No one knows exactly how the system obtains its matches. There is an entire field in AI known as “mechanistic interpretability” that is attempting to understand how LLMs move from a given input (your passport photo) to a given output (identifying your face in the Facebook post). - Harper's
The plan addresses national policy, library legislation, and local connections. “While libraries serve as a cornerstone of democracy the world over, we operate within the circumstances we’re provided,” they said. “We grow and ebb and flow with the communities we serve. - Publishers Weekly
“As more companies explore AI literary translation, the rapid progression of the technology and what that could mean for the future has divided the book industry.” - The Bookseller (UK)
The problem with a competitive approach to puzzles is that you take what is intended as a soothing and distracting pastime and quietly hitch it to a goal and a ticking clock. - The American Scholar
Prolific writers are simultaneously envied and dismissed, admired and snarked about. There is the sense that a writer can write too much, that whatever results can’t be very good.
Through small contributions from Americans who care about their museums, arts organizations, and libraries, a national fund could be built that provides steady, apolitical support to these institutions.- Chronicle of Philanthropy
“In state-run media systems, a government agency hires editors, dictates coverage, and provides full funding from the treasury. Public officials determine — or make up — what is newsworthy. Media operations survive only so long as the party in power is happy. Public broadcasting in the U.S. works in almost exactly the opposite way.” - Nieman Lab
National Public Radio will cut its budget by about $8 million in order to provide that money to member stations most impacted by last week’s rescission of federal funding. - Houston Public Media
The proposal was introduced by Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee as part of a spending bill for the Department of the Interior, environment and related agencies. - The New York Times
On 9 June, the Harvard Education Publishing Group, the journal’s publisher, abruptly canceled the release. In an email to the issue’s contributors, the publisher cited “a number of complex issues”, shocking authors and editors alike, the Guardian has learned. - The Guardian
Opinions differ over whether Trump or any president could make the NEA (or NEH) cease to exist without an act of Congress, but if that happens, it’s clear that smaller, less wealthy places will be the ones most affected. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
Yes, the photographer still best known for the 1987 image of a crucifix in a jar of urine that made him one of the NEA Four is now suggesting a mausoleum-like monument to Donald Trump as the official U.S. contribution to next summer’s Biennale. - Artnet
The donor: 88-year-old Klaus-Michael Kühne. His family’s company, Kühne + Nagel, is one of the world’s largest logistics firms, and collaborated with the Nazi regime to transport goods stolen from Jews during World War II. So the project has become controversial, with some accusing Kühne of “artwashing” his family legacy. - The New York Times
“Paramount agreed to buy the global streaming rights (to) South Park (for) the company's digital service, Paramount+, for the first time in the U.S. … The (five-year) deal with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, through their Park County production company, values the global streaming rights at $300 million a year.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
