Revenge quitting: is it ever a good idea to leave your job in anger?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kathy Hartley, Senior Lecturer in People Management, University of Salford

Many of us will have experienced the rage that comes with being badly treated at work – and maybe even felt the instinct to pack up and leave. Bad bosses, belittling treatment or poor pay could be behind these kneejerk emotions. But, while most employees swallow their anger and get back to work, some walk out in a way that tells their employer exactly how they feel. Welcome to the world of “revenge quitting”.

Unlike “quiet quitting”,“ where workers stay in their job but do only the bare minimum, revenge quitting is about making a loud and visible stand.

It’s a phenomenon that has now spread around the world. Quitters have filmed their exit for social media, sent scathing farewell emails or quit two hours before they were due to teach a class.

These incidents show how revenge quitting can be empowering – a way to reclaim dignity when workers feel ignored or mistreated. But this signals more than increased workplace drama or a generational change in behaviour. It indicates that when riled, some workers are ready to make their exit heard.

Economist Albert Hirschman’s classic 1970 book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty suggested that when dissatisfied, people can either use voice (speak up and complain), show loyalty (put up with it) or exit (leave). Revenge quitting is a form of exit, but one designed to send a message to employers.

Several workplace dynamics increase the likelihood of revenge quitting.

abusive bosses and toxic environments: research shows that abusive supervision makes workers more likely to retaliate and to quit
mistreatment by customers: studies also show that rudeness or incivility from clients can spark revenge intentions in frontline workers
emotional exhaustion: being overworked or unsupported can tip people into retaliatory behaviour, including dramatic resignations
social media culture: platforms like TikTok provide a stage, making quitting not just personal but performative.

Risks and alternatives

Of course, revenge quitting comes with risks. Dramatic exits may damage future careers, especially in small industries where word travels fast, or if workers quit multiple times after a relatively short stay. For those with in-demand skills or plenty of experience and a history of good performance, the risks may be lower.

So, what are the alternatives?

voice rather than exit: raising concerns with the HR department, wellbeing leads or trade union representatives (where they exist)
disengagement: quietly withdrawing, for instance by not spending time preparing for meetings or avoiding extra tasks, as a way of regaining some control.

These alternatives might ultimately harm organisations more than a worker who quits loudly (so long as revenge quitting doesn’t become a wider phenomenon in the organisation). But of course, not everyone who wants to quit can do so.

A 2023 survey found that more than half of workers worldwide would like to leave their jobs but can’t. This could be due to things like financial responsibilities, limited opportunities or family constraints.

Employment relations researchers have called these people “reluctant stayers”. One study found that around 42% of employees in two organisations were reluctant stayers. Others have found that these “stuck” employees often develop plans to retaliate. They may quietly spread negativity or undermine productivity. In the long run, this may cause more harm than revenge quitting.

The effect of revenge quitting is likely to depend on the context. In small organisations, a sudden departure can be devastating. This is especially true if the employee has rare or highly valued skills. Sudden loud quitting may also hurt the colleagues left behind to pick up the pieces.

Larger organisations may experience inconvenience but are likely to be able to absorb the shock more easily. While a loud exit by senior or highly skilled staff may have significant impact, employers will be keen to prevent this, working to resolve problems before things reach breaking point. For this reason, revenge quitting is likely to be more visible among more junior or precarious workers, who often feel less supported.

Great fanfare – Joey quit his hotel job back in 2012 with a brass band.

So what can workplaces do? Revenge quitting can be a sign that traditional employee support systems aren’t working. Many HR teams are already overstretched, and are struggling to meet all the demands placed on them. But still, there are some basic practices that employers can follow.

These include encouraging open communication so employees feel safe raising issues, as well as training managers to avoid abusive or micromanaging behaviour. And although it may seem obvious, unequal workloads and conditions will leave workers disgruntled – it’s important to ensure they are fair. Employers should also recognise the expectations of younger workers, who often prioritise respect and balance.

At its heart, revenge quitting reflects serious issues in a workplace. While leaving loudly can feel empowering for the worker, especially in the heat of the moment, it could be bad news for both employees and organisations.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Kathy Hartley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Revenge quitting: is it ever a good idea to leave your job in anger? – https://theconversation.com/revenge-quitting-is-it-ever-a-good-idea-to-leave-your-job-in-anger-266823

October 15, 2025

Misophonia: having strong negative reactions to certain sounds is linked to mental inflexibility

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Helen E. Nuttall, Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience, Lancaster University

Hearing involves more than just the ears – it’s intimately connected to how we think and feel. A recent study has shed light on the possible links between hearing, emotion, and cognition by investigating misophonia, a condition where someone experiences an extreme emotional response to particular sounds.

If you’ve ever felt inexplicably furious at the sound of someone chewing or clicking a pen, you might have some insight into what people with misophonia experience. The triggers can be sounds made by the human body – someone eating crisps, cracking their knuckles, or breathing heavily. But it’s not just bodily sounds; a clock ticking or a dog barking can provoke the same intense reaction.

The emotional responses range from irritation to full-blown rage and disgust. These aren’t just feelings, either. Physically, people with misophonia experience fight-or-flight responses when they hear trigger sounds. For some, the condition becomes so debilitating that they avoid situations where they might encounter these sounds, which can seriously affect their daily lives and relationships.

But why do certain sounds cause such extreme reactions? The new study suggests that people with misophonia may find it harder to switch focus between emotional and non-emotional information – a skill known as “affective flexibility”.

The researchers tested 140 adults with an average age of 30, including both those with clinically significant misophonia symptoms and those whose symptoms didn’t meet clinical thresholds. Participants completed a memory and affective flexibility task, which involved both memory tasks and emotional tasks using pictures rather than sounds.

The participants were asked to switch between remembering details and judging the emotional content of pictures. The researchers found that the severity of someone’s misophonia was associated with their ability to accurately respond to emotional tasks. More severe misophonia was associated with worse accuracy on these tasks, suggesting reduced mental flexibility when dealing with emotional stimuli.

A person cracking their knuckles. — A trigger sound could be someone cracking their knuckles.
Oporty786/Shutterstock.com

The mind’s echo: why some sounds won’t let go

Based on questionnaire responses, people with more severe misophonia also showed a stronger tendency to ruminate. Rumination refers to getting stuck in negative thoughts about the past, present, or future, which can cause distress.

It’s worth noting that the questionnaires weren’t specifically about ruminating on misophonia experiences – this was a general tendency to get stuck in negative thought patterns.

Rumination is a symptom of various mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This link between misophonia and rumination suggests the condition may relate to how people process emotions in general, not just how they react to certain sounds.

These findings highlight just how complex our experiences with sound can be. Hearing really is much more than just the ear doing its job. More severe misophonia may be linked to less mental flexibility around emotional situations and a stronger habit of negative thinking.

It’s crucial to understand that these findings reflect correlation, not causation. We can’t say that reduced mental flexibility causes misophonia, or that misophonia causes reduced flexibility. The relationship could work either way, or both could be influenced by some other factor entirely. Still, the researchers suggest these findings may help inform how misophonia is diagnosed in future.

There are some limitations to consider. The memory and affective flexibility task is new as of this year, so there’s limited data on how well it works. It would also be useful for future research to use sounds instead of images to better understand how visual versus auditory emotional stimuli relate to misophonia. The study also didn’t use a control task to compare emotional task switching with non-emotional task switching, which would have strengthened the findings.

Misophonia remains an underexplored area of research. We don’t really know how common it is worldwide, and research into treatment is still in early stages. There’s even debate about which disorder classification misophonia should be grouped into, if any.

For people with misophonia, the condition can seriously disrupt everyday life. A deeper exploration of the diversity in hearing experiences will be key to understanding how people process sound and how best to relieve the discomfort it brings.

Helen E Nuttall receives funding from UKRI, the Vivensa Foundation, North West Cancer Research, and Rosemere Cancer Foundation.

– ref. Misophonia: having strong negative reactions to certain sounds is linked to mental inflexibility – https://theconversation.com/misophonia-having-strong-negative-reactions-to-certain-sounds-is-linked-to-mental-inflexibility-266844

October 15, 2025

Why India’s monsoon is becoming more extreme – even though overall rainfall has hardly increased

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ligin Joseph, PhD Candidate, Oceanography, University of Southampton

Across India, torrential rains over the past few months have swallowed an entire village in the Himalayas, flooded Punjab’s farmlands and brought Kolkata to a standstill. This all happened in a monsoon season in which total rainfall was technically only 8% above normal.

Climate change is not simply making India’s monsoon wetter. It’s making it wilder – with longer dry spells and more extreme downpours.

The Indian summer monsoon, which delivers about 80% of the country’s annual rainfall, usually sweeps in from the Arabian Sea in early June and retreats at the end of September. Growing up in India, I remember the joy of watching the rains arrive each year, the scent of wet earth and the relief they brought after a scorching April and May. Those memories still live in me. But today, the same monsoon that once filled our rivers and hearts with hope now brings fear and uncertainty.

This year, the monsoon arrived a week early, the fastest onset in 16 years. However, an early start does not necessarily translate to higher rainfall totals for the season. The modest 8% above average hides the real story: many regions experienced unusually intense and frequent downpours.

In the Himalayan village of Dharali, for instance, a cloudburst in early August triggered flash floods that left the local market buried under sediment as high as a four-storey building. Most parts of the village were completely washed away. Scientists suspect melting glaciers and cloudbursts – both linked to a warmer climate – were to blame.

In Punjab, a state of 30 million people often called India’s “food bowl”, heavy rains drowned crops across an area roughly the size of Greater Manchester. All 23 districts of the state were affected.

Scientists say the deluge was driven by an unusual interaction between regular monsoon weather systems and “western disturbances” – storm systems that originate in the Mediterranean and typically influence India’s weather in the winter. Their overlap this year amplified rainfall across northern India.

On the other side of the country, the huge city of Kolkata was not spared either. Some areas received 332mm of rain in just a few hours, more than half of what London gets in a whole year. The rains fell just before the major Hindu festival of Durga Puja, paralysing the city. The culprit was another low-pressure system that formed over the Bay of Bengal and carried vast amounts of moisture inland.

While the south escaped the worst flooding, cities such as Mumbai and Vijayawada also saw intense cloudbursts, demonstrating the spread of extreme rainfall.

Why the monsoon is becoming more extreme

Each disaster was driven by the same underlying trend: a warmer atmosphere that can hold more moisture. For every degree of warming, the air can store about 7% more water vapour – and when that moisture is released, it falls in heavier downpours over shorter periods. This trend is now clearly visible in India’s monsoon data.

Map of India — How the number of extreme rainfall days during the summer monsoon has changed since 1951. Green areas are having more extremes; brown areas less. Extremes are increasing across southern and western India, and decreasing in parts of central and northeastern India. (Boundaries and names shown on the map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance).
Ligin Joseph (data: Indian Meteorological Department)

The number of extreme rainfall days, when daily totals exceed the top 10% of the long-term average, has risen sharply across southern and western India since the 1950s. Some regions, meanwhile, are receiving less overall rain but in stronger and more erratic bursts, meaning both droughts and floods can be a threat in the same season.

Scientists have also noticed shifts in the monsoon’s circulation and in the low-pressure systems that drive it. Climate change is pushing the whole monsoon system westward, increasing rainfall over typically arid northwestern India, while decreasing rainfall over the traditionally wetter northeast.

All this extreme rainfall is turning the monsoon from a friend into a foe. Unless we act responsibly to limit greenhouse gas emissions and become more resilient to the consequences of a changing climate, the season that sustains life across India may increasingly threaten it.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

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Ligin Joseph receives funding from the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc).

– ref. Why India’s monsoon is becoming more extreme – even though overall rainfall has hardly increased – https://theconversation.com/why-indias-monsoon-is-becoming-more-extreme-even-though-overall-rainfall-has-hardly-increased-267159

October 15, 2025

A digital twin could help Canada beat wildfires, fix commutes and save tax dollars

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ehsan Noroozinejad Farsangi, Visiting Senior Researcher, Smart Structures Research Group, University of British Columbia

Canada is facing larger wildfires, rising flood risks and worsening traffic congestion. The federal government’s infrastructure plan budgets at least $180 billion over 12 years, yet insured disaster losses hit a record $8.5 billion in 2024.

Despite these massive investments, too often problems are only discovered after construction begins. One way to address this is to model risks and impacts before they occur using a digital replica that mirrors how real systems work.

A “digital twin” — essentially a live virtual model of roads, transit, energy, water and public buildings — would let policymakers and planners test ideas and spot risks ahead of time. It blends maps and 3D models with data (some live, some updated regularly), so policymakers and planners can run “what-if” scenarios.

For example, policymakers could use a digital twin to see how a lane closure, new bus route or wildfire evacuation order might ripple through a city before making a decision. Singapore already uses this approach to test planning and emergency responses and its documented efficiency gains are clear.

As researchers, we see a national, federated digital twin improving Canada’s resilience and efficiency in three practical ways.

Benefit #1: Safer wildfire evacuations

Canada’s 2023 wildfire season was the worst on record, with more than 18 million hectares burned, and 2025 has already been called the second-worst on record.

When fires move fast, evacuation routes can become jammed and communication can break down. During the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, for instance, residents received “mixed messages” about the threat and proximity of the wildfire. Thousands of people ended up jamming Highway 63, the sole road in and out of the city.

Similarly, during Yellowknife’s 2023 evacuation, an after-action review found there was a lack of clear and transparent communication to the public about an evacuation plan, leading to “significant confusion and stress.”

A national digital twin could help emergency teams rehearse evacuations in advance. They could test detours, traffic signal plans, one-way controls, signage and reception-centre capacity; check if ambulances can reach hospitals when smoke closes a route; and push clear routes to navigation apps in real time.

Benefit #2: Faster, more reliable commutes

Traffic congestion and transit delays cost Canadians time, productivity and peace of mind. We all know what it’s like when a construction project snarls traffic or a crowded station slows trains.

A 2024 report from the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis estimated that congestion cost Ontario $56.4 billion in total economic and social impacts. Of that, about $43.6 billion was linked to reduced quality of life, including stress, health impacts and time lost to delays.

A digital twin could help. With this technology, transit agencies could test bus-only lanes, signal timing, platform-crowding fixes and construction plans before rolling them out.

Vancouver International Airport has already built a real-time digital twin to optimize passenger flows. The same principles can also be applied to transit hubs and busy corridors, helping cities identify problems early, reduce disruption and move people more efficiently.

Benefit #3: Better use of tax dollars

Cost overruns and rework continue to drain public budgets across Canada. Major infrastructure projects frequently exceed their initial pricetags, like the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which is now projected to cost nearly $34 billion — almost six times the original $5.3 billion estimate.

Montréal’s Réseau express metropolitain light-rail project has faced multiple cost increases as wells, rising from an initial estimate of $6.3 billion to more than $7.9 billion as of 2023.

Digital twins can reduce these losses by identifying design conflicts early, comparing options side-by-side and improving transparency with the public.

Evidence suggests the savings can be substantial. A technical report from the National Research Council of Canada found that using digital design tools to resolve design conflicts early saved roughly 20 per cent of a project’s contract value.

The potential returns are equally clear abroad. The U.K. government estimates that applying digital twins to network management could deliver 856 million pounds in benefits over 10 years.

Canada is already testing these possibilities. Ontario’s $5 million digital twin pilot is exploring how they can be used to deliver hospitals, highways and transit projects on time and on budget.

Similarly, the federal government is exploring using a digital twin to improve infrastructure maintenance and planning. Public Services and Procurement Canada has issued a Request for Information on a digital twin platform for its building portfolio.

From scattered projects to a national framework

Canada already has a strong foundation to build on for a national digital twin. Many Canadian cities already publish detailed base spatial data, such as Toronto’s 3D massing models and Vancouver’s public LiDAR data that captures its urban form in high resolution.

Canadian universities are already leading the way. Researchers at Carleton University have been the first to model a digital twin at a national scale, and plan to release the project’s code as an open-source project and the platform for free.

Infrastructure Ontario and Toronto Metropolitan University have signed a two-year partnership to apply digital-twin technology to modernize provincial infrastructure planning. Meanwhile, four other Canadian universities are involved in a project to explore how these tools can improve development approvals and regulatory decision-making.

The challenge is not to start from scratch, but to connect these existing initiatives under a coherent national framework.

This means agreeing on a few shared rules: common formats so maps and assets line up, clear privacy and security standards that prohibit personal tracking (only anonymous or aggregated data) and a small federal team to maintain standards and allow the different systems to work together.

Transparency about how the digital twin models work will be essential. The government should publish the methods and test results online for communities, journalists and independent experts to check. Routine audits and a quick way to fix mistakes should also be added.

A practical first step is to focus on projects that address urgent, tangible issues, namely wildfire evacuation routes and commute reliability. Early successes in these areas would demonstrate value quickly while proving the model’s effectiveness.

Learning from global leaders

Canada does not need to invent its own rule book. It can adopt existing frameworks like the U.K.’s plain-English Gemini Principles and information-management playbook, which focuses on public benefit, openness and safety.

Singapore, the U.K. and the European Union have all developed, implemented and tested digital twin programs, showing how to set standards, protect privacy and deliver public benefits.

If Canada borrows their templates and lessons, it can move faster and at a lower cost. It will be able to link early adopters, focus on high-impact uses like wildfire evacuations and commute reliability, publish results for review and then expand.

By doing so, Canada would shift from fragmented projects to a national digital twin that strengthens resilience, protects privacy and improves everyday life.

Dr. Ehsan Noroozinejad has received funding from both national and international organizations to support research addressing housing and climate crises. His most recent funding for integrated housing and climate policy comes from the APPI. He has also been involved in securing funding from NSERC and Mitacs. He is also affiliated with Western Sydney University.

Professor T.Y. Yang secures funding from national and international organizations to develop innovative solutions for housing and climate crises, with a focus on modern methods of construction.

– ref. A digital twin could help Canada beat wildfires, fix commutes and save tax dollars – https://theconversation.com/a-digital-twin-could-help-canada-beat-wildfires-fix-commutes-and-save-tax-dollars-266460

October 15, 2025

Thug culture in Nigerian politics: the links between state governors, funding and violent armed groups

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Maureen Fubara, PhD candidate, University of Amsterdam

Since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999, elections have consistently been marred by violence. The elections between 1999 and 2019 and in 2023 saw party clashes, physical attacks, assassinations and intimidation.

As Nigeria prepares for the 2027 elections, the threat of violence lurks again. Already, reports have emerged of clashes between supporters of the ruling All Progressives Congress and the opposition African Democratic Congress in northern states like Jigawa, Kogi and Kebbi.

The violence is largely carried out by hired thugs, party supporters and members, gangs and militias. But the issue is not only that politicians are willing to use violence, it is that they can afford to fund it.

My research across Lagos, Rivers, Plateau and Nasarawa States shows that the perpetrators are different across states. This difference is linked to how much funding governors control, in the form of resource rents or state fiscal allocations.

In a recently published paper based on my PhD research on the political economy of electoral violence in Nigeria, I argue that the distinction in electoral violence perpetrators is driven by governors’ financial capacity to “rent” violence. While those with access to more resource rents or state fiscal allocations hire armed groups, others rely on ordinary citizens.

In both cases, the implication is that democracy is undermined, but the organised violence of high-rent states is especially harmful because it embeds one-party dominance and long-term insecurity.

‘Rents’ and the political marketplace

At the heart of Nigeria’s political and economic system are natural “resource rents” – public funds allocated to states by the federal government under the Federation Account. They are mostly from oil revenues and value added tax. The allocations are based on a formula that includes factors like population size, landmass, and natural resource wealth. This sharing results in uneven distribution across states. Although intended to fund development, “rents” have become a tool for politicians to finance their aspiration to stay in power.

Where governors have high rents, they engage expensive organised groups like transport unions, who in some instances are illegally armed, and cult groups to manipulate elections in their favour.

Where rents are limited, they rely on ordinary citizens, offering cash, food, or alcohol in exchange for violence.

This creates two outcomes:

in high-rent states (Lagos and Rivers), incumbents can sustain long-term alliances with armed groups
in low-rent states (Nasarawa and Plateau), violence is carried out by ordinary citizens in the form of party and ethnic supporters.

Why this matters for democracy

Not all violence perpetrators are the same. Armed groups are organised, feared, and able to systematically intimidate and harm voters. Their alliances with ruling parties go beyond elections. They spill into extortion in the transport sector, oil bunkering, piracy and crime.

In Lagos, much of the election violence is linked to the National Union of Road Transport Workers. This is a powerful trade union with close ties to the ruling All Progressives Congress. During elections, street touts known as agberos, who are affiliated with the union, perpetrate violence on behalf of the ruling party. In return, they receive payments from commercial bus drivers and maintain control over parts of Lagos’s lucrative public transport system.

For instance, during Nigeria’s 2023 elections, some voters in Lagos, especially those from minority ethnic groups, reported being attacked or threatened by members of the National Union of Road Transport Workers. These incidents were allegedly aimed at pressuring them to vote for the All Progressives Congress. The group’s strong influence in the transport sector gives it unrivalled access to neighbourhoods, making violence both effective and difficult to resist.

Similarly, in Rivers, cult groups such as the Icelanders and Deewell have become political instruments.

Financed with millions of naira, sometimes even equipped with sophisticated weapons, armed groups are deployed to silence rivals and scare voters. Their reputations for violence mean that just the rumour of their presence can keep voters at home.

In “low-rent” states, perpetrators of violence look different. To recruit citizens for election violence in Nasarawa State, politicians often offer as little as ₦5,000 (about US$4), well below Nigeria’s minimum monthly wage of ₦70,000 ($47). They also compensate them with alcohol or hard drugs. Similarly, in Plateau State, north central Nigeria, unemployed young people are promised small cash rewards, sometimes alongside drugs, to disrupt rival rallies or attack opposition neighbourhoods.

‘Rents’ and one-party dominance

The risk of “renting” violence is that it becomes self-sustaining. Governors splurge resources on armed groups while granting them access to lucrative criminal markets such as oil bunkering (crude oil theft).

These alliances secure ruling parties’ dominance across elections. In Lagos and Rivers, violence has become a permanent feature of politics, not a temporary campaign strategy.

In Nasarawa and Plateau, violence is cheaper and ad hoc. Citizens involved in violence return to farming, hustling or unemployment once elections end. Competition remains more open, but insecurity at the polls still undermines elections.

Why 2027 may not be different

There are warning signs that the 2027 elections are likely to be violent. There have been incidents of attacks and intimidation in several states. Governors with high “rents” are likely to strengthen ties with armed groups, given the prevalent impunity in Nigeria’s political space.

In previous elections, Human Rights Watch flagged the lack of accountability for political violence. Politicians have no reason to stop when the risks are low and the rewards, such as political, economic and social power, are so high.

Since many Nigerians have low trust in the government and democratic institutions, another violent election risks pushing citizens further away from the polling units and closer to apathy. When voters expect violence, many will stay at home, leaving elections to be decided not by choice but by violence.

Next steps

Nigeria is not unique; other resource-rich countries like Tanzania also struggle with electoral violence.

Breaking the cycle requires more than election monitoring. It demands fiscal reforms that limit governors’ control over rents, and institutions strong enough to prosecute sponsors and perpetrators of violence.

Nigerians deserve elections where voters’ choices, not violence, decide winners.

Maureen Fubara receives funding from the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant #852439..

– ref. Thug culture in Nigerian politics: the links between state governors, funding and violent armed groups – https://theconversation.com/thug-culture-in-nigerian-politics-the-links-between-state-governors-funding-and-violent-armed-groups-265695

October 15, 2025

What ‘The Paper’ reveals about local news and journalism today

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Adrian Ma, Assistant Professor, Journalism, Toronto Metropolitan University

‘The Paper’ is a spinoff of ‘The Office,’ with the character Oscar Martinez now employed at the Toledo Truth-Teller in Toledo, Ohio. (NBC Universal)

In the debut episode of the new sitcom The Paper, freshly appointed editor-in-chief Ned Sampson tries to rouse the spirits of his colleagues at The Truth Teller, a fictional local newspaper in Toledo, Ohio.

It’s a community institution with a storied past but a precarious future — in recent years, the paper has relied almost exclusively on news wire articles and clickbait entertainment to meet its bottom line.

Ned makes a declaration while standing on a desk, as a documentary film crew records it all:

“If you have ever wanted to be the first person to know what’s going on in the place where you live, or if you want to make sure the people who are running your city are telling the truth … You are more than welcome, all of you, to volunteer your time at this newspaper.”

It’s meant to be an uplifting moment, with the earnest but inexperienced leader insisting that good journalism can make the paper profitable again. But, even as some colleagues respond with cautious optimism (if not skeptical curiosity), the episode ends by cutting back to an earlier gag — a nearby building has been on fire the entire time, unnoticed and unreported.

It’s an apt, if unsettling, metaphor for the state of local news in North America, where so many outlets have vanished that residents often don’t know what’s happening in their own backyard.

Trailer for ‘The Paper.’

Alarming rate of collapse

Local newspapers are collapsing at an alarming pace. In Canada, more than 500 outlets have closed since 2008, affecting more than 370 communities, according to the Local News Research Project.

In the United States, the number exceeds 2,800 closures since 2005, based on research by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

The result is what scholars call “news deserts” — places where no professional local news source remains to cover councils, courts or communities.

The causes of this decline are multifaceted. Reporters and editors need to be paid, newsrooms need resources and investigative journalism is costly and time-consuming. Print advertising, once the financial lifeblood of local papers, has been in steep decline for years as businesses moved their spending to platforms like Google and Facebook.

That collapse in revenue left papers more dependent on digital ads and subscriptions, neither of which has filled the gap. According to the Florida-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies, local news websites saw about a 20 per cent drop in page views and unique visitors in 2022, undercutting the ad impressions needed to sustain online revenue.

Patchwork assistance

Canadian news organizations have sought compensation for the ways tech platforms profit from news content. Google reached a deal with the Canadian government to provide $100 million annually for five years to domestic publishers in exchange for an exemption from the Online News Act, which allows continued access to Canadian news links.

As Gretel Kahn with the Reuters Institute reports, some Canadian outlets — including The Conversation Canada — have begun to benefit from these payments. The money is disbursed by the Canadian Journalism Collective, a federally incorporated nonprofit.

However, the effects are uneven: larger corporate chains such as Postmedia and Torstar are getting most of the support, while smaller independent and local publishers receive far less. This patchwork assistance offers temporary relief but does little to fix the deeper imbalance in how digital advertising profits are distributed.

Expectation of free news

Audiences have now grown accustomed to receiving news instantly and for free, often through social media feeds or aggregators rather than directly from a newspaper. Younger readers in particular encounter news on platforms like TikTok, Instagram or YouTube, where entertainment and opinion often overwhelm verified reporting.

In this environment of declining ad dollars and fragmented attention, local outlets are trying harder than ever to convince audiences their work is worth supporting. This is the tension The Paper plays for laughs.

Throughout the series, the characters contend with all manner of challenges as they strive to keep their newspaper relevant and viable. They get scooped on major stories by a teenage blogger. They struggle to decide whether to chase sensationalism that attracts eyeballs or invest in reporting that actually matters. They try to revive accountability coverage by investigating local businesses but must tread carefully not to alienate the few remaining advertisers willing to support them.

Reporters as underdogs?

On screen, journalists have often been depicted as crusaders for truth — from All the President’s Men to Spotlight to The Newsroom. Even shows and films that explore the darker side of the industry, like The Wire, Bombshell or Tokyo Vice, frame journalism as a profession of serious consequence and high-stakes drama.

The Paper suggests something different: reporters not as larger-than-life figures, but as struggling underdogs doing their best and often getting it wrong. On one hand, this risks trivializing the work of local journalists at a time when the survival of their industry is already in doubt.

For real reporters, it’s no laughing matter. A 2022 Canadian study found many are experiencing high rates of burnout, anxiety and online harassment. In 2021, in the U.S., newsroom employment had fallen by more than a quarter since 2008, with those left behind facing heavier workloads as colleagues were laid off.

The loss of reporters has created gaps in coverage of councils, courts and communities that once formed the backbone of civic accountability.

Heartfelt missive

On the other hand, when it’s at its best, The Paper is a heartfelt missive about why local journalism has always mattered: that despite its sometimes dysfunctional newsroom, the reporters are people who truly understand and care about the community they cover because they live there too.

This kind of connection has long been a foundation for building public trust and encouraging dialogue. But it has been severely eroded as outlets close and news deserts spread.

Research shows that as local news declines, so does voter turnout, civic engagement and political accountability.

The Paper doesn’t pretend to solve the seemingly insurmountable problems facing local news, but it does capture the messy reality of trying to do the job. In a moment when journalists are often idealized or demonized, showing them as flawed but dedicated may not be comforting — but it may be closer to the truth.

Adrian Ma does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What ‘The Paper’ reveals about local news and journalism today – https://theconversation.com/what-the-paper-reveals-about-local-news-and-journalism-today-264849

October 15, 2025

How wildfires and other climate disasters put health systems under extreme pressure

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Bhavini Gohel, Clinical Associate Professor, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary

Wildfires are no longer rare disasters in Canada. They are now an annual reality, and 2025 has already been one of the worst on record, with 3,582 fires burning 6.2 million hectares as of July 30 — quadruple the 10-year average.

At a time when hospitals are already strained by staff shortages, long wait times and rising costs, wildfires add yet another layer of pressure.

Rural communities are usually the hardest hit by wildfires. These communities rely on small health facilities with limited staff and equipment.

When fires cut off access or force evacuations, these facilities struggle to provide even basic care. As a frontline health-care worker and system leader, I have seen first-hand how every part of health system — from hospital operations to workforce readiness and community partnerships — is being tested. Leading resilience initiatives has shown me how urgently we need system-wide co-ordination and investment to protect patients when disasters strike.

Frontline health-care workers face surging pressure during wildfires: treating burns, vehicle accidents during evacuation and smoke-related illnesses that damage lungs, worsen asthma, and increase risks of strokes, heart attacks and cardiac arrest. Seniors, children, pregnant women and people with chronic illnesses are especially vulnerable.

Beyond physical harm, survivors often face lasting anxiety, depression and trauma. Wildfires are not just environmental events; they are public health crises that demand stronger, more resilient health systems.

Preparing for a predictable risk

During wildfires, poor air quality makes it difficult for both patients and staff to stay safe indoors. Fires can disrupt medical supply chains, damage buildings and force hospitals, clinics and operating rooms to close. Surgeries can be delayed, emergency care becomes harder to access, and patients often crowd into the few facilities still running, stretching resources even thinner.

Health-care workers face their own challenges: finding safe routes to work, arranging child or elder care during evacuations, and coping with the uncertainty of when, or if, they can return home.

Past wildfires in Alberta, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories have forced urgent evacuations of patients, the relocation of health-care workers and the rapid reorganization of care at enormous cost. Each of these events has added millions of dollars in costs and created more strain for a health system already struggling to keep up.

Wildfires are now a predictable part of Canada’s climate reality. Yet health systems remain under-prepared. While emergency management frameworks exist, they often fall short of addressing broader and long-term needs during wildfires and fail to build true resilience. The Climate-Resilient Acute Care Clinical Operations framework and wildfire framework highlight what is required, but these requirements must be scaled and integrated across the entire health system.

What resilience looks like

Building climate resilience in health care requires focusing on several key pillars.

Leadership and governance must come first. Yet many health leaders are not provided with the knowledge or training they need to understand how wildfires affect both health outcomes and health-care systems. Leaders must be equipped to make quick, informed decisions that safeguard patients and staff when disasters strike.

Financing is another critical piece. Resources must be directed to the areas most at risk during wildfire season and reviewed regularly to ensure funding keeps pace with reality. Without sustainable financing, health systems are left reacting instead of being prepared.

Health information systems also need to be strengthened. Power outages and connectivity failures can wipe out access to patient records and communication tools at the worst possible moment. Developing reliable backup systems and clear plans ensures that records, co-ordination and critical data are not compromised.

At the same time, the health-care workforce must be supported. Staff need training, such as simulation-based exercises that prepare them for wildfire events. Protecting the mental health of staff and encouraging personal resiliency plans are equally important, allowing workers to remain in the system when demands are highest. Workers can only serve patients effectively if they themselves are supported.

Workforce planning must also account for seasonal risks. Wildfire season falls in the summer, when health systems are already short-staffed due to vacations. Every winter, we prepare for respiratory virus surges, but we do not treat wildfires with the same seriousness. This must change.

Strengthening access to care

Protecting medical supply chains is another priority, as disruptions are common during wildfires. Identifying alternatives and ensuring backups to maintain critical supplies is key. Technology can help fill gaps: virtual care platforms can keep patients connected to doctors even when roads are closed, facilities are damaged or patients are displaced.

Equally important is ensuring that patients and communities know how to access care under stress. Preparedness should include clear communication, education kits, checklists, extra medication supplies and mental health resources. Collaboration with municipalities, under-served groups and high-risk communities is vital, since they often feel the effects of wildfires first and most severely.

An investment that pays off

Strengthening health systems for wildfire resilience will require resources. But it’s anticipated that these investments will ultimately save money in the long run by reducing disruptions, preventing costly emergency transfers and minimizing long-term health impacts. Most importantly, they protect access to health care for patients with urgent or ongoing chronic conditions.

If we fail to prepare, wildfires will continue to exacerbate the cracks in our health system. Patient-centred, climate-resilient care is no longer optional; it is essential.

Bhavini Gohel is affiliated with Canadian Coalition for Green Healthcare & Brain Climate Equity Collaborative

– ref. How wildfires and other climate disasters put health systems under extreme pressure – https://theconversation.com/how-wildfires-and-other-climate-disasters-put-health-systems-under-extreme-pressure-265483

October 15, 2025

Fruit juices in South Africa are getting a free ride: why they should have the same health warning labels as fizzy drinks

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Siphiwe Dlamini, Lecturer, Department of Physiology, University of the Witwatersrand

South Africa is facing a sharp rise in obesity-related diseases like type 2 diabetes. Between 2010 and 2019, the prevalence of diabetes nearly tripled from 4.5% to 12.7%. This increase is linked to lifestyle risk factors including drinking sugary beverages, eating unhealthy foods, and not getting enough physical activity.

To help tackle the problem, the government has introduced several public health measures targeting key risk factors, including unhealthy eating.

One of the most prominent measures was the introduction of a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in 2018. The tax targets added sugars, encouraging manufacturers to reformulate products like soft drinks and energy drinks to reduce their sugar content. But beverages containing naturally occurring sugars, such as 100% fruit juices, are exempt.

Often, 100% fruit juices are seen as healthier alternatives to sugar-sweetened or artificially sweetened drinks. But growing research shows this may not be true. A 2023 meta-analysis of 72 published studies involving over 3 million people found that drinking fruit juice does not lower the risk of type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure. It was instead linked to a higher risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases.

The recommendation from that meta-analysis and other studies is that fruit juices should not be considered a healthier alternative to sugar-sweetened beverages. This could be because, although fruit juices contain more vitamins and minerals than soft drinks, they are also high in natural sugars and lack the fibre found in whole fruits, which helps control blood sugar and keeps you feeling full.

In a further move to curb sugar intake in beverages the government has proposed new food labelling regulations. These would require front-of-package warning labels for products high in added sugar, saturated fat, sodium, or artificial sweeteners. The regulations are still under review. But they align with international best practices adopted by countries like Chile, Mexico and Brazil.

If implemented effectively, they could help South African consumers make more informed dietary choices.

But, once again, fruit juices are getting a free ride. This is even though they have the highest energy (calories) and sugar content (8.4%) across a range of soft and energy drinks, according to our recent study.

As researchers in public health nutrition, we are concerned that the regulations had some important gaps. The proposed regulations introduce a simple package warning label system for prepacked foods that contain added sugar, saturated fat, or sodium and exceed specific nutrient thresholds. It also requires warning labels for products containing artificial sweeteners, reflecting growing concerns about their long-term health effects.

But the regulations exclude certain sugar-containing beverages from front-of-pack warning label requirements, particularly those with naturally occurring sugars. Many juices, such as 100% fruit juices, are exempt despite their high sugar content and significant contribution to overall sugar and energy intake. This raises concerns about the consistency of the policy and whether it adequately addresses the health risks associated with excessive sugar consumption across all types of beverages.

To test the scale of the problem, we analysed over 600 non-alcoholic beverages sold in major South African supermarkets. The study found that 21.4% of beverages would require a warning for high sugar, 49.8% for artificial sweeteners, and 58.7% for at least one of these criteria.

Juices were least likely to qualify for warning labels. Only 30% of juices met the criteria , versus 94.1% of soft drinks and 96.9% of energy drinks. Excluding 100% fruit juices from South Africa’s proposed warning label regulations could have serious public health consequences.

We recommend that the health department revise the criteria for warning labels to include beverages that are high in naturally occurring sugars.

Fruit juices

Fruit juices are often seen as a healthier choice because of their natural origin. In South Africa, regular consumption of 100% fruit juice is common, with many consumers perceiving it as beneficial despite its high sugar content.

This is a problem for a number of reasons.

Because of their high sugar content, fruit juices can cause sharp spikes in blood glucose. For more than 2.3 million South Africans living with diabetes regular consumption may interfere with blood glucose control. But this is not only a concern for people with diabetes. Research shows that even among non-diabetics, frequent intake of fruit juice increases weight gain, and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes over time.

Labelling policies that ignore naturally occurring sugars risks misleading consumers. In particular, it misleads those trying to make healthier choices into over-consuming these products. International examples, such as Chile’s approach to food labelling, show that including total sugar content in warning criteria can reduce purchases of high-sugar items and improve public awareness.

Exempting juices also creates an uneven playing field. While soft drink and energy drink manufacturers are pushed to reformulate products to avoid taxes and warning labels, juice producers face no such pressure, despite offering products with comparable health risks.

We also demonstrated that nearly half of the beverages analysed contained artificial sweeteners, which are increasingly used to lower sugar content and bypass the sugar tax. Emerging research suggests these additives may negatively affect gut health and contribute to nutrition-related diseases. Taken together, these factors highlight the need for comprehensive regulation that reflects the full spectrum of health risks posed by sugary beverages.

Next steps

South Africa’s efforts to regulate sugary beverages are commendable and reflect a growing commitment to tackling lifestyle-related diseases. But excluding fruit juices from key policies risks undermining these efforts.

By aligning regulations with scientific evidence and international best practices, the country can take a more comprehensive approach to sugar reduction. This approach will protect all consumers, especially the most vulnerable.

To ensure that South Africa’s food labelling regulations achieve their intended public health outcomes, we recommend the following steps.

Include naturally occurring sugars: Revise the criteria for warning labels to account for total sugar content, not just added sugars. This would ensure that high-sugar juices are appropriately labelled, and consumers are fully informed.
Extend the sugar tax: Consider applying the sugar tax to fruit juices with high sugar content. This would encourage manufacturers to explore lower-sugar formulations.
Public education campaigns: Launch targeted education initiatives to raise awareness about the health risks associated with all types of sugar, including those found in fruit juices.
Ongoing monitoring: Establish systems to monitor the impact of both labelling and taxation policies on consumer behaviour and health outcomes, allowing for evidence-based adjustments over time.

Siphiwe Dlamini receives funding from the National Research Foundation.

– ref. Fruit juices in South Africa are getting a free ride: why they should have the same health warning labels as fizzy drinks – https://theconversation.com/fruit-juices-in-south-africa-are-getting-a-free-ride-why-they-should-have-the-same-health-warning-labels-as-fizzy-drinks-266307

October 15, 2025

Our team of physicists inadvertently generated the shortest X-ray pulses ever observed

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Uwe Bergmann, Professor of Ultrafast X-Ray Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Stanford linear accelerator creates super short X-ray pulses. Steve Jurvetson/Flickr, CC BY

X-ray beams aren’t used just by doctors to see inside your body and tell whether you have a broken bone. More powerful beams made up of very short flashes of X-rays can help scientists peer into the structure of individual atoms and molecules and differentiate types of elements.

But getting an X-ray laser beam that delivers super short flashes to capture the fastest processes in nature isn’t easy – it’s a whole science in itself.

Radio waves, microwaves, the visible light you can see, ultraviolet light and X-rays are all exactly the same phenomenon: electromagnetic waves of energy moving through space. What differentiates them is their wavelength. Waves in the X-ray range have short wavelengths, while radio waves and microwaves are much longer. Different wavelengths of light are useful for different things – X-rays help doctors take snapshots of your body, while microwaves can heat up your lunch.

A diagram of the electromagnetic spectrum, with radio, micro and infrared waves having a longer wavelength than visible light, while UV, X-ray and gamma rays have shorter wavelengths than visible light. — The rainbow of visible light that you can see is only a small slice of all the kinds of light. While all light is the same phenomenon, it acts differently depending on how long its wavelength is and how high its frequency is.
Inductiveload, NASA/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Optical lasers are devices that emit parallel, or collimated, beams of light. They send out a beam where all the waves have the same wavelength – the red light you get from a laser pointer is one example – and oscillate in synchronicity.

Over the past 15 years, scientists have built X-ray free-electron lasers, which instead of emitting beams of visible light emit X-rays. They are housed in large facilities where electrons travel through a long accelerator – depending on the facility, between a few hundred meters and 1,700 yards – and after passing through a series of thousands of magnets they generate extremely short and powerful X-ray pulses.

An aerial image of a very long and thin facility. — The Stanford linear accelerator, shown here from above, is a 1.9-mile-long X-ray free-electron laser.
Peter Kaminski, using data from USGS, CC BY

The pulses are used kind of like flash photography, where the flash – the X-ray pulse – is short enough to capture the fast movement of an object. Researchers have used them as cameras to study how atoms and molecules move and change inside materials or cells.

But while these X-ray free-electron laser pulses are very short and powerful, they’re not the shortest pulses that scientists can make with lasers. By using more advanced technology and taking advantage of the properties some materials have, researchers can create even shorter pulses: in the attosecond region.

One attosecond is one-billionth of a billionth of a second. An attosecond is to one second about what one second is to the 14 billion-year age of the universe. The fastest processes in atoms and molecules happen at the attosecond scale: For instance, it takes electrons attoseconds to move around inside a molecule.

We’re physicists who work with X-ray free-electron lasers. We study what happens when we put different types of materials in the X-ray free-electron pulses’ path. In a new experiment we put copper and manganese samples in the path of highly focused X-ray free-electron laser pulses. We knew the interactions between these elements and the X-ray free-electron laser pulses would generate new X-ray laser pulses.

Originally, we wanted to find out how different chemical forms of the element manganese – for example, manganese-II and manganese-VII – would create small changes in the wavelengths of these newly generated X-ray laser pulses.

But along the way, we found some unexpected results that made the newly generated X-ray laser pulses act strangely. At first, we did not understand why, but when we eventually figured it out, we realized that we had discovered two unique laser phenomena, and that these effects had helped us generate X-ray laser pulses that where much shorter than we’d expected – shorter than the fastest X-ray pulses ever previously generated.

The short pulses generated by the laser at SLAC allow researchers to study molecules at the atomic scale or see how different materials interact with X-ray light.

Filamentation – irregular spurts

We found that our new X-ray laser pulses weren’t always shooting out in the forward direction, as we expected. When we increased the intensity of the X-ray free-electron laser pulses, the resulting new X-ray laser pulses spurted out irregularly, in slightly different directions.

For optical lasers, these irregular spurts – or filamentation – result from the index of refraction changing in the laser material. But we didn’t expect to see this effect for X-rays, since materials – including the manganese and copper we used – don’t refract X-rays very much.

However, the high intensity X-ray free-electron laser pulses we used generated the fluctuations at the quantum level in our materials that led to these irregular spurts.

Rabi cycling – a broad spectrum of light

Even more surprising than the filamentation effects we saw was the fact that the X-ray pulses we generated contained a variety of different wavelengths that were more spread out than what we expected to see with the materials we used.

Seventy years ago – five years before the first optical laser was built – physicists Stanley Autler and Charles Townes discovered a strange phenomenon in microwaves known as Rabi cycling. And the spread of wavelengths we saw looked just like Rabi cycling.

Autler and Townes knew that when light hit an atom, the atom would absorb its energy by exciting an electron from one energy level to a higher one. The hole left by that missing electron is filled by an electron that’s coming down from a higher energy level in the atom and releasing – or emitting – this energy difference as light.

What Autler and Townes found was that when the microwaves are very intense, the strong electric field can split each of these energy levels into two distinct levels, called doublets, which have slightly different energies.

These doublets are separated by an energy, or a frequency, known as the Rabi frequency. The Rabi frequency depends on the intensity of the new light. The stronger it is, the larger is the energy separation.

A figure showing several roughly spherical blobs of light, in a line with the largest and brightest in the center. — An X-ray laser shot spectrum exhibiting the three lines – called a Mollow triplet – that characterize Rabi cycling. The split energy is shown by the distance of the two smaller blobs from the stronger center blob.
Uwe Bergmann and Thomas Linker

In Autler and Townes’ discovery of Rabi cycling, they used microwaves. The energy splitting was so small that the Rabi frequency was very low, at radio wave frequencies.

In this new study we used X-rays, which have 100 million times shorter wavelengths than microwaves and 100 million times more energy. This meant the resulting new X-ray laser pulses were split into different X-ray wavelengths corresponding to Rabi frequencies in the extreme ultraviolet region. Ultraviolet light has a frequency 100 million times higher than radio waves.

This Rabi cycling effect allowed us to generate the shortest high-energy X-ray pulses to date, clocking in at 60-100 attoseconds.

Future directions and applications

While the pulses that X-ray free-electron lasers currently generate allow researchers to observe atomic bonds forming, rearranging and breaking, they are not fast enough to look inside the electron cloud that generates such bonds. Using these new attosecond X-ray laser pulses could allow scientists to study the fastest processes in materials at the atomic-length scale and to discern different elements.

In the future, we also hope to use much shorter X-ray free-electron laser pulses to better generate these attosecond X-ray pulses. We are even hoping to generate pulses below 60 attoseconds by using heavier materials with shorter lifespans, such as tungsten or hafnium. These new X-ray pulses are fast enough to eventually enable scientists to answer questions such as how exactly an electron cloud moves around and what a chemical bond actually is.

Uwe Bergmann receives funding from the Department of Energy and has previously worked at SLAC and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Thomas Linker receives funding from the Department of Energy and works at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

– ref. Our team of physicists inadvertently generated the shortest X-ray pulses ever observed – https://theconversation.com/our-team-of-physicists-inadvertently-generated-the-shortest-x-ray-pulses-ever-observed-258776

October 15, 2025

Concerns about AI-written police reports spur states to regulate the emerging practice

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Professor of Law, George Washington University

Body cameras generate audio transcripts that police can feed to AIs that write up reports. Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

Police are getting a boost from artificial intelligence, with algorithms now able to draft police reports in minutes. The technology promises to make police reports more accurate and comprehensive, as well as save officers time.

The idea is simple: Take the audio transcript from a body camera worn by a police officer and use the predictive text capabilities of large language models to write a formal police report that could become the basis of a criminal prosecution. Mirroring other fields that have allowed ChatGPT-like systems to write on behalf of people, police can now get an AI assist to automate much dreaded paperwork.

The catch is that instead of writing the first draft of your college English paper, this document can determine someone’s liberty in court. An error, omission or hallucination can risk the integrity of a prosecution or, worse, justify a false arrest. While police officers must sign off on the final version, the bulk of the text, structure and formatting is AI-generated.

Who – or what – wrote it

Up until October 2025, only Utah had required that police even admit they were using an AI assistant to draft their reports. On Oct. 10, that changed when California became the second state to require transparent notice that AI was used to draft a police report.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 524 into law, requiring all AI-assisted police reports to be marked as being written with the help of AI. The law also requires law enforcement agencies to maintain an audit trail that identifies the person who used AI to create a report and any video and audio footage used in creating the report. It also requires agencies to retain the first draft created with AI for as long as the official report is retained, and prohibits a draft created with AI from constituting an officer’s official statement.

The law is a significant milestone in the regulation of AI in policing, but its passage also signifies that AI is going to become a major part of the criminal justice system.

If you are sitting behind bars based on a police report, you might have some questions. The first question that Utah and California now answer is “Did AI write this?” Basic transparency that an algorithm helped write an arrest report might seem the minimum a state could do before locking someone up. And, even though leading police technology companies like Axon recommend such disclaimers be included in their reports, they are not required.

Police departments in Lafayette, Indiana and Fort Collins, Colorado, were intentionally turning off the transparency defaults on the AI report generators, according to an investigative news report. Similarly, police chiefs using Axon’s Draft One products did not even know which reports were drafted by AI and which were not because the officers were just cutting and pasting the AI narrative into reports they indicated they wrote themselves. The practice bypassed all AI disclaimers and audit trails.

The author explains the issues around AI-written police reports in an interview on CNN’s ‘Terms of Service’ podcast.

Many questions

Transparency is only the first step. Understanding the risks of relying on AI for police reports is the second.

Technological questions arise about how the AI models were trained and the possible biases baked into a reliance on past police reports. Transcription questions arise about errors, omissions and mistranslations because police stops take place in chaotic, loud and frequently emotional contexts amid a host of languages.

Finally, trial questions arise about how an attorney is supposed to cross-examine an AI-generated document, or whether the audit logs need to be retained for expert analysis or turned over to the defense.

Risks and consequences

The significance of the California law is not simply that the public needs to be aware of AI risks, but that California is embracing AI risk in policing. I believe it’s likely that people will lose their liberty based on a document that was largely generated by AI and without the hard questions satisfactorily answered.

Worse, in a criminal justice system that relies on plea bargaining for more than 95% of cases and is overwhelmingly dominated by misdemeanor offenses, there may never be a chance to check whether the AI report accurately captured the scene. In fact, in many of those lower-level cases, the police report will be the basis of charging decisions, pretrial detention, motions, plea bargains, sentencing and even probation revocations.

I believe that a criminal legal system that relies so heavily on police reports has a responsibility to ensure that police departments are embracing not just transparency but justice. At a minimum, this means more states following Utah and California to pass laws regulating the technology, and police departments following the best practices recommended by the technology companies.

But even that may not be enough without critical assessments by courts, legal experts and defense lawyers. The future of AI policing is just starting, but the risks are already here.

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Concerns about AI-written police reports spur states to regulate the emerging practice – https://theconversation.com/concerns-about-ai-written-police-reports-spur-states-to-regulate-the-emerging-practice-267410