Today’s links Hypothetical AI election disinformation risks vs real AI harms: And those real AI harms are priming people to believe disinformation. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Hypothetical AI election disinformation risks vs real AI harms (permalink) You can barely turn around these days without encountering a think-piece warning of the impending risk of AI disinformation in the coming elections. But a recent episode of This Machine Kills podcast reminds us that these are hypothetical risks, and there is no shortage of real AI harms: https://soundcloud.com/thismachinekillspod/311-selling-pickaxes-for-the-ai-gold-rush The algorithmic decision-making systems that increasingly run the back-ends to our lives are really, truly very bad at doing their jobs, and worse, these systems constitute a form of “empiricism-washing”: if the computer says it’s true, it must be true. There’s no such thing as racist math, you SJW snowflake! https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/aoc-algorithms-racist-bias.html Nearly 1,000 British postmasters were wrongly convicted of fraud by Horizon, the faulty AI fraud-hunting system that Fujitsu provided to the Royal Mail. They had their lives ruined by this faulty AI, many went to prison, and at least four of the AI’s victims killed themselves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal Tenants across America have seen their rents skyrocket thanks to Realpage’s landlord price-fixing algorithm, which deployed the time-honored defense: “It’s not a crime if we commit it with an app”: https://www.propublica.org/article/doj-backs-tenants-price-fixing-case-big-landlords-real-estate-tech Housing, you’ll recall, is pretty foundational in the human hierarchy of needs. Losing your home…Pluralistic: Hypothetical AI election disinformation risks vs real AI harms (27 Feb 2024)