Tag Archives: Artificial intelligence

Generative AI could leave users holding the bag for copyright violations

By Anjana Susarla, Michigan State University. Published 3-22-2024 by The Conversation

Image: rawpixel.com

Generative artificial intelligence has been hailed for its potential to transform creativity, and especially by lowering the barriers to content creation. While the creative potential of generative AI tools has often been highlighted, the popularity of these tools poses questions about intellectual property and copyright protection.

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT are powered by foundational AI models, or AI models trained on vast quantities of data. Generative AI is trained on billions of pieces of data taken from text or images scraped from the internet.

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Primary Season Is Here, But Still No FEC Action on Campaign Deepfakes

A consumer advocacy group warns that deceptive images generated by AI are “one of the biggest threats to our elections.”

By Julia Conley. Published 1-16-2024 by Common Dreams

Image: ApolitikNow/flickr/CC

As consumer advocacy group Public Citizen marked three months since the Federal Election Commission closed its public comment period on regulating artificial intelligence-generated “deepfake” images in election ads, the group on Tuesday questioned whether the FEC itself is “just a computer-generated illusion.”

“Do we have a real Federal Election Commission?” asked Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, eight months after the group submitted its first petition asking the FEC to establish new rules banning deepfakes in campaign materials.

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EU Deal on AI Act Is ‘Missed Opportunity’ to Ban Mass Surveillance, Say Privacy Groups

“Whilst the Parliament fought hard to limit the damage, the overall package on biometric surveillance and profiling is at best lukewarm,” said one advocate.

By Julia Conley. Published 12-9-2023 by Common Dreams

The European Union reached an agreement on December 8, 2023 regarding the use of artificial intelligence. Image: Electronic Frontier Foundation/CC

Privacy advocates on Saturday said the AI Act, a sweeping proposed law to regulate artificial intelligence in the European Union whose language was finalized Friday, appeared likely to fail at protecting the public from one of AI’s greatest threats: live facial recognition.

Representatives of the European Commission spent 37 hours this week negotiating provisions in the AI Act with the European Council and European Parliament, running up against Council representatives from France, Germany, and Italy who sought to water down the bill in the late stages of talks.

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With Funds Opposed by GOP, IRS to Target Ultrawealthy Tax Delinquents

“This news stands in stark contrast to the approach taken by House Republicans, who want to allow wealthy tax cheats to continue business as usual,” said U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 9-8-2023 by Common Dreams

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Daniel Werfel . Screenshot: C-SPAN

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service on Friday won praise from congressional Democrats and progressive groups for announcing “a sweeping, historic effort to restore fairness in tax compliance by shifting more attention onto high-income earners, partnerships, large corporations, and promoters abusing the nation’s tax laws.”

The IRS effort is enabled by some of the $80 billion in funding for the agency included in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which President Joe Biden signed into law last year. About a quarter of that money is set to be clawed back as part of his recent deal with congressional Republicans to temporarily suspend the nation’s debt limit.

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How big tech and AI are putting trafficking survivors at risk

The tech industry’s privileging of ‘safety over privacy’ could get the most vulnerable killed

By Sabra Boyd. Published 6-14-2023 by openDemocracy

Ring spotlight camera’ Photo: Trusted Reviews/CC

High above the homeless camps of Seattle, in September 2022, Amazon hosted the first Tech Against Trafficking Summit. It was an elite affair. Project managers and executives from Amazon, Google, Facebook (Meta), Instagram, and Microsoft were present, as were ministers of labour from around the globe. Panellists included government leaders, law enforcement, tech executives, and NGO directors. Only two trafficking survivors made the speakers’ list.

The summit was above all a show of force. Most of the tools presented were built for law enforcement, and safety over privacy appeared to be the mantra. Only the two survivors highlighted the dangers of haphazardly collecting any and all data, a view that was generally scoffed at. Stopping traffickers by any means necessary, the non-survivors said, was more important.

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Experts Urge Action to Mitigate ‘Risk of Extinction From AI’

It “should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” says a new statement signed by dozens of artificial intelligence critics and boosters.

By Kenny Stancil. Published 5-30-2023 by Common Dreams

A growing number of experts are calling for a pause on advanced AI development and deployment. Graphic: deepak pal/fickr/CC

On Tuesday, 80 artificial intelligence scientists and more than 200 “other notable figures” signed a statement that says “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

The one-sentence warning from the diverse group of scientists, engineers, corporate executives, academics, and other concerned individuals doesn’t go into detail about the existential threats posed by AI. Instead, it seeks to “open up discussion” and “create common knowledge of the growing number of experts and public figures who also take some of advanced AI’s most severe risks seriously,” according to the Center for AI Safety, a U.S.-based nonprofit whose website hosts the statement.

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Bipartisan US Bill Aims to Prevent AI From Launching Nuclear Weapons

“As we live in an increasingly digital age, we need to ensure that humans hold the power alone to command, control, and launch nuclear weapons—not robots,” said co-sponsor Sen. Ed Markey.

By Brett Wilkins Pubished 4-26-2023 by Common Dreams

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jacob Puente of the 912th Aircraft Mainenance Squadron secures an AGM-183A air-launched rapid-response hypersonic air-to-ground missile to a B-52 Stratofortress bomber at Edwards Air Force Base in Kern County, California on August 6, 2020. (Photo: Giancarlo Casem/USAF)

In the name of “protecting future generations from potentially devastating consequences,” a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday introduced legislation meant to prevent artificial intelligence from launching nuclear weapons without meaningful human control.

The Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act—introduced by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Don Beyer (D-Va.), and Ken Buck (R-Colo.)—asserts that “any decision to launch a nuclear weapon should not be made” by AI.

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Experts Demand ‘Pause’ on Spread of Artificial Intelligence Until Regulations Imposed

“Businesses are deploying potentially dangerous AI tools faster than their harms can be understood or mitigated,” Public Citizen warns. “History offers no reason to believe that corporations can self-regulate away the known risks.”

By Kenny Stancil. Published 4-18-2023 by Common Dreams

Image: Mike MacKenzie/flickr/CC

“Until meaningful government safeguards are in place to protect the public from the harms of generative AI, we need a pause.”

So says a report on the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) published Tuesday by Public Citizen. Titled Sorry in Advance! Rapid Rush to Deploy Generative AI Risks a Wide Array of Automated Harms, the analysis by researchers Rick Claypool and Cheyenne Hunt aims to “reframe the conversation around generative AI to ensure that the public and policymakers have a say in how these new technologies might upend our lives.”

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UN fails to agree on ‘killer robot’ ban as nations pour billions into autonomous weapons research

Humanitarian groups have been calling for a ban on autonomous weapons.
Wolfgang Kumm/picture alliance via Getty Images

James Dawes, Macalester College

Autonomous weapon systems – commonly known as killer robots – may have killed human beings for the first time ever last year, according to a recent United Nations Security Council report on the Libyan civil war. History could well identify this as the starting point of the next major arms race, one that has the potential to be humanity’s final one.

The United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons debated the question of banning autonomous weapons at its once-every-five-years review meeting in Geneva Dec. 13-17, 2021, but didn’t reach consensus on a ban. Established in 1983, the convention has been updated regularly to restrict some of the world’s cruelest conventional weapons, including land mines, booby traps and incendiary weapons. Continue reading

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UNESCO Members Adopt First Global AI Ethics Agreement ‘To Benefit Humanity’

“We’re at a critical juncture in history,” said Ethics in Tech founder Vahid Razavi. “We need as humans to come together and decide what is the best course of action to take with these technologies before they surpass us in their abilities.”

By Brett Wilkins.  Published 11-26-2021 by Common Dreams

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay speaks during a November 25, 2021 press conference announcing the adoption of a global artificial intelligence framework agreement by all 193 member states. (Photo: Christelle Alix/UNESCO/Flickr/cc)

Tech ethicists on Friday applauded after all 193 member states of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization adopted the first global framework agreement on the ethics of artificial intelligence, which acknowledges that “AI technologies can be of great service to humanity” and that “all countries can benefit from them,” while warning that “they also raise fundamental ethical concerns.”

“AI is pervasive, and enables many of our daily routines—booking flights, steering driverless cars, and personalizing our morning news feeds,” UNESCO said in a statement Thursday. “AI also supports the decision-making of governments and the private sector. AI technologies are delivering remarkable results in highly specialized fields such as cancer screening and building inclusive environments for people with disabilities. They also help combat global problems like climate change and world hunger, and help reduce poverty by optimizing economic aid.” Continue reading

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