Latest news with #ImpactResearch
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Whitmer Gets ‘Trump Bump' for Cozying Up to President
Governor Gretchen Whitmer faced a fierce backlash for cozying up to Donald Trump in her effort to deliver for Michigan, but her gamble could be paying off. The Michigan Democrat is one of the many floated as a potential 2028 presidential contender who has had to grapple with how to navigate dealing with the president as part of their job. But new polling shows Americans appear to back how she's been handling the complicated relationship. Impact Research found the governor has a 63 percent positive job rating, the highest the poll has ever seen. What could be a backhanded Trump bump comes after Whitmer put politics aside and headed to Washington. Whitmer's first cringe moment came when she found herself standing awkwardly on the sidelines inside the Oval Office while Trump spoke with reporters last month. The governor looked uncomfortable and at one point even covered her face with folders, which ended up being captured on camera. She said she didn't want her picture taken, but defended showing up at the White House. Weeks later, Whitmer said she had secured a new fighter mission at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Macomb County and showed up for the announcement event with Trump, where she spoke alongside the president. The two shared a hug when Whitmer greeted Trump at the airport. During his speech, the president praised her for bringing the issue to his attention and for doing a 'good job.' The reaction to the speech was fast and furious. Some Democrats blasted the governor for accommodating Trump in any capacity, as they see him as a threat to the country and democracy. Whitmer pushed back that she had not abandoned her values but was putting 'service above self.' She has also been critical of the president's chaotic tariff plans. Turns out, Michiganders in the Trump-won state support her approach. 90 percent of Democrats have a positive view of her, Impact Research found, while 66 percent of Independents do. Even 35 percent of Republicans have a positive view of the governor. 'Michiganders want her to continue her approach of working with President Trump when it's good for Michigan while standing up to him when she disagrees,' the polling memo read. It found that given two choices, 60 percent support her approach to working with the president, where she could and pushing back at other points, while only 27 percent said she should stand up to Trump more. Overall, 58 percent said she is taking the right approach to working with Trump, 61 percent said she was focused on the right problems, and 63 percent viewed her favorably for getting things done. Whitmer might be one of the few Democrats who never got a nasty Trump nickname, but she's not the only Democratic state leader and potential 2028 hopeful who has had to find a way to deal with Trump. California Governor Gavin Newsom met Trump on the tarmac in California in January when he came to tour areas devastated by wildfires. The following month, Newsom met with the president to press for further aid at the White House. Their California meeting resulted in a tenser picture with a firm handshake, an exchange of words on the runway, and a kiss for First Lady Melania. There weren't images from the White House visit. But Newsom, who Trump has frequently blasted as 'Newscum' has not avoided the wrath of some Democrats for his approach to the president, as he too has signaled a willingness to find areas where he can work with the president.
The Star
6 days ago
- Lifestyle
- The Star
Contradictheory: AI and the next generation
Here's a conversation I don't think we'd have heard five years ago: 'You know what they do? They send in their part of the work, and it's so obviously ChatGPT. I had to rewrite the whole thing!' This wasn't a chat I had with the COO of some major company but with a 12-year-old child. She was talking about a piece of group work they had to do for class. And this Boy as she called him (you could hear the capitalised italics in her voice) had waited until the last minute to submit his part. To be honest, I shouldn't be surprised. These days, lots of people use AI in their work. It's normal. According to the 2024 Work Trend Index released by Microsoft and LinkedIn, 75% of employees then used artificial intelligence (AI) to save time and focus on their most important tasks. But it's not without its problems. An adult using AI to help draft an email is one thing. A student handing in their weekly assignment is another. The adult uses AI to communicate more clearly, but there the student is taking a shortcut. So, in an effort to deliver better work, the child might actually be learning less. And it's not going away. A 2024 study by Impact Research for the Walton Family Foundation found that 48% of students use ChatGPT at least weekly, representing a jump of 27 percentage points over 2023. And more students use AI chatbots to write essays and assignments (56%) than to study for tests and quizzes (52%). So what about the other students that don't use AI, like the girl I quoted above? I find they often take a rather antagonistic view. Some kids I talk to (usually the ones already doing well in class) seem to look down on classmates who use AI and, in the process, they look down on AI to do their homework as well. And I think that's wrong. As soon as I learned about ChatGPT, I felt that the key to using AI tools well is obvious. It lies in its name: tools. Like a ruler for drawing straight lines, or a dictionary for looking up words, AI chatbots are tools, only more incredibly versatile ones. One of the biggest problems, of course, is that AI chatbots don't always get their facts right (in AI parlance, they 'hallucinate'). So if you ask it for an essay on 'fastest marine mammal', there's a chance it'll include references to 'sailfish' and 'peregrine falcon'. In one test of AI chatbots, hallucination rates for newer AI systems were as high as 79%. Even OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, isn't immune. Their o3 release hallucinated 33% of the time in their PersonQA benchmark test, which measures how well it answers questions about public figures. The new o4-mini performed even worse, hallucinating 48% of the time. There are ways to work around this, but I think most people don't know them. For example, many chatbots now have a 'Deep Research' mode that actively searches the internet and presents answers along with sources. The thing about this is that you, the reasonable, competent, and capable human being, can check the original source to see if it's something you trust. Instead of the machine telling you what it 'knows', it tells you what it found, and it's up to you to verify it. Another method is to feed the chatbot the materials you want it to use, like a PDF of your textbook or a research paper. Google's NotebookLM is designed for this. It only works with the data you supply, drastically reducing hallucinations. You can then be more sure of the information it produces. In one stroke, you've turned the chatbot into a hyper-intelligent search engine that not only finds what you're looking for but also understands context, identifies patterns, and helps organise the information. That's just a small part of what AI can do. But even just helping students find and organise information better is a huge win. And ideally, teachers should lead the charge in classrooms, guiding students on how to work with AI responsibly and effectively. Instead, many feel compelled to ban it or to try to 'AI-proof' assignments, for example, by demanding handwritten submissions or choosing topics that chatbots are more likely to hallucinate on. But we can do better. We should allow AI in and teach students how to use it in a way that makes them better. For example, teachers could say that the 'slop' AI generates is the bare minimum. Hand it in as-is, and you'll scrape a C or D. But if you use it to refine your thoughts, to polish your voice, to spark better ideas, then that's where the value lies. And students can use it to help them revise by getting it to generate quizzes to test themselves with (they, of course, have to verify the answers the AI gives are correct). Nevertheless, what I've written about so far is about using AI as a tool. The future is about using it as a collaborator. Right now, according to the 2025 Microsoft Work Trend Index, while 50% see it as a command-based tool, 48% of Malaysian workers treat AI as a thought partner. The former issues basic instructions, while the latter has conversations and you have human-machine collaboration. The report goes on to say explicitly that this kind of partnership is what all employees should strive for when working with AI. That means knowing how to iterate the output given, when to delegate, when to refine the results, and when to push back. In short: the same skills we want kids to learn anyway when working with classmates and teachers. And the truth is that while I've used AI to find data, summarise reports, and – yes – to proofread this article, I haven't yet actively collaborated with AI. However, the future seems to be heading in that direction. Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about mathematician Terence Tao who predicts that it won't be long until computer proof assistants powered by AI may be cited as co-authors on mathematics papers. Clearly, I still have a lot to learn about using AI day-to-day. And it's hard. It involves trial and error and wasted effort while battling with looming deadlines. I may deliver inferior work in the meantime that collaborators may have to rewrite. But I remain, as ever, optimistic. Because technology – whether as a tool or a slightly eccentric collaborator – has ultimately the potential to make us and our work better. Logic is the antithesis of emotion but mathematician-turned-scriptwriter Dzof Azmi's theory is that people need both to make sense of life's vagaries and contradictions. Write to Dzof at lifestyle@ The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.
Axios
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Exclusive: Dems' tough medicine on Trump corruption
A jarring message is coming for congressional Democrats this week: It may feel good to focus on allegations of corruption by President Trump, but that rhetoric has its limits. Why it matters: Swing voters aren't biting at language that worked like a charm in prior elections, according to Impact Research focus groups in battleground states. 1️⃣ Swing voters are "more difficult to convince" on Trump corruption messages, said Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United, an anti-corruption organization. "They've heard 'drain the swamp' before," she told Axios. 2️⃣ They agree that "threats to democracy" are bad news. But they disagree over what that means, watering down its effectiveness. Zoom in: Trump isn't making it easy with his family's multibillion-dollar crypto deals or thanking Qatar on Monday for offering to give him an Air Force One replacement. But he still has some "inoculation" on corruption messaging thanks to DOGE and his longstanding anti-D.C. rhetoric, according to an Impact Research memo shared with Axios. 👀 The intrigue: Generic politicians are far more vulnerable to the corruption critiques than Trump or Elon Musk specifically, the focus groups suggest. But that's only if Democrats can put on a muscular anti-corruption demonstration. The focus group participants view Democrats as weak. Muller and Molly Murphy, the president of Impact Research, will be on the Hill this week to brief congressional Democrats and progressive allies on their findings. While a focus group is not a statistically significant sample like a poll, the responses show how some voters are thinking and talking about current events. Zoom out: Populists on both parties' ideological extremes have already cracked the code, even when that means going after their own. The clearest example: Stock trading bans for lawmakers and their families, with bills attracting cosponsors that range from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to MAGA firebrand Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.). Among Democrats, the guidance comes as the party's traditional split between progressives and centrists is giving way to a divide between young and old, fighters and compromisers, those who understand the urgency of the moment and those who appear unaware.
