Saturday, August 24, 2019


Some thoughts from Scientific American.
Misinformation Has Created a New World Disorder
Our willingness to share content without thinking is exploited to spread disinformation
  • Many types of information disorder exist online, from fabricated videos to impersonated accounts to memes designed to manipulate genuine content.
  • Automation and microtargeting tactics have made it easier for agents of disinformation to weaponize regular users of the social web to spread harmful messages.
  • Much research is needed to understand the effects of disinformation and build safeguards against it.


(Related) One “fake” hack.
How Artist Imposters and Fake Songs Sneak Onto Streaming Services
When songs leak on Spotify and Apple Music, illegal uploads can generate substantial royalty payments—but for whom?




...and apparently they all have different ways of describing the “perfect” AI development process.
Meet the Researchers Working to Make Sure Artificial Intelligence Is a Force for Good
To help ensure future AI is developed in humanity’s best interest, AI Now’s researchers have divided the challenges into four categories: rights and liberties; labor and automation; bias and inclusion; and safety and critical infrastructure. Rights and liberties pertains to the potential for AI to infringe on people’s civil liberties, like cases of facial recognition technology in public spaces. Labor and automation encompasses how workers are impacted by automated management and hiring systems. Bias and inclusion has to do with the potential for AI systems to exacerbate historical discrimination against marginalized groups. Finally, safety and critical infrastructure looks at risks posed by incorporating AI into important systems like the energy grid.
AI Now is far from the only research institute founded in recent years to study ethical issues in AI. At Stanford University, the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence has put ethical and societal implications at the core of its thinking on AI development, while the University of Michigan’s new Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing (ESC) focuses on addressing technology’s potential to replicate and exacerbate inequality and discrimination. Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society concentrates in part on the challenges of ethics and governance in AI.




I’m not so pessimistic. My library has her book, so I may change my mind when I read it.
Futurist Amy Webb envisions how AI technology could go off the rails
Webb’s latest book, The Big Nine, examines the development of AI and how the ‘big nine’ corporations – Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple – have all taken control over the direction that development is heading. She says that the foundation upon which AI is built is fundamentally broken and that, within our lifetimes, AI will begin to behave unpredictably, to our detriment.
One of the main issues is that corporations have a much greater incentive to push out this kind of technology quickly than they do to release it safely.




A geek lecture (45 minutes)
Computer Mathematics, AI and Functional Programming




For my students who might be slightly nervous about their presentations.



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