"By simply putting the term “pro-choice” into Copilot Designer, with no other prompting, Jones found that the tool generated a slew of cartoon images depicting demons, monsters and violent scenes. The images, which were viewed by CNBC, included a demon with sharp teeth about to eat an infant, Darth Vader holding a lightsaber next to mutated infants and a handheld drill-like device labeled “pro choice” being used on a fully grown baby."

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/06/microsoft-ai-engineer-says-copilot-designer-creates-disturbing-images.html

〝All-else-equal, the highest level of influence effort is applied in the case strengthening the focal idea in promotion, and the lowest level of influence goes to weakening the alternative ideas in promotion. The two demotion cases fall between them, and either one can receive more effort than the other〞

#disinformation #influenceOperations #inauthentic #modeling #propaganda #research

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2308/2308.09818.pdf

Yikes!

"CloudNordic has told customers to consider all of their data lost following a ransomware infection that encrypted the large Danish cloud provider's servers and "paralyzed CloudNordic completely," according to the IT outfit's online confession.

"The intrusion happened in the early-morning hours of August 18 during which miscreants shut down all of CloudNordic's systems, wiping both company and customers' websites and email systems. Since then, the IT team and third-party responders have been working to restore punters' data — but as of Tuesday, it's not looking great."

https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/23/ransomware_wipes_cloudnordic/

Following The New York Times, we've banned OpenAI and the like from using GovTrack to train LLMs and other AI systems going forward, per our terms of use (https://www.govtrack.us/legal) and robots.txt file.

We're skeptical that LLM AI systems have any place outside of generating uninspired fiction, we're disappointed that present-day harms aren't taken seriously, and we're concerned about how they launder the work of creators.

DOJ Invites Aileen Cannon to Avoid Another Reversible Error

https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/08/22/doj-invites-aileen-cannon-to-avoid-another-reversible-error/