Privacy, the last dinosaur?
Hitting the Books: How can privacy survive in a world that never forgets?
As I write this, Amazon is announcing its purchase of iRobot, adding its room-mapping robotic vacuum technology to the company's existing home surveillance suite, the Ring doorbell and prototype aerial drone. This is in addition to Amazon already knowing what you order online, what websites you visit, what foods you eat and, soon, every last scrap of personal medical data you possess. But hey, free two-day shipping, amirite?
The trend of our gadgets and infrastructure constantly, often invasively, monitoring their users shows little sign of slowing — not when there's so much money to be made. Of course it hasn't been all bad for humanity, what with AI's help in advancing medical, communications and logistics tech in recent years. In his new book, Machines Behaving Badly: The Morality of AI, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales, Dr. Toby Walsh, explores the duality of potential that artificial intelligence/machine learning systems offer and, in the excerpt below, how to claw back a bit of your privacy from an industry built for omniscience.
Sure to be a major field of study.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/08/22/information-warfare-in-the-ukraine-russia-conflict/
Information Warfare in the Ukraine-Russia Conflict
In the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and throughout the ongoing conflict, social media has served as a battleground for states and non-state actors to spread competing narratives about the war and portray the ongoing conflict in their own terms. As the war drags on, these digital ecosystems have become inundated with disinformation. Strategic propaganda campaigns, including those peddling disinformation, are by no means new during warfare, but the shift toward social media as the primary distribution channel is transforming how information warfare is waged, as well as who can participate in ongoing conversations to shape emerging narratives.
Examining the underlying dynamics of how information and disinformation are impacting the war in Ukraine is crucial to making sense of, and working toward, solutions to the current conflict. To that end, this FP Analytics brief uncovers three critical components:
How social media platforms are being leveraged to spread competing national narratives and disinformation;
The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in promoting, and potentially combating, disinformation; and,
The role of social media companies and government policies on limiting disinformation.
Eventually we will figure this out.
White paper offers ethics advice for use of AI in the US
A new white paper seeks to help government and other groups build a responsible future for artificial intelligence as the technology continues to evolve, specifically stressing the importance of creating redress mechanisms that can handle flaws as they emerge.
Published by the University of California, Berkeley, the paper is titled AI's Redress Problem, and it joins an accelerating, cross-sector conversation about how to ensure that ethics and responsibility are part of artificial intelligence's future. Government is no stranger to this conversation, with New York City, for example, having released a 116-page strategic vision for how to responsibly benefit from AI. This new white paper encourages all stakeholders — government among them — to consider potential harm that AI can do, and to plan for addressing that.
[The paper: https://cltc.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/AIs_Redress_Problem.pdf
Perspective. A dragon that thinks its powers are failing may appear to act irrationally.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/08/21/china-decline-us-great-power-competition-theory-economy/
Is China Declining?
“Xi Jinping’s China is about to give the world an education in the nuances of decline,” Hal Brands wrote in April, contributing to a heated debate on Beijing’s trajectory and what it means for the United States.
In this collection from our archives are essays at the heart of the debate, exploring the cracks in China’s economic miracle, Beijing’s prospects vis-à-vis Washington’s over the next decade, and the question of whether great-power competition is a useful framework for thinking about the U.S.-China relationship at all.
Maybe Cory has a point? After all, which side has more lawyers?
Cory Doctorow Launches New Fight against Copyrights, Creative Chokepoints, and Big Tech's 'Chokepoint Capitalism'
"Creators aren't getting paid," says Cory Doctorow. "That's because powerful corporations have figured out how to create chokepoints — that let them snatch up more of the value generated by creative work before it reaches creative workers."
But he's doing something about it.
Doctorow's teamed up with Melbourne-based law professor Rebecca Giblin, the director of Australia's Intellectual Property Research Institute, for a new book that first "pulls aside the veil on the tricks Big Tech and Big Content use ..." But more importantly, it also presents specific ideas for "how we can recapture creative labor markets to make them fairer and more sustainable." Their announcement describes the book as "A Big Tech/Big Content disassembly manual," saying it's "built around shovel-ready ideas for shattering the chokepoints that squeeze creators and audiences — technical, commercial and legal blueprints for artists, fans, arts organizations, technologists, and governments to fundamentally restructure the broken markets for creative labor."
Or, as they explain later, "Our main focus is action." Lawrence Lessig says the authors "offer a range of powerful strategies for fighting back." Anil Dash described it as "a credible, actionable vision for a better, more collaborative future where artists get their fair due." And Douglas Rushkoff called the book "an infuriating yet inspiring call to collective action."
The book is titled "Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back." And at one point their Kickstarter page lays down a thought-provoking central question about ownership. "For 40 years, every question about creators rights had the same answer: more copyright. How's that worked out for artists?" And then it features a quote from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. "Copyright can't unrig a rigged market — for that you need worker power, antitrust, and solidarity."
A Kickstarter campaign to raise $10,000 has already raised $72,171 — in its first five days — from over 1,800 backers.
Because we don’t like the real ones?
https://www.bespacific.com/how-can-policymakers-encourage-more-robo-lawyers/
How Can Policymakers Encourage More Robo-Lawyers?
Webinar – A discussion about the potential for AI-enabled robo-lawyers to provide legal services: “Advances in digital automation could enable many individuals and businesses to access better and cheaper legal services. Robo-lawyers—tech-enabled legal services—could help clients review contracts, draft patent applications, write legal briefs, and more. Unfortunately, state laws and professional licensing requirements significantly limit the development of technology-enabled legal services that would compete with existing legal services. These restrictions on robo-lawyers ultimately hurt consumer welfare, especially for many Americans who do not have access to adequate legal representation. Join the Center for Data Innovation for a panel discussion about the potential for AI-enabled robo-lawyers to provide legal services, the challenges in providing these services today, and steps policymakers can take to allow the development of tech-enabled legal services.”
Date and Time: September 21, 2022, from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM (EDT) – Register for the webinar here.
I would have loved this as a kid. “There is something you don’t want me to know? How dare you!”
The Brooklyn Public Library Gives Every Teenager in the U.S. Free Access to Books Getting Censored by American Schools
Open Culture: “…In response to this concerning trend, the Brooklyn Public Library has made a bold move: For a limited time, the library will offer a free eCard to any person aged 13 to 21 across the United States, allowing them free access to 500,000 digital books, including many censored books. The Chief Librarian for the Brooklyn Public Library, Nick Higgins said:
A public library represents all of us in a pluralistic society we exist with other people, with other ideas, other viewpoints and perspectives and that’s what makes a healthy democracy — not shutting down access to those points of view or silencing voices that we don’t agree with, but expanding access to those voices and having conversations and ideas that we agree with and ideas that we don’t agree with.
And he added:
This is an intellectual freedom to read initiative by the Brooklyn Public Library. You know, we’ve been paying attention to a lot of the book challenges and bans that have been taking place, particularly over the last year in many places across the country. We don’t necessarily experience a whole lot of that here in Brooklyn, but we know that there are library patrons and library staff who are facing these and we wanted to figure out a way to step in and help, particularly for young people who are seeing, some books in their library collections that may represent them, but they’re being taken off the shelves.
As for how to get the Brooklyn Public Library’s free eCard, their Books Unbanned website offers the following instructions: “individuals ages 13-21 can apply for a free BPL eCard, providing access to our full eBook collection as well as our learning databases. To apply, email booksunbanned@bklynlibrary.org.” In short, send them an email.”
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