Greetings! And welcome back to the AI & Human Rights Newsletter.
It has been absolutely gorgeous this week in London. Clear blue skies and sun. It just generates so much positivity and hope. And that is very welcome.
I presume ye have all already seen the AI-generated ‘Trump Gaza’ video. Which was posted… by Trump? There’s not a lot of words left for the current state of affairs. Palestinians’ have released a counter-video.
But have ye seen this? Its a conversational AI bot, which draws on emotional chat. Its definitely worth a test.
In very exciting news, myself and the incredible, indelible, Prof. Pete Fussey have a release date for our book Facial Recognition Surveillance: Policing and Human Rights in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Its out with OUP in July. ish.
I’d also like to flag a new story in ProPublic on Cambridge Analytica (remember them?), and another in the Guardian on Israel’s creation of a ChatGPT-esque tool based on the surveillance of Palestinians. This does not seem like a good idea. At all. Both are top of the list below.
I’ll leave you this week with – and head off out into the sun to – ‘Mole in the Ground’ by John Francis Flynn. It’s mad. But sure we all need a bit of madness.
Until next week!
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The Guardian, Revealed: Israeli military creating ChatGPT-like tool using vast collection of Palestinian surveillance data
ProPublica, How Cambridge Analytica Used Intimate Data to Exploit Gun Owners’ Private Lives
Sesame, Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice
ProPublica, How Cambridge Analytica Used Intimate Data to Exploit Gun Owners’ Private Lives
BBC, Inside the Taliban’s surveillance network monitoring millions
The Register, Deepfake cyberattacks proliferated in 2024, iProov claims
Smithsonian, Bletchley Park Exhibition Shows How World War II-Era Research Shaped Artificial Intelligence
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Anti-Surveillance Mapmaker Refuses Flock Safety’s Cease and Desist Demand (interesting re the extent of private surveillance)
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Ninth Circuit Correctly Rules That Dating App Isn’t Liable for Matching Users
The Register, How to exploit top LRMs that reveal their reasoning steps
The New York Times, IPhone Dictation Feature Transcribes the Word ‘Racist’ as ‘Trump’(ok, i didnt read this, but included for the headline)
Financial Times, Estonia launches AI in high schools with US tech groups
WIRED, Boston Dynamics Led a Robot Revolution. Now Its Machines Are Teaching Themselves New Tricks
The Guardian, AI is ‘beating’ humans at empathy and creativity. But these games are rigged
The New York Times, OpenAI Unveils A.I. Technology for ‘Natural Conversation’
The Guardian, Sora, OpenAI’s video generator, has hit the UK. It’s obvious why creatives are worried
The Guardian, Two Australian men charged in global investigation into AI-made child abuse images
WIRED, Honor’s New AI Agent Can Read and Understand Your Screen
The Conversation, AI could supercharge human collective intelligence in everything from disaster relief to medical research (or, you know… ;p )
Financial Times, Students must learn to be more than mindless ‘machine-minders’
The New York TImes, The Government Knows A.G.I. is Coming
The Conversation, How the risk of AI weapons could spiral out of control
MIT Tech Review, How AI is used to surveil workers
MIT Tech Review, A Nobel laureate on the economics of artificial intelligence
MIT Tech Review, Should we be moving data centers to space?
MIT Tech Review, At RightsCon in Taipei, activists reckon with a US retreat from promoting digital rights
Middle East Monitor, Meta, X failed to remove far-right hate speech on platforms, potentially impacting Germany elections, probe finds
The Hindu, Amazon debuts new Alexa voice assistant with AI overhaul
The New Arab, From Musk to Palantir in the NHS: Resisting technofascism
Blogs
Just Security, Q&A with Mariejte Schaake on the Tech Coup and Trump
Podcast:
BBC, Live facial recognition deployed in Cardiff over weekend’s rugby fixture