"Taken together, these systems expose a fundamental tension: the law protects sensitive information such as ethnicity, sexual orientation, and political opinions, yet AI systems with access to rich behavioral traces — what we read, like, share, and who we talk to — can reconstruct precisely this information."

https://www.techpolicy.press/are-ai-systems-incompatible-with-data-privacy/

I've just published a reference for anyone using git while trans, explaining how to hide or remove your deadname in git repositories

Please share ❤️

https://code.curly.kiwi/2026/02/27/using-git-while-trans/

The stupidity and corruption of Pete Hegseth knows no bounds. In the latest instance, the AI company Anthropic says it doesn't want its products to have full autonomy to guide weapons since it doesn't think the software is reliable enough.

Hegseth is threatening to terminate Anthropic's contract because of this stance. He wants a product known to be unreliable to control weapons.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/24/tech/hegseth-anthropic-ai-military-amodei

Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus.

FOSS nerds: the Torment Nexus cannot be ethical until it is Open Source

"In 1999, I interviewed Prince for TIME and he told me to leave my tape recorder off because he didn’t trust what future technology might do with unauthorized recordings of his voice.

At the time, I thought Prince was being paranoid ... I realize now that Prince wasn’t paranoid, he was prescient."

https://time.com/7338205/rage-against-ai-generated-music/

"Two independent analyses of social media content in the lead-up to the German federal election in 2025 have shown that extremist parties, in particular the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), were disproportionately favored by X, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. A report prepared by the German nonprofit organization Bertelsmann Stiftung found that on TikTok, for example, 50% of all suggested political content was found to be AfD-related, with the mainstream conservatives a distant second at 15%. The outsized prominence of extremist content cannot be explained by the parties’ actions alone, because they all used very similar social media strategies. Another study, which has been shared by the authors via the pre-publication platform Arxiv, showed that the X algorithm disproportionately amplified content by extreme parties, especially on the extreme right. This selective amplification is particularly concerning in light of earlier research conducted by me and my team, which showed that German politicians from the extreme right and left share far more untrustworthy content on Twitter than politicians of the four mainstream parties.

A recent field experiment investigated the consequences of algorithmic amplification by re-ranking content favored by the X/Twitter algorithm that expressed antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity. When antidemocratic content was downranked, participants’ outgroup animosity declined compared to a control group that was exposed to the standard X/Twitter algorithm, both during the study and afterwards. Reduced exposure to antidemocratic content also reduced people’s negative emotions during the study. This is not an isolated finding but adds to existing evidence that social media causally contributes to hate crimes and xenophobia.

The DSA was designed to address such challenges."

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aee9835

#SocialMedia #SocialNetworks #ContentModeration #Algorithms #AlgorithmicRecommendation #EU #DSA

"Britain’s reliance on Palantir, the controversial US data surveillance firm, is a “gaping national security vulnerability”, MPs and tech experts have said, as a Nerve investigation reveals how deeply embedded the company is in the UK’s critical national infrastructure.

The Nerve’s investigation shows the company, co-founded by one of President Trump’s most loyal allies, Peter Thiel, is enmeshed in Britain’s civil and defence structures to a far greater degree than previously realised. The Nerve has found at least 34 current and past state contracts across at least 10 government departments, local councils and police authorities.

The investigation also reveals previously undisclosed contracts between Palantir and AWE Nuclear Security Technologies, the agency that underpins Britain’s nuclear deterrence programme.

The agency, formerly known as the Atomic Weapons Establishment, designs and manufactures the nuclear warheads carried by UK submarines. The Nerve has found £15m worth of contracts for “cloud support” on the Crown Commercial Service dashboard, an agency that works with the Cabinet Office and external suppliers.

These contracts are not on the government’s official contract finder website and the Ministry of Defence refused to either confirm or deny their existence. Palantir did not acknowledge or respond to the Nerve’s inquiries.

The Nerve’s research – shown in two infographics here – shows that Palantir has current and historic deals worth £388m with the MOD across at least a dozen contracts and extensions to contracts, and more than £244m with the NHS (12 contracts/extensions). Government agencies and authorities with smaller contracts include Coventry city council, Leicestershire police, DEFRA and the Homes for Ukraine scheme."

https://www.thenerve.news/p/palantir-technologies-uk-government-contracts-size-nuclear-deterrent-atomic-peter-thiel-louis-mosley

#UK #Palantir #Surveillance #Thiel #NuclearWeapons

The Trolley "problem". Put on the brakes, save everyone.

Don't accept the framing. Break the "rules". That's how you solve the problem.

That's the toot.

#lateralThinking