Thursday, August 27, 2020

I suspect their lawyers would not use the word ‘honor.’

https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/26/21402978/clearview-ai-ceo-interview-2400-police-agencies-facial-recognition

Clearview AI CEO says ‘over 2,400 police agencies’ are using its facial recognition software

More than 2,400 police agencies have entered contracts with Clearview AI, a controversial facial recognition firm, according to comments made by Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That in an interview with Jason Calacanis on YouTube.

The hour-long interview references an investigation by The New York Times published in January, which detailed how Clearview AI scraped data from sites including Facebook, YouTube, and Venmo to build its database. The scale of that database and the methods used to construct it were already controversial before the summer of protests against police violence. “It’s an honor to be at the center of the debate now and talk about privacy,” Ton-That says in the interview, going on to call the Times investigation “actually extremely fair.” “Since then, there’s been a lot of controversy, but fundamentally, this is such a great tool for society,” Ton-That says.

You can watch the full hour-long interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNLK_f6m4e0





Local AI

https://www.colorado.edu/today/ai-education

New $20 million center to bring artificial intelligence into the classroom

Take a seat in the classroom of tomorrow—where intelligent computers work side-by-side with groups of students to support their engagement in meaningful and productive learning experiences designed by their teachers.

That’s the vision of a new $20 million research collaboration that will be led by the University of Colorado Boulder. The project is called the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) AI Institute for Student-AI Teaming. It will explore the role that artificial intelligence may play in the future of education and workforce development—especially in providing new learning opportunities for students from historically underrepresented populations in Colorado and beyond.

The NSF announced the effort alongside four other AI institutes at a virtual press conference Tuesday.

Sidney D’Mello, an associate professor in the Institute of Cognitive Science and the Department of Computer Science at CU Boulder, will lead the new institute.





Doctorow is often worth reading.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/08/cory_doctorow_o_2.html

Cory Doctorow on The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Cory Doctorow has writtten an extended rebuttal of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. He summarized the argument on Twitter.

Shorter summary: it's not the surveillance part, it's the fact that these companies are monopolies.

I think it's both. Surveillance capitalism has some unique properties that make it particularly unethical and incompatible with a free society, and Zuboff makes them clear in her book. But the current acceptance of monopolies in our society is also extremely damaging -- which Doctorow makes clear.





Another cause for argument?

https://www.bespacific.com/license-plate-tracking-for-police-set-to-go-nationwide/

License plate tracking for police set to go nationwide

cnet – “…On Tuesday, Flock Safety, which makes a license plate reader, announced the “Total Analytics Law Officers Network,” or TALON. The network looks to connect the 400 law enforcement agencies using its cameras, allowing agencies that opt in to view camera data from other regions. You may unsubscribe at any time. The company said it has cameras in 700 cities, essentially creating a nationwide camera network for tracking car movements if they’re all connected. License plate readers are a powerful surveillance tool, raising privacy concerns for people driving on public streets. Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in March 2019 showed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents used license plate readers to track people’s movements, accessing a database that logs 150 million to 200 million scans every month…”





I was taught that this could be an opening for the competition. Clearly better technology exists, what happens if I start using it in your market?

https://venturebeat.com/2020/08/26/opensignal-u-s-5g-speeds-slump-as-other-countries-leap-ahead/

Opensignal: U.S. 5G speeds slump as other countries leap ahead

It’s no surprise at this point that U.S. rollouts of 5G networks haven’t delivered on the next-generation cellular standard’s promise, as T-Mobile and AT&T launched low-speed 5G service and Verizon’s higher-speed network remains barely available. But the performance gap between U.S. and international 5G deployments is growing, a new Opensignal report shows today, and there’s only one piece of good news for American consumers: 5G service is becoming more widely available across the country, mediocre or not.



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