Digital Ethics

DeSmog talks with AI researchers about the risks of widespread fake climate content and how to combat it.

AI needs a lot of electricity and water to stay cool in data centers. We break down the toll prompt-by-prompt to show the scale of AI’s environmental needs.

“I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.” — Joanna Maciejewska

AI needs a lot of electricity and water to stay cool in data centers. We break down the toll prompt-by-prompt to show the scale of AI’s environmental needs.

OpenAI does not want anyone to know what o1 is “thinking" under the hood.

The technology can track individuals and monitor license plates. Here's why some Arizona school districts adopted it.

In this week’s newsletter: The AI company says its ‘o1’ model is capable of reason, a key blocker in the way of truly gamechanging artificial intelligence. But is it that simple?

Eryk Salvaggio says we must dispense with myths if we are to think more clearly about what AI actually is and does.

If professional scholars don’t engage the public, charlatans and Holocaust deniers certainly will.

Can artificial intelligence really enrich fossil-fuel companies and fight climate change at the same time? The tech giant says yes.

Making Facebook and Instagram private won’t delete that data.

Every query on Chat GPT or another artificial intelligence app requires extraordinary amounts of electricity and water. Users have no way of knowing.

Read to the end for a fun Clippy meme!

Concern is rising over surging water consumption by data centres, as well Big Tech's use of carbon offsets to write off emissions, and plans for a rejig of offset rules

The world’s generation of electronic waste is rising five times faster than documented e-waste recycling, the UN’s fourth Global E-waste Monitor (GEM) revealed. The 62 million tonnes of e-waste generated in 2022 would fill 1.55 million 40 tonne trucks, roughly enough trucks to form a bumper-to-bumper line encircling the equator, according to the report from

Energy usage might be front of mind amid the AI era, but surging data center water consumption is raising serious concerns among industry stakeholders

A conversation with Chat GPT can consume a bottle of water. So why is big tech setting up AI in some of the world’s driest countries?

Academic journals, archives, and repositories are seeing an increasing number of questionable research papers clearly produced using generative AI. They are often created with widely available, general-purpose AI applications, most likely ChatGPT, and mimic scientific writing. Google Scholar easily locates and lists these questionable papers alongside reputable, quality-controlled research. Our analysis of a selection of

Carbon capture outfits could be making up to $45B, say analysts

Four Thieves Vinegar Collective has made DIY medicine cheaper and more accessible to the masses.

By Abeba Birhane. We live in a world where technological corporations hold unprecedented power and influence. Technological solutions to social, political, and economic challenges are rampant. In the Global South, technology that is developed with Western perspectives, values, and interests is imported with little regulation or critical scrutiny. This work examines how Western tech monopolies, with their desire to dominate, control and influence social, political, and cultural discourse, share common characteristics with traditional colonialism. However, while traditional colonialism is driven by political and government forces, algorithmic colonialism is driven by corporate agendas. While the former used brute force domination, colonialism in the age of AI takes the form of ‘state-of-the-art algorithms’ and ‘AI driven solutions’ to social problems. Not only is Western-developed AI unfit for African problems, the West’s algorithmic invasion simultaneously impoverishes development of local products while also leaving the continent dependent on Western software and infrastructure. By drawing examples from various parts of the continent, this paper illustrates how the AI invasion of Africa echoes colonial era exploitation. This paper then concludes by outlining a vision of AI rooted in local community needs and interests.

Artificial intelligence researchers said Friday that they have deleted more than 2,000 web links to suspected child sexual abuse imagery from a dataset used to train popular AI image-generator tools.

​An inquiry into models that can create child sexual abuse material may have yielded results

Almost everyone I talk to in the tech industry is experiencing some level of burnout. Even if they don’t call it by that name, they are…

Study Reveals: AI Training is Copyright Infringement Brussels/Berlin - September 5, 2024: A computer scientist and a legal scholar shed light on the black…

A Blog post by Sasha Luccioni on Hugging Face

archived 31 Aug 2024 21:27:52 UTC

On its 10th anniversary, Signal’s president wants to remind you that the world’s most secure communications platform is a nonprofit. It’s free. It doesn’t track you or serve you ads. It pays its engineers very well. And it’s still a go-to app for hundreds of millions of people.

Surveillance Watch is an interactive map revealing the intricate connections between surveillance companies, their funding sources and affiliations.