Derek Willis

Why they matter

Directory member with public evidence across Culture, work & education.

AI signals
1
past 30d
Sources
1
distinct domains
Discussions
8
past 30d
Latest signal
20d ago
View every signal from Derek Willis →
I teach data journalism at the University of Maryland, run OpenElections. Fan of WBB & test cricket. Posting obscure things about campaign finance, Congress & elections. https://github.com/dwillis https://thescoop.org https://buttondown.com/dwillis

Articles & links

↻ Derek Willis reposted
Sam Biddle @sambiddle.com

NEW: I've uncovered an AI slop mill quietly backed by U.S. Special Operations to push military propaganda across Latin American and the Caribbean disguised as a lifestyle content brand. theintercept.com/2026/06/02/l...

The Pentagon Is Running an AI Propaganda Mill Targeting Latin America theintercept.com
AI Weekly's analysis →
  • La Tilde publishes AI-generated articles in Spanish and English for U.S. Special Operations Command South, with no bylines, masthead, or named staff.
  • AI-text detector Pangram flagged English and Spanish articles as machine-written; design was subcontracted to Antpack, a Colombian digital marketing firm.
  • Subdomains indicate planned country launches for Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, and Peru.
Read full analysis →
View on Bluesky →

Really excited that my friends at @biglocalnews.bsky.social have released DataTalk, a federal campaign finance agent that turns your questions about FEC data into data-backed answers. I helped a bit with this, and am very interested in feedback (as are the BLN folks). datatalk…

DataTalk datatalk.biglocalnews.org
View on Bluesky · ♥ 16 ↻ 7 ↩ 1 · 123d ago

Recent commentary

idk, I'm starting to worry about the LLM that's producing fundraising emails for Mike Rogers' Senate campaign:

View on Bluesky · ♥ 16 ↻ 7 ↩ 4 · 92d ago

"Ok, our new AI writing app is almost ready to go. Sure, we spelled 'Hemingway' wrong, but at least we captured some of the bleakness in the slogan, right?"

View on Bluesky · ♥ 19 ↻ 2 ↩ 2 · 45d ago

Does Facebook have a problem with AI-generated slop pages? Here's a post about UF football coach Jon Sumrall "clashing" with Nigel Farage about immigration to help you decide!

View on Bluesky · ♥ 10 ↻ 2 ↩ 2 · 173d ago

Been trying out some new open-weight OCR-focused LLMs and found a 4b param model that nails pages like this, including the "vertical" headers. OCR isn't totally solved, but we're getting closer to a scenario where you can get 2 of these 3, one of which is always accurate: cheap fast accurate

View on Bluesky · ♥ 8 ↻ 0 ↩ 2 · 109d ago

Did an exercise with journalism students this week in which they practiced working through somewhat difficult interview scenarios (reluctance/grief/defiance) using LLMs. Definitely canned, but I suspect this has some uses, and even my AI haters didn't hate the use case.

View on Bluesky · ♥ 7 ↻ 0 ↩ 1 · 33d ago

Detecting AI-written materials is hard, they say. Tough to be sure, they say. RNC: A person would definitely write a subject line of "Question 1 of 14"

View on Bluesky · ♥ 9 ↻ 0 ↩ 0 · 63d ago

As I sign up for more political fundraising emails, I'm gonna start surfacing the most AI-generated candidate website designs I'm finding. Here's one for Virginia McIntyre, a NY congressional hopeful:

View on Bluesky · ♥ 3 ↻ 1 ↩ 1 · 140d ago

I know I can always spot veterans because they wear this jacket(?) with "U.S. VETERAN" across the back as this clearly AI-generated image from a VA newsletter shows.

View on Bluesky · ♥ 2 ↻ 1 ↩ 1 · 67d ago

Honestly, might be starting to prefer AI writing over this MadLib by, well, mad libs.

View on Bluesky · ♥ 5 ↻ 0 ↩ 0 · 129d ago

I don't often use papal encyclicals in teaching my class on artificial intelligence, but when I do, I use this pope's encyclicals.

View on Bluesky · ♥ 4 ↻ 0 ↩ 0 · 168d ago

In Derek Willis's orbit

Center = Derek Willis. Left = members they follow (green edges). Right = members who follow them (blue edges). Top = mutual follows (orange edges, slightly larger). Drag any node to reposition; click to open that profile.

Are you Derek Willis? Show it.

Add the Who’s Who of AI badge to your site or bio. It links back to this profile.

Listed in AI Weekly's Who's Who of AI

Markdown: [![Listed in AI Weekly's Who's Who of AI](https://aiweekly.co/modules/custom/aiweekly_whoswho/images/whoswho-badge.svg)](https://aiweekly.co/whos-who/person/dwillis-bsky-social)