Sign the Polluters Pay Pact:

👉 https://act-int.greenpeace.org/polluters-pay-pact

#MakePollutersPay

I’m officially done with takes on AI beginning “Ethical concerns aside…”.

No! Stop right there.

Ethical concerns front and center. First thing. Let’s get this out of the way and then see if thre is anything left worth talking about.

Ethics is the formalisation of how we are treating one another as human beings and how we relate to the world around us.

It is *impossible* to put ethics aside.

What you mean is “I don’t want to apologise for my greed and selfishness.”

Say that first.

First, they'll ask for your official IDs to confirm your age and identity.

This will create a large treasure trove
of sensitive data, which will attract criminals, and will inevitably leak from either negligence or malice, sooner than later.

Then, they'll claim your official ID is
unreliable, because it was stolen so many times, and demand you share your biometric data.

They will collect your face scan,
your palm scan, and even your iris scan (no exaggeration, these are all already being collected by some companies for identification). They will claim it's super safe.

This will create a large treasure trove
of sensitive biometric data, which will attract criminals, and will inevitably leak from either negligence or malice, sooner than later.

Then what? Rinse and escalate.

You will have lost control of not just your corporate social media accounts by participating to this, but to any data capable of validating your identity, to your privacy rights, to the protections you could use online to stay safe.

We don't have to wait that it escalates.

We can, and must, push back and say No now. Start to say No now.

#Privacy #Biometrics #DataMinimization #AgeVerification

Where does Berlin rank when it comes to open source?

A recent survey by the IHK Berlin shows that:

● Around three quarters of the companies surveyed already use open source software

● Eighty percent expect digital sovereignty to become increasingly important in software procurement.

Find out more about the figures, expectations, challenges, and the need for political action – and why platforms such as OpenCloud play a role in this.

https://opencloud.eu/en/news/berlin-companies-rely-open-source

I very much get a "we just discovered radium and want to put it in everything" vibe from this whole generative AI bubble.

(Including the thing where companies used to slap the word "radium" on existing products even though they thankfully did not actually have any radioactive materials. Like "radium butter".)

Insisting that everyone should have a clear, recognizable and unchangeable gender only makes sense if you want to treat people of different genders differently.

Which you clearly shouldn't.