Citizen Digital Foundation

May 2023

The Cookie Jar is a free newsletter helping you stay on top of 
tech developments, and how they impact you.
Subscribe to read before everyone else.

In this edition of The Cookie Jar...

Google amps up the AI race;

‘Godfather of AI’ scared of AI’ potential;

Spotify striking major chords;

MisinfoCon in Bengaluru, and more.

Hi there!

Welcome to the third edition of our monthly newsletter – The Cookie Jar, filled with updates that

👩‍💻 affect you as end-users of emerging technologies,

🦸 inform developers and businesses on the need for fostering safe and healthy tech experiences,

🚨 and what CDF has been up to make technology safer for everyone.

News Chips

A Bard days’ night

Alexandra_Koch/Pixabay

A recent memo leaked by a senior engineer at Google and agreed upon by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy indicates apprehensions of Google and OpenAI losing stronghold of AI development to the nimble open and democratic Open Source Software (OSS) building community. Meaning more competitive, custom, use-case specific solutions for everyone, and added impetus for the Indian OS community to build on existing open source projects in the country.
Democratisation of tech sits uneasy with the big tech companies that are now shedding all pretence to elbow ahead in the AI Arms Race. Bard – Google’s has made its generative A.I chatbot available in 180 countries now including India, and plans to bring Google Lens into Bard as well. Interestingly, European countries have been passed over. Two reasons emerge: 1. The EU crafting strict AI regulation could be a deterrent, while also indicating Bard is not suitable for mass-adoption yet. 2. Nicolas Moës, Director of European AI Governance indicates this could be a power-move by Google to make European regulators soften their stance in light of a possible disadvantage.

As AI powerplays intensify, Aza Raskin, Co-founder, Center for Humane Technology raises a deeper point that no matter how many benefits AI assembles for us, how many of them can be realised in a society that is dysfunctional owing to the loss of trust, safety, privacy, and sense-making.

More beleaguered geniuses

OpenClipart-Vectors/Pixabay

Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, dubbed the “the godfather of AI” is the latest to quit his position at Google after expressing fears about neural networks saying it was “quite scary”. He reiterated upon the potential spread of misinformation created by AI, claiming that the average person will “not be able to know what is true anymore.” He joins the league of several AI researchers from Google like Timnit GebruMargaret Mitchell and El Mahdi El Mhamdi who continue to draw attention to AI redwashing.

Spotting the sync-out

Peter Fischer/Pixabay

Spotify has taken down thousands of songs generated by A.I startup Boomy, for suspected artificial streaming – the practice of using bots to inflate streams. While most of the A.I concerns in the music industry have been related to copyright, CEO Daniel Ek noted that the music industry had “legitimate concerns” about AI-generated music calling it both “cool and scary”.

Code AI

Tumisu/Pixabay

On April 1st, 2023, India’s first A.I hackathon took place in Bengaluru.  With over 150 participants, this hackathon saw some very interesting projects from talking to Youtube videos and creating A.I generated comics, to converting text to animation and simplifying coding for everyone. It appears AI accessibility is going to enable mass adoption of high-end technologies much faster.

Cracking down on misinformation

misinfocon.com

Misinfocon, a conference focused on fostering interdisciplinary conversations on misinformation research and response, saw its first Indian edition in Bengaluru from 12th – 14th May. Organised by Hacks/HackersMeedan and Tattle, Misinfocon India 2023 convened technology, policy, media, and design professionals to cultivate an understanding and action around misinformation in India. The event consisted of two days of talks and workshops, followed by a hackathon which touched upon different aspects of trust and safety online. 

Retreat to catapult?

creozavr/Pixabay

After major pushback from activist and advocacy groups, the latest notification under the amended IT Rules, 2023 suggests that the Centre will opt for a three-member fact checking unit, with two members from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and one independent member with expertise in law, social media or public policy. According to an earlier notification, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) was to be the government’s self-appointed fact checking agency, raising concerns of censorship of free speech in the country.

CDF Chunks

May was a busy month at CDF. A few glimpses of what kept us on our feet.

  • A workshop for media students at Kerala Media Academy, Kochi, to prepare them for ‘Hackfake’ an upcoming hackathon to experiment with automated fact-checking tools for Malayalam news-desks.
  • A session for senior women leaders of Technopark Trivandrum – AI Development and Equity in Tech Leadership – as part of the ‘Accelerated Leadership Programme’ by Women Inclusive In Technology and Trinity Skillworks.
  • discussion with Isabelle Thomas, Founding curator of Global Shapers Hub, Calicut on World Telecommunications Day on online safety for children and what parents can do to create healthier online experiences for them.
  • Session on Impact of AI on the Information Ecosystem for LLB students of Sai University, Chennai.

💡We Got Litt!

Factshala Innovation Lab has selected Litt, CDF’s Information Literacy initiative, among 10 media literacy projects from across India, for a 6-month incubation. The lab will help build capacity of media and community organisations to incubate unique and innovative media literacy interventions in India.

🥷🦹 Bring your superpowers!

🦾 CDF is a non-profit, tackling techno-social issues like misinformation, online harassment, online child sexual abuse, polarisation, data & privacy breaches, cyber fraud, hypertargeting, behaviour manipulation, AI Bias, election engineering etc.  We do this through knowledge solutions, responsible tech advocacy, and good tech collaborations under our goals of AwarenessAccountability and Action.
See our work here.

🙌 Contribute to our work. Become a #GoodTech Supporter.

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