Rowenna. 2 ‘n’s. Ro-WEN-na.

The Age-Verification Trap Verifying user’s ages undermines everyone’s data protection

Every word of this

spectrum.ieee.org/amp/age-veri...

Just a reminder that governments can invalidate or destroy the things you rely on to be seen as a valid, legal participant in society pretty much at will. So if you think you’re good bc you’re not trans or not in Kansas or whatever you’re lying to yourself while danger gets closer to your community.

Robot Rights? Let's Talk about Human Welfare Instead The 'robot rights' debate, and its related question of 'robot responsibility', invokes some of the most polarized positions in AI ethics. While some advocate for granting robots rights on a par with h...

It’s my own observation but it’s also a ‘thin end of the wedge’ extrapolation from this arxiv.org/abs/2001.05046

Whatever the Met’s paperwork might say, this is *not* a legitimate or lawful use case for facerec tech. It is, in fact, exactly the sort of thing data protection law was conceived to prevent, because the *only* purpose for this use case is abuse.

Not ‘to find convicted criminals who’ve evaded incarceration’ or ‘to identify people doing crimes as they happen’ but to attach names and profiles to *everyone* who passes the camera.

Which is monstrously excessive, insanely intrusive, expensively dysfunctional and mindlessly authoritarian.

Oh FFS

A black and white tuxedo cat with slightly ragged ears, white paws and bib sits up on the corner of a bed looking adorable

Had me some Timmy time this week, I shall be sad to leave him but awfully relieved to be home again

None of that is necessarily intentional or deliberately nefarious - it’s just how humans roll. But to pretend it’s legitimate to install algorithmic judgment tools in a workplace without radical measures to detoxify its power dynamics, is irresponsible and naive.

If a person defers to the algorithm, the algorithm can be blamed for adverse outcomes and accountability is diffused to the point of evaporation. However, if a person does not defer to the algorithm they alone will carry the burden of responsibility for any adverse outcomes.

‘Training’ is also ineffective as a countermeasure for automation bias, because the issue isn’t just recognisance of erroneous output, it also arises from the power dynamics of credibility and authority to make independent decisions within the organisation.

Policy documents are no defence against automation bias in a workplace that discourages challenge or critique. For these tools to be genuinely assistive rather than directive, it must be safe to refuse their ‘assistance’ without punishment for doing so over-cautiously

A worker who accepts algorithmic output despite it being self-evidently wrong is going to be given more grace by management than a worker who refuses an algorithmic output which is ambiguous or unreliable - it’s just easier and safer for the worker to refrain from contradicting the machine

Social biases coded into algorithmic systems is exacerbated by humans’ willingness to defer to the system’s outputs even when they are contradicted by the evidence of their own eyes, because nodding along with the machine is the path of least resistance.

I’m old enough that my birth mother had to wear a leg brace for walking because of the damage that polio left her with.

Image from the movie ‘28 Days Later’: a man dressed in hospital scrubs ascends a darkened stairway. On the wall behind him “Repent, the end is extremely fucking nigh” is daubed in black paint

Innit

I speak to Siri in machine-like language “hey Siri, set timer, 15 minutes” because I prefer to reserve the effort of courtesy for human beings who might actually benefit from it and AFAICT, treating software like a person leads to systemic dehumanisation rather than consideration for humanity.

It was inevitable - and what’s really sad is that the only effective protection against it is to use LLMs to leach one’s writing of any originality or character before publishing. Thus have the authoritarians of the world effectively lobotomised dissidence, protest and critique. Ugh.

It’s an optimistic theory but education alone is not sufficient defence against entire systems that have been designed to be manipulative, divisive and addictive - together with platform regulation though, it would be more effective than the banhammer

A sturdy 2 year old black Labrador curled up on a wood veneer floor seen from above

But in the meantime - it’s okay to turn off/mute the news and seek positive interactions instead!

Brain bleach: here is my fur nephew Murphy all tuckered out after a long beach walk

Our organic capacity for compassion has not evolved for the range and density of connection that the technological age brought with it. Too many Others, not enough space, time or energy to spare for the effort of humanising them. It’s not going to end well.

The Internet is not safe for kids because the *world* is not safe for kids. But we don’t keep kids locked in sterile isolation chambers until they turn 18.

All the dangers of social media are inherent to the business models of social media. That’s the issue that needs addressing.

We’ve already ended up with a legion of Facebook-radicalised boomers who’ve had their intellectual faculties and emotional regulation wrecked by the algorithmic hate engines of ad-tech - evidently if we’re banning kids from social media we should be banning adults too!

Education, safe reporting spaces and massive investment in skilled human moderation would far better equip kids to deal with the day they turn 18 and their ‘protections’ evaporate, leaving them naive and defenceless in the hostile environment of surveillance capitalism.

“He took my swag sack!” Cries man in striped top and domino mask.

This isn’t a tech problem that can be solved with more tech, it’s a governance problem in which throughput metrics substitute for values and conscientiousness is anathema to ‘return on investment’

Well, yeah. That’s what you get when you replace thoughtful human effort with stochastic parrots. It’s a foreseeable outcome of reducing every workplace to a generic sausage-making model in which purposes and outcomes are sacrificed to the motions of ‘productivity’

Has it occurred to any of these geniuses that the parents may be the reason teens are searching for self-harm and suicide content?

This is a terrible idea.

Yup

Humans routinely over-estimate their rationality, mistaking the *potential* (and limited) capacity to reason before acting for a default setting to which reflex, habit and vibes are the exception.

‘Think of the children!’ is the reddest of red flags for hypocritical authoritarianism and this example just takes the cake.