Most Americans are Worried About Overwhelming Amount of Misinformation on the Internet Amidst Elections

Adobe did a study about what Americans think of all the misinformation about elections on the internet and social media. Most of the respondents said that they have been fooled by misinformation about elections and now they are frustrated about what to believe and what not to believe. There has been a rise in deep fakes on social media that are spreading misinformation about the 2024 presidential elections in the USA.

95% of the Americans out of 2000 who were surveyed said that they believe that AI and misinformation is going to affect the elections. 85% said that they have seen a rise in misinformation on the internet regarding elections in the past three months and half of them admitted that they have fallen for the misinformation once or twice.

Adobe VP of Global Public Policy Jace Johnson says that they think misinformation has lowered the public trust and they do not have a way to verify information. It will soon be that the public won't believe anything they see and hear online. Generative AI tools have become one of the biggest sources for spreading misinformation on the internet.

87% of the respondents blame AI for eroding their trust on information they see online. Political deep fakes are being used extensively on social media and Americans have stopped believing every image they see on the internet and social media sites. Nearly half of the respondents said that they have stopped using social media because most of the things they see on there are fake.

89% of the US public wants the government to implement strict laws and regulations for spreading misinformation on social media while 74% believe that the US government isn't doing anything to stop the spread of misinformation. Overall, most Americans want transparency that can differentiate fake from real.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Google Improves Passkey Support On Chrome

Google is making support for passkeys on Chrome simpler. This means signing in without passwords is now going to be easier than before.

The tech giant says it’s rolling out more support for all devices by launching its Password Manager PIN. This ensures users can access securely, save credentials, and even synchronize the passkeys so that they can be used for Windows, macOS, Android, and Linux. All the updates will be present on ChromeOS as a beta too while support for iOS devices is arriving soon.

"In addition to Android devices, you can now save passkeys to Google Password Manager on desktop.", says Google.

The feature is required so that it can be saved onto Google’s Password Manager for Android before the update is rolled out. It would require users to scan QR codes on Android so that it can be accessed on various other apps.

The latest PIN means you no longer have to scan QR codes and need to make sure all saved passkeys stay protected through E2E encryption. This way, not even the Google can access these.

To use the feature, users will first need to unlock Android screens or make use of the Password Manager for unlocking Android screens. Another technique is to use a Password Manager PIN so passkeys can work on any new device.



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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

New Research Shows ChatGPT Uses Too Much Water to Keep its Data Centers Cool Which Can Have Harmful Effects to Environment

According to the Pew Research Center, a quarter of Americans have used ChatGPT ever since its release in 2022. Chatbots like ChatGPT consume too much energy while answering the prompts which can make their system heat up. A lot of water is used to keep the data centers cool but it can have a lot of effects on the environment. The Washington Post collaborated with the University of California to find out how much energy and water for ChatGPT-4 to write a 100 word email.

Whenever there is a prompt given to ChatGPT, it runs through servers to find out the best responses. Servers generate heat and water cools them down through cooling towers. The amount of water and electricity a data center requires usually depends on where the data center is located. Some data centers also use large units resembling air conditioners to cool down data centers. But even if a data center uses water or electricity to cool down, it still affects the environment.

The water required for AI chatbots using GPT-4 to generate a 100-word email varies by data center location. For example, Washington consumes 1,468 milliliters, while Texas needs just 235 milliliters. This variation emphasizes the environmental impact of technology. Here’s a breakdown of water usage: Washington—1,468 ml, Arizona—925 ml, Illinois—464 ml, Iowa—462 ml, Wyoming—369 ml, Virginia—353 ml, and Texas—235 ml.

AI chatbot water usage varies by data center location, with Washington requiring 1,468 milliliters per email.

Shaolei Ren, an associate professor at UC Riverside, says that if a data center is located in a hot region, it requires a lot of energy to cool down. If an air conditioner is used for cooling, it takes too much electricity. If water is used for cooling down, it can decrease the water level in that region especially if it is a drought prone area.

Northern Virginia has the world’s most data centers and people often protest that they are building more data centers there and there are still no long term jobs present. Records from Iowa show that Microsoft has already used the region's 6% of total water. Google disclosed that it has used over a quarter of water from The Dalles for their data centers.

According to AI experts, chatbots need months of training and huge amounts of energy before they can answer prompts. During the training process, each chatbot gives out heat in data centers but many bit tech companies like Microsoft, Google and Meta have pledged to use new cooling methods that wouldn't be harmful to the environment. But these pledges are often not fulfilled. Google recently shared a report about its carbon emissions stating that their carbon emission footprint has risen 48% because of their AI data centers. AI is demanding more energy from data centers which can have adverse effects on the environment and the future of this world.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

UN Launches New Detailed Framework To Maximize AI Potential and Minimize Risks

The UN has just announced a new detailed framework that will maximize AI potential and limit the risks attached.

The Secretary General’s Advisory Body on AI rolled out the final report called Governing AI for Humanity where it detailed more about how AI can serve humanity at its finest. This is especially true for those individuals who are considered minorities and underrepresented. They are those who feel their voices and opinions are never considered

The report goes on further to build months of extensive consultations featuring close to 2000 participants. The publishing of a provincial report that took place last year in December shed light on how this group can best represent AI and the aspirations that many hold for the groundbreaking tech.

The final report rolled out a new plan to manage AI based risks and share the potential that this tech has for millions around the world. Among a host of other things, it calls for a new foundation to be laid down for the first detailed plan for international cooperation on the matter.

Similarly, it proposed several recommendations to address the drawbacks on governing AI and hopes all governments can respond. In the same way, it will include stakeholders who wish to cooperate in regulation of AI so that it’s better marketed and in line with human rights protection.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Survey Shows Majority of Gen-Z Wish that TikTok and X Didn’t Exist

TikTok has become an addiction among teens and adults both. But a new survey of 1006 GenZ by a psychologist Jonathan Haidt and the Harris Poll found out that 47% of Gen-Z wish TikTok didn't exist while 50% share the same thoughts about X. The reason why Gen-Z think this way is because they are wasting most of their time on social media apps like TikTok and X.

Jonathan Haidt is the author of best-seller The Anxious Generation. In his book, he gave out four basic rules for children and their smartphone usage. The first rule was that children shouldn't own a smartphone before high school and the second rule talked about how no teen should have a social media account before age. The other two rules were about prohibition of smartphones in schools and unsupervised play. The book was quite controversial but it still said some bitter truths.

The psychologist found out that 60% of Gen-Z spend 4 hours of their day on social media while 23% spend six or more hours of their day on social media. It is really interesting to see as 60% of Gen-Z believe that use of social media has a negative impact on themselves and society. 52% of Gen-Z say social media has helped them a lot, 29% said that it has negatively impacted them and most of them said that it has affected their mental health.

36% of Gen-Z who were surveyed are in favor of banning social media for under 16, while 69% are in favor of imposing child-safe options on social media for under 18 kids.

When Gen-Z were asked which social media apps they wished didn't exist, TikTok and X got the most votes, followed by Snapchat (43%), Facebook (37%) and Instagram (34%). Haidt says that social media companies should take actions to ensure that the content on their apps isn't harming teens and children in any way.

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Read next:

• Study Shows Scientific Research on ChatGPT Lowers Cognitive Load and Gives Direct Responses as Compared to Traditional Research

• Study Finds ChatGPT Gives Biased Answers About Cultural Questions which Often Depict an English Speaking or Protestant European Country
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Study Finds ChatGPT Gives Biased Answers About Cultural Questions which Often Depict an English Speaking or Protestant European Country

A study published in PNAS Nexus found that ChatGPT shows some biases when it comes to some cultures. ChatGPT and many AI models are trained on different cultures by some individuals so it isn't that shocking that it can show some biases about some cultures. The researchers of the study asked five different versions of ChatGPT ten questions taken from the World Values Survey. The survey is quite important when it comes to knowing about what people from different countries think of different cultures.

The questionnaire included questions like an individual's belief in God and what they think of self expression values. The OpenAI’s model was asked to answer like any normal individual would. The results showed that ChatGPT mostly answered like someone from English-speaking and Protestant European countries.

This means that most of the answers were related to self expression like foreigners, environmental protection, diversity, sexual orientation and gender equality. All of the models surveyed neither answered in highly traditional ways like individuals from Ireland or Philippines would nor answered in a highly secular way like individuals from Estonia or Japan would.

To avoid these kinds of answers, researchers then asked ChatGPT models to answer the questions in a way that the individuals from each 107 countries would. The results were somewhat different and had reduced biases for 71% countries on ChatGPT-4o. The researchers say that ChatGPT can reduce its biases if we ask it to answer in a specific way. The way you give a prompt to an AI model is very important for it to answer in a way you want.

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A New Research Shows Many Browser Extensions Compromise User Data and Privacy

According to research by professors from the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, many browser extensions can make data of users vulnerable. Most users use browser extensions for different purposes like managing their passwords, fixing grammar, finding shopping deals and translating web pages.

Even though there are thousands of advantages of browser extensions, they do not come without risks. The research says that these browser extensions are a risk to user privacy and many of these extensions extract user data without their permission and use them for different purposes. Frank Li, the lead researcher, says that we already know that browser extensions can access web history and searches of users, but this new research is done to find out whether browser extensions can also access sensitive information like emails, passwords, social media accounts and bank information.

The team of researchers designed Arcanum, a web framework, to test their suspicions about browser extensions accessing user data. The researchers studied more than 100,000 browser extensions in the Chrome Web Store. It was found that nearly 3000 browser extensions can access private data of users, and more than 200 browser extensions took private user data directly and posted it on different servers.

Some browser extensions also take user data for acceptable reasons, for instance, to improve the browser's functionality so we cannot say whether a browser extension is taking user data for the right purposes or not. To know about this, researchers took some browser extensions and tried to match their privacy policies with their data collection activities. This way they could determine which browser extensions are legitimately taking user data and which ones are not.

Most of the browser extensions were found to have no proper data protection policies. This suggests that web browsers like Google should take a stricter privacy approach when it comes to browser extensions. Users shouldn't be worried about their data and privacy when it comes to browser extensions and only new policies can help them protect their data.

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