remixtures

remixtures, 6 days ago to ai Portuguese

#AI #GenerativeAI #Energy #Automation #WageSlavery #Inequality: "AI is everywhere; AI is here. The story around AI implies that it is here because it’s making things efficient: AI is better at detecting cancerous tumours in some scan images than radiographers, AI is faster at finding legal judgements within case law, AI can make office work more efficient by drafting emails or summarizing information from the web.

However, the story of this efficiency leaves out a discussion of some of the costs of AI. AI is expensive, not cheap. The efficiencies that are promised do not necessarily involve less work and fewer costs – just different work and different costs, some of which will only reveal themselves in time. These costs include:

1. Increased inequities (including inequitable labour between people ‘in front of’ and ‘behind’ the screen; inequitable opportunities for learning resulting from embedding of AI systems in learning and information infrastructures; environmental and material inequities resulting from the use of scarce natural resources to power ubiquitous technologies)

2. Shaky institutions that struggle to do things differently

3. Costly need for highly skilled review of AI outputs

First, we need to understand better what makes AI expensive. Then, we need to consider what factors can actually lead to real efficiency. My research has been examining both the deceptive stories that shape the way AI is described, as well as sociotechnical design considerations that must be taken into account when determining whether the cost of AI is worth it."

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2024/06/05/ai-is-expensive/

remixtures, 6 days ago (edited 3 days ago) to random Portuguese

Nunca consigo parar de me surpreender e - ao mesmo tempo de rir às gargalhadas daqueles que o negam -, com o facto de, após quase 250 anos após a morte de Karl Marx, a realidade do mundo das economias de mercado continuar a ser teimosamente marxista.

Em nome da acumulação de lucro à escala de toda a sociedade, vale tudo menos tirar olhos: sempre as mesmas aldrabices, sacanices, mentiras, charlatanices, chantagens, o recurso à figura do imigrante como "papão", etc., etc.

Um exemplo claro disso: anúncios fictícios para vagas de emprego em Portugal publicados no LinkedIn por grandes empresas de tecnologia com sede no Silicon Valley financiadas em centenas de milhões por capitalistas de risco.

Há uma companhia que conheço que tem vindo a anunciar já há alguns meses que vai abrir um escritório em Portugal e que anda supostamente a recrutar à fartazana mas que continua com um único funcionário neste país. Volta não volta os mesmos anúncios para as mesmas vagas são republicados - isto apesar do número de candidatos ser supostamente elevado.

Isto atribui todo um novo significado ao conceito de empresa "fantasma". É claro que a companhia tem tudo a ganhar com estes anúncios na medida em que transmitem a sensação de que a empresa está a expandir-se para novos mercados e a recrutar - apesar de na verdade ter vindo nos últimos anos gradualmente a reduzir o seu quadro de pessoal.

Com este tipo de estratégia comunicacional, consegue convencer os investidores a atirarem para lá mais dinheiro. Investidores esses que ficam convencidos que a empresa está mesmo à beira de gerar lucro :-D

Ao mesmo tempo, também é uma excelente manobra para silenciar eventuais exigências dos trabalhadores que vivem no país onde a sede está localizada (neste caso, EUA).

É claro que este exemplo não é único e a ideia de que estamos a atravessar uma Greve do Capital parece ser cada vez mais visível um pouco por todo o mundo. Mas no caso de Portugal, esta greve tem muito mais relevância.

remixtures, 6 days ago to ai Portuguese

#AI #Automation #GenerativeAI #Economy #WageSlavery #Capitalism: "-If history is any indicator, there’s no catastrophic, Great Depression-level mass job loss event on the horizon, BUT

-That won’t stop bosses from trying to use AI to replace certain jobs, keep pay lower, and demand you and your coworkers produce more work

-Your bosses’ measuring stick for AI output isn’t whether it’s so good it can replace you wholesale, but if it’s “good enough” to justify the savings on labor costs

-Certain industries are uniquely vulnerable to generative AI output, and are more threatened than others

-After workplaces are disrupted by generative AI, employees not laid off or reassigned will have to pick up the pieces, often with more work than before

-Whether or not your boss adopts generative AI directly or your industry is threatened, the technology can be used as leverage against you and your colleagues

-Generative AI may or may not be a flash in the pan, but it can be a wrecking ball to your job regardless, especially if your boss is looking for an excuse to cut costs or to appear innovative — and you should be ready

There will almost certainly be no AI jobs apocalypse. That doesn’t mean your boss isn’t going to use AI to replace jobs, or, more likely, going to use the specter of AI to keep pay down and demand higher productivity"

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/understanding-the-real-threat-generative

remixtures, 6 days ago to random Portuguese

#Capitalism #PoliticalEconomy #Competition #Neoliberalism #Antitrust: "40 years later, nearly every industry is dominated by a handful of companies, and these companies price-gouge us with abandon. Worse, they use their gigantic ripoff winnings to fill war-chests that fund the corruption of democracy, capturing regulators so that they can rip us off even more, while ignoring labor, privacy and environmental law and ducking taxes.

It turns out that keeping gigantic, opaque, complex corporations honest is really hard. They have so many ways to shuffle money around that it's nearly impossible to figure out what they're doing. Digitalization makes things a million times worse, because computers allow businesses to alter their processes so they operate differently for every customer, and even for every interaction.

This is Dieselgate times a billion: VW rigged its cars to detect when they were undergoing emissions testing and switch to a less polluting, more compliant mode. But when they were on the open road, they spewed lethal quantities of toxic gas, killing people by the thousands. Computers don't make corporate leaders more evil, but they let evil corporate leaders execute far more complex and nefarious plans. Digitalization is a corporate moral hazard, making it just too easy and tempting to rig the game."

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/

remixtures, 6 days ago to brasil Portuguese

#Brasil #ModeraçãoDeConteúdos #Facebook:
"-Relatos e documentos internos mostram como é o trabalho dos brasileiros responsáveis por checar conteúdos em redes da Meta para treinar sistemas de inteligência artificial. Um dos projetos prevê a criação de um sistema automatizado para “identificar e combinar evidências com desinformação”.

• Os trabalhadores precisam checar informações de posts em “fontes confiáveis”. A remuneração é de cerca de 45 centavos por cada post. Os moderadores têm 1h para moderar pelo menos 40 conteúdos.

• Falta de orientação e treinamento resulta em classificações inconsistentes e pode ser decisiva em conteúdos críticos, como as enchentes no Rio Grande do Sul, conteúdos sexuais, violentos e até Jogo do Tigrinho.

• Os moderadores são frequentemente expostos a conteúdos perturbadores, como violência e desinformação política, sem suporte."

https://www.intercept.com.br/2024/06/05/meta-paga-centavos-por-checagem-sobre-enchentes-no-rs-violencia-e-politica-para-treinar-inteligencia-artificial/

remixtures, 6 days ago to Portugal Portuguese

#UE #eleiçõeseuropeias2024 #PE #Portugal #OpenSource #FLOSS: "A ANSOL enviou um conjunto de questões aos partidos candidatos às Eleições Europeias 2024 sobre os temas mais prementes em discussão na União Europeia, que incluiam a Regulação de Patentes Essenciais a Normas, a Criptografia de Ponta-a-Ponta (E2EE), Dados Abertos, Acesso Aberto e Recursos Educacionais Abertos, Soberania Digital, e Ecologia e Sustentabilidade.

Publicamos abaixo as respostas completas, por ordem de recepção."

https://ansol.org/noticias/2024-06-04-software-livre-nas-eleicoes-europeias/

remixtures, 7 days ago to privacy Portuguese

#FBI #Surveillance #Privacy #Encryption: "As a privacy and encryption advocate, there were moments in this story that made me a little uncomfortable. There are places where the FBI is chafing at the constitutional limits on its surveillance powers where we can't help but sympathize with these "good guys" going after "bad guys." But this is the FBI, a lawless, unaccountable secret police who routinely bypass those limits by secretly buying data from sleazy data-brokers, or illegally sharing data with the NSA.

The conclusion really hammers home the point that the FBI's problem isn't constitutional niceties. Despite seizing hundreds of tons of illegal drugs and arresting thousands of high-ranking criminal syndicate bosses, Anom made no difference in the drug trade. Prohibition, after all, just makes criminals more wealthy and powerful. The Anom raids were, at worst, the cost of doing business – and at best, they were a global reset that cleared the board of established actors so that other criminals could seize their turf.

But even though Anom didn't triumph over crime, Dark Wire is a triumph. The book's out today, and there will shortly be a Netflix adaptation based on it, directed by Jason Bateman:"

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/04/anom-nom-nom/

remixtures, 7 days ago to india Portuguese

#India #Elections #Politics: "As votes from India’s six-week long general election were counted on Tuesday, it was quickly clear that Narendra Modi was on course for his third term as prime minister. That is where his satisfaction will end.

The early results also showed Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party set to lose its majority for the first time since 2014 — a stunning blow to the authority of India’s strongest leader in decades and one that would leave him dependent on junior partners in his National Democratic Alliance to govern.

On Tuesday night, the NDA was ahead in 291 of 543 seats in India’s lower house of parliament, far below the more than 350 it held before the vote and the 400 that Modi had set as its target.

A motley coalition of anti-BJP opposition parties, known by its acronym INDIA, was on track to nearly double its tally to 234.

Confirmation of the shock result would leave Modi in a weakened position from which to tackle the enormous economic challenges facing India and to undertake the difficult reforms needed to help the world’s most populous country secure its status as a rising global power." https://www.ft.com/content/c715fa47-fb26-401e-8453-ba10f41a71b2

remixtures, 7 days ago to random Portuguese

RT @manhack
Pédocriminalité : le texte de « compromis » EU pour lutter contre les contenus « pédosexuels » propose de scanner l'ensemble des photos, vidéos et URL avant qu'elles soient envoyées dans les messageries, y compris chiffrées de bout en bout. @nextinpact:

https://next.ink/139382/pedocriminalite-leurope-veut-scanner-toutes-les-photos-videos-et-url-dans-les-messageries/

remixtures, 7 days ago to random Portuguese

RT @emilymbender
"a potential gold mine for criminal hackers or domestic abusers who may physically access their victim’s device."

In 2024 it still somehow isn't standard practice to ask in the design process: Are we building the killer app for domestic abusers?

https://www.wired.com/story/total-recall-windows-recall-ai/

remixtures, 7 days ago to random Portuguese

RT @bhaggart
The complaint by @mgeist that Cdn media are “focused on regulatory payments rather than market-based success” reflects an ideologically driven hostility to the fundamental premise of Cdn cultural policy: that it’s too important to be left to the market.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-broadcasting-streaming-platforms-bill-c-11/

remixtures, 8 days ago to climate Portuguese

#ClimateChange #Renewables #FossilFuels #RenewableEnergy: "Countries' climate plans are not yet in line with a goal to triple renewable energy capacity worldwide by 2030 which was set at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai last year, a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday.

The target would involve increasing installed renewable energy capacity to at least 11,000 gigawatts (GW) by the end of the decade, compared to 4,209 GW in 2023.
Very few countries - just 14 out of a total of 194 - have included specific targets for total renewable power capacity for 2030 in their commitments under the Paris Agreement climate pact, called nationally determined contributions (NDCS).

Official commitments in current NDCs amount to 1,300 GW – just 12% of what is required to meet the global tripling objective set in Dubai, the IEA said."

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/countries-plans-not-yet-aligned-with-tripling-renewables-capacity-goal-2024-06-04/

remixtures, 8 days ago to climate Portuguese

#ClimateChange #CarbonEmissions #Inequality: "Rich individuals in all countries must pay more to tackle the climate crisis, whether through taxes or charges on consumption, one of the architects of the Paris agreement has said.

There is a growing consensus on the need for some kind of global wealth tax, with Brazil, which will host the Cop climate summit next year, an enthusiastic supporter.

Meanwhile, poor countries are struggling to raise the estimated $1tn (£785bn) a year of external finance needed to help them cut emissions and cope with the impacts of the climate crisis.

Another proposal is for a frequent flyer levy, as the richest people tend to take far more flights – in any year about half of the people in the UK do not fly, for instance. Laurence Tubiana, the chief executive of the European Climate Foundation, said a levy could be targeted at business class and first class seats.

Other possible sources of revenue include a carbon tax on international shipping, which could raise billions without disrupting global trade, according to research from the World Bank. Levies on fossil fuels could also play a role.

The richest 1% of people in the world are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the 66% at the other end of the scale, yet they experience little of the vulnerability to climate shocks that are causing suffering and death, mainly among poorer people."

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/jun/04/global-rich-pay-more-climate-crisis-architect-paris-deal

remixtures, 8 days ago to Bulgaria Portuguese

Cidades demasiado dependentes de carros deviam ser vistas como sinal de subdesenvolvimento. A ideia de querer obrigar as pessoas a endividarem-se à fartazana para comprar latas rolantes mastodônticas para serem deixadas à noite em cima dos passeios das cidades não tem ponta por onde se lhe pegue!

#EU #France #Paris #AntiCars #Cities #Mobility #Transportation #Urbanism: "The 15 million people expected to swarm Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics will visit a city far different than it was a decade ago.

That’s because a campaign to make Paris greener, primarily by reducing its dependence on cars, has transformed it into a shining example of what many environmental activists, city planners and transit advocates say ought to be the future of cities worldwide.

Paris has closed more than 100 streets to motor vehicles, tripled parking fees for SUVs, removed roughly 50,000 parking spots, and constructed more than 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) of bike lanes since Mayor Anne Hidalgo took office in 2014.

Those changes have contributed to a 40% decline in air pollution, according to city officials.

“How did we achieve this?” Hidalgo said in a statement in March. “By assuming a major and radical rupture: the end of car-dependence.”

Paris and other European cities have for years been at the forefront of efforts to reduce car use, though their successes have not come without challenges. The U.S., on the other hand, has been slower to adopt similar reforms." https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/paris-olympics-city-reduce-air-pollution-rcna153470

remixtures, 8 days ago to Bulgaria Portuguese

#EU #BorderControl #Bulgaria #Immigration #HumanRights: "The official Independent Monitoring Mechanism in Bulgaria - established between the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, the UNHCR and the Bulgarian Border Police in 2010 - reported 5,268 pushbacks in 2022, affecting 87,467 people, and 9,897 alleged pushbacks in 2023, affecting 174,588 persons.

This was, for the second time, almost a doubling of the figures reported the previous year. Indeed, a recent investigation by a coalition of media outlets revealed violent pushbacks are an “open secret” in Bulgaria.

Strikingly, the Bulgarian authorities continue to deny that these figures are the result of pushbacks. They claim these statistics merely cover "preventions of entry" as a result of increased border surveillance in Turkey."

https://euobserver.com/migration/ar931239c9

remixtures, 8 days ago to Bulgaria Portuguese

#EU #SocialMedia #Disinformation #Politics #Elections #TikTok: "Wildly popular social network TikTok approved adverts containing political disinformation ahead of European polls, a report showed Tuesday (4 June), flouting its own guidelines and raising questions about its ability to detect election falsehoods.

International campaign group Global Witness created 16 ads targeting Irish audiences with false information about this week’s EU elections and tried to get them approved by three platforms — TikTok, Google-owned YouTube and Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter).

TikTok, which is particularly popular with young voters, approved all 16 for publication, YouTube caught 14 while X filtered all the ads and suspended the group’s fake accounts, Global Witness said in its report.

“TikTok has failed miserably in this test,” Henry Peck, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, told AFP.

The fake ads, submitted by the group last month, all contained content that could pose a risk to electoral processes — including warnings to voters to stay home over a danger of poll violence and a spike in contagious diseases."

https://www.euractiv.com/section/elections/news/tiktok-fails-disinformation-test-before-eu-vote-study-shows/

remixtures, 8 days ago to ai Portuguese

#AI #GenerativeAI #OpenAI #BigTech: "When it comes to AI, the best defence is not to simply wrap ourselves in a protective legislative cocoon and demand another tough new law to preempt or repel every risk or act of harm.

Rather, it is about determining who has the power.

If we are going to embrace AI, let’s do so as active participants, not passive subjects. Let’s embed the notion of shared benefits with strong industrial guardrails. Let’s get AI out of the IT department and onto the shop floor. And let’s demand those driving the introduction of this technology do so with us, not to us; shaped by us, not shaping us; augmenting our labour, not automating it.

The lesson of the social media revolution has been that technology is neither innately good nor bad. What seemed like a positive tool to connect people on an open platform has become a threat to our collective wellbeing because of the underlying business model.

Approaching AI with this critical mindset, rather than naively embracing progress as a self-evident good, is the first step.

Thanks to scholars like Acemoglu and Johnson, we now have an economic argument to match the moral one: the adaptation of new technology can make us all richer and happier if we are given the chance to collectively design it and control it."

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/04/scarlett-johansson-wont-save-us-from-ai-but-if-workers-have-their-say-it-could-benefit-us-all

remixtures, 8 days ago to Samsung Portuguese

#Smartphones #Cellphones #FoldablePhones #Samsung: "Last week, Counterpoint Research said the global market for folding smartphones grew 49% in the first quarter of this year, with Huawei at the forefront (Huawei’s shipments of such devices were up 257% year on year.) And according to new data from the market intelligence firm TrendForce, 17.8 million foldable phones will be shipped this year.

That’s pretty impressive, but it’s also still only 1.5% of the smartphone market. However, TrendForce expects the form factor to command 4.8% by 2028, partly due to falling prices—2019’s Samsung Galaxy Fold cost a cough-worthy $1,980, but ZTE’s Nubia brand is now selling a folding phone in Japan for just $499.

Samsung is still projected to have the lion’s share of the folding phone market this year, but the Korean giant is a less dominant beast in this sub-sector than it once was, with its name on just 50.4% of shipments, down from over 80% just a couple years ago.

TrendForce has Huawei boosting its market share from 12% last year to over 30% in 2024, followed by Motorola with 6%, then a bunch of other Chinese brands."

https://fortune.com/2024/06/03/foldable-phones-market-share-samsung-huawei/

remixtures, 8 days ago to ai Portuguese

#AI #Anguilla #InternetDomains: "AI technologies like ChatGPT hold great promise to spur productivity growth and innovation globally. They have also generated an unusual boom in Anguilla, a British overseas territory and member of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, whose .ai country-code internet domain has become a favorite among technology companies across the world. Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, registrations of .ai domain names have skyrocketed—surging from 144,000 registrations in 2022 to 354,000 in 2023.

In 2023 alone, this surge in .ai domain registrations generated EC$87 million in revenue (approximately US$32 million)—just over 20 percent of the government's total revenue for the year. This marks a dramatic increase from previous years, when revenue from .ai domain registrations hovered around 5 percent. Looking ahead, the government expects revenue from .ai domain registrations to stabilize at around 15 percent of total government revenue, as the initial rush of registrations gradually slows."

https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2024/05/15/cf-an-ai-powered-boost-to-anguillas-revenues

remixtures, 9 days ago to UX Portuguese

#UX #UXWriting #TechnicalWriting #UserExperience: "I’ve worked with a lot of world-class product teams. Experts in design, engineering, and product management. I’ll paraphrase what almost every single member of those product teams has said to me at some point in our partnerships: they are not great writers. And no combination of guidelines and rulebooks will turn them into great writers while they’re focused on being great designers, engineers, and product owners.

It’s not a company-level problem. It’s a systemic one, born at the very creation of product orgs. The books, gurus, and consulting firms that teach companies how to build and scale product orgs have remained staunchly attached to the idea that a core product team should only include three people: a designer, an engineer, and a product owner.

UX writers most often go completely unmentioned or are represented as a line on a checklist toward the end of the design process along with a design system review and legal review. But as anyone who’s worked closely with a UX writer knows, orgs that follow these models are missing out on the full impact of a writer’s strategy, expertise, and value."

https://medium.com/carmax-ux/hey-product-its-time-to-embrace-ux-writers-a2c5c0a9ddfa

remixtures, 10 days ago to ai Portuguese

#AI #GenerativeAI #VCs #CashingOut #AIHype #SPVs: "VCs are clamoring to invest in hot AI companies, willing to pay exorbitant share prices for coveted spots on their cap tables. Even so, most aren’t able to get into such deals at all. Yet, small, unknown investors, including family offices and high-net-worth individuals, have found their own way to get shares of the hottest private startups like Anthropic, Groq, OpenAI, Perplexity, and Elon Musk’s X.ai (the makers of Grok).

They are using special purpose vehicles, or SPVs, where multiple parties pool their money to share an allocation of a single company. SPVs are generally formed by investors who have direct access to the shares of these startups and then turn around and sell a part of their allocation to external backers, often charging significant fees while retaining some profit share (known as carry).

While SPVs aren’t new – smaller investors have relied on them for years – there’s a growing trend of SPVs successfully getting shares from the biggest names in AI.

These investors are finding that the most popular AI companies, except OpenAI, are not all that hard for them to buy at their smaller levels of investing."

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/01/vcs-are-selling-shares-of-hot-ai-companies-like-anthropic-and-xai-to-small-investors-in-a-wild-spv-market

remixtures, 12 days ago to random Portuguese

RT @WolfieChristl
So, Microsoft exploits activity data from Outlook, Teams, Word etc across customers for its own promotional purposes, including on meetings, file usage and the seconds until emails are read.

Aggregate analysis but based on massive personal data processing
https://microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/ai-at-work-is-here-now-comes-the-hard-part

remixtures, 12 days ago to random Portuguese

RT @SeverinEngelma1
📢 New paper at #FAccT24!

We studied pop intro to AI courses on YouTube & developed recommendations for integrating ethics

Joint work with
@madihazc

@ang3linawang

@cfiesler

We find intro to AI courses teach practices known to cause societal harms

Paper https://rb.gy/2ktdik

remixtures, 12 days ago to ai Portuguese

#AI #GenerativeAI #GeneratedImages #DevianArt #Bots #SocialMedia: "On March 27, a large group of artists and creators from across the web noticed the frightening extent to which a once-beloved, highly influential community platform of theirs had, like so many others, fallen prey to the artificial intelligence juggernauts plundering the internet.

As VFX animator Romain Revert (Minions, The Lorax) pointed out on X, the bots had come for his old home base of DeviantArt. Its social accounts were promoting “top sellers” on the platform, with usernames like “Isaris-AI” and “Mikonotai,” who reportedly made tens of thousands of dollars through bulk sales of autogenerated, dead-eyed 3D avatars. The sales weren’t exactly legit—an online artist known as WyerframeZ looked at those users’ followers and found pages of profiles with repeated names, overlapping biographies and account-creation dates, and zero creations of their own, making it apparent that various bots were involved in these “purchases.”

It’s not unlikely, as WyerframeZ surmised, that someone constructed a low-effort bot network that could hold up a self-perpetuating money-embezzlement scheme: Generate a bunch of free images and accounts, have them buy and boost one another in perpetuity, inflate metrics so that the “art” gets boosted by DeviantArt and reaches real humans, then watch the money pile up from DeviantArt revenue-sharing programs. Rinse, repeat.

After Revert declared this bot-on-bot fest to be “the downfall of DeviantArt,” myriad other artists and longtime users of the platform chimed in to share in the outrage that these artificial accounts were monopolizing DeviantArt’s promotional and revenue apparatuses. Several mentioned that they’d abandoned their DeviantArt accounts—all appearing to prove his dramatic point."

https://slate.com/technology/2024/05/deviantart-what-happened-ai-decline-lawsuit-stability.html