💡 Warp News #237
✈️ Plane hijackings have decreased. 🏭 Has China’s CO2 emissions peaked? 🚀 First crash-free test of Starship. 👀 Few see disinformation online.
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❓ Where is all the AI disinformation?
AI-generated disinformation was supposed to lead to a "tech-driven Armageddon" during this super election year. Now, hundreds of millions have voted, and I wonder: where is it?
There are examples, of course, but we were supposed to be overwhelmed by it. That has not happened. What has been produced seems to have had no or very little impact on this year's two biggest elections in India and the EU.
Taiwan had elections already in January and is perhaps the country in the world most exposed to information warfare. What happened there? There are several reports about it.
I wrote about this yesterday. Conveniently, a new study came out showing that few people have seen any disinformation at all.
AI disinformation is a real problem, but so far many seem to have grossly exaggerated how big the problem is.
Mathias Sundin
The Angry Optimist
Other articles
📱 Ukrainian Qela organizes democracy activists with an app
Running a startup is hard. Running a startup in Ukraine is brutal. But that's what Tamara Tachynska is doing. With the Qela App, democracy activists and other communities can organize themselves.
🔎 We were supposed to be flooded with AI disinformation... now 800 million have voted, where is it?
We faced a "tech-driven Armageddon" and experts ranked AI disinformation as the second biggest global threat this year. Have you noticed much of it?
💡 Fact-based optimistic news of the week
✈️ Plane hijackings have decreased dramatically
The number of plane hijackings has significantly decreased since the 1980s. The number of fatalities in plane hijackings has also decreased. The last major hijacking occurred during the September 11 attacks in 2001.
🏭 Has China’s CO2 emissions peaked? New stats suggest so
China’s CO2 emissions decreased by 3% in March. Solar and wind covered 90% of the growth in electricity consumption, reducing the share of fossil fuels in electricity production. With the rapid increase in EVs, structural changes are occurring, suggesting that emissions may have peaked in 2023.
🚀 First crash-free test of Starship
Another successful test flight of Starship, and this time both parts of the rocket safely returned to Earth. Starship is not just a new cool rocket; it has the potential to transform humanity.
🦠 AI discovers nearly 1 million new antibiotics - progress in the fight against antibiotic resistance
Researchers used AI to analyze genetic data from tens of thousands of bacteria and other organisms. Nearly one million potential antibiotic compounds were identified, with 79% able to kill at least one microbe. AI has drastically accelerated the process.
👀 New study: Few see disinformation online - and the debate around it lacks support from science
Exposure to false information is concentrated among narrow extremist groups. Algorithms play less of a role than individual choices in exposure to extremist content. Social media has not been shown to be the main cause of polarization.
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