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PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
ChatGPT: An Eloquent Text Robot or a Web Misinformation Machine? (Maria)
The author writes, “Chatbots have been replacing humans in call centers, but they’re not so good at answering more complex questions from customers. That may be about to change, if the release of ChatGPT is anything to go by. The program trawls vast amounts of information to generate natural-sounding text. … Some experts have declared it a ground-breaking feat of artificial intelligence that could replace humans for a multitude of tasks, and a potential disruptor of huge businesses like Google. Others warn that tools like ChatGPT could flood the Web with clever-sounding misinformation.”
Republican Candidate’s Wife Arrested and Charged With Casting 23 Fraudulent Votes for Her Husband in the 2020 Election (DonkeyHotey)
The author writes, “The wife of an Iowa Republican who ran for Congress in 2020 was arrested Thursday and accused of casting 23 fraudulent votes for her husband. In an 11-page indictment, prosecutors say Kim Phuong Taylor ‘visited numerous households within the Vietnamese community in Woodbury County’ where she collected absentee ballots for people who were not present at the time. Taylor, who was born in Vietnam, then filled out and cast those ballots herself, the indictment alleges, ‘causing the casting of votes in the names of residents who had no knowledge of and had not consented to the casting of their ballots.’”
Philly DA Krasner’s Impeachment Trial Indefinitely Postponed (DonkeyHotey)
From The Philadelphia Inquirer: “The Pennsylvania Senate on Wednesday voted to indefinitely postpone the impeachment trial of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, and the future of the effort to remove the progressive prosecutor is now unclear. The trial had been scheduled to begin Jan. 18 after the Republican-led House voted largely along party lines last fall to impeach Krasner, a Democrat, for what they called his dereliction of duty. … The postponement, which the Senate unanimously approved, comes after the Commonwealth Court issued an order dismissing the seven articles of impeachment against Krasner on Dec. 30, saying none met the required legal standard of ‘misbehavior in office.’”
The Crisis of Missing Migrants (Dana)
From The New Yorker: “In the past decade, the Mediterranean Sea and the shores of Italy, Malta, Cyprus, and Greece have become a vast graveyard. As a result of conflict, repression, economic circumstances, famine, and drought, more than two million people have tried to cross the Mediterranean to Europe since 2014, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. At least twenty-five thousand have disappeared in the crossing and are presumed dead. Most of these bodies remain at the bottom of the sea; some have washed ashore and been buried in unmarked graves — two thousand in Italy alone.”
Number of Students Picking US as Study Destination Drops for the Second Consecutive Year, AECC Study Shows (Sean)
The author writes, “AECC, a global international education recruitment company has conducted a study, which shows that Canada and the United States were not perceived as top study destinations for many international students. More specifically, 15.5 percent fewer students had the intention of studying in Canada, in addition to 2.6 percent of those in the United States, while destinations like Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, witnessed increases of 30.8, 11.3 and 7.6 percent, respectively.”
Where the Bison Could Roam (Laura)
The author writes, “Bison once numbered in the tens of millions in the United States. Now, a nonprofit is working to restore the shortgrass prairie, where the American icons and their ecosystem can thrive again.”
Men Who Believe Their Penises to Be Small Are Drawn to Sports Cars, Study Says (Mili)
From Autoblog: “Are men who drive flashy sports cars compensating for something after all? A study conducted at a London university suggests that the old trope of men with less-than-average endowment turning to sports cars and other forms of ‘conspicuous consumption’ may indeed be rooted in truth. As a group of men who tend to be drawn to flashy sports cars, this headline caught our eye. The study does not appear to be peer-reviewed, but the methodology is described in detail and the study authors claim their data indicate a psychological link between attraction to sports cars and the belief that one has a smaller-than-average penis.”
