AI
'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back
Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. The Data Labelers Association is fighting back.
Grokipedia
Grokipedia Is the Antithesis of Everything That Makes Wikipedia Good, Useful, and Human
Grokipedia is not a 'Wikipedia competitor.' It is a fully robotic regurgitation machine designed to protect the ego of the world’s wealthiest man.
News
Rogue Goodreads Librarian Edits Site to Expose 'Censorship in Favor of Trump Fascism’
“When we let powerful people’s books be protected from criticism, we give up the right to hold power accountable.”
ICE
ICE Is Using a University Building as a Deportation Office and the University Says It Can't Do Anything About It
The Milwaukee School of Engineering is largely powerless to kick ICE out of a building it wanted to turn into a new academic center, according to audio of a meeting obtained by 404 Media.
News
Lawsuit Accuses a16z of Turning Roblox Into a School Shooter's Playground
The family of a dead teen girl said she'd still be alive if Roblox did a better job moderating its platform.
News
'House of Dynamite' Is About the Zoom Call that Ends the World
The general who advised Netflix’s nuclear Armageddon movie doesn’t believe in abolishing nuclear weapons.
ICE
Con Edison Refuses to Say How ICE Gets Its Customers’ Data
Court records show Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a part of ICE, and the FBI obtained Con Edison user data. The utility provider refuses to say whether law enforcement needs a warrant to access its data.
News
Zenni’s Anti-Facial Recognition Glasses are Eyewear for Our Paranoid Age
These anti-facial recognition glasses technically work, but won’t save you from our surveillance dystopia.
The Abstract
What Really Doomed Napoleon’s Army? Scientists Find New Clues in DNA
DNA from the teeth of French soldiers that died in the disastrous 1812 retreat from Moscow revealed previously unidentified pathogens.
News
AI Dataset for Detecting Nudity Contained Child Sexual Abuse Images
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection found more than 120 images of identified or known victims of CSAM in the dataset.
News
a16z-Backed Startup Sells Thousands of ‘Synthetic Influencers’ to Manipulate Social Media as a Service
Andreessen Horowitz is funding a company that clearly violates the inauthentic behavior policies of every major social media platform.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Making Things for Humans
This week, we discuss Pavlovian Chartbeat response, when to say "cum," and the wave of making things for humans, by humans.
ICE
DHS Tries To Unmask Ice Spotting Instagram Account by Claiming It Imports Merchandise
There is no evidence the Instagram and Facebook account, called Montcowatch, sells anything. Lawyers from the ACLU say the move is "wildly outside the scope" of DHS' authority.