A New Frontier for Travel Scammers: A.I.-Generated Guidebooks; The New York Times, August 5, 2023

 Seth Kugel and Stephen Hiltner, The New York Times; A New Frontier for Travel Scammers: A.I.-Generated Guidebooks

"Though she didn’t know it at the time, Ms. Kolsky had fallen victim to a new form of travel scam: shoddy guidebooks that appear to be compiled with the help of generative artificial intelligence, self-published and bolstered by sham reviews, that have proliferated in recent months on Amazon.

The books are the result of a swirling mix of modern tools: A.I. apps that can produce text and fake portraits; websites with a seemingly endless array of stock photos and graphics; self-publishing platforms — like Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing — with few guardrails against the use of A.I.; and the ability to solicit, purchase and post phony online reviews, which runs counter to Amazon’s policies and may soon face increased regulation from the Federal Trade Commission.

The use of these tools in tandem has allowed the books to rise near the top of Amazon search results and sometimes garner Amazon endorsements such as “#1 Travel Guide on Alaska.”"

Here Comes the Full Amazonification of Whole Foods; The New York Times, February 28, 2022

 Cecilia Kang, The New York Times; Here Comes the Full Amazonification of Whole Foods

"The technology, known as Just Walk Out, consists of hundreds of cameras with a god’s-eye view of customers. Sensors are placed under each apple, carton of oatmeal and boule of multigrain bread. Behind the scenes, deep-learning software analyzes the shopping activity to detect patterns and increase the accuracy of its charges.

The technology is comparable to what’s in driverless cars. It identifies when we lift a product from a shelf, freezer or produce bin; automatically itemizes the goods; and charges us when we leave the store. Anyone with an Amazon account, not just Prime members, can shop this way and skip a cash register since the bill shows up in our Amazon account...

Alex Levin, 55, an 18-year resident of Glover Park, said people should not reject the store’s changes.

“We need to understand the benefits and downsides of the technology and use it to our advantage,” he said...

Many were suspicious of the tracking tech.

“It’s like George Orwell’s ‘1984,’” said Allen Hengst, 72, a retired librarian."

Want to borrow that e-book from the library? Sorry, Amazon won’t let you.; The Washington Post, March 10, 2021

Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post ; Want to borrow that e-book from the library? Sorry, Amazon won’t let you.

 

"Many Americans now recognize that a few tech companies increasingly dominate our lives. But it’s sometimes hard to put your finger on exactly why that’s a problem. The case of the vanishing e-books shows how tech monopolies hurt us not just as consumers, but as citizens...

 

Librarians have been no match for the beast. When authors sign up with a publisher, it decides how to distribute their work... 

 

In testimony to Congress, the American Library Association called digital sales bans like Amazon’s “the worst obstacle for libraries” moving into the 21st century. Lawmakers in New York and Rhode Island have proposed bills that would require Amazon (and everybody else) to sell e-books to libraries with reasonable terms. This week, the Maryland House of Delegates unanimously approved its own library e-book bill, which now heads back to the state Senate... 

 

Libraries losing e-books matters because they serve us as citizens. It’s easy to take for granted, but libraries are among America’s great equalizers."

Tech giants are seeking help on AI ethics. Where they seek it matters; Quartz, March 30, 2019

Dave Gershgorn, Quartz; Tech giants are seeking help on AI ethics. Where they seek it matters

"Meanwhile, as Quartz reported last week, Stanford’s new Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence excluded from its faculty any significant number of people of color, some of whom have played key roles in creating the field of AI ethics and algorithmic accountability.

Other tech companies are also seeking input on AI ethics, including Amazon, which this week announced a $10 million grant in partnership with the National Science Foundation. The funding will support research into fairness in AI."

The doorbells have eyes: The privacy battle brewing over home security cameras; The Washington Post, January 31, 2019

Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post; The doorbells have eyes: The privacy battle brewing over home security cameras

"We should recognize this pattern: Tech that seems like an obvious good can develop darker dimensions as capabilities improve and data shifts into new hands. A terms-of-service update, a face-recognition upgrade or a hack could turn your doorbell into a privacy invasion you didn’t see coming."

Why public libraries are still essential in 2018; Forbes, July 24, 2018

Constance Grady, Vox; Why public libraries are still essential in 2018: Libraries exist for the public. Amazon exists to maximize profits.

"This past weekend, Forbes published and then took down a controversial article. “This article was outside of this contributor’s specific area of expertise, and has since been removed,” said Forbes, after significant backlash. The article in question? An op-ed arguing that libraries are a waste of taxpayer money and should be replaced by Amazon stores.

Libraries do seem to be outside of author Panos Mourdoukoutas’s areas of expertise; he’s a professor who specializes in world economy. (A popular tweet suggested that Mourdoukoutas paid for the privilege to be published on Forbes, though it turned out to be an error; he’s a paid blogger for Forbes.) But both the article itself and the backlash against it point to a profound anxiety centered on libraries and the question of whether they should be up for debate.

If we take it as read that public libraries exist and are good and important, then we’re saying that the services they provide are basic rights that it is our government’s responsibility to safeguard. If we suggest that libraries shouldn’t exist — that they’re a waste — then we call into question the rights that they protect.

Enter Mourdoukoutas’s now-deleted op-ed, whose central thrust was that the roles traditionally performed by libraries — lending books, of course, but also serving as community gathering places — are now performed better by “third places” like Starbucks and bookstore-cafes. And since Amazon’s brick-and-mortar bookstores are equipped with easy access to the comprehensive Amazon database of books around the world, the article concluded, Amazon bookstore-cafes are superior to libraries."

Amazon patents wristband that tracks warehouse workers' movements; Guardian, January 31, 2018

Olivia Solon, Guardian; Amazon patents wristband that tracks warehouse workers' movements

"Amazon has patented designs for a wristband that can precisely track where warehouse employees are placing their hands and use vibrations to nudge them in a different direction.

The concept, which aims to streamline the fulfilment of orders, adds another layer of surveillance to an already challenging working environment."

Privacy experts alarmed as Amazon moves into the health care industry; Washington Post, January 30, 2018

Abha Bhattarai, Washington Post; Privacy experts alarmed as Amazon moves into the health care industry

"Amazon.com on Tuesday announced a joint partnership with Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan to create an independent health-care company for their employees, putting an end to months of speculation that the technology giant was eyeing a foray into the medical industry. It’s yet another endeavor for the company, which last year spent $13.7 billion to enter the grocery business with its acquisition of Whole Foods Market. (Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, also owns The Washington Post.)

[Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase join forces to tackle employees’ health-care costs]

But as the online retailer expands into new industries — cloud computing, drones, tech gadgets, moviemaking and now health care — some privacy experts say the company’s increasingly dominant role in our lives raises concerns about how personal data is collected and used. What happens, for example, when a company that has access to our weekly shopping lists, eating habits and in-home Alexa-based assistants also becomes involved in our medical care?"

How Apple and Amazon Are Aiding Chinese Censors; Slate, August 2, 2017

April Glaser, Slate; How Apple and Amazon Are Aiding Chinese Censors

"Over the weekend, Apple took a small step to help shore up the Great Firewall of China: It deleted more than 60 apps used to route around internet filters from its App Store in China.

The removed apps are virtual private networks, or VPNs, which are used to tunnel web traffic through another computer, often hosted in other countries. VPNs allow Chinese users to circumvent government censorship by essentially letting people use the internet as if they weren’t in China.

The move came after the Chinese government began enforcing a cybersecurity law that prohibits the use of unregistered VPN apps, Apple CEO Tim Cook said on a call with investors on Tuesday."

Amazon has a patent to keep you from comparison shopping while you’re in its stores; Washington Post, June 16, 2017

rian Fung, Washington Post; Amazon has a patent to keep you from comparison shopping while you’re in its stores

"Amazon was awarded a patent May 30 that could help it choke off a common issue faced by many physical stores: Customers’ use of smartphones to compare prices even as they walk around a shop. The phenomenon, often known as mobile “window shopping,” has contributed to a worrisome decline for traditional retailers.

But Amazon now has the technology to prevent that type of behavior when customers enter any of its physical stores and log onto the WiFi networks there. Titled “Physical Store Online Shopping Control,” Amazon’s patent describes a system that can identify a customer’s Internet traffic and sense when the smartphone user is trying to access a competitor’s website. (Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos is also the owner of The Washington Post.)...

As Amazon increasingly bridges the online-physical divide, regulators should be on the lookout for potentially anti-competitive behavior, said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.

“Amazon knows younger consumers increasingly want home delivery of grocery products and online ordering. But there are huge privacy issues,” he said. “Amazon has created a largely stealth Big Data digital apparatus that has not gotten the scrutiny it requires.”

'Echo Is Not Spying On You,' Amazon Lawyer Declares; Inside Counsel, May 12, 2017

C. Ryan Barber, Inside Counsel; 

'Echo Is Not Spying On You,' Amazon Lawyer Declares

"We designed the Echo devices very intentionally to only listen when spoken to … and also be incredibly conspicuous when it is listening,” [Ryan] McCrate said, referring to the ring of LED lights that flash when Alexa perks up.

McCrate’s brief remarks on the panel sounded at times like a promotional pitch touting the lengths the company took to protect consumer privacy. The Echo, he said, was inspired by Star Trek—and Amazon knew that its customers would be familiar with a virtual assistant as a science-fiction concept. But the company, he added, also realized there would be “well-founded” concerns about a product like the Echo."

The Great A.I. Awakening; New York Times, 12/14/16

Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New York Times; The Great A.I. Awakening:

"Google’s decision to reorganize itself around A.I. was the first major manifestation of what has become an industrywide machine-learning delirium. Over the past four years, six companies in particular — Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and the Chinese firm Baidu — have touched off an arms race for A.I. talent, particularly within universities. Corporate promises of resources and freedom have thinned out top academic departments. It has become widely known in Silicon Valley that Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, personally oversees, with phone calls and video-chat blandishments, his company’s overtures to the most desirable graduate students. Starting salaries of seven figures are not unheard-of. Attendance at the field’s most important academic conference has nearly quadrupled. What is at stake is not just one more piecemeal innovation but control over what very well could represent an entirely new computational platform: pervasive, ambient artificial intelligence."

Amazon nets patent for mini police drones; SeattlePI.com, 10/28/16

Daniel Demay, SeattlePI.com; Amazon nets patent for mini police drones:

"Amazon Technologies, Inc. was granted a patent Oct. 18 for a device it called an “unmanned aerial vehicle assistant,” aimed at use by police for everything from monitoring situations to finding lost children at the fair...

The devices, if put into wide use, would no doubt raise new questions about police use of technology, said Shankar Narayan, technology and liberty project director for the America Civil Liberties Union in Seattle. Because the drones would be so small, they might be able to operate in discreet ways, collecting information without the subjects ever being aware, he noted.

In a traffic stop, for example, such a drone could fly around the vehicle conducting a search of the inside of the car without an officer ever establishing the required probable cause for such a search, Narayan said.

"That's just one of the ways you could try to make an end-run around the constitutional protections," he said.

Civil rights advocates would look to regulate such devices before they ever went into use.

"We want to make sure the use of this technology doesn't turn into an open fishing expedition" just because newer technology allows it, Narayan said."

Why the World Is Drawing Battle Lines Against American Tech Giants; New York Times, 6/1/16

Farhad Manjoo, New York Times; Why the World Is Drawing Battle Lines Against American Tech Giants:

"Over the last decade, we have witnessed the rise of what I like to call the Frightful Five. These companies — Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent — have created a set of inescapable tech platforms that govern much of the business world. The five have grown expansive in their business aims and invincible to just about any competition. Their collective powers are a source of pride and fear for Americans. These companies thoroughly dominate the news and entertainment industries, they rule advertising and retail sales, and they’re pushing into health care, energy and automobiles.

For all the disruptions, good and bad, Americans may experience as a result of the rise of the Frightful Five, there is one saving grace: The companies are American. Not only were they founded by Americans and have their headquarters here (complicated global tax structures notwithstanding), but they all tend to espouse American values like free trade, free expression and a skepticism of regulation. Until the surveillance revealed by the National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, many American tech companies were also more deferential to the American government, especially its requests for law enforcement help.

In the rest of the world, the Americanness of the Frightful Five is often seen as a reason for fear, not comfort. In part that’s because of a worry about American hegemony: The bigger these companies get, the less room they leave for local competition — and the more room for possible spying by the United States government."