Category: Knowledge and Technology

Emojis prove intent, a judge in Israel ruled

December 30, 2019

On the surface this ruling may seem silly. The smiley pictogram is internationally popular precisely because it’s simple for most people to understand, or so it seems superficially. One of the messages in question was supported with victory signs, champagne, a quilt of symbols that’s barely translatable but clearly positive. In fact, however, emoji in a legal context is very serious business.

Language interpretation is rarely simple upon close examination and lawyers can argue anything. Pictures give them a lot of room to do so.

Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman searched for 2016 cases in the US that dealt with emojis and emoticon and found about 80 judicial opinions that mentioned these.

He told The Recorder in May that he imagines that emoji interpretation issues will only get more common and could get very difficult. The images look different to each of us, and parties can have legitimately different understandings of an image used in an exchange.

https://qz.com/987032/emojis-prove-intent-a-judge-in-israel-ruled/

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How Emojis Have Invaded the Courtroom

In 2019, dozens of emojis showed up in legal cases. Here’s a look at the different ways they’ve been used.

https://slate.com/technology/2019/11/emoji-court-cases-crime-free-speech-contract-law.html

How one city hopes language monitoring can help it defeat hate

December 18, 2019

Once Hatebase has the data, it is automatically sorted and annotated. These annotations can explain the multiple meanings of the terms used, for example, or their level of offensiveness. The resulting data can also be displayed in a dashboard to make it easier for city officials to visualize the problem.

Once enough data has been gathered (most likely in a few months’ time), the city will use Hatebase’s system to monitor trends in hate-speech usage across Chattanooga, and see if there are any patterns between the words used against particular groups and subsequent hate crimes. Often, violence against a particular group is preceded by an increase in dehumanizing, abusive language used against that group. The Sentinel Project has already used this sort of language monitoring successfully as an early warning system for armed ethnic conflict in Kenya, Uganda, Burma, and Iraq.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614962/chattanooga-tennesee-data-race-language-hate-speech-monitoring-hatebase/?utm_source=newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement

Sacha Baron Cohen on social media and truth

November 24, 2019

ADL International Leadership Award Presented to Sacha Baron Cohen at Never Is Now 2019

Today around the world, demagogues appeal to our worst instincts. Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream. It’s as if the Age of Reason – the era of evidential argument – is ending, and now knowledge is delegitimized and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities.

Read the full transcript here

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/22/sacha-baron-cohen-facebook-propaganda

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The post-truth prophets

Postmodernism predicted our post-truth hellscape. Everyone still hates it.

Technology and globalization were making the world infinitely more complicated and that meant more information to process, more dots to connect. And one way to manage this chaos is to lean more and more on narratives that strip the world of its complexity — and often reinforce our biases at the same time.

https://www.vox.com/features/2019/11/11/18273141/postmodernism-donald-trump-lyotard-baudrillard

How app culture turned astrology into a modern obsession

November 23, 2019

But now, the pseudoscience isn’t as much of a taboo as it used to be. It’s been embraced by young people, who jokingly ascribe the inconveniences of life — a delayed train, a broken laptop — to Mercury’s retrograde. They know that Pisces are sensitive and Leos are self-involved and Geminis are kind of the worst. They follow astrology podcasts such as “Stars Like Us,” buy zodiac-themed candles and fragrances and crystals, and share astrology memes from Instagram accounts such as Drunk Astrology and Not All Geminis.

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“There’s a tendency that if there’s an app for it, it somehow gives it more credibility,” Alcock said.

But the app horoscopes are just like the wrappers: momentarily poignant, but disposable. When you look at your natal chart, you’re the center of the universe. But everyone else is the center of theirs.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-app-culture-turned-astrology-into-a-modern-obsession/2019/11/20/2d14e362-f9a7-11e9-8906-ab6b60de9124_story.html

The YouTube Revolution in Knowledge Transfer

September 25, 2019

Tacit knowledge is knowledge that can’t properly be transmitted via verbal or written instruction, like the ability to create great art or assess a startup. This tacit knowledge is a form of intellectual dark matter, pervading society in a million ways, some of them trivial, some of them vital. Examples include woodworking, metalworking, housekeeping, cooking, dancing, amateur public speaking, assembly line oversight, rapid problem-solving, and heart surgery.

Article Link

Adapted handout for class: Tacit Knowledge

Why Are Deepfakes So Effective? It’s because we often want them to be true

August 31, 2019

Developing deep fake detection technology is important, but it’s only part of the solution. It is the human factor—weaknesses in our human psychology—not their technical sophistication that make deep fakes so effective. New research hints at how foundational the problem is.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-are-deepfakes-so-effective/

The biggest threat of deepfakes isn’t the deepfakes themselves

“Deepfakes do pose a risk to politics in terms of fake media appearing to be real, but right now the more tangible threat is how the idea of deepfakes can be invoked to make the real appear fake,” says Henry Ajder, one of the authors of the report. “The hype and rather sensational coverage speculating on deepfakes’ political impact has overshadowed the real cases where deepfakes have had an impact.”

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614526/the-biggest-threat-of-deepfakes-isnt-the-deepfakes-themselves/?utm_source=newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement

Big data and ethics

March 24, 2019

The perils of Big Data: How crunching numbers can lead to moral blunders

Considering data at a distance makes it perilously easy to overlook the stories the data does not tell. What would a strategic management consultancy have done if they had been handed the data of wealthy slaveholders? Would they have suggested ways to tweak profits? Or perhaps recommended lobbying Congress to prevent abolition? Hopefully not.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/02/18/perils-big-data-how-crunching-numbers-can-lead-moral-blunders/?utm_term=.6acb03d1c218

Machine Bias

If computers could accurately predict which defendants were likely to commit new crimes, the criminal justice system could be fairer and more selective about who is incarcerated and for how long. The trick, of course, is to make sure the computer gets it right. If it’s wrong in one direction, a dangerous criminal could go free. If it’s wrong in another direction, it could result in someone unfairly receiving a harsher sentence or waiting longer for parole than is appropriate.

https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing

 

Artificial Intelligence and Art

September 30, 2018

Knowledge Questions: How do we define art? Is art/creativity the exclusive domain of humans?

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AI can produce pictures, but can it create art for itself?

Creativity is something we closely associate with what it means to be human. But with digital technology now enabling machines to recognize, learn from and respond to humans and the world — from digital assistant

s to driverless cars — an inevitable question follows: Can machines be creative? And will artificial intelligence ever be able to make art?

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/artificial-intelligence-ai-art/index.html

A philosopher argues that an AI can’t be an artist

Human creative achievement, because of the way it is socially embedded, will not succumb to advances in artificial intelligence. To say otherwise is to misunderstand both what human beings are and what our creativity amounts to.

This claim is not absolute: it depends on the norms that we allow to govern our culture and our expectations of technology. Human beings have, in the past, attributed great power and genius even to lifeless totems. It is entirely possible that we will come to treat artificially intelligent machines as so vastly superior to us that we will naturally attribute creativity to them. Should that happen, it will not be because machines have outstripped us. It will be because we will have denigrated ourselves.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612913/a-philosopher-argues-that-an-ai-can-never-be-an-artist/

Warner Music Group Signs an Algorithm to a Record Deal

One of the newest additions to the group of artists working with Warner Music Group — taking a spot alongside names like Ed Sheeran, Madonna, Coldplay and Camilla Cabello — is a bundle of code. It’s under contract to release 20 albums this year.

The creator of the algorithm is sound startup Endel, which uses artificial intelligence to make personalized audio tracks aimed at boosting people’s mood or productivity.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/warner-music-group-endel-algorithm-record-deal-811327/

Photogallery: Art Created by Artificial Intelligence

CREDIT: Art and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Rutgers University

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/art-created-by-artificial-intelligence/

Read my lips: the rise and rise of photo-editing

September 3, 2018

For my generation, editing your own image has become as routine as using social media. We grew up with airbrushing and Photoshop and saw the exposés of flawless magazine cover stars who weren’t flawless at all. Instead of rejecting the falsehoods we’ve made it part of our daily lives, crafting idealised digital versions of ourselves that feel like an essential corollary to real life. Technology has set a new standard for beauty that quite literally doesn’t exist in real life. Rather than reject that, we’ve embraced it.

https://www.1843magazine.com/style/read-my-lips-the-rise-and-rise-of-photoediting

Ethics of shutting down Backpage.com for promoting prostitution and child sex trafficking

April 24, 2018

Backpage.com was was online site with classified ads. Many of these ads were for sexual services. Interest in the site increased when craigslist banned such ads from its site. In April 2018, the US government shut down the site

The main issue that led to backpage being shut down was child sex trafficking. Ads appeared on the site for children who had been abducted and forced into prostitution. Though Backpage.com was the platform on which the ads appeared, it was ultimately held criminally liable for its users content after the U.S. Department of Justice took action against it. The US Congress also recently passed a bill along the same lines as this action.

This provides a great example of the contrast of ethical approaches.

Even though the main goal of the government’s action was to protect sex workers and exploited children, “sex workers across the U.S. and Canada swarmed social media to air concerns rarely heard in political discourse: To them, Backpage’s demise meant the end of safeguards and a reliable revenue stream in a profession that’s not going anywhere.”

How do we approach this topic? Should we stick to the moral principle that prostitution is morally wrong and should not be facilitated in any way? What about the principle of protecting free speech? Free association? How do we reconcile conflicting moral principles?

Should we look at this like a consequentialist and say that prostitution exists whether or not it is legal and we should try to protect workers whose professions make them vulnerable to abuse? What if these actions don’t do anything to limit child sex trafficking and it simply moves to another site?

What is the responsibility of the platform on which this whole debate is playing out?

A few interesting resources to explore this topic.

Reply All: No more safe harbor

The Podcast, Reply All covered this story with some great reporting. You can find a link for the episode as well as the transcript.

“But the thing that caught my eye in the aftermath of this story was that there were all these sex workers on the internet and they were all saying the same thing: this law is a disaster. Even though it’s supposed to go after sex trafficking,It’s actually going to go after us, voluntary sex workers. And that Backpage, it was not the boogeyman that the government had made it out to be, it was actually a website that was doing a lot of good.
“And I wondered – how could that be true? How can a website that sold children be good for the world? So I spent the past couple of weeks I’ve been talking to sex workers.”

https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/119-no-more-safe-harbor

“Sex workers ‘devastated,’ look to alternatives after Backpage closure”

Backpage didn’t turn me into a sex worker, any more than Youtube can turn people in musicians or comedians. It was just the medium. A really good, really helpful medium that was free and accessible.

— Sarah Fenix (@sarahthemoose) April 7, 2018

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/04/13/backpage-closure-sex-workers-react/513802002/

“Backpage’s Sex Ads Are Gone. Child Trafficking? Hardly.”

“Anti-Backpage.com Bill Will Shut Down Free Speech” 
As for the bill, rather than narrowly targeting websites that knowingly advertise these despicable practices, it would allow police to criminally pursue a website that has no idea it is hosting, and has procedures in place to prevent, ads featuring criminal activity. It does so because the “intent standard” – what a prosecutor has to prove the defendant knew – is vague.