Dockworker vote avoids strike, alters automation

The Association of American Publishers and Copyright Alliance today hosted a first-of-its-kind, one-day forum at the Royal Sonesta Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, titled The Story Starts with Us: Protecting Human Creativity in Artificial Intelligence. The event explored the intersection of creative industries and emerging artificial intelligence technologies, bringing together authors, publishers, journalists, songwriters, tech innovators, and U.S. policymakers to address issues relating to copyright and generative AI, including the policy framework that protects the livelihoods of creators by preventing theft and misuse of their creative works. As policymakers weigh the benefits and risks of generative AI technologies, the question of how to protect and incentivize the creative and intellectual expression of humans is of critical importance. Today’s forum presented the major issues of policy, practice, and ethics for AI and copyright law, from ingestion of creative works to the public deployment of tools and regenerated content – with a focus on text-centric creative industries.

First quarter-to-date service performance scores covering the period Oct. 1 through Nov. 26 included: *First-Class Mail: 91.1 percent of First-Class Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, an improvement of 2.6 percentage points from the fourth quarter. *Marketing Mail: 92.4 percent of Marketing Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, consistent with performance from the fourth quarter. *Periodicals: 83.4 percent of Periodicals delivered on time against the USPS service standard, an improvement of .6 percentage points from the fourth quarter. The Postal Service anticipates that between 850 million and 950 million packages will be delivered for the holidays. The total number of letters, cards and packages processed and delivered between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day is estimated to be more than 12 billion.

Fake news is nothing new. Merriam-Webster traces the use of the term as far back as the 1890s, and the concept of fabricated stories existed even long before then. With the invention of the printing press, it became significantly easier to spread news and information. But was that news and information true? There were no editors. There were no reporters. There were no fact checkers. It was up to readers to decide what they believed, whether a story told them that the earth was round or that their neighbor was a witch. And as human beings, we are wired to automatically and effortlessly believe what people tell us. Neuroscience shows us that it takes an extra mental step to question a statement. For our brains, it’s cognitively easier to simply accept what we are told and move on. Today, we can create and widely disseminate information more easily than any other time in history. Whether it’s your 12-year-old son’s selfies, the beauty blog your mechanic started, or a new magazine launch from a century-old publisher, it is all considered content. And it all has the potential to reach a massive audience. But not all content is created equal. Consumers and marketers are beginning to fully realize that, along with the dangers associated with unverified facts, intentionally misleading information and unqualified recommendations. Click Read More below for more of the story.