The AI spending frenzy is so huge that it makes no sense; The Washington Post, November 7, 2025

 Shira Ovide, The Washington Post; The AI spending frenzy is so huge that it makes no sense

" In just the past year, the four richest companies developing AI — Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta — have spent roughly $360 billion combined for big-ticket projects, which included building AI data centers and stuffing them with computer chips and equipment, according to my analysis of financial disclosures.

(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

That same amount of money could pay for about four years’ worth of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the federal government program that distributes more than $90 billion in yearly food assistance to 42 million Americans. SNAP benefits are in limbo for now during the government shutdown...

Eight of the world’s top 10 most valuable companies are AI-centric or AI-ish American corporate giants — Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Broadcom, Meta and Tesla. That’s according to tallies from S&P Global Market Intelligence based on the total price of the companies’ stock held by investors."

1.5M people in Ohio rely on SNAP: Map shows which towns will be hardest hit by shutdown; WLWT5, October 31, 2025

Emily Sanderson, WLWT5;  1.5M people in Ohio rely on SNAP: Map shows which towns will be hardest hit by shutdown

"More than 1 million Ohio residents will lose federal food support on Saturday when SNAP benefits expire because of the government shutdown.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamps, helps about 1 in 8 Americans buy groceries.

Cincinnati families are facing uncertainty as the SNAP food assistance program has been suspended due to the government shutdown, affecting nearly 100,000 residents in Hamilton County who rely on federal food benefits...

Governor DeWine has indicated that there is no mechanism for Ohio to directly fund SNAP payments, regardless of the source of the money."

Tech giant Palantir helps the US government monitor its citizens. Its CEO wants Silicon Valley to find its moral compass; The Conversation, July 28, 2025

Noel Castree Professor of Society & Environment, University of Technology Sydney , The Conversation; Tech giant Palantir helps the US government monitor its citizens. Its CEO wants Silicon Valley to find its moral compass

"Critics of those who misuse power tend to be outsiders. So, it’s striking that Alexander Karp, co-founder and CEO of data analytics giant Palantir Technologies, has written a book, with Palantir’s head of corporate affairs Nicholas Zamiska, calling on Silicon Valley to find its moral compass...

Karp has described Palantir’s work as “the finding of hidden things”. The New York Times described its work as sifting “through mountains of data to perceive patterns, including patterns of suspicious or aberrant behavior”.

Palantir has worked closely with United States armed forces and intelligence agencies across Democratic and Republican governments for 14 years. It has been criticised for enabling heightened government surveillance and loss of privacy among US citizens."

Who uses libraries? Even in the stacks, there’s a political divide.; The Washington Post, October 4, 2024

Andrew Van Dam, The Washington Post; Who uses libraries? Even in the stacks, there’s a political divide.

"When we took a look at the nation’s declining reading habits, our struggling bookstores and the prodigious number of books consumed by America’s top 1 percent of readers, scores of you wrote in with a singular question: What about the libraries?!

You people sure do love libraries! You wanted to know everything. Who are the biggest library users? How many of our books do we get from libraries? What else do we use libraries for?

We scoured all the government sources we could think of before turning to the cabal of polling prodigies over at YouGov to see what they could gin up.

As usual, YouGov exceeded our expectations, asking at least 50 library-related questions of 2,429 U.S. adults in April. They touched on just about everything: librarian approval ratings, restrictions on drag queen story times, number of books read. They also asked about the library services we actually use, up to and including how many of us avail ourselves of the library restrooms."

An attorney says she saw her library reading habits reflected in mobile ads. That's not supposed to happen; The Register, May 18, 2024

Thomas Claburn , The Register; An attorney says she saw her library reading habits reflected in mobile ads. That's not supposed to happen

"In December, 2023, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign information sciences professor Masooda Bashir led a study titled "Patron Privacy Protections in Public Libraries" that was published in The Library Quarterly. The study found that while libraries generally have basic privacy protections, there are often gaps in staff training and in privacy disclosures made available to patrons.

It also found that some libraries rely exclusively on social media for their online presence. "That is very troubling," said Bashir in a statement. "Facebook collects a lot of data – everything that someone might be reading and looking at. That is not a good practice for public libraries.""

SAS' data ethics chief talks about keeping an ethical eye on AI; Axios, March 7, 2023

• Zachery Eanes
 , Axios; SAS' data ethics chief talks about keeping an ethical eye on AI

"The U.S. is at a crossroads when it comes to the future of artificial intelligence, as the technology takes dramatic leaps forward without much regulation in place, Reggie Townsend, director of SAS Institute's Data Ethics Practice, tells Axios.

Driving the news: Cary-based SAS is a giant in the world of data analytics, and the company and its customers are increasingly using AI to process data and make decisions. Townsend's role at the company puts him at the forefront of the conversation.

• It's why he's a member of the White House's National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee.

Why it matters: Artificial intelligence could soon impact nearly every aspect of our lives, from health care decisions to who gets loans."

Artificial Intelligence Shows Why Atheism Is Unpopular; The Atlantic, July 23, 2018

Sigal Samuel, The Atlantic;

Artificial Intelligence Shows Why Atheism Is Unpopular

"Even harder to sway may be those concerned not with the methodology’s technical complications, but with its ethical complications. As Wildman told me, “These models are equal-opportunity insight generators. If you want to go militaristic, then these models tell you what the targets should be.”...

Nevertheless, just like Wildman, Shults told me, “I lose sleep at night on this. ... It is social engineering. It just is—there’s no pretending like it’s not.” But he added that other groups, like Cambridge Analytica, are doing this kind of computational work, too. And various bad actors will do it without transparency or public accountability. “It’s going to be done. So not doing it is not the answer.” Instead, he and Wildman believe the answer is to do the work with transparency and simultaneously speak out about the ethical danger inherent in it.

“That’s why our work here is two-pronged: I’m operating as a modeler and as an ethicist,” Wildman said. “It’s the best I can do.”"

Amazon's first New York bookstore blends tradition with technology; Guardian, May 26, 2017

Tom McCarthy, Guardian; 

Amazon's first New York bookstore blends tradition with technology

"Also unique here: the section called “Page turners: books Kindle readers finish in three days or less”. Amazon can track how quickly people who purchase books on Kindle read them, a company spokesperson explained, without explaining how."

Can Big Data Help Head Off Police Misconduct?; NPR, 7/19/16

NPR Staff; Can Big Data Help Head Off Police Misconduct? :

"Big Data has been considered an essential tool for tech companies and political campaigns. Now, someone who has handled data analytics at the highest levels in both of those worlds sees promise for it in policing, education and city services.

For example, data can show that a police officer who has been under stress after responding to cases of domestic abuse or suicide may be at higher risk of a negative interaction with the public, data scientist Rayid Ghani says.

Ghani, the chief data scientist for President Obama's re-election campaign in 2012, is now director of the Center for Data Science and Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He spoke to NPR's Ari Shapiro about finding ways to use data analytics in fields where it's not so common, like policing and city services."

Analytics key to agencies in big data explosion; FedScoop, 3/10/16

Billy Mitchell, FedScoop; Analytics key to agencies in big data explosion:

Lots of leading edge info and thought-provoking commentary from an impressive array of speakers at FedScoop and Hitachi's 3/10/16 Social Innovation Summit I attended at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Good overview of Summit by FedScoop's Billy Mitchell:

"The federal government has seen an explosion of data at its disposal and has needed powerful analytics tools to put it to use, federal IT officials and industry executives said.

A single statistic drove the bulk of the conversation at Thursday’s Hitachi Data Systems Social Innovation Summit, produced by FedScoop: By 2020, analysts predict there will be more than 30 billion network-connected digital devices globally, all producing unprecedented volumes of data in a concept called the Internet of Things.

“Those devices, whether it be the phones we use, the cars we drive in, the medical devices used to keep us healthy, the buildings we work in, the ships and airplanes that protect our country, they’re all generating data, and it’s a question of how do we take that data and really put it to use?” said Mike Tanner, president and CEO of federal for Hitachi Data Systems...

While that data brings with it endless opportunities, it also complicates things, particularly because humans alone are unable to do much with such massive data sets."

Unblinking Eyes Track Employees: Workplace Surveillance Sees Good and Bad; New York Times, 6/21/14

Steve Lohr, New York Times; Unblinking Eyes Track Employees: Workplace Surveillance Sees Good and Bad:

"A digital Big Brother is coming to work, for better or worse.

Advanced technological tools are beginning to make it possible to measure and monitor employees as never before, with the promise of fundamentally changing how we work — along with raising concerns about privacy and the specter of unchecked surveillance in the workplace.

Through these new means, companies have found, for example, that workers are more productive if they have more social interaction. So a bank’s call center introduced a shared 15-minute coffee break, and a pharmaceutical company replaced coffee makers used by a few marketing workers with a larger cafe area. The result? Increased sales and less turnover.

Yet the prospect of fine-grained, digital monitoring of workers’ behavior worries privacy advocates. Companies, they say, have few legal obligations other than informing employees. “Whether this kind of monitoring is effective or not, it’s a concern,” said Lee Tien, a senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco."