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For a birdwatcher, spotting a rare bird is like winning the lottery. But what if that bird isn’t supposed to be there? What if its arrival is a warning? From seabirds appearing hundreds of miles from home to elephant seals collecting data beneath Antarctic ice, scientists are using technology to discover what animals can tell us about climate change — sometimes long before we see the signs ourselves. The trick is learning how to listen.

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A missing daughter. An unidentified body. A single photograph. Facial recognition technology is helping police solve cases that once seemed impossible. But the same technology can identify just about anyone. In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU and NPR’s 1A, we revisit a story about the surprising power of facial recognition, then talk with Clare Garvie of the NYU Policing Project about what happens when your face no longer belongs just to you.

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Voting machines have long been at the center of conspiracy theories about U.S. elections. Now, Ben Adida and his nonprofit VotingWorks have built an open-source voting machine anyone can inspect, right down to its computer code. The idea is simple: make vote counting transparent. But making elections more transparent and making voters trust the results may be two very different things.

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You used to need a government-backed operation to spread election disinformation. Now a chatbot might do. Larry Norden of the Brennan Center put the major AI chatbots to the test: Could they create election fakes? Debunk them? Even recognize their own handiwork? The answers were not all reassuring.

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What if Russia didn’t have to convince you of anything new? What if it could simply exploit what you already believe? That’s the idea behind a Russian-linked disinformation network that hijacks real social media conversations to spread propaganda and influence U.S. elections. We follow the trail from celebrity rumors to Congress, and ask whether AI can spot the manipulation before it spreads.

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