EVENT: Chicago | AI for Organizing & Campaigns Hackathon – Cooperative Impact Lab, August 21, 2024
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“Join us at the AI for Organizing & Campaigns Hackathon in Chicago! Are you passionate about using technology for social change? Do you find AI solutions that can support organizing and campaigning efforts? Then this hackathon is for you! Come together with like-minded individuals to collaborate, innovate, and create solutions that make a real impact. Whether you're a seasoned coder or just starting out, there's a place for you here. Let's harness the power of AI for good!”
Public AI: A new approach to public-interest AI investment – The Public AI Network, August, 2024
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“In this paper, we set out a vision for a different path for AI. It starts with a recognition that, on technology, governments and public-interest organizations don't have to be relegated to the role of rule-makers. They can be inventors, builders, market- shapers, and maintainers. We believe the collective enterprise of building public AI infrastructure can kick-start a virtuous cycle, aligning the goals of the public with public investment and delivering the benefits of AI advances to all. The result is a new political economy.”
Future-Proofing Congress: How Member-Led Upgrades Are Optimizing Legislative Branch Capacity and Resilience – Popvox Foundation, August 2024
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“The House of Representatives is in the midst of a modernization golden age that began in 2019. In a great demonstration of bipartisan comity and institutional foresight, Members, Congressional staff, and Legislative branch agencies have implemented many meaningful upgrades to outdated processes — streamlining capabilities and boosting the chamber’s effectiveness to adapt Congress to the 21st century and better meet the needs of its constituents.”
The Impact of AI on Economic Forecasting and Policy-Making: Opportunities and Challenges for Future Economic Stability and Growth – By Parmeet Singh Channe, August 2024
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“This paper examines the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on economic forecasting and policy-making, highlighting the opportunities and challenges it presents for future economic stability and growth. Traditional economic forecasting methods, such as econometric models and consensus forecasts, often face limitations like data scarcity, limited predictive accuracy, and difficulty adapting to rapidly changing economic conditions. AI integration offers enhanced capabilities, including real-time updates and improved handling of complex data sets through techniques like machine learning and neural networks. This shift significantly improves prediction accuracy and economic policy strategy adaptability.”
The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery – By Chris Lu, Cong Lu, Robert Tjarko Lange et al., August 13, 2024
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“One of the grand challenges of artificial general intelligence is developing agents capable of conducting scientific research and discovering new knowledge. While frontier models have already been used as aids to human scientists, e.g. for brainstorming ideas, writing code, or prediction tasks, they still conduct only a small part of the scientific process. This paper presents the first comprehensive framework for fully automatic scientific discovery, enabling frontier large language models (LLMs) to perform research independently and communicate their findings. We introduce The AI Scientist, which generates novel research ideas, writes code, executes experiments, visualizes results, describes its findings by writing a full scientific paper, and then runs a simulated review process for evaluation. In principle, this process can be repeated to iteratively develop ideas in an open-ended fashion and add them to a growing archive of knowledge, acting like the human scientific community.”
Predicting Results of Social Science Experiments Using Large Language Models – By Ashwini Ashokkumar, Luke Hewitt, Isaias Ghezae, Robb Willer, August 8, 2024
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“To evaluate whether large language models (LLMs) can be leveraged to predict the results of social science experiments, we built an archive of 70 pre-registered, nationally representative, survey experiments conducted in the United States, involving 476 experimental treatment effects and 105,165 participants. We prompted an advanced, publicly-available LLM (GPT-4) to simulate how representative samples of Americans would respond to the stimuli from these experiments. Predictions derived from simulated responses correlate strikingly with actual treatment effects (r = 0.85), equaling or surpassing the predictive accuracy of human forecasters. Accuracy remained high for unpublished studies that could not appear in the model’s training data (r = 0.90).”
Digital Government in Japan: Historical Foundations, Future Ambitions, and the Digital Agency – By Sara Takamatsu, Masaki Wakao, Dr. Takuo Inoue, et al., Proceedings EGOV-CeDEM-ePart conference, September 1-5, 2024, Ghent University and KU Leuven, Ghent/Leuven, Belgium
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“Japan has always played a leading role in technological innovation, but when it comes to research on Japan’s digital government, there is a noticeable absence of literature. This practitioner paper addresses this by providing an overview of Japan’s history with digitalisation, delineating the country's journey from pioneering IT infrastructure initiatives to establishing a comprehensive digital society. The paper uses this historical exploration to frame a discussion on the creation of the Digital Agency, which may be categorised as a digital government unit, in 2021 as a response to the challenges experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
National Association of Counties Launches AI Training Course – Government Technology, August 9, 2024
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“As artificial intelligence makes its mark in the public sector, the push to educate officials about how to view and deploy the fast-moving technology keeps spreading. Now that effort includes counties. The National Association of Counties (NACo) has launched the NACo Artificial Intelligence (AI) Leadership Academy. Described as “an innovative, online program to equip frontline county government leaders with practical knowledge and tools,” the pilot course runs six weeks. County officials taking the course will learn how to understand and use AI to advance public-sector goals, the association said.”
California partners with Nvidia on community college AI training program – StateScoop, by Keely Quinlan, August 9, 2024
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“California on Friday announced a new partnership with the tech giant Nvidia to provide students, educators and workers in the state’s community colleges with access to generative artificial intelligence training and resources to learn new skills and advance their careers. The partnership was formalized by a memorandum of understanding signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Wednesday. The agreement aims to expand access to AI tools in community colleges. Under the agreement, Nvidia will share its AI resources and training materials, such as curriculums, certifications, hardware, software, labs and workshops, with community colleges with the aim of bolstering innovation in the state.”
Kamala Harris' Rally Crowds Aren't AI-Generated. Here's How You Can Tell – Wired, by Kyle Orland, August 13, 2024
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“...Aside from the novel use of "AI" as a verb, Trump's post marks the first time, that we know of, that a US presidential candidate has personally raised the specter of AI-generated fakery by an opponent (rather than by political consultants or random social media users). The accusations, false as they are, prey on widespread fears and misunderstandings over the trustworthiness of online information in the AI age. It would be nice to think that we could just say Trump's claims here are categorically false and leave it at that. But as artificial intelligence tools become increasingly good at generating photorealistic images, it's worth outlining the many specific ways we can tell that Harris' crowd photos are indeed authentic. Consider this a guide for potential techniques you can use the next time you come across accusations that some online image has been ‘A.I.'d’ to fool you.”
