Olives @olives@qoto.org

While you might be able to interpret it more narrowly, if you squint at it, I wouldn't count on people reading that document doing so.

https://www.wired.com/story/what-happens-when-a-romance-author-gets-locked-out-of-google-docs/
In the year of 2024, someone should be able to reasonably expect that they can mind their own business without a company digging through their private files (or that shared with a small select group). It's likely that legislation might be passed to curb this practice, and already has been in some jurisdictions. That said, just because someone could theoretically look through someone's files doesn't mean they should.

When it comes to moderation practices, it is very inappropriate for #Google to attempt to moderate "sexual content" here, and it feels like something which could easily trip people over. It is inherently user hostile and there isn't a good reason for it.

The article covers both this specific case (and a few other cases more generally and briefly), the following passage is not about this case:

"To a banhammer, every query looks like a nail: depictions of rape disappeared, but so did posts by rape survivors."

There are problems with this passage. For instance, this person focuses on one specific case "posts by rape survivors", and fails to unpack the more implication of pieces of fiction (with dark themes) being censored, which is an obvious incursion on freedom of expression. By failing to engage with the main problem at hand, it is also easier for concerns of censorship to be ignored entirely.

https://qoto.org/@olives/112362450620045294 This is a large part of why I will just point people to my new porn science piece directly.

I'm not saying someone can't cover that case "posts by rape survivors". In fact, it's a fairly important case. What I'm saying is that they shouldn't cover it exclusively.

In a way, this reminds me of someone writing a piece to argue that "ageplay" shouldn't be censored. Instead of making an argument that it isn't a form of abuse, and someone shouldn't be discriminated against because of the actions of a few criminals (guilt by association), they relied entirely on an argument that it wasn't inherently sexual. This isn't an inaccurate argument, in a number of cases it is not, it also misses the point.

#FreeSpeech

Interesting to see people pointing out the privacy implications of VR apps (which a few are rebranding as XR...?).

If someone would keep privacy in mind when building these things, that would be cool.

This cartoon fits this very well. #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4651053-a-disturbing-national-security-bill-could-silence-nonprofits-and-college-protests/
"This week, the Senate may pass a bill granting the executive branch extraordinary power to investigate and strip nonprofits of tax-exempt status based on a unilateral accusation of wrongdoing.

The potential for abuse under H.R. 6408 is staggering. If it were to become law, the executive branch would be handed a tool perfectly designed to stifle free speech, target political opponents and punish disfavored groups."
#FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech

Sci-fi enthusiast hit by #Twitter shadow ban. #FreeSpeech

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/stack-overflow-bans-users-en-masse-for-rebelling-against-openai-partnership-users-banned-for-deleting-answers-to-prevent-them-being-used-to-train-chatgpt Programming answers website (known for being run by pedantic jerks) bans users for deleting their answers to avoid them being used to train ChatGPT. #AI #privacy

I see another push against #KOSA on here (which is good because it's a very bad censorship bill). #FreeSpeech

Quite a few consultations popping up lately.

I'm thinking that I could have put a bit more polish on that post, but after sitting on it for a while, I just wanted to get out the news.

In general, both the language *and* the argument is broad and abusable for NCII and that other one (for page 7), therefore, both would have to be addressed. Frankly, the line itself doesn't actually add anything of value.

https://airc.nist.gov/docs/NIST.AI.100-4.SyntheticContent.ipd.pdf
A branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce has shown up with hot "AI" takes. Some of them are awful. In fairness, this part of it is said to be underfunded and undermanned (they also start out by saying these aren't necessarily endorsements or recommendations in a little note).

"Mitigating the production and dissemination of AI generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) of real individuals."
Well, it's nice to know they have presumably scoped themselves to only tackling actual problems, and not completely imaginary ones too.

"even when synthetic NCII and/or CSAM does not depict or appear to depict, real individuals" (page 7)

I think that using terms like "NCII" like this is very problematic. The NC in NCII refers to the consent of whoever is in the thing, not whether an outsourced contractor off in Kenya reckons it might be non-consensual. Isn't it moving the goalposts too? Instead of calling something a false positive, which it is, change the definition in a slimy way? #FreeSpeech

This argument is also fundamentally flawed, and I think abusable enough that it is worth responding to this consultation (the other tries too hard to justify censorship and offers up broad and abusable language). This is actually the only time this comes up in this document, even if you could argue that some of the ideas in this document are blunt instruments (for instance, in one later page, they admit that consent is relevant for NCII).

"Comments on NIST AI 100-4 may be sent electronically to NIST-AI-100-4@nist.gov with “Comment on NIST AI 100-4” in the subject line or via www.regulations.gov (enter NIST-2024-0001 in the search field.) Comments containing information in response to this notice must be received on or before June 2, 2024, at 11:59 PM Eastern Time." (from page 3).

Also, my new porn science post: https://qoto.org/@olives/112362450620045294

Page 9. While I could see it being possible for someone to disclose that a professionally produced textual piece involved "AI", it would be silly to expect everything that has been written using it to do so, nor is it technically possible to do so.

Page 12. I'm not sure it is good idea to add copyright enforcement metadata here.

I think that anything someone does with "AI" here is unlikely to be useful against a sophisticated state actor, especially the most obvious ones.

"people with disabilities and those with limited language skills regularly using generative AI to create content may be discriminated against if the content they publish on platforms is labeled as AI-generated"

Interesting, although the document fails to cover other risks to free expression.

Page 20. What about the context around the "terrorist" and "extremist" content? Also, I think the government should consider whether their ideas chill free expression prior to proposing them, in line with the values which underlie the #FirstAmendment. *Facebook does something* means nothing when Facebook is one of the platforms most notorious for suppressing vast swathes of legitimate expression.

Page 22. The document points out that some (or more?) metadata schemes have privacy issues.

For "provenance", it might be a better idea to have an optional additional metadata file along with the main file, rather than trying to be "smart" about it (violates the KISS principle). There are strong vibes of over-engineering here.

Page 28. Fake faces are easy to distinguish, apparently.

Page 32. "is being debated" is an under-statement. Detecting text is known to be completely unreliable.

Page 35. It's silly to think an algorithm can necessarily determine intent.

Page 39. Assuming that humans won't take a dodgy result at face value is really expecting too much from them.

Page 42. "keywords" have a high false positive rate (there have been many issues in the past, including even PornHub of all sites wrongly accusing people of looking for *actual* child porn at very high rates). This can be partially alleviated by having more dedicated models for different things but it can still be troublesome. This page also presumes that "sexual content" is harmful which is not necessarily the case.

Page 46. Likely exaggerations of the harms / influence of potential inputs in data sets.

Lots of reading for me to do.