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AI Causes Real Harm. Let's Focus on That over the End-of-Humanity Hype - Scientific Ame... - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/...ot-imaginary-existential-risks opinion analysis AI class race computing propaganda science
shared by Ed Webb on 11 Aug 23 - No Cached
  • Wrongful arrests, an expanding surveillance dragnet, defamation and deep-fake pornography are all actually existing dangers of so-called “artificial intelligence” tools currently on the market. That, and not the imagined potential to wipe out humanity, is the real threat from artificial intelligence.
  • Beneath the hype from many AI firms, their technology already enables routine discrimination in housing, criminal justice and health care, as well as the spread of hate speech and misinformation in non-English languages. Already, algorithmic management programs subject workers to run-of-the-mill wage theft, and these programs are becoming more prevalent.
  • Corporate AI labs justify this posturing with pseudoscientific research reports that misdirect regulatory attention to such imaginary scenarios using fear-mongering terminology, such as “existential risk.”
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  • Because the term “AI” is ambiguous, it makes having clear discussions more difficult. In one sense, it is the name of a subfield of computer science. In another, it can refer to the computing techniques developed in that subfield, most of which are now focused on pattern matching based on large data sets and the generation of new media based on those patterns. Finally, in marketing copy and start-up pitch decks, the term “AI” serves as magic fairy dust that will supercharge your business.
  • output can seem so plausible that without a clear indication of its synthetic origins, it becomes a noxious and insidious pollutant of our information ecosystem
  • the people selling this technology propose that text synthesis machines could fix various holes in our social fabric: the lack of teachers in K–12 education, the inaccessibility of health care for low-income people and the dearth of legal aid for people who cannot afford lawyers, just to name a few
  • Not only do we risk mistaking synthetic text for reliable information, but also that noninformation reflects and amplifies the biases encoded in its training data—in this case, every kind of bigotry exhibited on the Internet. Moreover the synthetic text sounds authoritative despite its lack of citations back to real sources. The longer this synthetic text spill continues, the worse off we are, because it gets harder to find trustworthy sources and harder to trust them when we do.
  • the systems rely on enormous amounts of training data that are stolen without compensation from the artists and authors who created it in the first place
  • the task of labeling data to create “guardrails” that are intended to prevent an AI system’s most toxic output from seeping out is repetitive and often traumatic labor carried out by gig workers and contractors, people locked in a global race to the bottom for pay and working conditions.
  • employers are looking to cut costs by leveraging automation, laying off people from previously stable jobs and then hiring them back as lower-paid workers to correct the output of the automated systems. This can be seen most clearly in the current actors’ and writers’ strikes in Hollywood, where grotesquely overpaid moguls scheme to buy eternal rights to use AI replacements of actors for the price of a day’s work and, on a gig basis, hire writers piecemeal to revise the incoherent scripts churned out by AI.
  • too many AI publications come from corporate labs or from academic groups that receive disproportionate industry funding. Much is junk science—it is nonreproducible, hides behind trade secrecy, is full of hype and uses evaluation methods that lack construct validity
  • We urge policymakers to instead draw on solid scholarship that investigates the harms and risks of AI—and the harms caused by delegating authority to automated systems, which include the unregulated accumulation of data and computing power, climate costs of model training and inference, damage to the welfare state and the disempowerment of the poor, as well as the intensification of policing against Black and Indigenous families. Solid research in this domain—including social science and theory building—and solid policy based on that research will keep the focus on the people hurt by this technology.
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Jordan: Alarm raised over 'vague and repressive' cybercrime draft law | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...-raised-vague-repressive-draft
shared by Ed Webb on 26 Jul 23 - No Cached
  • “Internet users will no longer be able to know if their online conduct will be considered a crime or not, resulting in even more online censorship.”
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 26 Jul 23
       
      induced self-censorship
  • he law is paving the way to further issues, such as webpage admins being held responsible for comments posted by others. “The scope of the text is so broad it can be applied to admins of WhatsApp groups too, making normal users potential censors of free speech.”
  • Around a dozen rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have urged the Jordanian government to withdraw the bill.  “The draft legislation will jeopardise digital rights, including freedom of expression and the right to information, and will ultimately fail in achieving the Jordanian government’s stated goals of tackling 'disinformation', 'hate speech' and 'online defamation',” their joint statement said
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  • there will be consequences for offences such as “provoking strife”, “promoting, instigating, aiding or inciting morality” and “contempt for religions”.
  • Earlier this month, Jordan blocked the popular satirical news site AlHudood, in a move denounced as censorship and an attack on freedom of expression.
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Source: Qatari authorities ask 100 Egyptian nationals affiliated to Muslim Brotherhood,... - 0 views

www.madamasr.com/...alafist-front-to-leave-country Qatar Egypt Turkey Islamists opposition media authoritarianism
shared by Ed Webb on 09 Jun 23 - No Cached
  • About 100 Egyptian nationals living in Qatar have been asked by Doha authorities to leave the country within a few weeks time, according to an Egyptian opposition figure based abroad who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity.  The move by Qatar comes after Egypt requested that the figures — all of whom are affiliated with Islamist groups — be delivered to Egyptian authorities, said the source.
  • Qatar has given the Egyptian nationals notice to leave the country amid a diplomatic rapprochement between Doha and Cairo that has blossomed over the past year. 
  • Helping bridge the distance between Doha and Cairo are the increasingly strained relations between the current Egyptian administration and its long-standing Gulf backers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as well as a number of economic investment opportunities, with potential for Egypt’s need for foreign direct investment to soothe its distressed balance of payments to align with Qatari interest in a number of key strategic economic sectors, including agriculture and telecommunications. 
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  • Qatari authorities requested 250 Egyptian nationals, including Islamist opposition figure Abdallah al-Sherif, who ran a series of satirical programs on YouTube and Al Jazeera, to leave the country when diplomatic ties were first being established in 2022
  • With Cairo and Ankara establishing closer ties in 2021, the Turkish government instructed opposition media channels broadcasting from Turkish soil to stop criticizing Sisi and his government.
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Tunisia: Attack on Djerba synagogue was premeditated by national guard member - Al-Moni... - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...editated-national-guard-member Tunisia minority minorities Jews saied terrorism Israel France violence
shared by Ed Webb on 12 May 23 - No Cached
  • Tunisia’s Interior Ministry has identified the man behind an attack that killed five people earlier this week, saying Thursday that he intentionally targeted a synagogue on the Mediterranean island of Djerba in a premeditated act. The ministry described the shooting as a “cowardly criminal attack” but refrained from calling it an act of terrorism.
  • The French National Terrorism Prosecution Office has launched its own probe into the attack. Benjamin Haddad, who was French, was killed in the attack along with his cousin Aviel Haddad, who held dual Tunisian and Israeli citizenship.
  • The shooting coincided with the annual Jewish pilgrimage that is part of Lag Ba’omer celebration. Thousands of Jews from around the world gather at El-Ghriba synagogue, believed to be the oldest in Africa dating back 2,500 years.
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  • Djerba’s Jewish population is one of North Africa’s biggest, although in recent years it declined to 1,500, down from 100,000 in the 1960s
  • Tunisia and Israel do not have formal diplomatic relations, but Israelis can apply for a visa to travel to Djerba for the pilgrimage.
  • During his electoral campaign in 2019, Saied, who has since cemented his one-man rule, labeled normalization with Israel “high treason.”
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'Queen Cleopatra' Netflix backlash frustrates show scholars - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...atra-looks-netflix-controversy Egypt media USA US politics race history television TV
shared by Ed Webb on 12 May 23 - No Cached
  • those criticizing the docuseries are “applying our racial constructs to the ancient world, and that is anachronistic.”
  • “With the exception of Jews, ethnicities weren’t really recorded in early Egyptian history,” he wrote. “In Alexandria especially, there was no normative race: genetic makeup was varied as people from across the region, from Europeans to Nubians, lived and married on its lands.”
  • “anti-Blackness is the framework” for much of the discourse around Cleopatra and how she should be depicted.
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  • She is mainly “an object of fascination to Europe — to Greece, to Rome — and to the stitched-together history of quote-unquote Western civilization,” Carr said. “That’s why she is the best known of the Egyptian rulers. She’s virtually irrelevant to the long history of Egypt.”
  • “The HBO series ‘Rome’ portrayed one of the most intelligent, sophisticated and powerful women in the world as a sleazy, dissipated drug addict, yet Egypt didn’t seem to mind,” Gharavi wrote. “Where was the outrage then? But portraying her as Black? Well.”
  • Though “Queen Cleopatra” is billed as a documentary series, it features an easy-to-miss disclaimer at the bottom of each episode’s credits noting that while the series is “based on true events” some “characters and situations have been altered for dramatization purposes.”
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What "Wait and See" Has Brought Tunisia - New Lines Magazine - 0 views

newlinesmag.com/...it-and-see-has-brought-tunisia Tunisia saied authoritarianism analysis opinion rights media
shared by Ed Webb on 13 Mar 23 - No Cached
  • The raids also served as an opportunity to deflect attention from Saied’s core conundrum: As he has consolidated power in his own hands, he has also consolidated responsibility for the country’s failing economy and public services, rising prices and food shortages, and the general sense of precarity that pervades Tunisian life. Yet in a late-night lecture — the former law professor’s favored mode of communication — to members of the security services last week, Saied insisted that those arrested in the raids had been conspiring not only to kill him and threaten state security, but to meddle in the food supply and force prices of basic goods ever higher.
  • Most hoped for accountability for those who had swindled Tunisia out of its prosperity, though who those people were exactly was hard to pin down. Was it the ambiguous group of “corrupt businessmen” Saied had sworn he would bring down during his campaign? Or was it the old politicians? The echo of “Ennahda,” the moderate Islamist party, resounded nearly everywhere.
  • The international community has been markedly milquetoast in its response to his political project, calling for a “return to a democratic path” while continuing to supply financial support, particularly for the security sector. The U.S. and EU are especially shy to condemn Saied, instead issuing statements such as that from U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Yael Lempert, who sought to “reiterate U.S. support for the Tunisian people, underscore the importance of taking steps to strengthen democratic governance, and emphasize the need for inclusive political and economic reforms” during a visit in May amid political arrests and protests.
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  • Like so many others I spoke to in the weeks and months following Saied’s takeover, as he dismantled Parliament, jettisoned the constitution, dismissed judges and jailed opponents, Jawedi insisted that the Tunisian people had toppled a dictator once, and would not hesitate to do so again if need be.
  • Saied has managed to push his political project through, albeit with record low voter participation, but has delivered on little else
  • a cohesive opposition that could challenge him has yet to materialize and the recent arrests undercut what weak opposition was coalescing.
  • members of the Tunisian press rallied outside the prime minister’s office, raising the alarm that they faced ever more restrictions on their work and demanding that Boutar, the Mosaique head, be released. The erosion of press freedoms, they said, was particularly worrying in a country with a government that no longer had internal checks and balances. If Saied succeeds in arresting or intimidating the opposition and his critics into silence, when Tunisians tire of waiting for him to deliver, there may be nothing left to see.
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