21 August 2023

Good morning, happy Monday, and welcome to the AI & Human Rights Newsletter, posting from Prague edition.

I’ll be brief, as I’m on holidays, but big thanks to Sarah Zarmsky for putting the newsletter together.

MIT Technology Review has a good piece on AI for war fighting, particularly interesting because of the run through of different technologies, including the ‘uberisation’ of artillery (seriously).

There is another wrongful arrest due to facial recognition story, and a BBC radio piece on ‘did Big Tech know I was gay before I did?’. This piece on the history of surveillance in Cairo is also a really nice read.

In a major breakthrough for humanity, AI may be able to fill in for us at Zoom meetings The future we want might finally be inching closer.

And since im in Prague, today’s song is Modlitba pro Martu, which was composed in response to the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, and is apparently the song Czech’s associate most with the Velvet Revolution. The performance is from just a few days after the fall of the wall. Or, for a totally different vibe, the Fine Young Cannibals …

Websites

Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Cairo’s Panopticon 2.0

MIT Technology Review, Six ways that AI could change politics 

The Markup, AI Detection Tools Falsely Accuse International Students of Cheating – The Markup 

The Guardian, CEO regrets her firm took on Facebook moderation work after staff ‘traumatised’

The Times, AI system can deter people smugglers by detecting small boats early

Popular Science, School district uses ChatGPT to help remove library books

MIT Technology Review, Hated that video? YouTube’s algorithm might push you another just like it.

NPR, ‘New York Times’ considers legal action against OpenAI as copyright tensions swirl

MIT Technology Review, Inside the messy ethics of making war with machines

Financial Times, UK to host AI safety summit at start of November

AI News, ChatGPT’s political bias highlighted in study 

WIRED, Use of AI Is Seeping Into Academic Journals—and It’s Proving Difficult to Detect

MIT Technology Review, AI isn’t great at decoding human emotions. So why are regulators targeting the tech?

The Conversation, Snapchat’s ‘creepy’ AI blunder reminds us that chatbots aren’t people. But as the lines blur, the risks grow

The Register, ‘AI-written book’ on Maui wildfire selling well on Amazon

The Washington Post, AI can now attend Zoom meetings for you

The Register, Tesla knew Autopilot weakness killed a driver – and didn’t fix it, engineers claim

The Guardian, Google DeepMind testing ‘personal life coach’ AI tool

The Guardian, Westworld at 50: Michael Crichton’s bleak vision of AI remains chilling

Financial Times, The sceptical case on generative AI

The Guardian, Deepfake detection tools must work with dark skin tones, experts warn 

The Register, Humans stressed out by content moderation? Just use AI, says OpenAI

The Guardian, ‘AI cannot taste the way a chef can’: are chatbots a threat to fine dining?

The Register, The US Pentagon launches new generative AI task force

The Register, Amazon uses AI to generate product review summaries

The Conversation, Do we need a new law for AI? Sure – but first we could try enforcing the laws we already have

The Guardian, ‘Only AI made it possible’: scientists hail breakthrough in tracking British wildlife

The Washington post, New AI app lets users ‘text’ with Jesus, as impersonated by ChatGPT

The Guardian, A tsunami of AI misinformation will shape next year’s knife-edge elections

AP News, Detroit police changing facial-recognition policy after pregnant woman says she was wrongly charged 

The Guardian, TechScape: ‘Are you kidding, carjacking?’ – The problem with facial recognition in policing

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, Stanford study finds AI detection tools to be biased against international students 

Forbes, An AI Model Tested In The Ukraine War Is Helping Assess Damage From The Hawaii Wildfires 

IPVM, Huawei Pledges Advanced Camera System Under Taliban 

Academic Literature

*Disclaimer: The following articles, chapters, and books have not been evaluated for their methodology and do not necessarily reflect the views of the AI & Human Right Blog 

David Gray Widder, Sarah West, and Meredith Whittaker, Open (For Business): Big Tech, Concentrated Power, and the Political Economy of Open AI

Joe Parslow, Kings, Queens, Monsters, and Things: Digital Drag Performance and Queer Moves in Artificial Intelligence (AI) 

Onur Bakiner, Pluralistic sociotechnical imaginaries in Artificial Intelligence (AI) law: the case of the European Union’s AI Act

Lena Enqvist, ‘Human oversight’ in the EU artificial intelligence act: what, when and by whom?

Bibo Lin, Beyond authoritarianism and liberal democracy: understanding China’s artificial intelligence impact in Africa

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