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@DAIRInstitute
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AI is not inevitable. We DAIR to imagine, build & use AI deliberately. Follow us on Mastodon at @[email protected]
Joined November 2021
Don't forget to subscribe to our monthly newsletter on our website for monthly updates. Scroll to the bottom of to sign up.
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We are @DAIRInstitute — an independent, community-rooted #AI research institute free from #BigTech's pervasive influence. Founded by @timnitGebru.
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Join us for our #NoTechForApartheid event in with @haymarketbooks to amplify the #NoTechForApartheid campaign & learn what we can do as tech workers. We don't have the registration page yet but you can add your email here to get info: Details in thread 👇
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We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Alex Hanna as our incoming director of research. A sociologist by training, her work centers on the data used in new computational technologies, and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. 1/4.
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Twitter's machine learning ethics & transparency (META) team led by our friend @ruchowdh, has been laid off along with countless other workers. What's happening there should be a wakeup call on the consequences of leaving our technological future to the whims of billionaires.
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We, along with @AINowInstitute and.@logic_magazine, are proud to support Surveillance Watch: an interactive map revealing the intricate connections between surveillance companies, their funding sources and affiliations.
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In this Op-ed, @timnitGebru & @mmitchell_ai note that "Scientists & engineers should focus on building models that meet people’s needs for different tasks, & that can be evaluated on that basis, rather than claiming they’re creating über consciousness." .
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As we celebrate our launch day, we want to extend deep gratitude to our Advisory Committee Members @safiyanoble and @CwaMaina who have helped us get here, and our first research fellow Raesetja Sefala
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Congratulations to Rylan Schaeffer, Brando Miranda, Sanmi Koyejo for winning a best paper award at NeurIPS for this insightful paper. Are Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models a Mirage?.
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"AI has launched a new era in unpaid labor, one in which everyone participates in building the foundations for new companies and technologies while remaining completely oblivious to their contributions.". @adrienneandgp and @MilagrosMiceli .
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For our 1 year anniversary virtual events, we'll have talks, panels and breakout discussions with attendees. Sign up here: Why should we always clean up after harmful tech rather than implementing our imagination of a technological future that serves us?
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We are hiring a senior community-based researcher. Full job ad and application here:
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Today we welcome @MilagrosMiceli as a research fellow. Milagros's research focusses on labor conditions and power asymmetries in outsourced data work as well as their effects on machine learning datasets. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork, interviews and workshops.
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Join us on March 17th for Stochastic Parrots Day marking the 2nd anniversary of the paper. The authors will be joined by scientists, teachers, artists, legal scholars & data workers to discuss the large language model landscape. Sign up here:
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Join us virtually on December 2nd and 3rd as we celebrate our 1st anniversary. We'll have interactive talks and conversations with DAIR's team members located across North America, Europe & Africa. 1/4.
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That's a wrap. Thank you for celebrating with us. Stay tuned for our research philosophy which will be released in English, Spanish, Arabic, Tigrinya and Amharic along with our revamped website.
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Congratulations to our director of research Dr. @alexhanna for being listed in Go Magazine's 100 Women We Love. 🎉🎉🎉. We agree!.
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Congratulations to Dr.@jovialjoy, founder of @AJLUnited, for receiving the well deserved Technological Innovation Award from the King Center.
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Our Founder, @timnitGebru, will be speaking at the Women in AI Ethics Summit today! Tune in 8am-12pm PST! #AIChangemakers.
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"When the contract with OpenAI was terminated eight months early, “we felt that we were left without an income, while dealing on the other hand with serious trauma”, said petitioner Richard Mathenge. ".
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This 2021 preprint by @Abebab @vinayprabhu @MannyKayy had discussed a number of issues with the dataset.
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We are looking for a full time summer intern to contribute to our goal of communicating our research to the public through creative means. Take a look at our job position and apply here: .
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PRESS RELEASE 📢🧵.@turkopticon & DAIR applaud the Congressional announcement of a letter by Sen. Markey. & Rep. Jayapal. which demands that Amazon, Google, OpenAI, & other tech giants answer questions about the working conditions of data workers,.
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Angie Wang's illustrated essay for the New Yorker, wondering whether her child's early attempts at speech were the same as LLMs, was a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize. Read On The New Yorker's Website:
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“Data is the last frontier of colonization,” Mahelona says. "In turning to AI to help revive te reo, the Māori language, Mahelona and Jones, who is Māori, wanted to do things differently." .
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". a number of AI experts, including @alexhanna, noted that despite the widespread proliferation of ethical frameworks & principles for AI, virtually none of them take into account the extensive human labour that underpins the technology.".
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Congratulations to the workers who successfully unionized 🎉. ""For too long we, the workers powering the AI revolution, were treated as different & less than. ” said Richard Mathenge" . If you missed Richard's panel on #StochasticParrotsDay, watch here:
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Please join us in welcoming Asmelash Teka as a part-time DAIR fellow. Asmelash is the Co-founder and CTO of Lesan (@lesan_ai). At Lesan, he has built state-of-the-art machine translation systems to and from Amharic, Tigrinya and English. 🎉🎉🎉.
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We are excited to welcome Meron Estefanos (@meronina, ) to DAIR as a research fellow. She is an activist and radio journalist who has been fighting for the rights of kidnapped refugees, and negotiating their release for 17 years.
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Join us on Dec 2nd & 3rd for research highlights & panels at our 1 year anniversary event. Day1 research highlights:.*Language tech for Ge'ez based languages | @asmelashteka .*Refugee advocacy & Bitcoin | @meronina .*Nobody owns our tech future | @dylan
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Please join us in welcoming our newest fellow, Adrienne Williams (@adrienneandgp)🎉🎉🎉. Adrienne started organizing in 2018 while working as a junior high teacher for a tech owned and operated charter school. 1/4
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"The reviewers’ overall feedback was that they felt AI summaries may be counterproductive and create further work because of the need to fact-check and refer to original submissions which communicated the message better and more concisely.".
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Image descriptions of 4 screenshots in the quote tweet of @alexhanna's talk from #WiDS2022 today. 1. “To begin to see how biases are propagated and reinforced via machine learning system training data, we need histories of the datasets themselves…”.
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DAIR & our collaborators call on @FAccTConference to divest from Israeli apartheid, occupation & genocide. Get our zines on the complicity of the conference's sponsors, & a #NoTechForGenocide pin if you haven't done so already. More tomorrow, RSVP info👇.
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Our director of research @alexhanna at yesterday's @NoTechApartheid rally. 👉Join the movement: . 👉Read our #CeasefireNOW statement Watch our #NoTechForApartheid event with @haymarketbooks
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Join us at the launch of Data Workers' Inquiry on July 8 at 8am PDT/5pm CET, executed by 15 data workers in 4 continents. Find zines, reports, documentaries, podcasts & more with insights that can only be found when workers tell their own stories👇. RSVP @
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"The EU AI Act will only entrench police and migration authorities’ existing culture of impunity – encouraging them to keep deploying harmful AI systems against the most marginalised communities.".
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We have now setup the registration page for our event where you can directly register below. While the event is free, you have an option to donate with proceeds going to @pal_legal @MedicalAidPal & @RespondCrisis
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"“It’s theft,” said Dave Wiskus, the CEO of Nebula, a streaming service partially owned by its creators, some of whom have had their work taken from YouTube to train AI.".
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"Coming from the community she studied, Sefala said, was crucial to the project’s success.". Our fellow, @bonjora, emphasizes the importance of valuing people's lived experiences.
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"I’ve written about relationships between tech companies & the military before, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by anything. at this conference. But when it ended, & I departed DC for home, it felt like my life force had been. sucked out of my body.".
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Congratulations to our director of research @alexhanna 🎉🎉🎉. "On Valentine’s Day 2011, graduate student Alex Hanna helped to lead a crowd into the office of Governor Scott Walker and dump 3,000 “We ♥ UW” valentines on his desk.".
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"We've shown that you can build useful models by using small, carefully curated data sets," said Asemalsh. "We understand its limitations & capabilities. Meanwhile, Microsoft or Google usually build a single, gigantic model for all languages, so it's almost impossible to audit.".
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4. Ariel Koren who was pushed out of Google for tireless advocacy on the @DropNimbus and #NoTechForApartheid campaigns. See the campaign page here.
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Our fellow, Raesetje Sefala (@bonjora) will talk about her work at @Blackathonic on February 5 at 1pm EST. You can get your tickets at to attend the event.
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"In the end, the real problem is arguably not that the data labelers shared the images on social media. Rather, it’s that this type of AI training set—specifically, one depicting faces—is far more common than most people understand, notes @MilagrosMiceli, .
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Join us tomorrow for our virtual #NoTechForApartheid event with @haymarketbooks to hear from an amazing line up of speakers, and register here if you haven't done so already. If you donate, proceeds go to @pal_legal @MedicalAidPal & @RespondCrisis .
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"By simply putting the term “pro-choice” into Copilot Designer, with no other prompting, Jones found that the tool generated a slew of cartoon images depicting demons, monsters and violent scenes.".
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"Is lack of diverse representation in data problematic? It sure is, but merely expanding exploitation of data subjects is not the answer.".
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“These big companies think they can enter small villages like ours, take our land, and destroy it.”.
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Join us for the 20th episode of Mystery AI Hype Theater Monday Nov. 6 at 10:30am Pacific where @alexhanna and @emilymbender travel back in time & examine the AI Hype in the grant proposal that funded the 1956 summer project at Dartmouth that started it all.
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“Don’t be fooled: it’s self-serving hype disguised as raising the alarm,” @dylnbkr. research engineer @DAIRInstitute. current discussions regarding hypothetical existential risks distract the public and regulators from “the concrete harms of AI today.”.
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Mystery AI Hype Theater by @emilymbender.and @alexhanna is now available in podcast form. Thank you to producer @ctaylsaurus . Take a listen as Alex and Emily dissect #AIHype vs reality.
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Here's the agenda of the event with @mcmillan_majora @mmitchell_ai @emilymbender @timnitGebru @mark_riedl @safiyanoble @Nanjala1 @StevenZapata @SarahSAAndrew Belzie Mont-Louis and an anonymous data worker.
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And that's a wrap. Thank you to all of our attendees, speakers, moderators, producers and moderators.
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We stand in solidarity with our Palestinian siblings who have lived under brutal Israeli occupation & apartheid for 75 years, and now face a genocide with access to food, water, and fuel shutoff while being bombed and burned with white phosphorus. 1/17.
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Join us for another edition of Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 on Monday April 1st at noon pacific time, where @timnitGebru will guest host with @alexhanna. In the mean time, you can catch up on old episodes
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You can watch the recording of our event here: Thank you once again to our speakers.
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Are you catching up with the story of the lawyer who used ChatGPT? Watch this Mystery AI Hype 3000 Theater episode hosted by @emilymbender & @alexhanna where special guest @KendraSerra warned about this type of issue with generative AI Hype and law.
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She also works in the area of social movements, focusing on the dynamics of anti-racist campus protest in the US and Canada. Dr. Hanna has published widely in top-tier venues across the social sciences, including the journals Mobilization, American Behavioral Scientist, and 2/4.
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Congratulations to our very own @adrienneandgp and .for becoming Just Tech fellow. "Adrienne Williams is a labor organizer & researcher with Distributed AI Research Institute." .
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Mark your calendars for the launch of the Data Workers' Inquiry project on July 8 at 8am PDT/5pm CET, executed by 15 data workers from around the world. You will find zines, reports, documentaries, podcasts, comic books & more!. RSVP at
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Read the statement from #StochasticParrots authors @emilymbender @timnitGebru @mcmillan_majora and @mmitchell_ai here: .
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We will have conversations with an incredible group of scholars, journalists and activists. 1. Caroline Hunter who co-founded the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement which forced the company to pull out of apartheid South Africa.
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"@alexhanna sees. financial incentives to rapidly commercialize AI outweighing concerns about safety or ethics. There isn’t much money in responsibility or safety, but there’s plenty in overhyping the technology,".by @kharijohnson .
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"What’s needed is not something out of science fiction — it’s regulation, empowerment of ordinary people and empowerment of workers.".
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Prof. @emilymbender tells us:. "if we mistake our ability to make sense of language and images generated by computers for the computers being “thinking” entities, we risk ceding power — not to computers, but to those who would hide behind the curtain.".
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Our second panel moderated by @alexhanna will start in 5 minutes. Join us here: Panelists are: 1. Caroline Hunter who co-founded the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement which forced the company to pull out of apartheid South Africa.
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We are looking for an operations lead to join us full time. If you are interested, take a look at the job post and apply here:
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Celebrating the launch of the @ssrc_just_tech platform. Image description: the @AJLUnited shield (black & white) next to @safiyanoble @ruha9 and @timnitGebru on screen. Also a reflection of @jovialjoy watching the panel.
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In her op-ed for @Newsweek DAIR fellow @adrienneandgp writes:. "A new type of "Zombie Trainer" has emerged. These are people who work as data labelers, content moderators, or image data collectors without their knowledge.".
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"Currently, no one can contest if they have. text that’s been picked up in a training data set. used to train a model, people can’t say no to that. So figuring out how to allow contestation brings with it a. bunch of research questions". @mmitchell_ai
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Big Data & Society, and top-tier computer science conferences such as CSCW, FAccT, and NeurIPS. Dr. Hanna serves a co-chair of Sociologists for Trans Justice and as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies. 3/4.
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Our fellow, @MilagrosMiceli was interviewed for part 2 of @techreview's series on AI colonialism, by @_KarenHao. "newer data-labeling companies have sought to establish a higher standard for working conditions.
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Dylan Baker (@dylnbkr) and Dr. Alex Hanna (@alexhanna) write: . "Our intent, as the first full-time employees of the newly formed. (DAIR), is to find a new path for technological research, which centers communities impacted most by emerging technologies.
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"But while authorities generally pitch facial recognition as a tool to capture terrorists or wanted murderers, the technology has also emerged as a critical instrument in a very particular context: punishing protesters." by @DarrenLoucaides .
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FastCompany included Dr. Hanna as part of their 2021 Queer 50, and she has been featured in the Cal Academy of Sciences New Science exhibit, which highlights queer and trans scientists of color. 4/4.
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Don't forget to RSVP @ and see you on Monday at 8am PDT/5pm CET for the virtual launch. In the mean time, you can find the repository of zines, reports, animated shorts, documentaries, comic books, video essays, podcasts & more at
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5. @antloewenstein who wrote the must read book The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, which Verso has made available FOR FREE as an e-book. Get yours here: .
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Researchers and practitioners in responsible AI demand an end to the "decades long, tech-enabled apartheid and occupation of the Palestinian people" which has culminated in "a genocide of the Palestinian people.". You can sign the letter here 👇.
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As journalist Antony Loewenstein noted in The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World: “Palestine is Israel’s workshop, where an occupied nation on its doorstep provides millions of subjugated people as a laboratory 5/17.
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“The revelations cast new light on so-called “Tescreal” intellectual movements – an umbrella term for a cluster of movements including EA & rationalism that exercise broad influence in Silicon Valley, & have the ear of the likes of Sam Altman,. ”.
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Our 1 year anniversary celebration is happening in ~2 weeks! Sign up here for virtual panels, talks & breakout sessions with us: In our 2nd panel @alexhanna @meronina @dylnbkr & @MilagrosMiceli will discuss non-exploitative community rooted research.
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"[Nyalleng] Moorosi believes AI has the potential to replicate those [colonial] systems—prioritizing perspectives & agendas of those in power while marginalizing Indigenous knowledge and cultural values.".
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The first episode of Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 for the year will be on Monday January 8 where Dr.s @alexhanna & @emilymbender will be joined by Kerry McInerney & Eleanor Drage to talk biometrics. Join us for the live stream at 9am pacific time at
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Looking for more Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000? Tune in live on Monday Oct 30 at 12pm pacific, when @alexhanna & @emilymbender are joined by @SashaMTL & @strubell to take on hype around AI and the environment.
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As researchers, activists and organizers working in the field of AI, we know that Gaza and the West Bank have been the testing ground for some of the most advanced automated surveillance and warfare technologies before they are exported around the world. 4/17.
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"Wanted to say, If they can pull this on a Hollywood celebrity what about "unknown" people, & I realised no need to imagine whats already happened, is happening" @AdioDinika on OpenAI using Scarlett Johansson's voice without consent or compensation. That's their business model.
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with data annotators, collectors, and scientists in different sites around the world.More broadly, she is interested in question of legitimacy and knowledge production in data, worker-led research, labor organizing, and the intersection of Critical Data Studies and data activism.
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Congratulations to our very own @Zebra_023 & @bonjora for being named Rising Stars in AI Ethics & for @milamiceli being named on of the “100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics” by Women in AI Ethics.
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Great article by Devin Coldewey about the Data Workers' Inquiry Project. "Seldom are things like moderation workers losing sleep to nightmares or rampant chemical dependency mentioned, let alone measured and presented.".
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We have now setup the registration page for our event where you can directly register below. While the event is free, you have an option to donate with proceeds going to @pal_legal @MedicalAidPal & @RespondCrisis .
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Read more about them here:
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"For any automated system, we need to know what it was trained to do, what training data was used, who chose that data and for what purpose. mimicking human behaviour is a “bright line” – a clear boundary not to be crossed – in computer software development.".
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If you missed DAIR fellow @adrienneandgp and founder @timnitGebru discussing their Noema Magazine article co-written with @MilagrosMiceli on KQED's Forum live radio program, you can listen to the recording here,
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"Google & Facebook overhype that they have built one single giant model to solve machine translation for hundreds of languages. If you put it on its face & compare it with smaller startups, like Lesan or @GhanaNLP , the quality is. low.". Interview with our fellow @asmelashteka.
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Our director of research @alexhanna, has written a summary of our team retreat in Costa Rica & highlights from our 1 year anniversary event with talks by @asmelashteka @bonjora @meronina @MilagrosMiceli @adrienneandgp & @dylnbkr here:
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