Greetings all, and happy Wednesday! What an absolutely gorgeous Spring day in London. And what a time to be alive and to be fortunate enough to bask in the wonder of top-tier international diplomacy.
Quite unusually I’d like to flag a Human Rights Watch report on Burkina Faso. I’m including here as HRW developed an AI tool to extract, transcribe and analyse approximately 38,000 videos, and to then generate a searchable database. Pretty cool. There’s more information in Annex II.
AlgorithmWatch also have quite an interesting piece on why the Army isn’t using AI for Wargaming which, in fairness, is one area you thought they would have embraced. Rest of World News also have an interesting story on what recent attacks on data centers mean for how data centers are built, and whether they also run military software or store military data. It also raises the possibility of the establishment of data embassies in third countries. Keeping on the conflict theme, The Guardian has an interesting piece on the AI-generated Iran US meme wars. And the New York Times has a piece on Anthropic’s AI cyber security potential. Obviously, Anthropic think its a game changer. And they haven’t been wrong at all recently. Have they?
As someone with their finger on the pulse of the Internet – at a reliable lag time of 3 to 4 weeks – I’m obviously going to have to leave you this week with Angine de Poitrine. These lads are mad. It’s not what I’d usually listen to, but I can’t stop listening. Here’s Sarniezz. This is also one it’s definitely worth sharing the video for.
Stay well. Be lovely.
Human Rights Watch, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in Burkina Faso
The Guardian, ‘The frontline is like Terminator’: fighting robots give Ukraine hope in war with Russia
EDRI, New study reveals how young people are influenced by gamification features on Snapchat
AlgorithmWatch, Where the army does not use AI
Rest of World News, Nations priced out of Big AI are building with frugal models
EDRI, Predatorgate: Breaking the chain of impunity of the spyware underworld
The HIll, Democrats investigating TSA, ICE data sharing after San Francisco airport incident
The Hill, Social media giants not fully complying with child account ban, Australia alleges
The HIll, Almost half of college students have considered changing majors due to potential AI impact: Polling (this is interesting, but frustratingly devoid of detail)
The Guardian, Pupils in England are losing their thinking skills because of AI, survey suggests (this is genuinely such a challenge for university education, that i don’t think we’re meeting)
EFF, EFF’s Submission to the UN OHCHR on Protection of Human Rights Defenders in the Digital Age
Rest of World News, “Data embassies” and safeguarding digital assets during wartime
DRM, Age of AI Empires
EFF, Digital Hopes, Real Power: How the Arab Spring Fueled a Global Surveillance Boom
BBC, North Yorkshire Police to use live facial recognition technology
BBC, London shops struggle with daily theft as Met reports success on shoplifting
New York Times. A.I. May Worsen Wealth Inequality (haven’t we seen this before? Same, no shit, response)
The Register, UK’s grand plan to fuel AI with public data faces uphill battle
The Guardian, AI-generated Lego videos and Trump’s poo-bombing: welcome to the Iran-US slopaganda wars
The New Yorker, The Team Behind a Pro-Iran, Lego-Themed Viral-Video Campaign
New York Times, Anthropic’s Restraint Is a Terrifying Warning Sign
New York Times, Anthropic Claims Its New A.I. Model, Mythos, Is a Cybersecurity ‘Reckoning’ (as it would)
The Conversation, AMD’s AI director slams Claude Code for becoming dumber and lazier since last update (pure coincidental placement)
WIRED, Hackers Are Posting the Claude Code Leak With Bonus Malware (Co.In.See.Dense)
The Conversation, Why AI shouldn’t be used even to decide ‘simple’ court cases (wait, what?!)
The Guardian, Row over ‘virtual gated community’ AI surveillance plan in Toronto neighbourhood
New York Times, How Accurate Are Google’s A.I. Overviews? (not very in my experience)
Financial Times, UK considers testing AI models used by banks (i’m sitting in City airport, gotta quote the FT to claim that free coffee)
Financial Times, Is AI the new fracking? (hoping for a glass of champagne. Cava, even)
The Register, AI agents promise to ‘run the business,’ but who is liable if things go wrong? (probably whoever decided to use AI?)
The New York Times, What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots (do we want to know?)
The Register, Google battles Chinese open-weights models with Gemma 4