The Center for AI Safety gets “90%” of its funding from Open Philanthropy. Okay. Who funds Open Philanthropy?
May 30, 2023 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
You may be wondering: why are some of the very people who develop and deploy artificial intelligence sounding the alarm about it's existential threat? Consider two reasons--
The first reason is to focus the public’s attention on a far fetched scenario that doesn’t require much change to their business models. Addressing the immediate impacts of AI on labor, privacy, or the environment is costly. Protecting against AI somehow “waking up” is not.
Aug 31, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
The Federal Trade Commission is changing. You can see it in the rhetoric of Chairwoman @linakhanFTC, in the Commission's hires and strategic planning, in the decision to challenge mergers and promulgate privacy rules. The FTC is changing, but how? 🧵
Obviously the pendulum has swung once again, and the FTC is becoming more assertive. That's only part of the story. The main shift to me is that the FTC seems to be centering the *American public*, rather than just policing the health of trade or the market. A few examples:
Apr 19, 2021 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Woah, woah, WOAH. An official @FTC blog post by a staff attorney noting that "The FTC Act prohibits unfair or deceptive practices. That would include the sale or use of – for example – racially biased algorithms." ftc.gov/news-events/bl…
AND: "But keep in mind that if you don’t hold yourself accountable, the FTC may do it for you. For example, if your algorithm results in credit discrimination against a protected class, you could find yourself facing a complaint alleging violations of the FTC Act and ECOA."
Nov 19, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Zoom problems as Disney princesses, a thread.
When you're on mute
May 13, 2020 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Reports are beginning to circulate about requirements to collect personal information for use in manual contact tracing. As many people have noted, manual contact tracing will require privacy trade offs. The question is how big a trade off and what do we get in exchange. 1/
What we get is a lot. As @EmilyGurley3---who is leading an online training at Johns Hopkins for contact tracers (great idea!)---has put it, "Contact tracers are in part detective, part therapist and part social worker.” washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05… 2/
May 8, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
To better understand privacy attitudes toward contact tracing apps, we surveyed subjects (total n=200) on two dates in early April. seclab.cs.washington.edu/wp-content/upl… (PDF) I thought some of the preliminary results were telling. 1/
Even with a hypothetical guarantee of "perfect" privacy, ~72% of participants said they were at least "somewhat likely" to download a contact tracing app. That number dropped significantly as we introduced the possibility of imperfect privacy. 2/
Apr 9, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Senate Commerce is holding a (first ever?) "paper" hearing on the use of digital technology to combat coronavirus. You can read my testimony and that of @staceygraydc, @Richardson_Mich, and others here. commerce.senate.gov/2020/4/enlisti…
I argue caution & humility when bringing tech to bear on the pandemic. For example, I discuss the early success but ultimate breakdown of Google Flu Trends between 2009 and 2013.
Mar 23, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
I have to say I'm really proud of @uw right now. It would be hard to enumerate all the ways this giant public research university and its staff, students, and faculty are helping, but they include developing & deploying Covid-19 tests (@UWVirology) 1/
Debunking misinformation (@katestarbird@CT_Bergstrom), providing context for emergency powers (Hugh Spitzer @UWSchoolofLaw), assessing the efficacy of containment measures (Elizabeth Halloran @UWBiostat), and so much more. 2/
Mar 17, 2020 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Apps that purport to track people infected with COVID-19 are a terrible idea imo for several reasons. Here are five: 1. In areas of low adoption, they will give people a false sense of security and could interfere with critical social distancing measures.
2. In areas of high adoption, coronapps will cause panic---especially if the data is visualized in such a way (e.g., heat maps) that overemphasizes relative densities.
Nov 12, 2019 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I can't believe I have to keep saying it's a bad idea to put weapons on security robots 🤦♂️
When I was investigating allegations of police misconduct in New York, the NYPD rolled out Tasers. But they only let "white shirts" (sergeants and lieutenants) have them at first, because only experienced officers had the situational awareness to know when to use them.
Feb 11, 2019 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Here is the Trump executive order on artificial intelligence. Reading now... whitehouse.gov/presidential-a…@daniellecitron For our paper: "Artificial Intelligence will affect the missions of nearly all executive departments and agencies (agencies)."
Sep 4, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
In case you're new to the field, IP and cyberlaw are very different. And this list scarcely captures the latter. Two main reasons: (1) who is considered cyberlaw here is arbitrary and (2) the impact of cyberlaw extends to other disciplines, i.e., well beyond law reviews.
Take @daniellecitron. She is *core* cyberlaw. But she's listed as writing in a related field. 🤔 Apparently she has 545 Sisk citations since 2013. Impressive. Until you run her Google Scholar citations, which include books and (gasp!) journals in other disciplines. Then it's 2093
