Tag: Research

ChatGPT boss wants HQ in Europe

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Sam Altman wants you to know he loves Europe.

The CEO of OpenAI, the maker of the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, spent last week touring the Continent, stopping in Spain, France, Poland, Germany and the United Kingdom. He was at once talking AI regulation with policymakers — he met national leaders Pedro Sánchez, Emmanuel Macron, Mateusz Morawiecki, Olaf Scholz, and Rishi Sunak — and scouting locations for an OpenAI European office.

“We really need an office in Europe,” Altman told POLITICO at a Paris event Friday. “We also just really want one.” Under the European Union’s upcoming Artificial Intelligence Act, companies with EU-based users would need a presence in the bloc, with national “supervisory authorities” in charge of implementing the regulation. The eventual choice of its HQ location will, therefore, determine which member country will oversee it when it comes to enforcing the AI Act.

Since its launch in November 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT — a bot able to create texts such as songs, scripts, articles and software based on written prompts — has caused both optimism and anxiety about what the rise of AI means for the future of humankind. While some have marveled at the tool’s prowess in creating computer code and streamlining office work, others fear that it could be used to generate troves of automated disinformation, manipulative content and biased material — or even put millions of people out of a job.

Nevertheless, politicians appear eager to host the world’s hottest AI lab. Opening the event, French Digital Minister Jean-Noël Barrot read a ChatGPT-generated description of Altman (“innovative, influential, visionary”) before pitching France as a “great AI country” — rattling off a list that included talent, abundant nuclear energy (to power the computers underpinning the AI), and cultural heritage among its assets.

In the U.K., where Altman also briefed national security personnel, a person familiar with his conversation with Sunak, who was granted anonymity to talk of high-level meetings, described the British prime minister as “deferential.”

Altman is still deliberating on where to house the new office. “If you had to pick just based on the most AI research talent, you’d pick France,” he told POLITICO. “But I’ve been super-impressed by the talent and energy everywhere.” OpenAI already has staff working in London, according to LinkedIn, and in September 2022 it created a U.K. subsidiary, according to the country’s business registry.

In Paris, Altman strove to quash reports, from Reuters, that OpenAI might leave the EU if the AI Act proved too onerous. “We plan to comply. We want to offer services in Europe,” Altman told the Parisian audience. “We just want to make sure we’re technically able to. And the conversations have been super-productive this week,” he added.

First floated by the European Commission in 2021, the AI Act would ban some uses of AI uses (such as social scoring and some instances of facial recognition) and impose stricter rules related to safety and oversight when it comes to sensitive AI applications considered “high-risk.” On top of that, according to a version of the AI Act adopted earlier this month by lawmakers in the European Parliament, “generative” models such as ChatGPT — which can create new content, like text or photos — would have to disclose a summary of copyrighted materials used as training data.

The rule — which still needs to be agreed upon by representatives of the Commission and EU member countries — addresses worries from artists and publishers that AI firms might use their intellectual property without their consent or knowledge.

“That sounds like a great thing to ask for,” Altman told POLITICO. “But — due to the way these datasets are collected and the fact people have been copying data in different ways on different websites — to say I have to legally warrant every piece of copyrighted content in there is not as easy as it sounds.”

Altman thinks an easier way for creators to know if their work is being used would be based on whether their names appear in the prompts users give to an AI. “Every time you ask, ‘I want a song in the style of the Beatles,’ that would be clear,” Altman said.

Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, the maker of the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

All in all, however, Altman struck an optimistic tone about the AI Act and said he’d be happy to meet EU policymakers — despite skipping a planned Brussels stop in his tour. He told POLITICO that OpenAI would join the EU’s first “sandbox,” based in Spain, where AI companies will be able to test their regulatory compliance.

“It’s going to get to a good place,” he said. “Regulatory clarity will be a good thing.”

This article has been updated.

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Gian Volpicelli

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May 24, 2023
How AI Is Transforming Market Research | Entrepreneur
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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Qualitative research has become an integral part of market research in the past few decades. Businesses have recognized the value of subjective experiences and perceptions of their consumers. In the early days of market research, quantitative methods dominated, with surveys and statistical analyses used to gather data about consumer behavior. However, as the market became more competitive and consumer preferences more complex, qualitative methods gained popularity.

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld, widely regarded as the father of qualitative research, by 1945 demonstrated that psychology could offer a valuable framework for interpreting human behavior. He revolutionized the field by introducing novel techniques such as unstructured interviewing and group discussions. The data from these methods enabled researchers to delve deeper into the subjective experiences of individuals. He emphasized the importance of answering the fundamental question of “why?” — which remains the guiding principle of qualitative research to this day. Through his pioneering work, Lazarsfeld paved the way for the evolution of qualitative research and its growing recognition as a powerful tool for exploring complex social phenomena and understanding the diverse perspectives of individuals.

Related: Why You Need To Invest In Qualitative Research Right Now

Qualitative market research really took off in the 1950s and 1960s, when psychologists and sociologists began using focus groups to study consumer behavior. These early studies focused on understanding the motivations behind consumer choices and the impact of advertising and branding on consumer attitudes. In the 1970s and 1980s, ethnographic methods were introduced, with researchers observing consumers in their natural environments to gain a deeper understanding of their behavior.

Today, qualitative research in market research has evolved to include a wide range of methods, including in-depth interviews, online communities and social media analysis. The goal of qualitative market research is to provide a rich, nuanced understanding of consumer behavior and preferences, allowing businesses to make informed decisions about product development, branding and marketing strategies. Qualitative research has become an essential tool for businesses seeking to stay competitive in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Introducing AI into market research

AI has revolutionized market research by offering tools for data analysis and insight generation. As AI technology continues to evolve and grow, it is expected to become an even more integral part of market research. It’ll be imperative in helping businesses to stay ahead of the curve in an increasingly data-driven world.
- AI can quickly process vast amounts of data, identify trends and patterns in consumer behavior and analyze unstructured data such as social media posts, reviews and customer feedback.
- With predictive analytics models in the picture, machine learning algorithms are used to forecast future trends and consumer behavior, guiding product development, marketing strategies and pricing decisions.
- AI can also automate time-consuming tasks such as data cleaning and coding, freeing up researchers’ and marketers’ time. This allows teams to focus on more complex tasks, such as interpreting results and developing actionable insights.
Related: Why AI is Revolutionizing Marketing

Revolutionizing qualitative research with AI

AI, as we know it, is changing as you read this. It has penetrated into business workflow and operations, promising to make lives easier and more efficient. AI has empowered marketing to become hyper-personalized, targeting consumers at the right time and at the right place. Qualitative research, an integral backbone of marketing, is no exception. Researchers are able to generate insights that would have been impossible to obtain using traditional research methods.
- Facial coding is one such AI-powered technology that can analyze micro-expressions and emotional responses. It can provide valuable insights into consumer behavior and preferences.
- Sentiment analysis, on the other hand, can help researchers identify the sentiment behind written or spoken responses, enabling them to understand the emotional impact of campaigns, products or services on consumers.
- Confidence metrics, a byproduct of sentiment analysis, is another technology that is sought after by brands these days. It measures the level of certainty or conviction expressed by respondents in their answers, allowing researchers to gain a deeper understanding of consumer behavior.
- Voice AI, meanwhile, can help researchers analyze the tonality, inflection and other vocal cues in spoken responses, providing additional insights into consumer attitudes and behaviors.
By using technology like facial coding, sentiment analysis and voice AI, researchers are able to tap into their leading to better product development, branding and marketing strategies.

Related: 3 Ways to Drive Business Growth Using AI

AI-powered qualitative research platforms

There’s a platform for almost everything — from recruiting respondents to automating surveys to generating insights.

Digital transformation of qualitative research through AI has transformed the way researchers execute studies. It is time that brands take up an AI-led qualitative platform to streamline their research efforts.

The use of AI-powered technologies such as facial coding, sentiment analysis, tonality analysis and voice AI can enable businesses to make data-driven decisions about product development, branding and marketing strategies and stay competitive in a rapidly changing marketplace. As AI technology continues to evolve, it is likely that we will see even more advanced tools and methods being developed, further enhancing the power and potential of qualitative research. Adopt an AI-led qualitative platform today before it’s too late.
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Sriya Srinivasan

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May 22, 2023
Unbelievable facts

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May 20, 2023
LOR Foundation Invests Over $500,000 in Innovative Water Projects Led by Western Farmers and Ranchers

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LOR selects 61 projects submitted by farmers and ranchers that explore innovative approaches to using water in agriculture.

DENVER, May 18, 2023 (Newswire.com)
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The LOR Foundation has selected 61 projects for its Field Work initiative, investing $538,802 into water-related agriculture projects led by farmers and ranchers.

Earlier this year the foundation launched Field Work, a research initiative to source innovative approaches to using water in agriculture in the West. Through Field Work, farmers and ranchers in rural parts of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming were eligible for up to $10,000 to implement innovative water projects on their land (think: improved water efficiency, water reliability, water quality, crop yield or crop diversification, and labor efficiency). The goal: Get money quickly into the hands of the people in the field and on the ranch who have the potential solutions.

LOR received more than 250 proposals from producers across all five states. Their innovative projects revealed some important trends among Western farmers and ranchers: the need for more and better pipes, nozzles, and gates to move water efficiently; investment in technology-enabled methods of supplying—and monitoring—remote or hard-to-access areas with water; a growing interest in how soil amendments like wool, fungi, and biochar can improve water retention and soil health; a return to holistic and Indigenous methods of catching, retaining, and spreading water (e.g., earthworks, water planting, underground greenhouses), and more.

“We believe that those closest to the problem often have the best solutions,” says Alex Dunlop, LOR’s chief business development officer. “Farmers and ranchers in places like Monte Vista, Colorado, and Questa, New Mexico, have creative solutions to water challenges. Field Work is a chance to help them put those ideas into practice and learn from them.”

Ultimately, LOR selected 61 projects, which will get underway this spring and summer. These projects are led by the experimenters, tinkerers, innovators, and iterators who—while Western states agonize over how to resolve antiquated water compacts—have been finding ways to eke out a living from the land. They’re people who have a vested interest in finding ways to use water more effectively, for their own operations and for the good of the West.

They’re people like Michael Lobato, a Colorado School of Mines engineer-turned-farmer, who for the past three years has been rehabbing a five-acre farm outside of Fruita, Colorado. Lobato thinks injecting biochar—which is extremely porous—deep into the soil, rather than using it on the surface level, will improve the drought tolerance of hay and grasses and significantly reduce agricultural water consumption across the West. Interestingly, he’s planning to inject it using a piece of machinery previously used for sports turf.

Ultimately, LOR hopes research projects like these—led by the people who best understand the challenge—reveal solutions for using water efficiently to grow food and sustain thriving communities in the West while in the grip of desperate drought.

Learn about the 61 selected Field Work projects at lorfoundation.org/field-work.

Source: LOR Foundation

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May 18, 2023
Unbelievable facts

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May 17, 2023
Welcome To Famicase 2023, My Favorite Time Of The Year

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Every year, around about now, indie Japanese games retailer/shopfront Meteor holds an exhibition called Famicase. The goal? Showcase the design and illustration of cartridge art for games that do not exist. Artists from all over the world take part, sending in their submissions, and every year Meteor pick the best and display them live in their store.

Disney’s New Post-Apocalyptic Anime Proves The Mouse Has Good Taste

The Week In Games: Return To Hyrule

Monday 3:53PM

Given the exhibition is in Tokyo, however, most of you reading aren’t able to go check it out. No matter! Meteor are also kind enough to post the submissions every year on their website, leaving us free to take a look at just how incredible every single one of them are

Like I have ever year for what feels like 1000 years, this post is going to highlight some of my favourite entries for the year, some of them from local artists, some of them from international ones, and some of them even from Kotaku readers who were kind enough to send in their own successful submissions.

If you want to check out every entry, there’s a gallery site here, while you can also buy a lovely book of the whole collection from Meteor for ¥1430 (or around USD$10). Anyway, without further ado: the submissions!

I should note here at the end that while the whole point of Famicase is to imagine games that don’t exist, and with the focus on simply making pieces of cartridge art that looks nice hanging on a wall (or displayed in a book), that doesn’t mean that these games don’t get made. As we’ve covered previously, the A Game By Its Cover jam takes place every year, and asks developers to turn some of these concepts into playable, actual games.

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Luke Plunkett

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May 11, 2023
Americans’ Verdict: Many Would Prefer AI Judges to Humans, The Harris Poll Finds
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New data shows large majorities of Americans believe courts are highly biased, and nearly half would trust artificial intelligence to provide a more fair outcome.
NEW YORK, May 3, 2023 (Newswire.com)
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Justice is blind, as the saying goes, but nearly half of all Americans don’t believe that: If they were in court, they would prefer an artificial intelligence judge to a human judge. According to new research from The Harris Poll Thought Leadership and Futures Practice, eight in 10 Americans believe the court system is biased and provides unequal justice, and more than four in 10 believe an AI judge would be more likely to provide a fair sentence.

The study’s findings are outlined in Harris Poll TL’s newsletter “The Next Big Think” and are based on a survey of 2,002 Americans conducted from March 31 to April 4, 2023, across representative samples of ethnic and generational demographics.

The study’s central finding is justice isn’t equal today, which has Americans looking for new alternatives. A strong majority of Americans – 79% of respondents – agree “Judicial courts don’t provide ‘equal justice to all’ even though they seek to be impartial in practice.” Six out of 10 respondents (58%) overall said they knew someone who had been treated unfairly in court – and reports of mistreatment escalate with Black (79%) and Hispanic (68%) respondents.

Poll respondents also were asked about what groups were affected by courts’ biases. They said courts were biased in favor of
- The ultra-wealthy (55% of respondents)
- Celebrities (54%)
- Political leaders (48%)
- Corporations (44%)
- White people (37%)
They said courts were biased against
- People with prior offenses (49%)
- Undocumented immigrants (45%)
- Lower-income people (38%)
- Black people (35%)
- LGBTQIA people (35%)
Facing the inequality of the courts, Americans are curious about new avenues for change. In fact, four in 10 respondents (43%) say “I would prefer an AI judge rather than a human one in a potential court hearing.” And a majority of respondents who have been mistreated by the justice system (particularly Black and Hispanic people) would take a bet on an AI judge.

Even the experts at The Harris Poll did not expect those findings.

“We were surprised to learn over half of Americans think AI judges would be more equitable in sentencing, but when you take into consideration the doubts around the impartiality of our judicial system, it starts to add up,” said Libby Rodney, Chief Strategy Officer at The Harris Poll.

A majority of all respondents agreed that AI could provide a variety of benefits, including: preventing long waits for court hearings (62%); countering human error and bias (60%); and providing more equitable sentences (59%).

However, Rodney cautioned that the perceived impartiality of AI is somewhat of an illusion: “It’s crucial to note AI is not necessarily neutral, as it reflects the values and biases of its creators. It’s essentially ‘people programming’ that codifies our belief systems into a machine that reflects our values back to us.”

Regardless of the solution, bipartisan majorities believe the courts are in need of reform. Eight out of 10 agreed that “Our judicial system needs to fundamentally change in order to provide unbiased justice to all” — including 88% of Democrats and 72% of Republicans. And three-quarters (75%) agreed that “Rather than increasing freedom for all Americans, it feels like judicial courts are taking it away,” including strong majorities of Democrats (81%) and Republicans (70%).

Rodney believes the lack of faith in U.S. courts we see in the data may be the result of a series of recent court decisions, from the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year to lower courts’ rulings on abortion access, transgender rights, and censorship issues. “The discontent directed at the Supreme Court could be spreading to the system as a whole,” she said. “While the possibilities for AI to alleviate some issues foster hope, people need to see more fundamental reform in order to repair the trust between the public and the judicial system.”

To learn more about The Harris Poll Thought Leadership and Futures Practice and the survey on justice in the U.S. court system, visit their Substack newsletter, The Next Big Think.

About The Harris Poll Thought Leadership and Futures Practice

Building on 50+ years of experience pulsing societal opinion, we design research that is credible, creative, and culturally relevant. Our practice drives thought leadership and unearths trends for today’s biggest brands. We are focused on helping our clients get ahead of what’s next.

Source: The Harris Poll
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May 3, 2023
What’s New in Diabetes Treatment?
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Advances in Diabetes Treatment

By
Camille Peri
WebMD Feature

WebMD Feature Archive

Diabetes treatment is getting better every day. Scientists may be just a few years away from making an artificial pancreas that can safely detect and adjust blood sugar (glucose) levels. In the meantime, new medications and insulin devices can make living with diabetes easier and safer now.

“We’re getting more and more options,” says Michael German, MD, clinical director of the Diabetes Center at the University of California, San Francisco. “That’s good because no two people with diabetes are the same. It helps us get the right medicine for each person.”

Recommended Related to Diabetes

Is There a Hypoglycemia Diet?

If you’ve ever gone too long between meals to eat and suddenly felt shaky, lightheaded, anxious, and cranky, you’ve had hypoglycemia. These unpleasant symptoms are your body’s way of warning you that your blood sugar (glucose) levels have fallen too low. (That’s what “hypoglycemia” means.)
Glucose is the body’s main source of energy. In most people, blood sugar levels should be within a range of 70 to 99 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL).
Most healthy people only need a quick high-carb snack, such…

Read the Is There a Hypoglycemia Diet? article > >

Progress in Diabetes Care

These treatments are or will soon be available in the U.S.
- Afrezza. This insulin inhaler for adults with type 1 and type 2 diabetes hit the market in February 2015. You use it at the beginning of a meal for a boost of short-acting insulin. Unlike an older inhaler, which was the size of a can of shaving cream, Afrezza is easier to use and not as clunky to carry around. “It’s quite small – a little bigger than a whistle,” says Sethu K. Reddy, MD, chief of adult diabetes at Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard Medical School in Boston. It’s probably not for you if you smoke or have a lung condition like asthma or emphysema.
- Medtronic MiniMed 640G. This combined insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor is a step toward the artificial pancreas. It automatically stops pumping insulin when your blood sugar levels are trending down and starts again when they’re back up. “Hypoglycemia [low blood sugar] is a real problem, particularly for people with type 1 diabetes,” German says. It could be especially useful for people who have hypoglycemia but feel no symptoms. The device isn’t available in the U.S. yet, but it may come to the FDA for approval soon.
- Lucentis. Doctors already use this drug to treat the eye disease macular edema in people who don’t have diabetes. But in February 2015, the FDA made it the first eye medication for diabetic retinopathy, a serious eye problem linked to diabetes and a leading cause of blindness among U.S. adults.
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April 26, 2023
What’s New in Diabetes Treatment?
[ad_1]
Advances in Diabetes Treatment

By
Camille Peri
WebMD Feature

WebMD Feature Archive

Diabetes treatment is getting better every day. Scientists may be just a few years away from making an artificial pancreas that can safely detect and adjust blood sugar (glucose) levels. In the meantime, new medications and insulin devices can make living with diabetes easier and safer now.

“We’re getting more and more options,” says Michael German, MD, clinical director of the Diabetes Center at the University of California, San Francisco. “That’s good because no two people with diabetes are the same. It helps us get the right medicine for each person.”

Progress in Diabetes Care

These treatments are or will soon be available in the U.S.
- Afrezza. This insulin inhaler for adults with type 1 and type 2 diabetes hit the market in February 2015. You use it at the beginning of a meal for a boost of short-acting insulin. Unlike an older inhaler, which was the size of a can of shaving cream, Afrezza is easier to use and not as clunky to carry around. “It’s quite small – a little bigger than a whistle,” says Sethu K. Reddy, MD, chief of adult diabetes at Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard Medical School in Boston. It’s probably not for you if you smoke or have a lung condition like asthma or emphysema.
- Medtronic MiniMed 640G. This combined insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor is a step toward the artificial pancreas. It automatically stops pumping insulin when your blood sugar levels are trending down and starts again when they’re back up. “Hypoglycemia [low blood sugar] is a real problem, particularly for people with type 1 diabetes,” German says. It could be especially useful for people who have hypoglycemia but feel no symptoms. The device isn’t available in the U.S. yet, but it may come to the FDA for approval soon.
- Lucentis. Doctors already use this drug to treat the eye disease macular edema in people who don’t have diabetes. But in February 2015, the FDA made it the first eye medication for diabetic retinopathy, a serious eye problem linked to diabetes and a leading cause of blindness among U.S. adults.
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April 26, 2023
Biogen wins accelerated FDA approval for treatment for rare form of ALS

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday it has granted accelerated approval to Biogen Inc.’s torferson, a treatment for a rare form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

The accelerated program is used to approve drugs for serious conditions that have an unmet medical need, where a drug is shown to have an effect on an endpoint that is reasonably likely to predict a clinical benefit to patients.

In…

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April 25, 2023
Nutrition Research Forgot About Dads

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When his 18-year-old daughter, Francine, first started losing weight, in the fall of 2018, Kenneth initially thought it was a good thing. Francine had always been artistic but never particularly athletic, which puzzled her father. Kenneth, now 47, is a runner with dozens of half-marathons and even one ultramarathon under his belt.

When Francine started to express an interest in exercising and joining Kenneth’s wife, Tracy, for workouts, Kenneth and Tracy thought it was a positive sign. When Francine announced that she was vegan, they rolled with it.

Then Francine’s hair started to fall out.

It took more than a year of trying different therapists, while Francine got progressively worse, for Kenneth and Tracy to grasp just how sick their daughter was. (I’ve changed the family members’ names to protect their privacy.) Kenneth started to add up exactly what his daughter was eating in a day and realized it wasn’t nearly enough. He also suspected that Francine had learned some of her new eating habits—such as replacing breakfast with bulletproof coffee—from watching him.

Around the same time that Francine began struggling, Kenneth was following his own intense diet while on a quest to improve his running time. When Francine asked about his eating, he explained what he was doing and why. “I think I was probably malnourished myself, and in that place where you can’t help but obsess about food and talk about it constantly,” he says. Kenneth thought that he was modeling healthy eating and exercise habits to his daughter. “I just had no idea that the stuff she was asking me was really her disease asking,” he says.

For decades, researchers trying to understand the role of a child’s family in eating-disorder development looked almost exclusively to mothers. “The literature on fathers’ child feeding practices is scant,” observed the authors of a scientific-review paper on the topic published in 2014. They could find only 20 studies that included fathers in a meaningful way. “The research that has included fathers has focused on fathers who are part of a family in which the mother has an [eating disorder], rather than examining fathers’ unique contributions,” wrote two Yale researchers in their analysis for a 2016 study. More studies on parents and eating habits have been published since that 2014 review, but the gap between research on mothers and research on fathers remains wide.

Fat Talk: Parenting In The Age Of Diet Culture

By Virginia Sole-Smith

Scientists and the public alike have long ignored the idea that a father might also struggle with dieting or disordered eating, despite the fact that, according to a 2008 estimate from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), roughly 1 million American men live with eating disorders. Men aren’t supposed to obsess over their weight. Men—especially straight, cisgender, white, thin men—aren’t defined by their appearance to the same degree that women and other marginalized people tend to be. And that might explain why Americans talk much less about how fathers’ eating habits and beliefs around health and weight can influence their children than, say, the motivations of almond moms.

Read: The harder, better, faster, stronger language of dieting

One 2018 study of 658 parents by Yale researchers found that although nearly everyone (93 percent) demonstrated some sort of weight bias, fathers, as well as parents of any gender with the perceived privilege of “healthy weight,” were more likely than mothers to agree with negative statements such as “Severely obese children are unusually untidy” (findings on the differences between mothers’ and fathers’ food parenting vary). Other research concluded that fathers with more education and a higher family income were more likely than other fathers to endorse fat stereotypes. And kids absorb this stigma: Adolescents were more likely to diet and binge eat if their parents talked about weight, according to a 2013 survey published in JAMA Pediatrics of 2,793 kids.

Many experts say that the NIMH’s figure on the number of men living with eating disorders is likely an underestimate: Men don’t tend to disclose their disordered-eating behaviors, and health-care providers don’t think to screen men for symptoms. “Men tell me they don’t have a script for how to talk about diet culture,” Jaclyn Siegel, a social psychologist at San Diego State University, told me in 2020 when I was reporting a story on the coronavirus pandemic’s effects on men’s dieting habits. “But there’s also no script for men to express their own concerns or to seek help, because it isn’t seen as normative for men to develop eating disorders or body-image dissatisfaction.”

What happens instead is a normalization and even a glamorization of men’s relationship with food and exercise. This rests on a common cultural misconception that men not only don’t get eating disorders; they don’t get emotional about food or bodies, period. Many dads go on diets, but far fewer actually call it that. Instead, like Kenneth, dieting dads might get super into long-distance running, or CrossFit, or bodybuilding, or Ironman training. They may become passionate about vegetable gardening; Kenneth and his family used to run an organic farm, and he says his passion for farming led him to preach about “good” and “bad” foods. All of these pursuits can be motivated by an interest in health and wellness—even science, the environment, social justice. But they can also be motivated by a fear of becoming or being perceived as fat, reflecting a broader bias against heavy people. “I used to do a lot of banter about ‘Look at that person; she’s fat,’” Kenneth says. “Or I’d say to the kids, ‘Hey, don’t eat that pizza,’ or ‘Don’t eat too many desserts; that will make you fat.’”

Some research suggests that dads can affect their kids’ relationship with food as much as or perhaps even more than moms do. Findings vary, underscoring the need for more research, but in a 2014 study of more than 2,700 kids, girls whose fathers reported binge eating were 3.38 times more likely to report binge eating themselves, although there was no correlation with mothers’ eating. (The researchers found no relationship between boys’ bingeing and that of parents.) Even if they don’t actively model disordered-eating habits, fathers may withdraw from family meals altogether—something many men can do more easily than women because of societal gender norms around who prepares food.

The little research we have on how dads influence their kids’ relationship with food and their body suggests that dads might be slightly more prone than moms to engage in what researchers call “pressure-to-eat behaviors”—pushing children to eat (or not eat) certain foods in certain amounts. Kyle Ganson, a clinical social worker at the University of Toronto who studies eating disorders in boys and men, speculates that fathers’ pressures on sons may relate to a desire for them to perform athletically in specific ways. “If the dad is pushing the kid in a certain direction with sports, or if the dad is their coach and heavily influencing their exercise plans, that can lead to disordered eating,” he says.

Read: Putting kids on diets won’t solve anything

On the flip side, fathers of kids with eating disorders may resort to exerting pressure because they are confused by a child’s inability to comply. “Anecdotally, the phrase I often hear from male caregivers is ‘Why can’t they just eat?’ They may also be more likely to think their child needs to ‘grow up’ or ‘deal with it,’” Ganson says. “Female caregivers tend to be doing a lot of the emotional processing around the eating disorder, while fathers are much more driven by logistics: ‘How do we move to the next phase of treatment? When do we see results?’” And when progress isn’t evident—as it often isn’t in the circular recovery process of eating disorders—dads are more likely to disconnect. “This isn’t really my territory” is another comment Ganson and his colleagues often hear from dads.

This is not to say that men can’t engage emotionally with a sick child, or that managing treatment logistics isn’t valuable. But helping and connecting with a child in eating-disorder recovery requires dads to be vulnerable and humble, skills that they aren’t always asked to employ or that haven’t been modeled for them. And the conditioning to push away feelings and move toward action mirrors the “No pain, no gain” messaging of much of male-diet culture.

Kenneth is now striving for acceptance as he and Tracy support Francine through her eating-disorder recovery. Soon after Kenneth’s realization of just how sick Francine had become, she was admitted to an inpatient recovery program for nine days. When she came home, Kenneth and Tracy began following a common eating-disorder-treatment protocol known as family-based treatment, where parents take full responsibility for feeding a child who can no longer hear hunger cues or make decisions around food, planning and preparing every single meal and snack and monitoring every bite.

There were many nights when Francine cried at the table. Tracy bore the brunt of making the food and talking Francine through the process of eating. “A lot of nights, I could see, she just could not eat unless Mom was there to support her,” Kenneth says. Those were the days he felt most helpless, just as the eating-disorder literature has so often painted fathers. But he began to look for ways to contribute, getting out board games for the family to play after dinner, when Francine had finished eating but still needed some help and distraction from the eating-disorder voice in her head.

Just being there—without judgment, without trying to fix it—made him reconsider what it meant to be Francine’s dad. “I still believe it’s my job to be the protector of my family,” Kenneth says, “but I’ve had to sort of rethink what that looks like.”

This article has been adapted from Virginia Sole-Smith’s forthcoming book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture.

When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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Virginia Sole-Smith

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April 18, 2023
Community Health Events to Be Held Nationwide as Part of the DREF Research Matters for All of Us Initiative

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WASHINGTON, April 16, 2023 (Newswire.com)
–
The Delta Research and Educational Foundation’s (DREF) Research Matters for All of Us initiative will host a series of community health events and panel discussions nationwide from April 16th-22nd, 2023, in recognition of the milestone anniversary of the Foundation. The week-long awareness program, entitled “55 Years Strong: Preserving Our Legacy through Research,” aims to raise awareness about the DREF Research Matters for All of Us Initiative, health topics that disproportionately impact the African American community, and how research can help close the health disparities gap. Join us at our events and use #DREFWeek to engage with panelists and attendees on social media.

The events kick off on April 16th at 1:00 PM (CT) in Houston with a community health event in partnership with the East Harris Chambers Liberty County Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., held at Alexander Duessen Park.

On April 18th at 5:30 PM (CT) in Milwaukee, a panel discussion regarding community science and the importance being involved in research will be held in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Sci Starter. Register for this event at http://bit.ly/allofusw.

On April 18th at 6:00 PM (ET) in Boston, Dr. Liza Swedarsky will be the featured presenter for “You Have a Right to be Healthy: Seven Health Vows for Living Your Best Life.” Partners for this event include the New England All of Us Program, South Middlesex County Alumnae Chapter, Greater Boston NPHC, National Council of Negro Women, Rho Omega Epsilon, 4 Corners Yoga & Wellness, Boston Alumnae Chapter, Boston Acupuncture Project, and Norfolk Plymouth County Area Alumnae Chapter. Registration for this virtual event can be found at https://bit.ly/7HealthVows.

On April 19th at 6:30 PM (ET), the DREF Research Matters for All of US HBCU team, along with current and former Student Ambassadors of the Research Accelerates Possibilities (R.A.P.) Program, will host a year-end panel discussion moderated by HBCU Research Specialist, Dr. Kelly Brittain. The event, “R.A.P Up,” will focus on the importance of research in our communities and the impact of the R.A.P. Program. To register for this virtual event, visit https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0ocOyvqjwtHtQpJSn7MyCl_MwAd2hUxr2J.

On April 21st at 7:30 PM (ET) in New York, the DREF will participate in an in-person event, held in conjunction with RECOVER, a wellness and fitness center, where a panel of researchers will discuss long-term effects and recovery from COVID. To register for this virtual event, visit https://bit.ly/RECOVERxDREF.

On April 22nd from 10 am to 2 PM (ET) in Atlanta at the CT Martin Natatorium and Recreation Center, a community health fair will be held in partnership with the Physical and Mental Health Committee of the Atlanta Alumnae Chapter. Participants will have the opportunity to receive free health screenings and learn about the All of Us Research Program.

Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. established the Delta Research and Educational Foundation (DREF) in 1967 as a public charity supporting scholastic achievement, public service programs, and research initiatives focused upon African American women. The DREF Research Matters for All of Us initiative recognizes the importance of health research in marginalized communities and is committed to closing the health disparities gap. Visit our websites and follow us on social media to learn more:

All of Us Research Program: www.joinallofus.org/dref

Delta Research and Educational Foundation: www.deltafoundation.net

Source: Delta Research and Educational Foundation

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April 16, 2023
FDA pulls preterm-birth drug Makena and its generics from market after 12 years

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it had reached a final decision to fully withdraw approval of preterm-birth drug Makena and its generics, a full 12 years after the treatment hit the market.

The drug was approved in 2011 using the agency’s accelerated-approval pathway as a treatment to reduce the risk of spontaneous preterm birth in pregnant women who had a history of the condition.

The…

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April 6, 2023
How Tech-Based Market Research Helps Businesses Stay Ahead | Entrepreneur

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Consumer priorities are quickly changing with the possibility of a recession. Businesses will find it difficult to get away with sub-optimal segmentation, placement, pricing or branding as people become more frugal with their money.

With rising uncertainty in both the business and consumer markets, market research is critical for brands to stay on top of shifting consumer preferences. However, marketers are expected to trim their research budgets while under increased pressure to obtain high-quality data and insights.

But here’s the good news — companies can speed up their market research at a notably lower cost with the help of technology-driven market research.

Tech-driven market research leverages technologies like AI, ML and Big Data to assist you in overcoming the significant limitations of traditional market research, like the reliance on self-reported data, lack of optimization recommendations and long turnaround times.

Let’s look at how market research techniques can be particularly useful during these uncertain times.

Related: The Impact of Technology on Market Research

Identify market trends

Spotting changes in customer preferences, shopping habits and spending patterns is essential for businesses to adapt and survive.

For instance, the fast fashion giant H&M realized the trend of sustainable clothing early on. Incentivizing customers with vouchers for recycling clothes, H&M collected nearly 19,000 tons of unwanted clothes and textiles in 2020 through their Garment Collecting program, garnering much love from their customers.

Like H&M, businesses can adjust their marketing strategies, develop new products and tailor their offerings to meet the evolving needs of their customers by keeping up with current trends. This is where tech-driven market research gives you an edge, effectively identifying changing consumer sentiments by capturing not just stated responses but also subconscious feelings that consumers have not explicitly conveyed.

Conduct competitive analysis

Competitive market research is especially critical during a recession, with many businesses struggling to survive and beat the fierce competition. By analyzing the competition, businesses can identify areas where they can improve, such as pricing, product features or customer service. They can also identify areas where they have an advantage and leverage it to gain market share.

Market research technology can help you delve deeper into understanding, for instance, why you might be losing customers to competitors. Even if you’ve lost the deal, following up with open-ended questions like what services attracted the customer to the competitor, did they have any issues with the pricing and such will help you find out why they made the switch.

Advanced research technologies help you quantify the emotions hidden in voice tonalities and facial expressions, enabling you to capture more profound insights. They can also help you accurately test the UX of your application and the competitors’ with features like eye tracking.

You can also test your media (adverts) against the competitors; robust market research tech stacks can generate heatmaps and benchmarking scores, so you know how your marketing strategies fare against the industry standard.

Related: 4 Key Questions to Ask When Analyzing Competition

Test new products and services

While businesses need to be more cautious with their investments during an economic downturn, keeping branding, products and services relevant to the current dynamics can be worthwhile.

For instance, Procter & Gamble utilized market research to successfully introduce the Swiffer WetJet in 2001 [during the recession], creating a new product that made it easier to mop floors, weaning customers away from less expensive alternatives.

This is where the right market research technology can enable you to flawlessly conduct innovation testing, product concept testing and more before investing in a product or service development and launch. Businesses can avoid costly mistakes and make informed choices by gathering feedback from prospective customers ahead of time to evaluate the viability of their new offering.

Currently, Coca-Cola is riding the sustainability trend and is testing paper bottles for all its products. An important aspect of this testing is how it will impact customer experience. The company is focusing on consumer research to understand how customers will react to the paper bottle and to find sustainable packaging solutions that people can enjoy.

Such intensive research activities become easy to conduct with the help of market research platforms where surveys and focus group discussions can be conducted entirely online. Moreover, research tools also come equipped with massive online panels, enabling you to practically reach any corner of the world for your research activities.

Related: How Businesses Can Utilize Market Research to Create Reactive, Recession-proof Strategies for Survival

Optimize marketing spend

Market research technology can help businesses optimize their marketing efforts by identifying the most effective channels and messages. By analyzing customer data, businesses can determine which marketing campaigns deliver the best return on investment (ROI) and adjust their strategies accordingly.

Fortunately, there are several tech-driven market research tools available in the market today. An integrated research platform allows you to gather both quantitative and qualitative data in one platform, giving you a single view of all data. Since data visualization is easy, these tools enable quick decision-making as well.

Today, companies can move forward during a recession rather than being bogged down; implementing the right market research platform can be a game-changer in helping companies innovate and thrive even during uncertain times.

According to HBR, only 9% of companies flourished during the Great Recession. This small group of companies was research-oriented and had concerted plans for handling a recession and where they would invest. The result? They outperformed competitors by more than 10% in sales growth.

These companies understood the consumer sentiment that people didn’t necessarily stop spending but were willing to spend elsewhere. However, it’s impossible to come to this understanding without investing in research.

Without effective market research, you can only speculate about what your consumers want and, as a result, what might benefit your company in difficult times.

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Sriya Srinivasan

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April 5, 2023
Could ChatGPT Pose a Threat to Google’s Dominance in Search? | Entrepreneur
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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Over the decades, Google has made a space in billions of people’s lives worldwide as the go-to search engine to answer their queries. From using it to learn “how to make a pecan pie” to diagnosing illnesses by inputting symptoms, Google, with its infamous and complicated ranking algorithm, is all-knowing.

But with innovation in artificial intelligence (AI) and the launch of OpenAI’s language generation model ChatGPT, things have changed. The world has been thrown into chaos, and Google’s monopoly among search engines may finally be wavering.

Introduction to ChatGPT and Google’s search engine

The Google Search Engine is now three decades old. The speed, simplicity and quality of results make Google the most-used search engine on the internet. It uses a search algorithm known as PageRank, which combines technical factors, such as the relevance and popularity of web pages, to rank the results returned for a given query.

The search algorithm considers many factors when determining a web page’s relevance. This includes the text, the links, and the relevance of the words in the query.

Related: Chat GPT Urgent Warning: Is Your Information, Job or Business Safe?

The algorithm intends to help users find the most useful and informative web pages for their queries. The trustworthiness and relevance of these results, however, are questionable.

ChatGPT, on the other hand, is a natural language generation model by OpenAI. It can be used for various natural language processing tasks. From generating text, answering questions, generating responses to prompts, language translation, and even text summarization, ChatGPT is multifaceted.

A comparison of ChatGPT and Google’s search engine capabilities

Search is a complex task. Google search involves not just understanding natural language queries — but also ranking and organizing the billions of web pages and documents indexed on Google. This requires sophisticated algorithms and a deep understanding of the structure of the web, which Google has done through years of research and development.

Let’s go over some of the wide range of tasks that the Google search engine is capable of:
1. Web Search: The primary function of Google Search is to help users find information on the web. Users can type in keywords or phrases, and the search engine will return a list of relevant web pages and documents.
2. Image Search: This feature allows users to search for images on the internet by keywords.
3. News Search: Google Search includes a feature that allows users to find news articles about a specific topic.
4. Video Search: It also allows users to search for videos on the internet by keywords.
5. Maps and Local Search: This feature enables users to search for businesses, places, and other points of interest and view them on a map.
6. Advanced Search: Google Search includes advanced search operators such as ‘site:,’ ‘filetype:,’ ‘intext:’ and many more to help users refine their search results and find the information they need.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, is not explicitly designed for use in search. But even in its primary stage, it has shown tremendous potential in assisting with search. While it can generate text similar to human writing, it is not currently as sophisticated as Google’s search algorithm, which has been developed and refined over many years.

How ChatGPT can improve the search experience

It’s currently missing many of the components that make Google’s search so powerful, such as a vast array of data, years of research and development, and a wide range of integrated products and services.

Related: What Is ChatGPT? Google, Siri and Even ChatGPT Are Confused About Its Existence

It is worth mentioning that ChatGPT, when used in conjunction with a search engine like Google, can assist in providing more sophisticated results as well as a more interpretable understanding of queried information.

Let’s look at some ways ChatGPT can be of aid when it comes to search.
1. Query Understanding: ChatGPT can understand the intent of a user’s query by analyzing the query and generating a summary of what the user is looking for.
2. Query Expansion: It can also expand a user’s query by generating similar or related queries.
3. Language Translation: Can be fine-tuned on a specific language task, allowing it to generate text in a different language than the one it was trained on, providing a more accurate and human-like translation.
4. Answer Generation: It can generate answers to natural language questions.
5. Text Summarization: ChatGPT can generate summaries of lengthy articles or documents, making it easier for users to find the information they are looking for.
6. Text Completion: It can also complete a text based on a given prompt or context.
7. Rich Snippet: ChatGPT can generate rich snippets, giving a better visual representation of the result.
8. Responding to Voice Queries: ChatGPT can be integrated with voice-enabled devices, allowing it to respond to natural language voice queries and generate spoken responses.
These are just a few examples of how ChatGPT can enhance search. The model can be fine-tuned for specific use cases, and its capabilities can extend through integration with other technologies.

Potential uses of ChatGPT in various industries and sectors

ChatGPT and other language models have great potential in many other fields, such as customer support, content creation, summarization, and search. Because of its efficiency, scalability, cost-effectiveness, coherence, and fluency, ChatGPT use cases expand to every major industry.
1. Education: ChatGPT can be fine-tune on educational data and knowledge to generate text for exam questions, summaries, and explanations.
2. Healthcare: ChatGPT has the ability to use medical data and knowledge to develop medical reports and summaries or answer patients’ questions.
3. Legal: Inputting legal data and knowledge in ChatGPT allows it to assist with legal documents, summaries, and contract reviews.
4. E-commerce: Can effectively generate product descriptions and customer reviews. It can also power chatbots to help customers find the products they are looking for and make purchase decisions.
5. Customer Service: ChatGPT can facilitate chatbot or virtual assistants that can answer customer questions, providing quick and accurate responses 24/7.
Potential threats Google may face with the development of AI models

Language generation is a rapidly evolving field, and ChatGPT comes with certain unique abilities. These may cause problems for Google. Let’s find out how this works.
- Automation of content creation: One of the key benefits of ChatGPT is its ability to generate human-like text. This could lead to the automation of certain content creation tasks. News articles, product descriptions, and customer reviews — can all be AI-generated, making it difficult for Google to discern between them. The lack of being able to actually tell the difference between real and AI throws the Google ranking algorithm into chaos.
- Personalization: ChatGPT can be fine-tuned on specific tasks and can generate customizable text for a particular context. While Google search is more general and not tailored to specific use cases.
- Competition in the advertising industry: Google generates a significant portion of its revenue through advertising. ChatGPT, however, can generate ad copy, potentially leading to increased competition in the advertising industry.
- Quality of results: Google’s search results rank by relevance. However, ChatGPT can provide results that humans prefer as they are in a conversational tone. This makes ChatGPT more efficient for Google’s search results.
- Reducing the need for Google search: ChatGPT can be fine-tuned on specific tasks and generate human-like text. This reduces the need for users to rely on Google Search for certain types of information.
The current state and future potential of ChatGPT and Google’s search engine

Google has created its own transformation-based language model, LaMDA. However, Google has been very cautious about making it available to the masses. OpenAI, on the other hand, has readily made ChatGPT available as a research preview, with the program gaining 1 million users in just five days.

ChatGPT has done a brilliant job of highlighting the capabilities of current AI. Head of Google’s AI, Jeff Dean, said the company has much more “reputational risk” in providing wrong information and thus is moving “more conservatively than a small startup.”

They went on to say that they had similar capabilities but much more to lose because people have to trust the answers they get from Google, which is not always the case with ChatGPT, as OpenAI has explicitly stated that ChatGPT “sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.”

It is also important to note that ChatGPT, like any other machine learning model, is not a silver bullet. This means that its performance depends on the data it’s trained on and the specific task it’s used for.

A search engine like Google needs to understand the intent of a user’s query and then provide relevant results. However, ChatGPT can generate text similar to human writing but is not fully able to carry out the former.

Additionally, GPT-3 and its variants are only open for some to use, as it requires API access which is not available for free. Thus there are limitations to its ability. Only large enterprises can afford it right now. Which also limits its potential to pose a real threat to Google in search.

Conclusion: Is ChatGPT a viable threat to Google’s dominance in search?

Google is now live for more than 30 years, which has advanced its algorithms and capabilities. Additionally, Google has a vast array of data at its disposal. This allows it to continuously improve its search algorithms and provide more accurate and relevant results.

Google also has a wide range of other products and services. Google Maps, Images, and YouTube play a vital role in the search experience. This integration of Google products provides a comprehensive search experience to its users.

ChatGPT is not currently a direct threat to Google’s dominance, but it can be a potential tool to assist the future search experience. Research is done in this area, but there is much more to search for. It’s not an easy task, but it’s a possible one.

With further innovations, ChatGPT could be major competition to the decades of monopoly Google has been enjoying over search engines. The release and potential success or failure of LaMDA also play a crucial role in determining whether Google will be able to continue asserting this dominance as ChatGPT and other natural-language generation models are wreaking havoc in the digital sphere.
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ReadWrite.com

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April 4, 2023
Upgrade to Real-Time Feedback with This Focus Group Style | Entrepreneur
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Research is a crucial component of any successful business decision. One of its most popular and effective forms is focus groups, where people are brought together to discuss and provide feedback on a product, service or idea. Usually, it’s conducted after people have interacted with the product for some time.

My company tried applying this research method in a bit different format. By dividing the data collection into two parts, one just after another, we made the process faster and more accurate than ever before. Here’s a guide on how to level up your focus group if you’re limited in time.

Related: If Your Company Is Not Customer-Obsessed, You’re Doing It Wrong

How to organize focus groups differently

The main difference in our type of focus group was collecting data on your customers’ opinions on the service or product almost simultaneously while interacting with it. We asked our participants twice: briefly while they were getting our services and more lengthy as soon as they were finished. Here’s how to build this type of focus group.

1. Gather a representative sample: Inviting people who closely match your target audience is essential. For example, you can select participants who have already registered for your service and have some familiarity with our product. In our case, we randomly invited people who enrolled in our free webinar. Of course, you should offer compensation for their participation.

2. Don’t set any limits: Explain that people shouldn’t treat your study as something they should change their behavior for. In particular, they are free to drop out if they don’t like something or get bored.

3. Collect feedback while they are getting your service: You can chat using the most popular messaging app among clients to collect feedback in real-time. We asked questions regularly so that participants could share what they liked and didn’t like as the webinar was taking place.

4. Arrange a follow-up call: After the webinar, we arranged a group call that was just like the usual focus group to get additional feedback and more detailed information. During this, give a brief intro and encourage participants to take turns telling you about themselves. Then ask questions on matters that are most significant for you, like:
- Did you finish taking the service?
- What were the good parts?
- What were the inconveniences you experienced?
Related: This Is Why You Should Never Ignore Customer Feedback

Benefits of “real-time” focus groups

As mentioned above, our goal was to make more data-driven decisions about the webinar funnel. We were looking for some little insights that might not be obvious at all, which people will soon forget about but are crucial in decision-making.

There are several benefits to changing your approach to focus groups. Here are the key ones:
- Unfiltered feedback: When participants provide feedback in real-time, their thoughts and feelings are not distorted by time or memory, resulting in unfiltered feedback. For example, we learned that people were really annoyed when the speaker’s icon covered a piece of presentation. It’s not surprising that it can be unpleasant, but we were astonished to know that it could be a reason for people to leave the webinar!
- Realistic representation: It was important for us to allow the participants to drop out or lose interest in the webinar, just as they would in real life, providing a more realistic representation of the process.
- Simultaneous information acquisition: By providing a platform for real-time feedback, we can understand the perspectives of different participants while gaining insights into cultural and social differences.
- Quick implementation of changes: Consequently, you can plan improvements on your product significantly after just one round of data collection.
Related: Steal These 4 Proven Customer-Retention Strategies

Challenges

While real-time decision-making during focus groups has many benefits, it is not without its challenges. The main problem one would face is typical for any kind of focus group: this format is not for newbies. To gain valuable insights, it is essential to have a skilled moderator who can keep the discussion on track and ensure that all participants are heard.

Moreover, there is a risk of people who talk too much – those who form opinions for other participants or do not let them express themselves. In this case, the moderator should encourage others to speak during their turn and know how to interrupt and even silence that person politely. Of course, all the participants must have a stable Internet connection. It can be hard to reassure, and technical difficulties can disrupt the process.

Moreover, it would be a mistake to think that focus groups are less expensive than other qualitative interviews. To recruit the participants, you will likely have to pay each of them the same honors as for other interviews, so you will spend several times more for one hour and probably learn less from each participant. Apart from them, you will need to hire a research team if you don’t have one, which would cost you extra. However, if your goal is to get the most information from several people simultaneously, you’re unlikely to find a better solution.

Conclusion

Real-time decision-making during focus groups is a revolutionary research method that can provide quick, unfiltered feedback and a realistic representation of the decision-making process. By following our step-by-step guide, you can organize your own real-time focus group and take advantage of the many benefits this method offers. While there are challenges to consider, the rewards are well worth the effort.
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Roman Kumar Vyas

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March 31, 2023
Disney eliminates metaverse division in cost-cutting purge: report

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The metaverse is among the first victims of Walt Disney Co.’s cost-cutting purge.

The Magic Kingdom is shutting down its next-generation storytelling and consumer-experiences unit, the small division that was developing metaverse strategies, as part of a plan to slash 7,000 jobs, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Tuesday.

Disney…

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March 28, 2023
Twitter’s plan to charge researchers for data access puts it in EU crosshairs

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Voiced by artificial intelligence.

Elon Musk pledged Twitter would abide by Europe’s new content rules — but Yevgeniy Golovchenko is not so convinced.

The Ukrainian academic, an assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen, relies on the social network’s data to track Russian disinformation, including propaganda linked to the ongoing war in Ukraine. But that access, including to reams of tweets analyzing pro-Kremlin messaging, may soon be cut off. Or, even worse for Golovchenko, cost him potentially millions of euros a year.

Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter is shutting down researchers’ free access to its data, though the final decision on when that will happen has yet to be made. Company officials are also offering new pay-to-play access to researchers via deals that start at $42,000 per month and can rocket up to $210,000 per month for the largest amount of data, according to Twitter’s internal presentation to academics that was shared with POLITICO.

Yet this switch — from almost unlimited, free data access to costly monthly subscription fees — falls afoul of the European Union’s new online content rules, the Digital Services Act. Those standards, which kick in over the coming months, require the largest social networking platforms, including Twitter, to provide so-called vetted researchers free access to their data.

It remains unclear how Twitter will meet its obligations under the 27-country bloc’s rules, which impose fines of up to 6 percent of its yearly revenue for infractions.

“If Twitter makes access less accessible to researchers, this will hurt research on things like disinformation and misinformation,” said Golovchenko who — like many academics who spoke with POLITICO — are now in limbo until Twitter publicly decides when, or whether, it will shut down its current free data-access regime.

It also means that “we will have fewer choices,” added the Ukrainian, acknowledging that, until now, Twitter had been more open for outsiders to poke around its data compared with the likes of Facebook or YouTube. “This means will be even more dependent on the goodwill of social media platforms.”

Meeting EU commitments

When POLITICO contacted Twitter for comment, the press email address sent back a poop emoji in response. A company representative did not respond to POLITICO’s questions, though executives met with EU officials and civil society groups Wednesday to discuss how Twitter would comply with Europe’s data-access obligations, according to three people with knowledge of those discussions, who were granted anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.

Twitter was expected to announce details of its new paid-for data access regime last week, according to the same individuals briefed on those discussions, though no specifics about the plans were yet known. As of Friday night, no details had yet been published.

Still, the ongoing uncertainty comes as EU regulators and policymakers have Musk in their crosshairs as the onetime world’s richest man reshapes Twitter into a free speech-focused social network. The Tesla chief executive has fired almost all of the trust, safety and policy teams in a company-wide cull of employees and has already failed to comply with some of the bloc’s new content rules that require Twitter to detail how it is tackling falsehoods and foreign interference.

Musk has publicly stated the company will comply with the bloc’s content rules.

“Access to platforms’ data is one of the key elements of democratic oversight of the players that control increasingly bigger part of Europe’s information space,” Věra Jourová, the European Commission vice president for values and transparency, told POLITICO in an emailed statement in reference to the EU’s code of practice on disinformation, a voluntary agreement that Twitter signed up to last year. A Commission spokesperson said such access would have to be free to approved researchers.

European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová said “Access to platforms’ data is one of the key elements of democratic oversight” | Olivier Hoslet/EPA-EFE

“If the access to researchers is getting worse, most likely that would go against the spirit of that commitment (under Europe’s new content rules),” Jourová added. “I appeal to Twitter to find the solution and respect its commitments under the code.”

Show me the data access

For researchers based in the United States — who don’t fall under the EU’s new content regime — the future is even bleaker.

Megan Brown, a senior research engineer at New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics, which relies heavily on Twitter’s existing access, said half of her team’s 40 projects currently use the company’s data. Under Twitter’s proposed price hikes, the researchers would have to scrap their reliance on the social network via existing paid-for access through the company’s so-called Decahose API for large-scale data access, which is expected to be shut off by the end of May.

NYU’s work via Twitter data has looked at everything from how automated bots skew conversations on social media to potential foreign interference via social media during elections. Such projects, Brown added, will not be possible when Twitter shuts down academic access to those unwilling to pay the new prices.

“We cannot pay that amount of money,” said Brown. “I don’t know of a research center or university that can or would pay that amount of money.”

For Rebekah Tromble, chairperson of the working group on platform-to-researcher data access at the European Digital Media Observatory, a Commission-funded group overseeing which researchers can access social media companies’ data under the bloc’s new rules, any rollback of Twitter’s data-access allowances would be against their existing commitments to give researchers greater access to its treasure trove of data.

“If Twitter makes the choice to begin charging researchers for access, it will clearly be in violation of its commitments under the code of practice [on disinformation],” she said.

This article has been updated.

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Mark Scott

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March 23, 2023
Russian oil finds ‘wide open’ back door to Europe, critics say

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Voiced by artificial intelligence.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has declared Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas “history.”

But others, from senior Ukrainian officials to MEPs and industry insiders, say that chapter of history is still being written.

Significant quantities of Russian hydrocarbons, particularly oil, are still flowing around sanctions and into the European market, they say, earning payments that fund Vladimir Putin’s war machine.

“I had a friend in New York in the 1990s who complained cockroaches would get into his apartment through any available hole — that’s what Russia is doing with its energy,” Oleg Ustenko, economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told POLITICO. “We have to fix these holes to stop Russia receiving this blood money they are using to finance the military machine that is destroying our country and killing our people.”

Crude oil is notoriously difficult to track on global markets. It can easily be mixed or blended with other shipments in transit countries, effectively creating a larger batch of oil whose origins can’t be determined. The refining process, necessary for any practical application, also removes all traces of the feedstock’s origin.

A complex network of shipping companies, carrying the flags of inscrutable offshore jurisdictions, adds a further layer of mystery; some have been accused of helping Russia to hide the origin of its crude exports using a variety of different means.

“Unlike pipeline gas, the oil market is global. Swap and netting systems, and mixing varieties are common practice,” said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a prominent exiled critic of Putin and the former CEO of oil and gas giant Yukos.

“The result of the embargo is a significant increase in Russian transportation costs, a significant redistribution of income in favor of intermediaries, and some additional discount due to the narrowing of the buyers’ market.”

Crude workarounds?

The EU has largely banned Russian fossil fuels since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with exceptions for limited quantities of pipeline crude oil, pipeline gas, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and oil products.

But large volumes of Russian crude oil — a bigger source of revenue than gas — are still being shipped onto global markets, leading some experts to suspect they are finding their way to Europe’s market through the back door.

“Since the introduction of sanctions, the volumes of crude oil Russia is exporting have remained more or less steady,” said Saad Rahim, chief economist at global commodities trading firm Trafigura. “It’s possible that Russian oil is still being sold on to the EU and Western nations via middlemen.”

Crude oil is notoriously difficult to track on global markets | Image via iStock

One potential route into Europe is through Azerbaijan, which borders Russia and is the starting point of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, operated by BP. The port of Ceyhan, in Turkey, is a major supply hub from which crude oil is shipped to Europe; it also receives large quantities from Iraq through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline.

François Bellamy, a French MEP and member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, aired suspicions about this route in a recent question to the Commission. Data show that Azerbaijan exported 242,000 barrels a day more than it produced between April and July last year, he said — a large margin over domestic production, which stood at 648,000 barrels a day last month and is in long-term decline, according to ministry figures.

“How can a country diminish its production and increase its exports at the same time? There is something completely inconsistent in the figures and this inconsistency creates suspicions that sanctions are being circumvented,” Bellamy said.

A spokesperson for the Commission said it is working to crack down on loopholes in sanctions regimes and has appointed the EU’s former ambassador to the U.S., David O’Sullivan, as a special envoy tasked with tackling circumvention. The official also pointed out that data cited by Bellamy on Azerbaijani oil transactions, the most recent publicly available, “happened before the sanctions entered into force so there is no question of evasion of sanctions there.”

“Azerbaijan does not export Russian oil to the EU via the BTC pipeline,” said Aykhan Hajizada, spokesperson for the country’s foreign ministry, adding that while “Azerbaijan continues to use all non-sanctioned oil regardless of source,” it “remains committed to conducting its supply and trading operations with the utmost care and diligence, in line with relevant laws and regulations.”

BP has previously been forced to deny that the BTC pipeline carries Russian oil, and data seen by POLITICO for crude shipments from Ceyhan shows a recent dip in the volume of exports to the EU, from around 3 million tons per month (about 700,000 barrels per day) in early 2022 to around 2 million tons a month this year.

Slick operations

At the same time, though, Turkey doubled its direct imports of Russian oil last year and has refused to impose sanctions on Russian crude despite simultaneously offering military and humanitarian support to Ukraine.

Finland’s Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) warned late last year that “a new route for Russian oil to the EU is emerging through Turkey, a growing destination for Russian crude oil,” where it is refined into oil products that are not subject to sanctions and sold on.

“We have enough evidence that some international companies are buying refinery products made from Russian oil and selling them on to Europe,” said Ustenko, the Zelenskyy adviser. “It’s completely legal, but completely immoral. Just because it’s allowed doesn’t mean we don’t need to do anything about it.”

On Monday, British NGO Global Witness released a report that found Russian oil has consistently been sold at prices far exceeding the $60 cap imposed by G7 countries in December last year.

“The fact Russian oil continues to flow round the world is a feature, not a bug, of Western sanctions,” said Mai Rosner, a campaigner who worked on the report. “Governments offered the fossil fuel industry a wide-open back door, and commodity traders and big oil companies are exploiting these loopholes to continue business as usual.”

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Gabriel Gavin

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March 22, 2023
Zelenskyy digs in against calls to quit Bakhmut

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Doubts are growing about the wisdom of holding the shattered frontline city of Bakhmut against relentless Russian assaults, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is digging in and insists his top commanders are united in keeping up an attritional defense that has dragged on for months.

Fighting around Bakhmut in the eastern region of Donbas dramatically escalated late last year, with Zelenskyy slamming the Russians for hurling men — many of them convicts recruited by the Wagner mercenary group — forward to almost certain death in “meat waves.” Now the bloodiest battle of the war, Bakhmut offers a vision of conflict close to World War I, with flooded trenches and landscapes blasted by artillery fire.

In the past weeks, as Ukrainian forces have been almost encircled in a salient, lacking shells and facing spiking casualties, there has been increased speculation both in Ukraine and abroad that the time has come to pull back to another defensive line — a retrenchment that would not be widely seen as a massive military setback, although Russia would claim a symbolic victory.

In an address on Wednesday night, however, Zelenskyy explained he remained in favor of slogging it out in Bakhmut.

“There was a clear position of the entire general staff: Reinforce this sector and inflict maximum possible damage upon the occupier,” Zelenskyy said in a video address after meeting with Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyy and other senior generals to discuss a battle that’s prompting mounting anxiety among Ukraine’s allies and is drawing criticism from some Western military analysts.

“All members expressed a common position regarding the further holding and defense of the city,” Zelenskyy said.

This is the second time in as many weeks that Ukraine’s president has cited the backing of his top commanders. Ten days ago, Zelenskyy’s office issued a statement also emphasizing that Zaluzhnyy and Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, agreed with his decision to hold fast at Bakhmut.

The long-running logic of the Ukrainian armed forces has been that Russia has suffered disproportionately high casualties, allowing Kyiv’s forces to grind down the invaders, ahead of a Ukrainian counter-offensive expected shortly, in the spring.

City of glass, brick and debris

Criticism has been growing among some in the Ukrainian ranks — and among Western allies — about continuing with the almost nine-month-long battle. The disquiet was muted at first and expressed behind the scenes, but is now spilling into the open.

On social media some Ukrainian soldiers have been expressing bitterness at their plight, although they say they will do their duty and hold on as ordered. “Bakhmut is a city of glass, bricks and debris, which crackle underfoot like the fates of people who fought here,” tweeted one.

A lieutenant on Facebook noted: “There is a catastrophic shortage of shells.” He said the Russians were well dug in and it was taking five to seven rounds to hit an enemy position. He complained of equipment challenges, saying “Improvements — improvements have already been promised, because everyone who has a mouth makes promises.” But he cautioned his remarks shouldn’t be taken as a plea for a retreat. “WE WILL FULFILL OUR DUTY UNTIL THE END, WHATEVER IT IS!” he concluded ruefully.

Iryna Rybakova, a press officer with Ukraine’s 93^rd brigade, also gave a flavor of the risks medics are facing in the town. “Those people who go back and forth to Bakhmut on business are taking an incredible risk. Everything is difficult,” she tweeted.

A Ukrainian serviceman gives food and water to a local elderly woman in the town of Bakhmut | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images

The key strategic question is whether Zelenskyy is being obdurate and whether the fight has become more a test of wills than a tactically necessary engagement that will bleed out Russian forces before Ukraine’s big counter-strike.

“Traveling around the front you hear a lot of grumblings where folks aren’t sure whether the reason they’re holding Bakhmut is because it’s politically important” as opposed to tactically significant, according to Michael Kofman, an American military analyst and director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses.

Kofman, who traveled to Bakhmut to observe the ferocious battle first-hand, said in the War on the Rocks podcast that while the battle paid dividends for the Ukrainians a few months ago, allowing it to maintain a high kill ratio, there are now diminishing returns from continuing to engage.

“Happening in the fight now is that the attrition exchange rate is favorable to Ukraine but it’s not nearly as favorable as it was before. The casualties on the Ukrainian side are rather significant and require a substantial amount of replacements on a regular basis,” he said.

The Ukrainians have acknowledged they have also been suffering significant casualties at Bakhmut, which Russia is coming ever closer to encircling. They claim, though, the Russians are losing seven soldiers for each Ukrainian life lost, while NATO military officials put the kill ratio at more like five to one. But Kofman and other military analysts are skeptical, saying both sides are now suffering roughly the same rate of casualties.

“I hope the Ukrainian command really, really, really knows what it’s doing in Bakhmut,” tweeted Illia Ponomarenko, the Kyiv Independent’s defense reporter.

Shifting position

Last week, Zelenskyy received support for his decision to remain engaged at Bakhmut from retired U.S. generals David Petraeus and Mark Hertling on the grounds that the battle was causing a much higher Russian casualty rate. “I think at this moment using Bakhmut to allow the Russians to impale themselves on it is the right course of action, given the extraordinary casualties that the Russians are taking,” retired general and former CIA director Petraeus told POLITICO.

But in the last couple of weeks the situation has shifted, said Rob Lee, a former U.S. Marine officer and now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the kill ratio is no longer a valid reason to remain engaged. “Bakhmut is no longer a good place to attrit Russian forces,” he tweeted. Lee says Ukrainian casualties have risen since Russian forces, comprising Wagner mercenaries as well as crack Russian airborne troops, pushed into the north of the town at the end of February.

The Russians have been determined to record a victory at Bakhmut, which is just six miles southwest of the salt-mining town of Soledar, which was overrun two months ago after the Wagner Group sacrificed thousands of its untrained fighters there too.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has hinted several times that he sees no tactical military reason to defend Bakhmut, saying the eastern Ukrainian town was of more symbolic than operational importance, and its fall wouldn’t mean Moscow had regained the initiative in the war.

Ukrainian generals have pushed back at such remarks, saying there’s a tactical reason to defend the town. Zaluzhnyy said on his Telegram channel: “It is key in the stability of the defense of the entire front.”

Volodymyr Zelensky and Sanna Marin attend a memorial service for Dmytro Kotsiubailo, a Ukrainian serviceman killed in Bakhmut | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images

Midweek, the Washington Post reported that U.S. officials have been urging the Ukrainians since the end of January to withdraw from Bakhmut, fearing the depletion of their own troops could impact Kyiv’s planned spring offensive. Ukrainian officials say there’s no risk of an impact on the offensive as the troops scheduled to be deployed are not fighting at Bakhmut.

That’s prompted some Ukrainian troops to complain that Kyiv is sacrificing ill-trained reservists at Bakhmut, using them as expendable in much the same way the Russians have been doing with Wagner conscripts. A commander of the 46th brigade — with the call sign Kupol — told the newspaper that inexperienced draftees are being used to plug the losses. He has now been removed from his post, infuriating his soldiers, who have praised him.

Kofman worries that the Ukrainians are not playing to their military strengths at Bakhmut. Located in a punch bowl, the town is not easy to defend, he noted. “Ukraine is a dynamic military” and is good when it is able “to conduct a mobile defense.” He added: “Fixed entrenches, trying to concentrate units there, putting people one after another into positions that have been hit by artillery before doesn’t really play to a lot of Ukraine’s advantages.”

“They’ve mounted a tenacious defense. I don’t think the battle is nearly as favorable as it’s somewhat publicly portrayed but more importantly, I think they somewhat run the risk of encirclement there,” he added.

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Jamie Dettmer and Veronika Melkozerova

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March 15, 2023