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Automatic gender recognition tech is dangerous, say campaigners : it’s time to ban it - 16 avril 2021
Simplistic gender binaries infringe on the right to self-expression
Dangers posed by facial recognition like mass surveillance and mistaken identity have been widely discussed in recent years. But digital rights groups say an equally insidious use case is currently sneaking under the radar : using the same (...)
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The French army is testing Boston Dynamics’ robot dog Spot in combat scenarios - 10 avril 2021
Spot appeared in research exercises alongside military students
Spot, the quadruped robot built by US firm Boston Dynamics, has appeared alongside soldiers during military exercises carried out by the French army. The robot was apparently being used for reconnaissance during a two-day training exercise, but the (...)
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Google promises it won’t just keep tracking you after replacing cookies - 7 avril 2021
Google says it wants a ‘privacy-first web’
Google is slowly phasing out third-party tracking cookies, and today, it’s making it clear that it won’t just replace them with something equally invasive despite the impact the change will have on Google’s lucrative advertising business. In a blog post, Google explicitly (...)
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Amazon delivery drivers have to consent to AI surveillance in their vans or lose their jobs - 30 mars 2021
AI cameras look for yawning or distracted drivers
Amazon is well-known for its technological Taylorism : using digital sensors to monitor and control the activity of its workers in the name of efficiency. But after installing machine learning-powered surveillance cameras in its delivery vans earlier this year, (...)
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Timnit Gebru was fired from Google — then the harassers arrived - 12 mars 2021
Even three months after Gebru’s controversial termination from the AI Ethics team, the sustained campaign of aggressive tweets and emails keeps coming
TimnitTimnit Gebru had expected her colleagues to rally around her when she was abruptly fired from Google on December 2nd. She was a well-respected AI ethics (...)
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Judge approves $650 million Facebook privacy settlement over facial recognition feature - 28 février 2021
The suit claimed the platform stored biometric data in violation of Illinois state law
A federal judge on Friday gave final approval to a $650 million Facebook class action privacy settlement and ordered the 1.6 million members of the class in Illinois who submitted claims to be paid “as expeditiously as (...)
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Amazon changed traffic light timing during union drive, county officials say - 19 février 2021
Organizers say the change made union efforts harder
As part of its ongoing fight over an Alabama warehouse’s efforts to unionize, Amazon reportedly changed the timing of a traffic light outside the warehouse, according to reporting by More Perfect Union. Union organizers at the site had previously accused the (...)
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Amazon plans to install always-on surveillance cameras in its delivery vehicles - 3 février 2021
To ostensibly improve safety conditions but also monitor drivers
Amazon plans to install high-tech video cameras in its delivery vehicles in order to better monitor the behavior of drivers as they deliver packages, according to a new report from The Information.
The hardware and software will be supplied by (...)
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Welcome to the internet of paranoia - 26 janvier 2021
Describing the path of technological progress, Marcelo Rinesi likes to point out an early 19th century drawing by a paranoid schizophrenic Welsh man named James Tilly Matthews. The sketch, reproduced in a book called Illustrations of Madness, is considered to be one of the first published pictures by a mental (...)
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Warning Signal : the messaging app’s new features are causing internal turmoil - 26 janvier 2021
The fast-growing encrypted messaging app is making itself increasingly vulnerable to abuse. Current and former employees are sounding the alarm.
OnOn January 6th, WhatsApp users around the world began seeing a pop-up message notifying them of upcoming changes to the service’s privacy policy. The changes were (...)
information
Facebook suspends ads for weapon accessories until at least January 22nd - 17 janvier 2021
The company added the temporary ban to its Inauguration Day preparations
Facebook has updated its Inauguration Day preparations to include a temporary ban on ads that promote weapon accessories and protective equipment at least through January 22nd “out of an abundance of caution,” the company said in a new blog (...)
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Georgia runoff ads made Facebook News Feeds more partisan and less informative - 5 janvier 2021
The Markup collected data from 58 Georgia users’ News Feeds
When Facebook lifted its ban on political ads in Georgia, local News Feeds became dramatically more partisan and less informative, according to research published on Tuesday by The Markup.
Facebook banned US political advertising in the wake of the (...)
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Facial recognition systems are getting better at recognizing masked faces - 5 décembre 2020
New data from NIST shows significant improvement since July
Facial recognition algorithms are getting better at recognizing faces in masks, according to data published on Tuesday by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). Drawing on independent testing of more than 150 separate facial (...)
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Facebook moderators at Accenture are being forced back to the office, and many are scared for their safety - 14 octobre 2020
Employees are concerned about COVID-19 now that they’re being told to return starting October 12th
Facebook moderators employed by third-party contracting firm Accenture and based in Austin, Texas are being forced to return to the office on October 12th, The Verge has learned.
Employees, almost all of whom are (...)
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Amazon takes down a five-star fraud in the UK - 4 septembre 2020
The company deleted 20,000 suspicious reviews following Financial Times investigation
Amazon’s top reviewers in the UK appear to have engaged in fraud, leaving thousands of five-star ratings in exchange for money or free products. The company took down 20,000 product reviews following an investigation by the (...)
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Verily, Google’s health-focused sister company, is getting into insurance - 31 août 2020
It’s launching a new subsidiary, Coefficient
Verily Life Sciences, the health care company owned by Alphabet, is getting into insurance, the company announced today. Verily is launching a new subsidiary for the effort called Coefficient Insurance Company, which will be backed by the commercial insurance unit of (...)
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ICE just signed a contract with facial recognition company Clearview AI - 22 août 2020
The contract comes after months of scrutiny of Clearview’s privacy practices
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) signed a contract with facial recognition company Clearview AI this week for “mission support,” government contracting records show (as first spotted by the tech accountability nonprofit Tech (...)
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An Instagram bug showed a ‘camera on’ indicator for iOS 14 devices even when users weren’t taking photos - 28 juillet 2020
The company says it’s fixing the issue
In the latest instance of iOS 14’s beta mode tattling on unexpected app behavior, some users reported that they were seeing the green “camera on” indicator while using Instagram when they were just scrolling through their feeds, not taking a photo or video.
An Instagram (...)
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What a machine learning tool that turns Obama white can (and can’t) tell us about AI bias - 4 juillet 2020
A striking image that only hints at a much bigger problem
It’s a startling image that illustrates the deep-rooted biases of AI research. Input a low-resolution picture of Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, into an algorithm designed to generate depixelated faces, and the output is a (...)
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Facebook wants to help register 4 million voters this year with new ‘Voting Information Center’ - 17 juin 2020
Facebook aims to improve the resources it providers American voters and will attempt to help more people register to vote ahead of the 2020 US election, according to a new op-ed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg published in USA Today on Tuesday evening.
Zuckerberg says the company set a goal of helping 4 million people (...)
