Greetings, from a gloomy grey London, hope you’re all having a wonderful Wednesday.
So, today, straight out of the blocks with some propaganda! Myself and my friend and colleague Pete Fussey contributed to the new ‘Model Protocol for Law Enforcement Officials to Promote and Protect Human Rights in the Context of Peaceful Protests‘. (We didn’t contribute the title). But we did play a big role vis-a-vis the use of digital technologies. More details at the UN HCHR website, including the text of the protocol and the component specifically focused on digital tech.
Two academic contributions worth flagging. First, is a Special Issue of the Journal of International Criminal Justice on Autonomous Weapons Systems and War Crimes. Particularly looking forward to reading Antonio Coco’s piece. The theme of the special issue is quite topical, as you’ll know from the last few newsletters given Israel’s apparently extensive use of AI in Gaza, the US’ use of AI for targeting, and the news today that Palantir have been awarded the US army contract for battlefield AI. Second, is a new piece by Daniel Solve on AI and Privacy. Everything Daniel J has written has been worth a read, so am looking forward to this one.
In facial recognition news, Big Brother Watch have a release out in light of the extra cash for facial recognition in last week’s budget. Interestingly, on the radio one of the ministers (I cant remember who, it was early) was highlighting that increased automation, and use of AI, was essentially the plan to fill gaps in the provision of public services caused by an abject failure in government policy, the decision to reduce taxation levels despite crumbling public services, left wing protestors, Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Not a shocking revelation in light of the last few years, but probably not great news for, eh, the provision of public services.
The Washington Post has a nice piece on videos made using Generative AI, with good examples. They also have a decent video on the plan to use AI surveillance in Paris at the Olympics. Probably not one to file under the Breaking News section tho.
Thanks to Sarah Zarmsky, and hope you enjoy the newsletter.
I would very much like to be away on holiday somewhere having the craic, and so I’ll leave you with a tune that always puts me in the mood for Berlin, ‘Einstegen‘ from Ellen Allien. Slightly different vibes, but ‘Since I Left You‘ is also very evocative of that first drink in the sun on holidays.
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Bloomberg, OpenAI GPT Sorts Resume Names With Racial Bias, Test Shows
TIME, Ethical AI Isn’t to Blame for Google’s Gemini Debacle
OECD.AI, The AI data scraping challenge: How can we proceed responsibly?
TechBullion, Addressing Concerns: The Role of AI in Safeguarding Student Privacy in Education
The Keyword, How AI is helping advance women’s health around the world
AI News, International Women’s Day: What it takes to innovate in the age of Gen AI
AI News, AIs in India will need government permission before launching
Brookings, How public AI can strengthen democracy
Towards Data Science, Gender Bias in AI (International Women’s Day Edition)
Towards Data Science, Is AI Fair in Love (and War)? Measuring Racial Bias in Large Language Models
MIT Technology Review, Nobody knows how AI works
UNESCO, AI and Judicial Systems
Technology’s Legal Edge, Building a smarter smartbomb: The Government responds to the House of Lords AI in Weapon Systems Committee
The Washington Post, Paris to use AI surveillance at Olympics
The New York Times, A.I. Is Learning What It Means to Be Alive
The Guardian, Warning over use in UK of unregulated AI chatbots to create social care plans
The Register, Large language model SauLM-7B aims for legal applications
The Register, Biden’s SOTU calls for a ban on AI voice impersonation
WIRED, Welcome to the Valley of the Creepy AI Dolls
The Guardian, ‘It’s terrifying’: songwriter behind Robbie Williams hits out at AI in the music industry
The Register, Palantir wins US Army contract for battlefield AI
The Guardian, ‘We definitely messed up’: why did Google AI tool make offensive historical images?
The New York Times, Dozens of Top Scientists Sign Effort to Prevent A.I. Bioweapons
The Washington Post, AI can now generate videos, and they look pretty realistic
The Register, Reddit moderators getting an assist from a new LLM tool
WIRED, Google’s GenAI Bots Are Struggling. But So Are Its Humans
The Guardian, Australian news media could seek payment from Meta for content used to train AI
The Guardian, AI likely to increase energy use and accelerate climate misinformation – report
WIRED, 5 Years After San Francisco Banned Face Recognition, Voters Ask for More Surveillance
WIRED, AI Tools Are Still Generating Misleading Election Images
The Washington Post, What fake images of Trump with Black voters tell us about AI disinformation
WIRED, The Dark Side of Open Source AI Image Generators
The New York Times, Self Service for Airport Security? It’s Happening in Las Vegas.
The Washington Post, This agency is tasked with keeping AI safe. Its offices are crumbling.
Big Brother Watch, Big Brother Watch responds to £230 million for facial recognition announced in budget
Algorithm Watch, The Council of Europe’s Convention on AI: No free ride for tech companies and security authorities!
Blog Posts
The Conversation, Emotion-tracking AI on the job: Workers fear being watched – and misunderstood
The Conversation, AI bias: the organised struggle against automated discrimination
Reports
Amnesty International, Briefing: Social Protection in the Digital Age
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
Journal of International Criminal Justice, Special Issue: Autonomous Weapons Systems and War Crimes
D. J. Solove, Artificial Intelligence and Privacy
A. King, Robot wars: Autonomous drone swarms and the battlefield of the future
E. Erman and M. Furendal, The democratization of global AI governance and the role of tech companies
D. E. Coleman, Information Literacy, Information Access, and Artificial Intelligence: A Brief Overview of Their Interplay in the Modern Information World
Media
Information Week (Podcast), What the Fawkes: Facial Recognition, Digital Masking, and AI
Blackbox (The Guardian Podcast), Episode two – The hunt for ClothOff: the deepfake porn app
EventsUNESCO (Webinar, 14 March), Breaking Barriers: Navigating Gender Rights in the Judiciary in the Era of Artificial Intelligence