People trying to train AIs are now complaining that all of the AI data on the internet are making it hard for them to get quality training sets of natural language and images.
@futurebird The main players have a big advantage, #Google can already detect #AI#content because they have been training #algorithms for so long the small players don't have that advantage. I would suggest using data from before #ChatGPT became popular with end-consumers. The good thing for small AI companies is, they don't get Robot.txt & #Ip blocked (i think >15% of major sites are blocking main AI scrapers) so they still have access to those data pools which are also guaranteed not to be AI
Fmr #Trump treas sec #Mnuchin is telling investors he has a plan to buy #TikTok
Mnuchin told potential backers he aims to maneuver around its price of >$100B & #China’s ban of the export of recommendation #algorithms.
He indicated he could overcome those hurdles by offering to buy the #app w/o the export-blocked #code, essentially forcing his consortium to remake a service built on billions of lines of code.
Observers, & ≥1 person familiar w/the pitch, have said the idea is so far-fetched that it suggests a lack of familiarity w/how #tech companies work. #TikTok users flocked to the #app bc of its surprising suggestions for videos they might like, & there’s no guarantee any #Mnuchin-driven version could duplicate that success — or beat rivals like #Meta & #Google, who have worked for yrs to mirror the experience w/in their own respective apps, #Instagram & #YouTube. #algorithms#SocialMedia#policy
“Everyone wants to build a #TikTok-level #algorithm. That’s a key element of competition in… #tech …right now,” said Matt Perault, UNC prof & fmr #Facebook dir who studies tech #policy.
“…the biggest cos have thrown a lot of money & #engineering talent at that issue & have struggled to do it. If #Mnuchin thinks he can do that & succeed where…successful cos have struggled, good luck.”
Mnuchin, [is] a fmr hedge fund mngr & Hollywood producer w/no #SocialMedia experience….
Dive Deep into Sorting Efficiency: Bucket Sort 🪣 V. Quick Sort 💨 This post unlocks the secrets to sorting speed. Discover which algorithm tackles large & uneven datasets best 🔗 https://zurl.co/7nTI#algorithms#bigData#hasty
📢 Two fully funded #PhD positions in our group, the Sydney Algorithms and Computing Theory group (SACT) at the University of #Sydney, and André van Renssen
The AI Act is done. Here’s what will (and won’t) change
The companies with the most powerful AI models will face more onerous requirements, such as having to perform model evaluations and risk-assessments and mitigations, ensure cybersecurity protection, and report any incidents where the AI system failed.
"The “Algorithmic Sabotage” radically reworks our technopolitical arrangements away from the structural injustices, supremacist perspectives and necropolitical power layered into the “algorithmic empire”, highlighting its materiality and consequences in terms of both carbon emissions and the centralisation of control"
#Cybersecurity#Encryption#QuantumComputing#Algorithms: "Chen’s (not yet peer-reviewed) preprint claims a new quantum algorithm that efficiently solves the “shortest independent vector problem” (SIVP, as well as GapSVP) in lattices with specific parameters. If it holds up, the result could (with numerous important caveats) allow future quantum computers to break schemes that depend on the hardness of specific instances of these problems. The good news here is that even if the result is correct, the vulnerable parameters are very specific: Chen’s algorithm does not immediately apply to the recently-standardized NIST algorithms such as Kyber or Dilithium. Moreover, the exact concrete complexity of the algorithm is not instantly clear: it may turn out to be impractical to run, even if quantum computers become available.
But there is a saying in our field that attacks only get better. If Chen’s result can be improved upon, then quantum algorithms could render obsolete an entire generation of “post-quantum” lattice-based schemes, forcing cryptographers and industry back to the drawing board.
#EU#France#Paris#Surveillance#Algorithms#AI: "After the legal debate, it's time for technical testing. Nine months after the Olympic Games law was enacted, with its article 10 allowing for experimentation with algorithmic video surveillance, French police officers will be testing this new technology – which is supposed to automatically detect a specific number of abnormal situations – for the first time. A trial run is scheduled for Sunday, March 3 and Tuesday, March 5, in conjunction with two concerts by the British band Depeche Mode in Paris.
The French interior ministry, as reported by Agence France-Presse (AFP), has announced that six cameras powered by software created by the Wintics company, Cityvision, will be scanning the public thoroughfares in the vicinity of the Bercy Arena concert hall in Paris' 12th arrondissement, where the concerts are set to take place. According to the same source, the aim will be to "test and configure software solutions" instead of using algorithmic video surveillance per se. One of the law's provisions is indeed for this system to be so tested before its actual use, which dispenses the police from the need for a prefectoral decree authorizing its application."
#Journalism#News#Media#Newspapers#Automation#Algorithms: "News organizations have turned to news automation to innovate specific processes in the newsroom. Despite the many advantages for news organizations in producing innovative news content, the news automation process is opaque and often not easily accessible for news consumers – undermining the core journalistic ethic of transparency. In this case study we examine how institutional dynamics shape internal and external algorithmic transparency practices at The Washington Post. Our findings, based on 16 expert interviews, reveal that while engineering teams at The Post exert great efforts to make some algorithmic systems transparent and explain their functions to the public (external), less information is being shared inside the newsroom (internal). This lack of internal algorithmic transparency is a potential pitfall as it could lead to mistakes in the news production and the reporting process in general."
#DynamicPricing#GigEconomy#Uber#Algorithms#ConsumerRights: "Dynamic pricing today may be unavoidable, but what consumers crave is a baseline of stability and clarity on how much we’re paying and why. There’s something unshakably disorienting about prices changing so quickly and finding our wallets beholden to a set of algorithms we’re not privy to. “It gives the feeling that we’re being manipulated a little bit more than we think we need to be,” says Zagor. Dynamic pricing, with the speed and detail with which it’s utilized today, allows businesses to optimize prices — for businesses, it can eliminate a lot of the uncertainty over whether they’re getting maximum profit. But that can come at the expense of more uncertainty for consumers. “We have this tension between ultimate efficiency for a business and consumer fairness,” says Witte.
#SocialMedia#Facebook#Algorithms#RecommendationEngines#AI#Spam: "Facebook’s recommendation algorithms are promoting bizarre, AI-generated images being posted by spammers and scammers to an audience of people who mindlessly interact with them and perhaps don’t understand that they are not real, a new analysis by Stanford and Georgetown University researchers has found. The researchers’ analysis aligns with what I have seen and experienced over the course of months of researching and reporting on these pages, many of which have found a novel way to link to off-platform, AI-generated “news” sites that are littered with Google ads or which are selling low-quality products.
Last week the world was introduced to Shrimp Jesus, a series of AI-generated images in which Jesus is melded with a crustacean, and which have repeatedly gone viral on Facebook. The images are emblematic of a specific type of AI image being used by spammers and scammers, which I first wrote about in December but have repeatedly made the masses go “WTF” and “WHY?” when shared away from an audience of Facebook users who are seemingly unable to detect them as AI, or don’t care that they are AI. “WHAT IS HAPPENING ON FACEBOOK,” a viral tweet about Shrimp Jesus read." https://www.404media.co/facebooks-algorithm-is-boosting-ai-spam-that-links-to-ai-generated-ad-laden-click-farms/
#SocialMedia#Algorithms#Democracy#ContentModeration: "For all their efforts to moderate content and reduce online toxicity, social media companies still fundamentally care about one thing: retaining users in the long run, a goal they’ve perceived as best achieved by keeping them engaged with content as long as possible. But the goal of keeping individuals engaged doesn’t necessarily serve society at large and can even be harmful to values we hold dear, such as living in a healthy democracy.
To address that problem, a team of Stanford researchers advised by Michael Bernstein, associate professor of computer science in the School of Engineering, and Jeffrey Hancock, professor of communication in the School of Humanities and Sciences, wondered if designers of social media platforms might, in a more principled way, build societal values into their feed-ranking algorithms. Could these algorithms, for example, promote social values such as political participation, mental health, or social connection? The team tested the idea empirically in a new paper that will be published in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction in April 2024. Bernstein, Hancock, and a group of Stanford HAI faculty also explored that idea in a recent think piece.
For their experiment, the researchers aimed to decrease partisan animosity by building democratic values into a feed-ranking algorithm. “If we can make a dent in this very important value, maybe we can learn how to use social media rankings to affect other values we care about,” says Michelle Lam, a fourth-year graduate student in computer science at Stanford University and co-lead author of the study." https://hai.stanford.edu/news/building-social-media-algorithm-actually-promotes-societal-values
#AI#Algorithms#ML#ResponsibleAI: "Machine learning and algorithmic systems are useful tools whose potential we are only just beginning to grapple with—but we have to understand what these technologies are and what they are not. They are neither “artificial” or “intelligent”—they do not represent an alternate and spontaneously-occurring way of knowing independent of the human mind. People build these systems and train them to get a desired outcome. Even when outcomes from AI are unexpected, usually one can find their origins somewhere in the data systems they were trained on. Understanding this will go a long way toward responsibly shaping how and when AI is deployed, especially in a defense contract, and will hopefully alleviate some of our collective sci-fi panic.
This doesn’t mean that people won’t weaponize AI—and already are in the form of political disinformation or realistic impersonation. But the solution to that is not to outlaw AI entirely, nor is it handing over the keys to a nuclear arsenal to computers. We need a common sense system that respects innovation, regulates uses rather than the technology itself, and does not let panic, AI boosters, or military tacticians dictate how and when important systems are put under autonomous control." https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/how-avoid-ai-apocalypse-one-easy-step
Posting on facebook is dumb. Your intelligent posts get fed to no-one, your worst mistakes get posted for two weeks into circles including even people who are not your friends.
Already a future classic, Joy Boulamwini’s Coded Bias. This documentary is already old, but it’s significance will continue to rise, as future generations will increasingly have their lives dictated from behind the scenes by invisible #AI. Schools you can go to, internships you can get, work you can get, loans you can get, how you will judged in court. And they are not talking about China.
You have an n by m grid, where each square is either filled or empty. You also have a stamp in some shape that you can use to fill squares in the grid. You can only stamp squares if none stamped squares are already filled.
Is determining if a given grid with preset files squares can be completely filled with the stamp in P or NP?
But while it is largely a guide to making money in the new economy he describes, he also implores us to not let it “spiral out of control”. The key to this, he argues, is asserting human agency through digital literacy.
What unites many of the misshapen and malevolent encounters between humans and algorithms, Kowalkiewicz argues, is our misunderstandings of what they can do.
An algorithm is a step by step set of instructions – “like a recipe” for a computer. While an algorithm may be very good, even “superhuman” at its job within those defined parameters, these minions require a more adaptable human brain to help them overcome unforeseen challenges.
Flexibility and interpretation, Kowalkiewicz writes, are skills “not easily reduced to coded rules” and so are areas in which humans can outperform algorithms – for the “foreseeable” future.
#Culture#BigTech#SocialMedia#Algorithms#SiliconValley: "The main defect with Filterworld is diagnostic: A focus on Big Tech’s colonization of culture obscures both the additional forces driving stagnation and the way those forces interact with technology to make the social media platforms such a formidable obstacle to cultural renewal. Is tech responsible for everything? Hollywood, the MFA industry, and America’s unequal education system, which makes the kind of deep instruction needed to engage meaningfully with the canon today available to only the very rich, surely bear just as much responsibility for our intellectually flattened times as the warped incentives of the BookTok reel do.
The big platforms have benefited from good timing, planting their flags in cultural terra firma at the exact moment when economic inequality and the distance between political elites and voters are at their widest since the Gilded Age, and the misalignments of rentier capitalism—handing a greater and greater share of wealth to asset owners—mean those gaps are only likely to grow. The collision of asset inflation with consumer technology’s incomparable distributional powers makes culture, as it’s exhibited online, both a powerful motor of social emulation (we want what they have) and a kind of consolation prize, a false democratizer for an unequal age. The playing field in actually existing capitalism may be scandalously uneven, but the online mediation of culture (in truth more an interruption) helps us all nourish a fantasy of equality at the level of creation. Il faut être absolument online.
Machine Vision: How Algorithms Are Changing the Way We See the World by Jill Walker Rettberg, 2023
Providing an overview of the historical and contemporary uses of machine vision, she unpacks how technologies such as smart surveillance cameras and TikTok filters are changing the way we see the world and one another.