Day: July 3, 2024

New York Post Former first lady Michelle Obama is the leading candidate to take on former President Trump in 2024, according to a new poll conducted after last week’s presidential debate. A Reuters/Ipsos poll asked respondents who they would like to see take on Trump on the general election ballot amid calls to replace the current nominee, and President Biden was bested by both the former first lady and his own vice president. When respondents were asked who they would vote for in a race against Trump, the poll found that Obama was the only Democrat to secure enough votes to beat the former president on the general election ballot. READ THE FULL STORY                   

Washington Examiner Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) is affirming her support for President Joe Biden in posts on X while pushing her own Hybrid PAC, Fight Like Hell. Several social media posts, made on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, all implied support for the president while linking the governor’s fundraising PAC, not the Democratic National Committee or the Biden reelection effort. The PAC describes itself as “a nationwide movement led by [Whitmer] to defend working people and protect our most fundamental rights.” It says its goal is to “focus the next two years on supporting President Biden and Vice President Harris’ re-election campaign, as well as helping Democrats flip the House and hold the Senate and ensuring our voice is heard in Washington.” READ THE FULL STORY                   

Breitbart A recent investigation by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has uncovered a disturbing trend in AI development, where images of children are being used to train artificial intelligence models without consent, potentially exposing them to significant privacy and safety risks. Ars Technica reports that Human Rights Watch researcher Hye Jung Han has discovered that popular AI datasets, such as LAION-5B, contain links to hundreds of photos of Australian children. These images, scraped from various online sources, are being used to train AI models without the knowledge or consent of the children or their families. The implications of this discovery are far-reaching and raise serious concerns about the privacy and safety of minors in the digital age. Han’s investigation, which examined less than 0.0001 percent of the 5.85 billion images in the LAION-5B dataset, identified 190 photos of children from all of Australia’s states and territories. This sample size suggests that the actual number of affected children could be significantly higher. The dataset includes images spanning the entirety of childhood, making it possible for AI image generators to create realistic deepfakes of real Australian children. READ THE FULL STORY                   

Axios The national average gas price for the Independence Day weekend is expected to be the lowest holiday price since 2021 but prices have been rising in recent weeks with record travel demand. Nearly 71 million people will travel during the holiday week with a record 60.6 million people traveling by car, according to AAA’s holiday forecast. The percentage of people traveling by car is up 4.8% from last year when 57.8 million people traveled by car, AAA said. READ THE FULL STORY