6 December 2023

Greetings!

Well, last week we had the news we all wanted in Nick Cage’s views on AI. This week, we’re a little more niche. It’s the news all teenage boys want: an AI robot that can clean your room and learn where you like stuff put away. Cue my Mam’s voice in my head, “if a bleedin’ robot can do it, why can’t you?!” (Not that she would ever say bleedin’, but creative licence).

There’s an interesting story about a shopping store’s ChatBot, which is apparently being taken to court for storing user’s info – not just the chat, but their mouse movements etc. – and comparing this to illegal wiretapping. Quite interested to see how that develops.

WIRED also has a piece on a new jet powered drone that seems like it can operate autonomously (or with a very high degree of autonomy) and is designed to counter the prevalence of cheap drones equipped with explosives, as seen in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, in particular. For some reason I find it quite mad that the comparison they use is that ‘it’s about the size of a patio heater’. Maybe it’s because my Mam’s voice is still in my head. (“You’re not turning on that bleedin’ heater with the cost of electricity!).* Luckily, AI can now detect the least energy efficient homes.

In our ‘AI for Good’ section we have research into how ‘AI that detects methane plumes from space could be a powerful tool for climate change’. And I guess we need all the powerful tools to combat climate change we can take.

In the ‘not Good AI’ section, there is a story on efforts to combat the spread of deepfake porn in high schools in the US.

In the ‘AI reminds me of Netflix’ section, there’s a story on how AI can be used to detect fraudulent wine (and also to generate statistically good wine I guess). It reminded me of ‘Sour Grapes‘ on Netflix, which was great, particularly for the pure cheekiness of it.

Thanks as ever to Sarah Zarmsky.

Hope you all have a lovely week.

So sad to hear the news that Shane McGowan passed. And also to read so many terrible obituaries, including one that started with a comment on his appearance. Seriously?

Obviously it’s the Pogues this week. So many options, but why not go back to where it started, with ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes‘ live.

Be well.

The Guardian, ‘The Gospel’: how Israel uses AI to select bombing targets in Gaza

Amnesty International, EU: Lawmakers reluctant to stop EU companies profiting from surveillance and abuse through the AI Act  

TS2, Old Navy’s AI Chatbot Raises Privacy Concerns in Legal Battle

Cryptopolitan, South Korea Aims to Lead in Regulating Generative AI

New Scientist, AI cleaning robot can tidy up clothes in a messy bedroom 

University of Oxford, AI that automatically detects methane plumes from space could be a powerful tool in combating climate change.

Communications of the ACM, New York City Takes Aim at AI

The Wall Street Journal, Amazon Launches Free AI Classes in Bid to Win Talent Arms Race

MIT News, Synthetic imagery sets new bar in AI training efficiency

University of Texas at Arlington, New machine learning technique 30% better at predicting cancer cure rates

MIT Technology Review, A high school’s deepfake porn scandal is pushing US lawmakers into action

Towards Data Science, Bias, Toxicity, and Jailbreaking Large Language Models (LLMs)

Towards Data Science, What Role Should AI Play in Healthcare?

UNESCO, Artificial Intelligence in education. Uses and impacts introduced to teachers in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Baker Data Counsel, Examining the Likely Impact of Washington’s My Health, My Data Act on Class Action Litigation Involving Biometric Data

Technology’s Legal Edge, UK House of Lords introduce bill setting the stage for AI regulation

The Register, Creating a single AI-generated image needs as much power as charging your smartphone   

The Guardian, Researchers create AI tool with a nose for fraudulent wine

The New York Times, The Climate Summit Embraces A.I., With Reservations

The Register, Local council in Brazil passes ChatGPT-written proposal

The Guardian, Georgia county to use program linked to election denier to flag ineligible voters

The Guardian, AI laser that reads heartbeat through the throat could replace stethoscopes

WIRED, ‘Authentic’ Is 2023’s Word of the Year. You Read That Right

WIRED, Anduril’s New Drone Killer Is Locked on to AI-Powered Warfare

The Register, Meta to require disclosure of AI-altered political ads

The Washington Post, Fake babies, real horror: Deepfakes from the Gaza war increase fears about AI’s power to mislead

The Register, Senate bill could end expansion of TSA face recognition tech

The Register, Interpol arrests suspect after remote biometric checks

BBC, AI trained to detect least energy-efficient homes

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights calls for attentive governance of AI risk, focusing on people’s rights

Privacy International, Protecting persons with disabilities in a digitised world

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, USA: Judge finds reasonable evidence that Tesla knew its self-driving tech was defective

Defense One, AI has a political problem       

Blog Posts

RAILS, AI Regulation in Canada: Protective and Innovation-Enabling 

The Conversation, Turmoil at OpenAI shows we must address whether AI developers can regulate themselves 

The Conversation, Artificial intelligence is already in our hospitals. 5 questions people want answered 

The Conversation, How AI ‘sees’ the world – what happened when we trained a deep learning model to identify poverty 

Reports

Amnesty International, Trapped by Automation: Poverty and discrimination in Serbia’s welfare state 

Lighthouse Reports, France’s Digital Inquisition

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 

B. Toff and F. M. Simon, “Or they could just not use it?”: The Paradox of AI Disclosure for Audience Trust in News

E. Hine et al., Supporting Trustworthy AI Through Machine Unlearning  

E. Ferrara, Fairness and Bias in Artificial Intelligence: A Brief Survey of Sources, Impacts, and Mitigation Strategies 

Media

Al Jazeera (video), What are the implications of Israel’s reported use of AI in Gaza war? 

The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper, AI & The Future of Humanity 

Events & Calls for PapersUNESCO, Global Forum on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence 2024 (Slovenia, 5-6 February 2024)

* Its far from patio heaters we were raised.

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