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VOICE ARCHIVE

Jonathan Zittrain

@zittrain
54 posts
2025-09-20
Hunh.  (1) Wouldn't everyone then notice on their phones that they'd been triggered to start AI?  Is that what people experienced?  (2) If true, it highlights serious issues where strangers can get people's phones to do things through voice command, like [Article: “Burger King debuts Whopper ad that triggers Google Home devices"]
2025-09-20 View on X
The Verge

Meta CTO says the technical issues during live demos of its new smart glasses were due to a self-inflicted DDoS and a bug that put Zuckerberg's glasses to sleep

and it wasn't the Wi-Fi Lakshmi Varanasi / Business Insider : Meta's CTO: We'd ‘love’ iMessage on Ray-Ban glasses, but Apple won't allow it David Heaney / UploadVR : Meta Explains ...

2023-12-31
@ylecun FWIW, the choices need not be exclusive - more than one party involved can be liable. And, of course, sometimes there are defenses like fair use to what is otherwise clear infringement. I'm not sure how much prior doctrine helps here, tbh. Seems a largely new situation.
2023-12-31 View on X
Marcus on AI

OpenAI and others will likely face more copyright lawsuits as systems like DALL-E produce copyright-infringing materials without attribution or informing users

including movie, TV, and computer game scenes and characters.  Reductio ad absurdam: trademark-infringing output from a two word prompt ("animated toys"): https://garymarcus.substa...

2023-12-30
@ylecun FWIW, the choices need not be exclusive - more than one party involved can be liable. And, of course, sometimes there are defenses like fair use to what is otherwise clear infringement. I'm not sure how much prior doctrine helps here, tbh. Seems a largely new situation.
2023-12-30 View on X
Marcus on AI

OpenAI and others will likely face more copyright lawsuits as systems like DALL-E produce copyright-infringing materials without attribution or informing users

A full of spectrum of infringement  —  At around the same time as news of the New York Times lawsuit vs OpenAI broke … Threads: @carnage4life and @thebrianpenny Mastodon: @cstross@...

2023-09-11
Dark times indeed, as @kashhill documents the latest chapter: glasses that identify strangers to you as you look at them. (Of course, more likely you're the person being looked at.) https://www.nytimes.com/...
2023-09-11 View on X
New York Times

How Meta and Google held back their tech to recognize unknown people's faces due to privacy worries, opening the door for startups like Clearview AI and PimEyes

2023-07-31
At this point, a legend!
2023-07-31 View on X
New York Times

A profile of Mike Masnick, who founded Techdirt in 1998, considered by lawmakers, CEOs, and activists as an essential guide for what's happening in tech

2023-07-30
At this point, a legend!
2023-07-30 View on X
New York Times

A profile of Mike Masnick, who founded Techdirt in 1998, considered by lawmakers, CEOs, and activists as an essential guide for what's happening in tech

Mike Masnick, who founded Techdirt in 1998, writes for an influential audience of lawmakers, C.E.O.s and activists.

2023-05-31
Today, a crisp one-sentence open letter warning about existential AI threat: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” I did not sign the letter. https://twitter.com/...
2023-05-31 View on X
New York Times

OpenAI and DeepMind executives, Geoffrey Hinton, and 350+ others sign a statement saying “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority”

and says computer scientists need ethics training Brian Fung / CNN : AI industry and researchers sign statement warning of ‘extinction’ risk Alka Jain / Livemint : Industry leaders...

2022-05-04
It's 2022 and random apps on your phone are sending telemetry about your location to brokers who will in turn sell it to anyone else — including the authorities — conveniently pre-sifted for visits to reproductive health clinics. A years-in-the-making total regulatory failure. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
2022-05-04 View on X
VICE

SafeGraph says it will stop selling the location data of visitors to Planned Parenthood and other family planning centers “to curtail any potential misuse”

including the authorities — conveniently pre-sifted for visits to reproductive health clinics. A years-in-the-making total regulatory failure. https://twitter.com/... https://twitt...

2022-02-17
Though it's weird that a FB board member supported this startup pretty early on when its business mode depended on scraping Facebook data over Facebook's mild protest. Here, strangely, is that person warning about this surveillance, having invested in it. https://www.cnbc.com/...
2022-02-17 View on X
Washington Post

Leaked pitch deck: Clearview AI told investors that it will have 100B facial photos in its database within a year, after growing to 10B+ since early 2020

because Congress is doing NOTHING to stop this — that it can get away with everything. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Will Oremus / @willoremus : In the absence of regulation,...

And it's not just a private effort, but a tiny private effort. If Microsoft or Facebook or IBM or Amazon had pulled this there'd be immediate outcry across the board, from the public and from competitors. That's in part why they didn't try!
2022-02-17 View on X
Washington Post

Leaked pitch deck: Clearview AI told investors that it will have 100B facial photos in its database within a year, after growing to 10B+ since early 2020

because Congress is doing NOTHING to stop this — that it can get away with everything. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Will Oremus / @willoremus : In the absence of regulation,...

Failing to deal with this company's behavior when it started is the biggest public policy failure in the digital space in a generation. Reining it in is that much tougher now that it's well-funded and so frequently used by government clients. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... @drewharwell
2022-02-17 View on X
Washington Post

Leaked pitch deck: Clearview AI told investors that it will have 100B facial photos in its database within a year, after growing to 10B+ since early 2020

because Congress is doing NOTHING to stop this — that it can get away with everything. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Will Oremus / @willoremus : In the absence of regulation,...

2021-10-25
Amazing work by @RonDeibert and @citizenlab tracking the hacking of journalists' iPhones by government(s) https://twitter.com/...
2021-10-25 View on X
New York Times

Citizen Lab: the iPhone of Ben Hubbard, an American reporter for NYT, was hacked in 2020 and 2021, likely by Saudi Arabia using NSO's Pegasus; NSO denies claim

Invasive hacking software sold to countries to fight terrorism is easily abused.  Researchers say my phone was hacked twice, probably by Saudi Arabia. Source: The Citizen Lab .

2021-09-04
Tech companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Uber should publicly articulate how they will respond to subpoenas for user data as private lawsuits begin under the new Texas law. A link to a great roundup by @issielapowsky below. https://twitter.com/...
2021-09-04 View on X
CNBC

Lyft and Uber say they will cover legal fees for drivers who are sued under Texas' new abortion law for transporting women to abortion clinics

- Lyft and Uber said Friday they would cover legal fees for drivers on their respective platforms who are sued under Texas' restrictive abortion law that went into effect this week...

Tech companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Uber should publicly articulate how they will respond to subpoenas for user data as private lawsuits begin under the new Texas law. A link to a great roundup by @issielapowsky below. https://twitter.com/...
2021-09-04 View on X
Protocol

Following Texas' abortion law, tech companies could face suits over providing on-demand rides to clinics, subpoenas requesting user data, and more

Issie Lapowsky / Protocol :

2021-09-03
Tech companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Uber should publicly articulate how they will respond to subpoenas for user data as private lawsuits begin under the new Texas law. A link to a great roundup by @issielapowsky below. https://twitter.com/...
2021-09-03 View on X
Protocol

Following Texas' abortion law, tech companies could face suits over providing on-demand rides to clinics, subpoenas requesting user data, and more

With the Supreme Court deciding not to block Texas' effective ban on abortion this week, fears have been rightly focused on the people in Texas …

2021-08-11
No big deal, just ~USD$600 million stolen this morning in a hack of a decentralized finance network. Below is a plea to return it. Because blockchains are blockchains, everyone can “see” the ill-gotten gains sitting in the hackers' wallets. https://twitter.com/...
2021-08-11 View on X
The Block

Group behind Poly Network, a cross-chain protocol used for DeFi applications, says a hacker has stolen $611M; one researcher blames the attack on a crypto flaw

Quick Take  — Cross-chain protocol Poly Network has been hacked for $611 million.  — The team behind the protocol …

2021-07-01
Hard to say what's more worrisome for the preservation of humanity's knowledge today: the fact that online sources disappear without warning, or that they can be changed without anyone noticing? https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
2021-07-01 View on X
The Atlantic

A look at link rot, and projects like Perma, which are trying to give authors of enduring documents like scholarly papers a way to preserve links permanently

Sixty years ago the futurist Arthur C. Clarke observed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Tweets: @lanceulanoff , @ethanz , @heghoulian , @d...

2021-06-28
Thread from an evolutionary biologist who, along with scholars of ecology, anthropology, philosophy, and complex systems, is calling for the study of social media and its unpredictable worldwide effects to become a “crisis discipline.” Yes! An urgent, important summons. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
2021-06-28 View on X
Vox

Researchers say the study of social media's large-scale societal impact should be treated as a “crisis discipline”, like climate science or conservation biology

One challenge is how little we know about the dangers.  —  Social media has drastically restructured … Tweets: @ct_bergstrom , @ct_bergstrom , @zittrain , @richggall , @bob_wachter...

Here's a companion thread from the lead author. It's really interesting to see problems that have been approached from “nearby” domains - here, e.g., law, policy, science and technology studies, social science - intrude upon the agendas and imaginations of additional disciplines. https://twitter.com/...
2021-06-28 View on X
Vox

Researchers say the study of social media's large-scale societal impact should be treated as a “crisis discipline”, like climate science or conservation biology

One challenge is how little we know about the dangers.  —  Social media has drastically restructured … Tweets: @ct_bergstrom , @ct_bergstrom , @zittrain , @richggall , @bob_wachter...

@richggall @shiringhaffary Yea, I think it's hard for anyone to have a comprehensive picture; it may be that some of the hard scientists aren't used to opining about power or politics as much. The paper and interview cite Naomi Oreskes's work, though. And that's some casual shade on design thinking!
2021-06-28 View on X
Vox

Researchers say the study of social media's large-scale societal impact should be treated as a “crisis discipline”, like climate science or conservation biology

One challenge is how little we know about the dangers.  —  Social media has drastically restructured … Tweets: @ct_bergstrom , @ct_bergstrom , @zittrain , @richggall , @bob_wachter...