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Get a Clue, Says Panel About Buzzy AI Tech: It’s Being ‘Deployed as Surveillance’
Earlier today at a Bloomberg conference in San Francisco, some of the biggest names in AI turned up, including, briefly, Sam Altman of OpenAI, who just ended his two-month world tour, and Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque. Still, one of the most compelling conversations happened later in the afternoon, in a panel discussion about AI ethics.
Featuring Meredith Whittaker, the president of the secure messaging app Signal; Credo AI co-founder and CEO Navrina Singh; and Alex Hanna, the director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute, the three had a unified message for the audience, which was: Don’t get so distracted by the promise and threats associated with the future of AI. It is not magic, it’s not fully automated and — per Whittaker — it’s already intrusive beyond anything that most Americans seemingly comprehend.
The comments made separately by Whittaker — who previously worked at Google, co-founded NYU’s AI Now Institute and was an adviser to the Federal Trade Commission — were even more pointed (and also impactful based on the audience’s enthusiastic reaction to them). Her message was that enchanted as the world may be now by chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard, the technology underpinning them is dangerous, especially as power grows more concentrated by those at the top of the advanced AI pyramid.
There’s much more that everyday people don’t understand about what’s happening, Whittaker suggested, calling AI “a surveillance technology.” Facing the crowd, she elaborated, noting that AI “requires surveillance in the form of these massive datasets that entrench and expand the need for more and more data and more and more intimate collection. The solution to everything is more data, and more knowledge pooled in the hands of these companies.
“But these systems are also deployed as surveillance devices. And I think it’s really important to recognize that it doesn’t matter whether output from an AI system is produced through some probabilistic statistical guesstimate, or whether it’s data from a cell tower that’s triangulating my location. That data becomes data about me. It doesn’t need to be correct. It doesn’t need to be reflective of who I am or where I am. But it has power over my life that is significant, and that power is being put in the hands of these companies.”
Child Predators Are Using Discord, a Popular App Among Teens, for Sextortion and Abductions
Discord launched in 2015 and quickly emerged as a hub for online gamers, growing through the pandemic to become a destination for communities devoted to topics as varied as crypto trading, YouTube gossip and K-pop. It’s now used by 150 million people worldwide.
But the app has a darker side. In hidden communities and chat rooms, adults have used the platform to groom children before abducting them, trade child sexual exploitation material (CSAM) and extort minors whom they trick into sending nude images.
In a review of international, national and local criminal complaints, news articles and law enforcement communications published since Discord was founded, NBC News identified 35 cases over the past six years in which adults were prosecuted on charges of kidnapping, grooming or sexual assault that allegedly involved communications on Discord.
Discord isn’t the only tech platform dealing with the persistent problem of online child exploitation, according to numerous reports over the last year. But experts have suggested that Discord’s young user base, decentralized structure and multimedia communication tools, along with its recent growth in popularity, have made it a particularly attractive location for people looking to exploit children.
What In-House Counsel Should Take Away From a Pair of Children’s Privacy Mega-Settlements
Regulators are playing hardball on kids’ privacy, with two recent settlements with tech giants giving in-house counsel in the industry plenty of reasons to review their own data collection and storage policies.
Last month, Amazon agreed to pay $25 million to settle allegations from the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice that it illegally retained voice recordings from children who used their Alexa devices, and then deceived parents about it.
According to the charges, Amazon used the recordings to improve its algorithm and kept transcripts of what kids had said even after parents requested the recordings be deleted.
Less than a week later, Microsoft agreed to pay $20 million to settle FTC allegations that it illegally collected personal information from children who signed up for its Xbox gaming system without notifying their parents or obtaining their consent, and then illegally retained children’s personal information.
FDIC Mistakenly Releases Confidential Information on Silicon Valley Bank Depositors, Revealing Major Tech Giants That Benefitted From Government Help
After Silicon Valley Bank failed in March, U.S. officials — including President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen — described its rescue as a necessary step to protect small businesses.
While many early-stage startups banked with the SVB, new documents obtained by Bloomberg show that several global tech giants with significant deposits also benefitted from the government’s intervention.
Sequoia Capital, a tech firm that backs giants like Apple and Google, for instance, had $1 billion of its $85 billion in assets at SVB, according to Bloomberg. Altos Lab, Inc., a life sciences startup that’s received billions from funders like Jeff Bezos, also had $680.3 million in the failed bank.
Bloomberg obtained the new documents through a Freedom of Information Act request filed with the FDIC. The independent government agency accidentally turned over the documents without first redacting some key details. Bloomberg published some of those details despite requests from the agency to withhold the information, the outlet reported.
Tom Morello, Zack de la Rocha, and Boots Riley Boycotting Venues That Use Face-Scanning Technology
Over 100 artists including Rage Against the Machine co-founders Tom Morello and Zack de la Rocha, along with Boots Riley and Speedy Ortiz, have announced that they are boycotting any concert venue that uses facial recognition technology, citing concerns that the tech infringes on privacy and increases discrimination.
The boycott, organized by the digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future, calls for the ban of face-scanning technology at all live events. Several smaller independent concert venues across the country, including the House of Yes in Brooklyn, the Lyric Hyperion in Los Angeles, and Black Cat in DC, also pledged to not use facial recognition tech for their shows. Other artists who said they would boycott include Anti-Flag, Wheatus, Downtown Boys, and over 80 additional artists. The full list of signatories is available here.
“Surveillance tech companies are pitching biometric data tools as ‘innovative’ and helpful for increasing efficiency and security. Not only is this false, but it’s also morally corrupt,” Leila Nashashibi, campaigner at Fight for the Future, said in a statement.
“For starters, this technology is so inaccurate that it actually creates more harm and problems than it solves, through misidentification and other technical faultiness. Even scarier, though, is a world in which all facial recognition technology works 100% perfectly — in other words, a world in which privacy is nonexistent, where we’re identified, watched, and surveilled everywhere we go.”
Amazon Is Putting Up $100 Million to Battle Microsoft and Google for the Next Generation of AI
While many companies are focused on bringing their versions of AI tools and AI writers to market, Amazon’s cloud division has been focused on helping startups reach that point instead, and the launch of its Generative AI Innovation Center takes that one step further.
The program is designed to connect AI and ML experts with AWS customers to help them design and deploy new generative AI products and has just received $100 million in funding to kick-start it which represents more than a quarter of a century of AI investments by the firm.
Key Figure Departs From Biden Administration, Accused of Leading ‘Vast Censorship Enterprise’
President Joe Biden’s digital director Rob Flaherty, a central figure in the administration’s efforts to shape social media narratives as part of a censorship-by-proxy effort, is leaving the White House by the end of the month, a court filing shows.
Flaherty, a veteran of Biden’s 2020 campaign, has been overseeing the biggest-ever White House digital team as the director of the Office of Digital Strategy.
The evidence presented by the plaintiffs — Louisiana attorney general Jeff Landry and Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt — led to the judge overseeing the case approving the depositions of eight officials believed to be or confirmed to be part of the administration’s censorship campaign, with Flaherty one of those flagged for deposition.
However, due to Flaherty’s imminent departure, his as yet unnamed successor will take his place as a defendant in the lawsuit, per the court document, which was filed in the U.S. District Court Western District of Louisiana on June 16.
