OUR PICKSWhy Super Typhoons Are More Common Than You’d Think | Russia Aimed Propaganda at Gamers, Minorities to Swing 2024 Election | How to Slow the Spread of Lethal AI, and more
· AI-Fakes Detection Is Failing Voters in the Global South
With generative AI affecting politics worldwide, researchers face a “detection gap,” as the biases built into systems mean tools for identifying fake content often work poorly or not at all in the Global South
· Why Super Typhoons Like Yagi Are More Common Than You’d Think
Unlike in the Atlantic, there is little to stop high-intensity storms forming in Southeast Asia, and climate change is making conditions even more perilous
· DOJ: Russia Aimed Propaganda at Gamers, Minorities to Swing 2024 Election
Newly unsealed court documents reveal in unprecedented detail a campaign called the Good Old USA Project, which Russian authorities believed could impact the US election
· How to Slow the Spread of Lethal AI
Today, it is far too easy for reckless and malicious actors to get their hands on the most advanced and potentially lethal machine-learning algorithms
· From Istanbul to El Paso: How Smugglers Enable Illegal Migrant Crossings
How Turkish migrants are managing to enter the U.S. illegally
AI-Fakes Detection Is Failing Voters in the Global South (Vittoria Elliott, Wired))
Recently, former president and convicted felon Donald Trump posted a series of photos that appeared to show fans of pop star Taylor Swift supporting his bid for the US presidency. The pictures looked AI-generated, and WIRED was able to confirm they probably were by running them through the nonprofit True Media’s detection tool to confirm that they showed “substantial evidence of manipulation.”
Things aren’t always that easy. The use of generative AI, including for political purposes, has become increasingly common, and WIRED has been tracking its use in elections around the world. But in much of the world outside the US and parts of Europe, detecting AI-generated content is difficult because of biases in the training of systems, leaving journalists and researchers with few resources to address the deluge of disinformation headed their way.
Detecting media generated or manipulated using AI is still a burgeoning field, a response to the sudden explosion of generative AI companies. (AI startups pulled in over $21 billion in investment in 2023 alone.) “There’s a lot more easily accessible tools and tech available that actually allows someone to create synthetic media than the ones that are available to actually detect it,” says Sabhanaz Rashid Diya, founder of the Tech Global Institute, a think tank focused on tech policy in the Global South.
Why Super Typhoons Like Yagi Are More Common Than You’d Think (Dennis Mersereau, Wired)
The year’s first super typhoon erupted over the steamy waters of the western Pacific Ocean on Thursday as Yagi churned toward an eventual landfall in southern China.
Having formed as a tropical cyclone in the Philippine Sea on Sunday, the powerful storm peaked on Thursday afternoon local time with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, which would be the equivalent of a high-end Category 4 hurricane. At least 13 people have been killed in the Philippines as a result of flooding and landslides.
Forecasters expect the storm to weaken somewhat before striking the Chinese island of Hainan by the end of the week, raking the popular tourist destination with dangerous winds and flooding rains. Yagi is expected to be the strongest storm to hit the region in a decade, with the southern Chinese provinces of Hainan and Guangdong shutting schools, closing bridges, and grounding flights in preparation.
