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All posts for the day May 5th, 2023
An Australian university has unearthed millions of Tweets by fake accounts pushing disinformation on the Ukraine war, Peter Cronau reports. The sample size dwarfs other studies of covert propaganda about the war on social media.
Rally for Ukraine outside the White House in Washington, Feb. 27, 2022. (Mike Maguire, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
By Peter Cronau
A team of researchers at the University of Adelaide have found that as many as 80 percent of tweets about the 2022 Russia-Ukraine invasion in its early weeks were part of a covert propaganda campaign originating from automated fake “bot” accounts.
An anti-Russia propaganda campaign originating from a “bot army” of phony automated Twitter accounts flooded the internet at the start of the war.
The research shows that of the more than 5 million tweets studied, 90.2 percent (both bot and non-bot) came from accounts that were pro-Ukraine, with fewer than 7 percent of the accounts being classed as pro-Russian.
The university researchers also found these automated tweets had been purposely used to drive up fear amongst people targeted by them, boosting a high level of statistically measurable “angst” in the online discourse.
The research team analysed a massively unprecedented 5,203,746 tweets, sent with key hashtags, in the first two weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from Feb. 24. The researchers looked at predominately English-language accounts. A calculated 1.8 million unique Twitter accounts in the dataset posted at least one English-language tweet.
The results were published in August in a research paper, titled “#IStandWithPutin versus #IStandWithUkraine: The interaction of bots and humans in discussion of the Russia/Ukraine war,” by the University of Adelaide’s School of Mathematical Science.
The size of the sample under study, of over 5-million tweets, dwarfs other recent studies of covert propaganda in social media surrounding the Ukraine war.
The little-reported Stanford University/Graphika research on Western disinformation, analysed by Declassified Australia in September, examined just under 300,000 tweets from 146 Twitter accounts.
The Meta/Facebook research on Russian disinformation reported widely by mainstream media, including by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) a fortnight later, looked at only 1,600 Facebook accounts.
Reports on the new research have appeared in only a few independent media sites, and on Russia’s RT. The ground-breaking study exposing a massive anti-Russia social media disinformation campaign has been effectively ignored by Western establishment media, showing how stories that don’t fit the desired pro-Western narrative are routinely buried.
Disinformation Blitz Krieg
The Adelaide University researchers unearthed a massive organised pro-Ukraine influence operation underway from the early stages of the conflict. Overall, the study found automated “bot” accounts to be the source of between 60 to 80 percent of all tweets in the dataset.
The published data shows that in the first week of the Ukraine-Russia war there was a huge mass of pro-Ukrainian hashtag bot activity. Approximately 3.5 million tweets using the hashtag #IStandWithUkraine were sent by bots in that first week.
In fact, it was like someone had flicked a switch at the start of the war as pro-Ukraine bot activity suddenly burst into life. In that first day of the war the #IStandWithUkraine hashtag was used in as many as 38,000 tweets each hour, rising to 50,000 tweets an hour by day three of the war.
By comparison, the data shows that in the first week there was an almost total absence of pro-Russian bot activity using the key hashtags. During that first week of the invasion, pro-Russian bots were sending off tweets using the #IStandWithPutin or #IStandWithRussia hashtags at a rate of only several hundred per hour.
Given the apparent long-range planning for the invasion of Ukraine, cyber experts expressed surprise that Russian cyber and internet responses were so laggard. A researcher at the Centre for Security Studies in Switzerland, said: “The [pro-Russian] cyber operations we have seen do not show long preparation, and instead look rather haphazard.”
After being apparently left flatfooted, the #IStandWithPutin hashtag mainly from automated bots, eventually fired up a week after the start of the war. That hashtag started appearing in higher numbers on March 2, day 7 of the war. It reached 10,000 tweets per hour just twice over the next two days, still way behind the pro-Ukraine tweeting activity.
The #IStandWithRussia hashtag use was even smaller, reaching only 4,000 tweets per hour. After just two days of operation, the pro-Russian hashtag activity had dropped away almost completely. The study’s researchers noted the automated bot accounts “likely used by Russian authorities,” were “removed likely by pro-Ukrainian authorities.”
The reaction against these pro-Russian accounts had been swift. On March 5, after the #IStandWithPutin hashtag had trended on Twitter, the company announced it had banned over 100 accounts using the hashtag for violating its “platform manipulation and spam policy” and participating in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour.”
Later that month, the Ukraine Security Service (SBU) reportedly raided five “bot farms”’ operating inside the country. The Russia-linked bot operators were reportedly operating through 100,000 fake social media accounts spreading disinformation that was “intended to inspire panic among Ukrainian masses.”
Ukrainian security forces unearthed a pro-Russian automated “bot army” operating out of an apartment in March 2022. The raid found 100 sets of GSM-gateways, left, and 10,000 sim cards, right, operating 100,000 fake bot accounts. (SBU)
Unfiltered Research
The landmark Adelaide University research differs from these earlier revelations in another most unique and spectacular way.
While the Stanford-Graphika and Meta research was produced by researchers who have long-term deep ties to the U.S. national security state, the Adelaide University researchers are remarkably independent. The academic team is from the university’s School of Mathematical Science.
Using mathematical calculations, they set out to predict and model people’s psychological traits based on their digital footprint.
Unlike the datasets selected and provided for the Stanford/Graphika and the Meta research, the data the Adelaide University team accessed did not come from accounts that had been detected for breaching guidelines and shut down by Meta or Twitter.
Adelaide University campus, in Australia, 2008. (Pdfpdf, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)
Joshua Watt is one of the lead researchers on the university team, and is a Master of Philosophy candidate in applied mathematics.
He told Declassified Australia that the dataset of 5 million tweets was accessed directly by the team from Twitter accounts on the internet using an academic license giving access to the Twitter API.
The “Application Programming Interface” is a data communication software tool that allows researchers to directly retrieve and analyse Twitter data.
The fake tweets and automated bot accounts had not been detected and removed by Twitter before being analysed by the researchers, although some were possibly removed in Twitter’s March sweep.
Watt told Declassified Australia that in fact many of the bot accounts behind the 5 million tweets studied are likely to be still up and running.
Declassified Australia contacted Twitter to ask what action they may have taken to remove the fake bot accounts identified in the University of Adelaide research. They had not responded by the time of going to press.
Critical Tool in Info War
This new research paper confirms mounting fears that social media has covertly become what the researchers call “a critical tool in information warfare playing a large role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
The Adelaide University researchers tried their best to be noncommittal in describing the activities of the fake Twitter accounts, although they had found the vast majority – over 90 percent – were anti-Russian messages. They stated: “Both sides in the Ukrainian conflict use the online information environment to influence geopolitical dynamics and sway public opinion.”
They found the two main participating sides in the propaganda war have their own particular goals and style. “Russian social media pushes narratives around their motivation, and Ukrainian social media aims to foster and maintain external support from Western countries, as well as promote their military efforts while undermining the perception of the Russian military.”
While the research findings concentrated on automated Twitter bots, there were also findings on the use of hashtags by non-bot tweeters. They found significant information flows from non-bot pro-Russian accounts, but no significant flows from non-bot pro-Ukraine accounts.
As well as being far more active, the pro-Ukraine side was found to be far more advanced in its use of automated bots. The pro-Ukrainian side used more “astroturf bots” than the pro-Russians. Astroturf bots are hyper-active political bots that continuously follow many other accounts to increase followers of that account.
Social Media Role in Boosting Fear
Crucially, the University of Adelaide researchers also investigated the psychological influence the fake automated bot accounts had on the online conversation during those early weeks of the war.
These conversations in a target audience may develop over time into support or opposition towards governments and policies – but they may also have more instant effects influencing the target audiences’ immediate decisions.
The study found that it was the tweets from the fake “bot” accounts that most drove an increase in conversations surrounding “angst” amongst people targeted by them. They found these automated bot accounts increased “the use of words in the angst category which contains words related to fear and worry, such as ‘shame,’ ‘terrorist,’ ‘threat, ‘panic.’”
By combining the “angst” messaging with messages about “motion” and geographical locations, the researchers found “the bot accounts are influencing more discussion surrounding moving/fleeing/going or staying.” The researchers believe this effect may well have been to influence Ukrainians even away from the conflict zones to flee from their homes.
The research shows that fake automated social media “bot” accounts do manipulate public opinion by shaping the discourse, sometimes in very specific ways. The results provide a chilling indication of the very real malign effects that mass social media disinformation campaigns can have on an innocent civilian population.
Origins of Twitter Bot Accounts
The researchers report that the overwhelming level of Twitter disinformation that was anti-Russian was from bots “likely [organised] by pro-Ukrainian authorities.”
The researchers asserted no further findings about the origin of the 5 million tweets, but did find that some bots “are pushing campaigns specific to certain countries [unnamed], and hence sharing content aligned with those timezones.” The data does show that the peak time for a selection of pro-Ukrainian bot activity occurred between 6pm and 9pm across U.S. time zones.
Some indication of the origin and the targeting of the messages could be deduced from the specific languages used in the 5 million tweets. Over 3.5 million tweets, or 67 percent, were in the English language, with fewer that 2 percent in Russian and Ukrainian.
In May 2022, the National Security Agency (NSA) director and U.S. cyber command chief, General Paul Nakasone, revealed that the Cyber Command had been conducting offensive Information Operations in support of Ukraine.
“We’ve conducted a series of operations across the full spectrum: offensive, defensive, [and] information operations,” Nakasone said.
U.S. Cyber Command training exercise at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, 2011. (Fort George G. Meade Public Affairs Office, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
Nakasone said the U.S. has been conducting operations aimed at dismantling Russian propaganda. He said the operations were lawful, conducted through policy determined by the U.S. Defense Department and with civilian oversight.
Nakasone said the U.S. seeks to tell the truth when conducting an information operation, unlike Russia.
U.S. Cyber Command had deployed to Ukraine a “hunt forward” cyber team in December to help shore up Ukraine’s cyber defences and networks against active threats in anticipation of the invasion.
A newly formed European Union cyber rapid response team consisting of 12 experts joined the Cyber Command team to look for active cyber threats inside Ukrainian networks and to strengthen the country’s cyber defences.
The U.S. has invested $40 million since 2017 in helping Ukraine buttress its information technology sector. According to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, the investments have helped Ukrainians “keep their internet on and information flowing, even in the midst of a brutal Russian invasion.”
Wars & Lies in Our Pockets
With the rise of the internet, war and armed conflict will never be the same. Analysts have noted that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has ushered in a “new digital era of military, political and economic conflict” being manipulated by “laptop generals and bot armies.”
“In all dimensions of this conflict, digital technology plays a key role – as a tool for cyberattacks and digital protest, and as an accelerator for flows of information and disinformation,” wrote analysts at the Heinrich Boll Stiftung in Brussels. “Propaganda has been a part of war since the beginning of history, but never before could it be so widely spread beyond an actual conflict area and targeted to so many different audiences.”
Joshua Watt, one of the lead researchers on the University of Adelaide team that conducted the landmark study, summed it up: “In the past, wars have been primarily fought physically, with armies, air force and navy operations being the primary forms of combat. However, social media has created a new environment where public opinion can be manipulated at a very large scale.”
“CNN brought once-distant wars into our living rooms,” another analyst stated, “but TikTok and YouTube and Twitter have put them in our pockets.”
We are all carrying around with us a powerful source of information and news media – and also, most certainly, disinformation that’s coming relentlessly at us from influence operations run by “bad actors” whose aim is to deceive.
Another concept that I am trying to figure out. Is the world really overpopulated? It is time to destroy all unscientific myths that are ruining our lives. Lou
I bought the whole package in the 1980s that we are doomed by climate change. I have since realized you cannot trust anything. Science and politics are too corrupted in the West. Just look at what they have done with the plandemic. As such, I will listen to those who attack the science behind climate change. Lou
The former colony will also seek reparations from the monarchy, its Minister of Legal and Constitutional Affairs has said
Say no to lame adulterers! Lou
https://www.rt.com/news/575781-jamaica-monarchy-commonwealth-bil
May 4, 2023
King Charles III (L) sits with Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness in Buckingham Palace, London, Britain, September 17, 2022 © AFP / Stefan Rousseau
The Jamaican government will introduce a bill next month to sever the country’s ties with the British monarchy, possibly removing King Charles as the head of state by 2024, legal and constitutional minister Marlene Malahoo Forte told Sky News on Thursday.
“While the United Kingdom is celebrating the coronation of the King, that is for the United Kingdom,” Malahoo Forte told Sky. “Jamaica is looking to write a new constitution… which will sever ties with the monarch as our head of state.”
“My government is saying we have to do it now,” she continued, adding that for Jamaicans, it’s “time to say goodbye” to the British crown.
Malahoo Forte explained that her government will follow King Charles III’s coronation this weekend by introducing a bill aimed at making Jamaica a republic. It could take around nine months to pass, and would be followed by a referendum giving the Jamaican people the final say on breaking away from the UK.
Almost half of British Commonwealth wants to ditch monarchy – poll
A recent poll has found that majorities in almost half of British Commonwealth countries – including Jamaica – would vote to become republics if given the opportunity.
A British colony since 1655, Jamaica was granted independence in 1962. Jamaican political leaders at the time rejected republicanism in favor of becoming a Commonwealth realm with Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. Successive Jamaican governments have promised to replace the monarch with a president, but all have either been defeated by pro-Commonwealth opponents or left office before fulfilling their promise.
Although most Jamaicans now favor republicanism, many “had warm affection and identified with Queen Elizabeth II,” Malahoo Forte told Sky. “But they do not identify with King Charles. He is as foreign as it gets to us. Plain and simple.” Others view the monarchy as a source of stability, with some elderly Kingston residents telling the British broadcaster that the Jamaican public aren’t “ready” to rule themselves.
Historically, British rule brought order to the island. Jamaica on the eve of its independence had a murder rate of 3.9 per 100,000, one of the lowest in the world. In 2022, the homicide rate stood at 43.8 per 100,000, the second-highest in the world.
READ MORE: UK newspaper apologizes for slavery links
Britain also transported around 600,000 African slaves to Jamaica, and British landowners profiteered from plantations on the island. Republicanism, Malahoo Forte said, “is about us saying goodbye to a form of government that is linked to a painful past of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade.”
While Britain’s Prince William acknowledged last year that “slavery was abhorrent,” Malahoo Forte wants more from the monarchy. “Nothing short of a full apology, plus concrete steps to repair the wrong, will suffice,” she said, adding that reparations “are what the people of Jamaica want, and it is something that the government will do.”
https://www.rt.com/russia/575839-zelensky-puppet-lavrov-west/
The tensions between Moscow and the West can only be resolved by talking with the Ukrainian president’s foreign masters, Russia’s FM has said
May 5, 2023
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attends a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council of Foreign Ministers in Goa, India. © Russian Foreign Ministry / Sputnik
The West and Russia will eventually sit down to discuss their differences, but this dialogue should be held not with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky but with those using him as a stooge, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Goa, India, Lavrov reiterated that Moscow had “never refused to settle issues arising from the actions of the US and their satellites to pump Ukraine with weapons” so that it could fight Russia.
The minister noted that many countries around the world are growing increasingly aware that these tensions cannot be defused solely by freezing the Ukraine conflict. “Everyone understands that the ongoing events are geopolitical in nature,” he said.
“Without solving the main geopolitical problem – that of the West aspiring to hold onto its hegemony and impose its own will on all the others, – it is impossible to resolve crises in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world,” Lavrov added.
‘Half of Europe’ wants better ties with Russia – Polish deputy PM
The Russian diplomat pointed to China’s 12-point plan for a political settlement in Ukraine, which was released in late February. Lavrov said that while the plan does seek to settle the conflict itself, it also focuses on much more global and comprehensive issues.
“All this has to be discussed, of course, not with Zelensky, who is a puppet in the hands of the West, but directly with his masters,” Lavrov said, noting that such talks would take place “sooner or later.”
In early April, amid speculation about an imminent Ukrainian spring counteroffensive, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken ruled out any peace negotiations between Kiev and Moscow, suggesting that such talks would only help Russia to “ratify” its territorial gains.
Moscow has repeatedly said it is open to talks with Kiev if the latter recognizes “the reality on the ground,” including the new status of four former Ukrainian regions that overwhelmingly voted to join Russia last autumn. However, around the same time as the referendums, Zelensky signed a decree prohibiting negotiations with the current Russian leadership.
An homeless woman begs for money in the streets of Helsinki by -18°C, on January 20, 2010.
(Photo by Olivier Morin/AFP via Getty Images)
It turns out the very best thing to do is give people who don’t have a place to live… a place to live.
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/how-finland-solved-homelessness
Apr 29, 2023
Determined to pack more homeless people into Toronto’s overcrowded shelters, officials have come up with a solution: reduce the number of inches between beds.
There’s a certain logic to this and it may be the best we can do — given our refusal to consider solutions that would actually be innovative.
And so it is that here in Toronto we’re busy studying how to jam more beds into already-cramped shelters, while over in Finland — where innovation is more than just another word for privatization — they’ve managed to virtually end homelessness.
OK, so the Finns are more generous and just shell out a lot more to help the homeless, right? Actually not. The Finns are simply smarter.
Instead of abandoning the homeless, they housed them. And that led to an insight: people tend to function better when they’re not living on the street or under a bridge. Who would have guessed?
It turns out that, given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with addictions and other problems, not to mention handling job applications. So, more than a decade after the launch of the “Housing First” policy, 80 per cent of Finland’s homeless are doing well, still living in the housing they’d been provided with — but now paying the rent on their own.
This not only helps the homeless, it turns out to be cheaper.
In Canada, however, we’re determined to stick to market-based solutions, no matter how badly they fail or how costly they are.
Indeed, homelessness is just the extreme end of Canada’s dysfunctional housing market, which we’ve left largely in the domain of the private marketplace, creating a huge divide between those who can afford to buy a house and those who can’t.
This has resulted in a large underclass of tenants — roughly one-third of Canadian households — many of whom are little more than a paycheque away from eviction.
More government intervention required
The situation cries out for more government intervention.
In fact, the government does intervene in the housing market — most notably in ways that actually enhance the privileged position of homeowners by, for instance, sparing them tax on the capital gains they receive on the sale of their homes.
This largely hidden government intervention in the housing market not only amounts to an enormous subsidy for homeowners — costing the federal government almost $10 billion a year in lost revenue — it also further disadvantages tenants by driving up housing prices, putting a home farther out of reach.
Of course, the government also intervenes to increase the housing supply, ostensibly helping tenants. However, these measures often take the form of financial incentives for developers, mostly benefiting developers. The additional rental units created rarely result in lower rents, notes political economist Ricardo Tranjan in his new book “The Tenant Class.”
The best way to benefit low-income renters would be for government to create housing that isn’t based on the profit motive — by building housing itself or subsidizing non-profit groups to do so.
Canada used to be fairly good at this social housing, along with the Europeans. In the late 1960s and early 70s, about 10 per cent of new rental housing built in Canada was social housing.
Canada has exited social housing
But while the Europeans have remained strong in social housing, Canada has almost completely exited the field, with our social housing dropping to just 4 percent of total households — roughly the same level as the devoutly pro-market U.S.
If we want to deal with our dysfunctional housing market more effectively than simply pushing the shelter beds more closely together, the answer will involve increasing the supply of housing that isn’t based on the profit motive.
Sadly, this is not on the political agenda, although it’s noteworthy that Toronto City Councillor Josh Matlow is advocating a proposal along these lines as part of his mayoral campaign.
Matlow’s proposal will no doubt be dismissed as impossibly costly by commentators who, as homeowners, quietly benefit from the impossibly costly (although largely hidden) subsidy provided to homeowners.
© 2023 TheStar.com
Linda McQuaig is an author, journalist, and former NDP candidate for Toronto Centre in the Canadian federal election. The National Post has described her as “Canada’s Michael Moore.” She is also the author of “The Sport and Prey of Capitalists: How the Rich Are Stealing Canada’s Public Wealth” (2019), “War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet: It’s the Crude, Dude” (2006) and (with Neil Brooks) of “Billionaires’ Ball: Gluttony and Hubris in an Age of Epic Inequality” (2012).
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/which-jobs-will-be-most-impacted-chatgpt
BY TYLER DURDEN
THURSDAY, MAY 04, 2023
On November 30, 2022, OpenAI heralded a new era of artificial intelligence (AI) by introducing ChatGPT to the world.
The AI chatbot stunned users with its human-like and thorough responses. ChatGPT could comprehend and answer a variety of different questions, make suggestions, research and write essays and briefs, and even tell jokes (amongst other tasks).
Many of these skills are used by workers in their jobs across the world, which begs the question: which jobs will be transformed, or even replaced, by generative AI in the coming future?
This infographic from Visual Capitalist’s Harrison Schell visualizes the March 2023 findings of OpenAI on the potential labor market impact of large language models (LLMs) and various applications of generative AI, including ChatGPT.
Methodology
The OpenAI working paper specifically examined the U.S. industries and jobs most “exposed” to large language models like GPT, which the chatbot ChatGPT operates on.
Key to the paper is the definition of what “exposed” actually means:
“A proxy for potential economic impact without distinguishing between labor-augmenting or labor-displacing effects.” – OpenAI
Thus, the results include both jobs where humans could possibly use AI to optimize their work, along with jobs that could potentially be automated altogether.
OpenAI found that 80% of the American workforce belonged to an occupation where at least 10% of their tasks can be done (or aided) by AI. One-fifth of the workforce belonged to an occupation where 50% of work tasks would be impacted by artificial intelligence.
The Jobs Most and Least at Risk of AI Disruption
Here is a list of jobs highlighted in the paper as likely to see (or already seeing) AI disruption, where AI can reduce the time to do tasks associated with the occupation by at least 50%.
Analysis was provided by a variety of human-made models as well as ChatGPT-4 models, with results from both showing below:
Jobs | Categorized By | AI Exposure |
---|---|---|
Accountants | AI | 100% |
Admin and legal assistants | AI | 100% |
Climate change policy analysts | AI | 100% |
Reporters & journalists | AI | 100% |
Mathematicians | Human & AI | 100% |
Tax preparers | Human | 100% |
Financial analysts | Human | 100% |
Writers & authors | Human | 100% |
Web designers | Human | 100% |
Blockchain engineers | AI | 97.1% |
Court reporters | AI | 96.4% |
Proofreaders | AI | 95.5% |
Correspondence clerks | AI | 95.2% |
Survey researchers | Human | 84.0% |
Interpreters/translators | Human | 82.4% |
PR specialists | Human | 80.6% |
Animal scientists | Human | 77.8% |
Editor’s note: The paper only highlights some jobs impacted. One AI model found a list of 84 additional jobs that were “fully exposed”, but not all were listed. One human model found 15 additional “fully exposed” jobs that were not listed.
Generally, jobs that require repetitive tasks, some level of data analysis, and routine decision-making were found to face the highest risk of exposure.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, “information processing industries” that involve writing, calculating, and high-level analysis have a higher exposure to LLM-based artificial intelligence. However, science and critical-thinking jobs within those industries negatively correlate with AI exposure.
On the flipside, not every job is likely to be affected. Here’s a list of jobs that are likely least exposed to large language model AI disruption.
Jobs Least Exposed to AI | |
---|---|
Athletes | Short-order cooks |
Large equipment operators | Barbers/hair stylists |
Glass installers & repairers | Dredge operators |
Automotive mechanics | Power-line installers/repairers |
Masons, carpenters, roofers | Oil field maintenance workers |
Plumbers, painters, pipefitters | Servers, dishwashers, bartenders |
Naturally, hands-on industries like manufacturing, mining, and agriculture were more protected, but still include information processing roles at risk.
Likewise, the in-person service industry is also expected to see minimal impact from these kinds of AI models. But, patterns are beginning to emerge for job-seekers and industries that may have to contend with artificial intelligence soon.
Artificial Intelligence Impacts on Different Levels of Jobs
OpenAI analyzed correlations between AI exposure in the labor market against a job’s requisite education level, wages, and job-training.
The paper found that jobs with higher wages have a higher exposure to LLM-based AI (though there were numerous low-wage jobs with high exposure as well).
Job Parameter | AI Exposure Correlation |
---|---|
Wages | Direct |
Education | Direct |
Training | Inverse |
Professionals with higher education degrees also appeared to be more greatly exposed to AI impact, compared to those without.
However, occupations with a greater level of on-the-job training had the least amount of work tasks exposed, compared to those jobs with little-to-no training.
Will AI’s Impact on the Job Market Be Good or Bad?
The potential impact of ChatGPT and similar AI-driven models on individual job titles depends on several factors, including the nature of the job, the level of automation that is possible, and the exact tasks required.
However, while certain repetitive and predictable tasks can be automated, others that require intangibles like creative input, understanding cultural nuance, reading social cues, or executing good judgement cannot be fully hands-off yet.
And keep in mind that AI exposure isn’t limited to job replacement. Job transformation, with workers utilizing the AI to speed up or improve tasks output, is extremely likely in many of these scenarios. Already, there are employment ads for “AI Whisperers” who can effectively optimize automated responses from generalist AI.
As the AI arms race moves forward at a rapid pace rarely seen before in the history of technology, it likely won’t take long for us to see the full impact of ChatGPT and other LLMs on both jobs and the economy.
Kennedy called for an end to the “corrupt merger of corporate and state power,” also known as an embedded administrative state within the Federal government which controls implementation of almost every Federal program at will as they use their influence to create outcomes on behalf of their corporate entities. Kennedy identified the “corporate kleptocracy as a‘cushy socialism for the rich’ and a ‘brutal merciless capitalism for the poor.’
“It keeps us in a state of war, it bails out banks. Last month the Federal government told 30 million Americans they were cutting their food stamp checks by 90%. It took fifteen million people off Medicare, the same month it gave $300 million to the Silicon Valley Bank and tapped up the cost of the Ukraine war to $113 billion. The entire budget of EPA is $12 billion, and the CDC budget is $11 billion. The way we do this is printing money; we printed ten centuries of money in the last fourteen years.”
Global Research, May 03, 2023
Region: USA
Theme: Militarization and WMD
***
It is not surprising that Deep State President Joe Biden, who is the oldest living American President ever, has the audacity to announce that he will be a candidate in the 2024 Presidential campaign even though 70% of Americans believe he should not make a second run.
That percentage includes 51% of Democrats as 67% of voters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. With Kamala Harris as his vice president, 37% of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance and even the pathetic Sen. Bernie Sanders has endorsed Biden’s re-election.
In a pre-packaged three minute video rather than a real live recitation, Biden’s claim to ‘let’s finish the job’ as he continues to spread a fabricated reality with false assertions while encouraging divisiveness in today’s political landscape with an attack on former President Trump and MAGA supporters.
There was no mention of his fiasco presiding over an unnecessary $113 Billion proxy war in Ukraine that began with the 2014 coup, Seventh Fleet invasion of China’s territorial waters in the South China Sea and most recently, challenges to North Korea’s ‘aggression’ with deployment of a nuclear-armed submarine as well as a series of severe economic sanctions against recalcitrant nations (which have boomeranged against the US economy) and the Nord Stream pipeline bombing which is categorized as an ‘act of war.’
Since Biden is little more than a frontman for a highly motivated team of political operatives led by former President Barack Obama or the diabolic WEF Klaus Schwab or some equally malevolent dark political entity, the country has been seized by the totalitarian clique as his administration targets the First Amendment as if free speech is tyrannical permitting government to criminalize political dissent. At the same time, the Biden Administration has allowed an invasion of titanic proportions at the southern border as UN-funded NGO’s threaten US sovereignty with an expected infiltration of up to one million illegal immigrants awaiting the potential lifting of Title 42 on May 11th.
All Biden policies display an utter contempt for the rule of law as the result of a deliberate strategy to collapse the US and its Constitution from within as the US rules-based order has replaced international law, dictating its imperialist foreign policy based on an interventionism-at-will strategy with a bankrupt Country able to only print Monopoly paper money of no real value.
While the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has a forbidding reputation for engineering favorable election result for their choice of candidate; legitimacy, ethics and public opinion notwithstanding, they have “with no plan to sponsor primary debates.” With Biden as its favored candidate, partisan politics has morphed into spiritual warfare, as a diabolic contest of wicked proportions contrary to the country’s divinely inspired beginnings and yet the Dems remain the odds-on-favorite to win via ballot harvesting and other election day trickery.
It is, however, a fitting response to the discredited Democrats and its handlers that an exceptional Presidential primary challenger has emerged who is genetically opposed to the malicious agenda espoused by Biden and its authoritarian elite. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., of the prestigious political Kennedy clan, is the most superior and influential Democrat who could have entered the campaign; not because of his last name but rather because he is a gifted orator, an incisive thinker with a penetrating analytical mind and fortunate enough to be imbued with integrity and a strength of character.
Having viewed RFK’s speech at Hillsdale College on “Anthony Fauci and the Public Health Establishment,” at Dartmouth University on “College Covid 19 Mandates” and his interview as one of Tucker’s last guests, the American public would be wise to pay attention and listen closely to the most knowledgeable and talented extemporaneous Presidential candidate on the American political scene since….1963.
Author of The Real Anthony Fauci as well as a history of voluminous lawsuits all predicated on science have established Kennedy’s bona fides as a professional advocate on Covid 19 and the methodical study of the material world known as ‘science.’ He is more knowledgeable than any other candidate with regard to all the implications of the pandemic and its mandated minutiae of masks, distance, shutdowns, vaccinations, and impacts on American culture and the health of its children.
Kennedy’s accomplishments are extensive and remarkable as Founder, Chair and General Counsel of the Children’s Health Defense, Founder of the Waterkeepers Alliance, legal counsel at Morgan and Morgan personal injury law firm with a BA from Harvard, a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, an LLM from Pace University School of Law and studied at the London School of Economics. He is the recipient of numerous awards with a forthcoming book entitled “The Wuhan Coverup: How US officials Conspired with Chinese Military to Hide the Origins of Covid 19”.
RFK’s appearance at Hillsdale, the only college in the country that did not shutdown during the Covid Pandemic, occurred in early March just prior to his formal announcement as a candidate. An appreciative and receptive audience, Kennedy’s provided a wide-ranging extraordinary presentation on a variety of formidable topics beginning with his efforts on behalf of the Hudson River Riverkeepers to clean up industrial pollution.
He especially focused on collusion between regulatory ‘captured’ state-federal agencies and powerful corporations like big Pharma, detailing the impacts of mercury and DPT vaccines on children and his experiences with Dr. Fauci. Kennedy outlined Covid related attacks on the Constitution including government imposed ‘arbitrary and capricious’ censorship to limit conversation about the truth of Covid including violations of freedom of assembly, enforced social distance w/no due process, compulsory closing of churches with no supporting science and reiterated that ‘the Constitution is the heart and soul of this country.”
Adding that President Reagan’s agreement to provide full vaccine immunity as a liability shield (due to “unavoidable adverse side effects”) allowed that vaccines are the only medical product never required to conduct pre-licensing safety studies as Big Pharma has paid $35 billion in criminal penalties in last ten years. In addition, Kennedy cited a 1989 explosion in chronic health issues for children related to mandated vaccines.
As a lifelong student of the CIA, Kennedy identified the role of his grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, former US Ambassador to the UK, who served on the Hoover Commission and voted to disband the CIA; thus beginning a sixty year Kennedy family fight with the CIA which led RFK to write “American Values: Lessons Learned from my Family.” He identified the CIA in developing bioweapons at Ft. Detrick including the anthrax attack during Patriot Act consideration in 2001. On JFK’s assassination, RFK shared that evil doer Allen Dulles who had been fired from the CIA, was quoted “I’m glad the little shit is dead. He thought he was a God.”
Kennedy’s Hillsdale appearance was followed by formal announcement of his candidacy in Boston which added current foreign policy and economic crisis to his agenda questioning whether pushing Russia and China together is in US national interest and what is objective of the war. Suggesting the US is in Ukraine ‘for the right reasons” although he questioned a nuclear exchange with a country that has more nukes and US prolonging the war is not a good idea. Like the majority of Congress including Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Kennedy would benefit from an in depth briefing by Scott Ritter and/or Colonel Doug MacGregor for a total understanding of the CIA initiated 2014 coup, Russia’s Special Military Operation and NATOs presence threatening Russian sovereignty.
RFK told the audience that after the Soviet Union collapse in 1990, the US never activated its peace dividend which was expected to decrease defense spending from $6 billion to $2 billion as the US made more foreign enemies around the world while increasing its military budget to $8.8 billion. Citing the economy as a source of American strength, ‘not bullets and weapons’ and that while the US spent $8 Trillion in Iraq, China built bridges, ports and infrastructure as it is displacing the US as a trading partner. “While China is earning good will, the US spends $800 Billion on the military.” Having lost Saudi Arabia as “our number one ally in the Shia Crescent”, which has been a key foreign policy objective in the Mideast, RFK suggested that “US foreign policy has collapsed and is no longer a coherent strategy.”
With de-dollarization, lowered oil production, Iraq now a proxy state of Iran, the entire US strategy in the Middle East has disintegrated. RFK suggested we need to do something FAST and committed to “close 800 US overseas bases and bring American troops home immediately in order to make the US an exemplary democracy again” as the Democratic party has lost its identity.
“The worse thing Trump did was the lockdown. In fairness, the bureaucrats rolled him on it; he did not want to do it. But that it not a good enough excuse. He was President of the United States. In May 2020, six hundred doctors sent a letter to Trump asking him to not do the lockdowns.” He said “bureaucrats were coming after him; he had the right instincts. He knew he shouldn’t close down the country but he didn’t; he got rolled by his bureaucracy. At this time in history, you need a President who can stand up to his bureaucracy.”
Kennedy pointed to Trump’s appointment of Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a well-known physician with ties to the pharmaceutical industry as an FDA Commissioner in March, 2017 to eliminate some of the agency’s “regulatory burdens”. Two years later, on June 27, 2019, Gottlieb was elected to Pfizer’s Board of Directors to serve on its Regulatory and Compliance Committee. According to US Federal Election Commission documents (page 163), Pfizer, Inc. donated $1 million to Trump’s Presidential Inauguration Committee on December 22, 2016 and received four tickets to the Leadership Luncheon with Cabinet appointees and House and Senate Leadership.
Only a political neophyte might not recognize the ‘coincidence’ that within days after RFK’s appearance as a Presidential candidate on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Tucker was unceremoniously removed from his Fox program.
Kennedy called for an end to the “corrupt merger of corporate and state power,” also known as an embedded administrative state within the Federal government which controls implementation of almost every Federal program at will as they use their influence to create outcomes on behalf of their corporate entities. Kennedy identified the “corporate kleptocracy as a‘cushy socialism for the rich’ and a ‘brutal merciless capitalism for the poor.’
He continued
“It keeps us in a state of war, it bails out banks. Last month the Federal government told 30 million Americans they were cutting their food stamp checks by 90%. It took fifteen million people off Medicare, the same month it gave $300 million to the Silicon Valley Bank and tapped up the cost of the Ukraine war to $113 billion. The entire budget of EPA is $12 billion, and the CDC budget is $11 billion. The way we do this is printing money; we printed ten centuries of money in the last fourteen years.” We have raised food prices for basic foods like chicken, dairy, milk by 76% in the last two years and now we’re cutting food stamps and bailing out banks in the same month. We need to get rid of this corporate control of our government.”
RFK’s appearance at Dartmouth was nothing short of a brilliant analysis as, given that the topic was part of a larger conference, he focused exclusively on health issues as related to government-industry collusion, the perversion of the science by government regulators, the explosion of chronic childhood diseases and that ‘vaccine effects are impervious to the facts or reality.”
RFK provided shocking and disturbing numbers as he is adamant that the lockdown was not a success but an economic catastrophe that cost the US $16 Trillion according to a Harvard Study with a massive GDP drop for the next ten years. With 4.2% of the world population, the US had 16% of covid deaths shifting $4 Trillion from the American middle class to billionaires as 41% black businesses shut down permanently. Toddlers lost 22 IQ points during the lockdown and many in need of remedial attention. The CDC revised its milestones that a toddler no longer walk at one year but now walk at 1.5 years.
Most impressive has been the quality of Kennedy’s scholarship, the level of his ability to identify essential data to his audience with no slipping and sliding around the unpleasant facts; never hesitating to be straight, true and factual in the belief that all citizens needed to have access to the same information he is familiar with.
In conclusion, RFK:
“Any power that government takes will never be returned voluntarily, every power government will abuse to the max possible and no one ever complied their way out of totalitarianism = the only way is to resist.”
*
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Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Renee Parsons, Global Research, 2023
by Michael Snyder
May 3, 2023
When you are standing on the brink of the unthinkable, it can be way too easy for someone to come along and push you over the edge. I don’t know who just attacked the Kremlin with drones, but it was obviously done for a reason. Whoever did it knew, or should have known, that the Russians would strike back really hard. Just imagine how we would feel if there were explosions at the White House. Russian leaders are extremely angry, and some of them are openly talking about using tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine. But if that happens, our world could be completely turned upside down. The Biden administration has hinted that the U.S. would use tactical nuclear weapons against Russian forces if the Russians use tactical nukes against Ukraine, and so let us hope that cooler heads will prevail.
Because once the nukes start flying, there is no turning back.
I really wish that this assault on the Kremlin had not happened. Russian leaders are framing this as “an attempt on President Vladimir Putin’s life”…
The Russian presidential administration said Wednesday that the Kremlin was attacked by drones overnight in an attempt on President Vladimir Putin’s life.
Moscow residents had reported hearing two explosions behind Kremlin walls shortly after 2 a.m. local time, after which the lights went out. Footage shared by residents in a local Telegram channel captured the incident, as smoke was seen filling the sky above the Kremlin. Videos also appeared to show part of the Kremlin on fire.
So who was responsible for doing this?
Could it have been a false flag by the Russians themselves?
That is certainly possible. Both sides in this conflict are more than capable of conducting false flag attacks.
It is also certainly possible that the Ukrainians were behind the attack. They have been using drones to strike other targets deep inside Russia, and the Washington Post had previously reported that Ukrainian officials had discussed attacking Moscow…
Last month, The Washington Post reported that the United States had secretly monitored discussions among Ukrainian officials about possible attacks against Moscow timed to coincide with the Feb. 24 anniversary of Russia’s invasion. The White House feared that such a move would provoke an aggressive response from Moscow, and two days before the anniversary, the C.I.A. said that Ukraine’s intelligence directorate “had agreed, at Washington’s request, to postpone strikes” on Moscow. The information was part of a trove of classified U.S. intelligence documents obtained by The Post and other news organizations.
When he was asked about the attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky flatly denied that his government was involved…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday denied Moscow’s claims that Kyiv had attempted to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin, after Russia said two drones were shot down at the Kremlin.
“We didn’t attack Putin. We leave it to the tribunal. We fight on our territory, we are defending our villages and cities,” Zelensky told reporters at a joint press conference with Nordic leaders in Helsinki.
Maybe he is telling the truth.
I don’t know.
We should also not rule out the possibility that some third party is trying to provoke Russia into using tactical nukes against Ukraine because they know that the U.S. would likely respond by using tactical nukes against Russian forces.
There are certainly many interested parties that would love to see an apocalyptic conflict erupt between the United States and Russia.
But no matter who did this, the end result is that Russian leaders are absolutely furious.
In fact, Dmitry Medvedev is publicly calling for “the physical elimination of Zelensky and his cabal”…
Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday called for the ‘physical elimination’ of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky after Moscow accused Kyiv of a drone attack on the Kremlin aimed at assassinating Vladimir Putin.
‘After today’s terrorist attack, there are no options left aside the physical elimination of Zelensky and his cabal,’ said Medvedev, who has been increasingly hawkish since Moscow’s Ukraine offensive.
Other prominent Russian leaders are issuing extremely angry statements as well…
Pro-Putin Just Russia party leader Sergey Mironov added: “This is the very real casus belli – a pretext for war.”
He urged the “liquidation of Ukraine’s terrorist top brass. We have something to hit their bunkers with.”
Senior politician Alexei Zhuravlev urged: “It is necessary to target the centre of Kyiv.
“Destroy the president’s office, destroy to the ground the [Ukrainian parliament], the general staff, and the buildings housing the Ukrainian special services.”
MP Mikhail Sheremet said: “It’s time to launch a missile strike on Zelensky’s residence in Kyiv.”
If the Russians do take out Zelensky, that will take this war to a very dangerous new level.
And if they actually decide to use tactical nukes against Ukraine, the Biden administration would be under a tremendous amount of pressure to hit the Russians back.
This is such a critical moment in our history, and Joe Biden will be the one making the final decisions on our end.
Needless to say, that thought should not bring comfort to any of us.
Of course, the U.S. military is not exactly prepared for an apocalyptic conflict with Russia. Instead, our military has been focusing on other things…
The US Navy invited an active-duty drag queen to be a “Digital Ambassador” – as part of a recent drive “to attract the most talented and diverse workforce” and combat plunging recruitment.
Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley, who identifies as non-binary, was appointed as the first of five Navy Digital Ambassadors in a pilot program that ran from October to March.
Kelley, whose stage name is Harpy Daniels, has shared their journey on TikTok and Instagram, where they described how they began performing onboard and became an “advocate” for people who “were oppressed for years in the service.”
In a battle of political correctness, we would beat the Russians hands down.
But that is not the way that real wars are won.
Of course, most Americans do not want a war with Russia at all.
Most Americans just want to work hard and raise their families.
Unfortunately, our leaders have just kept pushing us closer and closer to the unthinkable, and now we are staring down into an abyss of misery and pain.
Is it possible that someone just tried to push us over the edge?
I don’t know.
But what I do know is that the Russians are going to hit Ukraine extremely hard, and I am just hoping that they decide to use some restraint.