Lurker > Antifar

By gem you're sitting on, do you mean

It's your own metaphor, why would you not make your company Coca-Cola?

https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2024/04/meta-ai-falsely-claims-lawmakers-were-accused-sexual-harassment/396121/

If youre looking for information about state lawmakers, maybe dont trust Facebooks new Meta AI it may hallucinate about sexual harassment.

Facebooks chatbot, which launched in September as the latest in the trend of generative artificial intelligence, seems to have a nasty habit of fabricating sexual harassment allegations about state elected officials. A tipster sent City & State a screenshot of a conversation with Meta AI in which they input a lawmakers name and the phrase sexual harassment. The screenshot showed a completely made up incident and consequences that never happened.

City & State tested it out with over a dozen lawmakers from both parties and of different genders. For most, the chatbot invented similar stories of sexual harassment allegations that were never made, investigations that never took place and consequences in particular, being stripped of committee assignments that never occurred. In one instance, it suggested that a lawmaker resigned from their position in a year when the official wasnt even in office. In two other responses, Meta AI said it couldnt find any credible evidence of harassment allegations but then detailed fake allegations of sexual misconduct.

Responses varied depending on the specific language of the prompt, whether the conversation took place on the Facebook Messenger mobile app or desktop, and whether or not users were logged in to their Facebook accounts while conversing with the chatbot. But the AI consistently churned out completely fabricated stories that shared striking similarities. Sometimes, the chatbot said that the official in question was not directly implicated in harassment allegations, but was involved indirectly with others. In one case, Meta AI said that a top elected official faced criticism for not taking appropriate action to address allegations against a lawmaker. The lawmaker in question: a completely made-up state senator named Chinedu Ochi.

State Sen. Kristen Gonzalez, chair of the state Senate Internet and Techonology Committee, and Assembly Member Clyde Vanel, chair of the Assembly Internet and New Technology Subcommittee, were two of the lawmakers whom Meta AI fabricated sexual harassment allegations against. Their respective committee and subcommittee are the ones charged with considering legislation related to AI in the state. When the Meta AI chatbot was given a prompt consisting of their names and the words sexual harassment, it created similar fake stories about non-existent harassment allegations.

After recovering from the initial shock of seeing the fake allegations, Gonzalez told City & State in a text message that the incident illustrated the need to hold companies like Meta accountable for their role in spreading misinformation. Theres an old saying, A lie is halfway around the world before the truth gets out of bed, she said.

Vanel, a strong supporter of AI technology, was also concerned after he tested out the chatbot himself with similar results. We are absolutely concerned with generative AI hallucinating, especially when these hallucinations provide false, and potentially harmful, information about individual people and groups, he said in a statement, though he cautioned that any action to address issues with the emerging technology should not stifle innovation. My committee is actively looking into ways to combat these types of harms and more that AI can pose, both through legislation and through educating the public.

The recently passed state budget did included provisions to penalize the use of deceptive deepfake images and audio for marketing, sex act or election purposes. It also required that any election material that utilizes AI to include a disclaimer. However, it does not specifically address instances of false or defamatory information created through generative AI tools like the Meta AI chatbot.

The Meta AI chatbot did not always hallucinate allegations of harassment, along with subsequent investigations and punishments. When asked a direct question like Has (name) been accused of sexual harassment? it often correctly responded that it could find no information about such incidents, before providing some background information with source links. (The fabricated stories never included source links.) The Meta AI chatbot also failed to invent allegations about very high-profile lawmakers, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Meta spokesperson Kevin McAlister defended the companys technology in a statement to City & State. As we said when we launched these new features in September, this is new technology and it may not always return the response we intend, which is the same for all generative AI systems, he said. We share information within the features themselves to help people understand that AI might return inaccurate or inappropriate outputs. Since we launched, we've constantly released updates and improvements to our models and we're continuing to work on making them better.

Tech geniuses are going all in on a product that can't be left alone without doing crimes.

I would simply invent my own work without lifting from any of the media I've encountered and consumed over the course of my life.

Jaguar34 posted...

I may be wrong

I think you've forgotten the scale of BLM in 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html

The culture is way more fragmented now than it was then.

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/26/antisemitism-monitor-colleges-columbia-israel

A pro-Israel House Democrat and Republican plan to introduce legislation creating federally sanctioned "antisemitism monitors" for select college campuses.
Why it matters: It's the first bill introduced in Congress as a direct response to the pro-Palestinian protests that have rocked Columbia University and other colleges in recent days.
Driving the news: Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) are introducing the College Oversight and Legal Updates Mandating Bias Investigations and Accountability Act or COLUMBIA Act.
The bill would allow the Department of Education to send a "third-party antisemitism monitor" to any college that receives federal funding and to revoke that funding for colleges that don't comply.
The monitor, paid for by the school, would be charged with releasing a public, quarterly report evaluating "the progress that a college or university has made toward combating antisemitism."
The bill was first reported by Jewish Insider.
What they're saying: "My office and I have spoken with countless Jewish students from campuses across America who feel deeply unsafe, purely as a result of their religious and ethnic identity," Torres said in a statement.
"Jewish students have told my office that they feel completely abandoned by their university administrators and they view Congress as the only avenue for accountability and safety."
Zoom out: The bill's introduction comes as college campuses have become ground zero for a national fight over antisemitism and the Israel-Hamas war.
At least 10 House members, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), have gone to Columbia this week to denounce campus antisemitism and criticize the college's administration
Several high-profile House progressives have also gone to colleges in recent days to show their solidarity with demonstrators.

We're entering normal times

"From the river to the sea" is a regular chant, but I think reasonable people can disagree on whether it constitutes a call for genocide.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/apr/26/aaron-sorkin-january-6-film

I dunno about this one, folks

Update:
https://bsky.app/profile/cooperlund.bsky.social/post/3kr2452o5uc26

Related article: American cars are getting too big for parking spaces
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3pyzx/american-cars-are-getting-too-big-for-parking-spaces?utm_source=reddit.com

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I wanna double up on this: the struggle against policing here and Israel's treatment of Palestinians there are interconnected. They're the same struggle.

College presidents are taking a militarized response to students protesting genocide, two weeks before they all go home for summer anyways, because they're afraid of having to answer Elise Stefanik in congress and being subjected to a bullshit campaign in right wing (and no small amount of liberal) media that hounds them out of their jobs.

https://bsky.app/profile/brainnotonyet.bsky.social/post/3kqyiaqv3nn2s

Things are getting Normal

Father time

https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/education/k-12-schools/eric-eiswert-ai-audio-baltimore-county-YBJNJAS6OZEE5OQVF5LFOFYN6M/

Baltimore County Police arrestedPikesville High Schools former athletic director Thursday morning and charged him with using artificial intelligence to impersonate Principal Eric Eiswert, leading the public to believe Eiswert made racist and antisemitic comments behind closed doors.

Dazhon Darien, 31, was apprehended as he attempted to board a flight to Houston at BWI Airport, Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. Darien was stopped for having a gun on him and airport officials saw there was a warrant for his arrest. Police said they did not know whether Darien was trying to flee.

Darien was charged with disrupting school activities after investigators determined he faked Eiswerts voice and circulated the audio on social media in January, according to the Baltimore County States Attorneys Office.Dariens nickname, DJ, was among the names mentioned in the audio clips authorities say he faked.

The audio clip ... had profound repercussions, police wrote in charging documents. It not only led to Eiswerts temporary removal from the school but also triggered a wave of hate-filled messages on social media and numerous calls to the school. The recording also caused significant disruptions for the PHS staff and students.

Police say Darien made the recording in retaliation after Eiswert initiated an investigation into improper payments he made to a school athletics coach who was also his roommate. Darien is also charged with theft and retaliating against a witness.

Darien was allowed release on $5,000 bond and waived an attorney at an initial court appearance, according to court records. Attempts to reach him by phone and at his home were unsuccessful.

Eiswerts voice, which police and AI experts believe was simulated, made disparaging comments about Black students and the surrounding Jewish community and was widely circulated on social media.

Questions about the audios authenticity quickly followed. Police wrote in charging documents that Darien had accessed the schools network on multiple occasions in December and January searching for OpenAI tools, and used Large Language Models that practice deep learning, which involves pulling in vast amounts of data from various sources on the internet, can recognize text inputted by the user, and produce conversational results. They also connected Darien to an email account that had distributed the recording.

Many current and former students believed Eiswert was responsible for the offensive remarks, while former colleagues denounced the audio and defended Eiswerts character. Eiswert himself has denied making those comments and said the comments do not align with his views.

The audio, posted to the popular Instagram accountmurder_ink_bmore, prompted a Baltimore County Public Schools and Baltimore County Police investigation. Eiswert has not been working in the school since the investigation began.

The voice refers to ungrateful Black kids who cant test their way out of a paper bag and questions how hard it is to get those students to meet grade-level expectations. The speakeruses names of people who appear to be staff members and says they should not have been hired, and thathe should get rid of another person one way or another.

And if I have to get one more complaint from one more Jew in this community, Im going to join the other side, the voice said.

Darien was being investigated as of December in a theft investigation that had been initiated by Eiswert. Police say Darien had authorized a $1,916 payment to the schools junior varsity basketball coach, who was also his roommate, under the pretense that he was an assistant girls soccer coach. He was not, school officials said.

Eiswert determined that Darien had submitted the payment to the school payroll system, bypassing proper procedures. Darien had been notified of the investigation, police said.

Police say the clip was received by three teachers the night before it went viral. The first was Darien; a third said she received the email and then got a call from Darien and teacher Shaena Ravenell telling her to check her email. Ravenell told police that she had forwarded the email to a students cell phone, who she knew would rapidly spread the message around various social media outlets and throughout the school, and also sent it to the media and the NAACP, police said.

She did not mention receiving it from Darien until confronted about his involvement. Ravenell has not been charged with a crime and could not immediately be reached for comment.

Both Darien and Ravenell have submitted their resignations to the school system, according to an April 16 school board document. The resignations are dated June 30.

The tech companies hope that by throwing their garbage product into the public, one person somewhere might find a use for it that isn't a crime.

https://bsky.app/profile/nslayton.bsky.social/post/3kqyij3bqjq2m

TheGoldenEel posted...

I dont love when that happens, but as long as they dont forget the blackened ranch it usually works out ok

They were out of blackened ranch

UnholyMudcrab posted...

by actually repealing it, the GOP has galvanized the other side at no benefit to themselves.

The benefit to themselves is the restriction of abortion.

I have lost the mandate of heaven

Update:
https://www.nytco.com/press/a-statement-from-the-new-york-times-on-presidential-news-coverage/

Depends on how you define rich. Obviously, the billionaires and private jet crowd stand to gain, but so too do people whose wealth wouldn't look out of place in your average suburb: restaurant franchisees, jetski dealers, landlords.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/25/new-york-times-biden-white-house-00154219

...
According to interviews with two dozen people on both sides who were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject, the relationship between the Democratic president and the countrys newspaper of record for years the epitome of a liberal press in the eyes of conservatives remains remarkably tense, beset by misunderstandings, grudges and a general lack of trust. Complaints that were long kept private are even spilling into public view, with campaign aides in Wilmington going further than their colleagues in the White House and routinely blasting the papers coverage in emails, posts on social media and memos.

Although the presidents communications teams bristle at coverage from dozens of outlets, the frustration, and obsession, with the Times is unique, reflecting the resentment of a president with a working-class sense of himself and his team toward a news organization catering to an elite audience and a deep desire for its affirmation of their work. On the other side, the newspaper carries its own singular obsession with the president, aggrieved over his refusal to give the paper a sit-down interview that Publisher AG Sulzberger and other top editors believe to be its birthright.

The presidents press flacks might bemoan what they see as the entitlement of Times staffers, but they themselves put the newspaper on the highest of pedestals given its history, stature and unparalleled reach. And yet, they see the Times falling short in a make-or-break moment for American democracy, stubbornly refusing to adjust its coverage as it strives for the appearance of impartial neutrality, often blurring the asymmetries between former President Donald Trump and Biden when it comes to their perceived flaws and vastly different commitments to democratic principles.

Democrats believe in the importance of a free press in upholding our democracy, and the NYT was for generations an important standard bearer for the fourth estate, said Kate Berner, who worked on Bidens 2020 campaign and then as deputy White House communications director before departing last year. The frustration with the Times is sometimes so intense because the Times is failing at its important responsibility.

Biden aides largely view the election as an existential choice for the country, high stakes that they believe justify tougher tactics toward the Times and the press as a whole. Some Times reporters have found themselves cut off by sources after publishing pieces the Bidens and top aides didnt like. Columnist Maureen Dowd, for example, complained to colleagues that she stopped hearing from White House officials after a column on Hunter Biden. For many Times veterans, such actions suggest that the Trump era has warped many Democrats expectations of journalists.
...
Aides in the White House press office and on the presidents campaign pointed to two recent examples of articles by the Times that presented Biden and Trump side by side, emphasizing broad similarities and obscuring the proportional differences. One piece by Michael Shear cast both Biden and Trump as restricting the information the public has about their physical health. Another in the papers On Politics newsletter by the newly hired Jess Bidgood reacted to Arizonas reinstatement of a Civil War era law outlawing abortion by framing Biden and Trump as two imperfect messengers on the issue, a gross journalistic injustice, campaign officials said, given Trumps outsized role in appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.

TJ Ducklo, a senior adviser on Bidens campaign, blasted Shears story as part of an ongoing pattern of frustrating coverage by the Times. With limited exceptions, he wrote in a post on X, the Times continues to fail the American people in covering the most important election for democracy in 150+ years. It was not the first time Bidens campaign team publicly went after the Times in a way the White House, for all its irritation, has not. In February, the campaign blasted the Times and other news organizations for focusing more on the presidents age than Trumps comment encouraging Russia to do whatever the hell they want to any NATO country not meeting defense spending benchmarks. If you read the New York Times this weekend, you might have missed it buried behind five separate opinion pieces about how the president is 81 year old something that has been true since his birthday in November and *zero* on this topic, Ducklo wrote.

Joe Biden's actions and policies are more influential than any posts on CE by several orders of magnitude, and he should consider carefully their impact on potential voters' enthusiasm for his reelection. Imo

Have you ever had your appendix taken out?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/25/israel-gaza-ceasefire-adam-smith

Protesters calling for Israel to cease fire in its war with Hamas who have disrupted US public events and infrastructure are practicing leftwing fascism or leftwing totalitarianism, a senior US House Democrat said, adding that such protesters are challenging representative democracy and should be arrested.

Intimidation is the tactic, said Adam Smith of Washington state, the ranking Democrat on the House armed services committee. Intimidation and an effort to silence opposition I dont know if theres such a thing as leftwing fascism. If you want to just call it leftwing totalitarianism, then thats what it is. It is a direct challenge to representative democracy now.

Smith was speaking before the outbreak this week of mass protests on US college campuses, many producing arrests to the One Decision Podcast and its guest host Christina Ruffini, a CBS News reporter.

Ruffini asked Smith about protests in his district, including vandalism at his home and a town hall meeting disrupted by protesters demanding an end to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza prompted by attacks by Hamas on 7 October.

Disruptive, aggressive protests are illegal completely wrong and enormously dangerous, Smith said, adding: I really want people to understand and I put out a statement after they shut down a town hall meeting that I was trying to have [in March] whats going on here.

And everyones like, Well, you understand their passion and all that. And I do understand that, I do. This is a life-or-death situation. It is certainly not the only life-or-death situation that I and all policymakers deal with. But it is one that is important. But thats not what [the protesters are] doing.

What they are trying to do is they are trying to silence opposition and intimidate decision-makers. Ive been doing town hall meetings for 34 years now, in some pretty hotly contested environments [but] I have never had a town hall that I couldnt keep under control enough so that people had the chance to say their piece.

But [the protesters] goal and their objective was not to get their point across. It was to silence anyone who dared to disagree with them, to make sure that only one voice was heard. And their other goal was to intimidate. Thats why theyre showing up at members houses.

More than 1,100 people were killed on 7 October when Hamas attacked Israel, also taking hostages. Since then, more than 34,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza, where the population also faces displacement and starvation.

Protesters, Smith said, would say, Children are dying. This is a huge humanitarian crisis. And theyre right about that and by the way, I do have some sympathy with these people. If there are members of Congress who wont meet with them, I meet with them. All the time. So they have an opportunity to be heard. Theyre not trying to be heard. Theyre trying to silence people who disagree with them.

Asked what kind of protest might be appropriate, Smith cited a recent instance in an armed services hearing in which people came in and they didnt say anything, they just held up bloody hands. And the chairman noticed that and said, You cant do that, youre out, and they got up and left.

But he said: You go back to the civil rights movement, they expected to be arrested, they knew they were violating the law. And also you have to enforce the law. You have to make clear that this is about more than just the issue. You know, they can be heard, but then other people get to be heard.

Granting that I haven't played much of anything the last year or two:
Forza Horizon 5
Hitman 3
Desperados III
Tunic
Fights in Tight Spaces
Metroid Dread
Triangle Strategy
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
OlliOlli World
Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew

Real brain genius stuff to ban a popular platform in such a way that it can continue to be used to criticize you for banning it all the way up through election day.

Anteaterking posted...

Did this come out of nowhere? I don't think I had heard they were considering this.

No, it's been in the works
https://www.vox.com/recode/2023/1/5/23540951/noncompete-agreements-ban-biden

Hell yeah

emblem-man posted...

I think the language and chants some are using (at least what I'm seeing on social media, which I acknowledge might not be representative) has really bad optics and is unnecessarily inflammatory .

It seems, to me, that the most necessarily inflammatory thing to happen here is sending in the cops. It's April. Finals are a week or two away. This would have fizzled out on its own, but Columbia's decision to respond through policing has resulted in similar protests popping up at campuses across the northeast:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/nyregion/college-campus-protests-photos-yale-columbia.html

"Oh, it's so crowded" - guy who went to Times Square on purpose

stevo6452 posted...

Does he? How?

Twitter has a very well publicized effort to pay bluecheck users based on the impressions their tweets receive, to say nothing of the other benefits a professional provocateur like this gets from any attention he receives.

When you share his posts he makes money. Don't do that.

https://tinyurl.com/yeyrp3ab

Irish protesters were told they are not allowed to speak or sing in Irish at the pro-Palestine protest camp near the Reichstag in Berlin.
About 40 activists were attending the ciorcal comhr (conversation circle) event as Gaeilge when large numbers of police arrived and told them to stop and move on.

They also sang songs in English and Irish, including traditional favourite r S Do Bheatha Abhaile.

Police broke up the Irish language event attended by about 40 Irish people living in the German capital, under rules that only allow English and German, and in some cases Arabic, to be used during protests.

German authorities have been increasingly restricting pro-Palestine protests against the governments support for Israel amid its war in Gaza. The ban on languages other than English and German, in Berlin without a designated translator present to interpret for police is seen as mainly targeting Arabic speakers, and therefore Palestine supporters.

Irish is an official language of the EU, with equal status to the 23 other official languages of the EU since January 2022.

Irish woman Caoimhe McAllister, who was attending the protest, said the group of approximately 40 people gathered at 6pm at the protest camp in front of the German parliament, the Reichstag, on Friday evening, April 19.

At that camp, especially in the last days of Ramadan, there was a crackdown on any Arabic-speaking, including arresting someone, she said.

So we decided to highlight what we see as a really worrying human rights concern. We just had to highlight this by speaking in Irish.

Ms McAllister has been living in Berlin for 14 years and is originally from Belfast. She is a member of the Irish Bloc, a group based in Berlin supporting Palestine.

The police expressed concern that people might be discussing terrorist activity, or what they call incitement to violence, Ms McAllister said.

"They were worried that we, in Irish, would say something that glorified terrorism or incited violence and therefore we were required to have an interpreter to clarify that for the police officers there.

"And because we didn't have one, we were banned from speaking in Irish.

Ms McAllister told the Irish Independent there was already a very heavy police presence when the group arrived at the camp.

She said they were immediately stopped from carrying flags and a handmade banner that said Saoirse don Phalaistn Bheirln (Freedom for Palestine Berlin) and police wouldnt let them display it as it was too political in nature.

The meeting was structured by the group as a discussion or a conversation circle plus songs.

You're putting money in their megaphone when you use Twitter in 2024. These are the people the site's owner wants to have its loudest voices.

Not great!

Because it was fun

I am

They won though, so

Bump

In a Facebook group called Facebook Complaints Center
https://bsky.app/profile/zitron.bsky.social/post/3kqmpzh2hvc2l

https://bsky.app/profile/zitron.bsky.social/post/3kqmqeednss2l

SauI_Goodman posted...

People still use that thing?

By the millions

I went grocery shopping in the morning, but aside from walking the dog it's been YV and video games since

Mark Zuckerberg's ideas started at "Hey you should be able to easily look at pics of your hot classmates" and got worse from there. He holds more influence over society than any of us ever will.

https://bsky.app/profile/zitron.bsky.social/post/3kqlxs33ygs2d