Snapping
up children is easier?
https://theconversation.com/ice-can-now-enter-k-12-schools-heres-what-educators-should-know-about-student-rights-and-privacy-253519
ICE
can now enter K-12 schools − here’s what educators should know
about student rights and privacy
United
States federal agents tried to enter two Los Angeles elementary
schools on April 7, 2025, and were denied entry, according
to the Los Angeles Times. The agents were apparently seeking
contact with five students who had allegedly entered the country
without authorization.
The
Trump administration has been targeting
foreign-born college students and professors
for deportation since February 2025. This
was the first known attempt to target younger students
since the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in January rescinded
a 2011 policy that had limited immigration enforcement
actions in locations
deemed sensitive by the government such as hospitals, churches and
schools.
“Criminals
will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to
avoid arrest,”
the department
said on Jan. 21, 2025.
What
else might be ‘verified’ by a facial scan?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjr75wypg0vo
Discord's
face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'
Discord
is testing face scanning to verify some users' ages in the UK and
Australia.
The
social platform, which says it has over 200 million monthly users
around the world, was initially used by gamers but now has
communities on a wide range of topics including pornography.
The
UK's online safety laws mean platforms with adult content will need
to have "robust" age verification in place by July.
And
social media expert Matt Navarra told the BBC "this isn't a
one-off - it's the start of a bigger shift".
"Regulators
want real proof, and facial recognition might be the fastest route
there," he said.
"So
let it be written, so let it be done" (It’s like an AI
commandment.)
https://gizmodo.com/a-scanning-error-created-a-fake-science-term-now-ai-wont-let-it-die-2000590659
A
Scanning Error Created a Fake Science Term—Now AI Won’t Let It
Die
AI
trawling the internet’s vast repository of journal articles has
reproduced an error that’s made its way into dozens of research
papers—and now a team of researchers has found the source of the
issue.
It’s
the question on the tip of everyone’s tongues: What the hell is
“vegetative electron microscopy”? As it turns out, the term is
nonsensical.
It
sounds technical—maybe even credible—but it’s complete
nonsense. And yet, it’s turning up in scientific papers, AI
responses, and even peer-reviewed journals. So… how did this
phantom phrase become part of our collective knowledge?
As painstakingly reported by
Retraction Watch in February, the term may have been pulled from
parallel columns of text in a 1959
paper on bacterial cell walls. The AI seemed to have
jumped the columns, reading two unrelated lines of text as one
contiguous sentence, according
to one investigator.
(Related)
https://www.bespacific.com/russia-seeds-chatbots-with-lies-any-bad-actor-could-game-ai-the-same-way/
Russia
seeds chatbots with lies. Any bad actor could game AI the same way.
Washington
Post [no paywall]:
“Russia is automating the spread of false information to fool
artificial intelligence chatbots on key topics, offering a playbook
to other bad actors on how to game AI to push content meant to
inflame, influence and obfuscate instead of inform. Experts warn the
problem is worsening as more people rely on chatbots rushed to
market, social media companies cut back on moderation and the Trump
administration disbands government teams fighting disinformation.
Earlier this year, when researchers asked 10 leading chatbots about
topics targeted by false Russian messaging, such as the claim that
the United States was making bioweapons in Ukraine, a third of the
responses repeated those lies. Moscow’s propaganda inroads
highlight a fundamental weakness of the AI industry: Chatbot
answers depend
on the data fed into them.
A guiding principle is that the more the chatbots read, the more
informed their answers will be, which is why the industry is ravenous
for content.
But
mass quantities of well-aimed chaff can skew the answers on specific
topics. For Russia, that is the war in Ukraine. But for a
politician, it could be an opponent; for a commercial firm, it could
be a competitor…”
Perspective.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2025/04/15/an-epistemic-solution-to-do-away-with-our-illusion-of-ai-objectivity/
An
epistemic solution to do away with our illusion of AI objectivity
AI-generated
output has the potential to be much more than answers if it includes
a summary of relevant sources, indicators of disagreement between
them and a confidence score based on source credibility. Jakub
Drábik calls this epistemic responsibility. He writes that AI tools
don’t always have to be right, but they must be more transparent,
explaining why they think they are right and what might make them
wrong.
… As
a historian working with textual sources, I am trained to ask not
only what a statement claims, but where it comes from, why it exists
and how it can be evaluated. In recent months, I have found myself
turning to LLMs to assist in my work—only to encounter answers that
sound right but cannot be traced, supported or interrogated. When I
ask for references, I am given hallucinations. When I ask for
balance, I am given rhetoric. When I ask for method, I get metaphor.
No matter how careful the prompt, the
system has no true way to check its own statements.
This
is not a matter of prompting technique. It is structural. Today’s
AI systems are trained on vast amounts of language, but not on
knowledge in the epistemic sense: grounded, verifiable, source-aware
and accountable. What results is a surface of plausibility without a
spine of justification.
