Tags: neutrality

Stop saying that AI is just a tool and it only matters how it is used | Frank Elavsky

Must be something in the air.

One persistent piece of slopaganda you’ll hear is this:

“It’s just a tool. What matters is how you use it.”

This isn’t a new tack. The same justification has been applied to many technologies.

Leaving aside Kranzberg’s first law, large language models are the very antithesis of a neutral technology. They’re imbued with bias and political decisions at every level.

There’s the obvious problem of where the training data comes from. It’s stolen. Everyone knows this, but some people would rather pretend they don’t know how the sausage is made.

But if you set aside how the tool is made, it’s still just a tool, right? A building is still a building even if it’s built on stolen land.

Except with large language models, the training data is just the first step. After that you need to traumatise an underpaid workforce to remove the most horrifying content. Then you build an opaque black box that end-users have no control over.

Take temperature, for example. That’s the degree of probability a large language model uses for choosing the next token. Dial the temperature too low and the tool will parrot its training data too closely, making it a plagiarism machine. Dial the temperature too high and the tool generates what we kindly call “hallucinations”.

Either way, you have no control over that dial. Someone else is making that decision for you.

A large language model is as neutral as an AK-47.

I understand why people want to feel in control of the tools they’re using. I know why people will use large language models for some tasks—brainstorming, rubber ducking—but strictly avoid them for any outputs intended for human consumption.

You could even convince yourself that a large language model is like a bicycle for the mind. In truth, a large language model is more like one of those hover chairs on the spaceship in WALL·E.

Large language models don’t amplify your creativity and agency. Large language models stunt your creativity and rob you of agency.

When someone applies a large language model it is an example of tool use. But the large language model isn’t the tool.

FOREVERYONE.NET

I linked to this a while back but now this great half hour documentary by Jessica Yu is ready and you can watch the whole thing online: Tim Berners-Lee, the birth of the web, and where the web has gone since.

In the scenes describing the early web, there’s footage of the recreated Line Mode Browser—how cool is that‽

Rated zero. — Ethan Marcotte

Ethan points out the tension between net neutrality and AMP:

The more I’ve thought about it, I think there’s a strong, clear line between ISPs choosing specific kinds of content to prioritize, and projects like Google’s Accelerated Mobile Project. And apparently, so does the FCC chair: companies like Google, Facebook, or Apple are choosing which URLs get delivered as quickly as possible. But rather than subsidizing that access through paid sponsorships, these companies are prioritizing pages republished through their proprietary channels, using their proprietary document formats.

The web we may have lost | Christian Heilmann

The world-wide-web always scared the hell out of those who want to control what people consume and what their career is. The web was the equaliser.

A heartfelt missive by Christian on the eve of the US potentially losing net neutrality. I agree with every single word he’s written.

I hope that people still care that the web flows, no matter for whom or what the stream carries. The web did me a lot of good, and it can do so for many others. But it can’t do that if it turns into Cable TV. I’ve always seen the web as my media to control. To pick what I want to consume and question it by comparing it. A channel for me to publish and be scrutinised by others. A read-write medium. The only one we have. Let’s do more of the write part.

The future of the open internet — and our way of life — is in your hands

We’ve gone through the invention step. The infrastructure came out of DARPA and the World Wide Web itself came out of CERN.

We’ve gone through the hobbyist step. Everyone now knows what the internet is, and some of the amazing things it’s capable of.

We’ve gone through the commercialization step. Monopolies have emerged, refined, and scaled the internet.

But the question remains: can we break with the tragic history that has befallen all prior information empires? Can this time be different?

The first part of this article is a great history lesson in the style of Tim Wu’s The Master Switch. The second part is a great explanation of net neutrality, why it matters, and how we can fight for it.

If you do nothing, we will lose the war for the open internet. The greatest tool for communication and creativity in human history will fall into the hands of a few powerful corporations and governments.

ForEveryone.Net - Trailer on Vimeo

I can’t wait for this documentary to come out (I linked to its website a while back).

The inside story of Facebook’s biggest setback | Rahul Bhatia | Technology | The Guardian

The history of Facebook’s attempt to steamroll over net neutrality in India …and how they failed in that attempt, thanks to a grassroots campaign.

Crucially, Facebook itself would decide which sites were included on the platform. The company had positioned Internet.org as a philanthropic endeavour — backed by Zuckerberg’s lofty pronouncements that “connectivity is a human right” — but retained total control of the platform.

Prohibition Of Discriminatory Tariffs For Data Services Regulations, 2016 (PDF)

Good news for net neutrality from India:

No service provider shall enter into any arrangement, agreement or contract, by whatever name called, with any person, natural or legal, that has the effect of discriminatory tariffs for data services being offered or charged to the consumer on the basis of content.

Less than Zero

I have to admit, my initial reaction to the idea of providing free access to some websites for people in developing countries was “well, it’s better than no access at all, right?” …but the more I think about it, the more I realise how short-sighted that is. The power of the internet stems from being a stupid network and anything that compromises that—even with the best of intentions—is an attack on its fundamental principles.

On the surface, it sounds great for carriers to exempt popular apps from data charges. But it’s anti-competitive, patronizing, and counter-productive.

Is Facebook building a colonial web? by Alice Newton

internet.org might more accurately be called very-small-piece-of-internet.org

Google Fiber Continues Awful ISP Tradition of Banning “Servers”

We have lost an ally in the fight to maintain net neutrality. I wonder how Vint Cerf feels about his employer’s backtracking.

The specific issue here is with using a home computer as a server. It’s common for ISPs to ban this activity, but that doesn’t change the fact that it flies in the face of the fundamental nature of the internet as a dumb network.

I think the natural end point to owning your own data is serving your own data—something that Steven Pemberton talked about in his fateful talk.

We must fight these attempts to turn the internet into controlled system of producers and consumers.

Fat pipe. Always on. Get out of the way

Google Public Policy Blog: A joint policy proposal for an open Internet

Google reaffirms its commitment to net neutrality ...except when it comes to wireless broadband, of course, because that's *totally* different, right? This disgusts me.

Cory Doctorow: We must ensure ISPs don't stop the next Google getting out of the garage | Technology | guardian.co.uk

A superb call to arms on the importance of "fat pipe, always on, get out of my way."

Official Google Blog: Introducing Measurement Lab

Vint Cerf announces M-Lab: an excellent resource which will allow people to find out if and how their internet access is being throttled. Viva l'internet!

Obama’s FCC Transition Team Co-chair a WoW Player - GigaOM

This bodes well: "President-elect Obama appointed Kevin Werbach, assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at Wharton, and Susan Crawford, who teaches communications and Internet law at the University of Michigan, to co-chair his FC…