15 November 2023

Greetings, and I hope all is well with ye all.

So, wow. First story this week is potentially really interesting, but there are frustratingly few actual details! It concerns a pilot programme run by the NHS to track people’s eating and drinking habits to reduce ‘avoidable’ hospital admissions. There are clearly huge privacy and stigmatisation issues at play, and a real question about how access to kettle and fridge use is monitored. I presume this doesn’t involve ‘smart’ fridges, etc. The reporting seems a little muddy as it may be that care workers monitor individuals habits, and then report this for further intervention, but this is then linked with a (separate?) story regarding the use of AI tool to flag those at risk. Really interesting anyways. AI has always held a lot of promise in terms of preventative health care, but the way this is framed does seem concerning. Data Justice Lab did work previously on AI and social welfare if you’re interested in this topic.

So, I watched ‘The Creator‘ last night, which I really enjoyed. And today am reading this story on NYPD’s deployment of autonomous police robots. The story (well, specifically Albert Fox Cahn) highlights that even if live facial recognition is not used, the use of retrospective facial rec on the images recorded can have massive implications. And not just for privacy, this is where the chilling effect really comes into play. WIRED also have a story on the dramatic expansion of all forms of facial rec here in the UK. If its any consolation, I thought the Creator ended really quite happily (overall). So there is that.

That said, this also happened.

So, music wise, I’ve just been looking for positivity in a time of what seems like endless horror. So this week, it’s Enola Gay. An anti-war song with bounce.

Thanks as always to Sarah Zarmsky. Be well.

Politics Home, AI Summit’s Bletchley Declaration does little to address tech harms in the here and now 

Sky News, NHS to track people’s kettles and fridges to reduce ‘avoidable’ admissions  

The New Yorker, Does A.I. Lead Police to Ignore Contradictory Evidence? 

BBC News, Beyoncé’s Cardiff gig crowd was scanned for paedophiles 

JOLT Digest, Under the Watchful, Unblinking Eye: Privacy Implications of the New York Police Department’s Deployment of Autonomous Robots

The Guardian, How Chinese firm linked to repression of Uyghurs aids Israeli surveillance in West Bank

FedScoop, Homeland Security adds facial comparison, machine learning uses to AI inventory

HackerNoon, US Agencies Directed to Strengthen Privacy Protection Against AI in New Executive Order

Towards Data Science, Can AI Overcome Human’s Confirmation Bias?

The Harvard Gazette, How facial-recognition app poses threat to privacy, civil liberties

UNESCO, Leveraging UNESCO Normative Instruments for an Ethical Generative AI Use of Indigenous Data

The Register, UK signals legal changes to self-driving vehicles liability

The Guardian, A two-hour walking tour with ChatGPT: ‘I’d not suggest that to my worst enemy’ 

The Guardian, ‘It is a beast that needs to be tamed’: leading novelists on how AI could rewrite the future 

The Washington Post, A.I. and nuclear decisions shouldn’t mix, U.S. says ahead of Biden-Xi summit

The Register, Adobe sells fake AI-generated Israel-Hamas war images – then the news ran them as real 

The Guardian, Faked audio of Sadiq Khan dismissing Armistice Day shared among far-right groups

The New York Times, Personalized A.I. Agents Are Here. Is the World Ready for Them? 

Financial Times, Here’s what we know about generative AI’s impact on white-collar work

Financial Times, Cruise’s driverless car accident underlines the risks of AI

The Register, Child psychiatrist jailed after making pornographic AI deep-fakes of kids

The Guardian, AI could cause ‘catastrophic’ financial crisis, says Yuval Noah Harari 

The Washington Post, Schumer previews plan to tackle AI in elections, privacy

Financial Times, In AI, focus on technocrats not terminators

The Conversation, UK announces AI funding for teachers: how this technology could change the profession

The Register, India gives social media platforms 36 hours to remove deepfakes

The Conversation, Bletchley declaration: international agreement on AI safety is a good start, but ordinary people need a say – not just elites 

The Register, FTC interrupts Copyright Office probe to flip out over potential AI fraud, abuse

The Register, Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him

The Conversation, Generative AI like ChatGPT could help boost democracy – if it overcomes key hurdles 

The Washington Post, Meta will require campaigns to disclose use of AI in political ads

WIRED, The US and 30 Other Nations Agree to Set Guardrails for Military AI

The Conversation, Who will write the rules for AI? How nations are racing to regulate artificial intelligence

The Conversation, AI-generated faces look just like real ones – but evidence shows your brain can tell the difference

WIRED, Police Use of Face Recognition Is Sweeping the UK

Privacy International, Revealed: UK MPs “asleep at the wheel” as government ramps up facial recognition technology

Algorithm Watch, Some image generators produce more problematic stereotypes than others, but all fail at diversity

Blog Posts

Opinio Juris, “How Do You Feel Today?” Exploring IHRL and IHL Perspectives on Law Enforcement and Military Uses of Emotion Recognition Technology 

Media

The Washington Post (Video), Topol on using AI in ‘changing the fate of cancer’           

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 

E. Taiwo et al., A Review of the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Its Applications in the United States 

C. Geiger and V. Iaia, The Forgotten Creator: Towards a Statutory Remuneration Right for Machine Learning of Generative AI 

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