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Technology may not create inequality, but it certainly enables it to thrive | John Naughton | Opinion | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 4, 2019

Aug. 4, 2019

<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/04/technology-doesnt-cau…> ere is one of the great paradoxes of our time. The world is dominated by a few corporations that are among the most profitable companies in the history of capitalism. In the US (the home of these giants) and in the UK (an enthusiastic vassal state), parts of the economy are booming and employment is at record levels. And yet, in the middle of this astonishing prosperity, inequality is at levels not seen since the period before the first world war. In the US, the share of total income going to the top 1% of the population is now back to the level it was in the 1920s. And in the UK, more than 4 million people are trapped in deep poverty. Since this catastrophic rise in inequality seems to be correlated with the rise of the tech industry, it’s tempting to see a causal link between the two. Tempting, but too simplistic. For while digital technology has been a central factor in what’s happened, it’s only a part of the story. More often, it’s been an enabler of other forces rather than a prime mover. The biggest force reshaping our world has been globalisation. “A really good substitute for a manual labourer in the US is a manual labourer in China or Costa Rica,” says the Stanford economist Paul Oyer. But you can’t outsource complex production lines without high-bandwidth connections between the west and those distant factories. Oyer cites Apple as a canonical example of how to do it well. “The company is designing their products here, so the people who work in engineering are more and more valuable, and making more and more money, but the people who, in the old days, might have made computers here – that’s now done in China.” Globalisation exported jobs from western economies and gave them to workers in poorer countries, which is why, globally, inequality has reduced even as it increased in the west. But in our suddenly deindustrialised regions, neoliberal governments did little to help workers and communities that had been left behind. It’s been the same story with job-destroying automation. “We always forget,” says Oyer, “to go back and take care of the people who lose their jobs.” Since the companies that deploy the machines were driven by the overriding imperative to maximise shareholder value, they felt no responsibility for the collateral damage they had wreaked on communities and lives. And, once again, governments failed to pick up the pieces. [...]

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Record di evasione fiscale per il sito Booking.com - Il Sole 24 ORE
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 3, 2019

Aug. 3, 2019

Record di evasione fiscale per il sito Booking.com L’intermediazione di Booking.com sugli affitti delle abitazioni di privati senza partite Iva, potrebbe aver generato, tra il 2013 e il 2019, una evasione dell’Imposta sul valore aggiunto pari a 350 milioni di euro di Ivan Cimmarusti 30 luglio 2019 https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/record-evasione-fiscale-il-sito-bookingcom-… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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La scomparsa dei bancari
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 3, 2019

Aug. 3, 2019

Effetto della digitalizzazione come sappiamo, un po' di numeri rispetto ad un fatto di cui abbiamo già contezza Buona lettura dl https://www.truenumbers.it/dipendenti-bancari-italia/ _________________________ www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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Quando i cervelli fuggono nascono meno imprese
by Luigi Scorca Aug. 2, 2019

Aug. 2, 2019

https://www.lavoce.info/archives/60686/quando-i-cervelli-fuggono-nascono-me…

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It’s time to break the wheel of homogeneity in A.I. development
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 2, 2019

Aug. 2, 2019

<http://nautil.us/issue/74/networks/who-will-design-the-future> Who Will Design the Future? AI will be staggeringly diverse. Its developers should be, too. [...] We all have a role to play in building AI and ensuring that this revolutionary technology is used for the benefit of all. What kind of skills and intelligence will be required to build our best technological future? How will we avoid the pitfalls of homogeneity? Almost all of the major advances in AI development are currently being made in silos, disparate laboratories, secret government facilities, elite academic institutions, and the offices of very large companies working independently throughout the world. Few private companies (as of this writing) are actively sharing their work with competitors, despite the efforts of such organizations as OpenAI, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and the Future of Life Institute to bring awareness to the importance of transparency in building AI. Keeping intellectual property secret is deeply ingrained in the culture of private enterprise, but with the acceleration of AI technology development and proliferation, our public duty to one another is such that we have to prioritize transparency, accountability, fairness, and ethical decision-making. The people working in the various fields of AI are presently doing so with little or no oversight outside of a few self-imposed ethical guidelines. They have no consistent set of laws or regulations to guide them, in general or within industries. The intelligent machine gold rush is still in its Wild West phase, and there are huge financial rewards on the line. Many believe that the first trillionaire will be an AI entrepreneur. Concentrating AI talent in a very small and secretive group of organizations sets a dangerous precedent that can inhibit democratization of the technology. While the rewards of inventing the next generation of smart tech are undoubtedly attracting the best and the brightest from around the world—and there is currently a substantial demand for AI experts—for the most part they constitute a homogeneous group of people. Many of AI’s foundational concepts were created by an even less diverse set of people. The building blocks of AI are incredibly eclectic, in that they draw from such distinct fields as psychology, neuroscience, biomimicry, and computer science, yet the demographic of AI’s developers does not reflect this diversity. Researcher Timnit Gebru was at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference in 2016, with approximately 8,500 people in attendance. She counted six black people among them, and herself the only black woman. If the players are all very similar, the game is already stacked. The teams designing smart technology represent some of the most astute computer scientists working today, and they have made and will continue to make extraordinary contributions to science. However, these brilliant people, for the most part—except for some of those writing on the subject, and some of the coalitions calling for more transparency in AI research—are working in isolation. The result is a silo effect. To avoid the most harmful repercussions of the silo effect, we need to be having a broader discussion about the homogeneity of the people involved in artificial intelligence development. Although many of the current leaders in the AI field have been trained at the most prestigious schools and have earned advanced degrees, most have received virtually no training in the ethical ramifications of creating intelligent machines, largely because such training has not historically been a standard expectation for specialists in the field. While some pilot programs are underway, including a new AI college at MIT, courses on ethics, values, and human rights are not yet integral parts of the computer and engineering sciences curriculum. They must be. The current educational focus on specialized skills and training in a field such as computer science can also discourage people from looking beyond the labs and organizations in which they already exist. In the next generation of AI education, we will need to guard against such overspecialization. It is crucial that we institute these pedagogical changes at every level, including for the very youngest future scientists and policy-makers. According to Area9 cofounder Ulrik Juul Christensen, “discussion is rapidly moving to the K-12 education system, where the next generation must prepare for a world in which advanced technology such as artificial intelligence and robotics will be the norm and not the novelty.” Some of the biggest players presently in the AI game are the giant technology companies, such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Baidu, Alibaba, Apple, Amazon, Tesla, IBM (which built Watson), and DeepMind (which made AlphaGo and was acquired by Google). These companies swallow up the smaller AI companies at a rapid rate. This consolidation of technological knowledge within a few elite for-profit companies is ascendant and will continue to rise due to conventional power dynamics. We will need, among many other societal changes, incentives to encourage entrepreneurship that can spawn smaller, more agile, and more diverse companies in this space. Given the economic trends toward tech monopolies and against government intervention in corporate power consolidation, we have to counter not only by investing in creative AI start-ups, but also by educating the public on how important it is to infuse transparency, teamwork, and inclusive thinking into the development of AI. The demand for the most accomplished people working in AI and related fields is fierce, and so these relatively small numbers of corporations that control enormous resources are thus able to offer significant compensation. Even such elite universities as Oxford and Cambridge are complaining that tech giants are stealing all of their talent. On the federal level, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is readying AI for the government’s military use. Governments and tech giants from Russia to China are hard at work in a competition to build the most robust intelligent technology. While each nation is covert about its process, sources indicate that China and Russia are outpacing the United States in AI development in what is being called the next space race. Our chance to include diverse voices has a limited horizon. Concentrating AI talent in a very small and secretive group of organizations sets a dangerous precedent that can inhibit democratization of the technology. It also means that less rigorous academic research is being conducted and published than could be achieved if ideas were shared more freely. With a primarily capitalistic focus on growth, expansion, and profit, the pendulum of public discourse swings away from a deeper understanding of the philosophical and human repercussions of building these tools—topics that researchers and those outside these siloed environments are freer to debate in academic institutions. To better manage the looming menaces posed by developing smart technologies, let’s invite the largest possible spectrum of thought into the room. This commitment must go beyond having diverse voices, though that is a critical starting point. To collaborate effectively (and for good), we must move toward collective intelligence that harnesses various skills, backgrounds, and resources to gather not only smart individuals but also smart teams. Thomas W. Malone, in his book Superminds, reminds us that our collective intelligence—not the genius of isolated individuals—is responsible for almost all human achievement in business, government, science, and beyond. And with intelligent tech, we are all about to get a lot smarter. Harnessing our collective ingenuity can help us move past complacency and realize our best future. The company Unanimous AI uses swarm intelligence technology (sort of like a hive mind) inspired by swarms in nature in order to amplify human wisdom, knowledge, and intuition, optimizing group dynamics to enhance decision-making. Another idea will be to consider more open-source algorithms to better support algorithmic transparency and information sharing. Open-source allows developers to access the public work of others and build upon it. More aspirationally, we must endeavor to design a moral compass with a broad group of contributors and apply it throughout the entire AI ecosystem. [...]

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Denialists' Deck of Cards: An Illustrated Taxonomy of Rhetoric Used to Frustrate Consumer Protection Efforts by Chris Jay Hoofnagle :: SSRN
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 2, 2019

Aug. 2, 2019

Tutt’altro che nuovo, ma sempre interessante. jc Denialists' Deck of Cards: An Illustrated Taxonomy of Rhetoric Used to Frustrate Consumer Protection Efforts 19 Pages Posted: 11 Feb 2007 Chris Jay Hoofnagle University of California, Berkeley - School of Information; University of California, Berkeley - School of Law Date Written: February 9, 2007 Abstract The Denalists' Deck of Cards is a humorous illustration of how libertarian policy groups use denialism. In this context, denialism is the use of rhetorical techniques and predictable tactics to erect barriers to debate and consideration of any type of reform, regardless of the facts. Giveupblog.com has identified five general tactics used by denialists: conspiracy, selectivity, the fake expert, impossible expectations, and metaphor. The Denialists' Deck of Cards builds upon this description by providing specific examples of advocacy techniques. The point of listing denialists' arguments in this fashion is to show the rhetorical progression of groups that are not seeking a dialogue but rather an outcome. As such, this taxonomy is extremely cynical, but it is a reflection of and reaction to how poor the public policy debates in Washington have become. The Deck is drawn upon my experience as a lawyer working on consumer protection in Washington, DC. Where possible, I have provided specific examples of denialism, but in many cases, these arguments are used only in closed negotiations. Some who read them find the examples humorous, while others find it troubling. But all who read the Washington Post will recognize these tactics; they are ubiquitous and quite effective. This taxonomy provides a roadmap for consumer advocates to understand the resistance they will face with almost any form of consumer reform. I hope to expand it to include retorts to each argument in the future. Keywords: lobbying, logic, rational thought, advocacy, libertarianism https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=962462 (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Calls for backdoor access to WhatsApp as Five Eyes nations meet | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 1, 2019

Aug. 1, 2019

<https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jul/30/five-eyes-backdoor-access-w…> British, American and other intelligence agencies from English-speaking countries have concluded a two-day meeting in London amid calls for spies and police officers to be given special, backdoor access to WhatsApp and other encrypted communications. The meeting of the “Five Eyes” nations – the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – was hosted by new home secretary, Priti Patel, in an effort to coordinate efforts to combat terrorism and child abuse. Dealing with the challenge faced by increasingly effective encryption was one of the main topics at the summit, officials said, at a time when technology companies want to make their services more secure after a range of security breaches. The meetings, however, were held in private with no agenda being made public, making it difficult to conclude exactly what had been discussed by the ministers, officials and intelligence agencies from the countries involved. However, British ministers have privately voiced particular concerns about WhatsApp, the widely used Facebook-owned messenger service, which was used by, among others, the three plotters in the London Bridge terror attack. “We need to ensure that our law enforcement and security and intelligence agencies are able to gain lawful and exceptional access to the information they need,” the Home Office said in a statement. GCHQ, the UK agency which monitors and breaks into communications, has suggested that Silicon Valley companies could develop technology that would silently add a police officer or intelligence agent to conversations or group chats. The controversial so-called “ghost protocol” has been fiercely opposed by companies, civil society organisations and some security experts – but intelligence and law enforcement agencies continue to lobby for it. Police said they had not been able to see or crack open hundreds of WhatsApp messages sent by at least one of those involved in the London Bridge attacks because an acquaintance of theirs had refused to hand over his phone. WhatsApp has also been improving its security after it emerged earlier this year that a flaw had been exploited by an Israeli spyware company, which allowed special software used by intelligence agencies to covertly take control of a person’s phone. Ministers attending the event included Patel and the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, who is the government’s most senior law officer. Also present was his US counterpart, William Barr. Barr attracted controversy last week when he said the proliferation of what he described as “warrant-proof encryption” was making it easier for criminals to evade detection. Patel described the summit as “an exciting moment for the UK” and said the UK was “a global leader on national security and child protection and we are committed to working with our close partners on shared challenges”. The Five Eyes summit is an annual event, first held in 2013. The anglophone security network has become increasingly important at a time when the UK is planning to leave the European Union.

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The Dying Art of Instruction in the Digital Classroom | by Tim Parks | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 1, 2019

Aug. 1, 2019

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/07/31/the-dying-art-of-instruction-in-th… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Army fights fake news with propagandists and hackers in one unit | Technology | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 1, 2019

Aug. 1, 2019

<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/31/army-fights-fake-news-wi…> Computer hackers and propaganda specialists working in the British army are to be placed in a single division, as part of a reorganisation designed to reflect a belief that the boundary between peace and war has become increasingly blurred. The cyber and intelligence experts will be consolidated into a reborn 6th Division – one of three in the army with a strength of 14,500 – which will also contain ground troops who can be used in secret, special forces-type operations. British special forces to get new mission to counter state actors Read more Lt Gen Ivan Jones, the commander of the British field army, said the plan reflected the fact that “the character of warfare continues to change” and “the boundaries between conventional and unconventional warfare” had become blurred. One of the early tasks for the rebranded unit is to better tackle disinformation and fake news emerging from Russia and elsewhere. For example, at the end of a recent exercise in Croatia, stories circulated that British soldiers had tried to abduct a native child only to be fought off by locals. “What happened was that a handful of incidents that happened after the exercise, regrettable stories of soldiers accused of vandalism or urinating in public, were exaggerated online locally and began to appear in local media. We need people on the ground from the new 6th Div who can quickly counter that,” a military source said. However, deliberate disinformation has been used in Mosul and northern Iraq “to great effect” to undermine Islamic State, army sources indicated, although they declined to provide further details for security reasons. British combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan finished 10 and five years ago, and while the military are now engaged in some covert missions such as in Yemen, conventional war fighting is currently rare. Troops are more likely to be engaged in peacekeeping and security operations, such as leading a Nato battlegroup on the Russian border in Estonia, or engaged in exercises in parts of the world where a visible UK presence is deemed politically desirable. [...]

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"Billionaire Summer Camp: The Rich And Famous Flock To Sicily For The 7th Annual Google Retreat"
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 31, 2019

July 31, 2019

*Billionaire Summer Camp: The Rich And Famous Flock To Sicily For The 7th Annual Google Retreat** * Jul 30, 2019, 08:29am Jim Dobson Senior Contributor Located on the southwest coast of Sicily, close to the seaside town of Sciacca, the wealthiest people have converged for the Annual Google Camp. Traditionally held every year at the end of July, the famed Verdura Resort hosts the most top-secret gathering in the world. Even though social media posts are forbidden, the superyacht owners enjoy showing off their celebrity guests throughout the week's activities and high profile lunches. […] Continua qui: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimdobson/2019/07/30/billionaire-summer-camp-t…

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