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ECP NetHappenings: #Education, #Bitcoin, #AI, #Democracy, #Zuckerberg

#EDUCATION

Some of my thoughts about protecting children’s brains; arguably, this is society’s most important mission. Dr. Christopher Giza stresses importance of safeguarding brain development.
Pediatric neurology division chief promotes TBI education for all clinicians.
https://www.uclahealth.org/news/dr-giza-safeguarding-childrens-brains

Pennsylvania will need to spend at least $5.4 billion to close the gap between rich and poor school districts, according to a long-awaited report approved by a divided panel of policymakers Thursday.
https://triblive.com/news/pennsylvania/pa-needs-to-spend-5-4b-to-close-gap-between-rich-and-poor-schools-report-advanced-by-dems-says/

#BITCOIN

10/19/23US Government Holds Over $5B in Bitcoin, Among Top Hodlers
https://sharedcryptobots.com/us-government-holds-over-5b-in-bitcoin-among-top-hodlers/

1/16/24 Grayscale recently transferred an additional 9,000 $BTC, valued at $385 million, to a presumed Coinbase $COIN Prime deposit address. The Grayscale address currently identified retains 617,000 BTC, equivalent to $26.22 billion

AI

FROM A 1979 IBM PRESENTATION

A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

THEREFORE A COMPUTER
MUST NEVER MAKE A
MANAGEMENT DECISION

Meredith Whittaker @mer__edith
MS–Open AI’s ~parent company–already has massive US military contracts. This is the biz model.
It’s also one more alarm re. the current AI paradigm, its reliance on concentrated corp power, & the undemocratic decision making power this gives these (primarily) US-based corps.

Here’s the section of the OpenAI policy on banned usage that was deleted two days ago. In its place is a much more ambiguous general ban on causing “harm” and a very narrow mention of weapons development

The new version, overhauled on Jan 10th, is here:
https://openai.com/policies/usage-policies

@samfbiddle
OpenAI quietly deleted its ban on “military and warfare” applications from its permissible uses policy in a revision this week
https://theintercept.com/2024/01/12/open-ai-military-ban-chatgpt/

Here’s the section of the OpenAI policy on banned usage that was deleted two days ago. In its place is a much more ambiguous general ban on causing “harm” and a very narrow mention of weapons development

• Activity that has high risk of physical harm, including:

Weapons development
Military and warfare
Management or operation of critical infrastructure in energy, transportation, and water
Content that promotes, encourages, or depicts acts of self-harm, such as suicide, cutting, and eating disorders

You can read the previous version of the policy here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240109122522/https:/openai.com/policies/usage-policies

“You can now take a GenAI model and train it to automatically recommend fixes for insecure code, generate training materials for your security teams, and identify mitigation measures in the event of an identified threat, moving beyond just finding vulnerabilities.”

Sam Biddle @samfbiddle
If you work at OpenAI and have concerns or any thoughts at all about the company’s policy change, please feel free to reach out to me via Signal at +1 978 261 7389 (don’t use a work-provided device!) Happy to speak off the record.

Max Lamparth @MLamparth
Thank you for highlighting this important change! We studied potential escalators risks from deploying LLMs in military decision-making scenarios in our new paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.03408 and our findings warrant caution to using LLMs for such purposes.
Escalation Risks from Language Models in Military and Diplomatic Decision-Making
https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.03408

Tal Broda is Head of Research Platform at @OpenAI which develops ChatGPT.
To express concern, politely contact:

📧 VP of People
di***@****ai.com

📧 VP of Global Affairs
am******@****ai.com

One of the world’s largest AI training datasets is about to get bigger and ‘substantially better’
The Pile was created by all of us. It’s the work of all humans past and present. It therefore belongs to all of us, and when used to train AI, we all deserve a cut of the profits. Universal basic income should be seen as our rightful AI training dividend.
https://venturebeat.com/ai/one-of-the-worlds-largest-ai-training-datasets-is-about-to-get-bigger-and-substantially-better/
Massive AI training datasets, or corpora, have been called “the backbone of large language models.” But EleutherAI, the organization that created one of the world’s largest of these datasets, an 825 GB open-sourced diverse text corpora called the Pile, became a target in 2023 amid a growing uproar focused on the legal and ethical impact of the datasets that trained the most popular LLMs, from OpenAI’s GPT-4 to Meta’s Llama.
EleutherAI, a grassroots nonprofit research group that began as a loose-knit Discord collective in 2020 that sought to understand how OpenAI’s new GPT-3 worked, was named in one of the many generative AI-focused lawsuits last year.

Internet Ethics @IEthics
“The models also suffered from ‘contra-factual bias’: They were likely to believe a false premise embedded in a user’s question, acting in a ‘sycophantic’ way to reinforce the user’s mistake.” #ethics #law #AI #LLMs #tech #research
@StanfordHAI
Popular AI chatbots frequently hallucinate when answering legal questions, new research from Stanford RegLab and HAI finds. This poses special risks for people using the technology because they can’t afford a human lawyer.

Popular AI Chatbots Found to Give Error-Ridden Legal Answers
Researchers measured AI responses to 200,000 legal questions
Frequent ‘hallucinations’ could hurt self-represented litigants
Popular AI chatbots from OpenAI Inc., Google LLC, and Meta Platforms Inc. are prone to “hallucinations” when answering legal questions, posing special risks for people using the technology because they can’t afford a human lawyer, new research from Stanford University said.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/legal-errors-by-top-ai-models-alarmingly-prevalent-study-says

Scammy AI-Generated Book Rewrites Are Flooding Amazon
Authors keep finding what appear to be AI-generated imitations and summaries of their books on Amazon. There’s little they can do to rein in the rip-offs.
https://www.wired.com/story/scammy-ai-generated-books-flooding-amazon/

DEMOCRACY

All #KochNetwork
Republican National Committee 👉 ties to Koch 👉ties to ALEC 👉ties to SPN Koch Wiki
Charles Koch is the right-wing billionaire owner of Koch Industries. As one of the richest people in the world, he is a key funder of the right-wing infrastructure, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN). In SourceWatch, key articles on Charles Koch and his late brother David include: Koch Brothers, Americans for Prosperity, Stand Together Chamber of Commerce, Stand Together, Koch Family Foundations, Koch Universities, and I360.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Talk:Republican_National_Committee

Josh Hawley just wrote a couched screed subtly calling for ‘Seven Mountains’ dominionism: that Christians must capture the 7 ‘mountains’ that constitute society (Education, Religion, Family, Business, Govt, Arts/Ent., & Media). He tweeted it with his government account.

ARREST ROGER STONE Hear the tape that purports to show Roger Stone discussing assassinations
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/exclusive-heres-the-tape-of-roger-stone-discussing-assassination-of-democrats-which-he-denied-ever-doing/
“We’re going to raise money from ‘stop the steal,’” he told an aide. “It will be like falling off a log.”
In late December, [Roger] Stone used a “Stop the Steal” site to falsely claim George Soros was funding violent “attacks on our peaceful patriots” and to request contributions “for private security at every one of our events, as well as funds for permits, staging, transportation, and legal fees.”
#TheBigLieIndustrialComplex

At 4:17 p.m. on January 6, 2021, while rioters battled police inside the Capitol, Kimberly Guilfoyle emailed her banker. Guilfoyle … wanted to know if a $60,000 payment for short speeches that she and Donald Trump Jr., her fiance, gave … had hit her account yet. Meet the Operatives Who Profited From January 6: Charlie Kirk & Co.

Meet the Operatives Who Profited From January 6

“We’re going to raise money from ‘stop the steal,’” he told an aide. “It will be like falling off a log.”
In late December, [Roger] Stone used a “Stop the Steal” site to falsely claim George Soros was funding violent “attacks on our peaceful patriots” and to request contributions…

Christians Against Christian Nationalism.
Watch @AmandaTylerBJC’s full testimony to the House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
I testified before Congress this morning that “#ChristianNationalism often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation.” Thank you @RepRaskin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3AqNB8OnPg
https://twitter.com/AmandaTylerBJC/status/1602720928739229697

Brian Allen @allenanalysis
Joe Biden is currently leading against Donald Trump in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Hampshire, not only surpassing Trump but also outdoing his own 2020 victory margins in these areas.
Despite this significant development, it hasn’t been widely reported.
This makes it clear that the media may be selectively focusing on narratives that favor Trump, overshadowing news that could be detrimental to his image.
It’s crucial to stay vigilant and not be swayed by this apparent media strategy.

“A watchdog group is suing Cochise County officials for delays in providing records related to the county’s controversial management of the 2022 election, from its attempt at a hand count of all ballots to the taxpayer cost of hiring outside attorneys.”
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2024/01/10/cochise-county-faces-lawsuit-for-election-records-delay/72176627007/

The charade is over. Evangelical universe is infiltrated by hell bent political hacks disguised as some true faith based messengers from the Lord. Throw in the flock of non critical thinking lemmings and you have not a “church” but a tinderbox.

@richsignorelli Our democracy is under attack from Trump/MAGA. Many are culpable, 4 stand out:
-McConnell deciding v Trump impeachment for 1/6 thinking he would go away.
-CJ Roberts allowing gerrymandering/dark $.
-Garland delaying prosecution of Trump et al.
-Murdoch spreading lies to the gullible.
Garland has now supplanted Newt Gingrich in that foursome because although Newt’s evil impact on the #GOP cannot be denied, our AG was in a position to excise that cancer & instead chose to do nothing. As a result, Newt’s disciples are now openly & fearlessly seditious.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), Vice Chairwoman of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol
Liz Cheney: House GOP enabled “white nationalism, white supremacy and anti-semitism”
Which part of the Civil War “could have been negotiated”? The slavery part? The secession part? Whether Lincoln should have preserved the Union? Question for members of the GOP—the party of Lincoln—who have endorsed Donald Trump: How can you possibly defend this?

The National Guard WAS prepared to deploy to the Capitol, but were delayed for 3 hours per order of the Department of Defense officials, which included CHARLES FLYNN, brother of “5th Amendment” Trump supporter, Gen. MICHAEL FLYNN.
DOD Took Hours To Approve National Guard Request During Capitol Riot, Commander Says
Walker said that Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt and Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn were concerned about the optics of sending the National Guard to the scene of the uprising.
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/03/973292523/dod-took-hours-to-approve-national-guard-request-during-capitol-riot-commander-s

@ConsumerReports analyzed Facebook data files donated by 709 volunteers to identify which companies are sharing the most data and what it means for you.
FACEBOOK helped CR recruit participants. What they discovered was striking:
https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/each-facebook-user-is-monitored-by-thousands-of-companies-a5824207467/

Mark Zuckerberg’s bunker access code is 2165# lol
Mark Zuckerberg of $META has said he’s raising cattle on beer and macadamia nuts to “create some of the highest quality beef in the world.”
ZUCKERBERG SUCKS
META SUCKS
INSTAGRAM SUCKS

A New Lawsuit Shows How Recklessly Facebook Endangers Kids
BYROB LARSON
Facebook parent company Meta is facing a massive lawsuit alleging the company is knowingly hurting young people, including by accepting underage use. Court documents suggest this is true — and that executives have been egregiously callous about harms to kids.
Metacurse
Another interesting feature of the states’ complaint concerns the decision-making related to these problems, especially the abuse of notifications to keep users leashed to their devices and the platforms. The company’s own chief marketing officer supported a proposal to cut back on the platform’s heavy use of notifications, writing in an email thread, “Fundamentally I believe that we have abused the notifications channel as a company.” The chief of product agreed — only to be overruled by Zuckerberg himself.
“…a 2020 internal Meta presentation…saying Meta should take advantage of…psychological weaknesses of young users…(it) argued that rather than designing its platforms to avoid harming minors, it should take advantage of their vulnerabilities.”
https://jacobin.com/2024/01/lawsuit-kids-meta-facebook-profit