Elon Musk expands his empire of misinformation; CNN, October 15, 2024

 Allison Morrow, CNN; Elon Musk expands his empire of misinformation

"At any Tesla event, you have to go in expecting a good amount of smoke and mirrors. This is the company run by Elon Musk, after all — its self-anointed Technoking who’s made overpromising and underdelivering a theme of his career.

But Thursday’s “Cybercab” robotaxi unveiling was, even by Musk-ian standards for bluster, one giant optical illusion. The kind of spectacle that should remind everyone that the world’s richest person is someone who promotes and appears to relish misinformation and hyperbole on a mass scale, whether he’s speaking to investors, his millions of followers on X or whichever politician he feels is most likely to agree with his increasingly right-wing and conspiracy-laden worldview...

The robotaxis, Tesla’s fully driverless vehicles that it hopes to put into service next year, were the main event. But the company’s humanoid Optimus robots stole some of the spotlight as they danced and mingled with the crowd, pouring drinks and playing charades.

That all would have been impressive if not for a few liiiittttle things. Like, the fact that the robots were not actually autonomous and were being operated remotely by humans, which was first reported by Bloomberg. At one point, an attendee even got a bartending bot to admit that it was being assisted by a human.

“This was not disclosed, and many thought they were operating autonomously,” Gordon Johnson, a longtime Tesla critic and short-seller, said in a note Monday.  “In our view, this is very deceptive.”

The event — rather appropriately held on a Hollywood stage — was light on details about how Tesla plans to improve its “Full Self Driving” system, or how it plans to actually get its driverless cars on the road."

Putin's war was launched on a runway of lies; CNN, February 25, 2022

Opinion by Frida Ghitis, CNN ; Putin's war was launched on a runway of lies

"In the end, Putin did exactly what President Biden told the world he would do: He invaded Ukraine on a runway of lies.

In Russia, where most people get their news from government-controlled media, many believed Putin's claims of a nefarious threat from Ukraine. But the rest of the world saw the propaganda fall flat in real time. 

"Orwellian" doesn't begin to describe the falsehoods. Putin announced he was sending "peacekeepers," as he ordered his military machine to move into Ukrainian territory. His soldiers went into Ukraine to supposedly "de-Nazify" -- smearing the Nazi label on a country that is a democracy, though a flawed one, whose president happens to be Jewish. Putin claimed Moscow needed to move in to defend Ukraine's Russian speakers from a nonexistent "genocide" by Ukrainians (a tactic made infamous of World War II).

Washington succeeded in thoroughly delegitimizing not only the phony Russian justification for war, but Putin's own credibility before the entire world. It may take some time for the Russian people, too, to grasp the depth of the deception, but eventually they will."

Two young women in Florida ‘dressed up as grannies’ to get vaccinated, health official says; The Washington Post, February 18, 2021

  

Meryl Kornfield, The Washington Post; Two young women in Florida ‘dressed up as grannies’ to get vaccinated, health official says

"The coronavirus vaccine is so coveted that two women in Florida went to extremes Wednesday to get inoculated: They dressed as if they were elderly, health officials said.

The women, both younger than 45, “dressed up as grannies,” wearing bonnets, gloves and glasses to disguise themselves as older than 65, the age cutoff to be prioritized to get the coronavirus vaccine in Florida, according to Raul Pino, the director of the health department in Orange County, where Orlando is located. He attributed the deception to growing interest in the vaccine, giving the example of the women while explaining how high demand is in the area...

Meanwhile, an Indiana health department issued a warning earlier this month against what it called “a substantial lack of morality” after people had lied to vaccination site workers about their addresses, jobs and ages."

College cheating scandal is the tip of the iceberg; CNN, March 12, 2019

David Perry, CNN; College cheating scandal is the tip of the iceberg

"We're not talking about donating a building, we're talking about fraud," said Andrew Lelling, the US Attorney for Massachusetts, as he announced indictments in a massive scheme alleging that celebrities and other wealthy individuals used cheating, bribes, and lies to get their kids into elite colleges.

The behavior described in this alleged fraud should be punished. But on a broader and more basic level, the case also sheds light on deep inequities in our college admissions system. Because if someone can get their kid into Harvard by buying a building, let alone by committing any of the alleged acts emerging from this case, the scandal isn't just what's illegal, but what's legal as well. "

The Trumps and the Truth; Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2017

Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal; The Trumps and the Truth

"Even Donald Trump might agree that a major reason he won the 2016 election is because voters couldn’t abide Hillary Clinton’s legacy of scandal, deception and stonewalling. Yet on the story of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, Mr. Trump and his family are repeating mistakes that doomed Mrs. Clinton."

How can we stop algorithms telling lies?; Guardian, July 16, 2017

Cathy O'Neil, Guardian; 

How can we stop algorithms telling lies?

[Kip Currier: Cathy O'Neil is shining much-needed light on the little-known but influential power of algorithms on key aspects of our lives. I'm using her thought-provoking 2016 Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality And Threatens Democracy as one of several required reading texts in my Information Ethics graduate course at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Computing and Information.]

"A proliferation of silent and undetectable car crashes is harder to investigate than when it happens in plain sight.

I’d still maintain there’s hope. One of the miracles of being a data sceptic in a land of data evangelists is that people are so impressed with their technology, even when it is unintentionally creating harm, they openly describe how amazing it is. And the fact that we’ve already come across quite a few examples of algorithmic harm means that, as secret and opaque as these algorithms are, they’re eventually going to be discovered, albeit after they’ve caused a lot of trouble.

What does this mean for the future? First and foremost, we need to start keeping track. Each criminal algorithm we discover should be seen as a test case. Do the rule-breakers get into trouble? How much? Are the rules enforced, and what is the penalty? As we learned after the 2008 financial crisis, a rule is ignored if the penalty for breaking it is less than the profit pocketed. And that goes double for a broken rule that is only discovered half the time...

It’s time to gird ourselves for a fight. It will eventually be a technological arms race, but it starts, now, as a political fight. We need to demand evidence that algorithms with the potential to harm us be shown to be acting fairly, legally, and consistently. When we find problems, we need to enforce our laws with sufficiently hefty fines that companies don’t find it profitable to cheat in the first place. This is the time to start demanding that the machines work for us, and not the other way around."

Clinton’s Fibs vs. Trump’s Huge Lies; New York Times, 8/6/16

Nicholas Kristof, New York Times; Clinton’s Fibs vs. Trump’s Huge Lies:

"ONE persistent narrative in American politics is that Hillary Clinton is a slippery, compulsive liar while Donald Trump is a gutsy truth-teller.

Over all, the latest CBS News poll finds the public similarly repulsed by each candidate: 34 percent of registered voters say Clinton is honest and trustworthy compared with 36 percent for Trump.

Yet the idea that they are even in the same league is preposterous. If deception were a sport, Trump would be the Olympic gold medalist; Clinton would be an honorable mention at her local Y.

Let’s investigate."

Volkswagen apologizes, stops diesel sales in wake of US emissions scandal; CNet.com, 9/21/15

Antuan Goodwin, CNet.com; Volkswagen apologizes, stops diesel sales in wake of US emissions scandal:

"Volkswagen Group is apologizing after the US Environmental Protection Agency accused the automaker of using illegal software in its TDI diesel cars to skirt US emissions standards.

In a statement over the weekend, Volkswagen Group CEO Dr. Martin Winterkorn said he's "deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and the public." The German automaker ordered its US Volkswagen and Audi dealerships to halt sales of affected vehicles until a fix can be issued. In a further statement, issued Tuesday morning, VW indicates that 11 million Volkswagen Group autos (which includes Audi, Porsche and other brands) contain the software, and that the company has set aside EUR 6.5b to address costs.

The EPA claims certain VW and Audi vehicles use software that meets clean diesel emissions standards when hooked up to testing equipment but then switches to a dirtier mode when disconnected."