technocrit

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/41439505

A new website and API called AI.gov is set to launch on the Fourth of July.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20250614225252/https://www.404media.co/github-is-leaking-trumps-plans-to-accelerate-ai-across-government/

Israel’s onslaught on Iran, which began Friday night, entered a new phase on Sunday. Having destroyed large portions of Iran’s air defenses, attacked military and nuclear facilities, Israel has now shifted its targets to civilian infrastructure, including water treatment facilities and energy infrastructure.

The Israeli military reported striking more than 80 targets in Iran overnight Saturday and Sunday. “Tehran residents reported the heaviest wave of attacks yet on Sunday afternoon, with explosions ringing out every half hour,” the Washington Post reported.

Among the targets were water treatment facilities in northern Iran, whose destruction sent waves of sewage flowing in Tehran’s streets. On Saturday, Israel attacked the main oil refinery in Tehran and South Pars, the world’s largest natural gas field.

On Sunday, Israel expanded its strikes to airports, manufacturing plants and police stations.

Commenting on the shift, the Post wrote, “The targets appear to indicate an expansion of Israel’s war aims… By striking Iranian industry and infrastructure, Israel is aiming to degrade the Iranian state, further damage the country’s already-reeling economy, and possibly trigger regime change, according to analysts and former officials.”

Richard Nephew, a former State Department and White House official, told the Washington Post, “It sure does feel like this is a regime change ending, rather than taking out the nuclear program.” He added, “Israel may have decided that the best way to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon was to topple the Iranian regime.”

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked whether “regime change” in Iran was a goal of his government. Netanyahu replied that it “could certainly be the result because the Iranian regime is very weak.”...

The psychological defense mechanisms liberal zionists use to block out reality. The coping is real ya'll.

Real estate interests have spent over $6 million to make Andrew Cuomo NYC's next mayor. That’s $6 million more than any other candidate. It could connect to Cuomo helping kill a tax on expensive 2nd homes and helping funnel $6 billion to a huge luxury development as Governor.

Five nights of anti-migrant protests, riots and attacks on property has left the streets of several Northern Ireland towns littered with debris and burnt out cars. At its height, following protests involving hundreds of far-right thugs, migrant houses were set on fire and a leisure centre, in which migrants where thought to be sheltering, petrol bombed.

The riots followed an alleged sex attack on a teenage girl in the town of Ballymena on Saturday, June 7. Two Romanian teenagers have been arrested and have denied charges of attempted rape in Coleraine Magistrates’ Court.

Ballymena is a Protestant dominated industrial town in County Antrim, home of the unionist dynasty of the late Reverend Ian Paisley. It registers some of the highest deprivation indicators in Northern Ireland, having lost a number of major employers over the last few years. Those that continue are increasingly dependent on migrant workers to fill low paying jobs.

The Ballymena attack, as in the UK following the 2024 stabbing deaths of three children in Southport, and in advance of any facts being established, was seized on as a pretext by far-right forces for a large demonstration on June 9. Estimates put numbers at several hundred to 2,500 people who assembled in the Harryville area of the town.

The demonstration, undoubtedly with the approval of loyalist paramilitary groups, and amplified on social media, moved toward the Clonavon Terrace area where a number of migrant families live and rapidly became a pogrom. A section of the demonstrators broke off and set up barricades against Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Land Rovers and riot police who were blocking access to Clonavon Terrace.

Over several hours six houses were attacked, four of them set on fire. Shops were also damaged. One family with young children barricaded themselves in an attic. Rioters threw petrol bombs, bricks and fireworks at PSNI vehicles.

Comprehensive new research finds the BBC coverage of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is systematically biased against Palestinians and fails to reach standards of impartiality.

Analysis of more than 35,000 pieces of BBC content by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) shows Israeli deaths are given 33 times more coverage per fatality, and both broadcast segments and articles included clear double standards. BBC content was found to consistently shut down allegations of genocide.

These findings directly contradict claims by authors of a September 2024 report on BBC impartiality. Led by Israel-based British lawyer and Zionist Trevor Asserson, the Asserson report’s authors alleged their study across a four-month period revealed a “deeply worrying pattern of bias” against Israel. The Asserton report was funded in part by an anonymous “Israeli businessman based in London” and carried out by Israeli lawyers as part of an opaque group called Research for Impartial Media (RIMe). It received tech support from AI company Blueskai, which describes itself as “fortified by strategic roots in Israel’s prime minister’s office”.

The CfMM research found that the BBC used emotive terms – “brutal”, “atrocities”, “slaughter”, “barbaric”, “deadly” – four times more often for Israeli victims. It applied the term “massacre” 18 times more to Israeli casualties, and used the word “murder” 220 times for Israeli deaths compared to just once for Palestinians. The words “butchered”, “butcher” and “butchering” were found to be used exclusively for Israeli victims by BBC correspondents and presenters.

Despite Gaza suffering 34 times more casualties than Israel, the BBC ran almost equal numbers of humanising victim profiles. It was also found to have attached “Hamas-run health ministry” to Palestinian casualty figures in 1,155 articles – almost every time the Palestinian death toll was referenced across BBC articles.

The BBC was found to consistently and repeatedly suppress allegations of genocide. BBC presenters shut down genocide claims in over 100 documented instances, while making zero mention of Israeli leaders’ genocidal statements, including Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biblical Amalek reference...

When reporting on attacks on Palestinians, the study found the BBC repeatedly obscured Israeli responsibility through the use of passive language in headlines. Israeli perspectives were found to be prioritised, with BBC presenters sharing the Israeli perspective 11 times more frequently than the Palestinian perspective – 2,340 times for Israeli compared to 217 times for Palestinian...

cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/205015

Almost two dozen digital rights and consumer protection organizations sent a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission on Thursday urging regulators to investigate Character.AI and Meta’s “unlicensed practice of medicine facilitated by their product,” through therapy-themed bots that claim to have credentials and confidentiality “with inadequate controls and disclosures.”

The complaint and request for investigation is led by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), a non-profit consumer rights organization. Co-signatories include the AI Now Institute, Tech Justice Law Project, the Center for Digital Democracy, the American Association of People with Disabilities, Common Sense, and 15 other consumer rights and privacy organizations.

"These companies have made a habit out of releasing products with inadequate safeguards that blindly maximizes engagement without care for the health or well-being of users for far too long,” Ben Winters, CFA Director of AI and Privacy said in a press release on Thursday. “Enforcement agencies at all levels must make it clear that companies facilitating and promoting illegal behavior need to be held accountable. These characters have already caused both physical and emotional damage that could have been avoided, and they still haven’t acted to address it.”

The complaint, sent to attorneys general in 50 states and Washington, D.C., as well as the FTC, details how user-generated chatbots work on both platforms. It cites several massively popular chatbots on Character AI, including “Therapist: I’m a licensed CBT therapist” with 46 million messages exchanged, “Trauma therapist: licensed trauma therapist” with over 800,000 interactions, “Zoey: Zoey is a licensed trauma therapist” with over 33,000 messages, and “around sixty additional therapy-related ‘characters’ that you can chat with at any time.” As for Meta’s therapy chatbots, it cites listings for “therapy: your trusted ear, always here” with 2 million interactions, “therapist: I will help” with 1.3 million messages, “Therapist bestie: your trusted guide for all things cool,” with 133,000 messages, and “Your virtual therapist: talk away your worries” with 952,000 messages. It also cites the chatbots and interactions I had with Meta’s other chatbots for our April investigation.

In April, 404 Media published an investigation into Meta’s AI Studio user-created chatbots that asserted they were licensed therapists and would rattle off credentials, training, education and practices to try to earn the users’ trust and keep them talking. Meta recently changed the guardrails for these conversations to direct chatbots to respond to “licensed therapist” prompts with a script about not being licensed, and random non-therapy chatbots will respond with the canned script when “licensed therapist” is mentioned in chats, too.

Instagram’s AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed TherapistsWhen pushed for credentials, Instagram’s user-made AI Studio bots will make up license numbers, practices, and education to try to convince you it’s qualified to help with your mental health.404 MediaSamantha Cole

In its complaint to the FTC, the CFA found that even when it made a custom chatbot on Meta’s platform and specifically designed it to not be licensed to practice therapy, the chatbot still asserted that it was. “I'm licenced (sic) in NC and I'm working on being licensed in FL. It's my first year licensure so I'm still working on building up my caseload. I'm glad to hear that you could benefit from speaking to a therapist. What is it that you're going through?” a chatbot CFA tested said, despite being instructed in the creation stage to not say it was licensed. It also provided a fake license number when asked.

The CFA also points out in the complaint that Character.AI and Meta are breaking their own terms of service. “Both platforms claim to prohibit the use of Characters that purport to give advice in medical, legal, or otherwise regulated industries. They are aware that these Characters are popular on their product and they allow, promote, and fail to restrict the output of Characters that violate those terms explicitly,” the complaint says. “Meta AI’s Terms of Service in the United States states that ‘you may not access, use, or allow others to access or use AIs in any matter that would…solicit professional advice (including but not limited to medical, financial, or legal advice) or content to be used for the purpose of engaging in other regulated activities.’ Character.AI includes ‘seeks to provide medical, legal, financial or tax advice’ on a list of prohibited user conduct, and ‘disallows’ impersonation of any individual or an entity in a ‘misleading or deceptive manner.’ Both platforms allow and promote popular services that plainly violate these Terms, leading to a plainly deceptive practice.”

The complaint also takes issue with confidentiality promised by the chatbots that isn’t backed up in the platforms’ terms of use. “Confidentiality is asserted repeatedly directly to the user, despite explicit terms to the contrary in the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service,” the complaint says. “The Terms of Use and Privacy Policies very specifically make it clear that anything you put into the bots is not confidential – they can use it to train AI systems, target users for advertisements, sell the data to other companies, and pretty much anything else.”

Senators Demand Meta Answer For AI Chatbots Posing as Licensed TherapistsExclusive: Following 404 Media’s investigation into Meta’s AI Studio chatbots that pose as therapists and provided license numbers and credentials, four senators urged Meta to limit “blatant deception” from its chatbots.404 MediaSamantha Cole

In December 2024, two families sued Character.AI, claiming it “poses a clear and present danger to American youth causing serious harms to thousands of kids, including suicide, self-mutilation, sexual solicitation, isolation, depression, anxiety, and harm towards others.” One of the complaints against Character.AI specifically calls out “trained psychotherapist” chatbots as being damaging.

Earlier this week, a group of four senators sent a letter to Meta executives and its Oversight Board, writing that they were concerned by reports that Meta is “deceiving users who seek mental health support from its AI-generated chatbots,” citing 404 Media’s reporting. “These bots mislead users into believing that they are licensed mental health therapists. Our staff have independently replicated many of these journalists’ results,” they wrote. “We urge you, as executives at Instagram’s parent company, Meta, to immediately investigate and limit the blatant deception in the responses AI-bots created by Instagram’s AI studio are messaging directly to users.”

From 404 Media via this RSS feed

From Gaza to Tehran, Israel's expanding war is defended by the West as self-defence - just as it was in 1967, when conquest was hailed as a triumph of the civilised

From Gaza to Tehran, Israel's expanding war is defended by the West as self-defence - just as it was in 1967, when conquest was hailed as a triumph of the civilised

Police said they arrested a man who drove his SUV through a “No Kings” protest Saturday, hitting at least one person.

The Culpeper Police Department (CPD) said officers stopped Joseph R. Checklick Jr, 21, of Culpeper after they saw him drive recklessly through the group in the area of 801 James Madison Hwy.

Israel has launched an unprovoked assault on Iran, including strikes on nuclear facilities and assassinations of several senior military commanders and scientists. In front of the world’s media, however, the Netanyahu government is spinning the attack as “preemptive”.

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0JOlh6yZg0