INTELWIRE

AI and Education, the ‘return’ of ISIS, and more

Some new resources on understanding the impacts of AI, plus a very valuable resource for tracking the Islamic State’s activities around the world—a topic that more people may be interested in this week for some reason. Without further ado, here’s what I’ve been reading this week:

Monitoring AI-Modified Content at Scale: A Case Study on the Impact of ChatGPT on AI Conference Peer Reviews

This is just an incredibly smart piece of work revealing that academics have already started using AI to write peer reviews, which is a terrible development for an already fairly problematic process. Among other highlights, the paper finds that certain trite words showed dramatic spikes in usage shortly after ChatGPT went wide. If it's any consolation, we won't reach the true Singularity until AI is capable of complaining that the author didn't cite the AI. Beyond that atrocity, JSTOR published a useful bibliography of recent work on AI and education.

One Year of the Islamic State Worldwide Activity Map

Aaron Zelin and Ilana Winter published a great overview Islamic State activity worldwide over the last year. The drop in public and policy discussion of ISIS reflects the massive changes since its territorial heyday, but while extremist movements ebb and flow, they rarely just die off. Recent activity has been focused on branches in Afghanistan and West Africa, and the map itself is a great resource for anyone tracking the group’s footprint.  

Strategically Hijacking Victimhood: A Political Communication Strategy in the Discourse of Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump

Demagogues like Orban and Trump have found ways to benefit from casting themselves and their supporters as victims, regardless of the veracity of that framing. This is a very interesting read that I will be likely be integrating deeply into my thinking, since extremist movements are also very adept at this slight of hand.

Extremism (Re)defined: Online and Wider implications

Lee Jarvis and my VOX-Pol colleague Stuart Macdonald weigh in on the debate over a new legal definition of extremism and its wider context that is currently playing out in the U.K., which I have mentioned a few times here and elsewhere.

J.M. Berger is a writer and researcher focused on extremism as a Senior Research Fellow for the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS). Views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of CTEC or MIIS. 

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THE LAST TWITTER CENSUS

The newest VOX-Pol Publication, The Last Twitter Census by JM Berger, is now available on the VOX-Pol Publications page.

This open-access report compares two large random samples of Twitter accounts that tweet in English: one taken just before Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022, and one taken three months later, in January 2023. It also examines several related datasets collected during the period following the acquisition, a period in which, the study found, new accounts were created at a record-breaking pace.


LAWFUL EXTREMISM

Academics usually define extremism as a set of beliefs that fall outside the norms of the society in which they are situated, but entire societies have at times been organized around recognizably extreme beliefs. This paper will examine the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Scott v. Sandford, 60 US 393 (1856), aka the Dred Scott decision, which ruled that Black people, whether enslaved or free, were entitled to no rights under the Constitution.

The paper analyzes the Dred Scott decision to consider whether and how it implements and institutionalizes many widely recognized tropes of extremist ideology. The paper will conclude with a discussion of empirical frameworks that can enable and empower the study of lawful extremism.


A WHITE SUPREMACY READER

A chronological collection of more than a decade of research on American white supremacy and white nationalism by INTELWIRE's J.M. Berger. 

Read it at World Gone Wrong

NEW DATABASES

INTELWIRE presents exclusive collections of Freedom of Information documents, with entity extraction and full text search through Google Pinpoint. Databases at launch include the September 11 attacks and the 1979 Siege of Mecca, with more to come.  

Check out the new INTELWIRE Databases page

An image of a declassified SECRET State Department cable

An image from the document database

LIABLE SOURCES

If you're wondering why your AI is racist, here's a clue. A deep dive into the contents of linguistic training data shows extensive extremist sourcing.

Read it at World Gone Wrong

RESEARCH NOTES

featured research from around the Web on extremism, technology and online harms, including new data on who purchased guns during the pandemic, fact-checking, and the fictional nature of social media engagement metrics.

Read it at World Gone Wrong 

EXTREMISM

"Elegantly written, the book provides a lucid discussion of a contested concept." -- Perspectives on Terrorism

"J.M. Berger wrote a book that everyone has needed for more than a decade. He combines a wealth of experience from research of extremist groups of all types and sizes to develop a useful taxonomy for all - from the beginner to the expert." -- Clint Watts, author of Messing with the Enemy