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Nuovo articolo "The computerization of the world and international cooperation"
by Nexa - Media Jan. 10, 2025

Jan. 10, 2025

Gentilissime, gentilissimi, Vi segnaliamo la pubblicazione di un nuovo articolo dal titolo "The computerization of the world and international cooperation", a cura del co-direttore del Centro Nexa Juan Carlos De Martin. L'articolo è consultabile al seguente link: https://nexa.polito.it/the-computerization-of-the-world-and-international-c… 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

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Meta: more (free) speech and fewer mistakes (it's time to get back to our roots around free expression).
by 380° Jan. 9, 2025

Jan. 9, 2025

Buongiorno, la notizia epocale non sarà sfuggita a nessuno iscritto a questa lista, ma non si sa mai (e comunque merita di essere archiviata per benino). Già l'oggetto di questa email (titolo comunicato Meta e frase di apertura di è Zuckerberg) è TANTA ROBA™ e potrebbe bastare, tuttavia suggerisco di prendersi il giusto tempo per leggere /attentamente/ quanto DICHIARATO da Meta, oltre ad ascoltare /attentamente/ (o leggere i sottotitoli) quanto DICHIARATO da Zuckerberg. In 5+5 minuti c'è la sintesi della storia degli ultimi 20 anni di censura via social network; è un po' confessione, un po' whistleblowing (eravamo costretti) e un po' chiedere umilmente scusa. https://about.fb.com/news/2025/01/meta-more-speech-fewer-mistakes/ «More Speech and Fewer Mistakes» January 7, 2025 Joel Kaplan, Chief Global Affairs Officer --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- [Mark Zuckerberg video message] <box> Takeaways ───────── • Starting in the US, we are ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to a Community Notes model. • We will allow more speech by lifting restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse and focusing our enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations. • We will take a more personalized approach to political content, so that people who want to see more of it in their feeds can. </box> Meta's platforms are built to be places where people can express themselves freely. That can be messy. On platforms where billions of people can have a voice, all the good, bad and ugly is on display. But that's free expression. In his 2019 speech at Georgetown University, Mark Zuckerberg argued that free expression has been the driving force behind progress in American society and around the world and that inhibiting speech, however well-intentioned the reasons for doing so, often reinforces existing institutions and power structures instead of empowering people. He said: “Some people believe giving more people a voice is driving division rather than bringing us together. More people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes they think matter is more important than every person having a voice. I think that's dangerous.” In recent years we've developed increasingly complex systems to manage content across our platforms, partly in response to societal and political pressure to moderate content. This approach has gone too far. As well-intentioned as many of these efforts have been, they have expanded over time to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable. Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in “Facebook jail,” and we are often too slow to respond when they do. We want to fix that and return to that fundamental commitment to free expression. Today, we're making some changes to stay true to that ideal. Ending Third Party Fact Checking Program, Moving to Community Notes ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── When we launched our independent fact checking program in 2016, we were very clear that we didn't want to be the arbiters of truth. We made what we thought was the best and most reasonable choice at the time, which was to hand that responsibility over to independent fact checking organizations. The intention of the program was to have these independent experts give people more information about the things they see online, particularly viral hoaxes, so they were able to judge for themselves what they saw and read. That's not the way things played out, especially in the United States. Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact check and how. Over time we ended up with too much content being fact checked that people would understand to be legitimate political speech and debate. Our system then attached real consequences in the form of intrusive labels and reduced distribution. A program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor. We are now changing this approach. We will end the current third party fact checking program in the United States and instead begin moving to a Community Notes program. We've seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see. We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they're seeing – and one that's less prone to bias. • Once the program is up and running, Meta won't write Community Notes or decide which ones show up. They are written and rated by contributing users. • Just like they do on X, Community Notes will require agreement between people with a range of perspectives to help prevent biased ratings. • We intend to be transparent about how different viewpoints inform the Notes displayed in our apps, and are working on the right way to share this information. • People can sign up today ( [Facebook] , [Instagram] , [Threads] ) for the opportunity to be among the first contributors to this program as it becomes available. We plan to phase in Community Notes in the US first over the next couple of months, and will continue to improve it over the course of the year. As we make the transition, we will get rid of our fact-checking control, stop demoting fact checked content and, instead of overlaying full screen interstitial warnings you have to click through before you can even see the post, we will use a much less obtrusive label indicating that there is additional information for those who want to see it. Allowing More Speech ───────────────────── Over time, we have developed complex systems to manage content on our platforms, which are increasingly complicated for us to enforce. As a result, we have been over-enforcing our rules, limiting legitimate political debate and censoring too much trivial content and subjecting too many people to frustrating enforcement actions. For example, in December 2024, we removed millions of pieces of content every day. While these actions account for less than 1% of content produced every day, we think one to two out of every 10 of these actions may have been mistakes (i.e., the content may not have actually violated our policies). This does not account for actions we take to tackle large-scale adversarial spam attacks. We plan to expand our transparency reporting to share numbers on our mistakes on a regular basis so that people can track our progress. As part of that we'll also include more details on the mistakes we make when enforcing our spam policies. We want to undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement. We're getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate. It's not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms. These policy changes may take a few weeks to be fully implemented. We're also going to change how we enforce our policies to reduce the kind of mistakes that account for the vast majority of the censorship on our platforms. Up until now, we have been using automated systems to scan for all policy violations, but this has resulted in too many mistakes and too much content being censored that shouldn't have been. So, we're going to continue to focus these systems on tackling illegal and high-severity violations, like terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud and scams. For less severe policy violations, we're going to rely on someone reporting an issue before we take any action. We also demote too much content that our systems predict might violate our standards. We are in the process of getting rid of most of these demotions and requiring greater confidence that the content violates for the rest. And we're going to tune our systems to require a much higher degree of confidence before a piece of content is taken down. As part of these changes, we will be moving the trust and safety teams that write our content policies and review content out of California to Texas and other US locations. People are often given the chance to appeal our enforcement decisions and ask us to take another look, but the process can be frustratingly slow and doesn't always get to the right outcome. We've added extra staff to this work and in more cases, we are also now requiring multiple reviewers to reach a determination in order to take something down. We are working on ways to make recovering accounts more straightforward and testing facial recognition technology, and we've started using AI large language models (LLMs) to provide a second opinion on some content before we take enforcement actions. A Personalized Approach to Political Content ───────────────────────────────────────────── Since 2021, we've made changes to reduce the amount of civic content people see – posts about elections, politics or social issues – based on the feedback our users gave us that they wanted to see less of this content. But this was a pretty blunt approach. We are going to start phasing this back into Facebook, Instagram and Threads with a more personalized approach so that people who want to see more political content in their feeds can. We're continually testing how we deliver personalized experiences and have recently conducted testing around civic content. As a result, we're going to start treating civic content from people and Pages you follow on Facebook more like any other content in your feed, and we will start ranking and showing you that content based on explicit signals (for example, liking a piece of content) and implicit signals (like viewing posts) that help us predict what's meaningful to people. We are also going to recommend more political content based on these personalized signals and are expanding the options people have to control how much of this content they see. These changes are an attempt to return to the commitment to free expression that Mark Zuckerberg set out in his Georgetown speech. That means being vigilant about the impact our policies and systems are having on people's ability to make their voices heard, and having the humility to change our approach when we know we're getting things wrong. [Mark Zuckerberg video message] <https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/V2.Single-Take-CS25_MZ_JanA…> [Facebook] <https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/1914298425761977> [Instagram] <https://help.instagram.com/contact/1223551615403090> [Threads] <https://help.instagram.com/contact/1638078013752611> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- ...mumble mumble. E adesso Diamogli Addosso™ anche al miliardario Mark Zuckerberg che non ha perso nemmeno un minuto ed è saltato subito sul carro del vincitore, trasformandosi in una brutta copia di Elon Musk, pur di non perdere i suoi privilegi... Saluti, 380° P.S.: tra tutto quello che hanno dichiarato, la cosa che personalmente trovo gustosamente curiosa è il trasloco della sede dei "trust and safety teams" dalla California al Texas... perbacco sta /copiando/ Musk proprio in tutto, non solo sulle "community notes" :-O -- 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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da Timnit Gebru
by J.C. DE MARTIN Jan. 9, 2025

Jan. 9, 2025

*Timnit Gebru* (da LinkedIn): We're hoping to organize a hopeful virtual event to get us to think about our possible technological futures, and have a creative workshop. Maybe in the spring. Stay tuned. In the mean time, read our Possible Futures Series. If you have thoughts on what you'd like to see from the event, comment below. 1. Nobody Owns Our Techno-Future: https://lnkd.in/eM62Gknh 2. A Bus Model For Global, Human-Centered Education: https://lnkd.in/epXMiuNB 3. An Internet for Our Elders: https://lnkd.in/eK2Z__eC 4. Closure for Families of the Missing: https://lnkd.in/e_GErxQZ 5. Decentralized, Locally-Tailored Technology: https://lnkd.in/eDdef9ts

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Back to Fedro
by Guido Vetere Jan. 9, 2025

Jan. 9, 2025

> Caro ingegnosissimo (technikòtate) Theuth, una cosa è la capacità di > generare ciò che riguarda l'arte (techne), un'altra giudicare se coloro che > la useranno ne avranno utilità oppure danno. E così ora tu, per ben volere > nei confronti delle lettere di cui sei il padre, hai detto il contrario di > quello che può provocare. Perché essa produrrà oblio nelle anime di coloro > che imparano: essi fidandosi della scrittura senza cura della memoria, > richiameranno alla memoria dall'esterno, attraverso segni estranei, e non > più dall'interno, da se stessi: tu non hai scoperto un farmaco per la > memoria ma per far ricordare. A coloro che imparano dai una apparenza di > sapienza e non la verità; grazie a te essi, avendo udito molto senza > insegnamento, crederanno di essere molto dotti senza per lo più esserlo; > sarà difficile stare con loro, presuntuosi di sapienza (doxòsophoi) > piuttosto che sapienti. > (Platone, Fedro) Nonostante questo monito rivolto da Thamus (a.k.a. Ammon, Re d'Egitto) al tecnocrate Theuth, inventore della scrittura, sono stati vergati e poi stampati centinaia di milioni di libri, e ancora oggi se ne pubblicano più di due milioni all'anno. Ammon sbagliava? Il punto non è questo. Il punto è che il Re avrebbe fatto comunque bene a finanziare il progetto di una biblioteca a prova di incendio, visto che oggi ci piacerebbe molto avere ancora quella di Alessandria. Un po' di senso pratico, insomma ... Cordialità G.

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"Le multinazionali del tech hanno ficcato il naso nell'AI Act. Forse un po' troppo"
by maurizio lana Jan. 9, 2025

Jan. 9, 2025

leggo oggi 8 gennaio su Wired questo articolo: Le multinazionali del tech hanno ficcato il naso nell'AI Act. Forse un po' troppo https://www.wired.it/article/ai-act-lobby-big-tech-microsoft-ibm/ che rimanda a questo report: Uncovering Big Tech’s hidden network. Undisclosed affiliations distort Digital Market Act’s public workshops https://www.somo.nl/uncovering-big-techs-hidden-network/ abstract: > > In March 2024, the European Commission set up a series of public > workshops to test Big Tech companies’ compliance with the Digital > Markets Act (DMA). These workshops were meant to gather the input from > impacted business and end users. Research by CEO, LobbyControl and > SOMO now shows that 1 in 5 workshop participants had a direct > connection with Big Tech, most of them undisclosed. > > Gatekeeper companies like Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta were able to > complement their own legal and lobbying teams’ influence through a > vast and undisclosed network of law firms, lobby consultants, trade > associations and think tanks. Given the clear asymmetry of resources > between Big Tech and regulators, the European Commission must > strengthen its conflict of interest safeguards before its next DMA > workshops. > qui in in lista si è già discusso di vari aspetti controversi dell'AI Act, ma questo non era ancora comparso Maurizio ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erano anni felici, ma nessuno se n'era accorto daniele luchetti, anni felici ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maurizio Lana - 347 7370925

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My New Book ‘Waiting for Robots’ Out Now from University of Chicago Press
by Antonio Casilli Jan. 9, 2025

Jan. 9, 2025

Waiting for Robots is Here My new book out now from University of Chicago Press Dear all, I’m thrilled to announce the release of my new book, [ https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo239039613.html | Waiting for Robots: The Hidden Hands of Automation ] , now available from the University of Chicago Press! This book has traveled an incredible journey, starting with its French initial publication and expanding to readers worldwide through six editions editions in Spanish, Arabic, and more. Now, this updated and expanded English edition lands at a crucial moment in the global conversation about artificial intelligence and labor. The journal [ https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu1541 | Science ] has already given it a stellar review. This updated edition addresses key issues, including: * The rise of generative AI and large language models * The pandemic’s lasting impact on labor markets and on supply chains * Emerging worker movements against AI and platform exploitation This book is also perfectly suitable for academic courses on digital labor, technology studies, sociology, and political economy. [ https://press.uchicago.edu/books/textadoption/requestHandler.html?path=/boo… | Request An Instructor Copy for Course Use ] Critical Acclaim for Waiting for Robots “Waiting for Robots makes a substantial contribution to the discourse on digital labor and platform capitalism… Casilli’s incisive analysis of the hidden human costs of AI, combined with his clear and engaging prose, establishes the book as essential reading for those seeking to understand the ethical and social dimensions of technology.” — Science BQ_BEGIN “Casilli’s pioneering book, now updated and available for the first time in English, completely upends the celebratory myths about AI. Through a quite remarkable range of international fieldwork, Casilli shows how exploited human workers, usually in the Global South, not only train AI, but often literally do the exhausting work branded as ‘artificial’ intelligence.” — Nick Couldry, London School of Economics BQ_END BQ_BEGIN “Disturbing…. Artificial intelligence, according to its advocates, holds out the promise of an end to mind-numbing, exploitative work. Casilli vehemently disagrees. He argues that it has merely changed the type of labor and the structure of the exploitation, and he has a mountain of research to support his case.” — Kirkus Reviews BQ_END BQ_BEGIN “With a blend of analysis and a subtly wry sense of humor, he debunks the myth of Al-driven job replacement, exposing how human labor is reconfigured and concealed within digital platforms . Bridging history, media, philosophy, and business, this page-turning work redefines our understanding of digital labor.” — Trebor Scholz, New School BQ_END BQ_BEGIN “Sweeping in its scope and exacting in its analysis, Waiting for Robots stands out as one of the most perceptive and critical accounts of AI in recent times. Casilli reveals the hidden fingerprints of human labor on these technologies, as long as we know where—and how—to look.” — Gabriella Coleman, Harvard University BQ_END Thank you for your support. I encourage you to forward this annoucement to anyone who may be interested. Warm regards, Antonio Casilli -- Antonio A. Casilli Professor, Institut Polytechnique de Paris My new book: Waiting for Robots. The Hired Hands of Automation, University of Chicago Press, 2025. My new documentary: In the Belly of AI, Federation Studios, 2025. *We respect your right to disconnect. My workflow efficiency accounts for the timing of this email. Taking action or responding outside of office hours is not required.*

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In a mirror
by Silvia Crafa Jan. 8, 2025

Jan. 8, 2025

Buondì, nell'augurare a tutti un buon nuovo anno, segnalo questa lecture di Shannon Vallor, che affronta il tema dell'AI con un approccio filosofico che coniuga profondità e concretezza, di cui c'è sempre molto bisogno. Shannon Vallor - Inaugural Lecture 23.10.24 - University of Edinburgh In a mirror, dimly. Why AI can't tell our stories and why we must https://media.ed.ac.uk/media/Shannon+Vallor+-+Inaugural+Lecture+23.10.24+/1… Silvia C.

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Nuovo Community Article "Licenze Creative Commons e Intelligenza Artificiale Generativa: una sinergia per la condivisione della conoscenza"
by Nexa - Media Jan. 7, 2025

Jan. 7, 2025

Gentilissime, gentilissimi, Vi segnaliamo con piacere la pubblicazione di un nuovo articolo della sezione del nostro sito web "Community Articles", dal titolo "Licenze Creative Commons e Intelligenza Artificiale Generativa: una sinergia per la condivisione della conoscenza", a cura dell'Avv. Deborah De Angelis, Fellow del Centro Nexa. L'articolo è consultabile al seguente link: https://nexa.polito.it/licenze-creative-commons-e-intelligenza-artificiale-… 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

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Things we learned about LLMs in 2024 [Being critical is a virtue]
by Alberto Cammozzo Jan. 7, 2025

Jan. 7, 2025

Utile sintesi da parte di un tecnico, con molti elementi interessanti e spunti di riflessione senza posizioni ideologiche. Riporto per esteso in calce solo la parte "LLMs need better criticism" non per censurare il resto che merita senz'altro la lettura, ma perché mi pare che risponda a quanto si cerca di fare qui, ed in particolare mi pare attinente al dibattito in corso. <https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/31/llms-in-2024/> Things we learned about LLMs in 2024 A /lot/ has happened in the world of Large Language Models over the course of 2024. Here’s a review of things we figured out about the field in the past twelve months, plus my attempt at identifying key themes and pivotal moments. [...] LLMs need better criticism A lot of people /absolutely hate/ this stuff. In some of the spaces I hang out (Mastodon <https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon>, Bluesky <https://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net>, Lobste.rs <https://lobste.rs/>, even Hacker News <https://news.ycombinator.com/> on occasion) even suggesting that “LLMs are useful” can be enough to kick off a huge fight. I get it. There are plenty of reasons to dislike this technology—the environmental impact, the (lack of) ethics of the training data, the lack of reliability, the negative applications, the potential impact on people’s jobs. LLMs absolutely warrant criticism. We need to be talking through these problems, finding ways to mitigate them and helping people learn how to use these tools responsibly in ways where the positive applications outweigh the negative. I /like/ people who are skeptical of this stuff. The hype has been deafening for more than two years now, and there are enormous quantities of snake oil and misinformation out there. A lot of /very bad/ decisions are being made based on that hype. Being critical is a virtue. If we want people with decision-making authority to make /good decisions/ about how to apply these tools we first need to acknowledge that there ARE good applications, and then help explain how to put those into practice while avoiding the many unintiutive traps. (If you still don’t think there are any good applications at all I’m not sure why you made it to this point in the article!) I think telling people that this whole field is environmentally catastrophic plagiarism machines that constantly make things up is doing those people a disservice, no matter how much truth that represents. There is genuine value to be had here, but getting to that value is unintuitive and needs guidance. Those of us who understand this stuff have a duty to help everyone else figure it out.

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MEMENTO | 179° Mercoledì di Nexa | 8 gennaio 2025, ore 17.00
by Nexa - Media Jan. 7, 2025

Jan. 7, 2025

Gentilissime, gentilissimi, Vi ricordiamo che mercoledì 8 gennaio, alle ore 17.00, si terrà il 179° Mercoledì di Nexa con un incontro dal titolo "Le nuove leggi dello spazio". Ospite dell'incontro: Ugo Pagallo (Trustee del Centro Nexa, Università degli Studi di Torino). L'incontro si terrà IN PRESENZA e ONLINE. 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-179 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

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