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Bill Gates Hopes AI Can Reduce ‘Polarization,’ Save ‘Democracy,’ Ignores Censorship Implications
The notion that whoever controls and shapes AI could potentially wield significant influence over large swathes of society could be one of the most alarming and prominent over the next few years.
In a recent episode of “Unconfuse Me with Bill Gates,” Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and tech billionaire Bill Gates controversially delved into the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool for maintaining democracy and promoting world peace.
The discussion notably omits a critical aspect: the influence of the programmers’ own beliefs and principles on the AI’s functioning. The designers and developers of AI systems inherently embed their ideas about democracy, free speech, and governance into the AI’s algorithms. This raises significant concerns about the impact of these personal biases on the AI’s neutrality and its ability to make fair, unbiased decisions.
The prospect of AI systems being programmed with particular ideologies could have profound implications for free speech. If an AI is designed to favor certain political or social viewpoints, (excluding those it decides are “polarizing”) it could potentially suppress opposing perspectives, leading to a form of digital censorship.
Exclusive: Pentagon Faces Questions for Funding Top Chinese AI Scientist
U.S. lawmakers are demanding answers from the Department of Defense as to why it ignored signs that a scientist who got tens of millions of dollars in federal research grants was for years transferring potentially sensitive research on advanced artificial intelligence to China, Newsweek reports exclusively.
The chairs of two House committees and three subcommittees also asked the National Science Foundation (NSF), which is a federal government agency, and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) why they failed to pay attention to “concerning signs” over the Chinese-born scientist Song-Chun Zhu, in similarly worded letters sent to all three institutions on Wednesday.
Newsweek revealed in November 2023 that Zhu had received over $30 million in U.S. grants to lead research into the most advanced artificial intelligence that could have major military implications.
“U.S. federal grant-providing agencies ignored numerous concerning signs while granting Mr. Zhu $30 million in grants,” the chairs of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wrote in a letter addressed to the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd J. Austin III.
EXCLUSIVE: CDC Drafted Alert for Myocarditis and COVID Vaccines, but Never Sent It
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) prepared to alert state and local officials to an emerging connection between heart inflammation and COVID-19 vaccines but ultimately did not send the alert, according to a new document obtained by The Epoch Times.
All four COVID-19 vaccines that are or have been available in the United States can cause the heart inflammation, or myocarditis, according to studies, experts, and agencies like the CDC. The first cases were reported shortly after the vaccines became available in late 2020.
The CDC sends alerts to federal, state, and local public health officials and doctors across the nation through a system called the Health Alert Network (HAN). Messaging through the system conveys “vital health information,” according to the CDC.
“This censorship of a proposed alert in May of 2021 is just one more example of our regulatory agencies’ repeated pattern of behavior to censor any information that serves to counter the narrative that the COVID-19 vaccinations are ’safe and effective,’” Dr. Joel Wallskog, co-chair of the vaccine-injured advocacy group React19, told The Epoch Times via email.
Unsettling New Warning in Chrome Incognito Mode Reveals Ongoing Tracking
Chrome’s Incognito mode is a bit of a joke that even Google employees weren’t so hyped about it. It’s now going to be less useful for “privacy” reasons, as explained in a new disclaimer change.
An updated warning page for Incognito mode went live on Canary, a version of Chrome primarily used by developers, as first spotted by MSPowerUser on Tuesday. The new text confirms your data will be collected by websites and Google while browsing in this mode. This change has yet to hit the latest version of Chrome, but it’s likely to come soon.
Google’s update to the disclaimer stems from a 2020 lawsuit the company was hit with over the not-so-private Incognito mode. That $5 billion class-action suit alleged Google’s privacy options didn’t work as described, meaning users were continually tracked while using Chrome.
Google settled the lawsuit in late December according to Reuters, but no details of the settlement were made public, and it will still need to be approved by a judge in February.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Be Deposed in Texas Facial Recognition Case
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg must take part in a deposition as part of an ongoing lawsuit in Texas involving the company’s facial recognition technology. Justice Jeff Rambin of Texas’s Sixth Court of Appeals said in a Tuesday ruling that the state court has denied Meta’s recent petition “seeking relief from an order compelling the oral deposition” of Zuckerberg at an unspecified date.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit in February 2022, saying at the time that Meta has been “capturing and using the biometric data of millions of Texans without properly obtaining their informed consent to do so.”
Attorneys representing Texas also said Meta violated the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act by “failing to disclose information — including the fact that it collects biometric identifiers — with the intent to induce Facebook users in Texas into using Facebook, which such users would not have done had the information been disclosed.”
In Tuesday’s ruling, the state of Texas claimed that Zuckerberg has “had unique personal knowledge of discoverable information” that’s relevant to its lawsuit, alleging that Meta violated state laws related to the collection of biometric data and deceptive trade practices.
The Cops Are Watching You
Who watches the watchmen? All of us, if we’re smart. In the age of surveillance, that means monitoring how and where the snoops put us under scrutiny. Among the people and organizations doing such important work is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which recently updated one of its countersurveillance tools.
“The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today unveiled its new Street Level Surveillance hub, a standalone website featuring expanded and updated content on various technologies that law enforcement agencies commonly use to invade Americans’ privacy,” the group announced on January 10.
The Street Level Surveillance hub integrates closely with EFF’s already established Atlas of Surveillance. Users can search the Atlas for jurisdictions to see what surveillance tools are currently in use in their hometowns or in places they’re visiting.
Unsurprisingly, Washington, DC, is closely monitored by the powers that be. Residents and visitors in the nation’s capital are scrutinized by automated license plate readers, face recognition scanning by the FBI of driver’s license photos, a registry of private security cameras, gunshot detection microphones (yes, they can overhear conversations), cell-site simulators which pinpoint the locations of phones and their users, and more. The Atlas lists the surveillance tools used in the city and links to more information on them — including the extensive write-ups on the Street Level Surveillance hub.
OpenAI Won’t Let Politicians Use Its Tech for Campaigning, for Now
Artificial intelligence company OpenAI laid out its plans and policies to try to stop people from using its technology to spread disinformation and lies about elections, as billions of people in some of the world’s biggest democracies head to the polls this year.
The company, which makes the popular ChatGPT chatbot, DALL-E image generator and provides AI technology to many companies, including Microsoft, said in a Monday blog post that it wouldn’t allow people to use its tech to build applications for political campaigns and lobbying, to discourage people from voting or spread misinformation about the voting process. OpenAI said it would also begin putting embedded watermarks — a tool to detect AI-created photographs — into images made with its DALL-E image generator “early this year.”
“We work to anticipate and prevent relevant abuse — such as misleading ‘deepfakes,’ scaled influence operations, or chatbots impersonating candidates,” OpenAI said in the blog post.
If You’re in the EU, You Can Now Decide How Much Data to Share With Google
If you are in the EU, you can take back more agency over your digital privacy even when using notorious data-hungry platforms.
Google now allows users to decide the amount of information they want to share (or not) with the provider as they can opt for “unlinking” certain services from each other. The move comes as the big tech giant gets ready to comply with new data-sharing rules introduced by the Digital Market Act (DMA).
Approved in November 2022, the new legislation is set to be officially enforced on March 6, 2024. That’s when the choices you select for your Google account will also take effect. These services include Google Search, YouTube, Ad services, Google Play, Chrome, Google Shopping and Google Maps.
You can exactly decide the amount of data you’re comfortable to share with the big tech firm. As Google explains, in fact, “you can choose to keep all these services linked, choose to have none of these services linked, or choose which of these individual services you want to keep linked.”
