Notices by Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me), page 2
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Saturday, 03-Aug-2024 00:33:41 JST 
Per Axbom
I'm in the process of preparing for open heart surgery. It's an elaborate procedure where I'll get a new mechanical heart valve and also replace about 6-7 centimeters of the aorta.
This is followed by sick leave and rehabilitation with, among other things, breathing techniques to make sure my lung capacity is restored. It takes about three months for my rib cage to just heal up.
Although I've been aware of my congenital heart defect for a long time, the news of needing an imminent operation came quite suddenly and surprisingly. So how did I end up here?
In this blog post I share my experience and the road ahead.
[This post was first written in Swedish. I've done my best to rewrite it in English in my own voice, not the voice of any AI tool.]
https://axbom.com/my-tender-heart-and-i/ -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Thursday, 01-Aug-2024 06:34:18 JST
Per Axbom
Organisations when they hire consultancy services: “We need a company credit check and report to ensure your finances are stable and that this will be a sustainable relationship.”
Organisations when deciding on using OpenAI: “We understand you spend $700,000 per day and need $5 billion a year to survive as a company, which is way more than any company has ever raised in history. Please take our money. We will integrate your tool into all our tools now. The lottery is our favorite way of investing in our own future.” -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 00:46:15 JST
Per Axbom
Vimeo’s stance on user content vis-à-vis generative AI:
”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.”
https://vimeo.com/blog/post/vimeos-position-on-ai/
#vimeo #aiethics -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 16:05:37 JST
Per Axbom
In June 2023 I wrote:
«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.
https://per.ax/aie
#solarpunk -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Monday, 03-Jun-2024 20:56:22 JST
Per Axbom
Just found the Solarpunk Futures storytelling game and now all I want to do is run a solarpunk workshop. 😊
https://thefuture.wtf
The free print-and-play version of the cards: https://per.ax/solarpunkcards -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Saturday, 04-May-2024 20:40:19 JST
Per Axbom
How people trust this software for decision-making is beyond me…
https://chat.openai.com/share/534ac2bd-332c-43d5-a26c-4b1bd8050c38 -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2024 17:35:09 JST
Per Axbom
Some of you may have seen me researching online signing services yesterday, testing about five different services through their trial accounts. One of those companies just called me up(!) and wanted to book me in for a demo of their product.
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. -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2024 17:35:08 JST
Per Axbom
And whenever people wonder about trackers I always want to play them the sound from @bert_hubert@fosstodon.org’s googerteller:
https://axbom.com/the-creepy-sound-of-online-trackers/ -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2024 15:24:34 JST
Per Axbom
Fediverse appreciation post.
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. -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Tuesday, 12-Mar-2024 17:08:10 JST
Per Axbom
If your concern is that humans are standing in the way of technological progress, your understanding of the purpose of tech should perhaps be the subject of consideration. -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 01:27:59 JST
Per Axbom
Okay, here is my take on Nielsen's latest post.
"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. 👇
https://axbom.com/nielsen-generative-ui-failure/
#accessibility #a11y #ux -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 19:57:10 JST
Per Axbom
Giving a shoutout to UX Copenhagen. I spoke at this amazing conference in March of 2020. Conference curator extraordinaire Helle Martens was able to move the entire event online, amidst reports of a quickly spreading virus, and still deliver a stellar experience for speakers and attendees.
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.
https://uxcopenhagen.com/ -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Saturday, 17-Feb-2024 18:21:19 JST
Per Axbom
The 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.
Generative video: Hold my beer. -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Jan-2024 01:41:48 JST
Per Axbom
It's funny how my main issue with the reality of the Fast and Furious franchise is Dom's love of Corona. 😁 -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Tuesday, 09-Jan-2024 15:40:12 JST
Per Axbom
Paper. Accidental Wiretaps: The Implications of False Positives By Always-Listening Devices For Privacy Law & Policy, by Lindsey Barrett and Ilaria Liccardi.
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.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3781867
#DigitalEthics -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Sunday, 31-Dec-2023 17:36:05 JST
Per Axbom
How do you say "We have no idea how our product works", without saying those exact words.
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.
https://businessinsider.mx/chatgpt-accused-of-getting-lazier-2023-12/ -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Friday, 29-Dec-2023 18:34:06 JST
Per Axbom
He had me at "egg".
"[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
https://moralcodes.pubpub.org/ -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 04:57:37 JST
Per Axbom
Recommended listen:
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.”
https://pca.st/episode/817eb328-4f14-4179-bb14-89c2187b7bec -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Thursday, 14-Dec-2023 16:59:30 JST
Per Axbom
The dystopian world of an entirely AI-generated newsroom means that privileged men can continue to own and control everything but still give the appearance of diversity.
"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. -
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Per Axbom (axbom@axbom.me)'s status on Thursday, 14-Dec-2023 07:38:06 JST
Per Axbom
@HistoPol Haha, that post left the building before it got fully dressed. 😁
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