#YouTube has ‘protections’ for users speech that it breaks all the time we know this | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

davebuckleslefthand · 4 years ago

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the USA makes me so upset! U.S. CITIZENS ARISE!

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years ago

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Big Tech welcomes (some) regulation

You know how the Curse of the Monkey's paw works: a cursed object grants all of your wishes, but in the worst way possible: "be careful what you wish for."

That's what we're living through with Big Tech right now.

I'm all for regulating Big Tech, but not all regulation is created equal. Some regulation can dampen the power of Big Tech, while other regulation can make it permanent, even creating powerful stakeholders for monopolies within government.

Every monopolist's first preference is to be totally unregulated, but every monopolist's SECOND preference is to be regulated in a way that only a monopolist can comply with, thus foreclosing on the possibility of competition from an as-yet-nonexistent upstart.

Look at AT&T, or, as it was known in its monopolistic glory days, "The Bell System." From its earliest days, AT&T was a bully, pulling all kinds of dirty tricks on small carriers and rural telephone co-ops that grew out of the New Deal electricity co-ops.

Regulators and the DoJ often had stern words for AT&T, and at various times, the company was subjected to legal penalties and court-ordered conduct remedies to make it behave.

But this was as far as it all went: no one was going to break up AT&T, take away the power it was abusing. AT&T was too important, "too big to fail," part of the national emergency and security infrastructure.

AT&T leveraged the fact that cops or fire marshalls could (and did) coopt its infrastructure to argue for special rules to protect the Bell System, because if nefarious competitors were to compromise the system, America couldn't fight crime, fires, floods and other disasters.

Which is how it was that AT&T was able to get the government to ban connecting anything to the Bell System that they hadn't manufactured. It's hard to overstate how ridiculous and abusive this rule was, but here are a couple important court cases that give a taste.

Take the Hush-A-Phone, a plastic cup that fit over your mouthpiece to make it harder for people to listen in or reading your lips. AT&T argued that attaching a plastic cup to a phone handset put America itself in danger and must be banned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_States

Or the Carterfone, a gadget that let you retransmit phone audio over short-range radio, so that ranch-hands could take calls when they were out on the range.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone#Landmark_regulatory_decision

Hush-A-Phone and Carterfone represent the endpoint of AT&T's venality, the instances in which the company overreached so thoroughly that a court finally limited its power. But they are also emblematic of the costs AT&T exacted from its customers.

Before these decisions, AT&T customers had to rent phones, paying for them dozens or hundreds of times over. To make things worse, AT&T used its regulated monopoly status to block innovators, holding back the answering machine, the switchboard and (crucially) the modem.

By 1956, AT&T's conduct was so odious that the DoJ was ready to break it up. But at the last instant, AT&T got a stay of execution: the Pentagon intervened to say that without AT&T, the US would not be able to prosecute the war in Korea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System#Kingsbury_Commitment

AT&T had been "punished" for its prior bad acts by being made a de-facto, privatized arm of the state, and now the state was intervening to keep AT&T intact. It worked. AT&T stayed intact for another quarter-century, during which time its conduct steadily worsened.

This is what happens when we "tame" monopolies instead of breaking them up: the monopolist makes some cosmetic changes to its conduct, coopts its regulators, and reverts to its wicked ways as soon as the attention shifts, using its monopoly profits to fight any consequences.

Today, there are many proposals to fix Big Tech, but far too often, these proposals start from the perspective that Big Tech is permanent and there is no need to consider the way that new rules would impact potential competitors, because they're already doomed.

Last year's EU Copyright Directive, for example, with its mandate for expensive copyright filters for online services (how expensive? Google spend $100m developing Contentid, a toy version of what the EU rule requires).

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/european-copyright-directive-what-it-and-why-has-it-drawn-more-controversy-any

Not only is this a disaster because filters are garbage and block all kinds of legitimate speech - it's doubly awful because it prevents competitors from entering Big Tech's markets that might be more respectful of their users - co-ops, EU-based SMEs, etc.

And it makes Google and FB and other Big Tech companies an arm of the state, part of the apparatus of copyright enforcement (not just copyright, the EU's Terror Reg makes them filter "extremist" content too).

And it prevents a future Hush-a-Phone moment for Big Tech: Youtube will say that if it is responsible for fighting extremism and infringement, it MUST block competitors who interoperate with its service to provide fairer, better alternatives.

Tellingly, while Youtube and Facebook started off as staunch opponents of a filter mandate in the Copyright Directive, they quickly switched sides and began arguing in FAVOR of filters - after all, they already had filters, and nascent competitors did not.

Big Tech's latest cursed monkey paw moment comes from Amazon, who, after losing key court cases over selling dangerously defective goods stop arguing that it wasn't responsible for its sellers' goods.

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-jeff-bezos-is-worth-200-billion

Instead, they started demanding that state legislative proposals, like California's AB 3262, be made FAR stricter, so that just making an ecommerce platform (like the scrappy Canadian Amazon rival Shopify does) makes you responsible for anything sold on that platform.

It's gonna be burdensome for Amazon to check out all of its sellers' goods, but Amazon is arguably the only company with enough excess capital to do that checking, and they've got a patent on forcing sellers to expose their entire supply-chain in machine-readable formats.

Which means that Amazon - who are under antitrust scrutiny for spying on their sellers and then knocking off their best products and driving them out of business - could be LEGALLY OBLIGATED to spy on its sellers.

Which means that if the DoJ or Congress decides to force Amazon to STOP spying on its sellers, they will have to override California's consumer protection rule that makes Amazon undertake this surveillance.

It also means that sellers who are worried that Amazon will spy on them in order to drive them out of business will have few (or no) alternatives to giving Amazon its data, because Shopify and other ecommerce platforms CAN'T comply with California's proposed liability rule.

Amazon is REALLY good at this kind of regulator monkeypawing. For a long time, Amazon maintained the fiction that all its European digital goods sales were consummated in Luxembourg, where there was no VAT. That let it sell ebooks for 20% less than, say, UK competitors.

When the EU decided to fix this, Amazon enthusiastically cooperated, producing a harmonized VAT rule that only the largest companies could comply with: a rule that required sellers in the EU to gather and retain two pieces of address-confirming info from every customer.

Then sellers would have to calculate how much VAT to charge based in 28 different countries' VAT laws, and would have to remit that VAT every quarter, regardless of how small that remittance was. I was living in the UK then, and selling my ebooks online.

The VAT rule meant that if I collected EU0.01 from a single Polish customer in a quarter, I would have to pay to wire the Polish tax authorities EU0.01, and pay accountants to prepare the paperwork. The first quarter, I paid £750 to remit £17 in VAT.

Of course, there was a way to get around all of this! All I needed to do was shut down my independent ebook store and shift to selling on Amazon, and pay them 30% of every penny I brought in. Amazon has a whole building full of accountants and programmers to make that work.

(The issue became moot when I moved to the US and shuttered my UK Limited Company; today you can shop at my ebook store and I don't have to collect VAT at all)

https://craphound.com/shop

There are monkey's paw proposals everywhere, like killing CDA230, which shields tech platforms from liability for users' speech - sure, the Big Tech platforms wouldn't like to pay for more moderators and filters, but in return they'd get to wipe out all small rivals.

But the monkey's paw is not inevitable. There are plenty of ways to make Big Tech less powerful while encouraging alternatives, including co-ops and nonprofits. Instead of copyright filters, we could have blanket licenses that directly pay artists.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/05/plan-pay-artists-encourage-competition-and-promote-free-expression

Instead of moderation mandates, we could have interop mandates that let users choose what is and isn't allowed in their own conversations:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/27/cult-chalk/#eff-eu

And, as Matt Stoller points out in his article on AB3262, we don't need Amazon's extensions to an otherwise sensible consumer protection statute that would extend liability to Shopify - we can craft a rule that catches Amazon's bad conduct alone.

If we are going to tame Big Tech, let us tame them - by reducing their power, not by demanding that they exercise it wisely. If Big Tech has too much power, let's take some of it away - we'll never get them to use it for good.

We can (try to) fix Big Tech or we can fix the internet. Big Tech will either figure it out and survive or it won't. Their products are optional, but we NEED the internet.

#pluralistic

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Saturday, May 1, 2021

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France Proposes More Surveillance to Hunt for Potential Terrorists (NYT) The French government, responding to several attacks over the past seven months, presented a new anti-terrorism bill on Wednesday that would allow intense algorithmic surveillance of phone and internet communications and tighten restrictions on convicted terrorists emerging from prison. “There have been nine attacks in a row that we could not detect through current means,” Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, told France Inter radio. “We continue to be blind, doing surveillance on normal phone lines that nobody uses any longer.” The draft bill, prepared by Mr. Darmanin, came in a political and social climate envenomed by Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, who applauded a letter published this month by 20 retired generals that described France as being in a state of “disintegration” and warned of a possible coup in thinly veiled terms. Published in a right-wing magazine, Valeurs Actuelles, the generals’ letter portrayed a country ravaged by violence, swept by hatred and prey to subversive ideologies bent on stirring a racial war. “If nothing is done,” they said, “laxity will spread inexorably across society, provoking in the end an explosion and the intervention of our active-service comrades in the perilous protection of our civilization’s values.”

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In India’s devastating coronavirus surge, anger at Modi grows (Washington Post) As he surveyed the thousands of people gathered at an election rally in eastern India on April 17, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared jubilant. “Everywhere I look, as far as I can see, there are crowds,” he said, his arms spread wide. “You have done an extraordinary thing.” At the time, India was recording more than 200,000 coronavirus cases a day. In the western state of Maharashtra, oxygen was running short, and people were dying at home because of a shortage of hospital beds. In Modi’s home state of Gujarat, crematoriums were being overwhelmed by the dead. For Modi, the most powerful Indian prime minister in five decades, it is a moment of reckoning. He is facing what appears to be the country’s biggest crisis since independence. Modi’s own lapses and missteps are an increasing source of anger. As coronavirus cases skyrocketed, Modi continued to hold huge election rallies and declined to cancel a Hindu religious festival that drew millions to the banks of the Ganges River. Modi swept to a landslide reelection victory in 2019, offering Indians a muscular brand of nationalism that views India as a fundamentally Hindu country rather than the secular republic envisioned by its founders. He has cultivated an image as a singular leader capable of bold decisions to protect and transform the country. Now that image is “in tatters,” said Vinay Sitapati, a political scientist at Ashoka University in the northern Indian state of Haryana. Modi and his governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) built a formidable machine for winning elections, Sitapati said, but their mind-set of continuous campaigning has come “at the cost of governance.”

Iran and Saudi Arabia Edge Toward Détente (Foreign Policy) Iran’s relationship with Saudi Arabia could be entering “a new chapter of interaction and cooperation,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Thursday, as the two countries signal a rapid mending of diplomatic ties. Khatibzadeh’s comments came in response to an interview Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave to state television this week, when he said that problems between the regional rivals could be overcome and “good relations” could soon prevail. His recent comments offer a stark contrast with ones he made in 2018 when he compared Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to Adolf Hitler and described Iran as part of a “triangle of evil.” Behind the scenes, the two countries have also been busy. Earlier this month, the Financial Times broke news of direct talks, held in Baghdad, with a primary focus on ending the war in Yemen.

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Hong Kong’s latest star TV host? City leader Carrie Lam. (Washington Post) In a city known for producing action-packed martial arts movies, there’s a gripping new TV show on the block. The title promises to captivate viewers: “Get to Know the Election Committee Subsectors.” The star? Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, not as a guest but as the host. The show, which premiered Wednesday on public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong, gives Lam a platform to promote electoral changes introduced by Beijing that further tilt the system against pro-democracy voices, add weight to industry-sector representatives and ensure only “patriots” loyal to the Communist Party can govern Hong Kong. People in mainland China have long been accustomed to state propaganda broadcasts. Hong Kong, however, traditionally had a freewheeling media environment. But almost a year after China imposed a security law that curtailed freedom of speech there, the public broadcaster has become a vital instrument of Beijing’s efforts to control the narrative. Wednesday night’s double-episode premiere featured furious agreement on the merit of Beijing’s electoral changes. The episodes scored only a few thousand views and mostly “thumbs-down” responses on YouTube. One user drew comparisons to George Orwell’s “1984.” If you missed the show, there’s plenty of opportunity to catch it again; episodes will air four times a day, every day.

Cambodians complain of lockdown hunger as outbreak takes toll on poor (Reuters) Residents in Cambodia’s capital gathered on Friday to demand food from the government, outraged at what they called inadequate aid distribution during a tough COVID-19 lockdown that bars people from leaving their homes. Authorities put Phnom Penh and a nearby town under a hard lockdown on April 19 to quell a surge in coronavirus infections that has seen Cambodia’s case total balloon from about 500 to 12,641 since late February, including all 91 of its deaths. Though private food deliveries are operating, markets and street food services are closed, making it difficult for poorer families to get supplies, with many without income because of the stay-home order. Amnesty International on Friday called Cambodia’s lockdown an emerging humanitarian and human rights crisis, with nearly 294,000 people in Phnom Penh at risk of going hungry.

Palestinian election delay (Reuters) It could have marked a political turning point. Palestinians were slated to go to the polls starting next month for the first time in 15 years—but on Thursday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced he will indefinitely postpone the elections. He blamed Israel, accusing authorities of stonewalling efforts to let Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem cast their ballots. But Israeli officials suggested Abbas was using Israel as a pretext to cancel a vote his faction might lose. Hamas, his party’s rival, has rejected the move, and some Palestinians took to the streets to protest.

The real threat to Chad’s military rulers: unemployed youth (Reuters) When Neldjibaye Madjissem graduated with a mathematics degree in 2015, he began searching for work as a school teacher. Six years on, he is still looking—and is angry. The 31-year-old blames Chad's government for lack of work, mismanagement of oil revenues and corruption. No wonder people are protesting on the streets in their thousands, he says. The battlefield death of President Idriss Deby last week, after 30 years of autocratic rule, sent the Central African country into a tailspin. But perhaps the greater threat for Chad’s rulers comes from the mass of unemployed young people tired of the Deby family and its international allies, particularly former colonial ruler France. At least six people died in violent protests this week. "The lack of jobs risks creating a great problem. The people are angry," said Madjissem, as he prepared a private lesson to a high school student in the living room of a tiny house in N'Djamena. His infrequent wage: $3 an hour.

Famine looms in southern Madagascar, U.N.’s food agency says (Reuters) Famine is looming in southern Madagascar, where children are “starving” after drought and sandstorms ruined harvests, the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday. Amer Daoudi, senior director of WFP operations globally, speaking from Antananarivo, Madagascar, said he had visited villages where people had resorted to eating locusts and leaves. “I witnessed horrific images of starving children, malnourished, and not only the children—mothers, parents and the populations in villages we visited,” Daoudi told a United Nations briefing in Geneva. Malnutrition has almost doubled to 16% from 9% in March 2020 following five consecutive years of drought, exacerbated this year by sandstorms and late rains, he said.

#headlines #news

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ishahzaib22 · 6 years ago

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Facebook Wants a Faux Regulator for Internet Speech

Facebook Wants a Faux Regulator for Internet Speech. It Won’t Happen. In an opinion article published last weekend, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said he agreed with the growing consensus that Facebook — and other social media companies — should be subject to more regulation. The article, published in four countries and three languages, was fated to be misunderstood from the start.

His first suggestion was to create an independent body so users could appeal Facebook’s moderation decisions. Over the past few years, Facebook has caught fire from all sides for its content moderation. Some say hate speech should be censored more aggressively. At the same time, the company has been accused of censoring conservative viewpoints. And for years, it has been roundly criticized for its puritanical ban on female nipples.

But if Facebook had its way, the ultimate authority would no longer lie with Facebook — or Twitter or YouTube or other competitors. That job would fall to unspecified “regulators.”

“Regulation could set baselines for what’s prohibited and require companies to build systems for keeping harmful content to a bare minimum,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. For a company exhausted by a year of scandal, a regulatory scapegoat is just what the doctor ordered. If you don’t like what we do, why don’t you try it for a change?

American legal experts were incredulous. Daphne Keller of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society accused Facebook of proposing an unconstitutional system, knowing it was impossible. In an initial statement, Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union said it was a violation of the First Amendment. The Electronic Frontier Foundation claimed it would violate the freedom of expression guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Facebook’s head of public policy, Kevin Martin, explained that while Mr. Zuckerberg’s reference to “regulation” might mean actual government intervention in France, Germany and Ireland, it meant only private sector self-regulation in the United States.

This kind of faux regulation is nothing new. Among the examples cited were Finra, a nongovernmental financial industry “regulator”; the Motion Picture Association of America, which rates films; and the Entertainment Software Rating Board, which rates video games. (After this clarification, the A.C.L.U.’s Mr. Wizner agreed that independent bodies like the M.P.A.A. are not unconstitutional).

But none of these examples deal with directly regulating speech. Social media content moderation is a different beast entirely. Slapping a label on a video game isn’t the same as banning distribution of the video game.

Facebook avoided bringing up the Hays Code, the closest corollary to what they propose. The M.P.A.A.’s current rating system is a pale shadow of Hollywood’s old Hays Code, the now-laughable list of rules that for years had onscreen husbands and wives sleeping in separate beds.

The Code was developed voluntarily by the studios in hopes of avoiding government censorship. It zealously policed depictions of romance, crime, law enforcement and the clergy. When the Supreme Court held that motion pictures were protected by the First Amendment in 1952, enforcement of the code diminished.

Facebook’s proposal is a bow to public opinion. Last year, a coalition of advocacy groups published the Santa Clara Principles — new baseline rules for how content moderation should work. The principles focus most heavily on the right to appeal decisions — particularly in conjunction with “new independent self-regulatory mechanisms” created in collaboration with industry.

All this sounds like what The Verge’s Casey Newton calls “a Facebook Supreme Court. ” It’s almost as though the Santa Clara Principles were developed by a room full of lawyers. Hammer, meet nail.

Due process would be much welcomed in a world where people believe simultaneously that Facebook takes down too little content or too much. But due process is costly, even after removing high-billing lawyers from the equation. Consider that the Supreme Court, with a budget of nearly $90 million, receives 8,000 petitions a year — most of which are rejected. Meanwhile, according to a class-action lawsuit filed by an ex-Facebook moderator, “moderators are asked to review more than 10 million potentially rule-breaking posts per week.”

No wonder content moderation on the big platforms doesn’t so much resemble an unpleasant visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles as it does a re-enactment of the horror film “The Purge.” Due process is a luxury good.

We’re not likely to see a Facebook Supreme Court — not an American one, in any event. The Hays Code died after the First Amendment was extended to movies; a Hays Code for the internet will probably be dead on arrival.

In a confused, fractured world, Facebook would be glad to stick to a single global standard. This is perhaps why Mr. Zuckerberg offers full-throated praise of the European Union’s privacy standard, the General Data Protection Regulation, in his op-ed. The fracture of the internet into different spheres of influence would be bad for his business, and to that end, the company would much rather impose European sensibilities on the American internet than deal with multiple standards.

So, while the American government has its hands tied behind its back by the Constitution, the French, the Germans and the Irish will set their own bar for online speech. In the future, American speech — at least online — may be governed by Europe.

#facebook

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tom-mcd71 · 5 years ago

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Parler Releases Election Transparency Pledge

To protect integrity of the vote, Free Speech platform will host unfiltered content of the leading up to and after election day

Las Vegas, Nevada – To counter the de facto censorship planned by tech publishers like Facebook and Twitter, Parler has released a pledge to bring transparency and sunlight to the 2020 elections.

In a document written by COO and Strategic Investor Jeffrey Wernick, Parler announced that it will work with all parties and stakeholders to host unfiltered election content so that voters can hear all perspectives and decide for themselves what to think.

The full pledge is included here:

By popular account, Benjamin Franklin was asked the question as he strode from the Constitutional Convention in 1787, “What did we get, Doctor?”

He famously answered, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

We have held on to our Republic for 233 years, and trust in the integrity of our elections has been key. Americans have been confident that the vote of The People was secure and that transitions of power would be lawful.

But now, after months of indefinite lockdowns imposed with questionable authority and the Nation’s purse strings stretched beyond a limit any reasonable person would deem prudent, there looms a dire threat: a coordinated information blackout.

Recent polling by the Pew Center shows that half of voters expect it to be difficult to vote during this pandemic year, an expectation that will cast doubt on the legitimacy of the outcome. States across the Nation are scrambling to implement broad mail-in ballot programs, often governed by vague, unfamiliar rules that many Americans simply do not trust.

Whether their concerns are overblown is debatable, but research from MIT’s Election lab found that such programs increase the chance of fraud or error, particularly in jurisdictions where the system is new. We have seen major problems this year in places like New Jersey where a municipal election, held entirely by mail for the first time, was deemed to have been “irreversibly tainted,” and results were thrown out.

Matters won’t be helped when political power brokers execute their plans to delegitimize and challenge the results. Nor will they be helped when Facebook, Twitter and YouTube exercise their moderation powers as they see fit to impair the free flow of information.

By the time we finally do get official results—something Mark Zuckerberg is telling us we may not get for weeks—we could end up with a President-Elect the authority of whom roughly half of Americans won’t respect. That’s a recipe for instability, conflict, even violence.

We at Parler have no influence over election strategies nor can we predict the future. What we do know is that there will be a tremendous information deficit when Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter fire up their content-curation machines to halt the free flow of information.

Zuckerberg and his technoauthoritarian pals have made their plans clear. They will impose de facto censorship and an information blackout in which only “approved” information sources may be read, seen and heard. This plan is a recipe for disaster.

The slogan of The Washington Post is, “Democracy Dies in the Dark.” At Parler, we could not agree more. We will not let this backout stand!

Trust in election results requires transparency. The very last thing Americans need is to be coddled, babysat and spoon-fed propaganda. The People demand and deserve to hear from all sides, parties, and sources, so that they may exercise their own judgment. No one should be blocked, banned or censored, whether by government agents or Silicon Valley special interests. Biased editors and content curators should not be telling us what we may see, hear, read, write, say, or think.

Parler will be the home for unfiltered, uncensored, real-time election coverage. We invite all candidates, parties, election observers, journalists, and interested citizens to share news, information, and commentary on Parler. We will honor the right of all to speak freely to the community of users, who have grown accustomed to being able to read, watch, comment, parley—and decide for themselves what to think. Parler will be the hub for exit polling, poll watching, ballot counting, ballot recounting, legal challenges, breaking news and analysis from all perspectives

While this approach is just business as usual for Parler, we are proud to be doing our part to ensure that no candidate or special interest will be able cheat, interfere, incite unrest, or steal an election in the darkness. Sunshine is the antidote to election fraud and interference.

Americans deserve nothing less than full transparency. It is essential for the legitimacy of, trust in, and respect for election outcomes. We are here to provide it.

Join the movement at Parler.

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sciencespies · 6 years ago

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The Decade's Biggest Technology Disappointments

https://sciencespies.com/news/the-decades-biggest-technology-disappointments/

The Decade's Biggest Technology Disappointments

Like most teen years, the past decade in technology started out someplace relatively innocent before growing moody, dark and disillusioned. In 2010, we were excited about new iPhones and finding old friends on Facebook, not fretting about our digital privacy or social media’s threat to democracy. Now we are wondering how to rein in the largest companies in the world and reckoning with wanting innovation to be both fast and responsible.

Over the past 10 years, new technology has changed how we communicate, date, work, get around and pass time. But for every hit, there have been high-profile disappointments and delays. That includes overpriced gadgets for making juice, face computers, promises of taking a vacation in space and companies claiming to be saving the world.

The failures served a purpose, acting as reality checks for the technology industry and the people who fund, regulate or consume its products. Tech companies spent the last decade first trying to grasp, then distance themselves from, their impact on society. Facebook’s famously decommissioned “move fast and break things” motto sounded plucky in 2010 and laughably misguided in 2019, when the company had, in fact, broken things.

It was a decade when billions of dollars were thrown at tech companies, and yet many of the promises those companies made never materialized, blew up in our faces or were indefinitely delayed. And while tech failures are nothing new, taken together they brought the innovation industrial complex closer to earth and made us all a bit more realistic – if less fun.

Like proper adults.

The benevolent, world-saving tech company

“Don’t be evil” read Google’s famous motto, which sat atop its code of conduct until 2018, when it was quietly demoted to the last line.

At the beginning of the decade, that is exactly how many of the largest tech companies and CEOs marketed themselves. Their products were not only going to make daily life easier or more enjoyable, but they also would make the entire world better – even if their business models depended on ads and your personal data.

“Facebook was not originally founded to be a company. We’ve always cared primarily about our social mission,” chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a 2012 letter, just before the company’s initial public offering. He outlined lofty visions going forward, including that Facebook would create a more “honest and transparent dialogue” about government through accountability.

Instead, the decade turned toward disinformation, and hate speech spread on social media. Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube were used to spread disinformation ahead of the 2016 U.S. election, while Google briefly worked on a search engine for China that would censor content. Companies profited off mountains of user data they collected but failed to protect, as major data breaches hit Equifax, Yahoo and others.

In response, workers are pushing back, growing into quiet armies attempting to redirect their companies toward social goals.

Face computers

Google co-founder Sergey Brin debuted Google Glass in 2012 by wearing a prototype of the smart glasses onstage. Its real PR outing came later that year when skydivers live-streamed their jump out of a blimp above San Francisco during a Google developer conference.

By showing information in front of the face instead of on a phone, Google said, the $1,500 Glass would allow people to interact more with the world around them. Instead, its legacy has been questions about our right to privacy from recording devices, the word “glasshole,” and at least one bar fight. The company stopped selling Glass to consumers in 2015 and shifted it to a workplace product, targeting everyone from factory workers to doctors.

Google was not alone. Microsoft made HoloLens, a technically ambitious piece of eyewear that looked like round steampunk goggles and used augmented reality. Facebook bought virtual-reality goggle maker Oculus for $2 billion and heavily invested in and promoted it as a gaming and entertainment device (and the future of social media). Magic Leap, another augmented reality headset promising immersive and mind-blowing entertainment, managed to raise $2.6 billion and only release one $2,295 developer product.

Eventually we may wear glasses that display useful information on top of the real world, outfitted with smart assistants that whisper in our ears. Google’s early attempt at a consumer face-wearable was not destined to be that device.

A more efficient way of eating

Juice. Colorful, thirst-quenching, packed with vitamins, on-demand juice. It seemed an unlikely thing for Silicon Valley to try to disrupt. But in the 2010s, entrepreneurs’ impatience with preparing and even consuming the calories necessary to survive led to a number of eating innovations.

One of the decade’s most memorable tech failures asked the question: What if you spent $699 for an elaborate machine that squeezed juice from proprietary bags of fruit and vegetable pulp for you? The answer, discovered by intrepid Bloomberg journalists in 2017, is that you could squeeze those packets with your hands instead of overpaying for a machine. That machine was Juicero, and it raised $120 million in funding before shutting down just five months later.

Other food innovations have fallen fall short of their revolutionary promises. Smart ovens became fire hazards; meal-kit delivery start-ups went under; robots tossed salads, mixed drinks and flipped burgers; and pod-based devices for random foods (cocktails, tortillas, cookies, yoghurt, jello shots) failed. And then there’s Soylent – a meal in drink form, designed to save time by cutting out “tasting good” and “chewing.” Soylent has managed to find a small but enthusiastic fan base, and even got into solids recently with a line of meal-replacement bars called Squared.

The decade’s real food change came from delivery apps that pay on-demand workers to bring meals made in actual kitchens to your door. Those companies are dealing with employee protests over low and confusing pay while trying to become profitable.

Non-Facebook social networks

Remember Path? Color? Yik Yak, Meerkat and Google Buzz? And iTunes Ping, Apple’s short-lived attempt at making its music hub social? Start-ups and the tech giants alike launched social products over the past decade, but few succeeded.

In 2010 there was Google Buzz, which was quickly replaced by Google+ in 2011. The service struggled to attract users and experienced privacy issues, such as a bug exposing more than 52 million people’s data. It was finally declared dead this year, though some of its best features live on in Google Photos.

Vine burned bright for too short a time before being closed in 2016 by Twitter, which had bought the company for a reported $30 million in 2012. (Speaking of Twitter, it hung on thanks in part to its popularity with politicians, celebrities and people who are mad online, though it is far smaller than Facebook. Snapchat and TikTok have also carved out niches.)

Facebook dominated at the start of the decade and continues to dominate at the end, in part by buying or blatantly copying any competitors along the way. It acquired Instagram and WhatsApp, integrating both more closely with the Facebook brand. Even with major scandals and fumbles, its global user base grew to more than 2 billion people.

A crowdfunding, DIY revolution

For a short time, it looked as though the next generation of gadgets would come from outside the usual Silicon Valley idea factories. They would be dreamed up by passionate hobbyists, prototyped on 3-D printers and funded by fans instead of venture capitalists (though still manufactured in Shenzhen, China). Despite some notable successes – Oculus, Peloton, Boosted Boards – it turns out getting an idea from your cocktail napkin to market is pretty tough.

Notable failures include the disappointing Coolest Cooler, which featured both Bluetooth and a blender and raised more than $13 million on Kickstarter in 2014. It failed to deliver products to a third of its backers; many that shipped didn’t work. Others never materialized, such as iBackPack, which was supposed to produce a WiFi hotspot. The people behind it raised more than $800,000 and were accused by the Federal Trade Commission of using those funds to buy bitcoin and pay off credit cards. Skarp Laser Razor, a razor with dubious hair-removal technology, managed to get more than $4 million in pledges from interested customers before Kickstarter suspended its campaign for violating policies on working prototypes.

(Kickstarter said the vast majority of its products make it to production and that it aims “to be quite clear about the fact that not all projects will go smoothly.”)

Consumer 3-D printers also failed to live up to the hype. We were supposed to have a printer in every home, spitting out replacement LEGOs and screws, art projects, and even food. The high cost of the devices and the skills needed to use them could not compete with overnight shipping.

Drones dropping deliveries

“Could it be, you know, four, five years? I think so. It will work, and it will happen, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun,” Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said.

The year was 2013, and Bezos was on “60 Minutes” to unveil the next big thing in package delivery: drones. He said that within that time frame, quadcopters would be able to drop packages from warehouses at customers’ doors within 30 minutes. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

In 2016, Amazon showed off its first commercial drone delivery in a rural area of the United Kingdom, a 13-minute delivery of an Amazon Fire TV streaming device and a bag of popcorn. Its latest drone iteration was on display earlier this year at MARS, its weird tech conference, again promising that drone deliveries were coming soon.

But as of the end of the decade, Amazon packages are still being delivered by humans. In fact, Amazon announced in 2018 that it was adding 20,000 delivery vans via third-party delivery partners to its ground fleet. Other companies, including Uber, UPS and Alphabet’s Wing, have also been testing drone deliveries, and it’s possible that we will have boxes from the sky onto porches in the next decade.

Vaping to fix smoking

It was supposed to be safer than smoking and a way to quit nicotine altogether. While vaping has indeed caught on, its biggest selling point has blown up in recent years. Eight deaths and more than 2,500 cases of lung-related illnesses have been linked to vaping in the United States.

Critics say fun-sounding flavors and colorful devices, most notably from the company Juul, have made vaping wildly popular with teenagers – one in four high schoolers vapes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now the FDA and lawmakers are investigating vaping companies. But if we draw on experience from the cigarette industry, vaping is not likely to disappear anytime soon.

Amazon’s big phone play

Apple and Google have direct access to billions of people with their smartphone operating systems and hardware – 2.5 billion devices run Google’s Android operating system, and 900 million iPhones are in use.

One company noticeably absent from our pockets is Amazon, but not for lack of trying. After several years of stealth development, Amazon announced its Fire Phone in 2014. The smartphone did not look like much, started at $199, ran on a customized version of Android and was available only on AT&T. Amazon reported $83 million of unused inventory in late 2014, and it discontinued the Fire Phone a year after its introduction.

Now that Amazon is competing against those two companies for voice-assistant dominance, its lack of a smartphone is even more glaring. It has put Alexa in anything with a microphone, from cameras to headphones and, soon, eye glasses. (It is on smartphones, but you have to open the Alexa app first.) Meanwhile Apple’s Siri and Google’s Assistant are already in pockets, built into the core of the devices and listening for their next cue.

Tourists in space

It is no secret that big-name billionaires love space. Despite their passion, the three boldest aspiring space barons have made and missed deadlines for sending people into space this decade.

Richard Branson said Virgin Galactic would fly tourists into space by 2020, but its last test mission was two test pilots and a crew member at the start of last year. Bezos said at an Air Force Association conference in late 2018 that Blue Origin would send a test flight into the upper atmosphere with people on board this year, but the most recent test flight, on Dec. 11, contained no humans. In 2017, Elon Musk announced that SpaceX had taken deposits to fly two passengers around the moon in 2018. That flight did not take place. He has the whole next decade to hit a different goal, set in 2011: sending someone to Mars by 2031.

There are plenty of interested customers. Virgin Galactic has sold tickets to more than 700 people wanting to take a trip to space at $250,000 a seat.

If there is one thing on this list we would not want to rush just to meet a deadline, it is loading civilians into private rockets and hurling them into space.

#News

#12-2019 Science News #2019 Science News #Earth Environment #earth science #Environment and Nature #Nature Science #News Science Spies #Our Nature #planetary science #Science #Science News #Science Spies #Science Spies News #Space Physics & Nature #Space Science #News

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magzoso-tech · 6 years ago

Photo

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/the-decades-biggest-technology-disappointments/

The Decade's Biggest Technology Disappointments

Like proper adults.

The benevolent, world-saving tech company

“Don’t be evil” read Google’s famous motto, which sat atop its code of conduct until 2018, when it was quietly demoted to the last line.

In response, workers are pushing back, growing into quiet armies attempting to redirect their companies toward social goals.

Face computers

A more efficient way of eating

Non-Facebook social networks

A crowdfunding, DIY revolution

(Kickstarter said the vast majority of its products make it to production and that it aims “to be quite clear about the fact that not all projects will go smoothly.”)

Drones dropping deliveries

“Could it be, you know, four, five years? I think so. It will work, and it will happen, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun,” Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said.

Vaping to fix smoking

Amazon’s big phone play

Tourists in space

It is no secret that big-name billionaires love space. Despite their passion, the three boldest aspiring space barons have made and missed deadlines for sending people into space this decade.

There are plenty of interested customers. Virgin Galactic has sold tickets to more than 700 people wanting to take a trip to space at $250,000 a seat.

If there is one thing on this list we would not want to rush just to meet a deadline, it is loading civilians into private rockets and hurling them into space.

#Miscellaneous

0 notes

tbitzas-blog · 6 years ago

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The Great Firewall of China

Imagine living in a world with no Facebook, no Instagram, no Snapchat, no YouTube, not even dam Wikipedia. Well lucky for you, you don’t have to imagine this word, why, because you clearly live in the Western world. These social media platforms have ultimately transformed the way we communicate and connect with each other, but can you imagine living in a country where these sites are not only unavailable but are also BANNED. Yes, I know mind blown!

As it turns out, the Chinese governments have blocked these social networking sites that we use on an almost daily basis, as they deem the content to not be in the interest of the state. Don’t be alarmed, they aren’t totally confined to colouring books and crossword puzzles, they do have their own set of social media platforms that bare some resemblance to our famous sites. These include WeChat, Weibo, Baidu, QQ and Youku.

Youku is the YouTube of the westernized society, which serves as China’s main social networking site. Anyone is able to upload their own videos, however, this site is strictly monitored by the Chinese government and anything criticising the Communist Party is taken down. I mean isn’t freedom of speech one of the ten commandments?

As I am sure many of you are familiar with Game of Thrones, you must therefore understand the importance of a big wall for an old kingdom. It prevents weird things entering from the north. And just like the wall that spans Westeros’ north border, China also has a great wall, which has protected the country from invaders for the last 2,000 years. But another wall that many individuals are not so familiar is the Great Firewall of China. That's the biggest digital boundary in the whole world. It was built not only to protect Chinese traditional regime from universal customs and practices, but also to prevent China’s own citizens to access the global free internet, breaking their united front.

So here is the time we present to you two internets. One is the internet, and the other is the Chinanet.

But why does China have their only virtual internet and prohibit the use of apps commonly used by westernized societies. Well the answer is simple:

Censorship

This form of internet censorship is widely known as the ‘The Great Firewall of China’. It was implemented by the Chinese Government to serve two purposes.

Firstly, it allows the the government to at least partially control the flow of information to the country, and it fosters an economy that promotes homegrown Chinese companies such as the Chinese Uber (Didi), Chinese Facebook (WeChat), and the Chinese Google Search (Baidu).

Regardless, the Chinese government seems willing to endure the economic and scientific costs, as well as potential damage to its credibility, if it means more control over the internet. Censorship has practically forced Chinese online users to embrace their creativity gene and for the censors to be highly alert in blocking this exceedingly creative content. For example, online searches for this little cute ball of yellow fluff were blocked once in a while.

Why you may ask? Well because people think Winnie the Pooh looks like President Xi Jinping, so when people mention Winnie in conversations through words or picture, they use it as a proxy for talking about this guy.

Imaged sourced from (BBC).

I don’t know if its just me, but I can’t really see the resemblance. Should’ve gone to Specsavers I guess.

There are several ways however that Chinese citizens can reap the benefits of the modernised internet world despite ‘The Great Firewall’, with a VPN being the most common used.

A VPN, Virtual Private Network, is a connection method used to add security and privacy to private and public networks. It enables users to hide their IP address and actual location, displaying instead one of their IP addresses and virtual location from anywhere in the world where their server exists.

However, Chinese citizens may not get this privilege anymore, in the latest crackdown by the Chinese Government which will see the abolishment of VPN networks to suppress dissent and maintain the communications party’s grip on power. Welcome back Didi, WeChat and Baidu.

I don’t know about you, but I’m so thankful I live in country where I’m able to freely post about all the Winnie the Pooh related memes and content I want. I mean I use VPN here so I can watch Netflix from practically any country in the world, I couldn’t imagine if I had to use a VPN just so I could send my snapchat streaks for the day. Oops, don’t report me cause the Australian Government is also cracking down on this at the moment yikes. Living in China would be like featuring in an episode of Big Brother and playing Truman in The Truman Show. Creepy and a total violation of personal privacy. No thankyou!

#mda20009 #digitalcommunities #post8 #internetcensorship #china #thegreatfirewall #vpn #thetrumanshow

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lewisdigitalcitizenship-blog · 6 years ago

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Article 13 - THE END OF THE MEME?

You are probably wondering 1 of 3 things right now. Firstly, what do you mean this is the end of memes? Secondly, what is article 13? And thirdly, what is a meme? Just in case you are part of the small minority that doesn't know what a meme is,

Originally posted by desingyouruniverse

The Oxford Dictionary has 2 definitions. The one I will be talking about is: “An image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations”. If you want some examples of memes check out this article post by Complex down below:

Link to memes: https://www.complex.com/life/best-memes-2018

Now over to the main talking point. Article 13 is a proposal put forward in 2016 by the European Commission to change and implement new copyright laws. The reasoning behind this proposal was to update copyright laws to a more appropriate manor to combat the ever-changing environment. This blog post will talk about what is Article 13, its sister Article 11, the organisations and people affected. Also, the way in which it would change the way we use the internet with the EU.

What are the effects on organisations and creative people?

The overall effects caused by the change to Article 13 and 11 have been described as “taking a step back” as quoted in an article by The Guardian. This article would influence most of the creative economy such as music artists, video creators, reviewers and news sites. One of the proposals is referred to as a “Link Tax” by most news reports and articles. This change would mean that the creator of the content shared on their page would get a percentage of the advertisement revenue. This means the company’s revenue would be eaten into by this new proposal. The other issues that would arise would be that the companies that host the information would be open to lawsuits for copyright infringement. This would mean that sites such as YouTube and Twitch, who’s sites primarily rely on user generated content to generate revenue from adds, would have to drastically change the way they operate.

This is one of the big reasons why there has been such an uproar, since larger companies would have to set up processes to scan all user uploaded content to check for any infringements. This would be costly to this organisation and would drive down traffic to their sites due to the lack of content that would be compliant with the new regulations if they were to be put in place.

For these platforms to protect themselves people who upload content to the site would have to have agreements with the people who have produced the product to prevent them from being sued. This would be hard to do for large platforms like YouTube and Facebook as they have millions of videos and images posted by users that it would almost be impossible to have an agreement with every content owner.

This has started up large campaigns to prevent these legislation changes such as the one by YouTube called #Saveyourinternet. This campaign highlights the issues of this article and tries to make creators aware of its effects and impacts. They mention a lot of issues that would arise if this act in its current form was passed. In a video titled, “Article 13 – There’s a better way”, Matt from YouTube quotes, “YouTube would be forced to block millions of existing and new videos in the EU”. They continue to mention that the types of videos people could upload would be ‘limited’. Down below are some of the affected videos they name:

If you would like to watch the full video it is down at the bottom of the blog post.

This is part of Youtube’s campaign to stop Article 13 being put in place. This shows the effects it would have on YouTube as they would be forced to block videos. Could you imagine if this happened to Youtube?

If you want to read more on the issue and to see YouTube’s campaigns here is a link to their site on the issue. Here you will also find videos from creators on the site to see where they stand on the matter.

Link to their campaign: https://www.youtube.com/saveyourinternet/

Above is a demographic from EDiMA on all the sectors and business’s that would be harmed by the proposal of Article 13. You can see that there is a vast amount of companies on here that would affected and ultimately change the way these sites will operate due to the user created content being limited. There

BBC News quoted that “many believe would be an excessive restriction on free speech”. The reasoning this is said is due to the fact that people would be stopped from making creative and opinionated videos such as movie reviews and parodies. The other impact Article 11 will have is that it is forcing news organisations such as the New York Times and The Guardian to take a percentage out of their ad revenue and give it to the owner of the content.

To note these organisations aren’t dismissing change to the copyright law. Most people and organisations respect and want to achieve this change. Just with its current form, this would have a huge effect on how people would express themselves.

Why does the European parliament want change?

The European union wants to “update EU copyright law for the age of Facebook and Google” as quoted by the Guardian. People who support the articles think it’s important to help support and give credit where is due to creatives online. With this overhaul of Article 13 and a similar overhaul to the similar sibling Article 11, the commission aims to make the creators of the work get paid for the work they have put in.

One of the proposals put in place is something referred to as a “link tax”. The idea of this is to take a cut of the revenue generated by the website, video, music or video and give it to the creator of the content through licensing the content for people to use. This includes sites putting snippets or links of their work to drive their own ad revenue up, having to give a proportion of this to the creator.

One example of this would be that any of the above images that aren’t owned by Lad Bible would generate revenue for the owner of the property. This would mean that sites that use this would have to take more precaution and spend more time to create their own content to use on their sites.

How close is this to happening? Or will it ever happen?

Currently both Article 13 and 11 are still being hotly debated with a possible final vote to take place in March of this year. Compromise have been offered to try and push the bill through with MEP Axel Voss offering to exempt small to medium sized businesses. However, this proposes a new challenge as there would be 2 sets of copyright law. As said in a report by the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) this would essential create a “two-tier Internet”. This would cause issues with companies as they may want to stay in medium to small business category so they wouldn’t have to split some of there revenue with the creator if they use their property online.

One of the things that would have to be considered in this is the effect on new online start-ups within the EU if there wasn’t a tired system is that small online businesses within the EU would be at a big disadvantage compared to online business based outside the EU as they will struggle to stand out and differentiate themselves from competitors.

With the changes in copyright, I believe that everyone wants there to be change and respects the end goal of people getting revenue for when a site or person uses their work online. I just find that in its current state, the change would change the shape of how we use the internet for content in the EU. I feel that more time needs to be taken on changing the current laws for people properly online due to the world being more dependent on a digital life style.

Regarding the “link tax”, I feel that this a great concept as it gives credit to the creator for their work. I just think in practice this would be a very complicated system to put in place due to the sheer amount of content online.

Hopefully this opened you up and showed you a very present issue that could have large effects on how we go about our day to day life in a digital world. I also hope that there will never be a time where creativity is hindered and for there to be an end on Memes.

references The guardian(June 2018) EU votes for copyright law that would make internet a 'tool for control available at : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/20/eu-votes-for-copyright-law-that-would-make-internet-a-tool-for-control (accessed :22/1/2019)

The Guardian(September 2018) “ In punishing tech giants, the EU has made the internet worse for everyone”

Does it scare you too? If so, click here to #SaveYourInternet → https://t.co/UzaIKzKpj1 pic.twitter.com/obaNTfKlQD

Available at:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/13/tech-giants-eu-internet-searches-copyright-law

(accessed :22/1/2019)

The guardian(Sep018) Battle over EU copyright law heads for showdown https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/09/battle-over-eu-copyright-law-heads-for-showdownl (accessed :22/1/2019)

Oxford Dictionary, meme, available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/meme (accessed :22/1/2019)

Complex (2018) “The best memes of 2018″ Available at : https://www.complex.com/life/best-memes-2018/ (accessed :22/1/2019)

The law dictionary(2018) “What Happens If You Break Copyright Laws?” Available at: https://thelawdictionary.org/article/what-happens-if-you-break-copyright-laws/ (accessed :22/1/2019)

alphr (2017)”Article 13 approved: What are the EU copyright law amendments?” Available at:https://www.alphr.com/politics/1009470/article-13-EU-what-is-it-copyright

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shirlleycoyle · 5 years ago

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YouTube Removed a Sex Tech Conference for No Reason

The first-ever live streamed Women of Sex Tech conference, held on Saturday over Crowdcast, almost didn't happen because YouTube's automated moderation controls banned the group from the platform.

Women of Sex Tech, a group of entrepreneurs in sex and technology industries, has been organizing events and meetups for nearly five years. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year's conference moved to live-streaming online.

Women of Sex Tech president Alison Falk and vice president SX Noir tested the live stream on YouTube on Friday evening. After four minutes of streaming with a speaker in the UK, the stream was cut off for violating community guidelines.

"I was so confused, I thought it had to be a glitch considering there was no mention of sex or adult content at that time," Falk told Motherboard. She said that the YouTube account only had their logo on it, and was made weeks in advance. When she tried testing again a few hours later with Noir, YouTube said the channel was in violation three more times.

In a statement to the Daily Dot, a YouTube spokesperson blamed the incident on its coronavirus response, which involved sending human moderators home and instead relying more heavily on automated algorithms. “We know that this may result in some videos being removed that do not violate our policies, but this allows us to continue to act quickly and protect our ecosystem," the spokesperson said. "If creators think that their content was removed in error, they can appeal decisions and our teams will take a look.”

Falk and Noir told Motherboard that appealing the decision, so close to their event the following morning, seemed pointless.

"At that point, we began scrambling to figure out what we could do and ended up having to fork over a couple hundred dollars for conferencing software to make sure the show would still go on!" Falk said; Crowdcast costs $195 per month for a business plan that could support the attendees and time limit they needed.

YouTube’s nudity and sexual content policies bans a whole list of explicit content "meant to be sexually gratifying," but there was none of that in the entire five-hour conference, which Motherboard attended. Speakers including founder of MakeLoveNotPorn Cindy Gallop, reproductive health specialist Serena Chen, and sextech business founder Lora Haddock DiCarlo spoke on how the coronavirus pandemic has affected their work, and gave insights into how others in the sexual wellness and education industry can cope with the current crisis.

Adult industry professionals including Danielle Blunt, who spoke about the EARNIT act, and writer Jessie Sage discussed the ways sex work is impacted by the pandemic, but no one described their profession in explicit detail. All of that doesn't matter, however, because the algorithm decided they were breaking the YouTube terms of use before they even held the event.

"Morality and technology very much have intersections."

"Considering this isn't a one-time occurrence and there are frequent stories of folks being shadowbanned, demonetized, having their accounts disabled, and so on within our communities, I can't help but wonder what variables within the automation their smart detection has been told to look for that would trigger a violation of inappropriate content," Falk said.

This is yet another example of sex education and sexual speech being routinely silenced by tech companies like YouTube, Facebook and Apple for years. It's an incident that's indicative of a larger pattern of sexual censorship online.

"I think this indicates that there will always be a moral judgment on these platforms… When cis, heterosexual white men create these digital worlds, you see these moral judgments leading to more discrimination for people who are brown, black and queer," Noir said—and legislation like FOSTA-SESTA, which censors sexual speech online under the guise of preventing trafficking, and the EARN IT Act, which is still in the Senate but would give government actors the power to force sites to break users' encryption, further hinder their acceptance on mainstream platforms.

"Morality and technology very much have intersections," Noir said. "And most of the time, as mentioned, it's the queer and brown folks that are left out of this acceptance."

YouTube Removed a Sex Tech Conference for No Reason syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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entergamingxp · 5 years ago

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Modern Warfare battle royale leaks • Eurogamer.net

Activision is fighting Call of Duty: Modern Warfare battle royale leaks with subpoenas and online takedowns.

Modern Warfare’s upcoming battle royale, reportedly dubbed Warzone, is one of the worst-kept secrets in all of video games. While it remains unannounced, players have found themselves accidentally transported into its tutorial, and there is detailed information relating to its map and mechanics online.

In fact, if you boot up Modern Warfare today you’ll see a “classified” portion of its main menu. Clearly, this will turn into battle royale once Warzone launches. And Activision even released what very much looks like a teaser for the battle royale, with one soldier saying “the gas is closing in” before fan-favourite character Ghost drops in to say “they’re targeting their own”. The camera then pulls back to show soldiers dropping out of a plane into a warzone with, yes, a green gas closing in.

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But that hasn’t stopped Activision from filing multiple takedowns of social media and website posts on copyright grounds. And in a rare development, it has demanded Reddit hand over the personal details of a user who posted what looks like the cover art for Warzone.

As revealed by TorrentFreak, Activision obtained a subpoena from a US court ordering Reddit to dish the dirt on a redditor called Assyrian2410, who posted a thread on the Modern Warfare subreddit titled: “I found this image online. Not sure what it is. Possibly Battle Royale.”

The thread linked to an image that showed characters from Call of Duty standing on a downed chopper underneath the text: Call of Duty Warzone. Assyrian2410 has since deleted their Reddit account, and the image has been scrubbed.

It’s clear Activision is keen to find out the original source of this leak, but its efforts haven’t stopped with Assyrian2410. It has forced offline a tweet from a Call of Duty subreddit moderator who posted the image, and the Twitter account of Call of Duty leaker TheGamingRevolution, who claimed the image was “legit”, was suspended. TheGamingRevolution has also removed a video published to YouTube showing footage of the Warzone tutorial in action.

CALL OF DUTY WARZONE THE NEXT CHAPTER OF THE CALL OF DUTY FRANCHISE pic.twitter.com/tXW912vhqM

— CARSON J KELLY (@CARSONJKELLY) February 12, 2020

Elsewhere, other Reddit posts have been caught in the crossfire. The founder of a subreddit dedicated to Modern Warfare’s battle royale, r/modernwarzone, told Eurogamer they received a takedown from Activision after they posted the leaked image of Warzone to their Twitter account.

“In the email they sent me concerning the takedown, they linked every other tweet that contained the same image that was removed, and there was quite a long list,” DougDagnabbit said.

“Every other takedown that’s come since has been more of the same, with the community’s original content being affected adversely due to them copyright striking anything that they see fit. Even information that’s easily available in-game without using exploits or cheats of any kind.”

Various links have now been deleted in a megathread posted on r/modernwarzone that rounds up all the information on Warzone discovered so far. And with Call of Duty fans hungry for more on the inevitable battle royale, Activision has come under fire for its aggressive takedown strategy even as it teases the release of the mode within Modern Warfare itself.

“They really handled this in the worst way possible,” DougDagnabbit said. “If they would’ve shown restraint and not have had such a knee jerk reaction to the original leaked image none of the current leaks would’ve happened. The subreddit wouldn’t have been created in the first place. I also think that adding the menu blade of ‘classified’ was a terrible idea on their part to build hype. I’m sure they didn’t intend on any of this to happen, but the public opinion of them has definitely gone down since everything started, and everyone knows the current public opinion on Activision isn’t exactly great.”

Activision declined to comment when contacted by Eurogamer, but its course of action comes as no surprise given the nature of the leak. What we have here could be considered the artwork for the next big Call of Duty release, given Warzone will reportedly be available to download for free seperate from Modern Warfare. The company no doubt feels within its rights to protect its intellectual property in this case, as opposed to responding to accidental leaks of its own making, such as via data-mining.

But, according to DougDagnabbit, Activision has targeted more than this leaked art.

“I would say it is within their rights, but some of the things they’ve taken down have been ridiculous,” DougDagnabbit said.

“One of our most active users, u/SlammedOptima made the original superimposed image of the Blackout map compared to the Warzone map. The Warzone map info had been posted months beforehand and was public knowledge, and the Blackout map information was public knowledge as well. Our user spent time making approximate calculation of size based off of things available in-game to everyone without any sort of exploitation and it was still taken down within 24 hours after several major news sites posted about it without crediting the original author or seeking his permission to use.”

Meanwhile, Reddit has until 29th February 2020 to hand over the personal details of Assyrian2410, although it’s unclear whether the subpoena will amount to much. As Gizmodo points out, when Reddit faced a similar case in 2019, the courts decided anyone from anywhere can rely on the right to anonymous free speech under the First Amendment because Reddit is an American platform.

Online, the wait for an official Warzone announcement has become a meme within Call of Duty subreddits, although some moderators remain on edge.

Y’all didn’t hear? They are starting to protest in the streets! There is outrage across the globe! from r/ModernWarzone

“We may have gained Activision’s attention, but we did not intend to break any terms of service or copyright law and we are strictly vetting the content that is posted to ensure that it is legal and contains no material that isn’t the poster’s original content,” DougDagnabbit said.

“If Activision decided to come after me, not only would it be terrible PR for them, but there’s tens of thousands of others out there that they would need to go after as well. We are all just huge fans of the new Modern Warfare, and are hyped to see battle royale release.”

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/02/modern-warfare-battle-royale-leaks-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=modern-warfare-battle-royale-leaks-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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iol247 · 6 years ago

Video

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YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki tells Lesley Stahl what the video platform is doing about hate speech in an interview Sunday on the CBS newsmagazine program ‘60 Minutes.’ Wojcicki told '60 Minutes’ that Google employs 10,000 people to focus on “controversial content.” She described their schedule, which includes time for therapy. Stahl also said there are reports that the “monitors” are “beginning to buy the conspiracy theories.” “What we really had to do was tighten our enforcement of that to make sure we were catching everything and we use a combination of people and machines,” Wojcicki explained. “So Google as a whole has about 10,000 people that are focused on controversial content.”

Lesley Stahl: I’m told that it is very stressful to be looking at these questionable videos all the time. And that there’s actually counselors to make sure that there aren’t mental problems with the people who are doing this work. Is that true? Susan Wojcicki: It’s a very important area for us. We try to do everything we can to make sure that this is a good work environment. Our reviewers work five hours of the eight hours reviewing videos. They have the opportunity to take a break whenever they want. Lesley Stahl: I also heard that these monitors, reviewers, sometimes, they’re beginning to buy the conspiracy theories. Susan Wojcicki: I’ve definitely heard about that. And we work really hard with all of our reviewers to make sure that, you know, we’re providing the right services for them.

Wojcicki on Section 230, stopping 70% of controversial content:

Lesley Stahl: Once you watch one of these, YouTube’s algorithms might recommend you watch similar content. But no matter how harmful or untruthful, YouTube can’t be held liable for any content, due to a legal protection called Section 230. The law under 230 does not hold you responsible for user-generated content. But in that you recommend things, sometimes 1,000 times, sometimes 5,000 times, shouldn’t you be held responsible for that material, because you recommend it? Susan Wojcicki: Well, our systems wouldn’t work without recommending. And so if– Lesley Stahl: I’m not saying don’t recommend. I’m just saying be responsible for when you recommend so many times. Susan Wojcicki: If we were held liable for every single piece of content that we recommended, we would have to review it. That would mean there’d be a much smaller set of information that people would be finding. Much, much smaller. Lesley Stahl: She told us that earlier this year, YouTube started re-programming its algorithms in the U.S. to recommend questionable videos much less and point users who search for that kind of material to authoritative sources, like news clips. With these changes Wojcicki says they have cut down the amount of time Americans watch controversial content by 70%.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/12/02/youtube_ceo_wojcicki_weve_cut_amount_of_time_americans_watch_controversial_content_by_70.html

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thisdaynews · 6 years ago

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The Republican lawmaker rattling Silicon Valley

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/the-republican-lawmaker-rattling-silicon-valley/

The Republican lawmaker rattling Silicon Valley

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley embodies the rising threat facing some of the world’s most powerful companies, as political leaders of all ideological stripes sign on to rein in online giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon.

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‘This town has valorized the tech industry,’ says Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley.

Josh Hawley arrived in the Senate this year as a conquering Republican hero, after wresting a Democratic-held seat on a platform of religious liberty, low taxes and fights against “Washington overreach.”

Six months later, the former Missouri attorney general’s emergence as the chamber’s most relentless adversary of the tech industry has placed him at the center of a curious coalition of Democrats and Trump allies. But he’s confounding many of the libertarian Republicans who helped elect him — who say his proposals to rein in Silicon Valley’s accumulated power areverging into assaults onthe free market and the First Amendment.

Story Continued Below

Hawley embodies the rising threat facing some of the world’s most powerful companies, as political leaders of all ideological stripes sign on to break up or otherwise rein in online giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon. And it reflects how in the U.S., the modern GOP’s reluctance to tread on business can give way to larger worries about how major corporations are transforming society.

The Republican freshman’s anti-tech leadership has been “unbelievable,” says unlikely admirer Matt Stoller, a former aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and a fellow at the advocacy group Open Markets, which is pushing for Washington to crack down on the industry’s biggest players. “He’s definitely the most aggressive and assertive anti-monopolist on the Republican side — and, frankly, the entire Senate,” Stoller says.

Some of Hawley’s past supporters, though, are warning him that he’s going too far. They include Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy powerhouse backed by industrialists Charles and David Koch, which spent $2.1 million in ads helping to elect Hawley in 2018.Now, the group is opposing some of his legislative proposals, including one that would have federal regulators vet online platforms for political bias. In March, AFP ran online ads targeted at Hawley that warned against flirting with the idea of breaking up big tech firms.

“Both his rhetoric and his legislative proposals have been pretty disappointingly incompatible with the Constitution’s principles of limited government and very likely to be ineffective at making life better for innovators, entrepreneurs, and everyday Americans,” said Neil Chilson, a senior research fellow at Stand Together, the umbrella network for AFP and other Koch-backed groups.

As Hawley sees it, the Washington political establishment has for years been co-opted by Silicon Valley’s corporate lobbying army, forgetting about regular Americans while propping up what he branded in his fiery first Senate speech in May “the new aristocratic elite” running the country’s tech companies.

And he’s here in Washington, he says, to force a conversation he hears back home in Missouri about the tech industry’s destructive effects — from the vanishing of personal privacy to the resulting social isolation.

“This town has valorized the tech industry,” said Hawley in an interview with POLITICO in his Senate office, its bookshelves still largely bare. But he says voters in his state and across America are sending a different message: “We are tired of big government and big corporations who, by the way, we think don’t really like America that much.”

Hawley’s tired of them too, and he doesn’t shy away from saying it: “Maybe we’d be better off if Facebook disappeared,” Hawley mused in a May op-ed in USA Today.

Hawley’s passionate and frequent condemnations of Silicon Valley are winning him fans among cultural conservatives, particularly those who see social media companies as unfairly biased against them.

In a recent op-ed, Donald Trump Jr. praised Hawley’s “clear-eyed assessment of the ongoing affront to the freedoms of conservative speech and expression,” adding: “It’s high time other conservative politicians started heeding Hawley’s warnings.” The president retweeted his eldest son’s opinion piece.

Hawley, 39, has roots in Silicon Valley. He attended Stanford as a history major in the late 1990s. There was, he says, a lot of “big talk” of the greatness the internet was going to unleash. But it hasn’t panned out: “What they’ve given us in the last 20, 21 years, I think it’s really — it’s not much. They don’t have a whole heck of a lot to show for their efforts.”

Hawley went on to attend law school at Yale, and at 28 wrote a book about Teddy Roosevelt, called “Preacher of Righteousness,” which studied the one-time president’s antitrust record. Roosevelt, said Hawley, would be alarmed by Silicon Valley: “I think he’d be really worried. He’d be worried about the size, he’d be worried about the power, he’d be worried about the lack of accountability.”

In 2016, Hawley was elected attorney general of Missouri, going on to launch investigations into Google and Facebook on privacy, data handling and antitrust grounds. The probes, begun amid his Senate bid, were high-profile, with his office reaching out to national reporters. Other states followed suit. “We helped blaze a trail,” he says.

Chilson, of the Koch group Stand Together, says Hawley’s work on tech as attorney general didn’t raise concerns at the time because those were targeted cases within the traditional purview of the job. “That’s the job of an AG, to look at such issues,” Chilson says.

Hawley says that he can’t comment on those ongoing investigations but that what he learned about how the tech companies operate encouraged him to keep going once he reached the Senate. “Is Google and Facebook and Twitter in violation of antitrust laws? I don’t know the answer to that,” Hawley says. “But I think there’s a lot of smoke. So there may well be fire. So we need to look.”

He has stopped short — for now — of echoing Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s call to break up the biggest tech companies. “This is why we go through the process of having investigations, gathering data,” said Hawley. “Should we break them up? Maybe.”

That sort of talk alarms many in the tech industry.

“I think the critiques miss the overwhelming value that our companies and industry bring both to Missouri and the entire country,” said Michael Beckerman, CEO and president of the industry group the Internet Association. “When you just look at negatives and talk about making companies disappear, that would be a huge, huge disadvantage to Missouri and our entire country.”

Hawley himself is a user of social media, including Twitter and Facebook. Asked about it, Hawley says, “This is what happens when you get monopolies. It’s almost impossible to escape them.”

Still, he takes a different approach with the two sons, ages 4 and 6, that he is raising with his wife, Erin Morrow Hawley, a law professor and fellow former clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts: “No social media. Zilch. And they don’t do phones. We don’t even have an iPad.”

Hawley has partnered with an array of Democrats to push legislation addressing the online privacy rights of kids and other tech topics, including Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.), Senate Judiciary Committee top Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California and long-time privacy hawk Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). Together they’ve rolled out bills ranging from a proposal that would require companies to disclose how much money they make from user data, to another that would ban video services like YouTube from automatically recommending videos involving children.

Another of his Democratic legislative partners, Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, praises the Republican as a fellow former state attorney general. “I think he has the mindset of a law enforcement official who is intent on protecting consumers and the public,” Blumenthal told POLITICO. “We have some common approaches and we’re going to try to do more about it.”

“We disagree a lot on a lot of things,” Hawley says about his Democratic allies. Hawley has called for building Trump’s proposed border wall, celebrated the United States’ withdrawal from the Iran nuclear treaty negotiated by former President Barack Obama, and brandedRoe v. Wade“one of the most unjust decisions” in the history of U.S. courts. “I think you see people who take tech very, very seriously, who are who are very knowledgeable, have worked to educate themselves and who want to actually get something done,” he says.

But the bills those partnerships have produced, coupled with Hawley’s anti-tech rhetoric, have raised alarm among some conservatives and tech industry representatives.

“He’s one of the smartest people in the legislature and he’s somebody who, when he puts his mind to something, is incredibly driven,” said Carl Szabo, general counsel for right-leaning industry group NetChoice. “This is why I’m as disheartened as I am to see him put a lot of his effort into attacks on America’s businesses and harms to America’s freedoms that we enjoy today.”

NetChoice, like the Internet Association, counts digital heavyweights like Google, Facebook and Twitter as members.

The move that has most riled up industry and some on the right is a bill, rolled out in late June, that would require online giants like Facebook and YouTube to get a Federal Trade Commission certification of their political neutrality to qualify for a prized liability shield. That measure would amend Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms from lawsuits over user-generated content.

Hawley has billed the plan as a crackdown on “censorship” by Silicon Valley companies, which he and other Republicans accuse of stifling conservative content on their platforms.

But the proposal has drawn fire from both sides of the aisle. Critics say it would trample on the First Amendment right to constitutionally protected political speech, and would undermine companies’ ability to combat dangerous material, such as terrorist content and hate speech.

Former FTC Commissioner Josh Wright, a Republican, unleashed a 14-part tweet thread condemning Hawley’s social media proposal. The bill “quite literally injects a board of bureaucrats into millions of decisions about internet content,” one read. “This is central planning. Full stop.”

Hawley says he doesn’t get the critique. He argues that the federal government gifted the tech sector a tremendous advantage by giving it Section 230 protections, so it’s not overstepping to consider dialing them back. “I think the question we should be asking is, ‘What do we need to do to make these markets truly competitive, to protect people’s privacy, to make sure that there are open channels of communication when it comes to social media?’”

Hawley says his views on corporate consolidation align with those of voters in places like Missouri. “You’ve got Republican voters in one place and then you’ve kind of got Republican establishment in another place, and you’re seeing that tension in the tech debate,” he says.

As for falling out of favor with groups like Americans for Prosperity, says Hawley, “I’m a little puzzled by them, because I thought these groups who consider themselves libertarian, typically they consider themselves pro-free market. And so I’m surprised that there’s a lack of concern about market competition.”

Does he worry about losing the backing of the libertarian and establishment wings?

Hawley smiles and says no: “It was never my ambition to have a political career. So if I’m going to be here, I want to actually get something done.”

#Foreign #Politics #Silicon #Valley

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battybat-boss · 6 years ago

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How Artificial Intelligence Will Change the World in Coming Decades

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Kai-Fu Lee, Ph.D., a leading expert on artificial intelligence (AI), a venture capitalist and author of “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order,” has spent decades working for tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft and Google, both in China and Silicon Valley. He got his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, one of the most prestigious AI institutions in the U.S., if not the world.

His professional achievements came at a price, however. In 2013, Lee came down with Stage 4 lymphoma. While the focus of this interview is the impact of AI, his health journey is an interesting testimony to what can happen if you work too hard.

"I have been a workaholic basically my whole life, until my illness," Lee says. "Workaholic to such an extent that when I was the president of Google China, I would work 100-hour weeks. Not only that, I would automatically wake up twice a night to answer my emails, as I had to talk to the people at headquarters with the time zone difference.

But, I think, inside me, I also wanted to set an example so that my team thinks that [since] I work really hard, they would too. Once, I got a surgery and I had a special computer made so I could work while lying in bed, recovering from my surgery …

Obviously, we don't really know what the reasons are, but I was diagnosed with Stage 4 lymphoma. When I found out, it really changed my whole life. First, there's the normal stage of denial, 'Why me?' And then finally, acceptance.

Once I accepted, I started looking back on my life and realized, first, that my lifestyle probably led to this illness … Lack of sleep, too much stress, not eating healthily … But more importantly, I realized that … I was singularly focused on my work and accomplishments, and really overlooked all the other things that were more important.

When I realized I may only have a few hundred days to live, working hard didn't mean anything to me. What was important was giving love back to the people I love, spending time with them and, of course, regretting that I haven't lived that way."

Regrets of the Dying

During his illness, he read Bronnie Ware's book, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing.” As a nurse, she was present during the last days of some 2,000 people. Before they died, she would ask them about their regrets. One of the top regrets was working too hard.

The No. 1 regret was not spending more time with the people they loved. Another important regret was not doing things they felt really passionate about, listening to and following instead the expectations of others. "That changed my outlook," Lee says, who is now in remission and has changed his priorities in life.

When asked what drives this incredible work ethic in China - especially in the startup environment - Lee explains:

"Many young Chinese entrepreneurs, their families have been poor for 10 or 20 generations. They're an only child. Their two parents and their grandparents have only this one child or grandchild to look forward to, to improving the lives of the entire family. The pressure is on and the expectations are high.

Usually, they got into good schools, so even higher expectations. They gave up high-salary jobs to do this risky startup … To give you an example, there's one startup that advertises a very good work-life balance.

'Join us and you don't have to work as hard as your current startup, because we only work 9-9-6.' What that means is 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. In many startups, it's more like 10-12-7. That is 10 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week …

There's not even a lunch or a dinner break. You see people eating in front of their computers. This is 14 hours a day, seven days a week. It's about 100 hours. It is really crazed like that."

Sinovation Ventures

Lee's book, “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order,” helps us understand the potential implications of AI, which is clearly one of the hottest topics in the tech world. Most major corporations are investing heavily in this technology.

His own venture capital firm, Sinovation Ventures, which started about 10 years ago, has since funded 15 so-called "unicorns" - companies that have grown in value to over $1 billion.

"Our funds are among the best-performing. One of the reasons there are so many unicorns is our knowledge about technology and AI. My own AI Ph.D. and my partners' technical backgrounds allowed us to really pick out the best technical entrepreneurs and then help them with the business side.

I mean we invested in these companies when they were $10 million to $30 million in valuation. Now, they are $1 billion to $15 billion. Our investments made anywhere between 50 to 100 times for these 15 companies. Obviously, there are other companies that failed.

But even considering that, just these companies have made us very, very well-performing. Five of these companies are core AI companies. The other 10 are non-AI companies, but they used AI, so we were able to observe the power of AI and how it was transforming all kinds of usages and applications," Lee says.

Lee's Professional History

Prior to Sinovation Ventures, Lee was one of the leading AI researchers in the world, and was responsible for establishing Google China. His Ph.D. thesis was one of the earliest on speech recognition and machine learning.

After his Ph.D., he led the AI, graphics and multimedia groups at Apple before moving on to Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI), followed by Microsoft, where he was put in charge of starting Microsoft's research lab in China, where about 5,000 people have received AI training.

"Basically, the chief technology officers (CTOs) of all the top Chinese companies, maybe 70 percent were trained by us in Microsoft Research," he says. After that, he worked with Bill Gates in headquarters for five years before being hired to establish Google China.

"I found that a lot of my smartest people were leaving Google China to start their own companies. I felt the entrepreneurial spirit was going to be phenomenal, and I wanted to join that," Lee says.

"So, I left in 2009, after which, unfortunately, Google also decided to pull out. That was my career history. For the past nine to 10 years, I've been doing investments in China, primarily in AI and technologies."

China's Technological Advantage

In many ways - particularly when it comes to implementation - the Chinese are head and neck ahead of Silicon Valley. For example, WeChat has the functionality of Facebook, iMessage, Uber, Expedia, Evite, Instagram, Skype, PayPal, Grubhub, Amazon, LimeBike and WebMD, all in one smartphone app. About 75 percent of Lee's own cellphone usage is done through WeChat.

"I am on everything. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Twitter. I use Google. I use YouTube and other Chinese apps. This is 75 percent for me. That means a couple of things. First, that the Chinese companies, in particular Tencent, which build WeChat, built an incredible platform that … accumulates a tremendous amount of user data.

If you think Facebook has a lot of your data, WeChat has a lot more. But it's not all their data. They partner with people. They partner with the food delivery, the bike rental, the Uber of China and other companies. And also, people in China use the mobile phone to pay. There's almost no cash in China anymore.

People just pay with WeChat or Alipay. Those are the two choices. If you go to a farmers market, a convenience store or even the vendor in the street, they would be holding up a sign that says, "Scan me," not, "Give me money." Scan is the way in which you use your mobile app, WeChat, to pay."

AI is an incredibly powerful algorithm that thrives on data. Data is to AI what gasoline is to cars. As explained by Lee, the AI works differently from the human brain. It simply looks at huge amounts of data, for example, purchase patterns on Amazon, which allows it to learn your preferences, and then provide you with more things that match your purchase patterns.

The same thing goes for patterns of what you read online or like on Facebook. AI also works with data streams from audio and video, and uses facial and speech recognition. All this data will eventually lead to the creation of autonomous robots and vehicles, Lee says.

"All these things apply to internet, business, including banking, insurance, education, retail, manufacturing and health care medicine, as well as robotics and autonomous vehicles.

All these AI applications will come out in the next five to 15 years. The internet ones are already out, but the other ones are coming soon. China's advantage is having that ocean of data. In the age of AI, data is the new oil, and China is the new Saudi Arabia. That is China's advantage.

Now, in terms of research, core research competence, U.S. is still much stronger. Maybe 10 times stronger. But the academics generally publish papers and move on. Entrepreneurs in China, the U.S. and anywhere can use that. Usually, it's open-sourced, without internet protocol (IP) protection or patents, because university professors just want to write papers ...

[But] China is better at taking all this data and working 100 hours a week to monetize the data to create applications … that leverage the AI to build the applications that change the banking, insurance and eventually the medical industry."

China Leads Mobile Payments Trend

The mobile payment data is incredibly important, Lee says. Few Chinese carry cash or even credit cards anymore. Most transactions, both online and offline, are made by mobile phone. The total transaction amount for 2017 was $17 trillion, which is greater than China's entire gross domestic product.

There are about 800 million Chinese on the internet, and of those, about 600 million use mobile payment through WeChat Pay or Alipay. In WeChat pay, you can pay anyone, not just merchants, and there are no surcharges or commissions of any kind. Lee explains the implications of this financial data:

"This is the highest-quality data ever. If you think about, let's say, a doctor's diagnosis of a patient; well, the doctor could have made a mistake. If you think about a loan officer's decision to make a loan, the loan officer may have made a mistake.

You think about you're browsing a page on Amazon, maybe you have no real interest in the product, it was just-for-fun browsing. But if you pay for something, that is a definite transaction, and that carries a lot of value. Of this type of data, Chinese companies have 50 times more than the U.S.

Technologies [are] built on top of this data, such as targeted loans that you can borrow money instantly, such as insurance policy design based on your usage, such as recommendations on how you should invest your money, and so on and so forth.

And also, totally online banking and financial transactions. Once you pay online, you might as well save online. You might as well invest online. You might as well buy insurance online.

It's making a total disruption over a period of time for all things financial, because once it's cashless and merely electronic transactions, then everything goes electronic. Then everybody has data, and then everybody has AI. This is what propels China forward with the AI applications. U.S. leads in research, but China really leads in application."

The Future of Autonomous Vehicles

One area where the U.S. is in the lead is in autonomous vehicles. However, the question is whether America will stay ahead when it comes to implementation. The Chinese government is already building infrastructure that might allow Chinese companies to launch autonomous vehicles faster.

"For example, highways that will talk to the cars, cities that have new roads paved, two levels of downtown, one level for humans to walk, one level for cars to avoid hitting people," Lee says.

"China is watching [reports of autonomous vehicle] incidents and saying, 'Well, our companies are behind. Why don't we build roads that will facilitate companies to get their product going, even though they're not as good as the American counterparts? But we make it safer by moving away the pedestrians.'

Now, it must cost tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to redo a two-layered downtown for however many cities that try it, but that's the kind of effort the Chinese government is doing … The government is giving encouragement and building infrastructure and subsidies to help China become a leader in the world of AI."

Setting Priorities

While Lee still admits to working about 60 hours a week, he's reprioritized a number of areas of his life, placing emphasis on family time, stress relief, sleep and a healthy diet.

"It doesn't mean I don't work hard. But it's a matter of putting things first. It's not a matter of reducing my work hours and giving it to my family. Family don't just want hours. They want to see that you genuinely care. When my daughters have their vacation, I take my vacation to match theirs, not the other way around.

My wife travels with me wherever we go. When she travels with me and doesn't have something to do, I come back at 2 or 3 in the afternoon and take her somewhere.

This is one of the good things about being a venture capitalist and having my own company - I need to put in some hours, but I can put it in whenever I want. It's not a 9-to-5 job. I can basically put my family's needs first, and then the work later … "

After his lymphoma diagnosis, Lee spent time with a brilliant Buddhist monk who warned him about being addicted to fame and riches.

"He said, 'You don't worry about AI becoming humans, but I worry about humans becoming machines.' He said, 'What you really should do is think about what matters to the world. Give love back. Give knowledge back. Give wisdom back. You're at an age where you don't have to prove anything anymore,'" Lee says.

The Implications of AI for Education and Career Choices

The reason he gives for writing his book is to inform people about coming changes so they can make wiser choices in terms of education and career building, as jobs will inevitably be lost as AI starts beating human performance.

While AI can enhance and work symbiotically with a number of professions, such as lawyers, doctors, government officials, CEOs and scientists, jobs such as telemarketing, loan officers, customer service, fruit and berry pickers, dishwashers, drivers and assembly line inspectors will all eventually become a thing of the past.

"I think it's important for people to know, to start moving out of their routine jobs and for corporations to realize that they have a responsibility to take care of their people, even if they plan to use AI to displace them," Lee says. "For education, parents have to know that you don't educate your kids to go after routine jobs.

What is a routine job? I think most doctor jobs are obviously nonroutine, but some large components of some doctor jobs are routine [such as] radiology and pathology. Not today, but in 15 years, AI would do the diagnosis and reading part of their job, which is a substantial portion.

I think parents need to understand. People going to medical school should think about, 'What is the most sustainable medical job?' Probably in research, and 'What are the least sustainable?' Probably radiology and pathology. These are important messages for people …

The content I really want to get across is we, as employers, parents, people who run companies, employees, really have to plan for ourselves in light of AI coming over to take over anywhere between 30 to 50 percent of the jobs in the next 15 to 25 years."

More Information

To learn more about AI and what its application means for the future, be sure to pick up a copy of Lee's book, "AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order." It's a fascinating read.

"I think the main points really are that China and U.S. are the two giant AI engines that will create this technology revolution that is comparable to the industrial revolution, but probably even faster because it doesn't require an electrical grid to be built," Lee says.

"AI is working today. It, runs as software. That AI can create huge amounts of wealth for humanity, and reduce poverty and hunger. But at the same time, AI also has a lot of issues, including privacy, security, wealth, inequality and job displacements. My book is a summary of all of the above."

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lopezdorothy70-blog · 6 years ago

Text

How Artificial Intelligence Will Change the World in Coming Decades

youtube

Regrets of the Dying

When asked what drives this incredible work ethic in China - especially in the startup environment - Lee explains:

There's not even a lunch or a dinner break. You see people eating in front of their computers. This is 14 hours a day, seven days a week. It's about 100 hours. It is really crazed like that."

Sinovation Ventures

His own venture capital firm, Sinovation Ventures, which started about 10 years ago, has since funded 15 so-called "unicorns" - companies that have grown in value to over $1 billion.

Lee's Professional History

"I found that a lot of my smartest people were leaving Google China to start their own companies. I felt the entrepreneurial spirit was going to be phenomenal, and I wanted to join that," Lee says.

China's Technological Advantage

"All these things apply to internet, business, including banking, insurance, education, retail, manufacturing and health care medicine, as well as robotics and autonomous vehicles.

China Leads Mobile Payments Trend

And also, totally online banking and financial transactions. Once you pay online, you might as well save online. You might as well invest online. You might as well buy insurance online.

The Future of Autonomous Vehicles

"For example, highways that will talk to the cars, cities that have new roads paved, two levels of downtown, one level for humans to walk, one level for cars to avoid hitting people," Lee says.

Setting Priorities

While Lee still admits to working about 60 hours a week, he's reprioritized a number of areas of his life, placing emphasis on family time, stress relief, sleep and a healthy diet.

My wife travels with me wherever we go. When she travels with me and doesn't have something to do, I come back at 2 or 3 in the afternoon and take her somewhere.

After his lymphoma diagnosis, Lee spent time with a brilliant Buddhist monk who warned him about being addicted to fame and riches.

The Implications of AI for Education and Career Choices

More Information

0 notes

paullassiterca · 6 years ago

Text

How Artificial Intelligence Will Change the World in Coming Decades

youtube

“I have been a workaholic basically my whole life, until my illness,” Lee says. “Workaholic to such an extent that when I was the president of Google China, I would work 100-hour weeks. Not only that, I would automatically wake up twice a night to answer my emails, as I had to talk to the people at headquarters with the time zone difference.

Obviously, we don’t really know what the reasons are, but I was diagnosed with Stage 4 lymphoma. When I found out, it really changed my whole life. First, there’s the normal stage of denial, ‘Why me?’ And then finally, acceptance.

When I realized I may only have a few hundred days to live, working hard didn’t mean anything to me. What was important was giving love back to the people I love, spending time with them and, of course, regretting that I haven’t lived that way.”

Regrets of the Dying

During his illness, he read Bronnie Ware’s book, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing.” As a nurse, she was present during the last days of some 2,000 people. Before they died, she would ask them about their regrets. One of the top regrets was working too hard.

The No. 1 regret was not spending more time with the people they loved. Another important regret was not doing things they felt really passionate about, listening to and following instead the expectations of others. “That changed my outlook,” Lee says, who is now in remission and has changed his priorities in life.

When asked what drives this incredible work ethic in China — especially in the startup environment — Lee explains:

“Many young Chinese entrepreneurs, their families have been poor for 10 or 20 generations. They’re an only child. Their two parents and their grandparents have only this one child or grandchild to look forward to, to improving the lives of the entire family. The pressure is on and the expectations are high.

Usually, they got into good schools, so even higher expectations. They gave up high-salary jobs to do this risky startup … To give you an example, there’s one startup that advertises a very good work-life balance.

'Join us and you don’t have to work as hard as your current startup, because we only work 9-9-6.’ What that means is 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. In many startups, it’s more like 10-12-7. That is 10 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week …

There’s not even a lunch or a dinner break. You see people eating in front of their computers. This is 14 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s about 100 hours. It is really crazed like that.”

Sinovation Ventures

Lee’s book, “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order,” helps us understand the potential implications of AI, which is clearly one of the hottest topics in the tech world. Most major corporations are investing heavily in this technology.

His own venture capital firm, Sinovation Ventures, which started about 10 years ago, has since funded 15 so-called “unicorns” — companies that have grown in value to over $1 billion.

“Our funds are among the best-performing. One of the reasons there are so many unicorns is our knowledge about technology and AI. My own AI Ph.D. and my partners’ technical backgrounds allowed us to really pick out the best technical entrepreneurs and then help them with the business side.

Lee’s Professional History

After his Ph.D., he led the AI, graphics and multimedia groups at Apple before moving on to Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI), followed by Microsoft, where he was put in charge of starting Microsoft’s research lab in China, where about 5,000 people have received AI training.

“Basically, the chief technology officers (CTOs) of all the top Chinese companies, maybe 70 percent were trained by us in Microsoft Research,” he says. After that, he worked with Bill Gates in headquarters for five years before being hired to establish Google China.

“I found that a lot of my smartest people were leaving Google China to start their own companies. I felt the entrepreneurial spirit was going to be phenomenal, and I wanted to join that,” Lee says.

“So, I left in 2009, after which, unfortunately, Google also decided to pull out. That was my career history. For the past nine to 10 years, I’ve been doing investments in China, primarily in AI and technologies.”

China’s Technological Advantage

In many ways — particularly when it comes to implementation — the Chinese are head and neck ahead of Silicon Valley. For example, WeChat has the functionality of Facebook, iMessage, Uber, Expedia, Evite, Instagram, Skype, PayPal, Grubhub, Amazon, LimeBike and WebMD, all in one smartphone app. About 75 percent of Lee’s own cellphone usage is done through WeChat.

“I am on everything. I’m on Facebook. I’m on Twitter. I use Google. I use YouTube and other Chinese apps. This is 75 percent for me. That means a couple of things. First, that the Chinese companies, in particular Tencent, which build WeChat, built an incredible platform that … accumulates a tremendous amount of user data.

If you think Facebook has a lot of your data, WeChat has a lot more. But it’s not all their data. They partner with people. They partner with the food delivery, the bike rental, the Uber of China and other companies. And also, people in China use the mobile phone to pay. There’s almost no cash in China anymore.

People just pay with WeChat or Alipay. Those are the two choices. If you go to a farmers market, a convenience store or even the vendor in the street, they would be holding up a sign that says, "Scan me,” not, “Give me money.” Scan is the way in which you use your mobile app, WeChat, to pay.“

"All these things apply to internet, business, including banking, insurance, education, retail, manufacturing and health care medicine, as well as robotics and autonomous vehicles.

All these AI applications will come out in the next five to 15 years. The internet ones are already out, but the other ones are coming soon. China’s advantage is having that ocean of data. In the age of AI, data is the new oil, and China is the new Saudi Arabia. That is China’s advantage.

Now, in terms of research, core research competence, U.S. is still much stronger. Maybe 10 times stronger. But the academics generally publish papers and move on. Entrepreneurs in China, the U.S. and anywhere can use that. Usually, it’s open-sourced, without internet protocol (IP) protection or patents, because university professors just want to write papers …

China Leads Mobile Payments Trend

“This is the highest-quality data ever. If you think about, let’s say, a doctor’s diagnosis of a patient; well, the doctor could have made a mistake. If you think about a loan officer’s decision to make a loan, the loan officer may have made a mistake.

You think about you’re browsing a page on Amazon, maybe you have no real interest in the product, it was just-for-fun browsing. But if you pay for something, that is a definite transaction, and that carries a lot of value. Of this type of data, Chinese companies have 50 times more than the U.S.

And also, totally online banking and financial transactions. Once you pay online, you might as well save online. You might as well invest online. You might as well buy insurance online.

It’s making a total disruption over a period of time for all things financial, because once it’s cashless and merely electronic transactions, then everything goes electronic. Then everybody has data, and then everybody has AI. This is what propels China forward with the AI applications. U.S. leads in research, but China really leads in application.”

The Future of Autonomous Vehicles

“For example, highways that will talk to the cars, cities that have new roads paved, two levels of downtown, one level for humans to walk, one level for cars to avoid hitting people,” Lee says.

“China is watching [reports of autonomous vehicle] incidents and saying, ‘Well, our companies are behind. Why don’t we build roads that will facilitate companies to get their product going, even though they’re not as good as the American counterparts? But we make it safer by moving away the pedestrians.’

Now, it must cost tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to redo a two-layered downtown for however many cities that try it, but that’s the kind of effort the Chinese government is doing … The government is giving encouragement and building infrastructure and subsidies to help China become a leader in the world of AI.”

Setting Priorities

While Lee still admits to working about 60 hours a week, he’s reprioritized a number of areas of his life, placing emphasis on family time, stress relief, sleep and a healthy diet.

“It doesn’t mean I don’t work hard. But it’s a matter of putting things first. It’s not a matter of reducing my work hours and giving it to my family. Family don’t just want hours. They want to see that you genuinely care. When my daughters have their vacation, I take my vacation to match theirs, not the other way around.

My wife travels with me wherever we go. When she travels with me and doesn’t have something to do, I come back at 2 or 3 in the afternoon and take her somewhere.

This is one of the good things about being a venture capitalist and having my own company — I need to put in some hours, but I can put it in whenever I want. It’s not a 9-to-5 job. I can basically put my family’s needs first, and then the work later … ”

After his lymphoma diagnosis, Lee spent time with a brilliant Buddhist monk who warned him about being addicted to fame and riches.

“He said, 'You don’t worry about AI becoming humans, but I worry about humans becoming machines.’ He said, 'What you really should do is think about what matters to the world. Give love back. Give knowledge back. Give wisdom back. You’re at an age where you don’t have to prove anything anymore,’” Lee says.

The Implications of AI for Education and Career Choices

“I think it’s important for people to know, to start moving out of their routine jobs and for corporations to realize that they have a responsibility to take care of their people, even if they plan to use AI to displace them,” Lee says. “For education, parents have to know that you don’t educate your kids to go after routine jobs.

I think parents need to understand. People going to medical school should think about, 'What is the most sustainable medical job?’ Probably in research, and 'What are the least sustainable?’ Probably radiology and pathology. These are important messages for people …

More Information

To learn more about AI and what its application means for the future, be sure to pick up a copy of Lee’s book, “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order.” It’s a fascinating read.

“I think the main points really are that China and U.S. are the two giant AI engines that will create this technology revolution that is comparable to the industrial revolution, but probably even faster because it doesn’t require an electrical grid to be built,” Lee says.

“AI is working today. It, runs as software. That AI can create huge amounts of wealth for humanity, and reduce poverty and hunger. But at the same time, AI also has a lot of issues, including privacy, security, wealth, inequality and job displacements. My book is a summary of all of the above.”

from Articles http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/01/05/how-artificial-intelligence-will-change-the-world.aspx source https://niapurenaturecom.tumblr.com/post/181730903831

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