How long is too long, how much is too much?
Australia
passes social media law penalising platforms for violent content
The
Labor opposition combined with the ruling Liberal-National Coalition
to pass the law on Thursday, despite warning
it won’t allow prosecution of social media executives as
promised by the government. Tech giants expressed the opposite
concern that it may criminalise anyone in their companies for a
failure to remove violent material.
The
bill, described the attorney general, Christian Porter, as “most
likely a world first”, was drafted in the wake of the Christchurch
terrorist attack, when video of the alleged perpetrator’s violent
attack spread
on social media faster
than it could be removed.
… The bill
creates a regime for the eSafety Commissioner to notify social media
companies that they are deemed to be aware they are hosting abhorrent
violent material, triggering an obligation to take it down.
Porter said a
“reasonable” or “expeditious” timeframe would depend on the
circumstances and be up to a jury to decide, but “every Australian
would agree it
was totally unreasonable that it should exist on their site for well
over an hour without them taking any action whatsoever”.
Alternative
jobs for my Ethical Hackers?
New
Report Shows Just How Profitable Cyber Extortion Can Be
In just a few
years, cyber extortion has gone from a fringe hacking activity to
something that is now very much mainstream. In fact, it’s now
remarkably easy to download tools and how-to manuals for cyber
extortion from the dark web, and hacking syndicates are becoming much
more brazen about advertising for cyber extortion jobs in broad
daylight. According to a new report from the Digital Shadows Photon
Research Team, it’s
now possible to make upwards of $360,000 per year by joining a cyber
extortion team.
An
article worth a read.
THE PROBLEM
WITH AI ETHICS
… In
the past few years, tech companies certainly seem to have embraced
ethical self-scrutiny: establishing ethics boards, writing ethics
charters, and sponsoring research in topics like algorithmic bias.
But are these boards and charters doing anything? Are they changing
how these companies work or holding them accountable in any
meaningful way?
Academic Ben Wagner says
tech’s enthusiasm for ethics paraphernalia is just “ethics
washing,” a strategy to avoid government regulation. When
researchers uncover new ways for technology to harm marginalized
groups or infringe on civil liberties, tech companies can point to
their boards and charters and say, “Look, we’re doing something.”
It deflects criticism, and because the boards lack any power, it
means the companies don’t change.
… Google
isn’t the only company with an ethics board and charter, of course.
Its London AI subsidiary DeepMind has one, too, though it’s never
revealed who’s
on it or what they’re up to
Microsoft has its own AI
principles ,
and it founded its AI
ethics committee in
2018. Amazon has started sponsoring
research into
“fairness in artificial intelligence” with the help of the
National Science Foundation, while Facebook has even co-founded
an
AI ethics research center in Germany.
…
A
report
last
year from research institute AI Now said there’s been a “rush to
adopt” ethical codes, but there’s no corresponding introduction
of mechanisms that can “backstop these ... commitments.”
Perspective.
A simpler architecture?
Wayve
claims ‘world first’ in driving a car autonomously with only its
AI and a SatNav
We
reported
on
UK start-up Wayve
last
year when it announced its existence, but they had nothing to show
for their claims.
Now
they say they do, and the results are not only fascinating but might
also be genuinely innovative.
In
fact, they are claiming a “world first” in demonstrating that a
car working on their machine-learning platform can drive on roads
it’s never seen before during training, and without an HD map of
its environment. Other systems, like Waymo’s, rely on maps and
rules to drive. Theirs, says Wayve, does not.
Perspective.
What is important?
Prince
Harry and Meghan break Instagram record
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's Instagram account
amassed more than one million followers in record-breaking time,
Guinness World Records has said.
The
couple's official account took five hours and 45 minutes to reach the
milestone after its
launch on Tuesday.
… The
official account, sussexroyal, will be used for "important
announcements" and to share work that "drives" them.
…
Last
month, the Royal
Family published social media guidelines for the public, vowing
to block users who leave offensive or abusive comments on official
channels.
Another
tool?
Harvard
Caselaw Access Project Search
“Today
we’re launching CAP
search,
a new interface to search data made available as part of the Caselaw
Access Project
API.
Since releasing the CAP API in Fall 2018, this is our first try at
creating a more human-friendly way to start working with this data.
CAP search supports access to 6.7 million cases from 1658 through
June 2018, digitized from the collections at the Harvard Law School
Library. Learn
more
about
CAP search and limitations. We’re also excited to share a new way
to view cases, formatted in HTML. Here’s
a sample!
We invite you to experiment by building new interfaces to search CAP
data. See
our code
as
an example. The Caselaw
Access Project
was
created by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab at the Harvard
Law School Library
in
collaboration with project partner Ravel
Law.”
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