A Microsoft researcher unpacks the power and perils of today’s artificial intelligence; Science, April 12, 2021

Michael Spezio , Science; A Microsoft researcher unpacks the power and perils of today’s artificial intelligence

"Kate Crawford’s new book, Atlas of AI, is a sweeping view of artificial intelligence (AI) that frames the technology as a collection of empires, decisions, and actions that together are fast eliminating possibilities of sustainable futures on a global scale. Crawford, a senior principal researcher at Microsoft’s FATE (Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics in AI) group, conceives of AI as a one-word encapsulation of imperial design, akin to Calder Willingham’s invocation of the word “plastics” in his 1967 screenplay for The Graduate (1). AI, machine learning, and other concepts are here understood as efforts, practices, and embodied material manipulations of the levers of global power."

Stop talking about AI ethics. It’s time to talk about power.; MIT Technology Review, April 23, 2021

 Karen Hao, MIT Technology Review;

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Stop talking about AI ethics. It’s time to talk about power.

"If there’s been a real trap in the tech sector for the last decade, it’s that the theory of change has always centered engineering. It’s always been, “If there’s a problem, there’s a tech fix for it.” And only recently are we starting to see that broaden out to “Oh, well, if there’s a problem, then regulation can fix it. Policymakers have a role.”

But I think we need to broaden that out even further. We have to say also: Where are the civil society groups, where are the activists, where are the advocates who are addressing issues of climate justice, labor rights, data protection? How do we include them in these discussions? How do we include affected communities?

In other words, how do we make this a far deeper democratic conversation around how these systems are already influencing the lives of billions of people in primarily unaccountable ways that live outside of regulation and democratic oversight?

In that sense, this book is trying to de-center tech and starting to ask bigger questions around: What sort of world do we want to live in?""

Congress tried to crack Zuckerberg – but Facebook still has all the power; The Guardian, April 10, 2018

Julia Carrie Wong, The Guardian; Congress tried to crack Zuckerberg – but Facebook still has all the power

"In the end, it was Zuckerberg’s attitude toward his own privacy that was most revealing of the difference between the control that Facebook offers users and actual privacy. Zuckerberg said many times that he and his all his family used Facebook – a talking point we were apparently meant to take as proof that Facebook is safe.

Yet under questioning from Senator Dick Durbin, Zuckerberg expressed discomfort with revealing certain personal information, such as which hotel he was staying at while in Washington DC.

I’m a relatively well-informed Facebook user. I probably pay more attention than most people to privacy settings, and I consistently turn off things like location tracking. And yet, my Facebook data includes dozens of cases where the company has logged my location based on my IP address.

Zuckerberg may not want us to know where he slept last night, but his company sure as hell knows where the rest of us are sleeping."

The tyranny of algorithms is part of our lives: soon they could rate everything we do; Guardian, March 5, 2018

John Harris, Guardian; The tyranny of algorithms is part of our lives: soon they could rate everything we do

"The tyranny of algorithms is now an inbuilt part of our lives.

These systems are sprawling, often randomly connected, and often beyond logic. But viewed from another angle, they are also the potential constituent parts of comprehensive social credit systems, awaiting the moment at which they will be glued together. That point may yet come, thanks to the ever-expanding reach of the internet. If our phones and debit cards already leave a huge trail of data, the so-called internet of things is now increasing our informational footprint at speed...

Personal data and its endless uses form one of the most fundamental issues of our time, which boils down to the relationship between the individual and power, whether exercised by government or private organisations."

Sexual harassment is about power. Why not fight it as we do bullying?; Guardian, February 10, 2018

Claire Potter, Guardian; Sexual harassment is about power. Why not fight it as we do bullying?

"As management professionals know, enabling a bully damages a work culture. As the Stanford business professor Robert Sutton points out in his book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t (2010), one organization calculated that in one year it had paid over $160,000 in costs associated with a workplace bully. This cost did not include the “suffering and heartache, so much time wasted by talented people”, and the “emotional and physical toll on witnesses and bystanders”.

The company decided to deduct the money lost from the bully’s violent behaviors from his compensation, shifting some of the consequences of the anti-social, violent behavior back on to the bully. Notably, this is very different from strategies that shielded Weinstein, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and other media figures, in which the corporation made a continuing investment in the bully by paying complainants off, disposing of them, and hiring new employees.

Perhaps a more important outcome of fining the bully is to shift the stigma to the bully...

Many victims report intense fear as they try to process an encounter in the moment, a fear that is so intense it results in a feeling frozen, paralyzed, or leaving their own bodies...

Investing in the health of the many rather than knuckling under to the most powerful among us is not only the key to ending sexual harassment, it charts a clear path to a workplace that says no to bullying."

“Moral Sewage”: Trump Is The Opposite Of Christianity; Huffington Post, 8/12/16

Mike Lux, Huffington Post; “Moral Sewage”: Trump Is The Opposite Of Christianity:

"It wasn’t me who called Donald Trump’s campaign “reality television moral sewage.” The person who said that was none other than Russell Moore, the very conservative president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. And it isn’t just things like calling women fat pigs, commenting on women based on how they look, or talking about the size of his penis in a nationally televised debate. Donald Trump’s entire philosophy of life is predicated on the Ayn Randian notion of the ‘virtue of selfishness,’ the belief that power and wealth are the zenith of what is important and good in the world — not more old-fashioned values like basic human decency. Is there a clearer antithesis to what Jesus preached in the gospels?"...

Hillary firmly believes in the Methodist social gospel, exemplified in that quote from the Methodist Church’s founder, John Wesley, that she mentioned in her convention speech: “Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.”"

Bill Clinton’s Surprise Loretta Lynch Visit Isn’t a Scandal. But It Is a Problem.; Slate, 7/1/16

Josh Voorhees, Slate; Bill Clinton’s Surprise Loretta Lynch Visit Isn’t a Scandal. But It Is a Problem. :

"Bill Clinton either couldn’t stop himself or didn’t want to. On Monday, the former president stepped off his private plane in Phoenix and walked across the tarmac to pay a visit to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who was aboard a government plane parked at the same airport. The unplanned drop-in, according to Lynch, was nothing more than a harmless social call during which Clinton mostly talked about his grandkids. Republicans, of course, saw something else entirely. “The system is totally rigged,” Donald Trump tweeted Friday. “Does anybody really believe that meeting was just a coincidence?”

Trump and his conservative allies are—surprise, surprise—overplaying this. There’s absolutely no evidence that this was a planned meeting, and if Clinton wants to flex his political muscle or try to call in a favor to help his wife, all he would need to do is pick up the phone. Likewise, there’s also nothing to suggest that Lynch would bow to such pressure even if it were there...

But you don’t have to be partial to tweeting Benghazi acrostics to get worked up over this Lynch mess. Yes, the possibility of favor trading and conflicts of interest hangs over almost every decision in and out of Washington. And, no, Bill and Hillary Clinton didn’t create the imperfect system we have. But it’s also clear that they’ve come as close as anyone has to perfecting how to use it to their own advantage. The fact that they refuse to acknowledge the power of their, well, power and act accordingly is either willfully naïve or intentionally dishonest. Neither of which should make anyone feel any better about the idea of them returning to the White House."