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The New York Times: “The New York State Legislature gave final approval on Tuesday to legislation that provides legal protection for New York doctors to prescribe and send abortion pills to patients in states that have outlawed abortion. The measure, along with similar new laws in several other states controlled by Democrats, could significantly expand …
Four national security lawyers who have served in prominent positions within federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies will discuss whether U.S. institutions have become politicized in a webinar sponsored by the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Law and National Security at 4 p.m. EDT on Friday, June 23. Recent political developments have damaged the …
Bloomberg Technology, alt free link: “The world according to Stable Diffusion is run by White male CEOs. Women are rarely doctors, lawyers or judges. Men with dark skin commit crimes, while women with dark skin flip burgers. Stable Diffusion generates images using artificial intelligence, in response to written prompts. Like many AI models, what it …
Bloomberg Opinion [alt free link] – Stable Diffusion’s text-to-image model amplifies stereotypes about race and gender — here’s why that matters: “The world according to Stable Diffusion is run by White male CEOs. Women are rarely doctors, lawyers or judges. Men with dark skin commit crimes, while women with dark skin flip burgers. Stable Diffusion …
“A majority of Americans think business owners should be able to refuse to provide services in situations where providing them may “suggest support for beliefs about lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) issues” to which they have personal or religious objections, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. In earlier surveys, the public has …
Quartz: “Illinois has become the first US state to prohibit banning books in public libraries. Governor J.B. Pritzker signed HB 2789 into law in a public library in Chicago, amid a dramatic nationwide increase in book bans. The governor, a Democrat, called them an affront to free speech. “Young people shouldn’t be kept from learning …
Cracked Labs: “A research project on the datafication of work with a focus on Europe – Data collection is becoming ubiquitous, including at work. Systems that constantly record data about activities and behaviors in the workplace can quickly turn into devices for extensive monitoring and control, deeply affecting the rights and freedoms of employees. Opportunities …
Wired – The US Is Openly Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens “A newly declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reveals that the federal government is buying troves of data about Americans…Perhaps most controversially, the report states that the government believes it can “persistently” track the phones of “millions of …
Gaffney A, Himmelstein DU, Dickman S, et al. Projected Health Outcomes Associated With 3 US Supreme Court Decisions in 2022 on COVID-19 Workplace Protections, Handgun-Carry Restrictions, and Abortion Rights. JAMA Netw Open. 2023;6(6):e2315578. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.15578. “Several recent US Supreme Court rulings have drawn criticism from the medical community, but their health consequences have not been quantitatively …
ProPublica – Supreme Risk – “Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion established 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade, raising concerns about the future of other rights rooted in Supreme Court rulings. Although most rights are secured by statutes and regulations, others are guarantees extrapolated by the court from …
Via LLRX – How AI could take over elections and undermine democracy – Archon Fung, Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government, Harvard Kennedy School, and Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law and Leadership, Harvard University, pose the question: “Could organizations use artificial intelligence language models such as ChatGPT to induce voters to behave in specific ways? Sen. …
Nature Human Behavior, Accepted: 3 April 2023. Why voters who value democracy participate in democratic backsliding “Around the world, citizens are voting away the democracies they claim to cherish. Here we present evidence that this behaviour is driven in part by the belief that their opponents will undermine democracy first. In an observational study (N …
