mia

mia, 4 months ago to random

Online anonymity: study found ‘stable pseudonyms’ created a more civil environment than real user names

'What matters, it seems, is not so much whether you are commenting anonymously, but whether you are invested in your persona and accountable for its behaviour in that particular forum. There seems to be value in enabling people to speak on forums without their comments being connected, via their real names, to other contexts.

...calls to end anonymity online by forcing people to reveal their real identities might not have the effects people expect'

https://theconversation.com/online-anonymity-study-found-stable-pseudonyms-created-a-more-civil-environment-than-real-user-names-171374

mia, 5 months ago to random

Cool tool! MastodonContentMover

'a command-line tool that downloads your posts from one Mastodon instance, saving them as a set of files on your computer, and then re-posts them on any other Mastodon instance.

[so that] Mastodon users [can] move content they value when migrating from one instance to another, which is not currently possible within Mastodon itself.'

https://mastodoncontentmover.github.io/

mia, 9 months ago to random

Oh nice one, work people!

'British Library acquires unique disc from the KLF plus all of their surviving master tapes' https://www.bl.uk/press-releases/2023/august/british-library-klf-acquisition

mia, 7 months ago to random

Who think human nature meets computerised decision-making is going to end well?

UK officials use AI '...the processes they use are fair because the final decisions are made by people. Many experts worry, however, that biased algorithms will lead to biased final decisions, because officials can only review the cases flagged to them and often have limited time to do so.'

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/23/uk-officials-use-ai-to-decide-on-issues-from-benefits-to-marriage-licences

mia, 9 months ago to til

Today I learned that Margaret Hamilton, of NASA moon mission software engineering fame, also wrote the code for Edward Lorenz' work on chaos theory https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/aug/27/saved-by-a-butterfly-how-chaos-theory-became-the-secret-ingredient-in-my-happy-marriage
#TIL

mia, 11 months ago to random

'Telling academics they can achieve career success by using today’s algorithmic-driven platforms is like telling Millennials they could afford to buy a house by eating less avocado on toast. It’s a cruel lie because social media is a shit way to share your work now.' The Thesis Whisperer

https://thesiswhisperer.com/2023/07/10/academicenshittification/

mia, 6 months ago to random

'Is AI leading to a reproducibility crisis in science?'

Data leakage 'can be subtle: if a random subset of test data is taken from the same pool as the training data... And if medical data from the same individual (or same scientific instrument) are split between training and test sets, the AI might learn to identify features associated with that individual or that instrument, rather than a specific medical ailment... That’s why it is essential to run ‘control’ trials'

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03817-6

mia, 9 months ago to random

I just used https://tootfinder.ch to find one of my own posts - it's better than nothing while search is still being rolled out across mastodon!

mia, 11 months ago to random

I'm super-excited to launch a White Paper by me, @sam and @meghaninmotion at #DH2023 today:

'Recommendations, Challenges and Opportunities for the Future of Crowdsourcing in Cultural Heritage: a White Paper' https://doi.org/10.21428/a5d7554f.2a84f94b

In some ways it's an open letter to funders and organisational leaders about how they can support sustainable development and innovation in the field; with calls for better evaluation; skills and working with AI / machine learning etc.

Have thoughts, examples to share? You can comment on the doc!

More background at https://collectivewisdomproject.org.uk/new-release-collective-wisdom-white-paper/

#crowdsourcing #DigitalHumanities #CitizenScience #CitizenHistory

mia, 9 months ago to random

Generative AI is a big challenge for open data - I've reconsidered sharing my own stuff.

Creative Commons are asking people to get involved in the wider 'beyond copyright' issues.

'Though using CC licenses and legal tools for training data and works produced by generative AI may address some legal uncertainty, it does not solve all the ethical concerns raised, which go far beyond copyright — involving issues of privacy, consent, bias, economic impacts, and access to and control over technology, among other things.
...
For many creators, these and other issues may be a reason not to share their works at all under any terms, not just via CC licensing. CC wants AI to augment and support commons, not detract from it, and we want to see solutions to these concerns to avoid AI turning creators away from contributing to the commons altogether.'

https://creativecommons.org/2023/08/18/understanding-cc-licenses-and-generative-ai/

mia, 9 months ago to random

Hi! If you're interested or work in #DigitalHumanities, here's a shortcut to enjoying mastodon.

It's great once you're going but the first steps aren't that intuitive. There aren't algorithmic recommendations for posts or folks to follow, so here's a quick way to kickstart your network:

1. Sign up to https://hcommons.social/ (if you need a mastodon account)

2. Add some information and a pic to your profile

3. Select some or all of the DH folks listed at https://frederik-elwert.github.io/Mastodon-Digital-Humanists/ Save the CSV and import it to your Follow list

4. Enjoy! You can add or remove folk as you wish. You can add yourself to the list above too

mia, 9 months ago to random

Who are folk using for domains these days after Gandi put their prices up?

mia, 1 year ago to random

If you won the passport lottery at birth you might not realise how many voices are missing from 'international' conferences in countries like the UK or US.

This might be eye-opening: In pursuit of a VISA | Yanina Bellini Saibene

https://yabellini.netlify.app/blog/2023-05-06-visa/

mia, 6 months ago to random

Looking for a unique job that needs imagination and technical expertise; linking the worlds of ancient manuscripts and algorithms, historical newspapers and large language models? Make a difference at one of the world's biggest libraries

BL Labs Technical Lead, £51k, closes Dec 22
https://www.vercida.com/uk/jobs/bl-labs-technical-lead-british-library-st-pancras

More on this job, also Product Owner, Research Software Engineer and Test Engineer posts in the @BL_DigiSchol Universal Viewer product team, close Jan 3 https://livingwithmachines.ac.uk/digital-posts-at-the-british-library/
https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2023/09/join-the-british-librarys-universal-viewer-product-team.html

#JobFairy #JobKlaxon #RSE #UniversalViewer #IIIF #MuseTech #DigitalHumanities #ComputationalHumanities #HASS

mia, 5 months ago to random

I've noticed a few people commenting on not reaching their 'reading goals' for the year, so this A.Word.A.Day quote seemed timely:

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. -Mortimer J. Adler, philosopher, educator, and author (28 Dec 1902-2001)

mia, 6 months ago to random

Ted Chiang on AI: 'When Silicon Valley tries to imagine superintelligence, what it comes up with is no-holds-barred capitalism.'

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-danger-to-civilization-isnt-ai-its-runaway

mia, 8 months ago to random

If everything feels a bit much for whatever reason, don't forget that it's #bleptember season on mastodon. Cute cats and dogs and maybe even a giraffe are just a hashtag away...

mia, 10 months ago to random

Fab to see this from a major org like Museums Association. 'Better procurement is vital for the planet' 'Making spending decisions that enhance social value is one way to embed climate action across decision-making and processes.

Sustainable procurement is about taking a holistic approach to buying and looking at the social impact at all stages of the supply chain.'

But will procurement rules allow it? We're meant to use Amazon, which doesn't help the planet or local businesses

https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/opinion/2023/07/policy-better-procurement-is-vital-for-the-planet/

mia, 1 month ago to ai

Patriarchal AI: How ChatGPT can harm a woman's career (LSE blog)

If you ask ChatGPT to write performance reviews based on nothing but names, 'men are priceless and should be given more leadership positions in the organisation, whereas the women need help and guidance to improve their skills in their existing jobs'.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2024/04/26/patriarchal-ai-how-chatgpt-can-harm-a-womans-career/ #AI #EverydaySexism

mia, 2 months ago to ai

UNESCO's nvestigation into Gender Bias in Large Language Models: 'LLMs generated negative content about gay subjects in approximately 70% of instances for Llama 2 and in approximately 60% of instances for GPT-2. Finally, in generating content using prompts which intersect gender and culture with occupation, the results highlight a clear bias in AI-generated content, showing a tendency to assign more diverse and professional jobs to men (teacher, doctor, driver), while often relegating women to roles that are stereotypical or traditionally undervalued and controversial'

https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000388971/PDF/388971eng.pdf.multi

#AI #bias #equality

mia, 1 month ago to ArtificialIntelligence

Today I learnt about Masakhane, a 'grassroots NLP community for Africa, by Africans', helping make sure that the 2000+ languages and related names and cultures in the continent are represented in technology https://www.masakhane.io/ #NLP #AI #MachineLearning #language

Via a Towards a National Collection seminar

mia, 1 month ago to random

My hunt for a missing TV episode – and what it shows about being Black in Britain | Jason Okundaye | The Guardian

On making sure the stories of all communities can be told in the future:
'callouts for people to submit their possessions to valuable public archives is one solution; and a greater effort from museums, libraries and universities to build trust and reach people is essential'

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/13/tv-episode-black-britain-gay-history

mia, 1 month ago to random

'By looking at that graph, can you tell which year the library started to grow by around one hundred terabytes of data per year? With the expectation that billions of items would be findable and made available while operating under a complex set of legally-defined technical constraints entirely specific to this singular context?

It was 2013. There in the middle of that downward curve.

Today, the library manages petabytes of data and has the responsibility of providing nation-scale digital memory, on funds that have only ever shrunk.'

From 'Invisible Memory Machines' by @anj
http://anjackson.net/2024/05/14/invisible-memory-machines/

mia, 17 days ago to datascience

James Baker on Bluesky: 'From 2025/26 University of Southampton DH will be running a new MSc in Digital Humanities (Data Science). Huge thanks to all my colleagues who've helped turn our little idea into a reality, especially the amazing
Lexi Webster https://www.southampton.ac.uk/courses/digital-humanities-data-science-masters-msc

And look out for a Humanities Data Science Lectureship we'll be advertising in the Autumn to lead this programme (ask me if you are interested in knowing more before the ad comes out).'

#DigitalHumanities #DataScience

mia, 30 days ago to random

'The world needs to pay much closer attention to how, when and whether AI technologies are gendered and, crucially, who is gendering them'

From 'What’s up with ChatGPT’s new sexy persona?' Arwa Mahdawi in the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/16/openai-chatgpt-sexy-persona