Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world. 1. Cars – the latest subscription service Volkswagen announced, this week, that some of their electric models would now come with optional upgrades […]
Here are our stories for the week: AI Companions Worse Than Porn: People are turning to artificial intelligence for companionship, seeking emotional connection. AI companies are more than happy to supply this new drug, realizing personalized AI brings the most user engagement. A new Meta leak shows companies adopting a more […]
Have you driven to the hardware store recently? If you have, your car may be in a searchable database thanks to Flock cameras. Have you driven to the hardware store recently? If you have, your car may be in a searchable database thanks to Flock cameras. Read on to get a list of […]
China is leading the world in industrial robots or programmable machines that are pioneering fast and cost-effective manufacturing. China currently holds over 50% of the world market share in industrial robots capable of assembly, production line handling, service tasks, machine feeding, palletizing, packaging, and more. Automation is fueling Chinese manufacturing […]
It looks like we can add another to the growing mountain of problems that digital IDs are going to solve for all of us. We already know that digital IDs will help counter populism, and illegal immigration, and crime, and benefit fraud, and terrorism, and pandemics. But they’ll help tackle […]
Are governments weaponizing AI to reshape public discourse and whitewash their crimes? Whistleblowers at Meta’s Integrity Organization have shared data with International Corruption Watch (ICW), revealing evidence of a mass censorship strategy abusing Meta’s reporting system. Normal Takedown Process Meta’s public description of this pipeline is available at https://transparency.meta.com/enforcement/detecting-violations/how-enforcement-technology-works. Prioritizing Government Requests Governments […]
The White House’s recently-unveiled “AI Action Plan” wages war on so-called “woke AI”—including large language models (LLMs) that provide information inconsistent with the administration’s views on climate change, gender, and other issues. It also targets measures designed to mitigate the generation of racial and gender biased content and even hate speech. […]
As everyone learns about technocracy, the management of society by technical experts, or so-called social engineering, it may be difficult to discern when it is being executed. The concept of technocracy has been around since the early 20th century, peaking in the 1930s. But without the advancement of today’s technology, how was technocracy implemented […]
AI is not so much a tool that everyone uses in more or less the same way, but a mirror in which we see our own reflection–if we care to look. Attention has been riveted on what AI can do for the three years since the unveiling of ChatGPT, but very […]
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has been alarmingly rapid since 2022. Before then, AI was considered little more than a plaything or a novelty. But now it is transforming businesses, wiping out entire categories of office jobs, and threatening human liberty. The first practical release of the Claude AI code-writing […]