Greetings friends, and happy Thursday!
I hope you are all keeping well. I’m in Oxford teaching on a human rights summer school (on, you guessed it, Human Rights & AI) and its really lovely to be here for a few weeks. Quite idyllic with the sun, and the rowing crews, and i’m heading back to London before the rain comes, so even better 🙂 Remarkably, i have now also managed two newsletters only a week apart. Here’s hoping for three in a row! That will, however, be the last one for a while as August is hiatus time.
Quite pressed for time this week. So obviously highlighting the least important of this week’s stories: You’ve heard of The Velvet Underground, but have you heard of The Velvet Sundown? Well, you might soon (actually youre about to). The band quickly shot to fame (of sorts) with over a million streams on Spotify, but it turns out the music, the images, and the backstory were all AI generated. This is, i think a first? In terms of the success and level of misinfo at least. You can listen to their hit ‘Dust on the Wind’. If you fancy it.
This week i’ll leave you with ‘Take What’s Given’ by BadBadNotGood. Because its an absolute whopper.
Stay well. Stay lovely.
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New York Times, China Is Spending Billions to Become an A.I. Superpower
Tech Policy Press, The US Just Logged Off from Internet Freedom
Financial Times, A more intelligent approach to AI regulation
BBC, Bedfordshire Police vans could get facial recognition cameras
BBC, Croydon’s fixed facial recognition cameras spark debate
Financial Times, Europe just years away from uncrewed fighter jets, says defence start-up Helsing
The New York Times, A Classroom Experiment
Truthout, US Campuses Have Become the Newest Laboratories for Surveillance Technology
The New York Times, European Union Unveils Rules for Powerful A.I. Systems – The New York Times
Politico, Europe’s privacy groups take on Big Tech with class action cases
Future of Privacy, Tech to Support Older Adults and Caregivers: Five Privacy Questions for Age Tech
Newsweek, Are The Velvet Sundown an AI Band? What We Know
The Guardian, An AI-generated band got 1m plays on Spotify. Now music insiders say listeners should be warned
The Hill, France opens criminal probe into X algorithms under Musk
The Hill, US Divided over AI implications
The Hill, Grok controversies raise questions about moderating, regulating AI content
The Register, Microsoft says regulations and environmental issues are cramping its Euro expansion
The Conversation, AI in health care could save lives and money − but change won’t happen overnight
The Guardian, New research centre to explore how AI can help humans ‘speak’ with pets
The Guardian, Scientists reportedly hiding AI text prompts in academic papers to receive positive peer reviews
The Register, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI get $800M to hop in bed with Pentagon
The Washington Post, Defense Department to begin using Grok, Musk’s controversial AI model (this doesn’t seem like a great idea)
WIRED, I Tried Grok’s Built-In Anime Companion and It Called Me a Twat
New Arab, Investigation reveals Israel used paid ads to discredit Albanese
Hindustan Times, Woman’s hyper-realistic ‘seflies’ with Bollywood stars are all AI-generated. Here’s the prompt she used (potential for disinfo related, not just clickbait)
MYnews, China’s AI glasses market takes shape as Xiaomi’s entry inspires early adopters (as i said, i think last week, these terrify me)
El Pais, For years, the EU’s border agency unlawfully transferred data on migrants and activists to Europol
Hindustan Times, Drones, AI and Robot Pickers: Meet the Fully Autonomous Farm
Blogs
ICRC Blog, International humanitarian law and connectivity disruptions during armed conflict
Reports
Report of UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, From economy of occupation to economy of genocide (referencing the role of tech companies)