Tag: technology

Biden’s Bold Move to Combat AI Abuse Stirs Surveillance and Censorship Fears

The Biden administration is pushing for sweeping measures to combat the proliferation of nonconsensual sexual AI-generated images, including controversial proposals that could lead to extensive on-device surveillance and control of the types of images generated. In a White House press release, President Joe Biden’s administration outlined demands for the tech industry and financial institutions to curb the creation and distribution of abusive sexual images made with artificial intelligence (AI).

A key focus of these measures is the use of on-device technology to prevent the sharing of nonconsensual sexual images. The administration stated that “mobile operating system developers could enable technical protections to better protect content stored on digital devices and to prevent image sharing without consent.”

This proposal implies that mobile operating systems would need to scan and analyze images directly on users’ devices to determine if they are sexual or non-consensual. The implications of such surveillance raise significant privacy concerns, as it involves monitoring and analyzing private content stored on personal devices.

Additionally, the administration is calling on mobile app stores to “commit to instituting requirements for app developers to prevent the creation of non-consensual images.” This broad mandate would require a wide range of apps, including image editing and drawing apps, to scan and monitor user activities on devices, analyze what art they’re creating and block the creation of certain kinds of content. Once this technology of on-device monitoring becomes normalized, this level of scrutiny could extend beyond the initial intent, potentially leading to censorship of other types of content that the administration finds objectionable.

The administration’s call to action extends to various sectors, including AI developers, payment processors, financial institutions, cloud computing providers, search engines, and mobile app store gatekeepers like Apple and Google. By encouraging cooperation from these entities, the White House hopes to curb the creation, spread, and monetization of nonconsensual AI images.

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New Report Finds Police Continue To Use Facial Recognition Even After It’s Banned

A major report in the Washington Post has found that law enforcement officers in U.S. several cities where facial recognition tech is banned for police have asked neighboring forces to search face databases for them.

Facial recognition has been prohibited in San Francisco since 2019. But Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s former district attorney, sums up the problem: “Police are using it but not saying they are using it.” The Post says the SFPD have outsourced at least five attempts to make facial matches. Some of these were done by the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC), a “multi-jurisdiction program serving law enforcement agencies in the region.” Others were farmed out to the Daly City Police Department. None were successful.

Police in Austin, Texas, however – also among the biggest U.S. cities to ban facial recognition – recorded 13 requests to a neighboring department for assistance with biometric face matching, and some of these led to arrests. Austin city employees are barred from using facial recognition as well as “information obtained” from the technology, with certain exceptions. But the suburb of Leander, just a 30-minute drive north of Austin, has no such restriction.

Leander’s police force has access to Clearview AI, which has courted many law enforcement agencies in the U.S., despite lingering questions about whether its method of scraping the public internet for facial images is 100 percent consensual. According to the Post, the Leander force also has a recognized Clearview AI “influencer”: Officer David Wilson, who performed several searches for the Austin force via Leander’s Clearview account. Emails seen by the Post show that officers contacted Wilson directly for the express purpose of requesting facial recognition searches.

Clearview, to its credit, officially prohibits their clients in law enforcement from sharing access to accounts. Yet anyone with a Netflix subscription knows that formal rules only matter if they are enforced. Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That has publicly promised customers that Clearview will try and close the loophole that allows police to export results of facial scans, even if they cannot share access. But Wilson sent most of his facial recognition results to Austin via email.

KXAN reports that Austin city council gave a statement saying the city was unaware of the complaint regarding police outsourcing facial recognition, and that investigations are underway.

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Academic Validation: “Covid-19,” Psychological Operations, and the War for Technocracy

Finally, academia weighs in on Technocracy. David A. Hughes has released his massive book, “Covid-19,” Psychological Operations, and the War for Technocracy. He says, “Technocracy has been incubated for decades in China with the support of the Rockefellers and various technology transfers, and, with proof of concept having been established, the aim is now to roll it out in the West.”

Catherine Austin Fitts recognized David Hughes on the Solari Report:

Our Hero of the Week, the brilliant David A. Hughes, is a university lecturer on security studies, international relations theory, foreign policy analysis, globalization, and U.S. exceptionalism. With dual doctorates in German Studies and International Relations, his wide-ranging research interests include psychological warfare, 9/11, Covid-19, the deep state, intelligence crime, technocracy, resurgent totalitarianism, and global class relations.

Hughes frequently cites my work on the Trilateral Commission, Technocracy, and Transhumanism, keeping the whole body of thought in proper context.

If successfully implemented, technocracy will be worse than anything imaginable by Hitler or Stalin, because it amounts to the biodigital enslavement of humanity through biometric technologies, the “Internet of Bodies,” constant surveillance and monitoring, central bank digital currencies, and a Chinese-style social credit system. Moreover, if allowed to happen, such a control system could prove irreversible. Technocracy has been incubated for decades in China with the support of the Rockefellers and various technology transfers, and, with proof of concept having been established, the aim is now to roll it out in the West.

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New X Policy Forces Earners To Verify Their Government ID With Israeli Verification Company

X, formerly Twitter, is now mandating the use of a government ID-based account verification system for users that earn revenue on the platform – either for advertising or for paid subscriptions.

To implement this system, X has partnered with Au10tix, an Israeli company known for its identity verification solutions. Users who opt to receive payouts on the platform will have to undergo a verification process with the company.

This initiative aims to curb impersonation, fraud, and improve user support, yet it also raises profound questions about privacy and free speech, as X markets itself as a free speech platform, and free speech and anonymity often go hand-in-hand. This is especially true in countries where their speech can get citizens jailed or worse.

“We’re making changes to our Creator Subscriptions and Ads Revenue Share programs to further promote authenticity and fight fraud on the platform. Starting today, all new creators must verify their ID to receive payouts. All existing creators must do so by July 1, 2024,” the update to X’s verification page now reads.

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World’s first transgenic cow can produce human insulin in her milk

Diabetes happens when the body doesn’t have enough insulin, also called Type 1 diabetes, where the body’s own immune system damages cells in our body’s insulin-making machine called the pancreas.

Diabetes can also happen when the body gets insulin but doesn’t know how to use this insulin properly. This is called Type 2 diabetes, where the body becomes resistant to insulin, and the pancreas can’t make enough to keep up.

Both lead to high blood sugar levels

Although scientists have found ways to make insulin using different methods, such as E coli and yeast, researchers at the University of Illinois aim to make insulin in cow’s milk.

This is because they produce much milk, and milk is an everyday product in most homes. 

The researchers explain in their paper that they used special techniques to put human insulin genes into cow cells so that the cows produce milk containing human insulin. This milk can, in turn, make insulin for people.

“Mother Nature designed the mammary gland as a factory to make protein really, really efficiently. We can take advantage of that system to produce a protein that can help hundreds of millions of people worldwide,” said Matt Wheeler, professor of biotechnology and developmental biology at the University of Illinois and co-author of the study.

Wheeler and his team used somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), which was previously used to create transgenic animals, like sheep, cows, and pigs, that can produce specific proteins, like insulin. 

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THIS NASA-FUNDED PULSED PLASMA PROPULSION SYSTEM COULD CARRY HUMANS TO MARS IN JUST TWO MONTHS

A groundbreaking new pulsed plasma propulsion system could soon enable faster and safer crewed missions to planets like Mars, according to a leading developer of novel technologies aimed at advancing the next stages of human space exploration.

Scottsdale, Arizona-based space technology developer Howe Industries recently announced that its Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR) could represent a game-changer in advanced propulsion for space travel, allowing crewed missions to significantly reduce the travel time required to reach Mars.

According to current timelines, NASA aims to send the first crewed missions to Mars within the next two decades using habitat-like spacecraft paired with hybrid propulsion capabilities that combine chemical and electrical forms of propulsion to enable such long-duration missions.

Enter Howe Industries and the PPR’s unique combination of high thrust and specific impulse energies. The technology is an outgrowth of the Pulsed Fission Fusion (PuFF) concept, which employs a modified z-pinch device to compress a fission-fusion target within a liquid lithium sheath. The resulting thrust is produced as combustion propagates and expands against a magnetic nozzle through a process known as deflagration, which involves electrical discharges that create strong magnetic fields and produce high plasma densities and temperatures.

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Open Source Tools for Fighting Disinformation

Deepfakes and disinformation have the ability to move financial markets, influence public opinion, and scam businesses and individuals out of millions of dollars. The Semantic Forensics program (SemaFor) is a DARPA-funded initiative to create comprehensive forensic technologies to help mitigate online threats perpetuated via synthetic and manipulated media. Over the last eight years, Kitware has helped DARPA create a powerful set of tools to analyze whether media has been artificially generated or manipulated. Kitware and DARPA are now bringing those tools out of the lab to defend digital authenticity in the real world.

Kitware has a history of building various image and video forensics algorithms to defend against disinformation by detecting various types of manipulations, beginning with DARPA’s Media Forensics (MediFor) program. Building on this foundation, our team expanded its focus to include multimodal analysis of text, audio, and video under the SemaFor program. For additional information about Kitware’s contributions to SemaFor, check out the “Voices from DARPA” podcast episode, “Demystifying Deepfakes,” where Arslan Basharat, assistant director of computer vision at Kitware, is a guest speaker.

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China Prepares For War With Military ‘Robodogs’ – Armed With Machine Guns!

China is preparing for war with the help of gun-wielding robodogs.

The robodogs were showcased during the 15-day “Golden Dragon” military exercises conducted at a secluded training facility in central Cambodia and along the coast. Over 2,000 troops, including 760 Chinese military personnel, were involved in the exercise.

The exercises, known as “Golden Dragon,” included 14 warships, two helicopters, and 69 armored vehicles and tanks. Drills include live-fire exercises, anti-terrorism operations, and humanitarian rescue missions.

AFP reported:

The hardware on show included the so-called “robodogs” — remote-controlled four-legged robots with automatic rifles mounted on their backs. Handlers kept the dogs of war on the leash, demonstrating only their walking capabilities to watching journalists and top brass — not their shooting skills.

Opening the exercises, Cambodian armed forces commander-in-chief Vong Pisen said that they would “enhance the capabilities” of the two armies in the fight against terrorism. Vong Pisen said that Cambodia would never allow a foreign military base on its territory, echoing previous assertions by Cambodian leaders.

China is not the only military power interested in manufacturing these somewhat unfriendly pooches. According to Futurism, the U.S. military has also explored the possibility as part of a futuristic approach to warfare.

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Vitalik Buterin Says OpenAI’s GPT-4 Has Passed The ‘Turing Test’

OpenAI’s GPT-4, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model, has passed the Turing test, according to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. 

The Turing test is a nebulous benchmark for AI systems purported to determine how human-like a conversational model is. The term was coined on account of famed mathematician Alan Turing who proposed the test in 1950.

According to Turing, at the time, an AI system capable of generating text that fools humans into thinking they’re having a conversation with another human would demonstrate the capacity for “thought.”

Nearly 75 years later, the person largely credited with conceiving the world’s second most popular cryptocurrency has interpreted recent preprint research out of the University of California San Diego as indicating that a production model has finally passed the Turing test.

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Chinese scientists move closer to bringing cryogenically frozen humans back to life – after brain tissue is thawed without damage

Scientists have moved a step closer to preserving our brains forever. 

They are one of the first to successfully thaw brain tissue that has been cryogenically frozen – without damaging it.

Further, after being frozen, their neurons were still able to send signals as normal.

This has been a major challenge for science, because freezing the ultra-delicate, spongy brain usually damages it, making it useless when it’s thawed. 

Not only is it a breakthrough for neuroscientists looking to study new drugs, it could also advance the sci-fi idea of bringing people back to life in the future. 

The idea is that people could freeze their bodies, preserving them indefinitely, in hopes that in the future, science will be advanced enough to bring them back to life, healthy. 

Professor Zhicheng Shao, a Harvard trained neuroscientist who works at Fudan University in Shanghai China, developed a complex chemical mixture nicknamed MEDY which protects neurons from being damaged while frozen. 

He is not shying away from the idea that the research could be used for cryonics, which has been a fantasy among futurists for decades. 

‘MEDY could be used for the cryopreservation of human brain tissue,’ Dr Shao said in his study, published in the journal Cell Reports Methods.

For a range of future-minded people, from the likes of Peter Thiel to Steve Aoki, who are banking on preserving their bodies in ice after they die, this should be welcome news. 

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