Tag: technology

EU AI Act Effectively Legalizes Biometric Mass Surveillance

On February 2, the EU AI Act, which came into force in August, reached the first compliance deadline. These are provisions that contain rules that allow the bloc to legalize biometric mass surveillance.

This is happening via Article 5, that on the face of it seeks to introduce protections against using AI systems that represent “unacceptable risk.” But, there are also exceptions to this, defined in the act as the “strictly necessary” cases when those same systems are allowed to be used.

It is this that gave rise to the fear that one of the consequences of the AI Act is to in fact legalize some highly contentious deployments of biometric data-fueled mass surveillance.

Article 5 prohibits real-time remote biometric ID systems from being used by law enforcement in public spaces – but only “unless and in so far as such use is strictly necessary.”

The “strictly necessary” instances are described as those when law enforcement is searching for “specific victims” of crimes like abduction, trafficking, and sexual exploitation, but also when they look for missing persons.

The second definition gets less precise in scope as it allows for AI surveillance systems to be used to prevent crime. This includes a threat to life or physical safety of individuals that is deemed to be “specific, substantial, and imminent” – or threat of a terrorist attack that law enforcement decides is “genuine and present” but also – “genuine and foreseeable.”

Lastly, the AI Act treats as “strictly necessary” to exempt from prohibited AI activities the following: “Localization or identification of a person suspected of having committed a criminal offense, for the purpose of conducting a criminal investigation or prosecution or executing a criminal penalty for offenses.”

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Bill Gates Says ‘Humans Won’t Be Needed For Most Things’

Bill Gates says that in the near future humans won’t be needed for “most things” thanks to AI, but will still be required for the purposes of entertainment.

Gates made the comments during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to promote his new book.

Fallon asked Gates whether AI was going to “take over” and what the downsides and benefits of it were.

Gates explained that “intelligence is rare,” but that artificial intelligence will start to replace great teachers and doctors over the course of the next decade.

The Microsoft founder went on to suggest that many types of jobs will be replaced and that people could only end up working two or three days a week.

“This is a bit scary, it’s completely new territory,” he added.

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Digital Hegemony: Sophisticating Monitoring And Propaganda – Love Your Servitude!

Today, we are witnessing a profound transformation. We are increasingly impacted by algorithmic decision-making, artificial intelligence, data proliferation, data harvesting and sophisticated monitoring of how we think and act. This affects how we work, how we access services and how we relate to and interact with others. 

While digital innovations and online platforms offer unparalleled ease, they also raise critical concerns about our independence. The constant connectivity and data-driven decision-making that characterise modern life has major implications. Technological advancements are used to shape preferences and behaviour, and predictably, powerholders use the notion of convenience to manipulate and exert control over populations.

Giant corporations and the state are leveraging what is often termed ‘technological solutionism’ to establish a digital iron cage of control. By monitoring and predicting our thoughts and actions, these intertwined entities impose a tightening noose of automated systems, suffocating personal liberty.

We are increasingly hurtling toward a reality reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where a dystopian technocracy merges with a plutocracy.

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Mexican drug cartels plan attacks on Border Patrol agents with kamikaze drones and other explosives to fight US crackdown

Mexican drug cartels are ordering their members to attack US Border Patrol agents with kamikaze drones and other explosives in a desperate bid to thwart the crackdown at the border, according to an internal memo obtained by The Post.

The alert, which cites social media posts and other sources, cautions federal agents “to remain cognizant of their surroundings at all times” in the face of the new threat.

“On February 1, 2025, the El Paso Sector Intelligence and Operations Center (EPT-IOC) received information advising that Mexican cartel leaders have authorized the deployment of drones equipped with explosives to be used against US Border Patrol agents and US military personal currently working along the border with Mexico,” the internal memo titled “Officer Safety Alert” said.

“It is recommended that all US Border Patrol agents and DoD personnel working along the border report any sighting of drones to their respective leadership staff and the EPT-IOC.”

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“Just give me the f***ing links!”—Cursing disables Google’s AI overviews

If you search Google for a way to turn off the company’s AI-powered search results, you may well get an AI Overview telling you that AI Overviews can’t be directly disabled in Google Search. But if you instead ask Google how to turn off “fucking Google AI results,” you’ll get a standard set of useful web suggestions without any AI Overview at the top.

The existence of this “curse to disable Google AI” trick has been making the rounds on social media in recent days, and it holds up in Ars’ own testing. For instance, when searching for “how do you turn off [adjective] Google AI results,” a variety of curse word adjectives reliably disabled the AI Overviews, while adjectives like “dumb” or “lousy” did not. Inserting curse words randomly at any point in the search query seems to have a similar effect.

There’s long been evidence that Google’s Gemini AI system tries to avoid swearing if at all possible, which might help explain why AI Overviews balk at queries that contain curses. Users should also keep in mind, though, that the actual web link results to a query can change significantly when curse words are inserted, especially if SafeSearch is turned off.

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CBP Memo Reveals Cartel Members Are Deploying Weaponized Drones for Potential Use Against CBP Officers

Cartels at the southern border are reportedly escalating violent threats against U.S. border and law enforcement officers, with social media posts encouraging violence and the authorization of weaponized drones for use against border officers.  

Copies of recent memos sent to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers detail the threats on social media, NewsNation reports.

Additionally, officers are warned that the cartels are expected to use drones armed with explosives.

This news comes as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently said, “All options are on the table,” when he was asked if the U.S. will use military force against the cartels in Mexico.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, President Trump also sent a message to “all who would attack Americans” on Saturday, stating, “WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!” after announcing precision air strikes against ISIS in Somalia.

“This action further degrades ISIS’s ability to plot and conduct terrorist attacks threatening U.S. citizens, our partners, and innocent civilians and sends a clear signal that the United States always stands ready to find and eliminate terrorists who threaten the United States and our allies, even as we conduct robust border-protection and many other operations under President Trump’s leadership,” Hegseth said following the execution of the airstrikes indicating strikes on the cartels could be considered.

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The Demoralizing Downward Spiral Of Algorithmic Culture

In need of a letter certifying that I do not suffer from a disease of international concern, I headed out to my primary care practitioner last Monday.

Knowing how busy most doctor’s offices are these days, I decided I’d make it easy on the staff by bringing a) a copy of the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR) regulations on diseases of international concern b) a list of the diseases currently covered under this rubric and c) explicit instructions about the elements such a letter must include (i.e. letterhead of the practice, stamp of the practice, doctor’s signature etc.).

They assured me that they were familiar with this procedure and that it would be no problem.

And when I mentioned that it would be great if they could do it in both English and Spanish, I was assured that would be no problem either as there was a Spanish-speaking provider on staff who could write it up in that language.

But again, in the interest of facilitating things, I provided them with a copy of this very type of certification letter written for me some time back by a doctor in Spain. This “letter,” such as it was, consisted of one sentence of 27 words in Spanish and a couple more than that when rendered into English.

Given that there were two staff members present, and that one of them was scrolling on her phone, I figured it would be a simple matter of one of them quickly writing up the letters, checking my file to see if I had any of the diseases of international concern (I had been there a week previous for my annual checkup) and catching my doctor (or one of his colleagues) between patients for a quick signature.

However, when I asked the woman in front of me how long it would take, she replied, “Three to five business days. That’s the procedure. We’ll call you when it is done”.

When I told them that I needed it for an appointment first thing on the following Monday in New York and that if I didn’t have all the documents, it would be months before I got another one, they just repeated the mantra that it would be done toward the end of the week, probably late on Friday.

On Friday, at 1:45 I received a call saying the letter was ready for pickup. Relieved, I entered the office, checked the letter quickly, and headed out. Upon rechecking it at home, however, I realized that it had not been signed by the doctor, which was one of the first requirements on the list of directions I had handed them on Monday.

So back I went to the office and explained to them it would be inadmissible for the bureaucratic procedure in question without that signature. By this time it was getting toward 3:15 in an office scheduled to close at 5:00.

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The Hidden Dangers Of AI In Finance

Jim Rickards recently published a compelling article on AI risk for Insider Intel subscribers.

In it, Jim discusses a different way in which AI could crash markets. One that is totally separate from the DeepSeek, China, and NVIDIA angle we’ve been covering for the past week.

Today we’re going to review his key points and explore them in detail.

Here’s Jim:

“The ultimate danger arises when a large cohort of asset managers controlling trillions of dollars of assets all employ the same or similar AI algorithms in a risk management role. An individual robot working for a particular asset manager tells the manager to sell stocks in a crashing market. In some cases, the robot may be authorized to initiate a sale without further human intervention.

Taken separately, that may be the best course of action for a single manager. In the aggregate, a selling cascade with no offsetting buy orders from active managers, specialists or speculators takes stock prices straight down. Amplification through feedback loops makes matters worse.

Individual AI systems have various trigger points for selling. Not all will be triggered at once, yet all will be triggered eventually as selling begets more selling, which triggers more automated systems that add to the selling pressure, and so on. There are no contrarians among the robots. Building sentiment into systems is still at a primitive stage.”

This is a good example of why I read Jim’s work. He always approaches issues from a unique and thoughtful angle.

This risk is clearly real. We are now at the point where trading firms are integrating LLMs (AI models) into their proprietary algorithms.

What happens if a majority of trading firms are using the same AI software to drive their trading? For example, it’s likely that many money managers have integrated OpenAI’s ChatGPT models into their algos.

Now that DeepSeek R1 is the new shiny object, maybe a significant portion of firms are switching to that model.

Perhaps DeepSeek approaches trading in a completely different way. What happens if ChatGPT interprets data bullishly, but DeepSeek sees the same information as bearish?

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Face Scanning App Developed to Identify Unconscious Patients Decades After Human Microchips Failed to Gain Traction

The Dubai Corporation for Ambulance Services has announced a smartphone app that utilizes facial recognition technology aimed at identifying unconscious patients in emergency scenarios. By the middle of 2025 it is expected to be operational in the United Arab Emirates’ ambulatory setting.

“With the app, a patient in an emergency situation such as in a state of unconsciousness can have their face scanned by paramedics for their personal identification information to be retrieved, thanks to the system’s integration with the UAE national identity database,” Biometric Update said Friday.

Dubai is undergoing a so-called ‘digital transformation‘ where facial recognition is taking center stage in the areas of public transit and palm print scanning is being implemented in the areas of payments and commerce.

Being face scanned while unconscious may be the least of someone’s worries, as in the U.S. unconscious patients are being enrolled into medical experiments and administered lethal Covid vaccines.

While face scanning may be seen as invasive by some, American company VeriChip Corporation took things a step further, much further, when they developed an Orwellian implantable human microchip called the VeriChip in the early 2000s with the express purpose of identifying patients in the medical setting as well as identifying children.

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Evidence in new case suggests Obama admin colluded with Big Tech to steal invention that led to Chinese dominance

Jeff Parker, the CEO of the small Florida-based technology company ParkerVision, explained to Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck Thursday how tech giant Qualcomm allegedly stole one of the most revolutionary patented innovations in American history with the help of elements of the Obama administration — technology that was ultimately offshored to China, possibly giving America’s pre-eminent adversary a competitive edge.

“We are at the beginning of seeing corruption exposed like never before in America,” said Beck.

Long war

ParkerVision has spent around 11 years fighting Qualcomm over the tech giant’s alleged infringement of its patented technology concerning “down-converting” electromagnetic signals — a process now used in virtually every phone, wireless device, and Bluetooth device.

Representatives of the two companies apparently met in the early 2000s, with Qualcomm expressing an interest in acquiring rights to ParkerVision’s invention, which would have helped it connect phones to the internet. Qualcomm, a multinational company headquartered in San Diego, reportedly signed multiple special nondisclosure agreements in order to learn about how ParkerVision’s down-converting system worked, particularly its energy sampling technique, which differed from the voltage sampling technique previously used in conventional down-converting systems.

According to Parker, the two companies were unable to reach a licensing agreement and went their separate ways. A few years later, Qualcomm started using a revolutionary new chip for smartphones that created major waves, apparently taking the company from around 30% to roughly 90% market share. The phones that drove this growth allegedly relied on ParkerVision’s patented technology.

After spotting what appeared to be its technology discussed in a Qualcomm conference paper, ParkerVision launched an investigation and determined, partly on the basis of reverse engineering, that its patented technology had been stolen. ParkerVision filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm in 2011.

Parker told Beck that emails exposed during discovery showed frustrated Qualcomm engineers who were facing pressure to make a third-generation chip discussing a return to the ParkerVision technology.

Court documents reveal that the jury that saw that and other internal communications returned a unanimous verdict in 2013 “finding that Qualcomm directly and indirectly infringed” upon multiple claims across four asserted patents and awarded ParkerVision $173 million in damages.

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