Olives @olives@qoto.org

https://ecnl.org/news/civil-society-open-letter-proposed-french-law-2024-olympic-and-paralympic-games

This one is from early 2023. ECNL and other civil society groups opposed AI surveillance cameras at the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic games.

#privacy

Doomscrolling through bad news is not fun.

The dive is a work I have a bit of pride in. It's a "I wasn't born yesterday" type message for people who kept trying to use clever language, and ducking and weaving, and conflating brazenly right before our eyes. It's snappy, but it is also the only correct response to these sorts of "games".

Why do we let these people get away with this?

https://www.thefire.org/news/victory-after-fire-lawsuit-court-halts-new-yorks-misguided-law-targeting-online-speech Here's a piece on the previous New York law which was ruled unconstitutional.

Well, the problem with it is that it's geared towards chilling some form of speech that the State doesn't approve of, and that isn't consistent with the First Amendment.

Whatever someone thinks of those things, it is nonetheless speech protected by the First Amendment. So, that is kind of worrying.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-musk-x-twitter-california-content-moderation-law-1234937858/ That is a troubling precedent... And inconsistent with the New York case. I imagine he'll appeal.

https://truthout.org/articles/new-york-city-council-passes-veto-proof-measure-ending-solitary-confinement/

"The New York City Council approved two measures on Wednesday that would largely ban solitary confinement in city jails and require New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers to report low-level street stops."

"In 2020, a UN human rights expert declared that prolonged solitary confinement practices in the U.S. amount to psychological torture. Bill 549A places a four-hour limit on this practice and has been praised by advocates who say that the solitary confinement ban will reduce the psychological damage incarcerated people face in detainment."

"Sixteen-year-old Kalief Browder was imprisoned at Rikers Island and placed in solitary confinement for two of the three years he was incarcerated before the charges were dismissed. After being released, he died by suicide in part due to the psychological harm he suffered at Rikers. In 2019, the family received $3.3 million in a settlement with the city."

#CriminalJustice #HumanRights

https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2023/11/13/ai-models-will-become-smaller-and-faster
The Economist reckons that LLMs will become smaller and more efficient without deteriorating in accuracy (or not by much, and there is a saying that "worse is better"*).

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better

https://qoto.org/@olives/111191543236620885 It looks like I also have to offer up my dive into bad faith conflations between fiction and reality to the #chatcontrol tag too. Well, just in case.

It's a useful one to keep in mind just in case a bad faith actor deliberately? tries to invoke AI panic.

https://qoto.org/@olives/111516011246609826 That said, I've been over science that tears into puritanical nonsense before.

It's remarkable how claims as to the accuracy of "PhotoDNA" seem to keep coming from the creator (who is known to be fairly activist) and not from any sort of external assessment.

Also, didn't a former Facebook employee say that there's a NDA which prevents companies from talking about false positives? #chatcontrol

Reminder about my updated dive into bad faith conflations of fiction and reality (i.e. talking about a fictional scenario in similar tones as to if it was actually real in a bad faith manner), including for AI and VR, although not limited to those two. #GenAI

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/28/the-ny-times-lawsuit-against-openai-would-open-up-the-ny-times-to-all-sorts-of-lawsuits-should-it-win/ Now, a copyright take more favorable to "AI" (although, I prefer the idea of someone running something without the OpenAI middle-man, still).

https://apnews.com/article/university-wisconsin-la-crosse-porn-fired-2bcaa8e751be50ebe83f8e1ed1a7cc32 University of Wisconsin fires chancellor for appearing in porn film... Puritans...

"Gow told The Associated Press in a phone interview Thursday morning that regents had discovered that he and his wife, former UW-La Crosse professor Carmen Wilson, had been producing and appearing in pornographic videos.

He maintained that he never mentioned UW-La Crosse or his role at the university in any of the videos and the firing violated his free speech rights.

“My wife and I live in a country where we have a First Amendment,” he said. “We’re dealing with consensual adult sexuality. The regents are overreacting. They’re certainly not adhering to their own commitment to free speech or the First Amendment.”"