š„ø Accounts with AI profile pics want you to know Amazon is a real cool company to work for and Utah paid for AI surveillance that had no AI
š The important work of complimenting dogs gets some AI help
The Lulz
Not a ton of good news out on the AI front recently, but I enjoyed the chaotic energy that came out of someoneās attempt to influence the conversation around Amazonās workplace (which they want you to know doesnāt need a union and you are allowed to pee anytime you want and NOT into bottles, you guys) with a bunch of Twitter accounts using AI-generated profile pics. I say someone because Amazon claims that, at least for the account pictured above, arenāt from them. Maybe they learned their lesson earlier this week when they let Bezos get behind the keyboard and go after Elizabeth Warren?
Other documents show they did have some sort of Twitter āambassadorsā program was intended to āhave a great sense of humorā but the examples in that story donāt have the AI-generated profile pictures. Amazon is a big enough company to have divisions of press relations that all have different projects. And there is a chance this is a satire account, but Amazonās hamfisted ways means itās not hard to believe it is real, including using obviously AI-generated pictures.
The Bad
Utah paid a bunch of money to company that claimed it had AI tech to do all sorts of surveillance. Unforunately for them (but maybe fortunately for us) the tech they paid for wasnāt all it cracked up to be.
This was discovered when an auditor was specifically looking into how the company, called Banjo, was handling some issues around privacy. But turns out the tech wasnāt particularly smart, and thus, not a privacy threat. I run into so many small companies promising face rec tech that are run by a few people, most with law enforcement backgrounds and not technical ones. How do they get access to the huge data troves needed for state of the art results? How do they come up with the algorithms? I have a feeling this is a huckster story that is repeated across the country.
Oh, also Utah looked into the contract because of a investigation that revealed that the companyās CEO once pleaded guilty toĀ helping a KKK leader shoot up a synagogue.
More News
An AI to spot pups walking by and give that good girl or boy a compliment.
Itās AI all the way down: AI conferences use AI to assign papers to reviewers (who arenāt AIā¦yet).
A train accident in Taiwan that killed 51 people was likely caused by a driverless truck.
Google used AI to create a British-inspired cake recipe that includes the very British ingredient Marmite (aka concentrated yeast), which leads to an important question: who is worse at food, the English or computers?
All those databases that we use to train our AI systems have a bunch of mislabeled items.
There is an open source natural language generator out there we can all use to create streams of semi-coherent text now.
The company that makes the infamous robo-dog has a new (more practical?) warehouse robot.
Speaking of robo-dogs, a New York lawmaker wants to ban the police from using armed version of them.
Longform piece on how folks in China are getting tired of face rec tech (from private companies, government is going to do whatever it wants).
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Until my sore arm from getting vaxed is better so I can pet all the pups,
Jackie