June 2025 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

ChatControl e "Going Dark"

by J.C. DE MARTIN

Certi interessi hanno una perseveranza davvero ammirevole... passano i lustri, anzi, i decenni, ma loro, talpone pazienti e tenaci, continuano a scavare, a toglierci la terra da sotto i piedi... vediamo di fare un po' di rumore, di mobilitare qualche parlamentare europeo... juan carlos - *EU Going Dark: il piano di SORVEGLIANZA DI MASSA dell'Unione Europea*. Breve video (10') di Morrolinux: pacato, lucido, incisivo:https://youtu.be/cMxwjegG7ys?si=wXZSB7nArKN6ikEU *- Impact assessment on retention of data by service providers for criminal proceedings* https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/1… <https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/1…> Scadenza per dare feedback: *_18 giugno 2025_* (mezzanotte ora di Bruxelles). - *High-Level Group (HLG) on access to data for effective law enforcement* a.k.a. *HLG "Going Dark"* (non scherzo, il loro indirizzo email ufficiale è: EC-HLG-GOING-DARK(a)ec.europa.eu) https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/networks/high-level-group-hlg-access-data… <https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/networks/high-level-group-hlg-access-data…> /HLG Recommendations/: https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/document/download/1105a0ef-535c-44a7-a6d4… /Concluding report/: https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/document/download/4802e306-c364-4154-835b… - EDRI, High-Level Group “Going Dark” outcome: A mission failure <https://edri.org/our-work/high-level-group-going-dark-outcome-a-mission-fai…> (13 June 2024) - EDRI, ‘ProtectEU’ security strategy: a step further towards a digital dystopian future <https://edri.org/our-work/protecteu-security-strategy-a-step-further-toward…> (30 April 2025) - MEP Patrick Breyer, Going Dark expert group – EU’s surveillance forge <https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/going-dark-expert-group-eus-surveill…> - Per firmare contro Chat Control: https://stopchatcontrol.eu/ jc

June 10, 2025

The Problem With "AI Fluency"

by Daniela Tafani

The Problem With "AI Fluency" There is a growing tech trend in which questioning AI and recognizing that it's not the right tool for every task are no longer welcome Luiza Jarovsky Jun 09, 2025 As the “AI-first” narrative gains more traction in the tech industry, a few days ago, a post from the CEO of Zapier describing how the company measures “AI fluency” went viral. In today's edition, I discuss Zapier's approach and the problem with the expectation of “AI fluency” that is spreading within tech companies and beyond, as it might be harmful and could backfire, both legally and ethically. - In addition to the memos, leaked emails, and PR announcements showing how each company is prioritizing AI (Meta, Duolingo, Shopify, and Fiverr are recent examples - read my recent analysis), there are also worldwide “AI fluency” efforts aiming to incentivize employees to use AI no matter what. If you search “AI fluency” on LinkedIn, you'll see that there is a growing number of posts about the topic, as well as professionals who have added this skill or title to their profiles. There are also job openings that mention or require it, showing that it's a terminology that is becoming normalized and an integral part of the current AI zeitgeist. Before I continue, a reminder that learning about AI, upskilling, and integrating it professionally is extremely important. I wrote about AI literacy multiple times in this newsletter, including what laws, such as the EU AI Act, say about it. AI literacy, however, demands critical thinking, as well as ethical and legal awareness, including the ability to know when not to use AI. This is the opposite of what recent corporate approaches to “AI fluency” are promoting. Let's take a look at Zapier. A few days ago, their CEO posted the table below. It shows how they assess AI fluency by role and maps skills across four levels (unacceptable, capable, adoptive, and transformative): In the post, he also shared AI-related questions Zapier has been asking during interviews, and highlighted that requirements are role-specific and “the bar will keep rising.” Let me start by saying that when discussing “fluency,” the four categories necessarily involve a value judgment: "unacceptable" is worse than "capable", which is worse than "adoptive", which is worse than "transformative". The optimal column is the last one (“transformative”). With that in mind, pay attention to the "unacceptable" column. Across different roles and in various contexts, the employee described in this column is someone who is generally skeptical of AI tools and avoids them. This is an employee who will likely be fired soon, or a job applicant who will not be hired as they do not fit Zapier's expectations. Pay attention to how this doesn't necessarily mean the person doesn't understand AI, or doesn't know how to use it. In fact, this person might be consciously rejecting AI (or being critical of it) for a specific task because they know AI: will lead to inaccurate outputs will lead to low-quality outcomes is proven not to be the best tool to accomplish that specific task is legally risky for that specific task might require additional safety or ethical checks [whatever other perfectly legitimate reason to reject AI deployment in a specific professional context] Zapier and other companies spreading the AI fluency dogma don't want to hear about that and don't accept that AI will be rejected, even if it's for a legitimate reason. Critical thinking around AI, and the understanding that it's an automating tool that is not suitable for all tasks, is not welcome, even though we have more and more studies showing its limitations (the latest one from Apple). For Zapier and other companies promoting similar AI fluency approaches, AI is always good, and it must be accepted, implemented, and praised. Zapier is a private company, and its management team is free to act as it wishes within legal boundaries. This type of corporate culture, however, can be harmful. Why? <https://www.luizasnewsletter.com/p/the-problem-with-ai-fluency>

June 9, 2025

MEMENTO | 184° Mercoledì di Nexa | 11 giugno 2025, ore 17.00

by Nexa - Media

Gentilissime, gentilissimi, Vi ricordiamo che mercoledì 11 giugno, alle ore 17.00, si terrà il 184° Mercoledì di Nexa con un incontro dal titolo "A Law and Political Economy of Intellectual Property". Ospite dell'incontro: Talha Syed (UC Berkeley School of Law). L'incontro si terrà IN PRESENZA e ONLINE, in lingua inglese. SEDE FISICA dell'incontro: Centro Nexa su Internet e Società, Politecnico di Torino, Via Boggio 65/a, Torino (1° piano). Per accedere alla sala si raccomanda di suonare al citofono Portineria e di seguire le indicazioni segnalate lungo il percorso. QUI<https://nexa.polito.it/contatti> maggiori informazioni su come raggiungerci. STANZA VIRTUALE dell'incontro: https://didattica.polito.it/VClass/NexaEvent Maggiori informazioni alla pagina: https://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-184 Un saluto cordiale, -- Valeria Bergantino Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino - DAUIN Via Pier Carlo Boggio, 65/A - 10138 Torino web: https://nexa.polito.it/ mail: valeria.bergantino(a)polito.it<mailto:valeria.bergantino@polito.it> tel: 3473443585

June 9, 2025

What Trump’s and Musk’s Public Divorce Tells Us About the State of Tech

by M. Fioretti

Il mio commento, per FOSS Force https://fossforce.com/2025/06/what-trumps-and-musks-public-divorce-tells-us… in sintesi: questa farsa e' ESATTAMENTE come il divorzio fra Trump e Ivana del 1992, ma ricorda e prova due cose, mai ripetute abbastanza: 1) in democrazie serie, i politici non dovrebbero MAI parlare attraverso i social media 2) quanto le tecnologie chiuse mettono tutti alla merce' di pochissime persone, o addirittura una, in questo caso Marco

June 7, 2025

Webinar AI Act 1.01

by Nexa - Media

Gentilissime, gentilissimi, Vi segnaliamo che è in partenza il secondo ciclo di incontri online dedicati al quadro normativo europeo sull'intelligenza artificiale: AI Act 1.01 - 2025. Il webinar, promosso da FAIR (Future Artificial Intelligence Research), offre un'introduzione aggiornata ad alcuni temi centrali legati all'intelligenza artificiale, secondo un approccio interdisciplinare. Il formato dei seminari è studiato per essere agile e accessibile anche a coloro che non provengono da una formazione giuridica o etica specialistica. Gli incontri si terranno online ogni lunedì dal 9 al 30 giugno 2025, dalle ore 17.00 alle ore 18.30. Per partecipare basterà accedere alla seguente stanza virtuale (Zoom): https://unitn.zoom.us/j/88319695469 In allegato la locandina del webinar. Vi ringraziamo per l'attenzione, Un saluto cordiale, -- Valeria Bergantino Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino - DAUIN Via Pier Carlo Boggio, 65/A - 10138 Torino web: https://nexa.polito.it/ mail: valeria.bergantino(a)polito.it<mailto:valeria.bergantino@polito.it> tel: 3473443585

June 6, 2025

This strip was made entirely with ChatGPT

by Giacomo Tesio

ChatGPT prompt: ``` Generate an image for a Calvin & Hobbes strip. Four panels. Calvin and Hobbes are walking through the woods, talking to each other, both holding smart phones and looking at them intently the entire time. Panel 1: Calvin says to Hobbes, "This strip was made entirely with ChatGPT, which should be impossible given the strict intellectual property rights restrictions on Calvin & Hobbes content." Panel 2: Hobbes responds to Calvin, "Oh? Then how did it make it?" Panel 3: Calvin responds to Hobbes, "Some guy just typed this into a box and clicked a button. That’s all it took." Panel 4: Hobbes responds to Calvin, "That's so fucked up." ``` in allegato l'output condivido da <https://social.lol/@adam/114619827750163655> Giacomo

June 5, 2025

Doctoral Summer School 2025 - Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti di Torino

by Nexa - Media

Gentilissime, gentilissimi, Vi segnaliamo che da lunedì 30 giugno a sabato 5 luglio 2025 avrà luogo la Doctoral Summer School 2025 "Fostering digital and ecological transitions through arts. Reimagining human-nature-technology intra-actions for a sustainable future", promossa dall'Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti di Torino nell'ambito del progetto PNRR "INAR - The Italian Network of Artistic Research and World Art Education Expo 2026". L'iniziativa è rivolta a giovani ricercatori e ricercatrici, dottorandi e dottorande delle Università e degli Istituti di Alta Formazione Artistica, Musicale e Coreutica (AFAM), con interesse nelle pratiche artistiche, curatoriali, digitali ed ecologiche. Le candidature dovranno essere inviate entro il 9 giugno 2025 all'indirizzo summerschool(a)albertina.academy<mailto:summerschool@albertina.academy>. Maggiori informazioni riguardo alla Summer School e alle modalità di partecipazione sono disponibili al link che segue: https://nexa.polito.it/doctoral-summer-school-2025-accademia-albertina-di-t… In allegato, la call e il programma della Summer School 2025. Vi ringraziamo per l'attenzione, Un saluto cordiale, -- Valeria Bergantino Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino - DAUIN Via Pier Carlo Boggio, 65/A - 10138 Torino web: https://nexa.polito.it/ mail: valeria.bergantino(a)polito.it<mailto:valeria.bergantino@polito.it> tel: 3473443585

June 4, 2025

AI is ushering in a new age of violence against women

by Alberto Cammozzo

<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/03/ai-sexism-violence-ag…> Online brothels, sex robots, simulated rape: AI is ushering in a new age of violence against women | Laura Bates Laura Bates ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Society is sleepwalking into a nightmare. The rate of global investment in AI is rocketing, as companies and countries invest in what has been described as a new arms race. The Californian company Nvidia, which dominates the market in the chips needed for AI, has become the most valuable in the world <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/nvidia-shares-earnings-jensen-h…>. The trend has been dubbed an “AI frenzy”, with the components described by analysts as the “new gold or oil”. Everyone is getting in on the act, and politicians are desperate to stake their countries’ claim as global leaders in AI development. Safeguards, equitable access and sustainability are falling by the wayside: when countries gathered for the Paris AI summit in February 2025 <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/14/global-disunity-energy-c…> and produced an international agreement pledging an “open”, “inclusive” and “ethical” approach to AI, the US and the UK refused to sign it <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/11/us-uk-paris-ai-summit-ar…>. It is worth asking who is benefiting from this headlong rush, and at whose expense. One developer, who only goes by the name Lore in their communications with the media, described the open-source release of the large language model (LLM) Llama as creating a “gold rush-type of scenario <https://www.yahoo.com/news/meta-openai-spawned-wave-ai-140000660.html>”. He used Llama to build Chub AI, a website where users can chat with AI bots and roleplay violent and illegal acts. For as little as $5 a month, users can access a “brothel” staffed by girls below the age of 15, described on the site as a “world without feminism”. Or they can “chat” with a range of characters, including Olivia, a 13-year-old girl with pigtails wearing a hospital gown, or Reiko, “your clumsy older sister” who is described as “constantly having sexual accidents with her younger brother”. This million-dollar money generator is just one of thousands of applications of this new technology that are re-embedding misogyny deep into the foundations of our future. On other sites men can create,**share and weaponise fake intimate images**to**terrorise women and girls. Sex robots <https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/sex-robots-frigid-settings-rape-si…> are being developed at breakneck speed. Already, you can buy a self-warming, self-lubricating or “sucking” model: some manufacturers have dreamed up a “frigid” setting that would allow their users to simulate rape. Millions of men are already using AI “companions <https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20241008-the-troubling-future-of-ai-re…>” – virtual girlfriends, available and subservient 24/7, whose breast size and personality they can customise and manipulate. Meanwhile, generative AI, which has exploded in popularity <https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openais-weekly-a…>, has been proven to regurgitate and amplify misogyny <https://articles.unesco.org/sites/default/files/medias/fichiers/2024/07/PR_…> and racism. This becomes significantly more of a concern when you realise just how much online content will soon be created by this new tool. Women are at risk of being dragged back to the dark ages by precisely the same technology that promises to catapult men into a shiny new future. This has all happened before. Very recently, in fact. Cast your mind back to the early days of social media. It started out the same way: a new idea harnessed by privileged white men, its origins in the patriarchal objectification of women. (Mark Zuckerberg started out with a website called FaceMash <https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/zuckerbergs-prank-website-fac…>, which allowed users to rank the attractiveness of female Harvard students … a concept he now says had nothing to do with the origins of Facebook.) Women, particularly women of colour, raised their voices in concern: some of the earliest objections <https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creator-survives-ad-…> to FaceMash came from Harvard’s Fuerza Latina and Association of Harvard Black Women societies. They were ignored, Facebook was born and the rest is history. Social media was rolled out at great speed. Back then, Zuckerberg’s famous catchphrase was “Move fast and break things”. The things that got broken were societal cohesion, democracy <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/social-media-harm-faceboo…> and the mental health, in particular, of girls. By the time people started pointing out that online abuse was endemic to social platforms, those platforms were too well established and profitable for their owners to be prepared to make sweeping changes. Politicians seemed too enamoured with the powerful tech lobby to be prepared to stand up to them. The results have been devastating. Young women have taken their own lives after experiencing sexualised cyberbullying <https://www.cbsnews.com/news/audrie-pott-rehtaeh-parsons-suicides-show-sexu…>. An alarming number of female parliamentarians have stepped down from office after experiencing intolerable levels of online abuse <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/31/alarm-over-number-female-m…>. Millions of women have been subject to rape and death threats, doxing, online stalking and racist and misogynistic abuse. We failed to prevent this crisis when we didn’t heed the warning calls in the early days of social media. We now risk squandering a similar opportunity. Without urgent action, we will be doomed to repeat the same mistakes with AI, only this time on a far larger scale. “One of the reasons many of us do have concerns about the rollout of AI is because over the past 40 years as a society we’ve basically given up on actually regulating technology,” Peter Wang, co-founder of data science platform Anaconda, recently told the Guardian <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/03/ai-danger-doomsday-chatg…>. “Social media was our first encounter with dumb AI and we utterly failed that encounter.” If women and marginalised communities have already learned from their frequent mistreatment on social media to self-censor, to disguise their real names and to mute their voices, these coping mechanisms and restrictive norms will follow them when they step into new technological environments. Nearly nine in ten women <https://onlineviolencewomen.eiu.com/> polled in a 2020 Economist study said they restricted their online activity in some way as a result of cyber-harassment, hacking, online stalking and doxing. This helps to explain the disparity between men’s and women’s use of AI;**71% of men aged 18 to 24 say they use AI <https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/04/women-generative-ai-workplace/> weekly, while only 59% of women in the same age range do so. So long as men remain the main users of AI, the technology will be designed to cater to their preferences. The answer isn’t to reject new technology, or ignore the enormous potential of AI. Instead, we should ensure regulations and safeguards are implemented when AI is designed, before products are rolled out to the public, in much the same way that they are within other industries. “I thought people should be aware,” said Leyla R Bravo,then president of Fuerza Latina <https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creator-survives-ad-…>, when she tried to raise the alarm at Harvard over the nascent FaceMash website back in 2003. This time, might someone listen? It isn’t too late for political leaders to stand up to big tech. The harms of this technology aren’t rooted in a future dystopia where robots take over the world. AI is already devastating the lives of women and girls, right now. If people realised this, they might desire to do things differently.

June 3, 2025

184° Mercoledì di Nexa | 11 giugno 2025, ore 17.00

by Nexa - Media

Gentilissime, gentilissimi, Vi invitiamo a partecipare al 184° Mercoledì di Nexa, che si terrà mercoledì 11 giugno, alle ore 17.00, con un incontro dal titolo "A Law and Political Economy of Intellectual Property". Ospite dell'incontro: Talha Syed (UC Berkeley School of Law). L'incontro si terrà IN PRESENZA e ONLINE. SEDE FISICA Centro Nexa su Internet e Società, Politecnico di Torino, Via Boggio 65/a, Torino (1° piano). Per accedere alla sala si raccomanda di suonare al citofono Portineria e di seguire le indicazioni segnalate lungo il percorso. QUI<https://nexa.polito.it/contatti> maggiori informazioni su come raggiungerci. STANZA VIRTUALE dell'incontro: https://didattica.polito.it/VClass/NexaEvent Di seguito maggiori dettagli: https://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-184 Cordiali saluti, -- Valeria Bergantino Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino - DAUIN Via Pier Carlo Boggio, 65/A - 10138 Torino web: https://nexa.polito.it/ mail: valeria.bergantino(a)polito.it<mailto:valeria.bergantino@polito.it> tel: 3473443585

June 3, 2025

Re: [nexa] non male per una macchina scrivente non pensante :)

by Alfredo Bregni

Siamo sempre lì: come "confezionatori" è difficile batterli... Se poi però -- come scrive Cristianini in "Sovrumano" -- si può "ingannare" una macchina che gioca Go (mi ricorda un mio amico che barava a Monopoli), allora mi sorgono dubbi profondi: come è possibile? Dov'è il baco, il buco, la falla? Concettualmente, intendo. ----- Original Message ----- From: Juan Carlos Gentile Fag�ndez via nexa To: nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2025 7:16 AM Subject: [nexa] non male per una macchina scrivente non pensante :)

June 2, 2025