"Pornbots create fake accounts that are designed to mimic real people. They steal photos from public social media accounts, and follow the real profile's friends. They tack on suggestive captions and post links to external paid adult sites. The fake accounts choose @usernames that are deceptively similar to those they impersonate. And for good measure, the fake accounts block the person they're copying, making it difficult for the victim to see or interact with them."

"ChatGPT Heralds an Intellectual Revolution Generative artificial intelligence presents a philosophical and practical challenge on a scale not experienced since the start of the Enlightenment."

"Especially at voting time, fears grow of TikTok 'disinformation' threatening democracy. Politicians and their paymasters are terrified that they can no longer control the supply of information to the public, thanks to platforms like Facebook and TikTok. With Thailand's general election only a few months away, the Election Commission of Thailand (ECT) is battling to take back control of information through self-censorship of the TikTok video-sharing platform. Ostensibly, this is to keep young voters on the government's straight and narrow path."

"However, Ms Bower also noted Woolworths' AI technology is considerably less invasive than technology recently trialled and abandoned by Bunnings and Kmart. "The Woolworths cameras don't collect sensitive biometric data or any personal information," she said. "Woolworths has also taken steps to keep customers informed using a combination of in-store signage and public statements. Importantly, customers can opt-out by using the traditional checkout process. These are all consumer protections Bunnings and Kmart failed to implement.""

"Google, which recently laid off thousands of employees globally, is now laying off the robots that cleaned cafeterias at its headquarters. A report by Wired recently said that Alphabet's "Everyday Robots" project - a unit under Google's experimental X laboratories - has been shut down by Google's chief executive officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai."

"Taken as a whole, it shows strong and clear evidence of causation, not just correlation. There are surely other contributing causes, but the Collaborative Review doc points strongly to this conclusion: Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls."

"Google adverts direct pregnant women to services run by UK anti-abortion groups The tech giant is carrying adverts styled to look like real internet search results for women seeking pregnancy advice Shanti Das Sat 25 Feb 2023 13.00 GMT Last modified on Sat 25 Feb 2023 20.15 GMT Women seeking online advice about abortions are being directed to pregnancy counselling services run by anti-abortion campaigners, an Observer investigation has found. Google adverts that are styled to look like real search results and appear above genuine listings are routinely being shown to people searching key terms relating to pregnancy and abortion."

"Taming trolls is fairly easy if you follow the four-step approach below. It really works-in public and private social-media spaces, I tame 90% of trolls after phase one and have blocked fewer than a dozen people over the past four years."

"I have been working with generative AI and, even though I have been warning that these tools are improving rapidly, I did not expect them to really be improving that rapidly. On every dimension, Bing's AI, which does not actually represent a technological leap over ChatGPT, far outpaces the earlier AI - which is less than three months old! There are many larger, more capable models on their way in the coming months, and we are not really ready."

"Among other things, the declaration states that military AI needs to be developed according to international laws, that nations should be transparent about the principles underlying their technology, and that high standards are implemented for verifying the performance of AI systems. It also says that humans alone should make decisions around the use of nuclear weapons."

"ne YouTuber, Dan Duffy, joined the search just to post a video of himself joining it, and was fined on a public order offence, which he also filmed. One TikTok account, Curtis Cool Stuff, posted a video of a man digging up woodland, and another of him roaming around a derelict house opposite the bank where Bulley was last seen. Another group of men had to be dispersed from the house, having travelled there from Liverpool."

"Kellin Pelrine, an American player who is one level below the top amateur ranking, beat the machine by taking advantage of a previously unknown flaw that had been identified by another computer. But the head-to-head confrontation in which he won 14 of 15 games was undertaken without direct computer support. The triumph, which has not previously been reported, highlighted a weakness in the best Go computer programs that is shared by most of today's widely used AI systems, including the ChatGPT chatbot created by San Francisco-based OpenAI. The tactics that put a human back on top on the Go board were suggested by a computer program that had probed the AI systems looking for weaknesses. The suggested plan was then ruthlessly delivered by Pelrine."

"At first glance, the Twitter user "Canaelan" looks ordinary enough. He has tweeted on everything from basketball to Taylor Swift, Tottenham Hotspur football club to the price of a KitKat. The profile shows a friendly-looking blond man with a stubbly beard and glasses who, it indicates, lives in Sheffield. The background: a winking owl. Canaelan is, in fact, a non-human bot linked to a vast army of fake social media profiles controlled by a software designed to spread "propaganda". Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims, which controls more than 30,000 fake social media profiles, can be used to spread disinformation at scale and at speed. It is sold by "Team Jorge", a unit of disinformation operatives based in Israel."

""We erase your past" declares the company's tagline. Eliminalia, which has offices in several cities including Barcelona and Kyiv, is part of a growing industry that will clean up your online profile. Officially the company performs "a deep search across the internet for all information - whether it be an article, a blog, social media posts or even a mistaken identity". It then endeavours, on behalf of its clients, to get any negative information removed."

"The investigation reveals extraordinary details about how disinformation is being weaponised by Team Jorge, which runs a private service offering to covertly meddle in elections without a trace. The group also works for corporate clients. Hanan told the undercover reporters that his services, which others describe as "black ops", were available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns and private companies that wanted to secretly manipulate public opinion. He said they had been used across Africa, South and Central America, the US and Europe."

"To find out, we searched Hansard for parliamentary speeches made by Australian MPs in 2020 and asked ChatGPT to opine on the same subjects - ranging from the role the arts play in society to the government's obligation to provide good dental care."

"Google should know better, given that it already had a "hallucination problem" with its featured snippets(Opens in a new tab) at the top of search results back in 2017. The snippets algorithm seemed to particularly enjoy telling lies about U.S. presidents. Again, what could go wrong?"

"As Tremblay notes, a major problem for AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard is their tendency to confidently state incorrect information as fact. The systems frequently "hallucinate" - that is, make up information - because they are essentially autocomplete systems."

"US and European fears about China exploiting TikTok's data harvest and promoting Beijing's worldview look set to inspire an urgent overhaul in data privacy laws"

"The first paper turns the tables on the trend for job applicants to be screened by algorithms. The researchers assigned some applicants "algorithmic writing assistance" with their CVs or covering letters to see if it influenced employers' decisions. But obviously those of us who do lots of recruiting would never be affected by such small changes… would we? I'm afraid so. Jobseekers who had the tech help were 8% more likely to get hired. Sigh."