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#404media

3 posts3 participants0 posts today
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James House-Lantto (He/Him)

404media.co/researchers-secret

A team of researchers who say they are from the University of Zurich ran an “unauthorized,” large-scale experiment in which they secretly deployed AI-powered bots into a popular debate subreddit called r/changemyview in an attempt to research whether AI could be used to change people’s minds about contentious topics.

404 Media · Researchers Secretly Ran a Massive, Unauthorized AI Persuasion Experiment on Reddit UsersThe researchers' bots generated identities as a sexual assault survivor, a trauma counselor, and a Black man opposed to Black Lives Matter.
#AI#Reddit#404Media
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paywall

AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet as We Know It (404 Media Live at SXSW)

rss.ponder.cat/post/161316

rss.ponder.catAI Slop Is Breaking the Internet as We Know It (404 Media Live at SXSW) - Pondercat RSSAI Slop Is Breaking the Internet as We Know It (404 Media Live at SXSW) [https://www.404media.co/content/images/2025/04/CleanShot-2025-04-18-at-08.18.44@2x.png] We’re excited to share audio and video of our panel at SXSW, where Jason, Sam, and our friend Brian Merchant of Blood in the Machine [https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/?ref=404media.co] discuss how AI slop has taken over the internet, how it is a brute-force attack against the algorithms that control what we see on social media, and what we can do to fight back against it. Here’s the panel: It’s better with the video, because there are some visual aids, but we also released an audio-only version of this on our podcast feed: This was our first big live event, and we hope to do more in the future. If you’re throwing a conference or event, hit us up! We had a wonderful time talking about AI spam, labor, and the future of the internet. Thanks to everyone who came out to meet and party with us. This panel was held at Speakeasy in Austin, Texas at SXSW on March 10, 2025. Thanks to our friends at Flipboard for giving us the space and to DeleteMe for sponsoring the event. SPONSOREDAI Slop Is Breaking the Internet as We Know It (404 Media Live at SXSW) [https://www.404media.co/content/images/2025/03/CleanShot-2025-03-06-at-07.11.45@2x.png]https://srv.buysellads.com/ads/long/x/TC2FQGDFTTTTTTT634BC5TTTTTT25VRNKATTTTTTW47SY7YTTTTTTSPCPJCFEAP52HZWVKLEVHHN5ELFPVSDCSPD57BT?ref=404media.co This segment is a paid ad. If you’re interested in advertising, let’s talk [https://www.404media.co/advertise-with-404-media/]. Your Personal Data May Not Be Hidden. Take Control with DeleteMe [https://srv.buysellads.com/ads/long/x/T6RZISDFTTTTTTHHYULC5TTTTTTT3LGCKATTTTTTT3X5Y7YTTTTTTSPCPJCFEAP52HZWVKLEVHHN5ELFPVSDCSPD57BT?ref=404media.co]. Don’t want just anyone finding your information on Search Engines? Remove your personal information from Data Brokers using DeleteMe. Use code 404MEDIA for 20% off [https://srv.buysellads.com/ads/long/x/T6RZISDFTTTTTTHHYULC5TTTTTTT3LGCKATTTTTTT3X5Y7YTTTTTTSPCPJCFEAP52HZWVKLEVHHN5ELFPVSDCSPD57BT?ref=404media.co] Learn more [https://srv.buysellads.com/ads/long/x/TC2FQGDFTTTTTTT634BC5TTTTTT25VRNKATTTTTTW47SY7YTTTTTTSPCPJCFEAP52HZWVKLEVHHN5ELFPVSDCSPD57BT?ref=404media.co] And here’s a bunch of photos, taken by Case Hartsfield: AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet as We Know It (404 Media Live at SXSW) [https://www.404media.co/content/images/2025/04/DSC06459.jpg]AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet as We Know It (404 Media Live at SXSW) [https://www.404media.co/content/images/2025/04/DSC06473.jpg]AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet as We Know It (404 Media Live at SXSW) [https://www.404media.co/content/images/2025/04/DSC06481.jpg]AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet as We Know It (404 Media Live at SXSW) [https://www.404media.co/content/images/2025/04/DSC06532.jpg]AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet as We Know It (404 Media Live at SXSW) [https://www.404media.co/content/images/2025/04/DSC06550.jpg] — From 404 Media [https://www.404media.co/] via this RSS feed [https://www.404media.co/rss]
#404media
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paywall

Big Tech Backed Trump for Acceleration. They Got a Decel President Instead

rss.ponder.cat/post/150312

rss.ponder.catBig Tech Backed Trump for Acceleration. They Got a Decel President Instead - Pondercat RSSBig Tech Backed Trump for Acceleration. They Got a Decel President Instead [https://www.404media.co/content/images/2025/04/CleanShot-2025-04-04-at-08.30.35@2x.png] In October of 2023 [https://www.404media.co/marc-andreesen-manifesto-says-ai-regulation-is-a-form-of-murder/], Marc Andreessen, founder of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), published the “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” arguing that human ingenuity has been stagnated and demoralized by regulation, and that the only viable path forward for society is the accelerated development and adoption of new technologies, and specifically artificial intelligence. Andreessen was only formalizing and articulating a position that had already gained traction among tech company executives and Twitter shitposters like @BasedBeffJezos [https://twitter.com/BasedBeffJezos?ref=404media.co] (Andreessen crowned him a “patron saint” of techno-optimism), who adopted the label of effective accelerationists, or e/acc. As the 2024 presidential election got closer, Andreessen, Elon Musk, other tech CEOs, and less consequential shitposters saw a natural alliance between their cause and Donald Trump’s campaign. Trump wanted to slash and burn government regulation in all forms, but also specifically in a way that would unleash tech and AI’s true potential. Joe Biden and the Democratic party, the party of big government, Lina Khan’s antimonopolist FTC, welfare, and fear of climate change, were luddites. They demanded that tech platforms limit speech they perceived to be harmful. They wanted AI regulated so it could limit real and theoretical harm in the future, including science fiction nightmares about artificial general intelligence. They were worried about the environmental and energy costs of mining cryptocurrency and massive datacenters for training frontier AI models. They were referred to as decelerationists (decels) and degrowthers, a derogatory umbrella term that covers everything from the ambition to actually reduce the number of humans of the planet in order to make it more sustainable (a future most vividly imagined in Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry for the Future ) to any form of regulation on AI. Andreesen is so passionate about this position in his manifesto that he says that this type of regulation is “a form or murder” because it could stop the development of life saving technologies, and makes a list “enemies” of AI, which includes supporters of “sustainability,” “social responsibility,” and “trust and safety,” the latter of which refers to the people at tech companies who try to keep platforms safe for users. The good news for Andreessen and the accelerationists is that they backed Trump and he won. Andreessen is advising the administration. Venture Capitalist David Sacks is the White House AI and crypto “czar.” Musk and his posse of young engineers from his companies are doing the slashing and burning themselves. The regulation on AI and everything else they didn’t like is in the process of being removed, and the administration is working on tax cuts that will benefit them all. The bad news for these people is that Trump is also the Decel-in-Chief. The most painfully obvious evidence for this is Trump’s cataclysmic tariffs this week, which sent the stock market tumbling, and will be particularly damaging to giant tech companies. The problem here is not just “uncertainty in the markets.” As Jason wrote yesterday, the tariffs are aggressive, wide ranging, and very painful for tech companies that rely on complex global supply chains. It seems that the Trump administration tried to at least temporarily throw the tech industry a bone here by exempting semiconductors from these tariffs, but as the Wall Street Journal explains [https://www.wsj.com/tech/exempt-or-not-the-chip-industry-wont-escape-tariffs-a6c771db?ref=404media.co], this is a fantasy: “[M]ost chip imports are indirect. Chips typically are made overseas, packaged up there and inserted into electronics shipped across the globe–including to the U.S., where they will be subject to tariffs as high as 49%. Even many U.S.-made chips are sent to Taiwan, China or Southeast Asia for final assembly before being re-exported to end customers.” Unless Trump folds, the tariffs will make the price of everything go up. Unemployment will go up. People will buy less stuff, and companies will spend less money on advertising that powers tech platforms. The tech industry, which has thrived on the cheap labor, cheap parts, cheap manufacturing, and supply chains enabled by free and cheap international trade, will now have artificial costs and bureaucracy tacked onto all of this. The market knows this, which is why tech stocks are eating shit. Meanwhile, there is deafening silence from Musk, Andresseen, and the usual e/acc shitposters, who spent the last three months doing victory laps for Trump’s win, owning the libs, and posting AI-generated images of the glass tower cities and Mars space colonies that will be built under Trump’s admin and unrestrained technological progress. We’d be quiet too if we were them because it’s such a humiliating self own. Maybe, like many other pundits, they thought that Trump was just bluffing about tariffs. Maybe they thought they could push him in a direction that was purely beneficial to their industry. He might still back down. But at least for now, what the accelerationists did here by backing Trump is not just accidentally shoot themselves in the foot, but methodically blow off each of their toes with a .50 caliber sniper rifle. Even on a long enough timeline, there is no world in which the techno-optimist utopia comes to be in the United States under protectionist, isolationist policies. The Trump administration has also set to work dismantling the academic, scientific, research, and immigration infrastructures that have allowed business and innovation to thrive in the US, and the soft-power structures that have made it easy for tech companies to enter and dominate markets all over the world. Even if Americans believed and wanted to go back in time to a post WWII or turn of the century US economy, which has always been the backwards looking, regressive mantra of the MAGA movement, it is inherently incompatible with progress and the future because the future is not about cranking out Sherman tanks and gas powered Buicks. The techno-optimist utopia relies on the complex supply chains Trump threw into chaos this week, where different manufacturing and fabrication hubs with highly specialized expertise feed into a mutually beneficial system of free markets in order to make iPhones, semiconductors, lithium batteries, and so on. Trump has also thrown chaos into America’s software and service businesses, which require a neverending supply of new markets and new people to sell to in the name of chasing growth, scale, and new users; growing something like Facebook or OpenAI with the scale the stock market wants to see requires signing up users by the countryload; that’s far easier to do in a regulatory environment where you’re a willing partner with those countries, not creating trade wars and isolationist bureaucracies. As Peter Thiel loves to say [https://venturebeat.com/business/vc-peter-thiel-you-can-either-invest-in-bits-or-atoms/?ref=404media.co#:~:text=Investor%20Peter%20Thiel%20believes%20that,not%20enough%20%E2%80%9Catom%E2%80%9D%20companies.], venture capitalists can invest in either bits or atoms, meaning digital products, or actual physical things. Trump is currently fucking Silicon Valley on both ends. Making things will be much harder even if we adopt the fantasy that a lot of manufacturing jobs can be reclaimed from countries like China, India, and Vietnam, because we simply don’t have the atoms we need in the United States. America has used countries around the world both for their raw materials but also for their cheap labor; the “trade deficits” that Trump speaks of are largely due to American companies setting up factories in places with cheap labor and extracting value from those countries to sell products to Americans. It’s Nike, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and other American conglomerates that benefit most from global trade, not the factory workers making a few dollars a day. Moving this infrastructure to the United States is not advisable or feasible because lots of the jobs American companies have outsourced to China have already been outsourced from there to poorer countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, and India because many Chinese people have realized they don’t want to do this type of work. And many of those jobs are being automated by robots. Those jobs aren’t coming back to the United States, and we shouldn’t want them to, anyway. Meanwhile, the United States has exactly one rare Earth mineral mine in the entire country, which itself only became active after years of mishaps, regulatory mess, a bankruptcy, and a period of Chinese ownership. [Content truncated due to length…] — Posted from 404 Media [https://www.404media.co/rss] RSS feed, see !meta@rss.ponder.cat [/c/meta@rss.ponder.cat]
#404media
Continued thread
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Nonilex

New docs obtained by #404Media reveal that #ClearviewAI spent nearly a million dollars in a bid to purchase “690 million arrest records & 390 million arrest photos” from all 50 states from an #intelligence firm. The contract further describes the records as including current & former home addresses, dates of birth, arrest photos, social security & cell phone numbers, & email addresses.

#law#privacy#tech
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Nonilex

#FacialRecognition Company #Clearview Attempted to Buy #SocialSecurity Numbers & Mugshots for its Database

Controversial facial recognition company #ClearviewAI attempted to purchase hundreds of millions of arrest records including SSNs, mugshots, & even email addresses to incorporate into its product, #404Media has learned.

#law #privacy #tech #InfoSec
404media.co/facial-recognition

404 Media · Facial Recognition Company Clearview Attempted to Buy Social Security Numbers and Mugshots for its DatabaseClearview AI spent nearly a million dollars in a bid to purchase “690 million arrest records and 390 million arrest photos” from all 50 states, court records reveal.
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Flipboard

We're psyched to be partnering with @404mediaco at SXSW '25.

Starting at 5pm on March 10, 404's @samleecole and @jasonkoebler and Blood in the Machine's @brianmerchant discuss how AI slop is taking over the internet and how humans can fight back. Then it's Indie Media Q&A + party! RSVP here:

lu.ma/hffhi9sn

lu.ma404 Takeover and Party · LumaMeet the team at 404media.co, a new independent media company founded by tech journalists Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg, Samantha Cole, and Joseph Cox. 5pm –…
#Flipboard#SXSW#AI
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John Carlsen 🇺🇸🇳🇱🇪🇺

"Y Combinator Supports AI Startup Dehumanizing Factory Workers"

by Samantha Cole
Feb 25, 2025 at 11:27 AM

"A venture capital-backed “AI performance monitoring system for factory workers” is proposing what appears to be dehumanizing surveillance of factories, where machine vision tracks workers’ hand movements and output so a boss can look at graphs and yell at them about efficiency.

In a launch video demoing the product, Baid and Mohta put on a skit showing how Optifye.ai would be used by factory bosses.

..."

archive.ph/MlFoo

#404media#WorkerDehuminization#YCombinator
Public
Bongolian

The #techbros are saying most of the quiet part out loud now: The #AI endgame is worker #dystopia (followed by mass replacement by machines). Even #Ycombinator is embarrassed for saying that this technology benefits workers.

Samantha Cole: 'Hey Number 17!'

#404Media #spyware
404media.co/email/b7eb2339-2ea

404 Media'Hey Number 17!'Y Combinator supports an AI startup that's pitching granular machine vision surveillance of factory workers.
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HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

#SozialeMedien #Faschismus #Meta #Genozid
(1/2)

Immer noch im "Metaverse"?--Es is 5 nach 12 #Facebook, #Instagram und #Threads zu verlassen.

Von #404Media:

"#Meta legt den narrativen Grundstein für #Trumps #Massenabschiebungen

Mehrere Experten zogen Vergleiche zwischen den jüngsten Änderungen von Meta im Zusammenhang mit der Einwanderung und den Ereignissen in #Myanmar im Jahr 2017, wo Facebook durch die Verbreitung von Hass zu einem #Völkermord beitrug.

Mit...

404media.co/meta-is-laying-the

404 Media · Meta Is Laying the Narrative Groundwork for Trump’s Mass DeportationsMultiple experts drew comparisons between Meta's recent changes around immigration and what happened in Myanmar in 2017, where Facebook contributed to a genocide by allowing the spread of hate.
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