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‘There was all sorts of toxic behaviour’: Timnit Gebru on her sacking by Google, AI’s dangers and big tech’s biases | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo May 22, 2023

May 22, 2023

<https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/may/22/there-was-all-sorts-of…> ‘It feels like a gold rush,” says Timnit Gebru. “In fact, it is a gold rush. And a lot of the people who are making money are not the people actually in the midst of it. But it’s humans who decide whether all this should be done or not. We should remember that we have the agency to do that.” Gebru is talking about her specialised field: artificial intelligence. On the day we speak via a video call, she is in Kigali, Rwanda, preparing to host a workshop and chair a panel at an international conference on AI. It will address the huge growth in AI’s capabilities, as well as something that the frenzied conversation about AI misses out: the fact that many of its systems may well be built on a huge mess of biases, inequalities and imbalances of power. This gathering, the clunkily titled International Conference on Learning Representations, marks the first time people in the field have come together in an African country – which makes a powerful point about big tech’s neglect of the global south. When Gebru talks about the way that AI “impacts people all over the world and they don’t get to have a say on how they should shape it”, the issue is thrown into even sharper relief by her backstory. We need regulation, and we need something better than just a profit motive In her teens, Gebru was a refugee from the war between Ethiopia, where she grew up, and Eritrea, where her parents were born. After a year in Ireland, she made it to the outskirts of Boston, Massachusetts, and from there to Stanford University in northern California, which opened the way to a career at the cutting edge of the computing industry: Apple, then Microsoft, followed by Google. But in late 2020, her work at Google came to a sudden end. As the co-leader of Google’s small ethical AI team, Gebru was one of the authors of an academic paper that warned about the kind of AI that is increasingly built into our lives, taking internet searches and user recommendations to apparently new levels of sophistication and threatening to master such human talents as writing, composing music and analysing images. The clear danger, the paper said, is that such supposed “intelligence” is based on huge data sets that “overrepresent hegemonic viewpoints and encode biases potentially damaging to marginalised populations”. Put more bluntly, AI threatens to deepen the dominance of a way of thinking that is white, male, comparatively affluent and focused on the US and Europe. In response, senior managers at Google demanded that Gebru either withdraw the paper, or take her name and those of her colleagues off it. This triggered a run of events that led to her departure. Google says she resigned; Gebru insists that she was fired. What all this told her, she says, is that big tech is consumed by a drive to develop AI and “you don’t want someone like me who’s going to get in your way. I think it made it really clear that unless there is external pressure to do something different, companies are not just going to self-regulate. We need regulation and we need something better than just a profit motive.” Gebru, who is 40, sometimes speaks dizzyingly quickly, as if the rich details of her life might outrun the hour or so we have to talk. She tends to use the precise, measured vocabulary of a tech insider, leavened with a sense of the absurd that is focused on one particularly howling irony: the fact that an industry brimming with people who espouse liberal, self-consciously progressive opinions so often seems to push the world in the opposite direction. One of the subjects she returns to repeatedly is racism, including experiences of prejudice in the US education system and Silicon Valley. While she was at high school in Massachusetts, she says, her gift for science was treated bluntly (one teacher said: “I’ve met so many people like you who think that they can just come here from other countries and take the hardest classes”) and passive-aggressively: despite high grades in physics, her request to study the subject further was met with concerns that she might find it too difficult. “The thing that was very confusing to me as an immigrant was that liberal type of racism,” she says. “People who sound like they really care about you, but they’d be like: ‘Don’t you think it’s going to be hard for you?’ It took me a while to really figure out what was going on.” I was being attacked by a bunch of guys, and nobody helped me at all. That was the scariest thing Later on came a watershed experience of even more brazen prejudice, when she and a friend – a black woman – were attacked in a bar. “That was the scariest encounter I’ve ever had in the US,” she says. “It was in San Francisco – again, another liberal place. I was being attacked by a bunch of guys and nobody helped me at all. That was the scariest thing to see: being strangled and people just walking by and looking at you.” She called the police. “And that was worse than not calling them, because first they accused me of lying a number of times, and kept on telling me to calm down. And then they put handcuffs on my friend, who had just been attacked.” Her friend was also detained in a police cell. At Stanford, although she was often condescendingly asked by some of her white peers if she had got in thanks to an affirmative action programme, her undergraduate years were spent in an environment where senior people at least “talked about diversity a lot, and they had different people from different places”. But after working as an audio engineer for Apple between 2005 and 2007, she went back to Stanford to study for a PhD and had very different experiences. Her life, she says, became all about “going to an office every day with the same bunch of people – it’s kind of like work. And there was nobody who looked like me at all. It was just shocking.” Gebru began to specialise in cutting-edge AI, pioneering a system that showed how data about particular neighbourhoods’ patterns of car ownership highlighted differences bound up with ethnicity, crime figures, voting behaviour and income levels. In retrospect, this kind of work might look like the bedrock of techniques that could blur into automated surveillance and law enforcement, but Gebru admits that “none of those bells went off in my head … that connection of issues of technology with diversity and oppression came later”. Soon enough, though, she began to think deeply about how big tech’s innovations often embodied the same inequalities evident in its offices, labs and social activities. In 2015, Google had to apologise when the AI systems that served its Photos app mistakenly identified a black couple as gorillas. The year after, the thinktank ProPublica found that software used across the US to assess prison convicts’ chances of reoffending was heavily biased against black people. Meanwhile, Gebru was becoming even more aware of aspects of the tech industry’s culture that lay behind such stories. Around this time, she attended a big AI conference in Montreal where, at a Google party, a group of white men openly harassed her. “One of them kissed me, one of them took a picture. And I was kind of frozen: I didn’t really do anything. They were having a party at an academic conference with limitless drinks at a bar and they weren’t even making it clear that this was a professional event. Obviously, you should never harass women – or anybody – like that. But that was rampant at these conferences.” The organisers of the conference say that their code of conduct has since been “elaborated”; they now have “a new one-stop contact point for concerns and complaints, which is monitored closely”. The next year, Gebru made a point of counting other black attenders at the same event. She found that, among 8,500 delegates, there were only six people of colour. In response, she put up a Facebook post that now seems prescient: “I’m not worried about machines taking over the world; I’m worried about groupthink, insularity and arrogance in the AI community.” In that context, it might seem surprising that, after a year spent working in Microsoft’s fairness, accountability, transparency and ethics in AI lab, Gebru took a job at Google. In 2018, thanks to Margaret Mitchell, a recently hired specialist in algorithmic bias, she was recruited to co-lead a team dedicated to the ethics of AI. “I was full of trepidation,” she says. “But I thought: ‘Well, Margaret Mitchell is here – we can work together. Who else can I work with?’ But that was how I went into it: I was like: ‘I wonder how long I can last here.’” “It was a difficult decision,” she says. “Because, by the time I was going to Google, I had heard from several women about sexual harassment, and other kinds of harassment, and they had actually said: ‘Don’t do it.’” When Gebru arrived, Google employees were loudly opposing the company’s role in Project Maven, which used AI to analyse surveillance footage captured by military drones (Google ended its involvement in 2018). Two months later, staff took part in a huge walkout over claims of systemic racism, sexual harassment and gender inequality. Gebru says she was aware of “a lot of tolerance of harassment and all sorts of toxic behaviour”. In its quest to highlight some of the moral and political questions surrounding AI, her team hired Google’s first social scientist. She and her colleagues prided themselves on how diverse their small operation was, as well as the things they brought to the company’s attention, which included issues to do with Google’s ownership of YouTube. A colleague from Morocco raised the alarm about a popular YouTube channel in that country called Chouf TV, “which was basically operated by the government’s intelligence arm and they were using it to harass journalists and dissidents. YouTube had done nothing about it.” (Google says that it “would need to review the content to understand whether it violates our policies. But, in general, our harassment policies strictly prohibit content that threatens individuals, targets someone with prolonged or malicious insults based on intrinsic attributes, or reveals someone’s personally identifiable information.”) Then, in 2020, Gebru, Mitchell and two colleagues wrote the paper that would lead to Gebru’s departure. It was titled On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots. Its key contention was about AI centred on so-called large language models: the kind of systems – such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s newly launched PaLM 2 – that, crudely speaking, feast on vast amounts of data to perform sophisticated tasks and generate content. These sources are usually scraped from the world wide web and inevitably include material usually subject to copyright (if an AI system can produce prose in the style of a particular writer, for example, that is because it has absorbed much of the writer’s work). But Gebru and her co-authors had an even graver concern: that trawling the online world risks reproducing its worst aspects, from hate speech to points of view that exclude marginalised people and places. “In accepting large amounts of web text as ‘representative’ of ‘all’ of humanity, we risk perpetuating dominant viewpoints, increasing power imbalances and further reifying inequality,” they wrote. When the paper was submitted for internal review, Gebru was quickly contacted by one of Google’s vice-presidents. At first, she says, non-specific objections were expressed, such as that she and her colleagues had been too “negative” about AI. Then, Google asked Gebru either to withdraw the paper, or remove her and her colleagues’ names from it. She says she told the company that she would not retract it and would remove the authors’ names only if Google specified its objections. If this didn’t happen, she said, she would resign. She also sent a number of emails to women working in Google’s AI division, saying that the company was “silencing marginalised voices”. Then, in December 2020, while she was on holiday, one of her closest colleagues texted her to ask if an email they had seen saying she had left the company was correct. Subsequent accounts said that Google had cited “behaviour that is inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager”. How, I wonder, did she feel? “I was not in thinking mode. I was just in action mode, like: ‘I need a lawyer and I need to get my story out; I wonder what they’re planning; I wonder what they’re going to say about me.’” She pauses. “But I was fired. In the middle of my vacation, on a road trip to visit my mom, in the middle of a pandemic.” In response to what Gebru says about workplace harassment and toxic behaviour at Google, her experiences at the party in Montreal and the nature of her departure, the company’s press office emails me a set of “background points”. “We are committed to building a safe, inclusive and respectful workplace – and we take misconduct very seriously,” it says. “We have strict policies against harassment and discrimination, thoroughly investigate all concerns reported and take firm actions against substantiated allegations. We also have several ways for our workforce to report concerns, including anonymously.” Five years ago, it goes on, the company overhauled “the way we handle and investigate employee concerns, introducing new care programs for employees who report concerns and making arbitration optional for Google employees”. On questions about AI systems using copyrighted material, a spokesperson says that Google will “innovate in this space responsibly, ethically, and legally”, and plans to “continue our collaboration and discussions with publishers and the ecosystem to find ways for this new technology to help enhance their work and benefit the entire web ecosystem”. After her departure, Gebru founded Dair, the Distributed AI Research Institute, to which she now devotes her working time. “We have people in the US and the EU, and in Africa,” she says. “We have social scientists, computer scientists, engineers, refugee advocates, labour organisers, activists … it’s a mix of people.” The institute’s fellows, she tells me, include a former Amazon delivery driver, plus people with experience of the monotonous and sometimes traumatic job of manually labelling online content – including illegal and toxic material – to train AI systems. Much of this work happens in developing countries. “There’s a lot of exploitation in the field of AI, and we want to make that visible so that people know what’s wrong,” she says. “But also, AI is not magic. There are a lot of people involved – humans.” Running alongside this is a quest to push beyond the tendency of the tech industry and the media to focus attention on worries about AI taking over the planet and wiping out humanity while questions about what the technology does, and who it benefits and damages, remain unheard. “That conversation ascribes agency to a tool rather than the humans building the tool,” she says. “That means you can aggregate responsibility: ‘It’s not me that’s the problem. It’s the tool. It’s super-powerful. We don’t know what it’s going to do.’ Well, no – it’s you that’s the problem. You’re building something with certain characteristics for your profit. That’s extremely distracting, and it takes the attention away from real harms and things that we need to do. Right now.” How does she feel squaring up to her old employers in Silicon Valley? “I don’t know if we’ll change them or not,” she says. “We’re never going to get, like, a quadrillion dollars to do what we’re doing. I just feel like we have to do what we can. Maybe, if enough people do small things and get organised, things will change. That’s my hope.”

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Dennett, "The Problem With Counterfeit People"
by J.C. DE MARTIN May 21, 2023

May 21, 2023

*The Problem With Counterfeit People** */Companies using AI to generate fake people are committing an immoral act of vandalism, and should be held liable.// / By Daniel C. Dennett May 16, 2023 https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/problem-counterfeit-…

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CfP Rivista di Digital Politics: Open Access
by Mauro SANTANIELLO May 20, 2023

May 20, 2023

Gentili colleghi, segnalo un call for paper della Rivista di Digital Politics (Il Mulino) sui temi dell'open access. Il nuovo numero della rivista si propone di esplorare, tra gli altri, i seguenti aspetti: *Open source e tecnologie emergenti*, con un focus su Generative AI (e.g., OpenAi ChatGPT, etc.) e blockchain sia dal punto di vista dell’open access dei codici che dei training dataset. *Open source intelligence (Osint)*: strumenti, tecniche e applicazioni nell’analisi delle informazioni open access, con particolare attenzione alle pratiche e alle sfide dell’OSINT nel mondo accademico e nella ricerca scientifica. *Open access nella pubblica amministrazione*, comprese le normative sulla protezione dei dati, l’utilizzo delle informazioni del settore pubblico,l’equilibrio tra trasparenza e privacy, ecc. *Open access e giornalismo*, il citizen journalism,giornalismo immersivo ecc., anche dal punto di vista Osint e come i giornalisti possono affrontare le sfide della gestione dei bias informativi. *Open access e publishing*: politiche, modelli, esperienze/successi, sostenibilità, proprietà intellettuale e diritto d’autore, prospettive regionali. *Open education*, politiche educative aperte, piattaforme open source, metodi e tecnologie emergenti educative aperte (Vr, Ar, Ai), Massive open online courses (Moocs), repository Open educational resources (Oer), biblioteche digitali, impatto sulla scalabilità, inclusività e sostenibilità dell’istruzione. La nuova deadline per l'invio degli abstract è il *28/05/2023*. Ulteriori informazioni sono disponibili qui: https://www.digitalpolitics.it/call-for-paper-n7/ Cordiali saluti, Mauro Santaniello (PhD) *Assistant Professor, Internet Governance and Digital PolicyDirector, Internet & Communication Policy Centre (ICPC)* *Scientific Coordinator, Salerno Winter School on Internet Governance (SWING)* *Associate Research Fellow, The United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS)**Visiting Professor of Internet Governance, Sciences Po Grenoble* *Department of Business, Management and Information Systems (DISA-MIS)* *Università degli Studi di Salerno * *Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132 84084 Fisciano (SA) - Italy * *E. msantaniello(a)unisa.it <msantaniello(a)unisa.it> * *W. http://docenti.unisa.it/mauro.santaniello <http://docenti.unisa.it/mauro.santaniello>* *Skype: internetpolicy * *T. twitter.com/webvoodoo <http://twitter.com/webvoodoo>*

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The Internet Dodges Censorship by the Supreme Court
by 380° May 19, 2023

May 19, 2023

Buongiorno, The Internet Dodges Censorship by the Supreme Court DEEPLINKS BLOG By Aaron Mackey May 18, 2023 --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- The Supreme Court today refused to weaken one of the key laws supporting free expression online, and recognized that digital platforms are not usually liable for their users’ illegal acts, ensuring that everyone can continue to use those services to speak and organize. The decisions in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh are great news for a free and vibrant internet, which inevitably depends on services that host our speech. The court in Gonzalez declined to address the scope of 47 U.S.C. § 230 (“Section 230”), which generally protects users and online services from lawsuits based on content created by others. Section 230 is an essential part of the legal architecture that enables everyone to connect, share ideas, and advocate for change without needing immense resources or technical expertise. By avoiding addressing Section 230, the Supreme Court avoided weakening it. In Taamneh, the Supreme Court rejected a legal theory that would have made online services liable under the federal Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act on the theory that members of terrorist organizations or their supporters simply used these services like we all do: to create and share content. The decision is another win for users’ online speech, as it avoids an outcome where providers censor far more content than they do already, or even prohibit certain topics or users entirely when they could later be held liable for aiding or abetting their user’s wrongful acts. Given the potential for both decisions to have disastrous consequences for users’ free expression, EFF is pleased that the Supreme Court left existing legal protections for online speech legal in place. But we cannot rest easy. There are pressing threats to users’ online speech as Congress considers legislation to weaken Section 230 and otherwise expand intermediary liability. Users must continue to advocate for their ability to have a free and open internet that everyone can use. [...] That said, the Supreme Court’s ruling does not foreclose any potential liability when services affirmatively aid and abet specific terrorist acts rather than just assist the entity generally—the outcome could have been different in such a case. That could be read by some as an invitation to enact speech-chilling laws [1] that require services to spy on their users or censor their speech. EFF will continue to fight any efforts to censor the internet. And we will continue to center users’ rights to free expression so that lawmakers and courts know how their decisions will harm everyone’s ability to rely on the internet to speak, organize, and find their communities. Today, however, EFF is relieved that the Supreme Court avoided harming users’ speech. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Non (di)sperate: finché c'è vita (possibilità di spiare per _prevenire_ attività illegali [1]) c'è speranza... Saluti, 380° [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/earn-it-bill-back-again-seeking-scan-… -- 380° (Giovanni Biscuolo public alter ego) «Noi, incompetenti come siamo, non abbiamo alcun titolo per suggerire alcunché» Disinformation flourishes because many people care deeply about injustice but very few check the facts. Ask me about <https://stallmansupport.org>.

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DepreDATI – Laboratorio di autodifesa dalla sorveglianza digitale
by 380° May 19, 2023

May 19, 2023

Buongiorno, segnalo questa lodevole iniziativa: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- I Copernicani lanciano DepreDATI – Laboratorio di autodifesa dalla sorveglianza digitale * DepreDATI – cos’è DepreDATI è un laboratorio in cui si imparano e si condividono le tecniche di difesa dalla sorveglianza digitale. Si rivolge a tutti coloro che hanno a cuore la propria privacy nel mondo digitale e che non vogliono essere profilati dalle Big Tech. Ci proponiamo a non specialisti, non geek, non maghi dell’informatica, che vogliono riappropriarsi della loro vita digitale e non regalare la propria identità a chi ne trae profitto. La progressiva privatizzazione di Internet da parte delle Big Tech ha costruito un’economia dal valore inimmaginabile. A ottobre 2022 la capitalizzazione dei GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) è stata stimata nell’ordine dei 7 triliardi di dollari, poco meno della metà del PIL di tutti i Paesi dell’Eurozona. Uno dei principali fattori di questa economia è la monetizzazione dei dati comportamentali degli utenti. Gli utenti dei servizi Internet vengono costantemente profilati, e i loro profili, le loro identità digitali vengono venduti al migliore offerente; e gli acquirenti non sono solo fornitori di pubblicità, ma anche partiti politici ed enti governativi. È il capitalismo della sorveglianza, un’economia dell’estrazione del valore da soggetti in gran parte incosapevoli, che per questo vengono depredati; la sorveglianza digitale è pervasiva, e non solo genera profitto privato, ma strumenti usati per fini politici o di controllo sociale. * DepreDATI – perché DepreDATI intende sviluppare consapevolezza sulla sorveglianza digitale, perché crediamo che la divulgazione sia un valore (non a caso abbiamo tradotto il fumetto ContraChrome). Se la competenza è specialistica, data la posta in gioco la consapevolezza deve essere diffusa il più possibile: il funzionamento e le tecniche del capitalismo della sorveglianza non sono di dominio pubblico ma impattano il dominio pubblico: per questo la divulgazione a un pubblico non specialistico è importante * DepreDATI – come L’approccio del laboratorio è concreto: spieghiamo e condividiamo soluzioni per limitare la sorveglianza digitale a livelli diversi, dai più semplici e parziali a quelli radicali, sia per gli smartphone e tablet sia per i PC, tanto per le app quanto per il Web. DepreDATI è basato su due incontri di un’ora e mezza. In uno spieghiamo l’autodifesa per smartphone e app, nell’altro per il web, i PC, i loro programmi e sistemi operativi; ogni incontro è autonomo e non è necessario partecipare a tutti e due * DepreDATI – dove e quando I primi incontri sono una sorta di “numero zero”, per rodare l’iniziativa, e si tengono il 6 e il 13 giugno a Milano. CI vediamo all’Hacker Open Space di Via Golgi 60 (zona Lambrate) dalle 17:30 alle 19. È consigliata la prenotazione tramite Eventbrite: --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- ATTENZIONE!!! consiglio vivamente di visualizzarlo con Javascript disabilitato https://copernicani.it/depredati-laboratorio-di-autodifesa-dalla-sorveglian… Saluti, 380° -- 380° (Giovanni Biscuolo public alter ego) «Noi, incompetenti come siamo, non abbiamo alcun titolo per suggerire alcunché» Disinformation flourishes because many people care deeply about injustice but very few check the facts. Ask me about <https://stallmansupport.org>.

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"Violenza digitale" nella scuola pubblico: cosa fare?
by Damiano Verzulli May 19, 2023

May 19, 2023

Un genitore interessato ha fatto circolare un PDF "ufficiale" di un Liceo di Udine, con il quale il liceo comunica: * che "...a partire dall’a.s. 2023/24, anche nelle vostre classi sarà adottata la “didattica mista” che consisterà nell’utilizzo di iPad in affiancamento ai testi di studio..." * "... le famiglie potranno acquistare l’iPad già configurato, a tariffa educational sul sito di REKORDATA - Authorised Education Specialist - anche in forma dilazionata, con le modalità che verranno dettagliate presso l'e-commerce on-line dedicato Rekordata;..." * "...La PRIMA “finestra” indicata per l’acquisto andrà dal lunedì 22 Maggio 2023 al 23 Giugno 2023 con consegna prevista a scuola in data da fissarsi senza oneri da un addetto della Ditta Rekordata..." * "...Tutti i modelli saranno inseriti nel sistema scolastico e configurati in DEP (Device Enrollment Program) in MDM (Mobile Device Management) per permettere di distribuire app e gestire in modo sicuro il Device...." * "...Chi volesse acquistarlo per proprio conto tramite Rekordata, ma fuori dalle sopra indicate finestre, avrà la stessa scontistica e nessuna spesa di configurazione..." * "...Chi decidesse di acquistarlo da altri canali di vendita dovrà accertarsi che gli iPad siano predisposti per questa area geografica e siano almeno modello 2021; inoltre, PRIMA DI PROCEDERE ALL’ACCENSIONE, si consiglia fortemente di portarlo a configurare in DEP dai Tecnici dell’Istituto, al costo di € 30,00, da pagare tramite Pagonline..." * "...Chi invece volesse utilizzare un iPad già in possesso della famiglia, purché sia almeno di 7^ generazione (2019), dovrà sempre farlo configurare in DEP dai Tecnici dell’Istituto, al costo di € 30,00, da pagare tramite Pagonline..." Inoltre: * "...La configurazione in DEP e MDM si rende necessaria per le politiche di Privacy Europee, in quanto i Device girano sotto una rete WIFI istituzionale. Si ricorda che per utilizzare l’IPad in classe la configurazione è OBBLIGATORIA, senza di essa gli IPad NON POSSONO ESSERE USATI IN CLASSE, per una questione di sicurezza di utilizzo corretto in classe di tale strumento. La configurazione verrà in ogni caso rimossa da REMOTO al termine della classe quinta..." e... in ultimo: * "...Naturalmente, come anche negli scorsi anni scolastici, le famiglie che si trovassero in difficoltà economiche, potranno, in via riservata, fare richiesta di un Device in comodato d’uso gratuito, presentando una domanda secondo le modalità e i tempi indicati nella Circolare dedicata che verrà pubblicata a breve..." Il PDF è consultabile a questo indirizzo: https://mega.nz/file/VcA2VbKZ#L9f7DcNVpwwaL6pN6JY5vIhkbZJue1BAHPdEqKL4hGE Le domande che pongo a questa lista sono: * Cosa pensano, gli autorevoli Nexiani di questa lista, di una tale comunicazione? e poi: * Quanti e Quali profili di illeggittimità si trovano in una comunicazione del genere? * Cosa fare per evitare simili scempi, in futuro? Bye, DV -- Damiano Verzulli e-mail:damiano@verzulli.it --- possible?ok:while(!possible){open_mindedness++} --- "...I realized that free software would not generate the kind of income that was needed. Maybe in USA or Europe, you may be able to get a well paying job as a free software developer, but not here [in Africa]..." -- Guido Sohne - 1973-2008 http://ole.kenic.or.ke/pipermail/skunkworks/2008-April/005989.html

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Dai droni alle armi autonome
by de petra giulio May 18, 2023

May 18, 2023

Segnalo, sperando che sia di interesse, un nuovo incontro organizzato dalla Scuola critica del digitale del CRS durante il quale sarà presentato il libro. * "Dai droni alle armi autonome. Lasciare l'apocalisse alle macchine?" * della cui pubblicazione Diego Latella aveva informato questa lista. Il volume sarà presentato da alcuni degli autori: *Francesca Farruggia, Diego Latella. Maurizio Simoncelli, Guglielmo Tamburrini*, insieme a *Giulio De Petra, Giovanni Giannoli e Franco Ippolito.* A questo indirizzo si può trovare la descrizione dei contenuti dell'incontro. https://centroriformastato.it/iniziativa/dai-droni-alle-armi-autonome-lasci… L'incontro si svolgerà a *Roma mercoledì 24 maggio in via della Dogana Vecchia 5 dalle 17 alle 19.* Sarà possibile partecipare sia di persona che da remoto, collegandosi tramite il link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83698043760 <https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83698043760>

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Internet crackdown 2.0
by Marco Giustini May 18, 2023

May 18, 2023

Ieri il Senato ha approvato il cosiddetto pacchetto sicurezza (D.L. 733). Al suo interno è stato approvato un emendamento del senatore Gianpiero D'Alia (UDC) identificato dall'articolo 50-bis: "Repressione di attività di apologia o istigazione a delinquere compiuta a mezzo internet". In sostanza il governo potrà decidere, senza processo, di chiudere un sito se ritiene che al suo interno vi siano contenuti che istigano a delinquere, a disobbedire alle leggi o a fare apologia di reato. Il provider internet viene caricato della responsabilità e se non lo fa viene multato. Siccome questo emendamento viola le libertà costituzionali in quanto prevede una pena comminata con atto amministrativo esecutiva che comporta l'impossibilità di esprimere il proprio pensiero, al primo processo verrà richiesta da un bravo avvocato l'eccezione di incostituzionalità. Nel frattempo farà danni. https://www.senato.it/japp/bgt/showdoc/frame.jsp?tipodoc=Emend&leg=16&id=39…

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Re: [nexa] Proposal for a sovereign and democratic digitalisation of Europe (Alessandro Brolpito)
by alessandro marzocchi May 17, 2023

May 17, 2023

Alessandro Brolpito ha scritto:Date: Mon, 15 May 2023 14:29:02 +0200 From: Alessandro Brolpito <abrolpito(a)gmail.com> > To: nexa <nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it> > Subject: [nexa] Proposal for a sovereign and democratic digitalisation > of Europe > Buongiorno, > Nel caso non fosse ancora passato in lista, un passo importante su un tema > discusso molto in lista > Proposal for a sovereign and democratic digitalisation of Europe - > Publications Office of the EU (europa.eu) > < > https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/dae77969-7812-11ec… > > > Qualunque cammino dovrebbe partire dalla scuola, per questo segnalo https://www.partecipami.it/infodiscs/view/40999#body_41469, Nadia Ambrosetti scrive: --- Segnalo che, sul sito del Ministero dell'Istruzione e del Merito, da ieri è aperta una Consultazione pubblica, rivolta a tutti gli attori del mondo della scuola e non solo. Promossa dalla *Direzione generale per i fondi strutturali per l’istruzione, l’edilizia scolastica e la scuola digitale (DGEFID)* del *Ministero dell’istruzione e del merito (MIM)*, ha l’obiettivo di raccogliere pareri e contributi sui documenti che costituiscono i passi verso l’aggiornamento del *Piano Nazionale Scuola Digitale (PNSD)*https://partecipa.gov.it/processes/piano-nazionale-scuola-digitale Può essere un ottimo strumento per portare i temi del dibattito anche in quel contesto. --- Cordialmente. Duccio (Alessandro Marzocchi)

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WHO calls for safe and ethical AI for health
by Enrico Nardelli May 17, 2023

May 17, 2023

The World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for caution to be exercised in using artificial intelligence (AI) generated large language model tools (LLMs) to protect and promote human well-being, human safety, and autonomy, and preserve public health. <continua qua... https://www.who.int/news/item/16-05-2023-who-calls-for-safe-and-ethical-ai-…> -- EN https://www.hoepli.it/libro/la-rivoluzione-informatica/9788896069516.html ====================================================== Prof. Enrico Nardelli Presidente 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 ====================================================== --

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