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OpenAI Reportedly Dissolves Its Existential AI Risk Team
I can’t shake the mental image of them all being banished to the server room like Richmond the Goth from “The IT Crowd”, decrying ill portents and exclaiming doooooooom whilst listening to Cradle of Filth https://gizmodo.com/openai-reportedly-dissolves-its-existential-ai-risk-tea-1851484827
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In terms of the Data Protection Act I am pretty sure that Richard Gadd is off the hook… but quite a lot of social media users may be in trouble
Just saying: > ‘It an offence for a person knowingly or recklessly to re-identify information that is de-identified personal data without the consent of the controller responsible for de-identifying the personal data’ … ‘personal data is “de-identified” if it has been processed in such a manner that it can no longer be attributed, without more,…
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Quiz: Who said this about what?
https://www.threads.net/@benedictevans/post/C66PAK4u5UP/ – Benedict Evans quotes this puzzle, and places it in a modern context: > “This invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance…
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17 States Are Considering Laws That Would Imprison Librarians | Vanity Fair
> The Washington Post reports that 17 states are currently “weighing” bills that would remove long-standing exemptions protecting librarians from prosecution for distributing material deemed inappropriate for minors, a carve-out that allows them to offer books containing accurate information on things like sex education without having to worry about going to prison. Those bills, per…
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India’s butter chicken battle heats up with new court evidence | Reuters
This is culinary high drama: https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-butter-chicken-battle-heats-up-with-new-court-evidence-2024-05-17/
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Important Note: just because your App is trying to keep you safe does not *necessarily* mean that it’s doing “Client-Side Scanning”, even if AI, or Meta, or Google are involved…
A few months ago Meta followed Apple’s lead and announced in-app nudity detection for Messenger to attempt to dissuade teenagers from getting themselves into trouble by acting unwisely and without regard for their own privacy. Various people approached me, asking questions like: THEM: Look at this! Isn’t this client-side scanning (CSS)? Doesn’t this break end-to-end…
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The temporary shutdown comes amid continuing attempts to find technical solutions to address the problems, which have included flashing body parts and showing potentially offensive images.
Gosh, maybe the people who invented the Dublin to New York Portal need to talk to the age verification & child safety lobby who have got this all sorted out and who are simply waiting for their fixes to land in all the world’s platforms. “social problems require social fixes” https://news.sky.com/story/dublin-new-york-livestream-portal-to-be-switched-off-following-inappropriate-behaviour-13136067
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Today’s internet is the worst of all possible networks, excepting all those which were designed to predate, supplant or fix it
I don’t agree with the attached, in the same way that I acknowledge that the human body* is extremely badly designed but “fixing” it would bring other problems. So I’ll start calling this perspective — along with its “rewilding” cousin argument — the “digital eugenics” approach to network architecture & cybersecurity: telling folk after the…
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The End of TikTok Is a Win for Beijing | The New York Times
From the “No Shit, Sherlock” department: But at what point does matching China at its own game become a betrayal of American values?These charges of hypocrisy will resonate beyond China’s borders. After Twitter deleted a tweet by the Nigerian president in 2021, which intimated violence against an ethnic group, Nigeria banned the app. The government…
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Fredrik Backman on Creative Anxiety and Procrastination
4 minutes of comedy and insight, time well spent if you choose to watch it:
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We’ve heard that AI will bring about the apocalypse for 6+ months now; could it please get a move on?
It’s almost as if all of the doomerism schtick was not a realistic picture of how the world works. We set aside worrying about so many other things (war, famine, disease, racism, education…) in order to worry about AI, and as a hostile actor it is clearly under-delivering. It’s a shame because if the world…