@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net cover
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

Wolven

@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net

Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Data Science, UNCC
PhD in Science, Technology, and Society from Virginia Tech for research in Algorithms, Disability Studies, Marginalized Lived Experience, Values, Machine Consciousness, Pop Culture, and Magic
Master of Science in STS
Master of Arts in Philosophy & Religious Studies.
He/Him

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

Wolven , to random
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

Still not really back, but since tomorrow's Juneteenth, here's a reminder that a bunch of my writings on the intersections of race and other structures of marginalization with technology and society are available for free, either on my website, or elsewhere:
https://afutureworththinkingabout.com/?page_id=5038#Publications

Wolven , to random
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

"Do Artifacts Have Politics?"
https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf

Well…

"Challenging the Use of Algorithm-driven Decision-making in Benefits Determinations Affecting People with Disabilities"
https://cdt.org/insights/report-challenging-the-use-of-algorithm-driven-decision-making-in-benefits-determinations-affecting-people-with-disabilities/

Yes.

Wolven , to random
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

Mastodon has features to limit discovery and visibility, but it really needs features that allow everyone to see your shit but only some people to reply.

And if you can't immediately understand a use-case for that, then you need to stop and think about why that is.

Wolven , to random
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

First Sundar Pichai, now Tim Cook, both admitting that generative "AI," by dint of its very foundations (cf. "Bias Optimizers"), will not and cannot stop bullshitting (cf. "On Bullshit Engines").

Look at me. Listen to me: If someone is selling you a "search" and "knowledge" product they claim is smarter and better and faster than you, but it literally cannot be guaranteed to give you simple true facts about consensus reality when asked, then that product DOES NOT WORK and SHOULD NOT BE USED.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/tim-cook-admits-apple-ai-stop-lying

Wolven , to random
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

So. Literally everything that i and many others who have thought and written truly carefully about the social implications of "AI" have said in the past decade pretty much amounts to "Do Not Do This Exact Kind of Thing; In Fact UNDO How Often You've Done This Exact Kind of Thing." And yet here we are.

The FUCKING NSA, openAI?! JFC y'all
https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24178079/openai-board-paul-nakasone-nsa-safety

Wolven , to random
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

If you want a careful and nuanced examination of the politics and power dynamics of class, disability, race, and remote work, read this piece.

If you don't want a careful and nuanced examination of the politics and power dynamics of class, disability, and remote work, then you definitely need one, so read it.

https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/access/2024/05/23/reworking-remote

Wolven , to random
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

Adobe is trying to claim right of access to all of your projects, regardless of things like NDA, meaning that they are willing to violate HIPAA laws, FERPA laws, and any number of binding civil structures:
https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/06/06/adobes-new-terms-of-service-unacceptably-gives-them-access-to-all-of-your-projects-for-free

If you're in the US, you can contact the FTC here: https://www.ftc.gov/media/71268
and provide them with this contact information
Adobe
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704
Tel: 408-536-6000
Fax: 408-537-6000

I don't know the specifics of the process in the EU, but here might be a good place to start:
https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection_en

Wolven , to random
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

Windows Recall doesn't just screenshot things, it OCR's the shots, and then stores the OCR as plaintext in a local SQLlite database.

I mean what the FUCK??!

I've said it before and I'll say, again, & again, & again, that jamming "AI" into everything without considering the privacy and security implications is a) going to cause a major breach of at least two US laws, and b) just a really silly and terrible idea which is going to put a lot of people in danger, and this "recall" shit is among the worst of it i've seen.

Windows 11 has just become a complete capture system disguised as an OS. Every keystroke, work session, video call, and downtime window, logged, correlated, and extrapolated. And they're trying to sell it to you as being a SERVICE.

So let me be as clear as possible about this: Fuck That, Forever.

Roll it BACK, microsoft

https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/3/24170305/microsoft-windows-recall-ai-screenshots-security-privacy-issues

Wolven OP ,
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

Since I don't think some people are grasping how bad this is:
Bank Data;
Health Data;
Passwords;
Student Data;
Privileged Information (NDA's contracts, etc.)
Addresses

Unless a) your job has some version of windows that doesn't have these systems and tools in it, and b) work/life firewalls are PRISTINE, and I mean literally ZERO interconnections, even via email or calendars, the entire windows 11 OS, and any ecosystem of which it's a component, has just become a threat surface.

Wolven OP ,
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

And for anyone who's like "PShh! no organization dealing with sensitive data is gonna allow machines that ship with this into their org's networking ecosystem!": You're wrong.

I Just This Last Week got a new laptop from my university and copilot was already enabled, and pressing the "copilot" (reskinned context menu) button overrides even the group policy editor-level fix to turn it off, immediately reactivating it and resetting the GPE toggle to default.

So. Yeah. Bad.

Wolven OP ,
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

Sent a very angry, very detailed email to my University's Vice-Chancellor for IT/CIO; I mean what else can I fucking do about it right now?

Wolven OP ,
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

Edit: Some of you need to rethink your lives.

IS2FG if one more of you says "just put linux on it," thus completely ignoring that a) not everyone has the ability to do that to a computer on which they work, b) it's not just about me, and c) not everyone has NOR SHOULD THEY HAVE TO HAVE the skillset to do a linux move, even if they have the inclination, I am going to LOSE it.

Wolven OP ,
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

Does the Elliot Reid "I Told You So" Dance

"This Hacker Tool Extracts All the Data Collected by Windows’ New Recall AI: Windows Recall takes a screenshot every five seconds. Cybersecurity researchers say the system is simple to abuse—and one ethical hacker has already built a tool to show how easy it really is."

https://www.wired.com/story/total-recall-windows-recall-ai/

QasimRashid , to random
@QasimRashid@mastodon.social avatar

HEADLINE 1: June 2023: Atlanta City Council approves $90M for Cop City

HEADLINe 2: June 2024: Atlanta residents are under boil water orders because of a failed water system

America’s out of control police spending is literally killing us, and police violence is just the tip of that iceberg. Smh.

image/png

Wolven ,
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

@QasimRashid $90 million dollars for CopCity while Atlanta is literally under a city-wide boil water advisory due to a water system that has been known to be failing and in need of complete overhaul for at Least 30 years.

Wolven , to random
@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

Made a table of contents for my CV to make it easier to navigate. Yes, I do in fact hear myself.
https://afutureworththinkingabout.com/?page_id=5038

Screenshot of a sidebar widget titled "Curriculum Vitae," with links reading Summary Education Relevant Employment Areas Of Specialization Areas Of Competency Doctoral Dissertation Master of Arts Thesis Publications Professional Presentations and Workshops Podcast and Radio Appearances Academic Service and Public Outreach Positions Fellowships, Grants, and Sponsored Research Honours and Awards Press Professional Organization Memberships Professional Positions Held Graduate Assistantships Technical Skills
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    • Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    So google is admitting that their product is making misinformation worse and also underestimating how MUCH worse
    https://www.404media.co/google-says-ai-now-leading-disinformation-vector-and-is-severely-undercounting-the-problem/

    Historically, the next step after this is google saying they're going to "roll back" or "investigate" this "experimental" "preliminary" "AI" overview "feature;" then they're going shutter it and strip it for parts, and never speak of it again.

    Remember Wave? Yeah. That's what I thought. But at least Wave was useful.

    And then there's this potential leak of over 2500 pages worth of internal google documents, showing the sausage-making of google search itself:
    https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/28/24166177/google-search-ranking-algorithm-leak-documents-link-seo

    On LinkedIn you can find three classes of reaction to this news: Claims that Google's search is now worthless; Strategies for how to capitalize on the leak; and Denial that the leak means anything at all.

    All of which says to me that people are straight-up freaking out about where google is right now.

    I mean, when you— the biggest, shiniest, geekiest tech company in the WORLD— have lost the overarchingly technocratic parade that is LinkedIn? You have well and truly lost the plot.

    Going to be an interesting next couple of weeks.

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    When I say that the proliferation of "AI" bullshit being sold as fact-finding or truth-certifying machines is going to get people killed, "Google's GPT System Tells Someone To ['Use Bleach And Vinegar' (I.e. A Two Things Which In Mixture Make Chlorine Gas)] To Clean Their Washing Machine" is exactly the kind of thing I mean

    Wolven , to random
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    Facebook is now just utterly full to the brim of people obviously using GPT/LLM processes to throw together concatenations of bullshit and then just posting them like they're facts.

    Which is, y'know, exactly what some of us warned you was going to happen if we didn't start implementing new critical thinking and values reevaluation strategies like, as a society.

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    "If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound.

    "They won't even admit the knife is there."

    Happy birthday to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, called Malcom X. In his honour, at least admit the knife is there.

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    Police body cams with automated "AI" report writing integrations. And that "AI" is trained on what, again?

    That's right: Parsed and tagged datasets of police reports… which are themselves written after the fact and based on cops' memories of the events. Things which notoriously distort and amplify certain elements, especially concerning race, and often in a reciprocal relationship to whether a crime is charge, for whom, and of what level of severity.

    Everything is going to go wrong with this because it starts off from a place of utter wrongness.
    https://www.404media.co/here-is-what-axons-bodycam-report-writing-ai-looks-like-draft-one/

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    OpenAI, Google, and all the other GPT hype-merchants have been outright lying to everyone about their capabilities and accomplishments, which: We told you so.

    But I do appreciate @Julia always doing the solid work to lay it out plain.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/opinion/artificial-intelligence-ai-openai-chatgpt-overrated-hype.html

    But some of A.I.’s greatest accomplishments seem inflated. Some of you may remember that the A.I. model ChatGPT-4 aced the uniform bar exam a year ago. Turns out that it scored in the 48th percentile, not the 90th, as claimed by OpenAI, according to a re-examination by the M.I.T. researcher Eric Martínez. Or what about Google’s claim that it used A.I. to discover more than two million new chemical compounds? A re-examination by experimental materials chemists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found “scant evidence for compounds that fulfill the trifecta of novelty, credibility and utility.”
    ALT
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    • Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    Just learned that North Carolina State Senate passed a public masking ban out of committee into the full state senate, and that it has no exceptions for health. Like, it hasn't been passed by the full state legislature YET, but even the fact that it passed committee has me genuinely enraged and horrified by the direction of this country.

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    FedEx about to be like "Following Google's AI integrations, we're rolling out PorchRay™! Our GPT-infused, AI-enabled digital chatbot x-ray assistant scans every item that crosses your threshold to facilitate better, more accurate package delivery for You, the Consumer! PorchRay™: Did You Order That?"

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    I can only stay mad at my students for so long for stealing their classmates' work and running it through LLM-based auto-thesaurus-ers, when this is the kind of shit that is happening at the largest, most prestigious journals in the entire academy. I just… This shit is so deeply, darkly systemic.

    https://www.wsj.com/science/academic-studies-research-paper-mills-journals-publishing-f5a3d4bc?st=sgc2yq1xhe54ij4&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

    Cabanac and his colleagues realized that researchers who wanted to avoid plagiarism detectors had swapped out key scientific terms for synonyms from automatic text generators, leading to comically misfit phrases. “Breast cancer” became “bosom peril”; “fluid dynamics” became “gooey stream”; “artificial intelligence” became “counterfeit consciousness.” The tool is publicly available.
    ALT
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    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    Yo, you not gonna see this, but too many of y'all still believe the lies you were told about the Black Panthers and it shows.

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    Gonna be honest, I was a little iffy on the first episode of X-Men '97, but at this point I'm willing to say it might be the most blatantly radical X-Men project in years, and one of the most important TV projects to slip past Marvel's sensors.

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    Siding with brutal cop tactics against a student-led protest action gets a block. Claiming that Jewish students and faculty who have been subjected to brutal cop tactics while protesting during Passover are somehow antisemitic, doubly so.

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    NYPD have stormed Columbia campus using tear gas and drawn weapons to remove protesting students. They have removed student radio and other professional journalists from the scene. WKCR 88.9 has ongoing live updates. Do not look away from this, and do not let it pass unremarked.

    Wolven , to random
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    Someone tell ezra klein that some of us are already doing real work on philosophy, epistemology, and "AI"

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    Just now randomly learned that a) I was featured on American Scientist's instagram for Black History Month, and b) that my article "Bias Optimizers" was one of American Scientist's top 10 articles of 2023.

    So now I'm going to bed.
    https://www.instagram.com/american_scientist/p/C2-nQsMrF7e/

    futurebird , to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    I haven't really kept up with DARPA. I remember they used to lurk around my college when I was in undergrad trying to get young CS/engineers. Everyone was sort of creeped out by them, "You're going to be making weapons of war, they are totally DOD funded. That's the dark side."

    They had gaming nights and stuff to try to convince us otherwise.

    But... have they made any truly heinous weapons yet? Or did they pull the best move ever and take all the DOD money and make cool if ominous robots?

    Wolven ,
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    @futurebird All of their fun stuff gets used to make "better" autonomous weapons :(

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    Jesus Christ, Trent Reznor.

    Goddam.
    https://www.gq.com/story/trent-reznor-and-atticus-ross-creativity-awards-profile

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    Messing me up that José Andrés' name got more public movement to prevent the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians than the reports of, y'know, hospitals & safe havens being entirely bombed out. Like, maybe it's coincident timing, but it REALLY feels like his name moved the needle where nothing else had.

    And like, I LOVE Andrés work. I think it's a genuine and legitimate good.

    So like, legitimately? If that's what gets a ceasefire and ends this horror, then good. Genuinely fucking GREAT.

    However.

    If THAT'S what gets it done? Then our motivating factors are quite seriously fucked up and in desperate need of attention.

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    this whole intersecting technosocial system of influences— stocks, credit, influencer culture, great man theory, authoritarianism, capitalism— was a mistake.

    Skeet from e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.io: "absolutely wild that Elon Musk can simply retweet someone saying "Reuters is dying because Reuters is lying," immediately stop Tesla stock from tanking, and add ~$25 billion to its market cap in a matter of minutes" [Image of stock price of tesla inc described as: "An hourly stock price chart for TSLA today, with a crudely drawn arrow showing where Musk's tweet stopped a dramatic decline in the stock and stabilized it well above the day's lows."]
    ALT
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    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    Some actual good news:
    After way too long they're finally replacing "…a once widely used test that overestimated how well Black people’s kidneys were functioning…— all because of an automated formula that calculated results for Black and non-Black patients differently. …[while also] exacerbating other disparities…" https://apnews.com/article/kidney-transplant-race-black-inequity-bias-d4fabf2f3a47aab2fe8e18b2a5432135

    Thing is, these algorithms and others like them, as well as the treatment decisions made From them, still form the framing and training data of a LOT of "AI" healthcare systems tho, and it's kind of hard to unmake that soup, to paraphrase one of my favourite Noah Hawleyisms. So we might just have to make a new batch.

    I've talked about this a lot in the past, and last year in particular:
    https://doi.org/10.1002/cncy.22739
    https://doi.org/10.1511/2023.111.4.204
    https://apple.news/A21yoP44dRRWLK41gzu7t9A?trk=feed-detail_main-feed-card_reshare_feed-article-content

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    Not only should you NOT provide amazon with your palm print, you should be doing everything you can to keep your finger- and palmprints out of high resolution images, as a whole. (Also your keys, but please tell me you know that already.)
    https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/28/24114499/amazon-one-palm-scanning-mobile-app

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    If you somehow think translation between languages is a neutral act, go search for any two differently translated versions of the same poem.

    And then recognize that that goes for the "same" language, across time, too.

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    it is genuinely fucked up that these billionaires got some of y'all out here thinking that a) we will NEVER achieve anything other than a racist, sexist, ableist, transphobic for-profit health system, so b) might as well settle for racist, sexist, ableist, transphobic statistical pattern matching software.

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    Shoutout to Abbott Elementary for the "The Future of AI is Trash" joke in the stinger 😂

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    I just gotta say how much it Genuinely sucks to have a world where most people believe and behave as though all attention is good attention and any action is fine as long as it's not boring

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    I participate in peer review. I take it seriously. I think that it can meaningfully shape discourse, disciplines, and expertise, and i know there are other people who feel that way too.

    But I've also seen peer review be used to gatekeep and exclude potentially valuable knowledge and knowledgeHOLDERS.

    I've seen peer review used as a cudgel, to declare the lines of inquiry w/in a disciple will be shaped thusly and no ways otherwise. I've watched peer review sideline the work of marginalized and minoritized people (i sure hope you didn't think some groups were "traditionally underrepresented" by like, oopsies). And I've watched people doing strong, interesting work get cut out of the academic conversation because of a bad dice roll on who was asked to read, understand, and evaluate the merits of their work.

    And these latter cases are so frequent, we have, as a body, made a gallows humour ghost story about it:

    * Beware Reviewer № 2 *

    So i say all of that to say this: I do believe peer review can still act as a metric of professionalization and a community-based knowledge creation practice. Just so long as what we mean by "peer review" points to fundamentally reconfigured cultural values re: metrics of professionalization and community-based knowledge creation practices.

    Wolven OP ,
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    Whosoever responds to Reviewer 2 should take care that, in the process, they do not become Reviewer 2 themselves.

    Wolven OP ,
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    You either die a revise and resubmit or you live long enough to see yourself become reviewer 2

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    So about five days ago, or so, people on Bsky and Twttr started highlighting Elsevier science papers with GPT/LLM hallmark phrases riddled all throughout them. Literally thousands of peer-reviewed papers.

    As I said, then, and as I discussed in my dissertation, knowledge-making and expertise are always a tricky process, but it needs deep, intentional confrontation and reform:
    https://media.proquest.com/media/hms/PRVW/1/twSaS?_s=yIAhHtzhif4xd76I%2BihtcJJXTPw%3D

    Anyway, now it looks like @404mediaco has dug down on this, and found Even More of It and I am genuinely and completely struggling against despair at what the future of being an educator, researcher, and writer will even mean over and at the end of the next 5 years.
    https://www.404media.co/scientific-journals-are-publishing-papers-with-ai-generated-text/

    Quite frankly, this should genuinely a) be the death of peer review as we know it (Again: AS WE KNOW IT), and b) lead a complete reformulation of the knowledge-making and expertise processes, but it won't and that terrifies and saddens me.

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    All those things you want your shiny new technologies to fix won't shift even a little bit unless the humans involved fix their fucking hearts, first.

    You can't technofix your way out of a values problem.

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    Apart from everything else— and holy DAMN it's a lot "else"— the mixed messages these kids are getting about "AI" and school work are fucking nightmarish.

    "Don't use AI! It's faulty, unreliable, and plagiarism! Also if you use it, we'll use a different faulty and unreliable AI to catch you! Also here's some integrated AI tools, make sure to use them."

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    It's Super Tuesday, and you know what That means! Time to go vote to minimize what damage i can in this place, to try to keep myself and the people i care for from having to literally fight for our literal lives.

    Wolven , to random
    @Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net avatar

    Free COVID test distribution in the United States ends this coming Friday and, for the record, this is a bad plan. These tests should not only be free, forever, they should be massively invested in and drastically improved upon.

    But we don't live in that world, right now. Get your free COVID tests while you still can.
    https://special.usps.com/testkits

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