The Project Information Literacy News Study released

A recent study on how college students interact with a “news ecosystem” that is massive in scale and polarised more than ever before. The online survey on its own attracted 5,844 respondents, Twitter panel members aside! The study team came up with 6 recommendations that librarians and educators need to guide their work with students.

Some Open-Source Companies Re-Considering their Model

Hardly surprising! What was a community minded philosophy has become a way for big companies to use code they either did not contribute anything to, or barely contributed to at all, to make hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves. This became evident when those companies decided they could use open source code that was cheaper and more flexible, rather than proprietary software to build their tech infrastructure. In the case of AWS, it launched its managed version of the open source version of Redis as a closed service. Redis and MongoDB are leading the charge “to alter their licences under which some of their software is distributed”.

As AI is increasingly used in courts how long before Judge becomes extinct?

After reading Wired’s (17th April, 2017) article ‘Courts are Using AI to Sentence Criminals. That Must Stop’ alarm bells rang for more than a few people. Occasional checking on the topic shows an increase in the use of privately developed AI used by judges in sentencing. A lack of transparency regarding the algorithm should be concerning, to those jurisdictions who buy such AI products. Just using a clunky (forgive us) Google search “AI for sentencing in US” yields a number of articles. Disregarding the obvious question of “how long before we don’t need judges”, the important questions should be “are there different algorithms for different levels of crime or is it a one size fits all?” and “in future will there be an algorithm that decides whether a person is guilt or innocence?”

Liberty takes the security of its customer data seriously

Recently the Liberty development team completed the last of their regular training days where updates to security measures are a focus. This time they turned into “hackers”. Click on the title link above to read about the day they had!

Merry Christmas

That’s the last Scoop for 2018. Softlink Information Centres wish everyone a relaxing end of year break. We look forward to bringing you more industry and Softlink IC news to you in 2019!