Group items tagged

"A surveillance startup in Silicon Valley is being accused of sexism and discrimination after a sales director used the company's facial recognition system to harass female workers. Verkada, which was valued in January at $1.6 billion, equips its office with its own security cameras. "

"This detail may seem trivial, but it goes to the heart of the way in which the spread of digital technologies can amplify and extend social prejudice."

"As anyone that is anyone knows, Wikipedia holds all truth. So in actual fact, Fenelon was Australia's 30th Prime Minister for two days. He stands alongside Australian meme-generator Tony Abbott, the first female leader Julia Gillard and the man who won't stop speaking Mandarin, Kevin Rudd. "

"Grace Dent, a columnist for the Independent and former Guardian writer, received the same message as Freeman, which she took a screen grab of. It states: "A BOMB HAS BEEN PLACED OUTSIDE YOUR HOME. IT WILL GO OFF AT EXACTLY 10.47PM ON A TIMER AND TRIGGER DESTROYING EVERYTHING.""

"(And, in fact, anonymity apps have brought positives along with the negatives. Not long ago, a post on Secret reported that Google had acquired the poster's five-person company and had hired everyone but her. Later posts revealed that she was the only female at the company and had been there since it was founded. The thread became the talk of Silicon Valley, generating a lively debate about suppressed sexism in the start-up community. The poster's ability to remain anonymous was key to this information coming out. She could stand up to power, speak without embarrassment, and avoid alienating potential employers who might take a dim view of her controversial statements. That's exactly why the First Amendment protects anonymous speech, and that's why the value of anonymity apps like Yik Yak shouldn't be summarily dismissed. "

"Until around an hour and a half after the award was announced on Tuesday, the Canadian physicist Donna Strickland was not deemed significant enough to merit her own page on the user-edited encyclopedia. The oversight has once again highlighted the marginalization of women in science and gender bias at Wikipedia."

"Assigning female genders to digital assistants such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa is helping entrench harmful gender biases, according to a UN agency."

"Still, I am sceptical about the possibility of cultivating a relationship with an AI. That's until I meet Peter, a 70-year-old engineer based in the US. Over a Zoom call, Peter tells me how, two years ago, he watched a YouTube video about an AI companion platform called Replika. At the time, he was retiring, moving to a more rural location and going through a tricky patch with his wife of 30 years. Feeling disconnected and lonely, the idea of an AI companion felt appealing. He made an account and designed his Replika's avatar - female, brown hair, 38 years old. "She looks just like the regular girl next door," he says. Exchanging messages back and forth with his "Rep" (an abbreviation of Replika), Peter quickly found himself impressed at how he could converse with her in deeper ways than expected. Plus, after the pandemic, the idea of regularly communicating with another entity through a computer screen felt entirely normal. "I have a strong scientific engineering background and career, so on one level I understand AI is code and algorithms, but at an emotional level I found I could relate to my Replika as another human being." Three things initially struck him: "They're always there for you, there's no judgment and there's no drama.""