Hey, do y’all remember how Tencent said they were developing faceID AI to identify people in riots, and then they suddenly created an AI art generator to turn your selfies into anime?

Do y’all remember that time that someone discovered facial recognition cameras couldn't see through Juggalo makeup, then Facebook had a fun “see what you'd look like with Juggalo makeup” thing, and then facial recognition cameras could suddenly see through Juggalo makeup?

Do y’all remember how, on Twitter, Elon started a tirade against artists who ask for credit when their art is reposted, and he suddenly he created one of the first big art AI programs?

Do y’all remember how AI destroyed the field of translation, despite the inferiority of the machine translations, because people didn’t care about the quality of the translations? They just wanted it done for free?

Do you know how companies will see a lot of money going into a New Tech Thing (like, say, AI art apps) and will jump to try and implement that New Tech Thing into their tech? For example, how it felt like every big company and celebrity had an NFT to sell?

Just wondering.

"La tragedia de la vejez no es que uno sea viejo, sino que uno sea joven. Dentro de este cuerpo que envejece hay un corazón todavía tan curioso, tan hambriento, todavía tan lleno de anhelo como lo estaba en la juventud. Me siento junto a la ventana y observo pasar el mundo, sintiéndome como un extraño en una tierra extraña, incapaz de relacionarme con el mundo exterior y, sin embargo, dentro de mí arde el mismo fuego que una vez pensó que podía conquistar el mundo. Y la verdadera tragedia es que el mundo sigue siendo, tan distante y esquivo, un lugar que nunca pude captar del todo."

Albert Camus, de "La caída".

Capitalist propaganda is manifest.

i dont think its necessarily ableist to hate AI art, but if you then qualify that by arguing that art derives its meaning from the effort and skill that went into it then you're being kinda ableist

and if you link inspirationporn videos of amputees painting with their noses like "now what's your excuse" then you are 100% being ableist

Ai art is literally theft???

I don’t know a single disabled person who supports art theft

theft is fine, especially when its art

Corporations are rapidly mobilizing to claim everything we ever wrote, painted, or imagined, as intellectual property to sell back to us, destroying all usefulness of legal protections for creators. There is NO kindness for disabled creators baked into this overt theft of IP, it's a violation.

They're trying to remove the condition of paying their artists from the benefit of using art for their money making.

AI "art" hurts disabled creators too, and worst of all, it prevents disabled creators from having even their most feeble pay day. Do not fall for this scam!

this translation of an article by a chinese communist on the parallels between Xinjiang and Palestine (itself strongly sourced/referenced, including primary and official sources in mandarin) is always relevant and worth reading through. i'd strongly urge all communists who out-of-hand dismiss anything about the ill treatment of uyghurs as american propaganda to read it. it also comes with a preface by the translators who give context and critique to the piece

being an archaeologist in tumblr is so funny because I see so many text posts and go. Imperialism pre-dates capitalism. Rebellion against empires pre-dates capitalism. Money pre-dates capitalism. Social inequality pre-dates capitalism. Misogyny pre-dates capitalism. Wealth inequality pre-dates capitalism. Unilateral rule by oppressive rulers pre-dates capitalism. People’s dependence on their job for their survival pre-dates capitalism. Capitalism as an economic system is about 200-250 years old max but these problems are much, much older, and capitalism supports, entrenches, or exacerbates many of these problems… doesn’t mean it invented them and doesn’t mean they will simply cease to be problems After Capitalism.

At the California Institute of the Arts, it all started with a videoconference between the registrar’s office and a nonprofit.

One of the nonprofit’s representatives had enabled an AI note-taking tool from Read AI. At the end of the meeting, it emailed a summary to all attendees, said Allan Chen, the institute’s chief technology officer. They could have a copy of the notes, if they wanted — they just needed to create their own account.

Next thing Chen knew, Read AI’s bot had popped up inabout a dozen of his meetings over a one-week span. It was in one-on-one check-ins. Project meetings. “Everything.”

The spread “was very aggressive,” recalled Chen, who also serves as vice president for institute technology. And it “took us by surprise.”

The scenariounderscores a growing challenge for colleges: Tech adoption and experimentation among students, faculty, and staff — especially as it pertains to AI — are outpacing institutions’ governance of these technologies and may even violate their data-privacy and security policies.

That has been the case with note-taking tools from companies including Read AI, Otter.ai, and Fireflies.ai.They can integrate with platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teamsto provide live transcriptions, meeting summaries, audio and video recordings, and other services.

Higher-ed interest in these products isn’t surprising.For those bogged down with virtual rendezvouses, a tool that can ingest long, winding conversations and spit outkey takeaways and action items is alluring. These services can also aid people with disabilities, including those who are deaf.

But the tools can quickly propagate unchecked across a university. They can auto-join any virtual meetings on a user’s calendar — even if that person is not in attendance. And that’s a concern, administrators say, if it means third-party productsthat an institution hasn’t reviewedmay be capturing and analyzing personal information, proprietary material, or confidential communications.

“What keeps me up at night is the ability for individual users to do things that are very powerful, but they don’t realize what they’re doing,” Chen said. “You may not realize you’re opening a can of worms.“

The Chronicle documented both individual and universitywide instances of this trend. At Tidewater Community College, in Virginia, Heather Brown, an instructional designer, unwittingly gave Otter.ai’s tool access to her calendar, and it joined a Faculty Senate meeting she didn’t end up attending. “One of our [associate vice presidents] reached out to inform me,” she wrote in a message. “I was mortified!”

THIS HAPPENED AT WORK!!!

One of the parties in a grievance mediation had Otter.ai installed on his computer for a previous meeting. He thought (and, honestly, had been led to believe by the company) that he was the one triggering when it was used, and had wanted it to provide captions and a transcription for another meeting. He intended to use it once. Unbeknownst to him, it activated on EVERY MEETING. The worst part is no one noticed, so it is actually unclear how many meetings he'd been in that the AI had been activated on, but for this particular meeting, it sent the meeting host (my colleague) an email saying that it was RECORDING (which is illegal in this line of work, highly illegal, there's hearings in Congress right now on someone recording a negotiations meeting) the proceedings.

The goal of the email was for her to see how "helpful" of a tool that it was so that she could download it as well and enable it in her meetings. It sent her 1) an attendance summary (private); 2) a transcript of the meeting so far (illegal) and 3) a snippet of audio from the meeting (highly illegal). They had to stop the mediation entirely, switch to old school phones to see where the issue was and who had this enabled on their computer. The man was horribly embarrassed, and had to get help from his IT department to get the program uninstalled from his computer.

Genuinely, these AI tools are viruses. Because of this, we've been asking external people at the start of meetings if anyone else is present off-screen (a different story) or if anyone has AI programs installed on their computer. But most people don't KNOW because Copilot is now installed behind their backs, and it's being sneakier than other programs (like Microsoft isn't going to email someone and say "Hey, by the way, we've been listening into your meetings"), but that doesn't mean it isn't doing the same things.

If you are downloading and using these programs, please be aware of this and please fucking uninstall them.

This is something you have to be very aware about, as (the article notes), this can be illegal in many cases, and you have no idea what these companies are doing with this data they scrap from you.

Hey do y'all remember several years ago when we were all freaking out about net neutrality being overturned? Well despite net neutrality's win in 2024, a federal court just overturned it.

For those who aren't aware, net neutrality is the simple principle that companies like Verizon and Comcast should treat all web traffic equally – not pick and choose based on who is willing to pay more or who they like best. Big Tech companies obviously don’t like that – which is why they spent millions lobbying against it over the years.

Now, these megacorporations will be able to seize control back over our Internet. The likely result? Throttled access to streaming services, monopolistic pricing that cuts out competition, and a slower, walled off, and less free Internet for all of us.

And unfortunately, rulings like this will only get more common now that the Supreme Court has overturned the “Chevron deference” – giving judges, rather than qualified public servants, a blank check to toss out protections like net neutrality, environmental safeguards, or food safety standards.

When Trump’s FCC repealed net neutrality back in 2017, they gave big corporations total control over our Internet – putting free and open access at risk.

Internet providers responded by exploiting their newfound power to speed up certain websites, and slow down – or even block – others. They failed to provide crucial Internet infrastructure in rural areas, low-income communities, and communities of color. They even slashed firefighters’ Internet access during severe wildfires.

But over 126,000 people spoke out and we were able to reinstate net neutrality – until now.

The time has come again to take action: please sign this petition from Common Cause so we can reinstate net neutrality.

People in the notes providing a perfect example of divide and conquer by nitpicking the wording and order of the dominos.

YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO NITPICK THE METAPHOR, YOU DUMBASSES!

The People who wanna knock down the dominoes are more then willing to reorder the dominoes to make them easier to knock down.

"The People who wanna knock down the dominoes are more then willing to reorder the dominoes to make them easier to knock down."

I will forever find it funny the way Americans are so scared of "Chinese surviellance" like bro you live in THE surviellance state

nosferatu? no. tuferatu. no es mi problema.

momentos despues de escribir esto vi otro post con el misma chiste pero en frances joder mi estupida baka vida.

Jajajajajajajajajajaja

TIL: there's a VACCINE for salmonella????

Yeah, it’s not the ENTIRE reason that uk eggs are safer at room temp (it also means that our pet chickens were safer for the kids to handle which is why I know about it) but for people pointing out that “USA eggs are washed removing the bloom and that’s why they have to be refrigerated” YES BUT. The reason USA eggs are washed to begin with (and the reason why Americans habitually wash chicken meat before cooking it) is because, traditionally, in the USA, you MUST ASSUME SALMONELLA. Eggs and meat are assumed to contain salmonella etc unless refrigerated and cooked.

In the Uk you do NOT assume salmonella. Most birds just don’t have it! It just isn’t in the egg! All this stuff about “actually it’s because USA washes eggs” what you’re MISSING is the assumption that salmonella is IN the egg in the first place which is WHY you wash and refrigerate it.

The USAmerican FDA recommends vaccinating as part of your salmonella control, but when I left the USA (2010) there was this big debate in which it was agreed not to worry too much about vaccinating because… well… assume salmonella anyway! Not everyone does it - it’s a uk thing - but here’s a very interesting article from the time when i emigrated: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/business/25vaccine.html

Anyway, it isn’t the WHOLE reason, because food handling and welfare standards play a big role - the FDA in 2022 published some guidance you can look up that says “even if you vaccinate you CANNOT then disregard our minimum welfare standards” which shows some underpinning emotional background of this cultural difference.

But it isn’t my area of expertise, which begins and ends with

- I live in the uk 🤷

- I keep pet chickens and I buy them from breeders who vaccinate 🤷

- as a cook I understand about room temp eggs and “always assume salmonella/do NOT assume salmonella” was a big cultural transition for me

- I don’t know everything and I’m currently drinking

Sorry, this is a wine take 🍷 do your own research if interested I am looking after 5 kids while cooking and drinking ✌️ and will take corrections if needed.

I know you know…

And then Socialist Jesus said let there be fear amongst the Republican oligarchy.