Category: Links

Categories
Links

Deskilling and Human-in-the-Loop

Photo by Digital Buggu on Pexels.com

I found boyd’s “Deskilling on the Job” to be a useful framing for how to be broadly concerned, or at least thoughtful, about using emerging A.I. technologies in professional as well as training environments.

Most technologies serve to augment human activity. In sensitive situations we often already require a human-in-the-loop to respond to dangerous errors (see: dam operators, nuclear power staff, etc). However, should emerging A.I. systems’ risks be mitigated by also placing humans-in-the-loop then it behooves policymakers to ask: how well does this actually work when we thrust humans into correcting often highly complicated issues moments before a disaster?

Not to spoil things, but it often goes poorly, and we then blame the humans in the loop instead of the technical design of the system.1

AI technologies offer an amazing bevy of possibilities. But thinking more carefully on how to integrate them into society while, also, digging into history and scholarly writing in automation will almost certainly help us avoid obvious, if recurring, errors in how policy makers think about adding guardrails around AI systems.

  1. If this idea of humans-in-the-loop and the regularity of errors in automated systems interests you, I’d highly encourage you to get a copy of ‘Normal Accidents’ by Perrow. ↩︎
Categories
Links

Russian Cyber Doctrine and Its Implementation

Photo by Mati Mango on Pexels.com

While the following might be a bit bellicose it, at the same time, has a ring of truth to it.

Using a foreign country’s military doctrine to reframe fuck-ups as successes — here, that the Russians’ real operations have had the intended effects — boils down to doing a GRU colonel’s work for him; placating Gerasimov about whether or not the O6’s department has contributed to winning the war, among other things.

The Russian government and its various agencies have been incredibly active in attempting to influence or affect the ability of the Ukrainian government to resist the illegal Russian invasion of its territory. But at the same time there has been a back and forth about the successes or failures of Russia in largely academic or public policy circles. In at least some cases, these arguments seem to argue for the successes of the Russian doctrine without sufficient evidence to maintain the position.

Notwithstanding the value of some of those debates it’s nice to see a line of critique that is more attentive to the structure of institutions and what often drives them, with the affect of broadening the rationales and explanations for the (un)successful efforts in the cyber domain by Russian forces.

Categories
Aside Links

Felony Contempt of Business Model

Cory Doctorow has a great analysis of Netflix and it’s efforts to define (and delimit) what constitutes a family. The real kicker, though, is the final paragraph:

When [Netflix] used adversarial interoperability to build a multi-billion-dollar global company using the movie studios’ products in ways the studios hated, that was progress. When you define “family” in ways that makes Netflix less money, that’s felony contempt of business model.

Netflix: a company the whole family can appreciate. Just perhaps not together.

Categories
Links

Censorship, ChatGPT, and Baidu

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Baidu will soon integrate ChatGPT into the company’s chat/search offerings. The company plans, however, to:

limit its chatbot’s outputs in accordance with the state’s censorship rules, one of the people said. OpenAI also applies restrictions to ChatGPT’s outputs in an effort to avoid toxic hate speech and politically sensitive topics.

While I have no doubt that Baidu will impose censorship, I wonder whether researchers will be able to leverage the learning properties of ChatGPT to gain insight into what is censored by Baidu. Side-channel research has been used to reveal how censorship is undertaken by companies operating in China; I’d expect using these AI models will offer yet another way of interrogating their censorship engines.

Categories
Links Writing

Doing A Policy-Oriented PhD

Steve Saideman has a good, short, thought on why doing a PhD is rarely a good idea for Canadians who want to get into policy work. Specifically, he writes:

In Canada, alas, there is not that much of a market for policy-oriented PhDs. We don’t have much in the way of think tanks, there are only a few govt jobs that either require PhDs or where the PhD gives one an advantage over an MA, and, the govt does not pay someone more if they have a PhD.

I concur that there are few places, including think tanks or civil society organizations, where you’re likely to find a job if you have a policy-related PhD. Moreover, when you do find one it can be challenging, if not impossible, to find promotion opportunities because the organizations tend to be so small.

That said, I do in fact think that doing a policy-related PhD can sometimes be helpful if you stay pretty applied in your outputs while pursuing your degree. In my case, I spent a lot of time during my PhD on many of the same topics that I still focus on, today, and can command a premium in consulting rates and seniority for other positions because I’ve been doing applied policy work for about 15 years now, inclusive of my time in my PhD. I, also, developed a lot of skills in my PhD—and in particular the ability to ask and assess good questions, know how questions or policy issues had been previously answered and to what effect, and a reflexive or historical thinking capacity I lacked previously—that are all helpful soft skills in actually doing policy work. Moreover, being able to study policy and politics, and basically act as an independent agent for the time of my PhD, meant I had a much better sense of what I thought about issues, why, and how to see them put into practice than I would have gained with just a master’s degree.

Does that mean I’d recommend doing a PhD? Well…no. There are huge opportunity costs you incur in doing them and, also, you can narrow you job market searches by appearing both over-educated and under-qualified. The benefits of holding a PhD tend to become more apparent after a few years in a job as opposed to being helpful in netting that first one out of school.

I don’t regret doing a PhD but, if someone is particularly committed to doing one, I think that they should hurl themselves into it with absolute abandon and treat it as a super-intensive 40-65 hour/week job, and be damn sure that you have a lot of non-academic outputs to prove to a future employer that you understand the world and not just academic journals. It’s hard work, which is sometimes rewarding, and there are arguably different (and less unpleasant) ways of getting to a relatively similar end point. But if someone is so motivated by a hard question that they’d be doing the research and thinking about it, regardless of whether they were in a PhD program? Then they might as well go and get the piece of paper while figuring out the answer.

Categories
Aside Links

What is Documentary Photography?

Black Tap Magazine has a helpful article that distinguishes between photojournalism, documentary photography, and street photography. I found it particularly helpful to see the author grapple with the differences (and commonalities) between documentary and street photography, with the former focusing more on projects and potentially posed/non-urban photography, and the latter being cast as more spontaneous and less project-driven. While I think good street photography should be emotive and tell a story over time, I appreciate that the core assertion is that documentary photography must tell (or try to tell) some story, often as a photo set, whereas street photography is not similarly bound by these conditions.

Categories
Links Writing

Economic Fundamentals Are Just That: Fundamental

In an opinion piece for the New York Time, Mihir A. Desai writes:

Embracing novelty and ambition in the face of huge problems is to be lauded, but the unhinged variety of these admirable traits that we have seen so much of in recent years is counterproductive. The fundamentals of business have not changed merely because of new technologies or low interest rates. The way to prosper is still by solving problems in new ways that sustainably deliver value to employees, capital providers and customers. Over-promising the scope of change created by technology and the possibilities of business and finance to a new generation will lead only to disaffection as these promises falter.1

A whole generation has seen exploding home prices, outrageous explosions in the costs of education, deeply challenging labour markets, and is facing down ecological catastrophe. These changes have taken place during a time of unprecedented financial gain for an older segment of the economy while the younger generations is, also, being routinely told that it is the first that will generally live a worse life than their parents.

So, in the face of ‘fundamentals’ falling apart a whole range of people—often though not always younger—have sought to find new ways of generating wealth in the face of the exploding challenges to living in Western society. Shockingly, the new companies that depend on exploiting regulatory blind spots to ‘find value’ (or, instead, just act illegally and dare governments to take the time and effort to rule that their operations are illegal) or that offer new lottery-like “currencies” have become popular as ways that may enable younger people to generate wealth and enjoy the (perceived) good life of their parents.

The fundamentals of businesses, and currencies and interest, however are just that: fundamental. The effect, however, is that while the promised wealth-generation opportunities may in fact be dead in the water, the explosion of costs and challenges to younger generations are not. Under-regulated capitalism has, also, become a fundamental of business with the effect that unless new regulations are developed and deployed we can expect further, and ongoing, attempts to evade the fundamentals of business if only so as to overcome the fundamental unfairness of capitalism and its logics of accumulation.

All of which is to say: sure, business fundamentals are just that. But an increasingly desperate and younger population will keep throwing fundamentals to the wind in the face of a business systems that is fundamentally and structurally designed to inhibit that same population from enjoying the Western ideal of the good life.

  1. 1: Emphasis not in original. ↩︎
Categories
Links Writing

Social Networks, Social Media, and Design Affordances

Ian Bogost has a good piece in The Atlantic that recalls the trajectory of social networking services and their transformation into social media services. He distinguishes between the two thusly:

The terms social network and social media are used interchangeably now, but they shouldn’t be. A social network is an idle, inactive system—a Rolodex of contacts, a notebook of sales targets, a yearbook of possible soul mates. But social media is active—hyperactive, really—spewing material across those networks instead of leaving them alone until needed.

I’m someone who obtains a vast amount of very valuable information from my social networks. People are always softly pushing information that is relevant to my specific interests, such as by RSS or through private email groups, with just enough extra stuff that I can learn about novel topics or issues. In all of these cases however I make the choice to interact with the content and in a pretty focused way. This approach is perhaps a bit more active than how Bogost frames social networks but is much closer to the earliest days of Web 2.0, prior to the advent of microblogging and image sharing becoming major things in my neck the Internet. Much of this information comes from people I have either strong or intermediate connections with.

Professionally, I have historically found Twitter to be a useful social media platform. I and other experts have used it to surface media and/or opinions that were meant to be helpful in better understandings parts of the world I engage with. This, of course, has changed for the worse in the past 2 months. Broadly, I and other experts have benefitted from the design affordances of the ‘megascale’ of Twitter.

Most social media, however, holds little or no value to me.1 And perhaps most dangerously even Twitter has the effect of sharpening language (gotta keep within those character or thread limits!) while also making it much harder, if not impossible, to find useful contributions at a later date in time. As experts have moved to Twitter and away from long-term content storage repositories (e.g., blogs, opinion articles, etc) their expertise has the effect of appearing briefly and then being lost to themselves as well as future audiences. Broadly, then, one question is what is the role of social media for professionals and experts who have a public communication role to their careers?

There is also some real value in social media platforms that move content quite quickly. I know for a fact that Twitter, as an example, is regularly useful for foreign policy observers who are trying to determine what is happening around the world. These observers are taking advantage of weak ties to obtain otherwise difficult to find information. Twitter is, also, helpful for crowdsourcing in the case of disasters. At the same time these networks can be, and have been, and are being used for harmful purposes. This includes targeted harassment, government abuse, and more. We often hear about these latter ills and, in response, some wish that very different or slower social media platforms existed on the presumption that they would reduce the harm while still enabling the good platforms. This is perhaps best captured by Bogost’s earlier article, “People Aren’t Meant to Talk This Much,” where he writes:

Imagine if access and reach were limited too: mechanically rather than juridically, by default? What if, for example, you could post to Facebook only once a day, or week, or month? Or only to a certain number of people? Or what if, after an hour or a day, the post expired, Snapchat style? Or, after a certain number of views, or when it reached a certain geographic distance from its origins, it self-destructed? That wouldn’t stop bad actors from being bad, but it would reduce their ability to exude that badness into the public sphere.

However, in assessing the properties of networks/media systems designers should consider the respective technologies’ affordances and what they, and their users, really want or need. I don’t subscribe to the position that Twitter is Evil™ or that a ‘new Twitter’ needs to do away with all the affordances of the current platform.

Real good has come from the ability of different parties to exploit or benefit from virality. But that virality is not something that all persons should have to deal with if they don’t want to, and users of viral-enabled platforms should be protected by rigorous trust and safety policies and teams. (Twitter is clearly moving away from their already-insufficient efforts to protect their users and, so, any replacement virality-platform should start with trust and safety as a top priority ahead of almost anything else.)

The ‘solution’ to the ills of social media shouldn’t be to wistfully look back to the earliest era of Web 2.0, or the last breaths of Web 1.0, and say that we should be restricted to tool and service equivalents of those times. Social technologies should not be permanently halted in the time and template of Livejournal, Orkut, Google+, or Blogger.

First, because we enjoy a lot of modern affordances in our technology and likely won’t want to abandon them!

Second, because such call-backs are often to times when the social networks were far less diverse than the social media platforms today. We should be wary of seeking the civility of the past on the basis that much of that same perceived civility was premised on the exclusive and privileged nature of the social networks.

Third, it’s important for any and all who look for different social networks or social media platforms to recognize that the affordances they are seeking may not be the affordances that everyone is seeking. To use Twitter as just one example we regularly hear about how the platform is used by its Western users but comparatively little about how it’s used by Japanese users, who have prolifically adopted the platform. We should not over generalise our own experiences (or issues with) platforms and should instead adopt a more inclusive approach to understanding the benefits and drawbacks of a given platform’s affordances and capabilities.

I think that when imagining the ‘next’ iteration of social networks and social media it’s helpful to recognize that different kinds of networks will serve different functions. Not everything needs to operate at megascale. Also, though, we should learn lessons from the current social media platforms and design affordances that provide individuals and groups with the ability to express control over how their networks and media can be used. Tim Bray offers some of those suggestions in his proposals for updating Mastodon. Key, to my eye, are that content-licensing should be a default thing that is considered with code (and, unstated, law) being used to reinforce how individuals and communities permit their information to be accessed, used, collected, or disclosed.

We’re in the middle of yet another reflection period about what role(s) should social networks and social media play in Western society, as well as more generally around the world. Regulatory efforts are moving along and laws are being passed to rein in perceived issues linked with the companies operating the various networks. But there’s also real appetite to assess what should, and shouldn’t, be possible writ large on the contemporary and future social networks and social media platforms. We should lean into this in inclusive ways to develop the best possible policy. Doing anything else means we’ll just keep having the same debate ad infinitum.

  1. There’s lots of broader value: it can be useful economically for some individuals, enable speech outlets that are otherwise denied to individuals who are historically discriminated against, and serve as a medium for creative expression. ↩︎
Categories
Links

Cybersecurity and White Labelled Android Devices

Trend Micro has a nice short piece on the challenges of assessing the security properties of various components of Android devices. In short, white labelling incentivizes device manufacturers to invest the least amount possible in what they’re building for the brands that will sell devices to consumers. Trend Micro included this very nice little mention on the shenanigans that firmware developers can get up to:

Firmware developers supplying the OEM might agree to provide the software at a lower cost because they can compensate the lost profit through questionable means, for example by discreetly pre-installing apps from other app developers for a fee. There is a whole market built around this bundling service with prices ranging from 1 to 10 Chinese yuan (approximately US$0.14 to US$1.37 as of this writing) per application per device. This is where the risk is: As long as the firmware, packaged apps, and update mechanisms of the device are not owned, controlled, or audited by the smartphone brand itself, a rogue supplier can hide unauthorized code therein.1

While the authors suggest a range of policy options, from SBOMs to placing requirements on device transparency before administrators ‘trust’ devices, I’m not confident of these suggestions’ efficacy when taking a broader look at who principally uses white labelled devices. There are economics at play: should all devices have increased input costs associated with greater traceability and accountability then it will place financial pressures on the individuals in society who are most likely to be purchasing these devices. I doubt that upper-middle class individuals will be particularly affected by restricting the availability of many white labelled Android devices but such restrictions would almost certainly have disproportionate impacts on less affluent members of society or those who are, by necessity, price conscious. Should these individuals have to pay more for the computing power that they may depend on for a wide range of tasks—and in excess of how more affluent members of society use their devices?

Security has long been a property that individuals with more money can more easily ‘acquire’, and those who are less affluent have been less able to possess similar quantities or qualities of security in the services and products that they own. I understand and appreciate (and want to agree with) the Trend Micro analysts on how to alleviate some of the worse security properties associated with white labelled devices but it seems as though any such calculation needs to undertake a broader intersectional analysis. It’s possible that at the conclusion of such an analysis you still arrive at similar security-related concerns but would, also, include a number of structural social change policy prescriptions as preconditions that must be met before heightened security can be made more equitably available to more members of society.

  1. Emphasis added. ↩︎
Categories
Links

Postal Interception Coming to Canada?

The Canadian Senate is debating Bill S-256, ‌An Act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act (seizure) and to make related amendments to other Acts. The relevant elements of the speech include:

Under the amendment to the Customs Act, a shipment entering Canada may be subject to inspection by border services officers if they have reason to suspect that its contents are prohibited from being imported into Canada. If this is the case, the shipment, whether a package or an envelope, may be seized. However, an envelope mailed in Canada to someone who resides at a Canadian address cannot be opened by the police or even by a postal inspector.

…

To summarize, nothing in the course of the post in Canada is liable to demand, seizure, detention or retention, except if a specific legal exception exists in the Canada Post Corporation Act or in one of the three laws I referenced. However, items in the mail can be inspected by a postal inspector, but if it is a letter, the inspector cannot open it to complete the inspection.

Thus, a police officer who has reasonable grounds to suspect that an item in the mail contains an illegal drug or a handgun cannot be authorized, pursuant to a warrant issued by a judge, to intercept and seize an item until it is delivered to the addressee or returned to the sender. I am told that letters containing drugs have no return address.

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, in 2015, raised this very issue (.pdf). They recognised “that search and seizure authorities granted to law enforcement personnel under the Criminal Code of Canada or other criminal law authorities are overridden by the [Canada Post Corporation Act], giving law enforcement no authority to seize, detain or retain parcels or letters while they are in the course of mail and under Canada Post’s control.” The result was the Association was resolved:

that the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police requests the Government of Canada to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act to provide police, for the purpose of intercepting contraband, with the ability to obtain judicial authorization to seize, detain or retain parcels or letters while they are in the course of mail and under Canada Post’s control.

It would seem as though, should Bill S-256 pass into law, that seven or eight years later some fairly impressive new powers that contrast with decades of mail privacy precedent may come undone.