911 for deepfakes in India
WhatsApp is doing its best to forum-slide its privacypolicygate. Big Daddy Meta has fired a new cannon from the WhatsApp canoe. The target? The deepfake deluge.
The Misinformation Combat Alliance (a non-profit assembly of media, fact-checkers and researchers) has collabed with Meta to launch a WhatsApp Tipline dedicated to deepfakes, called Deepfakes Analysis Unit (DAU). What’s a Tipline? Think of it as the 911 of deepfake reporting. The next time a deepfake or a sus sounding audio clip pops up on a family WhatsApp group, try forwarding it to +91 99990-25044 for authentication.
This deepfake-checking initiative is a timely solution in the election season for sure, but barely holds a candle to the melting pot of misinformation that Meta still is. For perspective, note that only 13% of Meta’s global budget for tackling misinformation is spent on countries outside the US, and India is a voracious market for all of Facebook’s junk.
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Mechanical nurses
Nvidia x Hippocratic AI’s new Gen AI nurses (that eerily look and talk like real ones) can video call you to offer medical advice. You’re probably thinking – “No thanks, I’ll look up my symptoms online!” We can’t say what’s worse. And get this – Nvidia is making AI nurses available at $9 an hour to replace the human ones at $90 an hour. Why, though?
Hippocratic boasted about how their AI nurses were better than real-life nurses, but clarified they cannot make diagnoses – thank heavens! Aiming to resolve the nursing staff shortage during the pandemic and after, Hippocratic AI is seemingly trying to eliminate the remaining, and go straight after the ‘Hippocratic Oath’ – physicians’ code of ethics that translates to ‘first do no harm’. Hypocritical much?
It might just do more harm than good for healthcare accessibility, if the robotic nurses end up replacing human nurses and compromising the fundamental nature of the job of nursing, rather than serve as trusty minions taking care of patient check-ins, reporting back and such.
Hole in the boAt
BoAt-heads, hold on tight because this ship has crashed into a gigantic data breach, dumping sensitive personal data of 7.5 million Indian customers down the trenches a.k.a the dark web. 2 euros (180 bucks) – that’s how much your critical personal information is up for on the dark web. ShopifyGUY, the hacker behind the leak showboated about his latest feat and had some choice expletives to hurl at the audio wearables brand.
The hacker Robinhood-ed the brand by putting the data up for sale for dirt-cheap prices as a lesson for their poor security measures. The real loser though is the customer whose data is now vulnerable to scams, financial frauds, phishing attacks and more. Meanwhile, boAt may opt for the Deny, Deny, Deny route instead of finding and fixing the leak while victims are left to deal with the soon-to-hit iceberg of more profiling and targeting by bad actors and wolves in sheepskin.
Gen AI loses VC nodSee AlsoExploring Ethical Boundaries: The Rise Of Deepfake Technology In Modern Mediabitchy | Billie Eilish takes a big swipe at ‘wasteful’ artists who do multiple vinyl packages12 Ethical Concerns to Consider with AI Deepfake Generators - Toolify AIBillie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, Stevie Wonder and more musicians demand protection against AI
Even as Gen AI basks in its sunshine-and-daisies moment with startups hastily replacing ‘web3’ and ‘crypto’ in their pitches with ‘AI’ to lure the big VC bucks, some seem to be hitting a brick wall. Some VCs pulled the plug on Gen AI startups in 2023 as both private and corporate investments did a freefall. We saw AI companies jam during the golden period. But now it’s time to scram since VCs are not pumped about investing in Gen AI startups due to slow growth.
Paul Madera of Meritech Capital, who has betted on companies like Facebook and Salesforce in the past, told fellow investors to watch out for Gen AI adoption since the initial business traction could all just be smoke and mirrors. He says, “We have to be a lot more careful. We are seeing a massive experimentation phase here that can give you the head fake that a (startup) has a real business.
Stability AI makes a fine case of sky-high valued AI startups turning out to be duds. Samir Kumar of Touring Capital also thinks that AI is still taking baby steps, with a lot of dabbling going on. Just because a Gen AI startup is making noise, doesn’t mean there’s any real business happening (yet).
Feature, not bug
Here’s a story about how Governments should pause and take a deep breath when it comes to tech, especially AI. The New York City administration let loose their AI-powered chatbot on unassuming New Yorkers. But it was soon clear that the NYC bot didn’t fully understand the assignment when business owners got hilariously wrong answers to 'What's the best way to run a business in the city?’ – ‘Break the law’.That’s what the NYC bot is telling businesses in a classic example of how ungoverned tech is always so famously bad.
Grab some popcorn because here are more faux pas by the NYC bot:
‘Are bosses entitled to worker tips?’
Bot: “Yes they are.”
‘Can landlords financially discriminate between tenants?’
Bot: “They can.”
Even though the NYC bot boasts of an impressive background, backed by Microsoft’s Azure AI services, it sure doesn’t mean business for NYC.
In-Stability
Hot Gen AI startups are running on shaky ground. In the latest, Stability AI’s CEO Emad Mostaque called it quits following key researchers a.k.a makers of the company (half a dozen, to be precise). Emad pretty much said ‘See ya! Out chasing decentralised AI’ because he’s squirmy about a handful of companies controlling a lot of AI. But somehow we’re not convinced with this excuse.
Emad’s time at Stability has been a rocky ride with rumours of him even being a British spy agent running wild. While the board was pushing towards commercialisation, Emad was having none of it and chose to exit with a call for open-source and decentralised AI. Lawsuits, mismanagement, and cash crunch were just some of the woes of Stability AI during his time. One thing is for sure, the next CEO of Stability isn’t going to be as open as our friend Emad here.
Billie will ‘bury a friend’
Another fraternity is setting the record straight on how they want to be treated by AI and tech companies. Global music artists are saying ‘Oh no, you don’t!’ as ‘predatory AI’ continues to undermine music and the rights of human musicians.
An army of 200-odd artists, including cream-of-the-crop names like Billie Eilish, Camilla Cabello, J Balvin, and Katy Perry wrote a strongly worded letter to technology companies and digital music services, asking them to lay their AI hands off artist rights. They called out AI companies using their copyrighted works to train their models in a chorus to stop the sabotage of creativity stemming from human artists and creators.
However, there’s a way music artists and AI companies could be friends. The 3C’s of AI and artists’ collaboration involves taking consent, crediting the artist and offering fair compensation. Besides, recommending a playlist of personalised songs isn’t the same as AI-generated garbungle trained on the work of creative artists in the name of music. It ain’t rocket science.
Garbage in, Google out
Amazon authors are aplenty, but the new kid on the block is AI-generated E-books. And they’re selling like hotcakes among the unsuspecting. That’s only half the problem. The other half is with Google Books gobbling up scores of this trash to no end.
The world has barely woken up to poor quality, dated books being spat out using Chat-GPT, with the obvious giveaway still being multiple instances of the phrase ‘As of my last update in September 2021’ (for those who still read). But Google Ngram Viewer, a fun tool and a favourite of researchers, going wonky over authenticating the pfaff is where many are drawing the line. Basically, Ngram is a tool that pulls up references to a term or a phrase, say, ‘Cardi B’ across the entire body of books on Google Books. So, if Google Books is indexing trashy AI-generated content, Ngram will become totally useless for researchers and academics who rely on it. We are hoping this whole Gen AI business will get past the trough of disillusionment soon(er), although some experts are less hopeful.
Snap ‘solar’ selectively switched off
Snapchat has been working hard to keep up with its “streak” of FOMO-inducing features. After huge outcries from media and civil society groups and pressure from the US Senate for perpetrating cyberbullying and feelings of isolation among tweens, Snap has turned off (not removed) one of its toxic features – the solar system – a feature for paid users that ranks the ‘closeness’ of online friends aka the planets in the solar system based on the number of interactions they have online. Cleverly, Snap offered an opt-in option for the Solar System feature instead of removing it altogether. Ever heard of a paid subscriber who settles for less? Who are you kidding, Snap?
Teen cliques are toxic as it is. Needless to say, getting ousted from a Snap friend’s social stratosphere adds a lot more anxiety to deal with for Snap’s teen subscribers. At least this toxic feature hasn't dropped in India (yet). PS. Keep an eye out parents, it may just pop up on your child’s screen and in their convos.
Amazon’s AI (Actually Indians)
Amazon ditched its overhyped tech ‘Just Walk Out’. Just Walk Out allowed grocery shoppers to hop, skip and jump the checkout aisle at Amazon Fresh stores in the US. Turns out, it wasn’t pure automation or AI. It was actually just cheap labour with a thousand workers in India watching shoppers’ every move, tracking their purchases and generating receipts. And eventually there occurred some… let’s call it ‘latency’, leading to inaccuracies and slip-ups.
Now that the cat’s out of the shopping bag, Amazon is betting on Dash Carts, another data-hoarding tech that scans items from shopping bags and debits customers’ accounts. This is probably the first high-profile retail AI disaster. Labelled “revolutionary” by the brand at first for the automation technologies they claimed to have employed, it appears no revolution is complete without Indians at the centre of it.
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Turning the tides with tech for coastal resilience
April at CDF kicked off with a virtual roundtable on "Tech for Coastal Resilience" with Sustera and the Centre for Development Initiatives (CDI). Experts and community reps brainstormed how innovative tech can help vulnerable regions weather climate change. OpenNyAI's Jugalbandi demo by Atreyo Bannerjee showcased AI bridging information gaps, while disaster expert Sriram Ananthanarayanan stressed connecting existing data to those in need. TinkerHub's Cyril Sebastian tackled the challenges of building Malayalam-based AI tools. Active audience participation rounded out the discussion, paving the way for exciting coastal resilience initiatives. This is being followed up with discussions to identify one specific problem that we could attempt to build a solution for. Watch this space for more.
Unpacking AI Ethics at Drishti 2024
Our session at the College of Engineering Trivandrum (CET) spotlighting the nuanced challenges and alarming harms of rampant, unregulated deployment of automation systems, urged engineering students to think beyond binaries. The students interacted with us on philosophy, culture, ethical dilemmas and everything else that incentivises the design of tech architecture. They shared their own insightful, complex examples of real-world ethical dilemmas.
Good Tech Squad’s super crescendo!
April was a big month for CDF’s GTS at TRINS:
Raising digital natives: We unpacked the mechanics of ‘junk-tech’ and the truly harrowing realities of online child sexual abuse and teen mental health struggles for the parents of Trivandrum International School (TRINS) in a hybrid session.
An F- for Junk Tech! Through activities like ‘Rate the Junk Tech’ and ‘Post it, Vote it’, the students of grades 5 to 7 got hands-on experience distinguishing useful tech from the mindless ‘junk’ they consume online. We also tackled the tricky line between harmless online pranks and cyberbullying.
Scrolling through loneliness: We hosted our interdisciplinary dialogue – the Youth Dialogue Forum (YDF) – in collaboration with CDF's Good Tech Squad (GTS) at TRINS wherein the students tackled the complex issue of loneliness in a hyper-connected world.
Finding fake news fault lines - with Tatvika Avalokanam
After making waves at TRINS earlier this month, CDF's Youth Dialogue Forum (YDF) headed to its next stop – the vibrant debating community of Tatvika Avalokanam at The Reading Room in Trivandrum! This time, the format was a free-flowing, no-holds-barred dialogue where perspectives on the topic of who's responsible for the spread of fake news and harmful content online really flew. From Big Tech platforms to the creators to us as consumers, no potential culprit was left unscathed as this high-calibre group with diverse participants from tech, law, banking and medicine debated the nuances of the spread of misinformation. For us, it was a thrilling chance to engage such a diverse set of voices in these vital conversations at the intersection of society and technology and we plan to bring our YDF program to even more stages throughout the year!
CDF is a non-profit, working to influence systems change to mitigate
techno-social issues like misinformation, online harassment, online child sexual abuse, polarisation, teen mental health crisis, data & privacy breaches, cyber fraud, and behaviour manipulation. We do this by fostering information literacy, responsible tech advocacy, and good-tech collaborations under our approaches of Awareness, Accountability and Action.
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