Sharon Webb
@swebb.bsky.social
400 followers 310 following 49 posts
Critical community archives, feminism & technology, queer archives, digital preservation. Doggie Mam, Vegan for the animals 🌱
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swebb.bsky.social
How long is this ridiculous speech gonna go on for?
swebb.bsky.social
Because then people would have to confront their hypocritical belief system. #veganfortheanimals
swebb.bsky.social
Congratulations on such a fantastic achievement. So well deserved and I look forward to reading 🥳🥳
swebb.bsky.social
Great to hear from a tech company talking actual sense about privacy, surveillance and security with relation to AI. Also love how she’s refers to “while our brain is in a jar”!!!
keithfitzgerald.bsky.social
Worth a watch:

Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.
Reposted by Sharon Webb
datasociety.bsky.social
“While nobody will escape AI, only a few will prosper under it,” writes ‪@kevindeliban.bsky.social. “This current dynamic suggests that the technology’s underlying purpose is to entrench inequality and reinforce existing power dynamics.” www.techpolicy.press/austerity-in...
swebb.bsky.social
“In shocking news” 🗞️ tech companies launch new AI products without consideration of societal consequences!
esqueer.net
VEO 3

Prompt: Generate a TV news anchor with a British accent, the anchor says "in shocking news, Jake Kaye Rowe ling's yacht sank with her on board after being attacked by orcas off the coast of turkey" include the announcement in the dialogue.

This took one prompt and 2 minutes to generate.
Reposted by Sharon Webb
cathfletcher.bsky.social
Using big LLMs for basic queries is 'like turning on stadium floodlights to look for your keys' - this is good on the AI environmental questions.
We still don’t know how much energy AI consumes
Companies must give us the chance to understand the environmental impact of the tech we use
www.ft.com
Reposted by Sharon Webb
adaptcentre.bsky.social
How can EU AI policy better reflect cultural values, shared meaning-making, and democratic integrity?

Join the @kt4democracy.bsky.social Workshop, Culture in the Loop: Shaping Human-Centric AI Policy, to join the discussion.
🗓 8 May | 13:00–14:30 | Online

Register: kt4democracy.eu/events/cultu...
Reposted by Sharon Webb
siliconrepublic.bsky.social
Electricity demand from data centres is set to more than double to nearly 950TWh by 2030 – and AI is the primary driver, finds the IEA in its latest report.

#SiliconRepublic #AI #DataCentre #IEA
AI to double data centre energy demand by 2030
Electricity demand from data centres is set to double by 2030 – and AI will be the primary driver, finds the International Energy Agency.
www.siliconrepublic.com
swebb.bsky.social
‘More water is needed because “climate change will lead to an increase in global temperatures and the frequency of extreme weather events, including heat waves”, Amazon wrote in its application.’…

Basically, we need more 💧 to put out the 🔥 , cause I’ve added more 🔥 to the 🔥
swebb.bsky.social
We need tech leaders and tech industries that actively engage with the problems their industries are causing. What is the point of these (extractive) technologies if the planet and its inhabitants are dead??
Revealed: Big tech’s new datacentres will take water from the world’s driest areas
Amazon, Google and Microsoft are building datacentres in water-scarce parts of five continents
www.theguardian.com
swebb.bsky.social
We need tech leaders and tech industries that actively engage with the problems their industries are causing. What is the point of these (extractive) technologies if the planet and its inhabitants are dead??
Revealed: Big tech’s new datacentres will take water from the world’s driest areas
Amazon, Google and Microsoft are building datacentres in water-scarce parts of five continents
www.theguardian.com
swebb.bsky.social
Was just talking about this yesterday, how will this new business model work? Do businesses pay to be mentioned in the AI summary??
datasociety.bsky.social
Google’s AI-generated answers — and the way the company has changed its search algorithm to support them — have caused traffic to independent websites to plummet, “disrupting a delicate symbiotic relationship” and hurting creators and small businesses. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Google AI Search Shift Leaves Website Makers Feeling ‘Betrayed’
In March 2024, website owner Morgan McBride was posing for photos in her half-renovated kitchen for a Google ad celebrating the ways the search giant had helped her family’s business grow.
www.bloomberg.com
swebb.bsky.social
Daily reminder from Theo, that rest is important. Many argue it’s an act of resistance 🤩
swebb.bsky.social
Exactly that. But we need to protect individuals whose lively-hood relies on copyright material, especially in terms of creative works.
swebb.bsky.social
We either care about copyright or we don’t care. Many of us will remember Aaron Swartz who downloaded academic journals & as a result was prosecuted, the stress of which led him to take his own life. The hypocrisy of current political leaders to just downplay this now for AI should make us angry 😡
UK government tries to placate opponents of AI copyright bill
Economic impact assessment is one concession aiming to head off opposition from MPs, peers and creatives such as Paul McCartney and Tom Stoppard
www.theguardian.com
swebb.bsky.social
Open knowledge is being ransacked by AI bots 🤖 Like all similar activities, companies generate revenue through AI will happily take but never give back! Ideologically the whole AI system is f**ked
cameronwilson.bsky.social
The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, says its bandwidth costs have gone up 50% since Jan 2024 — a rise they attribute to AI crawlers.

AI companies are killing the open web by stealing visitors from the sources of information and making them pay for the privilege
Reposted by Sharon Webb
aial.ie
We are seeking to appoint a Postdoctoral Researcher to work on developing a justice-oriented audit framework synthesising computational methods, theories of justice, and existing regulations to premeditatively focus audits towards meaningful accountability. www.adaptcentre.ie/careers/post...
Research project/Challenge 
The AIAL (AI Accountability Lab) is seeking to appoint a Postdoctoral Researcher to work on developing a justice-oriented audit framework synthesising computational methods, theories of justice, and existing regulations to premeditatively focus audits towards meaningful accountability. The goal of the framework is to provide audit practitioners with practical tools such as guiding questions and rubrics that shape perspectives towards rigorous justice oriented audits.

The position corresponds to work in one or more of the following areas:
Accountability
Mapping accountability mechanisms and governance structures and their alignments with fundamental rights and freedoms and legal frameworks.
Challenging existing accountability mechanisms that do not consider or sufficiently address social inequalities, power and resource asymmetries. 
Developing new methods for ensuring accountability beyond technical and organisational considerations that provide empirical evidence for holding stakeholders accountable for AI development, provision, and deployments.
Auditing
Developing audit methodologies for specific stages in the AI lifecycle focused on ensuring justice, accountability, and transparency beyond merely satisfying legal requirements.
Development of verifiable, replicable, and reproducible design methodologies and frameworks and using these in the execution of audits. 
Developing audit tools and frameworks to evaluate AI development and deployments with a specific focus on risk and harm mitigations beyond technical and organisational issues.
Reposted by Sharon Webb
swebb.bsky.social
The world can be sh**, so be like Theo, enjoy a (doggy) ice cream on a sunny day 🤩
Brown dog near in sea front, looking away from the camera, waiting for a doggy ice cream from a cafe in the near distance 
Brown dog enjoying a doggy ice cream