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Hi! After 16 years of posting on this platform (🤡), I'm closing up shop here and stepping away. You can find me over at Bluesky (bsky.app/profile/baricks.bsk…) and Mastodon (mastodon.social/@beccaricks) where I'll be posting more regularly.
Becca Ricks retweeted
Very happy to announce that @A__W______O and @mozilla have launched our report on researcher access to closed foundation models, written by @mathver and I!✍️
Check out the blog and full research here: blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/…
Becca Ricks retweeted
Our methodology is inspired by Aaron and @dmehro’s Jalopnik piece on Uber and a Lyft fares and @dcalacci’s Shipt calculator SMS bot that offers pay transparency to Target gig workers.
jalopnik.com/uber-and-lyft-t…
dcalacci.net/papers/Calacci%…
Really proud to work with @LeonYin, @natlungfy and @DeniseDSLu on this one. Imagine having to constantly tap a button in an app all day to find out if you're allowed to work. That's what Uber/Lyft drivers in NYC had to do all summer (and Lyft still does). bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-…
Becca Ricks retweeted
Incredible data journalism. This Article shows exactly what "algorithmic wage theft" looks like. We need more than the minimum wage & data transparency: we need new laws of work to prevent algorithmic wage discrimination.
bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-…
Becca Ricks retweeted
DATA VAMPIRES is a four-part series exploring the costs of hyperscale data centers and why tech billionaires are desperate to build more.
In Part 1, we examine where “the cloud” came from and how it expands Amazon, Microsoft, and Google’s power.
Full ep: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/d…
Loved this reflection from @biancawylie on the use of AI to summarize meetings. She says that the "inefficiency" of transcribing & synthesizing notes forces us to sit with what requires our attention. biancawylie.medium.com/autom…
Becca Ricks retweeted
Great news! Bellingcat just launched the new Online Investigations Toolkit. In the toolkit you can discover tools for everything from satellite imagery analysis, to social media scraping, transportation tracking or archiving research material. bellingcat.com/resources/202…
Becca Ricks retweeted
NEW PAPER!
1. Small AI models often perform better than big in context.
2. Obsession w bigness has bad consequences, from climate, to power concentration, to surveillance, to research capture.
This & what to do c/o @GaelVaroquaux, @SashaMTL and me ♥️👇
arxiv.org/abs/2409.14160
Becca Ricks retweeted
NEW: Armed with a fanny pack full of radios, WIRED investigated reports of a secretive surveillance technology being deployed at the DNC.
Here’s the story about what we found:
wired.com/story/dnc-hidden-s…
Becca Ricks retweeted
🎉 New Grant Opportunity for #MozillaAlumni!📢
Today we open applications for our Alumni Connections Grants; a program built to support Mozilla Fellows and Awardees as they continue their critical work on issues that directly affect the future of #AI and the health of our internet⤵️ mzl.la/3XckM1V
Becca Ricks retweeted
If you haven't yet read Ted Chiang's essay on generative AI and art, get on it. For my money, it's one of the best things written on AI, period—it gets to the heart of what's so dismaying about AI in a single haunting sentence:
"It reduces the amount of intention in the world."
Becca Ricks retweeted
Meta is shutting down CrowdTangle, a tool popular among researchers to investigate disinformation on Facebook and Instagram.
@mozilla says over 50,000 people have signed letters and petitions asking Meta to stop or pause its plans - via @darakerr @NPR
npr.org/2024/08/14/nx-s1-507…
Becca Ricks retweeted
We, along with @AINowInstitute and
@logic_magazine, are proud to support Surveillance Watch: an interactive map revealing the intricate connections between surveillance companies, their funding sources and affiliations.
surveillancewatch.io
ALT Screenshot of the website: They Know Who You Are. It's Time to Uncover Who they Are. Surveillance Watch is an interactive map revealing the intricate connections between surveillance companies, their funding sources and affiliations. Ready to find out?
Becca Ricks retweeted
New from 404 Media: we got a massive leak from inside Nvidia (emails, Slack chats, documents) which show how it created a yet-to-be-released AI model. The leak shows that Nvidia scraped YouTube en masse, had clearance from highest levels of the company 404media.co/nvidia-ai-scrapi…
Becca Ricks retweeted
📣 Introducing the eight initiatives now supported by the Data Empowerment Fund. It's a great group, empowering people with data to tackle the climate crisis, advocate for fair work, govern artificial intelligence and address other critical challenges: dataempowerment.fund/#initia…
Becca Ricks retweeted
New zine alert! Collective Action in Tech and @DAIRInstitute zine on workers stories and (mis)dealings with generative AI. It was a pleasure to work with an amazing team on this!!
We're at #FAccT2024 giving away this new zine: A Time Capsule of Workers Stories in the Age of Gen AI. This is a window into the complex relationship between workers and the AI we use (or are forced to use) and produce, but also resist and subvert…
collectiveaction.tech/2024/b…
Becca Ricks retweeted
This was a sharp convo with Cynthia Conti-Cook, @paromitashah and @nassereledroos, a few of my co-authors on the shadow report - and makes clear how distant this industry-driven policymaking process was from the concerns orgs like ours have been working on for years.
In this podcast convo with @justinhendrix @techpolicypress, AI Now and a few of our fellow authors of senateshadowreport.com - @JustFuturesLaw, @S_ResistanceLab, @ColorOfChange - debrief how it came together, and where we need to go next:
techpolicy.press/reading-the…
Becca Ricks retweeted
📣New! Despite its increasing adoption in AI governance and industry circles, the term “sociotechnical” is widely misunderstood. Our new brief aims to remedy that, explaining what a sociotechnical perspective is and why it’s so important in policy. 1/6 datasociety.net/library/a-so…
Becca Ricks retweeted
Nice to see the DSA in action--CrowdTangle (a platform transparency tool for Facebook) has been re-enabled through 2024 elections in EU member states.
@mozilla & @brandonsilverm led a letter calling for this in March, after FB tried to shut the tool down:foundation.mozilla.org/en/ca…
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