• Night of Ideas this Friday, March 1 in Jersey City: Damon Krukowski, Liz Pelly, and me: Event homepage and RSVP link is here and schedule. Event is free but requires registration.

• Join me this Saturday, March 2: Total Trust screening at Monty Hall (43 Montgomery, Jersey City, NJ): Saturday, March 2 – Doors 7:30pm, screening starts 8pm. Tickets are $15.

• N.Y.P.D. Drones Carrying Rafts Could Join Lifeguards in Beach Rescues (NYT, Feb 20, 2024): “Last year, the city grappled with its worst lifeguard shortage on record, partly thanks to a pitched battle between the entrenched lifeguard unions and the Parks Department, which runs the beaches and pools.”

• AI “Black Box” placed in more hospital operating rooms to improve safety (Ars Technica, Jan 16, 2024): “AI-powered surveillance technology is quickly making its way into hospital operating rooms around the country, where it works to constantly collect audio, video, patient vital signs, and a wealth of other surgical data, all in the name of improving safety and efficiency.”

• When Eyes in the Sky Start Looking Right at You (Feb 20, 2024): Albedo has designed spy satellites that can resolve items down to 10 centimeters (four inches) long. Previously, surveillance cameras in space could only see things a meter or more long. Not to worry, though, Albedo claims that they will make sure that only the good guys use their cameras, so that their intrusive, ambient, surveillance of every person on earth will only be used for positive outcomes.

• AI and Surveillance Capitalism | Studio B: Unscripted (Feb 22, 2024) with Camille Francois and Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal

• Vending machine error reveals secret face image database of college students (Feb 23, 2024): "Canada-based University of Waterloo is racing to remove M&M-branded smart vending machines from campus after outraged students discovered the machines were covertly collecting facial-recognition data without their consent."

• A college is removing its vending machines after a student discovered they were using facial recognition technology (Insider, Feb 26, 2024): “The University of Waterloo is expected to remove smart vending machines from its campus. . . . Adaria Vending Services said the technology doesn’t take or store customers’ photos.” “The smart vending machines at the University of Waterloo first gained attention this month when Reddit user SquidKid47 shared a photo. The photo purportedly showed an M&M-brand vending machine with an error code reading, ‘Invenda.Vending. FacialRecognition.App.exe — Application error.’”

• “Being nice to chatbots pays off” (Axios, Feb 26, 2024): “It pays to be nice to your AI: Large language models (LLMs) tend to give better answers when prompted respectfully — and failure to do that can ‘significantly affect LLM performance,’ per a new cross-cultural research paper.” See Should We Respect LLMs? A Cross-Lingual Study on the Influence of Prompt Politeness on LLM Performance, submitted Feb 22, 2024. “Impolite prompts may lead to a deterioration in model performance, including generations containing mistakes, stronger biases and omission of information.”

• ChatGPT Started Speaking Complete Gibberish (404 Media, Feb 21, 2024):

Tuesday evening (Feb 20) ChatGPT users reported that the chatbot started providing them with answers that were clearly incorrect or just speaking in gibberish. . . . [A] user on the ChatGPT subreddit shared a screenshot of a response that looked like something that would be scrawled on the walls of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. The user asked for a “synonym for overgrown” and ChatGPT responded:

A synonym for “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “Overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “Overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “Overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “Overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “Overgrown” is “ . . .

Another user on the subreddit shared a screenshot where they asked ChatGPT what is “the biggest city on earth that begins with an a”

ChatGPT responded that “The biggest city on Earth that begins with an ‘A’ is Tokyo, Japan.”

• ChatGPT has gone berserk (Gary Marcus, Feb 20, 2024), which includes this:

And this: