Political scientists from various U.S. universities have compiled a dataset called “border crossings of the world” to help researchers understand how different countries use physical infrastructure to enforce control of their territories. The researchers used satellite imagery to identify and geolocate border infrastructure—gates, border walls, checkpoints, etc.—that countries have built at points where their highways cross international borders.   Get the data. Image credit: Greg Bulla ..read more

The Washington Post used data from an Oregon-based technology startup called NatureQuant to map how accessible nature is in neighborhoods across the United States. One visualization shows the variance in access to nature in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, with the greenest neighborhoods denoting an abundance of nature and the purplest ones showing deficient access to nature.  Take a look. Image credit: Washington Post ..read more

This week’s list of top data news highlights covers April 13, 2024 to April 19, 2024 and includes articles on revamping disaster response and tracking carbon emissions in buildings. 1. Creating Custom Playlists Amazon Music and Spotify have launched AI tools that generate customized music playlists from text, audio, or emoji prompts. Spotify’s AI Playlists and Amazon’s Maestro, which a small number of users are currently testing, are capable of generating niche playlists in minutes. 2. Speeding Up Parkinson’s Research Scientists at the University of Cambridge have used a machine learning metho ..read more

The Center for Data Innovation spoke with Tony Beltramelli, co-founder and CEO of Uizard, a Copenhagen-based startup that uses machine learning algorithms and AI to help users create designs for websites and mobile apps. Beltramelli spoke about the inspiration behind Uizard, the challenges of innovating at a time when data was more scarce, and the company’s vision for the future.  Martin Makaryan: What exactly is Uizard, and what makes your product unique?  Tony Beltramelli: In today’s competitive digital economy, regardless of the specific industry that a business operates in, many ..read more

National health news outlet KFF Health News has published a dataset showing how much state and local governments are receiving in settlements from companies that made, sold, or distributed prescription painkillers and were found to have fueled the opioid crisis through their actions. Currently the information the outlet has gathered only reflects the largest settlement to date, which is 26 billion national settlement to be paid out by four pharmaceutical distributors. The dataset will grow with the addition of more payouts in an effort to assess whether settlements help combat the opioid crisi ..read more

U.S. small business lending firm OnDeck Capital has mapped the global reach of American exports using 2022 data from the U.S. International Trade Administration (ITA). The map highlights the biggest foreign trading partner of each U.S. state and their total exports in dollars. According to the visualization, Canada is the biggest foreign trading partner for 34 of 50 U.S. states and Texas is the largest international exporter with roughly $144.3 billion in exports.  Take a look. Image credit: OnDeck ..read more

A Los Angeles jury found in 2015 that “Blurred Lines”—Pharrell Williams’ hit song with Robin Thicke—had illegally infringed on the copyright of Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up.” This was a landmark ruling because prior cases had only extended copyright protection to lyrics and melody. In Williams v. Gaye the court allowed several other elements, such as harmony, pitch, rhythm, timbre, and tempo, to be considered as well. As a dissenting judge on the appellate court later wrote, this decision allows someone to “copyright a musical style” and “establishes a dangerous precedent that strikes a de ..read more

There has been a concerning rise in nefarious uses of AI-enabled voice cloning recently. Bad actors have targeted families and small businesses with disturbing extortion scams. The scams themselves are not new, the term “virtual kidnapping scam” has been around for many years to describe the ways fraudsters trick victims into paying a ransom to free a loved one they believe is being threatened. But AI has made these scams more sophisticated as the technology can be trained on publicly accessible audio recordings of regular people to make them sound incredibly authentic and believable. Join the ..read more

This week’s list of top data news highlights covers April 6, 2024 to April 12, 2024 and includes articles on creating a building’s digital twin and automating grading in schools. 1. Creating Digital Twins of Universities The University of Liverpool partnered with a Glasgow-based climate technology firm called  Integrated Environmental Solutions to produce a digital twin of a university building. The university connected live operational data about the building to the digital twin to evaluate the efficiency of an ongoing heating, ventilation, and air conditioning refurbishment project. So ..read more

In this submission, the Center argues that the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office should refine how it applies the purpose limitation principle to the development and deployment of generative AI models. The purpose limitation principle states that organizations should only collect and process data for specified, explicit, and legitimate purposes. However, the ICO should not attempt to apply this principle to general purpose generative AI models where, by definition, the various potential uses of these models are unknown. Instead, it should apply this principle to organisations that fine-tu ..read more