Technology

AI: Considerations for people who make decisions (Bert Hubert)

it's been a while since i made one (or even thought about this) but here is my latest PrivacyPack list!

“An inherent conflict of interest”: More than 800 USA Today Co. employees want the company to end its new Palantir partnership

Phones should have a 'guest lock' feature

CBP Workers Allegedly Used Government Databases to Spy on Exes, Crushes, and Colleagues

Researchers Show How Meta's 'Pervert Glasses' Are Used to Harass Women

MySpace is Making a Comeback!

Facebook ads are so hard to block that uBlock Origin stopped filtering them

Separate tech and capital: Schneier on AI's two kinds of problems

In any discussion about AI’s potential, it’s important to separate the technology from the socio-political system it’s embedded in. That AIs can lack context, mix up facts, or fall for stupid tricks are all technological problems. Because the giant developers like OpenAI and Anthropic have prioritized solving them, AIs can now more easily access resources like the web or email, are more disciplined about using those resources, and are better at staying within their guardrails.

Yet AI developers do not seem to be prioritizing other technological problems. Major AI models still act far more sycophantic than humans, telling people what they want to hear even when untrue or not in their best interests. Popular AI models tend to answer questions confidently even when they lack training, knowledge, or evidence to back their claims. In both cases, AI developers choose to train models that please users with flattery and the appearance of competence, rather than constraining them to act in users’ and society’s best interests.

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In a different political and economic system, Chinese developers are producing—and then giving away—smaller, more efficient, more affordable models. While the US government seeks to restrict China’s access to the most advanced chips, China is betting that incentivizing their tech giants to create leaner, more open models using more commodity hardware—models that can be trained with older chips and run even on personal computers—will be an advantage in achieving widespread use and, perhaps, Chinese national influence.

There’s a green powered, ethically trained LLM out there: Apertus. But we’re not (currently) choosing that route.

The Indian government arbitrarily suspended a website that hosted information about the recent student protests in the country

Some Claude users are mad that Anthropic’s new watermarks will catch them using it at their jobs, classes

The Government is Monitoring Anti-Flock TikTok and Instagram Accounts

Modder exploits GeForce NOW to run a full Windows desktop through a simple file swap

By swapping a game binary for a modified one that gives access to the desktop he was able to trick the system into thinking he was playing authorized material, and even got local AI models to run on the 48GB VRAM a6000 card that powers the system. I can’t imagine this hole will go unpatched for long though.

Spotify to introduce AI badge after fans make feelings 'clear'

DeepSeek’s updated V4 Pro AI model struggles on benchmarks, shines in cybersecurity: impresses in niche areas but leaves some developers disappointed in its overall capabilities.

U.S. and Ukrainian Forces Went Head-to-Head in an Exercise. Ukraine’s Drones Won.

PBS broadcaster loses access to 50TB of data comprising 70 years of TV history after contracted cloud storage vendor goes defunct

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1332594/pbs-broadcaster-loses-access-to-50tb-of-data-comprising-70-years-of-tv-history-after-con

Twitch content has trained Amazon AI for years, but users can opt out now

Twitch Is Mining Peoples' Streams to Train Amazon's AI

Anthropic just rolled out a tool that'll decimate some people's dreams of writing AI novels undetected