vol. 32 (sep. 12 - sep. 26)

biiiig neck turtle and 14 things

haaaaaappppy Tuesday — here is a turtle with a biiiiig neck:

14 things from the last 14 days:

1. the writers guild is the latest group of people to demonstrate that the future of technology does not have to be inevitable and exactly how the people creating that technology or profiting off of it wants it to be. I can’t wait to see exactly what the agreements are, but it seems like there was some great concessions on using their work to feed AI systems made!
   
   as ACLU-MA technology for liberty project director Cade Krockford put it

   

2. As of today, both Amazon and Google are officially both defendants in antitrust lawsuits about essential parts of their business. The pricing algorithms are the main AI focus, but the complaint focuses on the company’s anti-competitive behavior leading to higher prices/lower quality for consumers and an inability for competitors to sell their goods without going through Amazon’s extra products, often to the sellers’ financial or logistical detriment.

3. Grant Fergusson, an excellent attorney at EPIC, published “outsourced and automated,” a wide-ranging investigation into how state and local governments are automating so many of their essential functions through third party vendors at a huge cost to consumers. It includes a guide to how governments go through buying these systems, and a 60-page table of contract documents he was able to find, as well as so much more.

   -Check it out at epic.org/outsourced — if for nothing else, the weird robots that populate i

   

4. Schumer held his first ‘insight forum’ — his series of closed door panels/briefings/hm…hearings? that is meant to teach congresspeople about AI! Wait — isn’t that already a thing? arent those all things, that the Senate has done forever in public to give us all some ~ insight ~? Could bore you with musings on the wildness of that phrase ‘insight forum,’ but by design we don’t know enough :) Afterward, he repeated that he feels that the US is not quite ready to regulate - interesting stance!

   

5. There were 4 of those Senate hearings (read more about what those were from last newsletter! )

6. My fantastic coworker Calli Schroeder and I wrote about the “approaching train wreck” that Generative AI and Elections around the world next year will be :))))

7. Wyden et al introduced the Algorithmic Accountability Act for the third time — here’s a good resource on what’s in there.

8. Klobuchar and friends introduced a bill about using Generative AI as a candidate, making it clear that candidates and their agents have to be responsible for the content that falls under campaigning.

9. Google and Youtube, huge carriers of political ads (and the same company,) said they will require disclosure of the use of Generative AI in ads put on their platform. I’ll be interested to see if it is enforced.

   snake break to subscribe to the newsletter if you havent yet:

   

10. A good POLITICO piece on the fracturing Senate approaches to AI regulation or…non-regulation!

11. 404 Media had a good story showing that an AI generated selfie pretending to be the famous protestor in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square was the first result when someone googled about the historical event. This is going to continue to happen, where AI generated stuff, which may or may not be real or reflect real circumstances, will be picked up by algorithmic systems that rank and feed info to us and suddenly we have a consistent cycle of falsely generated nonsense!

12. Another black man was put in jail because of a faulty facial recognition match - it’s bullshit and nonsense to keep using it.

13. Relatedly - 180 groups and experts called for a ban of facial recognition last week because of “insufficient evidence…safeguards…legal bases…and democratic mandates to justify the use of the controversial technology.

14. A nightmare for the road: Open AI expanded and connected the capabilities of a few of their systems — and one of their staff members is already recommending people use it for therapy?!?!? PLEASE DONT USE IT FOR THERAPY!