Accessibility at a Crossroads: Balancing Legal Requirements, Frivolous Lawsuits, and Legitimate Needs — from er.educause.edu by Martin LaGrow
Excerpt:
Changes in legal requirements for IT accessibility have prompted some to pursue self-serving legal actions. To increase access to users of all abilities, colleges and universities should articulate their commitment to accessibility and focus on changing institutional culture.
Why AI is a threat to democracy – and what we can do to stop it — from asumetech.com by Lawrence Cole
Excerpts:
In the US, however, we also have a tragic lack of foresight. Instead of creating a grand strategy for AI or for our long-term futures, the federal government has removed the financing of scientific and technical research. The money must therefore come from the private sector. But investors also expect a certain return. That is a problem. You cannot plan your R&D breakthroughs when working on fundamental technology and research. It would be great if the big tech companies had the luxury of working very hard without having to organize an annual conference to show off their newest and best whiz bang thing. Instead, we now have countless examples of bad decisions made by someone in the G-MAFIA, probably because they worked quickly. We begin to see the negative effects of the tension between doing research that is in the interest of humanity and making investors happy.
…
The problem is that our technology has become increasingly sophisticated, but our thinking about what free speech is and what a free market economy looks like has not become that advanced. We tend to resort to very basic interpretations: free speech means that all speech is free, unless it conflicts with defamation laws, and that’s the end of the story. That is not the end of the story. We need to start a more sophisticated and intelligent conversation about our current laws, our emerging technology, and how we can make the two meet halfway.
So I absolutely believe that there is a way forward. But we have to come together and bridge the gap between Silicon Valley and DC, so that we can all steer the boat in the same direction.
— Amy Webb, futurist, NYU professor, founder of the Future Today Institute
Also see:
“FRONTLINE investigates the promise and perils of artificial intelligence, from fears about work and privacy to rivalry between the U.S. and China. The documentary traces a new industrial revolution that will reshape and disrupt our lives, our jobs and our world, and allow the emergence of the surveillance society.”
The film has five distinct messages about:
1. China’s AI Plan
2. The Promise of AI
3. The Future of Work
4. Surveillance Capitalism
5. The Surveillance State
FTI 2020 Trend Report for Entertainment, Media, & Technology — from futuretodayinstitute.com
Our 3rd annual industry report on emerging entertainment, media and technology trends is now available.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Drones from CVS and Walgreens are finally here—and they’re bringing Band-Aids — from fastcompany.com by Ruth Reader
With UPS and Google sister company Wing as partners, the big pharmacies are starting to deliver pills, Cheez-Its, and first-aid supplies by drone.
From DSC:
Add those drones to the following amassing armies:
Are smart cities the pathway to blockchain and cryptocurrency adoption? — from forbes.com by Chrissa McFarlane
Excerpts:
At the recent Blockchain LIVE 2019 hosted annually in London, I had the pleasure of giving a talk on Next Generation Infrastructure: Building a Future for Smart Cities. What exactly is a “smart city?” The term refers to an overall blueprint for city designs of the future. Already half the world’s population lives in a city, which is expected to grow to sixty-five percent in the next five years. Tackling that growth takes more than just simple urban planning. The goal of smart cities is to incorporate technology as an infrastructure to alleviate many of these complexities. Green energy, forms of transportation, water and pollution management, universal identification (ID), wireless Internet systems, and promotion of local commerce are examples of current of smart city initiatives.
What’s most important to a smart city, however, is integration. None of the services mentioned above exist in a vacuum; they need to be put into a single system. Blockchain provides the technology to unite them into a single system that can track all aspects combined.
From DSC:
There are many examples of the efforts/goals of creating smart cities (throughout the globe) in the above article. Also see the article below.
DC: Some solid points to consider.
“As cities around the world become increasingly ‘smart’, I argue that – amid the optimised encounters and experiences – there also need to be slow moments, when people can mindfully engage with and enjoy the city.” https://t.co/NhzWIKgFOU
— Daniel Christian (@dchristian5) October 24, 2019
What happens when employers can read your facial expressions? — from nytimes.com by Evan Selinger and Woodrow Hartzog
The benefits do not come close to outweighing the risks.
Excerpts:
The essential and unavoidable risks of deploying these tools are becoming apparent. A majority of Americans have functionally been put in a perpetual police lineup simply for getting a driver’s license: Their D.M.V. images are turned into faceprints for government tracking with few limits. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are using facial recognition technology to scan state driver’s license databases without citizens’ knowing. Detroit aspires to use facial recognition for round-the-clock monitoring. Americans are losing due-process protections, and even law-abiding citizens cannot confidently engage in free association, free movement and free speech without fear of being tracked.
“Notice and choice” has been an abysmal failure. Social media companies, airlines and retailers overhype the short-term benefits of facial recognition while using unreadable privacy policies
and vague disclaimers that make it hard to understand how the technology endangers users’ privacy and freedom.
From DSC:
This article illustrates how far behind the legal realm is in the United States when we look at where our society is at with wrestling with emerging technologies. Dealing with this relatively new *exponential* pace of change is very difficult for many of our institutions to deal with (higher education and the legal realm come to my mind here).
YouTube’s algorithm hacked a human vulnerability, setting a dangerous precedent — from which-50.com by Andrew Birmingham
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Even as YouTube’s recommendation algorithm was rolled out with great fanfare, the fuse was already burning. A project of The Google Brain and designed to optimise engagement, it did something unforeseen — and potentially dangerous.
Today, we are all living with the consequences.
As Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, explained to attendees of Hitachi Vantara’s Next 2019 conference in Las Vegas this week, “What the developers did not understand at the time is that YouTube’ algorithm had discovered a human vulnerability. And it was using this [vulnerability] at scale to increase YouTube’s engagement time — without a single engineer thinking, ‘is this what we should be doing?’”
The consequence of the vulnerability — a natural human tendency to engage with edgier ideas — led to YouTube’s users being exposed to increasingly extreme content, irrespective of their preferred areas of interest.
…
“What they had done was use machine learning to increase watch time. But what the machine learning system had done was to discover a human vulnerability. And that human vulnerability is that things that are slightly edgier are more attractive and more interesting.”
From DSC:
Just because we can…
Three threats posed by deepfakes that technology won’t solve — from technologyreview.com by Angela Chen
As deepfakes get better, companies are rushing to develop technology to detect them. But little of their potential harm will be fixed without social and legal solutions.
Excerpt:
3) Problem: Deepfake detection is too late to help victims
With deepfakes, “there’s little real recourse after that video or audio is out,” says Franks, the University of Miami scholar.
Existing laws are inadequate. Laws that punish sharing legitimate private information like medical records don’t apply to false but damaging videos. Laws against impersonation are “oddly limited,” Franks says—they focus on making it illegal to impersonate a doctor or government official. Defamation laws only address false representations that portray the subject negatively, but Franks says we should be worried about deepfakes that falsely portray people in a positive light too.
UPS just beat out Amazon and Google to become America’s first nationwide drone airline — from businessinsider.com by Rachel Premack
Key points:
From DSC:
Add to that, these delivery bots, drones, pods, and more:
From DSC:
I wonder…will we be able to take a quiet walk in the future? That may not be the case if the building of these armies of drones continues — and becomes a full-fledged trend.
Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech — from npr.org by Aarti Shahani
Excerpts:
Regulate us. That’s the unexpected message from one of the country’s leading tech executives. Microsoft President Brad Smith argues that governments need to put some “guardrails” around engineers and the tech titans they serve.
If public leaders don’t, he says, the Internet giants will cannibalize the very fabric of this country.
“We need to work together; we need to work with governments to protect, frankly, something that is far more important than technology: democracy. It was here before us. It needs to be here and healthy after us,” Smith says.
“Almost no technology has gone so entirely unregulated, for so long, as digital technology,” Smith says.
Uh-oh: Silicon Valley is building a Chinese-style social credit system — from fastcompany.com by Mike Elgan
In China, scoring citizens’ behavior is official government policy. U.S. companies are increasingly doing something similar, outside the law.
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
Have you heard about China’s social credit system? It’s a technology-enabled, surveillance-based nationwide program designed to nudge citizens toward better behavior. The ultimate goal is to “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step,” according to the Chinese government.
In place since 2014, the social credit system is a work in progress that could evolve by next year into a single, nationwide point system for all Chinese citizens, akin to a financial credit score. It aims to punish for transgressions that can include membership in or support for the Falun Gong or Tibetan Buddhism, failure to pay debts, excessive video gaming, criticizing the government, late payments, failing to sweep the sidewalk in front of your store or house, smoking or playing loud music on trains, jaywalking, and other actions deemed illegal or unacceptable by the Chinese government.
…
IT CAN HAPPEN HERE
Many Westerners are disturbed by what they read about China’s social credit system. But such systems, it turns out, are not unique to China. A parallel system is developing in the United States, in part as the result of Silicon Valley and technology-industry user policies, and in part by surveillance of social media activity by private companies.
Here are some of the elements of America’s growing social credit system.
If current trends hold, it’s possible that in the future a majority of misdemeanors and even some felonies will be punished not by Washington, D.C., but by Silicon Valley. It’s a slippery slope away from democracy and toward corporatocracy.
From DSC:
Who’s to say what gains a citizen points and what subtracts from their score? If one believes a certain thing, is that a plus or a minus? And what might be tied to someone’s score? The ability to obtain food? Medicine/healthcare? Clothing? Social Security payments? Other?
We are giving a huge amount of power to a handful of corporations…trust comes into play…at least for me. Even internally, the big tech co’s seem to be struggling as to the ethical ramifications of what they’re working on (in a variety of areas).
Is the stage being set for a “Person of Interest” Version 2.0?
This state is expected to become the first to collect prosecutor data, with breakdowns by race — from abajournal.com by Debra Cassens Weiss
Excerpt:
Connecticut is expected to become the first state to collect statewide criminal case data from prosecutors broken down by the defendants’ race, sex, ethnicity, age and ZIP code.
…
The bill requires the state to collect statistics on arrests, diversionary programs, case dispositions, plea agreements, cases going to trial, court fines and fees, and restitution orders.
Lamont said the bill will provide the public with greater insight into prosecutors’ decisions. “
[ABA] Council enacts new bar passage standard for law schools — from americanbar.org
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
On May 17, the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar approved a major change in the bar passage standard, known as 316, that would require 75 percent of a law school’s graduates who sit for the bar to pass it within two years. The change takes effect immediately although schools falling short of the standard would have at least two years to come into compliance.
Twice since 2017, the ABA policy-making House of Delegates has voted against the change, as some delegates feared it would have an adverse effect on law schools with significant minority enrollment. But under ABA rules and procedures, the Council, which is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as the national accreditor of law schools, has the final say on accreditation matters.
Also see:
“Either the ABA Council simply ignored the clear empirical evidence that the new bar standard will decrease diversity in the bar, or it passed the new standard with the hope that states, like California, that have unreasonably high bar cut scores will lower those metrics in order to ameliorate the council’s action,” Patton said.
At that January meeting, former ABA President Paulette Brown, the first African-American woman to hold that position, called the proposed change “draconian.”
“I know and understand fully that the [ABA] council has the right to ignore what we say,” she said. “That does not absolve us of our responsibility to give them a very clear and strong message that we will not idly stand by while they decimate the diversity in the legal profession.”
