In a submission to the Attorney-General's Copyright Enforcement Review, Google said it wants the government to modify copyright laws so it can train AI models without the inconvenient hassle of obtaining permission from the owner of that information. In an attempt to shame and/or scare the government into doing what it wants, Google says that "the lack of such copyright flexibilities means that investment in and development of AI and machine-learning technologies is happening and will continue to happen overseas". Meanwhile, Elon Musk is suing Microsoft, claiming its AI stuff was "trained illegally using Twitter data" and Reddit is planning to charge for access to its API for the purposes of training AI.
Another day, another dummy spit by law enforcement begging Meta to not make end-to-end encryption (E2EE) default in Messenger and Instagram. The Virtual Global Taskforce, a group of 15 agencies, including the FBI and AFP, argues that if E2EE is used on Meta's platforms, they are "blindfolding themselves to child sexual abuse". Meta seems unmoved by the claim, saying that "we don't think people want us reading their private messages" and will make E2EE default "sometime in 2023". Sorry coppers, I much prefer my communications being secure and private over your need to catch the dumbest of people using Facebook to do crimes. Maybe do some old fashioned investigation and police work instead of mass surveillance of the community?
The Washington Post took a look at Google's C4 data set, "a massive snapshot of the contents of 15 million websites that have been used to instruct some high-profile English-language AIs, called large language models, including Google's T5 and Facebook's LLaMA". The top 3 sources of data are patents.google.com (did not expect that), Wikipedia and Scribd. Unfortunately, they also scraped sites like Stormfront, Kiwifarms and 4chan. There's shitloads of data in there that is copyright too and I bet Google did not get permission from the owners of that content to use in their AI model training. Google certainly didn't ask me for permission if they could use thesizzle.com.au or decryption.net.au in their AI model! My message to Google is fuck you, pay me.
The Westinghouse Atom Smasher was a 5 million volt Van de Graaff electrostatic nuclear accelerator operated by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation at their Research Laboratories in Forest Hills, Pennsylvania. It was instrumental in the development in practical applications of nuclear science for energy production. In particular, it was used in 1940 to discover the photofission of uranium and thorium, and was most cited for certain nuclear physics measurements. The Westinghouse Atom Smasher was able to make precise measurements of nuclear reactions for the research in nuclear power. It was the first industrial Van de Graaff generator in the world, and marked the beginning of nuclear research for civilian applications. Built in 1937, it was a 65-foot-tall (20 m) pear-shaped tower. It went dormant in 1958. In 1985, it was named an Electrical Engineering Milestone by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. (Pat Gavin)
📻 What Do You Want Me to Say? - Dismemberment Plan
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