Thursday, April 04, 2019

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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