New piece in Nieman Lab, w/ Jake Karr & growing out of Knowing Machines project: "Press freedom means controlling the language of AI": niemanlab.org/2023/09/press-… "Journalists need to get good, fast, at looking under the hood of GenAI systems & developing the power to shape them."

📍NEWS! Vladan Joler and I are about to open our exhibition: CALCULATING EMPIRES. It’s about technology, power, and the rise and fall of empires. Not just in this crazy week/year, but over 5 centuries. At the center: a 24 meter installation. Opens Milan, Thursday. More:

A victory for clinical trial transparency! In 2021, UAEM, my students, & I FOIAed U.S. FDA's "Pre-Notices" to sponsors who withhold trial results. In 2021, Reshma Ramachandran, Joseph Ross & I urged U.S. FDA share Pre-Notices proactively. In Feb 2023, UAEM petitioned. Yesterday, FDA agreed.

And here's my piece with Jason Schultz on generative AI and the crisis in copyright law: a radical moment in creative production with billions of works produced without any legally recognizable author. ✍️issues.org/generative-ai-…

My latest for nature: AI's environmental costs are soaring. The new energy-hungry models for video, text, and image could create an energy crisis - and impact drinking water reserves. We urgently need action from industry, researchers, and legislators. nature.com/articles/d4158…

The AI field’s goal is nothing less than to transform the world. But what are the foundations upon which this transformation is built? In this investigation, Jer Thorp and I looked at LAION-5B, the only open-source foundation dataset currently available.

DER SPIEGEL and DER STANDARD released simultaneous stories on this Knowing Machines investigation: "How the worldview of an artificial intelligence is created." Check out the fantastic visual explainer! spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/l…

The Fordham Law Review, co-sponsored with Fordham’s Neuroscience and Law Center, published its Symposium issue showcasing 9 articles on a wide range of topics by attorneys, judges, professors, and scientists, exploring the opportunities and risks presented by AI bit.ly/4cPdxUI

So thrilled to be part of this amazing symposium on #artificalintelligence. Thanks go to Andrew W. Torrance, Bill Tomlinson, Harry Surden, Matthew Sag, Abdi Aidid, Jason Schultz, Daniel J. Solove, Yuki / Hideyuki MATSUMI / 松実秀幸, Eliott Behar for their superb essays and to Fordham Law Review for incredible oversight.

Honored to be named one of the Co-Chairs, along with Justice Angela Iannacci and Stuart Levi, for the NY Court System's AI Advisory Committee! nycourts.gov/LegacyPDFS/pre…

Here is a fascinating role for someone: a PhD position in tech anthropology focused on digital breakdown and experience in Greenland (!) vacancies.aau.dk/phd-positions/…

It was a real delight to speak with Eric Topol, who has been tracking complex issues with AI for years. 🔊

🎉 Launching online today: "Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power since 1500." Dive into our large-scale interactive visualization exploring how technical and social structures co-evolved over five centuries. 🧵 calculatingempires.net

Tech discourse is often ahistorical. Vladan Joler & I made this work to include longer trajectories of ideas, infrastructures, and systems of power. Calculating Empires investigates how past empires have calculated - and how they created the conditions of empire today.

You can read the work in many ways. The vertical axis represents time, and the horizontal addresses systems in four domains: communication, computation, classification and control. You can follow a theme, a time period, or a set of ideas in any direction.

The work is built from hundreds of illustrations & texts that trace patterns of automation, militarization, colonialism, and enclosure since 1500. You're invited to read and make your own connections.

By looking at the past, we can consider power and technology in the present - and how different futures could be realized.

This project was years in the making. We're so grateful to the people and orgs who helped bring it to life, particularly the amazing Knowing Machines team. Huge thanks to Milutin Marinovic & Olivia Solis for translating this project into an online form. 🙏 calculatingempires.net

Well this is reassuring

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