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Reevaluating Reality: How Google’s AI Transformation is Reshaping the Online News Landscape

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WThe chief executive of the Financial Times suggested this summer at a media conference that competing publishers might explore a “NATO” alliance to bolster negotiations with artificial intelligence firms.

Nevertheless, John Slade’s announcement regarding a “pretty sudden, sustained” drop in traffic from readers via search engines quickly highlighted the grave threat posed by the AI revolution.

Queries submitted on platforms like Google, which dominate over 90% of the search market, have been central to online journalism since its inception, with news outlets optimizing their headlines and content to secure high rankings and lucrative clicks.

Currently, Google’s AI summary appears at the top of the results page, presenting answers directly and reducing the need for users to click through to the original content. The introduction of the AI mode tab, which responds to queries in a chatbot format, has sparked fears of a future dominated by “Google Zero,” where referral traffic dwindles.

“This is the most significant change in search I’ve witnessed in decades,” states a senior editorial tech executive. “Google has historically been a reliable partner for publishers. Now, certain aspects of digital publishing are evolving in ways that could fundamentally alter the landscape.”

Last week, the owner of the Daily Mail revealed that the AI summary was officially in place following Click-Through traffic to a competitive market review of Google’s search services.

DMG Media and other major news organizations, including the Guardian Media Group and the Magazine Trade Body, the PPA, have advocated for the competitive watchdog. Urge Google for more transparency regarding AI summaries and traffic metrics provided to publishers as part of an investigation into tech company search monopolies.

Publishers are already experiencing financial strain from rising costs, declining advertising revenue, reduced print circulation, and changing readership trends. Google insists that they must accept agreements regarding how their content is utilized in AI systems or face the loss of all search results.

Besides the funding threat, concerns about AI’s impact on accuracy persist. Historical iterations advised users to consume harmful items, and although Google has since enhanced its summaries, the issue of “hallucinations” — where AI presents inaccurate or fabricated information as truth — remains, alongside inherent biases when machines, not humans, interpret sources.




Google Discover has supplanted search with content as the primary source of traffic clicks. Photo: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

In January, Apple pledged to improve its AI feature that summarized BBC News alerts with the company’s logo on the latest iPhone model. The alert misleadingly stated that a man accused of murdering a US insurance executive had taken his own life and falsely claimed that tennis star Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.

Last month, in a blog post, Liz Reid, Google’s search manager, claimed that AI had not yet been integrated into searches. “Driving more queries and quality clicks”.

“This data contradicts third-party reports that inaccurately suggest a drastic reduction in overall traffic,” she stated. “[These reports] are often based on flawed methodologies, isolated instances, or traffic alterations that occurred prior to the deployment of AI functionalities during searches.”

She also mentioned that overall traffic to all websites remains “relatively stable,” though “spacious” webs mean that user trends are redirecting traffic to different sites.

Recently, Google Discover, which delivers articles and videos tailored to user behavior, has taken precedence over search as the main source of traffic.

However, David Buttle, founder of DJB Strategy, stated that the services linked to publisher search transactions do not supply the quality traffic most publishers require to support their long-term strategies.

“Google Discover holds no product significance for Google,” he explained. “As traffic from general search diminishes, Google can concentrate more traffic on publishers. Publishers are left with no choice but to comply or face losing organic search, which often rewards ClickBaity content.”

Simultaneously, publishers are engaged in a broader struggle against AI companies looking to exploit content to train extensive language models.

The creative sector is rigorously lobbying the government to prevent AI firms from using copyrighted materials without authorization, urging for legislation.

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The February Make It Fair campaign highlighted threats to the creative sector posed by Generative AI. Photo: Geoffrey Swaine/Rex

Some publishers have reacted against bilateral licensing agreements with AI companies, including the Financial Times, German media group Axel Springer, the Guardian, and Nordic publisher Schibsted. Others, like the BBC, have initiated actions against AI companies for alleged copyright infringement.

“It’s a double-edged attack on publishers, almost a ‘Pinker move’,” remarks Chris Duncan, a senior executive at News UK and Bauer Media, also leading the consultancy Seadelta. “Content is vanishing into AI products without appropriate compensation, while AI summaries are embedded within products, negating the need for clicks and effectively draining revenue from both ends. It’s an existential crisis.”

Publishers are pursuing various courses of action, from negotiations and litigation to regulatory lobbying, while also integrating AI tools into their newsrooms, as seen with the Washington Post and Financial Times launching their AI-powered chatbots and solutions for climate inquiries.

Christoph Zimmer, chief product officer at Germany’s Der Spiegel, notes that while current traffic remains steady, he anticipates a decline in referrals from all platforms.

“This is part of a longstanding trend,” he states. “However, it has affected brands that haven’t prioritized direct audience relationships or subscription growth in recent years, instead depending on broad content reach.”

“What has always been true remains valid. Prioritizing quality and diverse content is essential; it’s about connecting with people, not merely chasing algorithms.”

Publication industry leaders emphasize that efforts to negotiate deals for AI models to aggregate and summarize news are rapidly being replaced by advancements in models interpreting live news updates.

“The initial focus was on licensing arrangements for AI training to ‘speak English,’ but that will become less relevant over time,” asserts an executive. “We’re transitioning towards providing news directly. To achieve this, we require precise, live sources — a potentially lucrative market publishers are keen to explore next.”

PPA CEO Saj Merali emphasizes the need for a fair equilibrium between technology-induced changes in consumer digital behavior and the just compensation for trustworthy news.

“What remains at the core is something consumers require,” she explains. “AI needs credible content. There’s a shift in how consumers prefer to access information, but they must have confidence in what they read.”

“The industry has historically shown resilience through significant digital and technological transitions, yet it is crucial to ensure pathways that sustain business models. At this point, the AI and tech sectors have shown no commitment to support publishers’ revenue.”

Source: www.theguardian.com

The power of subterranean pressure is reshaping the Earth’s inner core.

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Diagram showing the inner structure of the Earth

Rostislav Zatonskiy/Alamy

The inner core of Earth’s solids appears to have changed shape over the last 20 years or so, according to seismic wave measurements, but the behavior of these waves can also be explained by other shifts at the center of the planet.

Since the 1990s, models and earthquake measurements have shown that the inner core of Earth’s iron nickel moves at its own pace. Over decades, the inner core rotation is faster, slower than other planets, affecting the length of the day and more.

These rotational changes are primarily due to magnetic forces produced by convection in the Earth’s liquid outer core, they say. John Vidale At the University of Southern California. “That flow constantly torques the inner core.”

These magnetic forces, or related processes, can change the shape of the inner core and its rotation. In fact, previous measurements of seismic waves passing through the center of the planet seem to show just that. However, uncertainty regarding the rotation of the core made it impossible to distinguish between rotational changes and shape changes.

Now, Vidale and his colleagues are analyzing seismic waves generated by 128 earthquakes off the coast of South America between 1991 and 2023. All waves were measured by Alaskan instruments after passing through the planet.

From these, researchers have identified 168 sets of seismic waves that have passed through or near the same area of ​​the inner core, but have been away for years. It was only possible to identify these matches Recent work Vidale says it will better constrain the variation in rotation of the inner core.

Both waves of each pair that did not pass through the inner core shared a similar pattern, suggesting that in the region within the planet nothing had changed between the first and second earthquakes. Masu. However, the waves of the pair crossed with the inner core did not match.

Researchers say this suggests that the inner core not only slows down and speeds up rotation for decades but also changes shape. They say that these changes are magnetically pulled at the less viscous edge of the inner core of the solid or interaction between the inner core and the structure of the planetary core and the lower mantle. They say it is likely caused by interactions between the layers. The crust.

hrvojetkalčić At Australian National University, which was not involved in the study, this is a “step” to resolve changes in the internal core beyond rotation. However, he says that the shape change is not the only explanation for the seismic waves of incongruity.

As Vidale and his colleagues acknowledge, these differences can also be caused by unrelated changes in the outer core, convection within the inner core itself, or by eruption of melted material from the inner core. There is. “It’s really hard to tell,” Bidal says. He suggests that studying more repeated earthquakes in the future will help identify changes in more detail.

Tkalčić says seismological measurements in remote areas such as the seabed are also useful. “This is important for understanding the deepest inner evolution of Earth, from the time of the planetary layers to the present,” he says.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Imogen Heap discusses how her AI twin is reshaping pop music by infusing her songs with love for diverse audiences

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“I have to show you this – it’s going to change your life!” is the very Imogen Heap way of greeting.

She smiled at me and showed off a mysterious black device. The musician and technologist is an evocative and eccentric presence even on video calls, speaking with passion and changing his mind like a rally driver turning a corner. She swivels me from the kitchen floor to the living room of her parents’ home in Havering, near London. It’s familiar to the thousands of fans (aka Heapsters) who tune in to watch her improvise on the grand piano on livestreams. “By the way, that’s the tent I’ve been sleeping in,” she laughed, enjoying the surprise, pointing to an attractive white tent at the edge of the manicured lawn.

Her fans use the term “Imogeneration” to describe someone who changed the course of pop music. Heap’s theatrically layered vocals and expressive production on the albums Speak for Yourself (2005) and Ellipse (2009) have inspired the likes of Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, and Casey. It influenced chart giants such as Musgraves and popularized the use of the vocoder (later heard in the works of Kanye West and Bon Iver). She has been widely sampled, especially by hip-hop and ambient musicians, and in 2010 became the first woman to win a Grammy Award in the engineering category.

Since then, Heap has dedicated his career to shaping music through technology, and shaping technology through music. Her fast-paced projects include The Creative Passport, which envisions a more accessible way for musicians to store and share personal data, and a pioneering project that lets you record loops of sound and add details like vibrato and reverb. These include the MiMU glove, a wearable instrument. In real time just by moving your wrist.

But she didn’t create the black device she’s brandishing at me. Plaud Note is a voice recorder that uses ChatGPT. She laughed and explained that this converts our conversations into text and generates a summary of our thoughts. Recording interviews is typically the job of journalists, but for the past two years, Heap has been collecting data about herself for a new project: a comprehensive AI assistant called Mogen (pronounced like Imogen). Our interviews become training data. The text prepares Morgen to answer questions about Heep’s life and work, and the audio trains Morgen to reproduce her voice. “Everything I’ve ever said or done, I want Morgen to have access to,” Heap says.

Heap performance in 2010. Photo: Samir Hussain/Getty Images

Mogen was born as a premium feature of Heap’s fan app, theoretically giving Heapsters a way to access Heap’s sentiments and opinions on certain topics. Anything Mogen can’t answer is forwarded to Heap’s (human) assistant. “I don’t want to repeat myself. I want to make sure people have the information they need, when they need it,” Heap says. “In a way, I have been working on [her] For the rest of my life.”

But Heep’s ambitions for Morgen are rapidly expanding. Beyond its role as a kind of living autobiography, Heap hopes to become a point of “omniscient connection” that can streamline workflow and deepen the creative process in the studio and on stage. Future versions of Mogen will explore how Heap can improvise live, become a live collaborator, process fan musical suggestions in real time, and feed biometric and atmospheric data to create You’ll be able to create performances that feel “realistic.”

“I want to [be able to] “Right now, we can create broad orchestral pieces and angular drums with a variety, richness, and tenderness that you just can’t get in real time with off-the-shelf equipment,” says Heap.

All of this data collection was inspired by a series of life-changing experiences that convinced Heap of his current power. Heap, who discovered she had ADHD during the pandemic and shortly after her sister’s death, said: “We’re using our most precious resource, our time, to do these mundane things.” He explains what he noticed. She hired a studio assistant to reduce distractions and improve focus, and to understand the sense of presence, or what she poetically calls “an immaterial bubble without time and space.” I concentrated.

The journey included an introduction to Wim Hof ​​breathing techniques by fellow music experimenter John Hopkins and a visceral response to music by noise artist Pullian, which left her shocked on her kitchen floor. Ta. She likens the latter to childbirth. “That was the only time in my life that I felt like I wasn’t in control of my body.”

The result of this new focus, which she will discuss in more detail this week at London’s Southbank Center, is a worldview that sees technology as both a problem and a solution. On the other hand, the capitalist system and attention economy make us “greedy.” “We have become desensitized,” she says, but in the meantime, we might be able to invent new tools that foster creativity and connection over profit. “I want to dedicate my life to it,” she says seriously.

Her vision isn’t exactly utopian. She speculates that we “will go through this period of running away” from dangerous AI. But she firmly believes there is a bright future on the other side of this potential disaster. Even so, Heap remains perplexingly sour about the possible risks. “You can’t stop progress,” she shrugs, dismissing widespread concerns about the ethics of scraping other people’s data to build profitable AI systems and the environmental costs of all that processing power as “very simple.” “I scoff. It’s based on fear.”

The most direct result of her recent soul-searching will be a 14-minute track released in three parts via a new site called The Living Song. The first part, “What Have You Done to Me,” will be available at the end of October and will allow users to chat with Mogen and remix or sample the song. The idea is to demonstrate that ethical and compensatory collaboration between artists, AI, and fans is possible, with one-third of all profits going to Brian Eno’s climate change foundation Earth%. Masu. “This song gives you the tools to collaborate and love with different people,” she emphasizes. “I don’t want to be kept in a basement. I’ve never felt protective or possessive. [my music]”

The new song, which tells the story of Heap and her relationship with herself and Morgen, also reimagines the melody of “Hide and Seek,” her first big hit and a song that has had a remarkable life in its own right. After being used as the soundtrack for The O.C.’s dramatic second season finale in 2005, the scene was parodied in a Saturday Night Live sketch that looped her “Um, what are you talking about?” It went viral. lyrics. Two years later, Jason Derulo sampled the same elements in his debut single “Whatcha Say,” which topped the US charts. Heap himself included the song in his score for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and Palestinian singer Nemasis used the opening bars of a video about the devastation in Gaza.

AI optimists see similarities between this sampling (using parts of someone else’s work to create something new) and generative AI, which processes vast amounts of existing material to create music. I claim that there is. But major labels Sony, Universal and Warner are suing two AI startups for processing their copyrighted music without their permission.

Ms Heap said her project was trying to move on from the days when “people were always trying something and not evaluating it”. For example, an unreleased demo called “A New Kind of Love” cut from her band Frou Frou’s 2002 album somehow ended up on the desk of Australian drum and bass musician Veerre Cloud. His loose remix, released in 2019, has since been streamed over 400 million times on Spotify. After researching, Heap’s team discovered that there are more than 60 other tracks that use the song without credit. “We had to say: Hello, we’re glad you put it out there, but could we have some?”

This is why The Living Song project is so important, she says. Treating each song as a separate entity allows Heap to set and work around its own rules for interaction and collaboration, as it has throughout its career. It’s like labels and artists fighting over AI services.

Previously, I asked what happens if I don’t want my data (my words in the conversation) to be part of Mogen’s training set. Heap said that for data protection reasons, Morgen would only incorporate her answers, not my questions, and the same would be true for fan submissions. She hypothesizes that in the future, my own AI assistant will negotiate with Morgen and inform me of my preferences in advance. She then added with a wry smile that if we didn’t like the data, “I’d probably leave it alone.” [the interview] short”.

But certainly, conversation is also a type of collaboration. What is the answer to a question without context? As I was thinking about this, Heap sent me a summary of the call that Plaud had generated. One line reads: “Katie Hawthorn shares feelings of paranoia, while Imogen Heap expresses excitement.”

This mission to form her own archive through a cleverly automated digital twin, rooted in the past but designed to extend and even predict Heap’s present, is a battle with the music industry over ownership. It makes sense in the context of a career spent in . But it also raises bigger, more difficult questions about heritage, voice, creativity, and control, and Heap aims to fundamentally reshape music, and perhaps life, as we know it. Given her outpouring of persuasion and deep cultural influence, it’s hard to resist her. “I’m not a guru,” she jokes. “still!”

Source: www.theguardian.com

How Fossils Are Reshaping our Understanding of Human Evolution

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Is it in the way we live, laugh, love? Or is it our aversion to clichés? Deep inside each of us, there must be something that makes us human. The problem is, after centuries of searching, we haven’t found it yet. Maybe it’s because we’ve been looking in the wrong places.

Ever since researchers began unearthing ancient hominin bones and stone tools, their work has held the tantalizing promise of pinpointing the long-ago moment when our ancestors transformed into humans. Two of the most important fossil discoveries in this quest reach an important milestone this year: 100 years since the first “near-human” was found. Australopithecus Fossils have been discovered in South Africa that have upended previous ideas about human origins, and it’s been 50 years since the most famous fossil was found. Australopithecus Lucy, also known as humanity’s grandmother, emerged from the dusty hills of Ethiopia, and the two fossils have led researchers to believe they can pinpoint humanity’s Big Bang, the period when a dramatic evolutionary wave led to the emergence of humans. Homo.

But today, the story of human origins is much more complicated. A series of discoveries over the past two decades has shown that the beginning of humanity is harder to pinpoint than we thought. So why did it once seem like we could define humanity and pinpoint its emergence, thanks to Lucy and her peers? Why are we now further away than ever from pinpointing exactly what it means to be human?

Source: www.newscientist.com

The ghost cities of Amazon are reshaping civilization’s history

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Sasithorn Puapangkasemsuk/Getty Images

When you imagine an environment that has been largely untouched by humans, the Amazon rainforest might come to mind. After all, most of this South American landscape is covered with dense vegetation, suggesting a corner of the world that humans never had control over. Here, there must have been no deforestation, no agricultural revolution, no cities. It seems like a pristine environment.

At least, that's what we thought. But a very different picture is emerging. Archaeologists working with indigenous communities are being shown the remains of crumbling cities, and remote sensing techniques such as lidar are revealing traces of vast ghost cities. With so much evidence of ancient human activity, it is believed that millions of people lived in the pre-Columbian Amazon, some of them in large urban centres complete with road networks, temples and pyramids.

But this study reveals more than that. It also provides evidence that, paradoxically, conventional views of the Amazon are not entirely off the mark. For example, although ancient Amazonians managed the land intensively, they did not deforest. And, although they developed complex societies, they never underwent a major agricultural revolution. This may suggest that pre-Columbian Amazonians broke the mold of human cultural development traditionally thought of as an inexorable progression from hunting and gathering to agriculture to urban complexity. The truth is more surprising. In fact, we are now coming to understand that there was no such mold. Civilizations arose in different ways. What seems like an anomaly in the Amazon is actually a shining example of a process as vibrant and diverse as the rainforest itself.

in spite of…

Source: www.newscientist.com

Argentina’s lithium industry accelerates to fulfill electric vehicle demand, reshaping competitive dynamics

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IIn the vast white desert of Salinas Grandes, 45-year-old Antonio Carpanchay raises an axe and chips away at the earth. He has worked the land since he was 12, splitting and collecting salt, replenishing it for the next season and teaching his children to do the same.

“Our whole indigenous community works here, even the elders,” he says, shielding his sunburned face from the sun. “We’ve always done it. It’s our livelihood.”

As his son watches warily, Karpanchai points north, to a pile of black stones and mud that stands out from the stark whiteness of the plains. “They started mining for lithium in 2010,” he says. “We made them stop because they were destroying the environment and affecting the water quality. But now they’re coming back, and I’m scared. We could lose everything we have.”

Antonio Carpanchay and his son mine and sell salt in Salinas Grandes, Argentina.

The Salinas Grandes are the largest salt flats in Argentina, stretching over 200 miles and containing a biodiverse ecosystem. Sitting in the Lithium Triangle The same goes for parts of Chile and Bolivia.

Lithium is a silvery metal known as platinum and is a vital element in batteries for mobile phones and electric cars. By 2040, global demand is predicted to increase more than 40-fold. But that exploitation has also raised moral debates, pitting the transition to green energy against the rights of local and indigenous peoples.

The sign reads “No to Lithium.”

Thirty-three indigenous communities in the Atacama and Cola regions, fearful of losing or polluting their water resources and being forced off their lands, have banded together for 14 years to try to halt the mining operations. “Please respect our territory” and “No to lithium” are scrawled on dozens of road signs, abandoned buildings, and murals.

But now, with more than 30 global mining conglomerates moving into the region at the instigation of “anarcho-capitalist” President Javier Milley, the battle lines are being redrawn. Offers of jobs and investment are increasingly dividing communities, with some already reneging on agreements and more expected to follow.

“Businesses are moving in,” Karpanchai said. “I worry about my grandchildren’s future.”

TThe biggest concern for indigenous peoples is water. Approximately 2 million liters of evaporation is required per tonne of lithium. This threatens to dry up the region’s wetlands and already dry rivers and lakes. Industrial-scale pumping also threatens to contaminate fresh groundwater, endangering livestock and small-scale agriculture. The impacts will likely reach farther than the immediate source of the water: as locals say, “water knows no borders.”

Clemente Flores, a 59-year-old community leader, says water is the most important part of Pachamama, which means “Mother Earth.” “Water nourishes the air, the soil, the pastures for the animals and the food we eat,” he argues.

“If we used all the water for mining, the salt flats would dry up. We need water to grow salt. Without salt, there are no jobs,” said Karpanchai, who relies on the freshwater resources to raise llamas and sheep. “Chemicals from mining could pollute the water and pastures. We could lose everything.”

Flavia Lamas, 30, a tour guide on the salt flats, remembers when lithium companies began exploring around 2010. “They said mining lithium would not affect Mother Earth, but then water became a problem. Water was running off the salt flats and after just one month our land started to degrade,” she says.

Flavia Lamas, who guides tourists through the Salinas Grandes salt flats, compares the mining companies to the Spanish colonial army of the 1500s.

According to Pia Marchegiani, director of environmental policy at the NGO: Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (Fern) Environmental assessments leave gaps in understanding the full impact of large-scale development. “This region is a watershed. Water comes from everywhere, but nobody is looking at the whole picture,” Marchegiani says. “You have Australians, Americans, Europeans, Chinese, Koreans, but nobody is adding up their water use.”

Wildlife within the ecosystem may also be affected. A 2022 study found that flamingosLithium mining in Chile is slowly killing off coral reefs that feed on microorganisms in seawater.

Communities also fear their land will disappear. Indigenous people consider the land sacred and ancestral, and have lived on it for centuries, but they worry they will be forcibly removed. “We can’t sacrifice our community land. Do you think that’s going to save the planet? Instead, we’re destroying Mother Earth herself,” Flores says.

A painting welcoming visitors to the village of El Moreno features an anti-lithium message.

youUntil recently, the 33 communities fought together as one, but over the past year, cracks have appeared as mining companies have offered economic incentives. “Companies are approaching,” Karpanchai said. “They approach us alone, they come in disguise. People are feeling the pressure.”

Lamas says mining companies are descending on the region like conquistadors in the 1500s. “The Spanish brought mirrors as gifts. Now the miners come by truck,” she says. “We’ve been offered gifts, trucks, and houses in the city, but we don’t want to live there.”

Marchegiani accuses the companies of deploying “divide and conquer” tactics. Alicia Chalabet, an indigenous lawyer from Salinas Grandes, says the community is under “constant pressure” to agree to the demands. “We’re flooded with lithium companies here. It’s increased a lot in the last five years,” said Chalabet, who is currently handling 20 cases. “The community is just an obstacle.”

The community of Lipan was the first to agree to let mining company Rishon Energy explore the waters beneath the saltwater in exchange for promises of jobs and essential services, but some residents say the decision was controversial, and some community members claim not all residents were allowed to vote.

A facility set up by Rishon Energy to explore lithium potential near the village of Lipan. The company claims to employ staff from the local area and invest in their training.

Rishon denies that its decision to mine in Lipan was controversial and says it complied with all regulations that require it to seek local community support in lithium exploration. The company has previously told reporters that it has invested in 15 secondary school and 15 university scholarships, provided computers to local schools, and hired 12 workers from Lipan.

Anastasia Castillo, 38, grew up in Lipan and now lives in a nearby commune. She says neither she nor her parents, who remain in the village, agreed. “I’m very sad. My children’s future is ruined. We have 100 cows and 80 llamas in the area, which is my main job. I’m afraid they’ll die,” Castillo said. “Now we’re separated.”

Anastasia Castillo believes that

Source: www.theguardian.com