Chloe, an energetic young coach, promises to help you crush your fitness goals. The disciplined Rex, who has the air of a drill sergeant, encourages his clients to strive for excellence, but he is quick to warn that there won't be any shortcuts. If you're after a more mellow approach, Emma and Ethan are warm and quietly confident. But Lumin Fitness is no ordinary gym. These trainers don't exist--at least not physically.

Last week, Freedom House, a human rights advocacy group, released its annual review of the state of internet freedom around the world; it's one of the most important trackers out there if you want to understand changes to digital free expression. As I wrote, the report shows that generative AI is already a game changer in geopolitics. Globally, internet freedom has never been lower, and the number of countries that have blocked websites for political, social, and religious speech has never been higher. Also, the number of countries that arrested people for online expression reached a record high. These issues are particularly urgent before we head into a year with over 50 elections worldwide; as Freedom House has noted, election cycles are times when internet freedom is often most under threat.

The annual report, Freedom on the Net, scores and ranks countries according to their relative degree of internet freedom, as measured by a host of factors like internet shutdowns, laws limiting online expression, and retaliation for online speech. The 2023 edition, released on October 4, found that global internet freedom declined for the 13th consecutive year, driven in part by the proliferation of artificial intelligence. "Internet freedom is at an all-time low, and advances in AI are actually making this crisis even worse," says Allie Funk, a researcher on the report. Funk says one of their most important findings this year has to do with changes in the way governments use AI, though we are just beginning to learn how the technology is boosting digital oppression. Funk found there were two primary factors behind these changes: the affordability and accessibility of generative AI is lowering the barrier of entry for disinformation campaigns, and automated systems are enabling governments to conduct more precise and more subtle forms of online censorship.

Global internet freedom declined for a thirteenth consecutive year in 2023, partially as a result of AI being used to sow disinformation and enhance content censorship, according to a new report from U.S.-based nonprofit Freedom House. The 2023 Freedom on the Net report, published on Oct. 4, assesses the state of internet freedom in 70 countries through a comprehensive methodology examining obstacles to access, limits on content, and violations of user rights. The report found that many countries--including Myanmar, the Philippines, Costa Rica--have drastically restricted online freedoms this year. China has the lowest levels of internet freedom for the ninth consecutive year, the report said. Freedom House, established in 1941, publishes Freedom in the World and Freedom on the Net annually.

We describe our system for SemEval-2020 Task 11 on Detection of Propaganda Techniques in News Articles. We developed ensemble models using RoBERTa-based neural architectures, additional CRF layers, transfer learning between the two subtasks, and advanced post-processing to handle the multi-label nature of the task, the consistency between nested spans, repetitions, and labels from similar spans in training. We achieved sizable improvements over baseline fine-tuned RoBERTa models, and the official evaluation ranked our system 3rd (almost tied with the 2nd) out of 36 teams on the span identification subtask with an F1 score of 0.491, and 2nd (almost tied with the 1st) out of 31 teams on the technique classification subtask with an F1 score of 0.62.

Internet censorship, basically, is a very effective strategy used by dictatorial governments to limit access to information available online for controlling freedom of expression and prevent rebellion and discord. Countries at the forefront of adopting Internet censorship, as per the findings of the 2019 Freedom House report, are India and China as these are declared to be the worst abusers of digital freedom. Conversely, the US, Brazil, Sudan, and Kazakhstan are the countries where Internet freedom has considerably declined recently. When a country curbs Internet freedom, activists need to find ways to evade it. However, they may not need to manually search for it now that "Geneva" is here. The term is a shorter version of Genetic Evasion.

China now has seminars to teach other countries how to censor free speech as its'techno-dystopia' spreads, a worrying report has found. Governments worldwide are stepping up use of online tools to suppress dissent and tighten their grip on power, a human rights watchdog study found. Chinese officials have held sessions on controlling information with 36 of the 65 countries assessed, and provided telecom and surveillance equipment to a number of foreign governments, researchers said. India led the world in the number of internet shutdowns, with over 100 reported incidents in 2018 so far, claiming that the moves were needed to halt the flow of disinformation and incitement to violence. Many governments, including Saudi Arabia, are employing'troll armies' to manipulate social media and in many cases drown out the voices of dissidents.

The Google.cn for China website is seen on a computer screen in this photo illustration. Google is reportedly working on a censored version of its search engine to comply with China's government's demands. The Google.cn for China website is seen on a computer screen in this photo illustration. Google is reportedly working on a censored version of its search engine to comply with China's government's demands. Google is testing a mobile version of its search engine that will adhere to the Chinese government's censorship demands, including the blocking of certain websites and search terms, according to multiple reports.