggregate publishing revenue for books and course materials across print and digital formats, an increase of 4.1% as compared to $31.3 billion in 2023.

“This year’s report shows encouraging levels of year-over-year growth across multiple categories during 2024 and paints a picture of an industry that is dynamic, fast-moving, and continuing to evolve,” commented Syreeta Swann, Chief Operating Officer, Association of American Publishers. “In reference to the five-year period covered by StatShot Annual, we saw the continuation of some long-term trends, including the dominance of print formats, which accounted for more than half of the overall market for each of the five years, and sustained growth for the Digital Audio format, which has seen a revenue increase of nearly 80 percent since 2020.”

Calendar Year 2024 StatShot Annual Report Highlights:

During 2024, Trade (consumer books) increased by 4.4% to an estimated $21.2 billion.

Higher Education Course Materials revenue increased by 1.8% to $4.3 billion.

PreK-12 Instructional Materials increased 5.1% to $5.3 billion.

Professional Books increased 2.5% to $1.4 billion.

University Presses increased 3.1% to $350 million.

Print

In the industry overall, print formats (Hardback, Paperback, Mass Market, and Special Bindings) accounted for 50.5% of publishers’ revenue. During the year, revenue from the Hardback format climbed 3.6% to $7.9 billion, while Paperbacks increased 3.2% to $7.8 billion.

Within Trade, the Hardback and Paperback formats together accounted for nearly three-quarters of revenue (72.9%), maintaining their position as the most popular formats with $7.7 billion in revenue each. On a year-over-year basis within Trade, the Hardback format was up 3.6% and the Paperback format climbed 3.0%.

Digital

In the industry overall, digital formats (Digital Audio and eBooks) accounted for 14% of all revenue for 2024, representing a revenue increase of 11.4% since 2023. Digital Audio increased 22.5% to $2.4 billion in 2024, and eBooks increased 1.5% to $2.1 billion. During the five years covered by this report, revenue for the Digital Audio format grew by a significant 78.1%, and eBooks by 2.0%.

Within Trade, digital formats accounted for 21.2% of the overall revenue for 2024, returning an increase of 11.8% for the sector. Digital Audio revenue for Trade enjoyed a healthy increase of 22.5% while eBooks increased 1.8%.

Channels

A variety of channels are used within the industry, with publisher sales via Online Retail comprising the largest category at $12 billion. Within Online Retail, 34.5% of revenue was attributable to digital formats (eBooks and Digital Audio), 57.1% to print formats (Hardback, Paperback, Mass Market, and Special Bindings), 6.5% was attributable to Instructional Materials, and 1.9% to Physical Audio or Other formats.

During the year, Physical Retail revenue increased 3.3% to $6.2 billion. Over the five-year period, this channel grew 48.0%.

Within Trade, Physical Retail revenue rebounded from the pandemic-era low in 2020, growing 4.3% to $4.7 billion in 2024 and 74.1% over the five-year period, while Online Retail rose 11.0% to nearly $11 billion in 2024 and 28.5% over the same five-year period, though growth for both channels now appears to be returning to more typical patterns.

Methodology

The Calendar Year 2024 StatShot Annual report is the independent work of Industry Insights, Inc., an expert research and data analytics firm. The report offers a valuable financial overview of the book publishing industry by reporting estimated and aggregate revenue and reported unit sales.

For the calendar year 2024 report, Industry Insights conducted a comprehensive, multi-step analysis. Primary sources included U.S. Census annual and quarterly data, survey responses from publishers, and historical StatShot Monthly and Annual reports from the Association of American Publishers (AAP). Additional reference points included Bowker’s Books In Print, Circana’s BookScan tools with PubTrack Digital, research on independent and self-publishing trends, and data from digital publishing markets. Supplementary context was drawn from relevant economic datasets and publicly available articles on the U.S. publishing industry and individual publishing companies.

All participants were asked to report on all five years covered by this report. This edition accounts for both participation changes and restatements for each year included.

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/26/new-data-from-the-association-of-american-publishers-aap-publishing-revenues-totaled-32-5-billion-for-calendar-year-2024-publ/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166984

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/26/just-released-anthropic-education-report-how-educators-use-claude/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166982

From Anthropic:

The most prominent use of AI, as revealed by both our Claude.ai analysis and our qualitative research with Northeastern, was for curriculum development. Our Claude.ai analysis also surfaced academic research and assessing student performance as the second and third most common uses.

In our surveys, Northeastern faculty reported that another common case was using AI for their own learning (29% of their AI time on average). However, this was not studied in our Claude.ai analysis, given the filtering mechanism and the difficulty of distinguishing between student and educator usage in these learning instances.

Some other particularly interesting uses we discovered in the Claude.ai data include:

Create mock legal scenarios for educational simulations;

Develop vocational education and workforce training content;

Draft recommendation letters for academic or professional applications;

Create meeting agendas and related administrative documents.

Why faculty use AI in these cases

Our qualitative research with Northeastern faculty hints at why educators often gravitate towards these common AI uses:

Automation of a tedious task (“It takes care of the tedious tasks”; helps with “rote portions of fundraising”);

Collaborative thought partner (“AI can find effective ways to explain concepts to students that I had not thought of myself”);

Personalized learning experiences for students (“AI is useful for giving students and me individualized, interactive learning experiences beyond what one instructor could provide”).

Key creations built by educators with the help of Claude.ai, as surfaced by our automated analysis research tool Source: Anthropic

[Clip]

It’s also changing what professors are teaching. In coding, for example, according to one professor, “AI-based coding has completely revolutionized the analytics teaching/learning experience. Instead of debugging commas and semicolons, we can spend our time talking about the concepts around the application of analytics in business.”

More broadly, the ability to evaluate AI-generated content for accuracy is becoming increasingly important. “The challenge is [that] with the amount of AI generation increasing, it becomes increasingly overwhelming for humans to validate and stay on top,” one professor wrote. Professors are keen to help their students build enough expertise in a subject area to have this discernment.

Assessments also are starting to look different. While student cheating and cognitive offloading remain a concern, some educators are rethinking their assessments.

Learn More, Read the Complete Report (about 2500 words)

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/26/just-released-anthropic-education-report-how-educators-use-claude/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166982

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/26/university-of-california-curation-center-uc3-exploring-how-ai-can-help-research-data-management/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166979

From a UC3 Post:

At UC3, several of our latest initiatives involve integrating AI tools, with a particular focus on improving metadata and assisting researchers with creating best practice DMPs.

[Clip]

One key application of AI we are exploring is enhancing the quality and scale of our metadata curation activities, including those for the Research Organization Registry (ROR). ROR, a widely adopted persistent identifier service for research organizations, operates on a model where anyone can submit a request to add or update its records.

[Clip]

Another example of our AI exploration is “DMP Chef,” a large language model (LLM) based DMP generator. We are in the initial stages of this work, partnering with the California Medical Innovations Institute (CalMI2) to develop a new tool that allows researchers to provide simple descriptions of their work, from which the DMP Chef can generate a draft DMP. We are currently developing this tool to work with NIH DMPs and plan to follow up on this work by working with NSF and other templates.

[Clip]

We’re also developing new tools to automatically connect DMPs to the research outputs they describe, such as datasets, articles, and software. These new connections improve the discoverability of research data and make it easier for researchers, funders, and administrators to see the complete picture of a project’s outputs.

Learn More, Read the Complete Post (785 words)

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/26/university-of-california-curation-center-uc3-exploring-how-ai-can-help-research-data-management/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166979

libofcongressblog_feed

Posted by Neely Tucker

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2025/08/do-you-know-what-your-dog-is-thinking/

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/?p=31955

Alexandra Horowitz is the author of “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know,” which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list when it was first published in 2009. An updated version has just been released, and she’ll be at the National Book Festival on Sept. 6 to discuss her work. Horowitz teaches at Barnard College, where she runs the Dog Cognition Lab, and has written other books on her canine research.

This conversation has been edited for space and clarity.

Timeless: When meeting a new dog, people will often extend their arm, hand down, to the dog’s nose, instead of reaching out to pet them immediately. Is this actually reassuring to the dog?

Alexandra Horowitz: Well, I think this is an attempt to understand the dog’s point of view, so I understand where it’s coming from. And insofar as it isn’t leaning over a dog and just assuming that they can pat them on the head, it’s an improvement. But it still doesn’t completely take in the dog’s perspective. If I am encouraging somebody who is afraid of dogs on how to greet a new one, I say let the dog decide if they want to come to you. If they want to be petted and they want to meet you, then if you stand with your side to them and not make any aggressive gesture, they’ll come right up to you.

Outdoors color head and shoulders of a beaming Alexandra Horowitz. She is smiling, wearing a black coat, with sunlight and snow in the background. — *Alexandra Horowitz. Photo: Vegar Abelsnes.*

Timeless: What is it, in general, that we don’t understand about dogs’ intelligence and how they view us and the world around them?

Horowitz: I think we miss a lot by making assumptions, say, about a dog sitting on the couch with me and thinking they are having the same experience. I guess I’d focus on smell as the thing that has really surprised me, how much it defines who they are and what their capacities are. In smell, we can see that they can distinguish your smell from somebody else’s. They know you by your smell better than by sight. We know that they can recognize themselves by smell and notice when their smell has changed, a kind of self-awareness. They can smell stress in us, actually, and stress is kind of contagious with them. So, the way smell sort of defines their brain, I think is the most intriguing for me and something that there’s really a lot of room to explore.

Timeless: And oftentimes, what we think of as a bad smell is not necessarily what they think is a bad smell, correct?

Horowitz: Oh, absolutely. A lot of my research, and a big focus of this book and my other works, is what it’s like to be a smelling creature experiencing the world because dogs are so profoundly good at olfaction. And one of the things that comes up immediately is just what you mentioned — that we tend to think of smells as kind of good or bad. I don’t think dogs have that kind of impression at all. I mean, there might be a few things that they think are bad smells, but that would be like me saying, “I think of things I see as good or bad.” No, it’s just information about the world. There’s a plant in front of me, here’s a bunch of peaches, here’s a table, there’s a dog. It’s information. What I see through my eyes and what they smell through their noses is similar information.

Book cover, with a close up photo of a long-eared dog looking earnestly at the camera. — *Alexandra Horowitz will be discussing “Inside of a Dog” at the National Book Festival.*

Timeless: You do this in detail in the book, but can you give us a short explanation of how their sense of smell works and how it’s so much wildly better than ours?

Horowitz: I describe it as a sensory parallel universe because I think there are all these smells in the room with me or with you right now, but we’re mostly not experiencing them. Dogs are.

There are so many levels at which they are built to smell. Anatomically, they have these long snouts and can sniff much faster than we can — about seven times a second. That allows them to get a lot more information. Then those odors are sent tumbling down their nose and warmed and humidified to the back of the nose, sort of between the eyes, where there are olfactory receptor cells. They have hundreds of millions more of these cells than we do. This information goes to the brain, where they have a much larger olfactory lobe relative to the rest of their brain than we do. That’s all just on the inhale.

When they exhale, they don’t want to stop smelling, just as we don’t want to close our eyes to see one thing and then the next thing, so they exhale out of the slits on both sides of their nose. This allows them to do a kind of circular breathing. This then ties in with their vision.

I worked on a paper with a group at Cornell [University] in which they used a special kind of imaging to look at dogs’ brains and found that there’s a white matter connection, just like big tracks of neurons, connecting the olfactory lobe to the visual cortex, something that is absolutely not happening in the human brain. So, dogs are probably incorporating what they’re seeing and what they’re smelling instantly, versus how we do it.

Timeless: One of the things you write about is how we anthropomorphize our dogs, which can create misunderstandings. One of these is how we think they’re acting guilty about doing something wrong — an accident on the carpet, say — when they’re actually responding more to our tone of voice and manner.

Horowitz: Yeah, exactly. When I started studying dogs, I was surprised that they hadn’t been a research subject, the way that there is a lot of comparative cognition work on primates and dolphins and rats and mice. And I was like, why aren’t dogs being used? It occurred to me that it was because we kind of think we already have a vocabulary for what dogs know and understand, just from living with them.

I decided to explore empirically whether some of the attributions we make to dogs are correct. And one of the early behaviors I chose was that guilty look that you described: Whereupon being caught having done some misdeed, they turn away or make their body really small, or they do a really fast low wag, or their ears are back. We call that the guilty look because they look guilty, they look like they understand “I did something wrong.”

So, I did an experiment and it turned out that dogs show the most guilty looks when the owner thinks they’ve done something wrong, even if they haven’t. So, the dog is clearly responding to the owner’s behavior. If you come in and treat them like they’ve done something wrong, they’ll learn to put on this basically submissive look.

That’s really different than the dog kind of ruminating about that garbage can they got into three hours ago when the owner was away. The owner is angry that the dog did that, but the dog is not sharing that understanding. Instead, they are very responsive to us. They learn that when we come in looking angry or using an angry tone of voice, they get punished. So, they learn the guilty look, but it doesn’t mean that they are feeling guilt at that moment. I think that’s important. It doesn’t mean that they don’t feel guilt — again, we don’t have access to their interior lives — but it just means that sometimes what looks like guilt to us is something else.

Timeless: Last question. From the dog’s point of view, what do they do when they’re feeling really affectionate and happy toward us?

I don’t know if there’s one thing, but it’s more like a constellation of things which we would recognize. Things like staying close to us or licking in the face. That’s usually done as a greeting, but it’s also sort of a kiss. The excitement they have when greeting us when we return home — a strange dog won’t be happy to see you return, but the dog who knows you and who considers themselves part of your family is delighted. And we all know what that greeting looks like: Tails going bananas, jumping up, ears back and whimpering. It’s something like what wolves in a wolf pack do to each other when they return to their natal group. Dogs do that kind of thing with us.

Subscribe to the blog— it’s free!

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2025/08/do-you-know-what-your-dog-is-thinking/

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/?p=31955

rocky41_7 posting in

books

Today I finished The West Passage by Jared Pachacek. This is a fantasy novel about a massive palace that encompasses the entirety of the state where the protagonists live and is ruled over by the godlike and somewhat tyrannical Ladies. The ancient Beast, the enemy of the Ladies, is threatening to rise again, as it has done in the past, which leaves our protagonists, Pell and Kew, youths of the Grey Tower, to try to raise the alarm.

I’m usually a fan of stories that throw you right into things, but The West Passage did leave me turned around for a while. I struggled to conceptualize what was being explained, and it’s definitely a book that asks a lot of your powers of visual imagination regarding the palace.

However, I loved the general creativity of this book. I don’t think I’ve ever read a fantasy novel so firmly and intentionally grounded in the medieval. A lot of Western fantasy is generically medieval/pseudo-medieval (a la the Ren Faire), but The West Passage clearly took time to more securely set itself in this era. The technology is not always strictly medieval, as this is a fantasy world with all manner of fantastical beasts and tools, but the medieval setting is far more than window dressing here. To cap off the mood, the book is peppered with charming medieval-style illustrations at the start of each chapter and separating each “book” within the novel, showing our protagonists on their adventure.

( Read more... )

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/25/coalition-for-networked-information-cni-posts-edition-guide-for-summer-2025-pre-recorded-project-briefing-series/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166972

From CNI:

We invite you to explore the summer 2025 edition of CNI’s Pre-Recorded Project Briefing Series. This collection comprises contributions covering a range of topics, including open infrastructure, digital literacy, identity management, and more.

Several sessions report on community-driven efforts to examine how emerging technologies and external pressures are shaping the research and higher education ecosystem.

Making Artificial Intelligence (AI) Generative for Higher Education

AI Bots and Repositories—Results and Next Steps from COAR Survey

Vital Open Infrastructures in a Volatile Moment

More Video Presentations

A Community-designed Plan for Sustaining Open Data Infrastructure

Representing Researchers in the Library Linked Data Environment: A Case Study of ORCID Users at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK)

Scaling Digital Literacy in Nigeria: Kolibri’s Journey describes a University at Buffalo Libraries

What’s Missing in AI Ethics Literature

Direct to Complete Edition Guide

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/25/coalition-for-networked-information-cni-posts-edition-guide-for-summer-2025-pre-recorded-project-briefing-series/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166972

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/25/blog-post-gaidet-a-practical-taxonomy-for-declaring-ai-use-in-research-and-publishing/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166970

From Leiden Madtrics

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) tools like ChatGPT are increasingly finding their way into research and scholarly publishing. This trend brings a pressing challenge: how do academics clearly disclose the use of AI in their research workflows? Right now, many disclosures are either too vague (e.g. “We used ChatGPT to improve clarity”) or missing entirely. Such a lack of precision can undermine transparency and reproducibility, making it harder for readers, reviewers, and editors to assess how AI contributed to the work. In response to this challenge, we developed a new approach to standardise how researchers communicate their use of AI.

What is GAIDeT?

GAIDeT stands for Generative Artificial Intelligence Delegation Taxonomy. This framework was created to help researchers formally describe any assistance they received from AI in the course of their research or publishing processes. Unlike other approaches, such as the CRediT taxonomy (focused on human author roles) or the NIST AI Use Taxonomy (covering AI functions in general domains), GAIDeT is designed specifically for documenting the delegation of tasks to AI within research workflows. It combines the stage of research with the precise role AI played, while ensuring that responsibility always stays with the human researcher. GAIDeT provides a structured checklist for disclosing what was delegated to AI, at which stage, how the AI’s output was used, and the version of AI that was used.

Learn More, Read the Complete Post

Direct to GAIDeT Declaration Generator

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/25/blog-post-gaidet-a-practical-taxonomy-for-declaring-ai-use-in-research-and-publishing/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166970

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/25/can-we-trust-ai-global-research-team-offers-framework-for-tackling-this-question-reportbench-evaluating-deep-research-agents-via-academic-survey-tasks-preprint-more/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166969

Deep Research

ReportBench: Evaluating Deep Research Agents via Academic Survey Tasks (preprint; via arXiv)

Information Seeking

How AI Succeeds (and Fails) to Help People Find Information (via Nielsen Norman Group)

Market Research

Meet Your New Client: Writing Reports for AI — Benchmarking Information Loss in Market Research Deliverables (preprint; via arXiv)

Mental Health

How Chatbot Design Choices are Fueling AI Delusions (via TechCrunch)

Trust

Can We Trust AI? Global Research Team Offers Framework for Tackling this Question (via NC State University)

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166969

bookwormsworld_feed

Posted by Luanne

http://luanne-abookwormsworld.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-art-of-lie-laura-shepherd-robinson.html

I found author Laura Shepherd-Robinson a couple of years ago with her previous novel, The Square of Sevens. I was thrilled to see that she had a brand new book called The Art of a Lie.

The author takes us back England 1749. This isn't a time frame I usually read - but there's not a Royal to be found. Instead, our lead character is Hannah who runs a confectionary shop with her husband. They're not making much, but a new recipe for something called Iced Cream could help. (YUM!)

But her husband I missing. And those who say that they can help her? They are referring to themselves.

Everyone has their own agenda. And given the year this is set in, Hanna has to 'behave'. She is dismissed 'as only the wife'. Literally every last character is a liar. Can you find the truth?

I loved the deep look at the setting, the society, a woman's place, the skullduggery and more.

Shepherd-Robinson kept my attention from first to last. I encourage you to read the author's notes at the end of the books. They're fascinating. Read an excerpt as well.

http://luanne-abookwormsworld.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-art-of-lie-laura-shepherd-robinson.html

michaelgeistsblog_feed

Posted by Michael Geist

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2025/08/privacy-lost/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=privacy-lost

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/?p=21114

The Online Streaming Act, the government controversial reform to the Broadcasting Act, continues to attract attention given an ongoing court challenge and backlash from the U.S. government. But there is another element of Bill C-11 that is deserving of attention. Due to what is likely a legislative error, the government deleted privacy safeguards that were included in the bill only two months after they were enacted. As a result, a provision stating that the Broadcasting Act “shall be construed and applied in a manner that is consistent with the right to privacy of individuals” was removed from the bill, leaving in its place two-near identical provisions related to official languages. The net effect is that with little notice (Monica Auer of FRPC spotted it), the Broadcasting Act has for the past two years included an interpretation clause that makes no sense and efforts to include privacy within in it are gone.

How did the government bungle privacy in the Broadcasting Act so badly? The best guess is that it starts with the original Bill C-11, which had two provisions related how the Act should be interpreted:

This Act shall be construed and applied in a manner that is consistent with

(a) the freedom of expression and journalistic, creative and programming independence enjoyed by broadcasting undertakings; and

(b)the commitment of the Government of Canada to enhance the vitality of English and French linguistic minority communities in Canada and to support and assist their development, as well as to foster the full recognition and use of both English and French in Canadian society.

There was no mention of privacy in the initial bill. However, during the Senate review, privacy concerns struck a chord. Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne introduced an amendment, noting that it was raised by Philippe Dufresne, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada:

I didn’t come up with this. It’s straight from a recommendation made by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Philippe Dufresne. He appeared before the committee in September, when we first began the study. I’ll quote what he said:

Given this and in light of the fundamental importance of privacy, the committee could consider amending section 3 of the Broadcasting Act to include the protection of the privacy of persons as a policy objective of that act. This would be similar to the approach taken in the Telecommunications Act and would ensure that privacy is fully considered in the interpretation and implementation of the bill, by the CRTC, regulated entities and courts.

Those are the words of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Philippe Dufresne. As a reminder, further to our research and decision-making, we opted to put that provision under the heading “Interpretation,” on page 4. Indeed, it’s an interpretive clause to ensure that the right to privacy will inform how the entire bill is interpreted, especially for all of the stakeholders affected by the bill. Given that the internet raises serious privacy concerns, as you know, having a provision that applies broadly is vital in order to minimize infringements on people’s privacy.

Senator Marc Gold, who was then the government’s representative in the Senate, said it opposed the amendment, but it received support from the committee and ultimately the Senate. As a result, the proposed Broadcasting Act’s interpretation clause looked like this after the Senate review:

This Act shall be construed and applied in a manner that is consistent with

(a) the freedom of expression and journalistic, creative and programming independence enjoyed by broadcasting undertakings and creators;

(b) the right to privacy of individuals; and

(c) the commitment of the Government of Canada to enhance the vitality of official language minority communities and to support and assist their development, as well as to foster the full recognition and use of both English and French in Canadian society.

Despite the initial opposition, the government approved the inclusion of the privacy amendment when the bill returned to the House of Commons and it received royal assent in April 2023. The updated Broadcasting Act therefore featured the new privacy provision in the interpretation clause.

That provision only lasted for two months, however. As Bill C-11 was being debated, the government was also proceeding with Bill C-13, a bill on official languages. It was introduced soon after Bill C-11 in 2022 and received royal assent in June 2023. Buried at the end of the bill was a change to the Broadcasting Act that few seemed to notice:

70 (1) Subsections (2) and (3) apply if Bill C-11, introduced in the 1st session of the 44th Parliament and entitled the Online Streaming Act (in this section referred to as the “other Act”), receives royal assent.

(2) On the first day on which both section 2 of the other Act and section 21 of this Act are in force, paragraph 2(3)‍(b) of the Broadcasting Act is replaced by the following:

(b) the commitment of the Government of Canada to enhance the vitality of English and French linguistic minority communities in Canada and to support and assist their development, taking into account their uniqueness, diversity and historical and cultural contributions to Canadian society, as well as to foster the full recognition and use of both English and French in Canadian society.

If the language in subsection (b) looks familiar, it is because it a modest amendment to the Broadcasting Act objective related to languages. In the original Bill C-11, that was found in subsection (b). Bill C-13 therefore states that if both Bill C-11 and Bill C-13 are enacted, the Bill C-13 version of (b) will govern. The problem is that Bill C-11 was changed: the provision on languages became subsection (c) with subsection (b) replaced by the privacy provision.

Somehow, no one noticed the change or worked through the implications of the provision (unless, more troublingly, this was the government’s attempt to undo the privacy change). As a result, when both bills received royal assent, the privacy provision in the Broadcasting Act was replaced by a second provision on official languages. The interpretation clause now looks like this:

(3) This Act shall be construed and applied in a manner that is consistent with

(a) the freedom of expression and journalistic, creative and programming independence enjoyed by broadcasting undertakings and creators;

(b) the commitment of the Government of Canada to enhance the vitality of English and French linguistic minority communities in Canada and to support and assist their development, taking into account their uniqueness, diversity and historical and cultural contributions to Canadian society, as well as to foster the full recognition and use of both English and French in Canadian society;

(c) the commitment of the Government of Canada to enhance the vitality of official language minority communities and to support and assist their development, as well as to foster the full recognition and use of both English and French in Canadian society.

While the neither the government nor Canadian Heritage officials have ever addressed what is likely an embarrassing gaffe (I don’t believe the CRTC has either), the Broadcasting Act’s interpretation clause now includes two very similar provisions on official language minorities and no provision on protecting privacy. One would hope that this was not the intent, but the government was always too focused on the political side of Bill C-11 and did not pay enough attention to the specific implications of the legislation. It is this careless approach that leads to errors that undermine the very intent of legislative reform. Further amendments to the Broadcasting Act are therefore required. Once the government turns to that mistake, it should also address some of the other major mistakes in Bill C-11, including the rules on regulating user content, which required a policy directive to the CRTC as a temporary fix.

The post Privacy Lost: How the Government Deleted Bill C-11’s Key Privacy Principle Just Two Months After Passing it Into Law appeared first on Michael Geist.

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2025/08/privacy-lost/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=privacy-lost

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/?p=21114

infodocket_feed

Posted by Gary Price

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/24/report-nathan-lamberts-atom-project-seeks-american-open-source-ai-models/

https://www.infodocket.com/?p=166968

From The New Stack:

On the 4th of July, Nathan Lambert launched “The American DeepSeek Project,” a plan to counter the open-weight AI large language models (LLMs) from China’s DeepSeek with support for an American “fully open source model at the scale and performance of current (publicly available) frontier models, within two years.”

It’s an issue dear to his heart. Lambert is a former Hugging Face research scientist (who’s also worked at Google DeepMind and Facebook AI Research), and is now a post-training lead at the nonprofit Allen Institute for AI (Ai2). “I want to do this at Ai2,” Lambert wrote on his blog, “but it takes far more than just us to make it happen. We need advocates, peers, advisors, and compute.”

“Our strategy was never to seek broad public support,” Lambert told TNS in an email interview last week, “but instead to target key people in the AI/ML [machine learning] community. We’ve had numerous professors, founders and influential voices in AI sign on, as well as some surprises like OpenAI C-suite executives. We’ve also spoken to some key DC policy makers.” (“There are many avenues to obtain and allocate these resources across multiple stakeholders,” the site explains, including private companies, philanthropic institutions, government agencies, private sector partnerships, “and potentially new public-private partnership models, similar to how other critical national infrastructure projects are funded.”)

[Clip]

Lambert said his goals are similar to the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Pilot, led by the U.S. National Science Foundation and 12 other federal agencies and 26 nongovernmental partners to “make available government-funded, industry and other contributed resources in support of the nation’s research and education community.”

But Lambert said his project remains “focused on building the right kind of models; we believe very deeply that not all ‘open’ models are created equally, and we need to make sure that not only the caliber of models made in America match the foreign alternatives, but also that the decisions made to have fully open models are being respected.

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https://www.infodocket.com/2025/08/24/report-nathan-lamberts-atom-project-seeks-american-open-source-ai-models/

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