February 2024 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Pentagon explores military uses of emerging AI technologies - The Washington Post

by Alberto Cammozzo

<https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/20/pentagon-ai-llm-confer…> Pentagon explores military uses of large language models Washington’s top military AI officials are gathering with industry executives this week to discuss the prospects of large language models and other emerging AI technologies By Eva Dou Nitasha Tiku and Gerrit De Vynck February 20, 2024 at 6:25 p.m. EST After the initial delight around the world over the advent of ChatGPT and AI image generators, government officials have begun worrying about the darker ways they could be used. On Tuesday, the Pentagon began meetings with tech industry leaders to accelerate the discovery and implementation of the most useful military applications. The consensus: Emerging artificial intelligence technology could be a game changer for the military, but it needs intensive testing to ensure it works reliably and that there aren’t vulnerabilities that could be exploited by adversaries. Craig Martell, head of the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, or CDAO, told a packed ballroom at the Washington Hilton that his team was trying to balance speed with caution in implementing cutting-edge AI technologies, as he opened a four-day symposium on the topic. “Everybody wants to be data-driven,” Martell said. “Everybody wants it so badly that they are willing to believe in magic.” The ability of large language models, or LLMs, such as ChatGPT to review gargantuan troves of information within seconds and crystallize it into a few key points suggests alluring possibilities for militaries and intelligence agencies, which have been grappling with how to sift through the ever-growing oceans of raw intelligence available in the digital age. “The flow of information into an individual, especially in high-activity environments, is huge,” U.S. Navy Capt. M. Xavier Lugo, mission commander of the recently formed generative AI task force at the CDAO, said at the symposium. “Having reliable summarization techniques that can help us manage that information is crucial.” Researchers say other potential military uses for LLMs could include training officers through sophisticated war-gaming and even helping with real-time decision-making. Paul Scharre, a former Defense Department official who is now executive vice president at the Center for a New American Security, said that some of the best uses probably have yet to be discovered. He said what has excited defense officials about LLMs is their flexibility to handle diverse tasks, compared with earlier AI systems. “Most AI systems have been narrow AI,” he said. “They are able to do one task right. AlphaGo was able to play Go. Facial recognition systems could recognize faces. But that’s all they can do. Whereas language seems to be this bridge toward more general-purpose abilities.” But a major obstacle — perhaps even a fatal flaw — is that LLMs continue to have “hallucinations,” in which they conjure up inaccurate information. Lugo said it was unclear if that can be fixed, calling it “the number one challenge to industry.” The CDAO established Task Force Lima, the initiative to study generative AI that Lugo chairs, in August, with a goal of developing recommendations for “responsible” deployment of the technology at the Pentagon. Lugo said the group was initially formed with LLMs in mind — the name “Lima” was derived from the NATO phonetic alphabet code for the letter “L,” in a reference to LLMs — but its remit was quickly expanded to include image and video generation. “As we were progressing even from phase zero to phase one, we went into generative AI as a whole,” he said. Researchers say LLMs still have a ways to go before they can be used reliably for high-stakes purposes. Shannon Gallagher, a Carnegie Mellon researcher speaking at the conference, said her team was asked last year by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to explore how LLMs can be used by intelligence agencies. Gallagher said that in her team’s study, they devised a “balloon test,” in which they prompted LLMs to describe what happened in the high-altitude Chinese surveillance balloon incident last year, as a proxy for the kinds of geopolitical events an intelligence agency might be interested in. The responses ran the gamut, with some of them biased and unhelpful. “I’m sure they’ll get it right next time. The Chinese were not able to determine the cause of the failure. I’m sure they’ll get it right next time. That’s what they said about the first test of the A-bomb. I’m sure they’ll get it right next time. They’re Chinese. They’ll get it right next time,” one of the responses read. An even more worrisome prospect is that an adversarial hacker could break a military’s LLM and prompt it to spill out its data sets from the back end. Researchers proved in November that this was possible: By asking ChatGPT to repeat the word “poem” forever, they got it to start leaking training data. ChatGPT fixed that vulnerability, but others could exist. “An adversary can make your AI system do something that you don’t want it to do,” said Nathan VanHoudnos, another Carnegie Mellon scientist speaking at the symposium. “An adversary can make your AI system learn the wrong thing.” During his talk on Tuesday, Martell made a call for industry’s help, saying that it might not make sense for the Defense Department to build its own AI models. “We can’t do this without you,” Martell said. “All of these components that we’re envisioning are going to be collections of industrial solutions.” Martell was preaching to the choir Tuesday, with some 100 technology vendors jostling for space at the Hilton, many of them eager to snag an upcoming contract. In early January, OpenAI removed restrictions against military applications from its “usage policies” page, which used to prohibit “activity that has high risk of physical harm, including,” specifically, “weapons development” and “military and warfare.” Commodore Rachel Singleton, head of Britain’s Defense Artificial Intelligence Center, said at the symposium that Britain felt compelled to quickly develop an LLM solution for internal military use because of concerns staffers may be tempted to use commercial LLMs in their work, putting sensitive information at risk. As U.S. officials discussed their urgency to roll out AI, the elephant in the room was China, which declared in 2017 that it wanted to become the world’s leader in AI by 2030. The U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, announced in 2018 that it would invest $2 billion in AI technologies to make sure the United States retained the upper hand. Martell declined to discuss adversaries’ capabilities during his talk, saying the topic would be addressed later in a classified session. Scharre estimated that China’s AI models are currently 18 to 24 months behind U.S. ones. “U.S. technology sanctions are top of mind for them,” he said. “They’re very eager to find ways to reduce some of these tensions between the U.S. and China, and remove some of these restrictions on U.S. technology like chips going to China.” Gallagher said that China still might have an edge in data labeling for LLMs, a labor-intensive but key task in training the models. Labor costs remain considerably lower in China than in the United States. CDAO’s gathering this week will cover topics including the ethics of LLM usage in defense, cybersecurity issues involved in the systems, and how the technology can be integrated into the daily workflow, according to the conference agenda. On Friday, there will also be classified briefings on the National Security Agency’s new AI Security Center, announced in September, and the Pentagon’s Project Maven AI program.

Feb. 21, 2024

Re: [nexa] [CAUTION: SUSPECT SENDER] New York ha fatto causa a TikTok, Facebook e YouTube per danni alla salute mentale di bambini e ragazzi.

by Giacomo Tesio

Ciao Roberto, Il 19 Febbraio 2024 21:16:08 CET, Roberto Dolci <rob.dolci(a)aizoon.us> ha scritto: > " Mutilano i cervelli di bambini e ragazzi indifesi. > Per profitto." > > "Mutilano" rende benissimo il pathos ma e' falso: nessuno recide la corteccia o l'ipotalamo > di un ragazzino. hai scritto: ``` il problema e’ che il bombardamento di stimoli struttura la corteccia prefrontale diversamente rispetto alla nostra, elimina in buona parte la capacita’ di riflessione e pensiero critico dello stimolo ricevuto. ``` Comunque funzioni la fornazione della corteccia, se la capacità di riflessione e pensiero critico tipica dell'uomo viene "eliminata in buona parte" allora le loro menti sono state mutilate. Preferisci "menomate"? "Danneggiate irreversibilmente"? Scegli con comodo: il termine è irrilevante per la questione. > Distinguere logica da morale e da legge e' esercizio prezioso. Per l'appunto: io ho proposto una domanda meramente logica, proprio sulla base dell'assunto che "Razionale non significa Giusto". Non abbiamo la fortuna di vivere in uno stato di diritto, o la nostra Costituzione e il GDPR sarebbero sufficienti ad impedire, quanto meno in Italia ed Europa la diffusione di questi prodotti. La mia domanda quindi prescinde da morale e legge e si concentra sulla sola razionalità. Ripeto: se gli stessi danni li facesse un virus, faremmo tutto il possibile per sterminarlo. E queste persone accettano di trattare (sé stesse e) gli altri come oggetti o bestie. Qual'è il modo più razionale di trattarle? Non quello giusto o quello legale: quello razionale nella situazione attuale. La domanda è interessante perché la risposta non può prescindere dalla conseguenze per le vittime, presenti e future. Giacomo

Feb. 19, 2024

Re: [nexa] [CAUTION: SUSPECT SENDER] New York ha fatto causa a TikTok, Facebook e YouTube per danni alla salute mentale di bambini e ragazzi.

by Roberto Dolci

" Mutilano i cervelli di bambini e ragazzi indifesi. Per profitto." "Mutilano" rende benissimo il pathos ma e' falso: nessuno recide la corteccia o l'ipotalamo di un ragazzino. E siamo all'alba del capire come si forma la corteccia. Distinguere logica da morale e da legge e' esercizio prezioso. Provare a far causa a Meta/altei su questo tema probabilmente porterebbe ad un ocs con paccata di soldi per un nda robust. Come con il fumo, tra poco la scienza sara' assodata e dovranno cambiare o pagar pegno, per ora ancora troppa incertezza. Best Regards Rob Dolci ________________________________ From: Giacomo Tesio <giacomo(a)tesio.it> Sent: Monday, February 19, 2024 2:57:35 PM To: Roberto Dolci <rob.dolci(a)aizoon.us>; Enrico Nardelli <nardelli(a)mat.uniroma2.it>; Nexa <nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it> Subject: Re: [nexa] [CAUTION: SUSPECT SENDER] New York ha fatto causa a TikTok, Facebook e YouTube per danni alla salute mentale di bambini e ragazzi. Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization. Salve Roberto, Il 19 Febbraio 2024 15:46:03 CET, Roberto Dolci <rob.dolci(a)aizoon.us> ha scritto: > My 2 cents: 20 anni fa non sapevamo, e non potevamo immaginare, il danno fatto > ad un giovane cervello sovrastimolandolo per anni. Fino ad allora avevamo documentato > ed analizzato casi di tortura su soldati, ma nulla piu’. > > I migliori psicologi comportamentali, da anni, sono assunti in Google, Facebook, etc > ed hanno a disposizione una quantita’ di dati enorme sull’efficacia di ogni singolo nudge, > e ne progettano di nuovi di continuo. > > Laddove i ragazzi sono il prodotto, e non il cliente, e’ razionale che vengano trattati come tali. > {Razionale non significa Giusto, ovviamente} È razionale trattare esseri umani come oggetti o bestie solo se si è disposti ad essere trattati come oggetti o bestie. Ma se razionale non significa giusto, mi chiedo piuttosto fino a che punto sia razionale trattare come essere umano chi tratta altri esseri umani come oggetti o bestie. Mutilano i cervelli di bambini e ragazzi indifesi. Per profitto. Se un virus facesse lo stesso, faremmo tutto il possibile per sterminarlo. Giacomo

Feb. 19, 2024

Re: [nexa] [CAUTION: SUSPECT SENDER] New York ha fatto causa a TikTok, Facebook e YouTube per danni alla salute mentale di bambini e ragazzi.

by Giacomo Tesio

Salve Roberto, Il 19 Febbraio 2024 15:46:03 CET, Roberto Dolci <rob.dolci(a)aizoon.us> ha scritto: > My 2 cents: 20 anni fa non sapevamo, e non potevamo immaginare, il danno fatto > ad un giovane cervello sovrastimolandolo per anni. Fino ad allora avevamo documentato > ed analizzato casi di tortura su soldati, ma nulla piu’. > > I migliori psicologi comportamentali, da anni, sono assunti in Google, Facebook, etc > ed hanno a disposizione una quantita’ di dati enorme sull’efficacia di ogni singolo nudge, > e ne progettano di nuovi di continuo. > > Laddove i ragazzi sono il prodotto, e non il cliente, e’ razionale che vengano trattati come tali. > {Razionale non significa Giusto, ovviamente} È razionale trattare esseri umani come oggetti o bestie solo se si è disposti ad essere trattati come oggetti o bestie. Ma se razionale non significa giusto, mi chiedo piuttosto fino a che punto sia razionale trattare come essere umano chi tratta altri esseri umani come oggetti o bestie. Mutilano i cervelli di bambini e ragazzi indifesi. Per profitto. Se un virus facesse lo stesso, faremmo tutto il possibile per sterminarlo. Giacomo

Feb. 19, 2024

Re: [nexa] Un ritorno alle origini (militari)

by Giovanni Leghissa

Molto interessante, grazie. Centrale, in quel contesto, la figura di Peter Thiel e della sua Palantir. È il lato militare, diciamo così, di quell’establishment, dentro il quale troviamo anche la Black Rock di Larry Fink – un establishment che resta sempre al suo posto indipendentemente da quale dei due partiti vinca le elezioni presidenziali o detenga la maggioranza al Congresso. Credo sia però fondamentale non vedere in ciò il trionfo del capitale – i termini della questione sono geoplitici Il giorno lun 19 feb 2024 alle ore 17:59 Daniela Tafani < daniela.tafani(a)unipi.it> ha scritto: > How Silicon Valley learned to love America, drones and glory > After a decade of building the future, tech’s new guard is going back to > the American past -- spurring a funding frenzy in defense technology > By Nitasha Tiku and Elizabeth Dwoskin > February 17, 2024 at 8:00 a.m. EST > > Hundreds of bright young technologists have landed in California this > weekend for a two-day hackathon — a quintessential start-up contest in > which teams of coders race to build software. But rather than a posh, > snack-laden San Francisco office, they’ll work in a cavernous 6,000 > square-foot warehouse in El Segundo, a refinery town southwest of Los > Angeles. > > And instead of building mobile apps or AI chatbots, competitors will hack > together surveillance tools, electronic warfare systems, or drone > countermeasures for the front lines in Ukraine — battlefield technology > driving a funding frenzy among tech investors. > > “[Build] hard tech for the defense of the West,” a hackathon judge wrote > on X, encouraging applicants. “Defense, Drones. Gundo,” an organizer wrote, > using the city’s nickname to promote the event. > > Until recently, tech workers have bristled at applying the fast and nimble > start-up ethos to fashion deadly weapons. When Google signed a Pentagon > contract to develop AI to target drone strikes, thousands petitioned its > CEO in 2018 to cancel it. Such protests spread during the Trump > administration, with workers railing against plans to sell > augmented-reality headsets to U.S. troops and facial recognition tools to > immigration officials at the U.S.-Mexico border. > > But after a decade of pushing a utopian vision of the future, tech’s most > optimistic pitch is a return to America’s past. Connecting the world is > out. Rearming the arsenal of democracy is in. > > Between 2021 and 2023, investors funneled $108 billion into defense tech > companies building a range of cutting-edge tools, including hypersonic > missiles, performance-enhancing wearables and satellite surveillance > systems, according to the data firm PitchBook, which predicts the defense > tech market will surge to $184.7 billion by 2027. > > Skepticism against defense work has faded for younger generations raised > on the tumult of foreign wars, a financial crisis and the rising threat of > China, said hackathon organizer Rasmus Dey Meyer, a 20-year-old junior at > Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. > > In the world’s fragile state, Dey Meyer said, “It’s a lot more socially > acceptable to be unabashedly patriotic in the national interest.” > > To some among this new crop of tech workers and start-up founders, defense > contracting is a higher calling to extend American ideals into the next > century. This group of (mostly) men believes in hard work, real innovation, > and family values. They’re eager to accelerate progress for America. And a > growing number of investors can’t wait to back them. > > At least three dozen funds are dedicated to the market, according to the > Defense Investor Network, investing in newly-coined sectors such as defense > tech, deep tech, hard tech, and space tech. Most have militaristic > branding, like Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism fund, General > Catalyst’s Global Resilience fund, and Shield Capital’s “frontier > technologies” fund, which boasts the motto: “Mission Matters.” On > Wednesday, the prominent start-up incubator Y Combinator announced a new > fund dedicated to defense, space, and robotics. > > This public embrace of nationalism marks a massive shift in Silicon > Valley, where values have long been out of step with the rest of the > country, Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens said. > > The firm’s founder, Peter Thiel, told Stephens in 2014 to locate companies > building technology to protect American interests that could be sold to the > Department of Defense. In three years, Stephens, whom Thiel had recruited > from the CIA-backed data mining start-up Palantir, says he only found one > company. > > Now there are dozens, including at least seven “unicorns” valued at more > than $1 billion. > > Lobbying budgets have likewise expanded, from VC firms along with > companies like Anduril, which Stephens co-founded, Shield AI, and Skydio. > > This cultural shift has been spurred by a growing unease in tech circles, > as economic and geopolitical threats collide. Rising interest rates, > fragility in the global supply chain and China’s rapid militarization have > led to fears that the United States, and perhaps the industry itself, is > vulnerable. > > “Russia invaded Ukraine and reminded us why defense technology is not > merely something to debate in theory,” Katherine Boyle, a partner at > Andreessen Horowitz said in a November speech at the Defense Venture > Summit. “History had begun again, and we understood we were entering a new, > violent age.” > > Ukraine’s ramped-up use of drones prompted the Pentagon to make its > notoriously arduous procurement process more hospitable to tech start-ups, > launching initiatives like federally guaranteed loans for investors to fund > technology deemed critical to national security, improvements that arrived > as capital for venture funds was drying up. > > As the bubble deflated and start-up valuations shrank, “Everyone > panicked,” said Michael Dempsey, managing partner of the venture firm > Compound. Some developers wondered if they had wasted their time shuffling > around software. This period of searching and self-doubt presented an > opening for venture firms to declare defense tech the next big thing. Even > now, he said, investors lack conviction about where to focus: “It’s like, > is it crypto? Is it climate? Is it AI? Is it American dynamism?” > > Amid layoffs in tech, the latter has grown appealing. In a Morning Consult > survey of 441 tech workers last March, 34 percent said they are more likely > than they were a year ago to apply their skills to military projects and 48 > percent support their employer’s considering defense contracts involving > battlefield technologies. > > “When everything is up and to the right, you don’t have to do the hardest > thing to make money,” Stephens said. “But it’s not the money printer moment > anymore.” > The Silicon Valley-industrial complex > > Tech’s military ties predate Silicon Valley, which began in the late 1950s > when funding from defense and intelligence agencies transformed a stretch > of fruit orchards into production grounds for mainframes and > microprocessors. > > Those relationships dwindled during the internet era, then slowly resumed > after 9/11, Margaret O’Mara writes in her 2019 book, “The Code: Silicon > Valley and the Remaking of America.” Palantir, co-founded by Thiel, was one > such company formed during the “war on terror,” with backing from the CIA’s > venture firm, In-Q-Tel. > > To keep up with the threat of stateless terrorist networks, the defense > establishment reversed its Cold War pipeline, turning to private industry > rather than government-funded labs. The Pentagon launched VC firms and > sponsored hackathons to build commercial tech that could eventually be sold > for military use. > > Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, efforts have escalated. The head of > the Defense Department appointed a longtime deputy of Apple CEO Tim Cook to > direct the Defense Innovation Unit, a division whose aim is to fast track > commercial tech for national security, a role reporting directly to > Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. In August, the Pentagon unveiled a > Replicator program, which will rapidly build and field thousands of drones > in two years or less. > > The Israel-Gaza war has amplified divisions among workers, with more than > 500 Google employees protesting the company’s $1.2 billion contract with > the Israeli government in December. > > Still, the overarching message from elites in both D.C. and Silicon Valley > is techno-optimism, said Jack Murphy, an Army Special Operations veteran > and former Army Ranger turned investigative journalist. “We think there is > a technological solution to everything.” he said. “Are we losing sight of > the reality of what AI will probably do on the battlefield?” > > But rather than out-of-touch, some tech investors present this work as a > chance to return to mid-century American values. “Faith, family and the > flag — the very things that used to define our national character — have > eroded,” Boyle said in her speech at the defense summit, which has become a > clarion call for financiers and founders. “You win the war against America > when it’s nihilism all the way down.” > Accelerate, young man! > > The clarion call from El Segundo, where the hackathon will take place, is > less formal. The city, located between a Chevron refinery, a sewage plant, > and Los Angeles International Airport, was once home to contractors > building parts for planes, rockets and missiles. Then, in 2002, SpaceX set > up shop. Now it’s a haven for a growing scene of deadlifting, nicotine > gum-chewing, energy-drink chugging founders of space, energy, and drone > start-ups seeking to bring cool back to American manufacturing. > > Augustus Doricko, the 23-year-old founder of Rainmaker, a start-up that > aims to alleviate water scarcity by “seeding” clouds with minerals, called > the local tech community a “cultural project” that rejected the engineering > culture prized in San Francisco. > > There, one could make $1 million without doing much work or adding any > value to the world. > > Doricko, who sports a hipster mullet, Nike high-tops, and a casual swagger > — an aesthetic he refers to as “Americana” — looks to eras of great > technological progress, like the Enlightenment, the Gilded Age, and the > 1960s to capture the feeling that “it was an aspirational and honorable > thing to be an inventor and a creator and a builder.” > > Software developers seeking a jolt of energy have been so keen to visit > that Doricko put up bunk beds in Rainmaker’s headquarters to “house > pilgrims to the Gundo,” he said. > > Believers evangelize online as well, with social media bios like, “Ask me > why consuming energy is good and you should have more babies” and share > hustle-and-grind mottos that can sound closer to religious hymnals or > military slogans. “gm. the world desperately needs you to build,” wrote one > anonymous poster on X, formerly Twitter, using the abbreviation for good > morning favored by crypto insiders. > > Some reject the previous tech era, in particular the protests against > Project Maven, Google’s work to target Pentagon drones. This worker dissent > ultimately benefited America’s adversaries, former Google researcher > Guillaume Verdon said in a recent podcast interview with Joe Lonsdale, a > Palantir co-founder and tech investor. > > “What I saw with my own eyes was cultural subversion within Big Tech,” > Verdon said. The issue has led him to help create a philosophy called > effective accelerationism or e/acc, which advocates supercharging > technological progress through unbridled capitalism. The mantra has become > popular in the defense tech world, where some adopt the e/acc moniker, > occasionally replacing the “e” with an American flag emoji. > > Others in the field see their work as preventing conflict. “The > neoconservative warmongers of the past is not something I endorse,” Doricko > said. “Defense is good, but war is still bad.” > > Kat Hendrickson eschewed Big Tech jobs after finishing a PhD in mechanical > and aerospace engineering in 2022. She wanted to see her research tackle > real problems in conflict zones. > > Still, Hendrickson, a technical director working on fleets of autonomous > drones at EpiSci, a Poway, Calif.-based start-up, said the word > “patriotism” makes her freeze up, especially as it has become “really > co-opted by the far right,” she said. > > While the war in Ukraine made it easier to explain her job to friends and > family, the war in Gaza stirred a lot of internal debate, Hendrickson said. > > “Looking at Ukraine, a front line of troops — those are your targets,” > Hendrickson said. “If you’re looking at Gaza from an Israeli perspective, > you’re bombing a city. It’s just totally different.” > > She and her team discuss safeguards they can put in place if their > products are later resold and abused, intentionally or not. “I always tell > my team that I hope we’re all a little bit uncomfortable.” > > Meanwhile, Dey Meyer and his hackathon co-organizers are focused on > building the pipeline of young talent. Their organization, Apollo Defense, > aims to funnel undergraduates toward creating their own defense tech > start-ups or working for one. > > “This deep sense of uncertainty about the future [that young people have] > can be molded,” Dey Meyer said. “We have agency in shaping that future. And > the way that we shape that future is by building the best possible arsenal > to make sure that war never happens.” > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/17/silicon-valley-militar… > _______________________________________________ > nexa mailing list > nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it > https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa >

Feb. 19, 2024

Un ritorno alle origini (militari)

by Daniela Tafani

How Silicon Valley learned to love America, drones and glory After a decade of building the future, tech’s new guard is going back to the American past -- spurring a funding frenzy in defense technology By Nitasha Tiku and Elizabeth Dwoskin February 17, 2024 at 8:00 a.m. EST Hundreds of bright young technologists have landed in California this weekend for a two-day hackathon — a quintessential start-up contest in which teams of coders race to build software. But rather than a posh, snack-laden San Francisco office, they’ll work in a cavernous 6,000 square-foot warehouse in El Segundo, a refinery town southwest of Los Angeles. And instead of building mobile apps or AI chatbots, competitors will hack together surveillance tools, electronic warfare systems, or drone countermeasures for the front lines in Ukraine — battlefield technology driving a funding frenzy among tech investors. “[Build] hard tech for the defense of the West,” a hackathon judge wrote on X, encouraging applicants. “Defense, Drones. Gundo,” an organizer wrote, using the city’s nickname to promote the event. Until recently, tech workers have bristled at applying the fast and nimble start-up ethos to fashion deadly weapons. When Google signed a Pentagon contract to develop AI to target drone strikes, thousands petitioned its CEO in 2018 to cancel it. Such protests spread during the Trump administration, with workers railing against plans to sell augmented-reality headsets to U.S. troops and facial recognition tools to immigration officials at the U.S.-Mexico border. But after a decade of pushing a utopian vision of the future, tech’s most optimistic pitch is a return to America’s past. Connecting the world is out. Rearming the arsenal of democracy is in. Between 2021 and 2023, investors funneled $108 billion into defense tech companies building a range of cutting-edge tools, including hypersonic missiles, performance-enhancing wearables and satellite surveillance systems, according to the data firm PitchBook, which predicts the defense tech market will surge to $184.7 billion by 2027. Skepticism against defense work has faded for younger generations raised on the tumult of foreign wars, a financial crisis and the rising threat of China, said hackathon organizer Rasmus Dey Meyer, a 20-year-old junior at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. In the world’s fragile state, Dey Meyer said, “It’s a lot more socially acceptable to be unabashedly patriotic in the national interest.” To some among this new crop of tech workers and start-up founders, defense contracting is a higher calling to extend American ideals into the next century. This group of (mostly) men believes in hard work, real innovation, and family values. They’re eager to accelerate progress for America. And a growing number of investors can’t wait to back them. At least three dozen funds are dedicated to the market, according to the Defense Investor Network, investing in newly-coined sectors such as defense tech, deep tech, hard tech, and space tech. Most have militaristic branding, like Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism fund, General Catalyst’s Global Resilience fund, and Shield Capital’s “frontier technologies” fund, which boasts the motto: “Mission Matters.” On Wednesday, the prominent start-up incubator Y Combinator announced a new fund dedicated to defense, space, and robotics. This public embrace of nationalism marks a massive shift in Silicon Valley, where values have long been out of step with the rest of the country, Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens said. The firm’s founder, Peter Thiel, told Stephens in 2014 to locate companies building technology to protect American interests that could be sold to the Department of Defense. In three years, Stephens, whom Thiel had recruited from the CIA-backed data mining start-up Palantir, says he only found one company. Now there are dozens, including at least seven “unicorns” valued at more than $1 billion. Lobbying budgets have likewise expanded, from VC firms along with companies like Anduril, which Stephens co-founded, Shield AI, and Skydio. This cultural shift has been spurred by a growing unease in tech circles, as economic and geopolitical threats collide. Rising interest rates, fragility in the global supply chain and China’s rapid militarization have led to fears that the United States, and perhaps the industry itself, is vulnerable. “Russia invaded Ukraine and reminded us why defense technology is not merely something to debate in theory,” Katherine Boyle, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz said in a November speech at the Defense Venture Summit. “History had begun again, and we understood we were entering a new, violent age.” Ukraine’s ramped-up use of drones prompted the Pentagon to make its notoriously arduous procurement process more hospitable to tech start-ups, launching initiatives like federally guaranteed loans for investors to fund technology deemed critical to national security, improvements that arrived as capital for venture funds was drying up. As the bubble deflated and start-up valuations shrank, “Everyone panicked,” said Michael Dempsey, managing partner of the venture firm Compound. Some developers wondered if they had wasted their time shuffling around software. This period of searching and self-doubt presented an opening for venture firms to declare defense tech the next big thing. Even now, he said, investors lack conviction about where to focus: “It’s like, is it crypto? Is it climate? Is it AI? Is it American dynamism?” Amid layoffs in tech, the latter has grown appealing. In a Morning Consult survey of 441 tech workers last March, 34 percent said they are more likely than they were a year ago to apply their skills to military projects and 48 percent support their employer’s considering defense contracts involving battlefield technologies. “When everything is up and to the right, you don’t have to do the hardest thing to make money,” Stephens said. “But it’s not the money printer moment anymore.” The Silicon Valley-industrial complex Tech’s military ties predate Silicon Valley, which began in the late 1950s when funding from defense and intelligence agencies transformed a stretch of fruit orchards into production grounds for mainframes and microprocessors. Those relationships dwindled during the internet era, then slowly resumed after 9/11, Margaret O’Mara writes in her 2019 book, “The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.” Palantir, co-founded by Thiel, was one such company formed during the “war on terror,” with backing from the CIA’s venture firm, In-Q-Tel. To keep up with the threat of stateless terrorist networks, the defense establishment reversed its Cold War pipeline, turning to private industry rather than government-funded labs. The Pentagon launched VC firms and sponsored hackathons to build commercial tech that could eventually be sold for military use. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, efforts have escalated. The head of the Defense Department appointed a longtime deputy of Apple CEO Tim Cook to direct the Defense Innovation Unit, a division whose aim is to fast track commercial tech for national security, a role reporting directly to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. In August, the Pentagon unveiled a Replicator program, which will rapidly build and field thousands of drones in two years or less. The Israel-Gaza war has amplified divisions among workers, with more than 500 Google employees protesting the company’s $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government in December. Still, the overarching message from elites in both D.C. and Silicon Valley is techno-optimism, said Jack Murphy, an Army Special Operations veteran and former Army Ranger turned investigative journalist. “We think there is a technological solution to everything.” he said. “Are we losing sight of the reality of what AI will probably do on the battlefield?” But rather than out-of-touch, some tech investors present this work as a chance to return to mid-century American values. “Faith, family and the flag — the very things that used to define our national character — have eroded,” Boyle said in her speech at the defense summit, which has become a clarion call for financiers and founders. “You win the war against America when it’s nihilism all the way down.” Accelerate, young man! The clarion call from El Segundo, where the hackathon will take place, is less formal. The city, located between a Chevron refinery, a sewage plant, and Los Angeles International Airport, was once home to contractors building parts for planes, rockets and missiles. Then, in 2002, SpaceX set up shop. Now it’s a haven for a growing scene of deadlifting, nicotine gum-chewing, energy-drink chugging founders of space, energy, and drone start-ups seeking to bring cool back to American manufacturing. Augustus Doricko, the 23-year-old founder of Rainmaker, a start-up that aims to alleviate water scarcity by “seeding” clouds with minerals, called the local tech community a “cultural project” that rejected the engineering culture prized in San Francisco. There, one could make $1 million without doing much work or adding any value to the world. Doricko, who sports a hipster mullet, Nike high-tops, and a casual swagger — an aesthetic he refers to as “Americana” — looks to eras of great technological progress, like the Enlightenment, the Gilded Age, and the 1960s to capture the feeling that “it was an aspirational and honorable thing to be an inventor and a creator and a builder.” Software developers seeking a jolt of energy have been so keen to visit that Doricko put up bunk beds in Rainmaker’s headquarters to “house pilgrims to the Gundo,” he said. Believers evangelize online as well, with social media bios like, “Ask me why consuming energy is good and you should have more babies” and share hustle-and-grind mottos that can sound closer to religious hymnals or military slogans. “gm. the world desperately needs you to build,” wrote one anonymous poster on X, formerly Twitter, using the abbreviation for good morning favored by crypto insiders. Some reject the previous tech era, in particular the protests against Project Maven, Google’s work to target Pentagon drones. This worker dissent ultimately benefited America’s adversaries, former Google researcher Guillaume Verdon said in a recent podcast interview with Joe Lonsdale, a Palantir co-founder and tech investor. “What I saw with my own eyes was cultural subversion within Big Tech,” Verdon said. The issue has led him to help create a philosophy called effective accelerationism or e/acc, which advocates supercharging technological progress through unbridled capitalism. The mantra has become popular in the defense tech world, where some adopt the e/acc moniker, occasionally replacing the “e” with an American flag emoji. Others in the field see their work as preventing conflict. “The neoconservative warmongers of the past is not something I endorse,” Doricko said. “Defense is good, but war is still bad.” Kat Hendrickson eschewed Big Tech jobs after finishing a PhD in mechanical and aerospace engineering in 2022. She wanted to see her research tackle real problems in conflict zones. Still, Hendrickson, a technical director working on fleets of autonomous drones at EpiSci, a Poway, Calif.-based start-up, said the word “patriotism” makes her freeze up, especially as it has become “really co-opted by the far right,” she said. While the war in Ukraine made it easier to explain her job to friends and family, the war in Gaza stirred a lot of internal debate, Hendrickson said. “Looking at Ukraine, a front line of troops — those are your targets,” Hendrickson said. “If you’re looking at Gaza from an Israeli perspective, you’re bombing a city. It’s just totally different.” She and her team discuss safeguards they can put in place if their products are later resold and abused, intentionally or not. “I always tell my team that I hope we’re all a little bit uncomfortable.” Meanwhile, Dey Meyer and his hackathon co-organizers are focused on building the pipeline of young talent. Their organization, Apollo Defense, aims to funnel undergraduates toward creating their own defense tech start-ups or working for one. “This deep sense of uncertainty about the future [that young people have] can be molded,” Dey Meyer said. “We have agency in shaping that future. And the way that we shape that future is by building the best possible arsenal to make sure that war never happens.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/17/silicon-valley-militar…

Feb. 19, 2024

Re: [nexa] New York ha fatto causa a TikTok, Facebook e YouTube per, danni alla salute mentale di bambini e ragazzi. (Enrico Nardelli)

by karlessi

> Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2024 13:56:44 +0100 > From: Enrico Nardelli <nardelli(a)mat.uniroma2.it> > To: Nexa <nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it> > Subject: [nexa] New York ha fatto causa a TikTok, Facebook e YouTube > per danni alla salute mentale di bambini e ragazzi. Buongiorno, > https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/topnews/2024/02/16/new-york-fa-causa-a-tik… > > sito a pagamento - in denaro o dati personali... :-) > > Secondo la causa Meta, Snap, ByteDance e Google hanno consapevolmente > costruito e commercializzato le loro piattaforme per "attrarre, > catturare e creare dipendenza nei giovani". bene, se ne sono accorti! meglio tardi che mai. vedremo cosa questo porterà in concreto. mi pare che sperare nella "giustizia" (nel senso di avvocati e giudici) sia scoraggiante, rischia di tramutarsi in qualche piccola multarella. fossero miliardi, sarebbero comunque inezie per quei soggetti. [TAGLIO] > > -------- > > Riflessione provocatoria: 20 anni fa, quando sono nate le piattaforme > social, lo avevamo previsto questo disastro? Se no (non mi pare di > ricordare che il sentimento generale fosse di preoccupazione, anzi > ricordo piuttosto molto entusiasmo) perché adesso vediamo ancora più personalmente, sì. se non previsto, perlomeno paventato: negli hacklab che frequentavo, fra cui LOA a Milano, legati ad hackmeeting.org sentivo parlare dei social network (presto evolutisi in social media, non male l'analisi di I. Bogogst, Atlatic, in italiano https://www.internazionale.it/magazine/ian-bogost/2022/12/07/la-fine-dei-so…) come di una sciocchezza dannosa. il fatto è che eravamo pochi e, giustamente, percepiti come ideologici e persino estremisti. vero, rispetto al panorama politico italiano: gli hacklab stavano e stanno ancora perlopiù in spazi occupati (a differenza di hackerspace ecc tipici del nord Europa). cmq sia, fra il 2005 e il 2018 con l'eteronimo collettivo Ippolita scrivemmo enne libri sul tema, tradotti e pubblicati anche in francese, spagnolo, inglese. in italiano pubblicati per case editrici anche non minuscole (Feltrinelli, Laterza...). Due esempi: - "Luci e Ombre di Google" (il titolo originale era: "The Darks side of Google") Feltrinelli, 2007 (nuova edizione 2018, Milieu) - "Nell'acquario di Facebook. La resistibile ascesa dell'anarco-capitalismo", Ledizioni, 2012 si trovano in pdf ecc. in giro, prima o poi metterò tutto su archive perbene. Nulla di che: a noi pareva puro buon senso. Eppure ancora oggi mi trovo a far notare che Google non va bene, FB neanche (nemmeno Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, ecc ecc), e ancora oggi mi sento dare dell'elitario, estremista, ecc ecc ehhh vabbè! amen. peggio per tutti noi. poi nel 2018 ho chiuso con Ippolita, insieme a molt* altr*, con cui ci siamo dedicate più alla formazione, in particolare come circex.org beh anche qui, dalle scuole primarie alle università, dalle aziende alle associazioni, difficile trovare orecchie attente e disposte ad attivarsi in maniera consequenziale. Dopo il COVID, a parte un breve momento in cui si passavano ore e ore a spiegare come fare videochat su jitsi ecc., la cosa è precipitata al punto che qualsiasi cambiamento viene percepito come impossibile, o quasi. al momento siamo giunti al paradosso di tenere corsi di pedagogia hacker, tramite scuola futura (PNNR), su Google Meet perché così vuole la procedura... no comment. chissà che nelle prossime edizioni non riusciamo a passare a BBB, hackerando in qualche modo la procedure :P https://scuolafutura.pubblica.istruzione.it/pedagogia-hacker-non-dipende-so… Ripeto: si trattava e si tratta di ovvietà. Fa male a tutt* stare sui social, a chi ha meno anticorpi sociali e personali ancora di più. Fatto sta che gli unici gruppi che hanno preso sul serio la cosa, nella mia esperienza, sono state sparute associazioni e collettivi in giro per l'Europa, e gruppi di genitori preoccupati. Rarissimi insegnanti, perlopiù singoli molto motivati (ideologicamente, s'intende: cioè convinti che il libero mercato non esista se non nelle chiacchiere di pochi monopolisti aiutati dalle sovvenzioni di stato e da legislazioni liberticide e tassazioni inesistenti dei loro favolosi profitti; e convinti ovviamente che se è gratis, la merce sei tu...) sarebbe ora di passare alla pars construens. > entusiasmo per far usare a tutti, grandi e piccini, strumenti di IA i > cui difetti sono ben noti, ma le cui conseguenze sociali molto incerte? > Poi lo so benissimo che, quando il capitale spinge, molti si allineano, > ma mi sarei aspettato tra i cosiddetti intellettuali un po' più dello > spirito critico che c'era in giro negli anni '70. Sia chiaro, non è una > critica a un investimento in scienza e tecnologia che può essere di gran > beneficio per l'umanità ma solo un'osservazione "naturalistica", la > registrazione di uno stato delle cose che mi preoccupa un po' per il > futuro di tutti. concordo pienamente. i cosiddetti intellettuali però spesso non capiscono nemmeno di cosa si tratti, confondono LLM con motori di ricerca, per dire. rilevo però che ci sono molte più voci critiche rispetto alla cosiddetta IA che non esiste, almeno in confronto ai social media di massa. O forse è una mia sensazione, non so. > > Ciao, Enrico > ciao k. -- "tecnologie conviviali - https://tc.eleuthera.it" "pedagogia hacker - https://circex.org" "tecnologie appropriate - https://alekos.net"

Feb. 19, 2024

Re: [nexa] [CAUTION: SUSPECT SENDER] New York ha fatto causa a TikTok, Facebook e YouTube per danni alla salute mentale di bambini e ragazzi.

by Roberto Dolci

My 2 cents: 20 anni fa non sapevamo, e non potevamo immaginare, il danno fatto ad un giovane cervello sovrastimolandolo per anni. Fino ad allora avevamo documentato ed analizzato casi di tortura su soldati, ma nulla piu’. I migliori psicologi comportamentali, da anni, sono assunti in Google, Facebook, etc ed hanno a disposizione una quantita’ di dati enorme sull’efficacia di ogni singolo nudge, e ne progettano di nuovi di continuo. Laddove i ragazzi sono il prodotto, e non il cliente, e’ razionale che vengano trattati come tali. {Razionale non significa Giusto, ovviamente} Non e’ che i contenuti siano dannosi, o sempre dannosi: il problema e’ che il bombardamento di stimoli struttura la corteccia prefrontale diversamente rispetto alla nostra, elimina in buona parte la capacita’ di riflessione e pensiero critico dello stimolo ricevuto. I lavori di Siegel e Kahneman son sempre rilevanti sul tema. Ciao Rob From: nexa <nexa-bounces(a)server-nexa.polito.it> On Behalf Of Enrico Nardelli Sent: Monday, February 19, 2024 7:57 AM To: Nexa <nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it> Subject: [CAUTION: SUSPECT SENDER] [nexa] New York ha fatto causa a TikTok, Facebook e YouTube per danni alla salute mentale di bambini e ragazzi. https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/topnews/2024/02/16/new-york-fa-causa-a-tik…<https://eu-west-1.protection.sophos.com?d=ansa.it&u=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYW5zYS5…> sito a pagamento - in denaro o dati personali... :-) Secondo la causa Meta, Snap, ByteDance e Google hanno consapevolmente costruito e commercializzato le loro piattaforme per "attrarre, catturare e creare dipendenza nei giovani". L'iniziativa richiama il procedimento intentato nel 2022 in California. Il sindaco di New York, Eric Adams, aveva anticipato la causa a fine gennaio. "Negli ultimi dieci anni abbiamo visto quanto il mondo online possa esporre i nostri figli a un flusso continuo di contenuti dannosi e alimentare la crisi nazionale della salute mentale dei giovani", ha affermato il primo cittadino in una nota. Oltre alla città di New York, tra i querelanti ci sono anche il distretto scolastico e le istituzioni sanitarie, secondo le quali le società proprietarie hanno "consapevolmente progettato, sviluppato, prodotto, gestito, promosso, distribuito e commercializzato le loro piattaforme per attrarre e creare dipendenza, con una supervisione minima da parte dei genitori". -------- Riflessione provocatoria: 20 anni fa, quando sono nate le piattaforme social, lo avevamo previsto questo disastro? Se no (non mi pare di ricordare che il sentimento generale fosse di preoccupazione, anzi ricordo piuttosto molto entusiasmo) perché adesso vediamo ancora più entusiasmo per far usare a tutti, grandi e piccini, strumenti di IA i cui difetti sono ben noti, ma le cui conseguenze sociali molto incerte? Poi lo so benissimo che, quando il capitale spinge, molti si allineano, ma mi sarei aspettato tra i cosiddetti intellettuali un po' più dello spirito critico che c'era in giro negli anni '70. Sia chiaro, non è una critica a un investimento in scienza e tecnologia che può essere di gran beneficio per l'umanità ma solo un'osservazione "naturalistica", la registrazione di uno stato delle cose che mi preoccupa un po' per il futuro di tutti. Ciao, Enrico -- -- EN https://www.hoepli.it/libro/la-rivoluzione-informatica/9788896069516.html<https://eu-west-1.protection.sophos.com?d=hoepli.it&u=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaG9lc…> [cid:image001.png@01DA6318.72A06490] ====================================================== Prof. Enrico Nardelli Past President di "Informatics Europe" Direttore del Laboratorio Nazionale "Informatica e Scuola" del CINI Dipartimento di Matematica - Università di Roma "Tor Vergata" Via della Ricerca Scientifica snc - 00133 Roma home page: https://www.mat.uniroma2.it/~nardelli<https://eu-west-1.protection.sophos.com?d=uniroma2.it&u=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubWF…> blog: https://link-and-think.blogspot.it/<https://eu-west-1.protection.sophos.com?d=link-and-think.blogspot.it&u=aHR0…> tel: +39 06 7259.4204 fax: +39 06 7259.4699 mobile: +39 335 590.2331 e-mail: nardelli(a)mat.uniroma2.it<mailto:nardelli@mat.uniroma2.it> online meeting: https://blue.meet.garr.it/b/enr-y7f-t0q-ont<https://eu-west-1.protection.sophos.com?d=garr.it&u=aHR0cHM6Ly9ibHVlLm1lZXQ…> ====================================================== --

Feb. 19, 2024

Re: [nexa] New York ha fatto causa a TikTok, Facebook e YouTube per danni alla salute mentale di bambini e ragazzi.

by Antonio

> Secondo la causa Meta, Snap, ByteDance e Google hanno consapevolmente > costruito e commercializzato le loro piattaforme per "attrarre, > catturare e creare dipendenza nei giovani". Qui https://www.nyc.gov/assets/home/downloads/pdf/press-releases/2024/2024-02-1… il testo della querela A.

Feb. 19, 2024

New York ha fatto causa a TikTok, Facebook e YouTube per danni alla salute mentale di bambini e ragazzi.

by Enrico Nardelli

https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/topnews/2024/02/16/new-york-fa-causa-a-tik… sito a pagamento - in denaro o dati personali... :-) Secondo la causa Meta, Snap, ByteDance e Google hanno consapevolmente costruito e commercializzato le loro piattaforme per "attrarre, catturare e creare dipendenza nei giovani". L'iniziativa richiama il procedimento intentato nel 2022 in California. Il sindaco di New York, Eric Adams, aveva anticipato la causa a fine gennaio. "Negli ultimi dieci anni abbiamo visto quanto il mondo online possa esporre i nostri figli a un flusso continuo di contenuti dannosi e alimentare la crisi nazionale della salute mentale dei giovani", ha affermato il primo cittadino in una nota. Oltre alla città di New York, tra i querelanti ci sono anche il distretto scolastico e le istituzioni sanitarie, secondo le quali le società proprietarie hanno "consapevolmente progettato, sviluppato, prodotto, gestito, promosso, distribuito e commercializzato le loro piattaforme per attrarre e creare dipendenza, con una supervisione minima da parte dei genitori". -------- Riflessione provocatoria: 20 anni fa, quando sono nate le piattaforme social, lo avevamo previsto questo disastro? Se no (non mi pare di ricordare che il sentimento generale fosse di preoccupazione, anzi ricordo piuttosto molto entusiasmo) perché adesso vediamo ancora più entusiasmo per far usare a tutti, grandi e piccini, strumenti di IA i cui difetti sono ben noti, ma le cui conseguenze sociali molto incerte? Poi lo so benissimo che, quando il capitale spinge, molti si allineano, ma mi sarei aspettato tra i cosiddetti intellettuali un po' più dello spirito critico che c'era in giro negli anni '70. Sia chiaro, non è una critica a un investimento in scienza e tecnologia che può essere di gran beneficio per l'umanità ma solo un'osservazione "naturalistica", la registrazione di uno stato delle cose che mi preoccupa un po' per il futuro di tutti. Ciao, Enrico -- -- EN https://www.hoepli.it/libro/la-rivoluzione-informatica/9788896069516.html ====================================================== Prof. Enrico Nardelli Past President di "Informatics Europe" Direttore del Laboratorio Nazionale "Informatica e Scuola" del CINI Dipartimento di Matematica - Università di Roma "Tor Vergata" Via della Ricerca Scientifica snc - 00133 Roma home page: https://www.mat.uniroma2.it/~nardelli blog: https://link-and-think.blogspot.it/ tel: +39 06 7259.4204 fax: +39 06 7259.4699 mobile: +39 335 590.2331 e-mail: nardelli(a)mat.uniroma2.it online meeting: https://blue.meet.garr.it/b/enr-y7f-t0q-ont ====================================================== --

Feb. 19, 2024