”After extensive outreach and hearing your thoughts, we are taking a definitive stance contrary to many other community websites: Vimeo will not allow generative AI models to be trained using videos hosted on our platform without your explicit consent, even if you use our free offerings. In addition, we prohibit unauthorized content scraping (by model companies) and continue to implement security protocols designed to protect user-generated content.”
«Will consumers perhaps come to see the phrase "AI-Powered System" in the same light as "Diesel-Powered SUV".»
Well, not yet it would seem.
In The Elements of AI Ethics from June of last year I build on The Elements of Digital Ethics from 2021. Which itself was the output of reading about digital harms for many years.
Seeing all of the categories of harms just get worse year on year is disheartening.
What goal is worth all this? I tend to fall back on a sentiment I use in my talks and teaching:
When a privileged group benefits from a technology, the more inclined they will be to ignore the harms done unto others by the same technology. Because drawing attention to the harm would suggest they should give up their personal gain to help someone else.
This appears to be true for the short term. In the long term the beneficiaries of technology will happily also ignore harm done unto themselves, as long as they get the experience boost in the moment.
What hope is there?
In my June 11 session for Ambition Empower I will be talking about how to champion technologies of compassion, drawing on work related to nature connectedness by P. Wesley Schultz, Marianne E. Krasny, F. Stephan Mayer and Cynthia M Frantz.
Technologies of compassion work in unison with an acknowledgement of our connection not only to each other but also to nature. Technology tends to separate us from nature, making us value it less - and causing us to increasingly worsen our own living conditions, and the conditions of all other species, over time.
But we can choose to design technology that takes nature into account.. Technology that works with, not against, nature. I believe this is what all schools must start teaching. Now.
Expect me to write more about this over the next year.
I said I went with Docuseal because it’s open source and I have control over my own data as I can self-host. “Oh is that important to you, why?”, he asked. So I actually went on a rant about digital ethics, indieweb and how we are tracked whatever products we use these days.
So that sent him off on a rant about how they use blockchain and are based in the EU and no data ever leaves the EU and the data always belongs to the customer.
So I’m like, “well how did the fucking blockchain protect me from you calling me at 8.30 in the morning!?”*
*Hmm, I actually didn’t say that last part because it just hit me when I hung up. And I have a hard time being rude on the phone. But wow I wish I did say that. Let’s just agree I did.
I don’t know about the apps you’re using but at no point in the Fediverse have I lost track of a post I was reading because the feed auto-refreshed against my will.
Which happens to me regularly on LinkedIn. (And I remember happened on the other platforms I’ve left.) Which should make you acknowledge – if you haven’t done so already – how that is a design feature on the other platforms, not a bug.
"Accessibility has failed as a way to make computers usable for disabled users." Thus begins a newsletter by Jakob Nielsen. And had it not been written by someone a great many people take seriously in the UX industry I likely would just have dismissed it. But seeing how harmful I consider the post to potentially be, I would like to nip this in the bud. My reflection is that the published post is misleading, self-contradictory and underhanded. I'll walk you through the whole of it and provide my commentary and reasoning. 👇
I’ll myself be attending online this year for the 10th(!) installment of UX Copenhagen. The theme for 2024 is “Degrowth and Consumerism”:
> "For far too long, we have been living in a world that applauds and encourages continuous growth, expansion, selling, and manipulation. It’s a world of over production and over consumption, but we’re running out of resources. Business as usual will not cut it anymore."
There are tickets for on-site, live-stream and groups, There are still tickets available and I’d urge you to to check out the speaker lineup and workshop topics. If you want to contribute to universal wellbeing, this is a good place to find your energy.
I’m myself very much looking forward to Dr. Videha Sharma’s talk on how to consume less and live more.
Embed this noticePer Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Saturday, 17-Feb-2024 18:21:19 JST
Per AxbomThe electricity and water use required by data centres is becoming cause for concern. Iowa and Ireland are calling for moratoriums on new development projects. Microsoft’s global water consumption grew 34% from 2021 to 2022. And estimates say that around 80% of content in data centres could be stuff we never use again, stored by default to consume energy in perpetuity for no purpose at all.
Abstract Always-listening devices like smart speakers, smartphones, and other voice-activated technologies create enough privacy problems when working correctly. But these devices can also misinterpret what they hear, and thus accidentally record their surroundings without the consent of those they record, a phenomenon known as a ‘false positive.’ The privacy practices of device users add another complication: a recent study of individual privacy expectations regarding false positives by voice assistants depicts how people tend to carefully consider the privacy preferences of those closest to them when deciding whether to subject them to the risk of accidental recording, but often disregard the preferences of others. The failure of device owners to get consent from those around them is exacerbated by the accidental recordings, as it means that the companies collecting the recordings aren’t obtaining the consent to record their subjects that the Federal Wiretap Act, state wiretapping laws, and consumer protection laws require, as well as contravening the stringent privacy assurances that these companies generally provide. The laws governing surreptitious recordings also frequently rely on individual and societal expectations of privacy, which are warped by the justifiable resignation to privacy invasions that most people eventually acquire.
The result is a legal regime ill-adapted to always-listening devices, with companies frequently violating wiretapping and consumer protection laws, regulators failing to enforce them, and widespread privacy violations. Ubiquitous, accidental wiretaps in our homes, workplaces, and schools are just one more example of why consent-centric approaches cannot sufficiently protect our privacy, and policymakers must learn from those failures rather than doubling down on a failed model of privacy governance.
OpenAI: "Training chat models is not a clean industrial process. different training runs even using the same datasets can produce models that are noticeably different in personality, writing style, refusal behavior, evaluation performance, and even political bias,"
They can say 'refusal behavior' and get away with it.
"[AGI] interprets the Turing Test as an engineering prediction, arguing that the machine “learning” algorithms of today will naturally evolve as they increase in power to think subjectively like humans, including emotion, social skills, consciousness and so on. The claims that increasing computer power will eventually result in fundamental change are hard to justify on technical grounds, and some say this is like arguing that if we make aeroplanes fly fast enough, eventually one will lay an egg."
From the book Moral Codes - Designing Alternatives to AI, by Alan Blackwell
Paris Marx is joined by Tim Schwab to discuss why the story we hear about Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation doesn’t reflect their real impact on education and health around the world.
Tim Schwab is an investigative journalist and the author of The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire.
Tim Schwab: ”I mean, the problem is that this one side of reporting, it’s ended up producing what is essentially misinformation. It’s a lot of fictions really: this idea that Bill Gates is giving away all his money. That’s not true. His personal wealth is nearly doubled. During his tenure as a philanthropist. You go to the Gates Foundation’s website, and you’ll see lots of pictures of Black and Brown women and children, the so-called targets of the Gates Foundation’s charitable giving. But if you follow the money, almost all of the foundation’s charitable gifts go to rich nations like the United States, Switzerland, the United Kingdom. So, once you start to really peel back the layers, you realize that a lot of this sort of prevailing news coverage of Gates is telling a story that’s not just one-sided, but just it’s wrong.”
"News anchors" can be of all ages and backgrounds, and there can be 50% women presenting. The men in control can of course also give each woman exactly "the personality they want" and decide what they wear.
The men will definitely be applauded for their diversity efforts.
When I say in my talks that much of this forward motion is bringing us back in time, this is the type of "innovation" I am referring to.
Stop. Take a step back. Look at this state of mind from a distance.
If this is how it is making people feel, how is it helpful?
Creating fear and self-doubt is a sales technique. Notice and acknowledge when people are doing this to you, even as they are listing "50 AI tools you should be using today!"
I believe that by learning to ignore unhelpful assertions and claims designed to break down – rather than build – your confidence, you can improve your wellbeing.
Pending follow request? It’s a bug! Read this: https://axbom.com/migfail/Teacher, coach, speaker and designer in the space of #DigitalEthics, #InclusiveDesign and #Accessibility. Long history of tinkering with computers and making stuff on the Internet.Writer, blogger and author working to mitigate online harm. Maker of visual explainers. Communication theorist by education, #HumanRights advocate by dedication.Born in Liberia of Swedish parents.Country-living, book-loving middle-aged family man with adult kids and a French bulldog. Love to untangle digital messes. Preferably during long walks in the forest or meditative motorcycle rides.Co-host of @uxpodcast@mastodon.social. Try to get paid for my work but I put most of it out there for free ?Social media is fickle and unpredictable. To make sure you continue to get updates from me, I recommend signing up for my free newsletter below.This is my 4th Fediverse account. My posts are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonComm