blair

blair

@blairaf.com

Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Asst. Prof, sci-fi creator @ UAlberta Transfeminist AI governance, ethics, policy: blairaf.com Gay trans cyborg warriors vs. AI monsters: objecttype3.app

4.1K followers292 following1.2K posts

blair reposted

Is there a good overview/review paper of catastrophic AI risks that doesn't talk about "rogue AI" in a way that makes AI agents seem self-directed/decoupled from their human operators?

Is there a good overview/review paper of catastrophic AI risks that doesn't talk about "rogue AI" in a way that makes AI agents seem self-directed/decoupled from their human operators?

blair reposted

"AI does not understand accountability, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness, all of which shape reputational risk and ultimately drive revenue growth and profit margins.”

blair reposted

Replying to @blairaf.com

Canada was very early to develop a whole policy framework for automated decision systems that includes tiered compliance requirements based on a system's assessed impact level but this kind of approach does not seem to be a serious consideration in "frontier AI" circles?

blair reposted

Replying to @blairaf.com

Somewhat related: other than lobbying, is there a reason why policymakers are so fixated on legislative thresholds for "advanced" or "frontier" AI based on compute input, energy input, annual revenue, or anticipted economic damages/human casualities rather than multi-factor impact assessments?

blair reposted

wrote about "Black October," the PHP vulnerability, and the AI-fueled dread and panic I'm seeing among almost all of the cybersecurity experts I've ever known. I think people w/ LLMs are brute forcing software the same way they brute forced social media w/ slop www.404media.co/php2shell-bl...

404media.coAI Is Changing Everything About Hacking. No One Knows What Happens Next'Black October:' The PHP vulnerabilities and a series of other hacks and bugs have cybersecurity experts freaking out and unsure what happens next.

People who follow California AI policy more closely than me: has SB 53 actually been effective at re-shaping developer behavior in a visible way, or has it been mostly ineffective?

Somewhat related: other than lobbying, is there a reason why policymakers are so fixated on legislative thresholds for "advanced" or "frontier" AI based on compute input, energy input, annual revenue, or anticipted economic damages/human casualities rather than multi-factor impact assessments?

Canada was very early to develop a whole policy framework for automated decision systems that includes tiered compliance requirements based on a system's assessed impact level but this kind of approach does not seem to be a serious consideration in "frontier AI" circles?

blair reposted

People who follow California AI policy more closely than me: has SB 53 actually been effective at re-shaping developer behavior in a visible way, or has it been mostly ineffective?

Dark pattern UX is Duolingo progress bar making it look like you're half done a lesson after 3 questions but you actually have 15 more to go

Open letter to stop including references lists in word limits for journal submissions

It is exhausting with every submit to have to walk a tightrope between getting a desk reject for too many words or getting torn apart by reviewers for too few references

Bizarre that the first thing that I voted for since moving to this province is staying in my own country but ok

Looks like we are staying in the same country but also may be taking away basic rights from immigrants. Disappointing to see such a sizeable Yes majority on these questions

Truly disappointing that the separatists have gotten so much free publicity from this whole process that they kind of win no matter what the actual result is

blair reposted

"AI safety" is about making humans safe for investment in AI "Responsible AI" is about diffusing responsibility for AI away from investors "Trustworthy AI" is about re-assuring investors that the AI is safe and responsible

blair reposted

i keep hearing there is "infinity money" for organizations that want to work on "AI safety" but i can tell you that none of it is going to the organizations that have been working to address AI harms for years. we are all fighting over scraps while new orgs spring up over night with giant budgets

blair reposted

Reminder that Canada still doesn't have clear plans to table new AI legislation and our current plan to address AI security risks is voluntary certification schemes & voluntary ad hoc extralegal evaluations www.bbc.com/news/article...

bbc.comAI minister warns it is 'likely' UK's cyber defences will be breachedKanishka Narayan said the government will use advanced AI to strengthen the UK against cyber attacks.
blair@blairaf.com

Lots to digest here but one piece that sticks out is the proposed regulatory framework is mostly voluntary and opaque. Hinges on voluntary certification and selective safety partnerships & evaluations behind closed doors without clear public oversight mechanisms www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news...

Class on digital policy & ethics coming up in a few weeks, excited to hear what the students think about this fun new case study in industry self-regulation/ethics washing

Feels like I'm on the job market again spending hours and thousands of words justifying my value

A bright side of this is that it involves a very peculiar form of pageantry where you are just invited to spend several paragraphs flexing and that's kinda fun

current state of "responsible AI" is democratizing cyberwarfare capabilities and normalizing criminal enterprises

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Sorry GPT 7 harvested all your medical records but we promise it's good for the economy

Most of the "responsible AI" and "AI safety" events I go to lately have good discussions of procedural accountability mechanisms that could be effective in theory but as soon as you point out political relationality & structural constraints exist ppl get very uncomfortable

blair reposted

current state of "responsible AI" is democratizing cyberwarfare capabilities and normalizing criminal enterprises

current state of "responsible AI" is democratizing cyberwarfare capabilities and normalizing criminal enterprises

Lawmakers still pearl clutching about "stifling innovation" while critical infrastructure goes down and government databases get raided

I used to do fun colorful creative things but now I just do fun colorful empirical spreadsheets

"it's important to build this evidence base" I tell myself for the 100th time while suppressing the urge to backburner all my Social Scientist manuscripts and write an unhinged essay about the performativity of superintelligence

blair reposted

Looking for good recent papers on the current landscape/gaps in state-level AI legislation in the US, any recommendations?

Recently heard an argument that we should call OpenAI Anthropic DeepMind et al. "companies" instead of labs to re-assert their status as business entities but I increasingly prefer calling them labs to re-assert their status as hazardous experimentation entities

Are the AI personhood people at the big labs aware that you can't legally own a person?

blair reposted

We recorded an episode today about the bike lane removals in Toronto and decided to text Ontario Premier Doug Ford to give him the opportunity to comment. (Yes, we have his real phone number.) He wrote back.

blair reposted

Why would you want to put a human in the loop when you can put a loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of