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Most people older than 30 probably remember doing research with good old-fashioned encyclopedias. Youd pull a heavy volume from the shelf, check the index for your topic of interest, then flip to the appropriate page and start reading. It wasnt as easy as typing a few words into the Google search bar, but on the plus side, you knew that the information you found in the pages of the Britannica or the World Book was accurate and true.

Not so with internet research today. The overwhelming multitude of sources was confusing enough, but add the proliferation of misinformation and its a wonder any of us believe a word we read online.

Wikipedia is a case in point. As of early 2020, the sites English version was averaging about 255 million page views per day, making it the eighth-most-visited website on the internet. As of last month, it had moved up to spot number seven, and the English version currently has over 6.5 million articles.

But as high-traffic as this go-to information source may be, its accuracy leaves something to be desired; the page about the sites own reliability states, The online encyclopedia does not consider itself to be reliable as a source and discourages readers from using it in academic or research settings.

Metaof the former Facebookwants to change this. In a blog post published last month, the companys employees describe how AI could help make Wikipedia more accurate.

Though tens of thousands of people participate in editing the site, the facts they add arent necessarily correct; even when citations are present, theyre not always accurate nor even relevant.

Meta is developing a machine learning model that scans these citations and cross-references their content to Wikipedia articles to verify that not only the topics line up, but specific figures cited are accurate.

This isnt just a matter of picking out numbers and making sure they match; Metas AI will need to understand the content of cited sources (though understand is a misnomer, as complexity theory researcher Melanie Mitchell would tell you, because AI is still in the narrow phase, meaning its a tool for highly sophisticated pattern recognition, while understanding is a word used for human cognition, which is still a very different thing).

Metas model will understand content not by comparing text strings and making sure they contain the same words, but by comparing mathematical representations of blocks of text, which it arrives at using natural language understanding (NLU) techniques.

What we have done is to build an index of all these web pages by chunking them into passages and providing an accurate representation for each passage, Fabio Petroni, Metas Fundamental AI Research tech lead manager, told Digital Trends. That is not representing word-by-word the passage, but the meaning of the passage. That means that two chunks of text with similar meanings will be represented in a very close position in the resulting n-dimensional space where all these passages are stored.

The AI is being trained on a set of four million Wikipedia citations, and besides picking out faulty citations on the site, its creators would like it to eventually be able to suggest accurate sources to take their place, pulling from a massive index of data thats continuously updating.

One big issue left to work out is working in a grading system for sources reliability. A paper from a scientific journal, for example, would receive a higher grade than a blog post. The amount of content online is so vast and varied that you can find sources to support just about any claim, but parsing the misinformation from the disinformation (the former means incorrect, while the latter means deliberately deceiving), and the peer-reviewed from the non-peer-reviewed, the fact-checked from the hastily-slapped-together, is no small taskbut a very important one when it comes to trust.

Meta has open-sourced its model, and those who are curious can see a demo of the verification tool. Metas blog post noted that the company isnt partnering with Wikimedia on this project, and that its still in the research phase and not currently being used to update content on Wikipedia.

If you imagine a not-too-distant future where everything you read on Wikipedia is accurate and reliable, wouldnt that make doing any sort of research a bit too easy? Theres something valuable about checking and comparing various sources ourselves, is there not? It was a big a leap to go from paging through heavy books to typing a few words into a search engine and hitting Enter; do we really want Wikipedia to move from a research jumping-off point to a gets-the-last-word source?

In any case, Metas AI research team will continue working toward a tool to improve the online encyclopedia. I think we were driven by curiosity at the end of the day, Petroni said. We wanted to see what was the limit of this technology. We were absolutely not sure if [this AI] could do anything meaningful in this context. No one had ever tried to do something similar.

Image Credit: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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Meta Is Building an AI to Fact-Check WikipediaAll 6.5 Million Articles - Singularity Hub

Meta, Wikipedia

Despite the efforts of over 30 million editors, Wikipedia sure aint perfect. Some information on Wikipedia lacks a genuine source or citationas we learned with the Pringle Man hoax, this can have a wide-ranging impact on culture or facts. But Meta, formerly Facebook, hopes to solve Wikipedias big problem with AI.

As detailed in a blog post and research paper, the Meta AI team created a dataset of over 134 million web pages to build a citation-checker AIcalled SIDE. Using natural language technology, SIDE can analyze a Wikipedia citation and determine whether its appropriate. It can also find new sources for information already published on Wikipedia.

Meta AI highlights the Blackfoot ConfederacyWikipedia article as an example of how SIDE can improve citations. If you scroll to the bottom of this article, youll learn that Joe Hipp was the first Native American to competefor the WBA World Heavyweight Titlea cool fact that is 100% true. But heres the problem; whoever wrote this factoid cited a source that has nothing to do with Joe Hipp or the Blackfeet Tribe.

In this case, Wikipedia editors failed to check the veracity of a citation (the problem has since been fixed). But if the editors had SIDE, they could have caught the bad citation early. And they wouldnt need to look for a new citation, as SIDE would automatically suggest one.

At least, this is the hypothesis put forth by Meta AI researchers. While SIDE is certainly an interesting tool, we still cant trust AI to understand language, context, or the veracity of anything published online. (To be fair, Meta AIs research paperdescribes SIDE as more of a demonstration than a working tool.)

Wikipedia editors can now test SIDE and assess its usefulness. The project is also available on Github. For what its worth, SIDE looks like a super-powered version of the tools that Wikipedia editors already use to improve their workflow. Its easy to see how such a tool could flag citations for humans to review, at the very least.

Source: Meta AI

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Meta Wants to Fixs Wikipedia Biggest Problem Using AI - Review Geek

Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that Capitol Records just signed an "Artificial Intelligence virtual rapper" FN meka becoming the worlds first A.I. artist to sign with a major label. He has 10 million followers on TikTok. (Rappers are pissed!)

The deal was signed following Mekas continued success on TikTok with its singles Moonwalkin, Speed Demon and Internet, earning her over a billion views and has accrued 10 million followers on TikTok. The new deal came boasting a first single with Capitol Records titled Florida Water featuring Gunna and Fortnite streamer Clix.

The artificial intelligence rapper also announced it will star in a new commercial for Apple Music this week.

On the Turbo-produced song "Florida Water," Meka delivers flossy lines like, "Oh, just put it on my tab/I don't see the prices, throw it in my bag/Always in a foreign when I dash/Clean water VVS diamonds bust down/Make it splash."

Ryan Ruden, Capitol Music Groups Executive Vice President of Experiential Marketing & Business Development, views the partnership with FN Meka as the future of music merging with technology. "[It] meets at the intersection of music, technology and gaming culture," he told MBW. "It's just a preview of whats to come."

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BIOGRAPHY AND WIKIPEDIA: Capitol Records just signed an "Artificial Intelligence virtual rapper" FN meka becoming the world's first A.I....

It turns out Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid is causing a stir in Spain.

A painting in the Museo del Prado in central Madrid bears a striking resemblance to McDavid, and Twitter has just discovered it.

Went to El Museo del Prado in Madrid yesterday to get a little culture and this was [sic] my favourite painting because its Connor McDavid, user @Mariia19 tweeted Tuesday.

The painting actually is a portrait of Francisco Lezcano, also known as The Nio de Vallecas, and is the 1645 portrait by Diego Velzquez of Francisco Lezcano, also known as Lezcanillo or el Vizcano, a jester at the court of Philip IV of Spain, according to Wikipedia.

The tweet has prompted plenty of reaction.

And more than a few photoshops, too.

McDavid netted NHL career-highs in goals (44) and points (123) in 80 games this season to win the Art Ross Trophy as the leagues leading scorer. The 25-year-old also paced the Stanley Cup Playoffs in scoring with 33 points (10 goals, 23 assists) despite being swept out of the Western Conference Final by the eventual Stanley Cup-winning Colorado Avalanche.

He leads all NHLers in scoring since entering the league in 2015-16 with 697 points (239 points, 458 assists) in 487 games.

McDavid has Hart Memorial Trophy wins in 2021 and 2017; Art Ross Trophy wins in 2021, 2018, and 2017; Ted Lindsay Awards in 2021, 2018, and 2017; and has earned NHL First All-Star Team nods in 2021, 2019, 2018, and 2017.

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Spanish art museum has painting that looks exactly like Connor McDavid | Offside - Daily Hive

Maryana Iskander may have one of the least-understood jobs in all of tech. As the chief executive officer of the Wikimedia Foundation, she oversees hundreds of thousands of volunteers and a website that pulls in more traffic than Amazon, Netflix or LinkedIn.

Yet her 600-employee organization humbly raises funds to keep operating, she does not have authority to control the mighty volunteer workforce, and anyone can edit the popular website sometimes with malicious and mischievous content.

Iskanders job is a paradox, and so is she. She was born in Cairo but grew up a Texan. She has impressive educational bona fides, a Rhodes scholarship and a Yale law degree, but she downplays her credentials. She works from San Franciscos Financial District but has a home in Johannesburg, South Africa.

She is still relatively new. She took the helm at the Wikimedia Foundation at the beginning of 2022, previously serving as CEO of a South African youth employment nonprofit, Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator.

The Examiner sat down with Iskander in her office with a sweeping view of the San Francisco skyline to learn more about how Wikipedia works, what its like to lead it, and how she sees the job.

Are you the boss of all of Wikipedia? No. I am the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, which is an integral part of supporting Wikipedia, but actually, hundreds of thousands of volunteers all over the world are the people who make Wikipedia what it is.

Whats the Wikimedia Foundation? The Wikimedia Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports not only Wikipedia, but other free knowledge projects. And being a nonprofit organization means that all of this content can be provided for free, and without ads, and in a way that feels pretty different from how other platforms operate.

Isnt Jimmy Wales the head of Wikipedia? I would say Jimmy Wales is both the founder and the spirit of Wikipedia. Jimmy continues to be part of the story of this thing thats grown beyond even his wildest imagination.

You said theres hundreds of thousands of volunteer editors. So how many people get paid and are professional editors of Wikipedia? Wikipedia is written by volunteers, unpaid people helping the rest of us make sure that we find information on the internet that is accurate and verified and cited and sourced. There are employees of the Wikimedia Foundation that provide support to these communities and volunteers, but the volunteers themselves are not paid staff.

What does the foundation do? It does a few important things. The most important is provide the technology and support the servers that allow Wikipedia to operate as one of the top 10 websites in the world. We also provide support to local communities all over the world through grants and capacity-building that is the free knowledge movement. And we provide legal litigation and advocacy that keeps free knowledge available and accessible.

How many people work for the foundation and where is it headquartered? Although the foundation is a U.S. nonprofit with San Francisco headquarters, I would describe it as a highly global organization. We have roughly 600 people scattered across over 40 countries and every region of the world. And I think that the diversity of our staff makes us a really good partner to the global community that we serve.

So are there other Wikipedias besides English-language Wikipedia? That is one of my favorite questions because Wikipedia is the most multilingual project in the world and on the internet. Wikipedia exists in over 332 languages. They vary in size, depending on how volunteer communities grow those Wikipedias. But 89% of all the articles on Wikipedia are not in English.

Why does Wikipedia have banners on its website asking people to give money? Theyre a small invitation for folks who find value in Wikipedia to chip in and ensure that this can remain as it is: An enterprise that doesnt rely on selling you anything with ads. Im not incentivizing you to stay longer than you need to stay.

Some volunteers are extremely devoted, and there are big gatherings where they come together. Is Wikipedia a cult? I dont think its a cult. I think its like a highly committed subset of humanity that comes from all walks of life, every corner of the world, and somehow finds a common cause in the idea of making free knowledge available to everybody. I think its the most extraordinary digital community in human history.

Since anyone can edit Wikipedia, doesnt it mean all kinds of stuff is wrong up there? There are many built-in mechanisms that help us try to make sure accurate and verified content is on Wikipedia. Sources have to be cited and verified. We have both human and machine tools to identify vandalism, which is usually taken down within minutes, certainly on high-profile topics.

Lets shift gears a little bit more to the personal. Is it a large personal responsibility to lead the nonprofit that manages such a powerful project? I think about that every day. The world is a complicated place, and many societies are polarizing right now. The remarkable thing about Wikipedia is that its a place people can come to disagree in order to get to a better answer. And actually, the opportunity to debate creates more neutrality and the opportunity for people to express differences of opinion and have to talk it out and again, provide the citations and provide those verifiable sources. I think it is an antidote to what were seeing with misinformation and disinformation around the world.

Do you worry about editors in Ukraine who are telling the truth about whats going on in the war and might face oppression? That is maybe the most visible and poignant of many situations where people in the world have to fight for free knowledge and put themselves at risk. Providing support and safety to volunteers and staff is our highest priority. You wrote about both Ukrainian and Russian volunteers trying to preserve information and free knowledge. That reminds you why being able to record history as its happening is one of the most important applications of Wikipedia.

What kind of student were you in school? Were you studious? Did you love to delve into encyclopedias? I come from a family of immigrants who you know often say came to America at a time when America was welcoming of immigrants and maybe a different way than its been in these past few years. And I think that the one thing I understood from my parents is that in America at that time, if you studied hard and you work hard, you know, America was going to give you opportunity. And I think that I really took that to heart.

Youre a Rhodes scholar who went to Yale Law School. Im sure those diplomas are impressive. Why dont I see them on the walls of your office? At the end of the day, you gotta get the job done. And we dont always have equal opportunities to go to fancy schools. It doesnt matter in the end if you cant get the job done.

The best institutions are the ones that allow people to unleash their potential, which is what Wikipedia is all about. That potential might be their curiosity to read an article, or edit articles related to a topic theyre interested in. Or take part in another Wikipedia-related project. Theres a home for them, and theyre welcome.

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What does the CEO who oversees Wikipedia do? We ask her. - San Francisco Examiner