Unravelling the basic concepts and intents of misbehavior in post-truth society

Objective: To explore the definitions and connections between the terms misinformation, disinformation, fake news, rumors, hoaxes, propaganda and related forms of misbehavior in the online environment. Anotherobjective is to infer the intent of the authors, where relevant.Design/Methodology/Approach: A conceptual analysis of three hundred fifty articles or monographies from all types of disciplines with a priority of the articles focused on terminological analysis was being utilized. A conceptual map of the terminology that is relevant to the post-truth era was created. In the case of the lack of agreement, the etymology of the terms, utilizing dictionaries, terminological databases and encyclopedias,was favored.Results/Discussion: The approach made possible to delimit the borders between the core terms of posttruth society and to classify them according to the intents of the authors: power (influence), money, fun, sexual harassment, hate/discord, ignorance, passion and socialization. These features were identified to be able to differentiate the concepts: falsity (misleadingness, deceptiveness, lack of verification), accuracy, completeness, currency, medium, intent and analyzable unit. The conceptual map, summarizing and visualizing our findings is attached in the article.Conclusions: We argued that disinformation and misinformation are different terms with different authors and intents in the online environment. Likewise, fake news was delimitated as species of disinformation, which is limited by the medium and financial intent. The intent of hoaxers is rather the amusement of the authors or to spread discord between different groups of society. The intent and analyzable units as statement, claim, article, message, event, story and narrative that were identified in the literature, are crucial for the understanding and communication between social (human) scientists and computer scientists in order to better detect and mitigate various types of false information.Originality/Value: The study provides a theoretical background for detecting, analyzing and mitigating false information and misbehavior

Sewage Sludge as a Soil Amendment for Growing Biomass Plant Arundo donax L.

Sewage sludge (SS) is a waste originated from wastewater treatment that could be considered an interesting source of organic matter and nutrients for agricultural production. Our experiments aimed to assess the effect of SS on the growth parameters and the biomass yield of giant reed (Arundo donax L.) plants. Experiments were carried out in pots during two growing seasons, where samples of dried SS were applied in doses of 5 or 15 t ha−1. The number of shoots per plant was significantly higher with the application of 5 t ha−1 of SS into arable soil compared to the control treatment and did not increase with the dose of SS. On the other hand, the height of the plants was gradually elevated with the dose of SS. The diameter of the shoots was positively affected by the dose of 15 t ha−1, and it was the only parameter with significant differences between the used types of SS. The biomass yield increased by 1.2–2.7× depending on the type and dose of SS. Cu and Zn uptake, as micronutrients present in SS, and their accumulation in the aboveground parts were significantly higher for plants cultivated in the presence of SS

Report on the Current State of Societal Biases in Slovak AI

<p>This report serves as a concluding report of our project <i>Societal Biases in Slovak AI r</i>unning from November 2022 to October 2023. <strong>The goal of our project was to understand how gender biases in particular affect Slovak AI systems</strong>, but also to increase the awareness of this issue in both the expert community and the general public, as this is an issue that affects virtually everyone using modern communication technologies. Our aim was to approach this issue from an interdisciplinary point of view. The team included people with technical expertise in AI and natural language processing; but also AI ethics experts, social scientists, translators, and gender experts.</p><p>The main contribution of our project is the evaluation of multiple types of AI systems, namely English-to-Slovak machine translation systems, Slovak masked language models, and Slovak speech-to-text systems. We have proposed and implemented an evaluation methodology and observed whether these systems exhibit biased behavior with respect to gender. Each experiment was aimed at a specific type of biased behavior, such as male as norm behavior, stereotypical thinking, or non-equitable performance. <strong>Worryingly, we were able to discover some sort of problematic behavior in all the models taken into consideration</strong></p><h3>Contents of the report</h3><ul><li><strong>Chapter 1</strong> introduces the topic, our project and the role of this report.</li><li><strong>Chapter 2 </strong>provides an executive summary of this report and presents the main findings and conclusions of the project. It can be read to ascertain what the main outcomes of our project are at glance.</li><li><strong>Chapter 3</strong> introduces the issue of fairness in AI and provides a brief theoretical background for our research. It introduces and discusses terms such as fairness, bias, equality, algorithmic harms and others.</li><li><strong>Chapter 4 </strong>is an invited chapter written by gender experts Mariana Szapuová and Janka Kottulová. The chapter discusses what gender stereotypes are, how they impact our society and language.</li><li><strong>Chapter 5</strong> describes the experimental research we conducted. It documents how we evaluated the presence of gender biases in various Slovak AI systems, introduces the results, and discusses the implications of what we have found.</li><li><strong>Chapter 6 </strong>documents a data ethics assessment performed during the project to ensure that our research on sensitive issues is as ethical as possible, taking into consideration the needs and points of view of all the stakeholders.</li></ul><p><i>The project is co-funded by the U.S. Embassy Bratislava</i></p><p> </p&gt