Hard Numbers

81.9: Do China’s proposed tariffs target Trump voters? Nearly 82 percent of the 2,783 counties most likely to lose jobs in a U.S.-China trade war voted for Trump over Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election, according to a report from the Brookings Institution.

40: Nearly 40 percent of Brazilians would now back a military coup in their country to fight crime and corruption, according to a recent study by Vanderbilt University. The country’s top general put Brazilians on edge this week with tweets about the highly polarizing court case involving Lula.

1: A new report from the World Bank finds that South Africa is the world’s most unequal country. The top 1 percent of South Africans own 70.9 percent of the nation’s wealth. The bottom 60 percent of South Africans collectively control just 7 percent.

4.5 billion: Biting the hand that subsidizes you? On Sunday, Hungary holds parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has made harsh criticism of the EU and its rules a central part of his campaign. Yet, Hungary received 4.5 billion euros ($5.5 billion) from the EU budget in 2016 while contributing less than 1 billion euros ($1.23 billion).

33: In August 1966, just 33 percent of Americans reported a favorable opinion of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Just 12 percent said their opinion was “highly favorable” with 44 percent saying it was “highly unfavorable.” His birthday has been a federal holiday since 1986, though it has been observed in all 50 states only since 2000.

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In this episode of GZERO AI, Taylor Owen, professor at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University and director of its Centre for Media, Technology & Democracy, looks into the phenomenon he terms the "deepfakification" of social media. He points out the evolution of our social feeds, which began as platforms primarily for sharing updates with friends, and are now inundated with content generated by artificial intelligence.