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Chi "addestra" le auto a guida autonoma?
by Antonio Casilli Aug. 22, 2019

Aug. 22, 2019

Il 14 giugno scorso, Florian Schmidt, professore di design all'Università di Scienze Applicate di Dresda, aveva presentato la relazione conclusiva del nostro convegno INDL-1 "Microwork Platforms". Il tema del suo intervento era il mercato del data training nel settore automobilistico europeo e internazionale. La sua presentazione si basava sui dati di un progetto finanziato dalla Fondazione Hans Böckler. Il rapporto finale del progetto è ora disponibile in inglese e io ne consiglio caldamente la lettura a tutt* quell* che vogliono saperne di più sui lavoratori dell'ombra che insegnano alle auto "senza guidatore" a distinguere un albero da un pedone. https://www.boeckler.de/pdf/p_fofoe_WP_155_2019.pdf "The self-driving car depends on so-called self-learning algorithms, which require large amounts of “training data”. The production of this training data or “ground truth data” requires vast amounts of manual labour in data annotation, performed by crowdworkers across the globe. The crowdworkers both train AI systems and are trained by AI systems. Humans and machines work together in ever more complex structures. An end of this work is not in sight; according to interviews with experts conducted for the study, the demand for this type of labour will continue to grow rapidly in the foreseeable future. However, as the study also shows, while this type of labour creates a new class of skilled crowdworkers, the precariousness of this work remains high because individual tasks are continuously under threat either of being automated or of being further outsourced to an even cheaper region in the world. As the study shows, 2018 saw an influx of hundreds of thousands of crowd-workers from Venezuela specialising in these tasks. On some new platforms, this group now makes up 75 per cent of the workforce. These recent geographical shifts in the supply of labour are a symptom of deeper structural changes within the crowdsourcing industry." -- Antonio A. Casilli Associate Professor (HDR), Telecom Paris (Paris School of Telecommunications) Member, Interdisciplinary Institute for Innovation (i3 UMR 9217 CNRS) Associate Member, LACI-IIAC (EHESS) Faculty Fellow, Nexa Center for Internet & Society

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nasce in Calabria il primo corso di laurea in “Gestione e conservazione dei documenti digitali”
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 21, 2019

Aug. 21, 2019

Ad avviare il nuovo percorso, il primo in Italia, è l’Università della Calabria con sede a Rende (Cosenza), presso il Dipartimento di Lingue e scienze dell’educazione. Di durata biennale, il corso prevede la formazione di figure professionali come il responsabile della gestione documentale e il conservatore dei documenti digitali Buona lettura dl https://agensir.it/quotidiano/2019/8/21/universita-nasce-in-calabria-il-pri… _________________________ www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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The US Military's AI Can't Find Targets On Its Own — Yet, Top USAF General Says - Defense One
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 21, 2019

Aug. 21, 2019

<https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/08/ai-cant-find-targets-their-ow…> Nearly two years since the Pentagon started bringing artificial intelligence to the battlefield, the algorithms still need human help, a top U.S. Air Force general said Tuesday. But Gen. Mike Holmes said the technology is getting better at identifying people, cars, and other objects in drone video. He also sees promise in other AI applications, like predicting when parts on planes will break. “[W]e’re still in the process of teaching the algorithms to be able to predict what’s there from the data and be as reliable as we would like it to be or as reliable as our teams of people [who] are doing that,” the Air Combat Command leader said Tuesday at a Defense Writers Group breakfast. “Those tools are there. We’re starting to use them and experiment with them,” he said. “I don’t think, in general, they’re at the point yet where we’re confident in them operating without having a person following through on it, but I absolutely think that’s where we’re going.” While Air Combat Command is best known for its high-performance fighter jets, Holmes also oversees the Air Force’s drone program and the stateside intelligence centers that process the video and other data collected from high above the battlefield. Two years ago, the Pentagon stood up Project Maven, a small cell tasked with putting algorithms inside the computers that receive video captured by drones above the battlefield. Maven deployed its first AI-powered tools in 2017, and Pentagon officials soon declared the initial experiments a success. But the deployment also sparked an ethical debate about using decision-making machines on the battlefield. A batch of Google employees objected to the company working on Project Maven. In June 2018, Holmes called artificial intelligence “a big part of our future and you’ll continue to see that expanded.” But the general’s comments Tuesday show that’s still a ways off. Holmes compared Project Maven to “teaching your three-year-old with the iPad” to pick out objects that are a certain color. “I would watch my previous aide de camp’s three-year-old and he’d pick out all the green things,” Holmes said. “Green, green, green, not green. “That’s what we’re doing with Maven. Its car, car, car, not car.” “You have to teach it and it learns and it’s learning, but it hasn’t learned yet to the point where you still don’t have to go back and have mom or dad looking over the shoulder of the three-year-old to say, ‘Yeah, those really are cars.’ Or ‘those really are green’.”

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The unsustainable cost of free returns
by Luigi Scorca Aug. 21, 2019

Aug. 21, 2019

https://www.voguebusiness.com/consumers/returns-rising-costs-retail-environ… Luigi

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La scora notte é mancato giovanni buttarelli
by Andrea Violato Aug. 21, 2019

Aug. 21, 2019

https://edps.europa.eu/data-protection/our-work/publications/press-releases… Scrivo da dispositivo mobile. Perdonate la brevità. Andrea Violato

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LA Times: "This psychologist claims Google search results unfairly steer voters to the left. Conservatives love him"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 21, 2019

Aug. 21, 2019

*This psychologist claims Google search results unfairly steer voters to the left. Conservatives love him** */ //By Evan Halper// // //March 22, 2019// // //Reporting from Washington — / The idea that Google is subtly pushing masses of voters to the left has the ring of conspiracy, and thus the work of Robert Epstein is warmly embraced by conservative lawmakers — as well as a president — convinced big tech is plotting against them. Yet even some scholars who think the San Diego-based psychologist is wrong about the political impact of search engines — he believes bias built into Google’s processes could have cost Republicans three California congressional districts in the last election — have started paying attention to his detailed work on how voters respond to tens of thousands of search results. At a moment when misinformation about search engines and social media bias is rampant, with both the left and the right amplifying unsupported claims, Epstein is asking the right questions, they say, about the unseen power of algorithms and how little most Americans understand about the way they work [...] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-google-search-bias-elections-201…

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Economist: "The global gag on free speech is tightening"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 21, 2019

Aug. 21, 2019

*The global gag on free speech is tightening* /In both democracies and dictatorships, it is getting harder to speak up /ON JUNE 22ND there was an alleged coup attempt in Ethiopia. The army chief of staff was murdered, as was the president of Amhara, one of the country’s nine regions. Ordinary Ethiopians were desperate to find out what was going on. And then the government shut down the internet. By midnight some 98% of Ethiopia was offline. [...] continua qui: https://www.economist.com/international/2019/08/15/the-global-gag-on-free-s… //

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Facebook launches 'clear history' tool – but it won't delete anything | Facebook | The Guardian
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 21, 2019

Aug. 21, 2019

Facebook launches ‘clear history’ tool – but it won’t delete anything Feature ‘disconnects’ data from a user’s account and shows extent of tracking apparatus Alex Hern @alexhern Tue 20 Aug 2019 16.00 BST https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/20/facebook-launches-clear-… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays - VICE
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 21, 2019

Aug. 21, 2019

Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays Fooled by gibberish and highly susceptible to human bias, automated essay-scoring systems are being increasingly adopted, a Motherboard investigation has found By Todd Feathers | Aug 20 2019, 1:00pm https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pa7dj9/flawed-algorithms-are-grading-mil… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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US Is Obstructing Treaty to Ban "Killer Robots"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 20, 2019

Aug. 20, 2019

https://truthout.org/articles/us-is-obstructing-treaty-to-ban-killer-robots/ (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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