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In the media

Monkey settlement; Wikipedia used to give AI context clues

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By Eddie891

Monkey settlement

The monkey selfie in question

Naruto was just another monkey in the wilderness of Indonesia. Until one day in 2011, photographer David Slater came into the jungle. Naruto took Slater's camera, and snapped a 'selfie.' Slater published, and claimed the copyright for his company, Caters News Service. That would have been that, if not for PETA. They sued Slater, alleging that the copyright belonged to Naruto, as he took the image. PETA filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, starting the long, arduous tale of NARUTO, a Crested Macaque, by and through his Next Friends, PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS, INC., and ANTJE ENGELHARDT, Ph.D. Plaintiff, vs. DAVID JOHN SLATER, an individual, Defendant. In 2016, the Judge dismissed the case, only to have PETA appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Wikipedia came into the dispute when Slater asked them to take the image down. Wikipedia refused, maintaining that the image is in the public domain. In early September 2017, PETA and Slater reached a settlement. Reported in, among others The New York Times, The Smithsonian Magazine, NPR, and The Washington Post)

Wikipedia used to give AI context clues

Were I to say, go to the grocery story, to buy food, common sense would tell me that the displays are not food. To take this a step further, "we know intuitively that certain verbs pair naturally with certain nouns, and we also know that most verbs don't make sense when paired with random nouns." David Wingate, a Computer Science professor at Brigham Young University, put it this way "Consider the monitor on your desk: you can look at it, you can turn it on, you can even pick it up or throw it, but you cannot impeach it, transpose it, justify it or correct it. You can dethrone a king or worship him or obey him, but you cannot unlock him or calendar him or harvest him." However, as Science Daily reported, that intuition is almost nonexistent in most robots. In a study done by Wingate and several other researchers, they found that Wikipedia could be used to inform the AI what they were looking at, and what their uses are.

In brief

  • Jeopedia: J-archive is a database of over 338,000 Jeopardy clues. Using that database, The Washington Post created a Jeopardy! content "Wikipedia". The tool allows you to search anything, and you will get the Jeopardy questions that correspond to the answer.
  • Science is shaped by Wikipedia: A recent study published by MIT found that content on Wikipedia is directly correlated with how likely that same information added is to be referenced in future scientific work. Neil Thompson of MIT explained the project as "Our research shows that scientists are using Wikipedia and that it is influencing how they write about the science that they are doing. Wikipedia isn’t just a record of what’s going on in science, it’s actually helping to shape science." (Reported in The Next Web)
  • Dubaipedia: Saqib Qayyum plans to make Dubai the worlds first 'Wikipedia city'. The ideas creators plan to install QR code around the city that residents and tourists can scan to learn more information. Currently, the group has identified over 200 locations that will have QR codes installed. (Reported in GulfNews.com)
  • Fake quote: Das menschliche Vorstellungsgebilde der Welt ist ein ungeheures Gewebe von Fiktionen voll logischer Widersprüche, d. h. von wissenschaftlichen Erdichtungen zu praktischen Zwecken bzw. von inadäquaten, subjektiven, bildlichen Vorstellungsweisen, deren Zusammentreffen mit der Wirklichkeit von vornherein ausgeschlossen ist.
    – Attributed to Hans Vaihinger: Philosophie des Als Ob, 1911, p. 14 
    This quote was on the German Wikipedia's Hans Vaihinger page for over 12 years. The quote was picked up by numerous scholars. (Reported in Parergon)



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Regarding the false quote persisting for 12 years on the German Wikipedia, "numerous scholars" is an overstatement on several levels. What the heck does "numerous" even mean here? A number somewhere between two and infinity? Cullen328 Let's discuss it 07:39, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Numerous means that the signpost does not have enough writers, and I was in a rush to get it published quickly, so I picked a fairly apt number. In this case, numerous means "Looking for the false quote on Google produced only around 100 results, partial search increasing that number to only around 300 results." Eddie891 Talk Work 17:30, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Science is shaped by Wikipedia

It's worth reading the paper. They say "Our back-of-the-envelope analysis thus has stark conclusions: even with many conservative assumptions, dissemination through Wikipedia is ∼1700x more cost-effective than traditional dissemination techniques. Thus, from a public policy perspective, funding the creation of content in public repositories of science like Wikipedia is compelling. We thus encourage governments, organizations, and publically-minded individuals to incorporate the creation of such articles into their activities and applaud those who are already advocating it". We should make sure this recommendation is also well disseminated. Leutha (talk) 19:58, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to me, the summary ought to put near the top, something along the lines of, "They got experts to write 88 Wikipedia science articles, randomly chose half to upload, and found that the phrases used in the published half appeared in later months in scientific journals far more often than those used in the not published half". I mean, this is what a randomized controlled experiment is. Jim.henderson (talk) 20:11, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Since I was in the next building where the researcher from Pitt had his office, I invited myself over to discuss the research that he worked on with the other fellow at MIT. There were a lot more conclusions from the study that are described above. This study deserves a more detailed description in a future article in the Signpost. He even let me take his photo. I gently chided him for paying 'editors' to add is content and that there would be people watching out for him doing the same thing in the future. He thought that was funny and so did I. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 15:59, 5 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Monkey Selfie

Am I correct in thinking that since the two have come to a settlement it doesn't set a legal precedent in the way that a court decision would? IE Animals still are not people and cannot claim a copyright on their works in the way that humans can? ϢereSpielChequers 07:22, 30 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As the selfie is posted above, does that mean the monkey uploaded his own selfie into commons? Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 15:59, 5 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The Signpost is looking for new talent.
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