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"The proto-currency known as RSCoin has vastly greater scope than Bitcoin, used for peer-to-peer transactions by libertarians across the world, and beyond the control of any political authority. The purpose would be turned upside down. RSCoin would be a tool of state control, allowing the central bank to keep a tight grip on the money supply and respond to crises. It would erode the exorbitant privilege of commercial banks of creating money out of thin air under a fractional reserve financial system."

"Kristoffer Koch invested 150 kroner ($26.60) in 5,000 bitcoins in 2009, after discovering them during the course of writing a thesis on encryption. He promptly forgot about them until widespread media coverage of the anonymous, decentralised, peer-to-peer digital currency in April 2013 jogged his memory. Bitcoins are stored in encrypted wallets secured with a private key, something Koch had forgotten."

"But historically, these tools have been put into use only after a rigorous peer review of the raw data and statistical analyses used to develop them. Epic's Deterioration Index, on the other hand, remains proprietary despite its widespread deployment. Although physicians are provided with a list of the variables used to calculate the index and a rough estimate of each variable's impact on the score, we aren't allowed under the hood to evaluate the raw data and calculations. "

"Beginning in 2017, I did a project with artist Trevor Paglen to look at how people were being labelled. We found horrifying classificatory terms that were misogynist, racist, ableist, and judgmental in the extreme. Pictures of people were being matched to words like kleptomaniac, alcoholic, bad person, closet queen, call girl, slut, drug addict and far more I cannot say here. ImageNet has now removed many of the obviously problematic people categories - certainly an improvement - however, the problem persists because these training sets still circulate on torrent sites [where files are shared between peers]."

"This is the biggest concern. I can't overstate how big of a problem this is. I'd be the first that wishes I could wave a magic wand and have an easy solution where all of this could be solved. A teacher I know says there's just 5 percent or 10 percent of her kids in Mountain View, Calif., who are just checked out. She can't get them to show up. She can even see that their language has degraded because they haven't spent as much time with adults or peers in an academic setting."

"After being set an overarching goal like maximizing profit, they develop their own strategies based on experience of the market, often with little human oversight. The most advanced also use forms of AI whose workings are opaque even if humans wanted to peer inside."

"'Much easier to say no': Irish town unites in smartphone ban for young children Parents and schools across Greystones adopt voluntary 'no-smartphone code' in bid to curb peer pressure Rory Carroll Ireland correspondent @rorycarroll72 Sat 3 Jun 2023 09.00 BST Last modified on Sat 3 Jun 2023 09.02 BST On the principle of strength in numbers, parents in the Irish town of Greystones have banded together to collectively tell their children they cannot have a smartphone until secondary school. Parents' associations across the district's eight primary schools have adopted a no-smartphone code to present a united front against children's lobbying. "If everyone does it across the board you don't feel like you're the odd one out. It makes it so much easier to say no," said Laura Bourne, who has a child in junior infants. "The longer we can preserve their innocence the better.""

"The campaign is spearheaded by the privacy advocate Big Brother Watch and is also backed by 31 groups including Liberty, Amnesty International and the Race Equality Foundation. Police have deployed live facial recognition at large-scale public events, including King Charles's coronation. The statement said: "We hold differing views about live facial recognition surveillance, ranging from serious concerns about its incompatibility with human rights, to the potential for discriminatory impact, the lack of safeguards, the lack of an evidence base, an unproven case of necessity or proportionality, the lack of a sufficient legal basis, the lack of parliamentary consideration, and the lack of a democratic mandate. "We call on UK police and private companies to immediately stop using live facial recognition for public surveillance.""

"The personal details of millions of voters are believed to have been accessed in an attack by China on Britain's democratic process, ministers will say. MPs and peers are thought to be among 43 people who the government looks set to confirm have been targeted by cyber-attacks backed by the Chinese state. The UK could impose sanctions on individuals believed to be involved in these acts of state-backed interference, one of which was a separate attack on the Electoral Commission in which Beijing accessed the personal details of about 40 million voters."