A nationally recognized online disinformation researcher has accused Harvard University of shutting down the project she led to protect its relationship with mega-donor and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
The allegations, made by Dr. Joan Donovan, raise questions about the influence the tech giant might have over seemingly independent research. Facebook’s parent company Meta has long sought to defend itself against research that implicates it in harming society: from the proliferation of election disinformation to creating addictive habits in children. Details of the disclosure were first reported by The Washington Post.
Beginning in 2018, Donovan worked for the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and ran its Technology and Social Change Research Project, where she led studies of media manipulation campaigns. But last year Harvard informed Donovan it was shutting the project down, Donovan claims.
It’s only a bullshit generator if you use it for bullshit generation…
We’ve automated ways to accelerate problem solving, and now that it’s able to actually reason (AI that can actually do math is a big deal). That acceleration should increase significantly.
Such acceleration can make things like AGI actually around the corner, with that corner being 5-10 years from now. Though I think we have too many hardware limitations ATM, which will definitely hamper progress & capability.
But with companies like Microsoft seriously considering moves like “Nuclear Reactors to power AI” , issues with power consumption may not be as much of a barrier…
That’s like saying parrots are only a few generations away from being as intelligent as humans because they can already immitate human speech.
Clearly immitation does not require cognition and by all evidence so far does not lead to it.
Why do you think parrots aren’t intelligent or cognitive?
They are but do you think one will be able to help sort information, misinformation, and disinformation on Facebook any time soon? Or even have a real conversation? They are cognitive but mimicking our speech doesn’t mean they are close to our level.