Citizen, proud father, tech reporter at CalMatters, formerly WIRED + VentureBeat
I missed this piece by @nitashatiku
"an Army Special Operations veteran and former Army Ranger turned investigative journalist. “We think there is a technological solution to everything.” he said. “Are we losing sight of the reality of what AI will probably do on the battlefield?”
But rather than out-of-touch, some tech investors present this work as a chance to return to mid-century American values."
New: More than 1,000 photos of child sexual abuse have been found in a prominent database used to train AI image generators. "Basically gives the model an advantage in being able to produce content of child exploitation in a way that could resemble real life" https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/20/ai-child-pornography-abuse-photos-laion/
Since it is the #ASA2023 season, don't miss our Thematic Session: Public Sociology and Digital Technology.
We have an amazing lineup to talk about the need for sociology to engage in public discussions about technology with
@nanjala @kharijohnson Joan Donovan @ftripodi!
I always read @kharijohnson & this piece w @willknight is helpful in explaining what happens next with AI.
"Going from text generation to taking actions on a person’s behalf erodes an air gap that has so far prevented language models from taking actions."
https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-plugins-openai/
"Bender remains particularly fond of an alternative name for AI proposed by a former member of the Italian Parliament: “Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences.” Then people would be out here asking, “Is this SALAMI intelligent? Can this SALAMI write a novel? Does this SALAMI deserve human rights?”"
New: The FBI actively helped research facial recognition software that could be used to identify people from street cameras and flying drones at distances of more than half a mile away. "The question always in the back of my mind was: What does the intelligence community really want to do with this stuff?"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/07/facial-recognition-fbi-dod-research-aclu/
Alonzo Sawyer spent nine days in jail for a crime he didn’t commit after an analyst using face recognition identified him as the person who assaulted a bus driver. He’s the latest Black man falsely accused of a crime involving face recognition in the US https://www.wired.com/story/face-recognition-software-led-to-his-arrest-it-was-dead-wrong/
@gleemie thx for listening!
This interview with Tawanna Petty and @kharijohnson@mastodon.socialwas so good! On AI, errors, social movement organizing, police policies, and the story that surveillance is about safety with ample evidence that it is actually about social repression.
Although fasc-y vibes from some call in comments: "who cares if someone is mistakenly jailed? there are always EDGE CASES." Edge cases is programmer vocabulary! People are not unusual inputs generating odd output!
In this article by @kharijohnson,
"@alex sees a familiar pattern in these events—financial incentives to rapidly commercialize AI outweighing concerns about safety or ethics. There isn’t much money in responsibility or safety, but there’s plenty in overhyping the technology, says Hanna, who previously worked on Google’s Ethical AI team and is now head of research at nonprofit Distributed AI Research."
https://www.wired.com/story/chatbots-got-big-and-their-ethical-red-flags-got-bigger/
Meanwhile, here is some actually good coverage about the current generation of chatbots, from @kharijohnson
https://www.wired.com/story/chatbots-got-big-and-their-ethical-red-flags-got-bigger/
Talked to @kharijohnson about ChatGPT, Bard, and the political economy and hype around LLMs. https://www.wired.com/story/chatbots-got-big-and-their-ethical-red-flags-got-bigger/
Another difference between ChatGPT and Clippy is that Clippy wasn't a pathological liar
Authoritarian regimes love facial recognition. Important @kharijohnson story on how Iran wants to use it to identify and punish any woman not wearing their compulsory hijab
https://www.wired.com/story/iran-says-face-recognition-will-id-women-breaking-hijab-laws/
George Santos' fun first day in Congress:
"For long stretches of time, no one sat directly next to him. His nearest seatmates were the squirming children of members-elect. Santos alternated between staring at his phone and glancing quickly around the chamber, the proverbial school cafeteria. He yawned a lot. He scratched his chin, his cheek, his lips. He fidgeted. He wiped his left index finger around the rim of his right nostril."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/01/03/george-santos-first-day-in-congress/
@psb_dc I’m into the variety
My last two Washington Post stories on Elon Musk before Twitter suspended me and other journalists discussed his flirtation with QAnon and the public data about his private jet:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/14/qanon-musk-revival-twitter/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/14/elonjet-twitter-suspension-jack-sweeney-talks/
Statement from Washington Post Executive Editor Sally Buzbee:
