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After months of discussion and outrage from residents, the city council of the tiny town of Bandera, Texas voted 3-2 to immediately end its contract with the surveillance company Flock. In the aftermath of the vote, one of the dissenting council members crashed out and said he would be introducing measures to ban cell phones, the internet, cameras, and nearly all technology in the town of roughly 900 people. After the vote, Councilmember Jeff Flowers, a staunch Flock supporter, said that if people in the town wanted privacy then the city council should basically ban all technology, essentially calling people who did not want government surveillance hypocrites. Flowers said he would propose a series of new regulations at an upcoming city council meeting, which he is calling the “Bandera Declaration of Digital Independence.” In a letter posted by the local newspaper, the Bandera Bulletin, Flowers said that in the name of preserving privacy he would suggest the city go back to the days of 1880. @jasonkoebler reports.

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So this AI poop app which tells users to upload photos of their poop for a “score” is selling the database of pictures to anyone. They even wanted to sell it to us. Here’s @jasonkoebler’s latest story on PoopCheck, and why it’s a lesson in downloading any app even if it says it says it values your privacy.

Find 404 Media on YouTube or wherever you get your fave podcasts.

The treasurer of Saline Township, Michigan, publicly resigned last week citing death threats she’d received related to the construction of an Oracle and OpenAI datacenter. Saline Township is a rural farming community in southern Michigan with a population of around 2,300 people. Last year, construction company Related Digital pinpointed the township as a location for the construction of a $16 billion dollar data center related to Oracle and OpenAI’s Stargate initiative. It didn’t sit well with some town residents and the board voted to deny zoning changes that would, they thought, stop the data center from proceeding.

Instead of looking elsewhere, Related Digital sued Saline Township. The Township board looked at its options, decided it couldn’t fight the massive corporation, and settled the lawsuit. In response, Saline Township’s residents pushed to recall three members of the board.

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A guy who sued 27 women who called him a “psycho” and “clingy” on a “Are We Dating the Same Guy” Facebook page also tried to sue Meta. A judge just dismissed the case because his lawyer was using AI to file non-existent citations. Judge David Hamilton wrote: “The brief included no citation to any legislative findings, let alone any including the statute’s targets as the brief asserted... These mistakes and fictitious quotations bear the hallmarks of the misuse of generative artificial intelligence.”

The attorney, Aaron Walner, works at Marc Trent’s law firm. Trent’s website, as the judge points out, brags extensively about Trent’s use of AI.

In the end, the court demanded Walner, Trent and D’Ambrosio answer for their AI-generated filings or face sanctions. @samleecole reports.

Read at 404media.co now.

A community college in Arizona used an AI program to call graduates up during their commencement ceremony. It glitched, and some students were not called onto the stage. “We’re using a new AI reader. So that is a lesson learned for us,” Glendale Community College president Tiffany Hernandez tried to explain during the event as she was met by boos in the crowd. It’s the latest in a series of viral graduation videos where students have booed the mention of AI by commencement speakers. This case, however, is unique as it shows how AI failed to perform a simple task on a day many see as a major milestone.

The Los Angeles Public Library’s LA Made series is collaborating with 404 Media, for a discussion that explores the ways technology is shaping—and is shaped by—our world, is proud to present How AI is Changing (or threatening) the Future of Media.

Media executives across a host of different industries believe that the rise of inexpensive AI tools will revolutionize their businesses leading to a number of different results—from Hollywood now relying on AI for scriptwriting, special effects, and editing; to the publishing and podcast industries looking to create books and episodes at a torrential scale. But the rise of this non-stop content, at this unrelenting rate, is undermining business’ credibility, and it’s unclear whether their customers actually have much interest in AI-generated content (with much of it being labeled “slop.”)

AI has already flooded the internet, social media, libraries and schools. What will it mean for the future of media? Join @jasonkoebler and @samleecole at the Central Library on Sunday, May 31st at 2PM for How AI is Threatening the Future of Media.

The Los Angeles Public Library’s LA Made series is collaborating with 404 Media, for a discussion that explores the ways technology is shaping—and is shaped by—our world, is proud to present How AI is Changing (or threatening) the Future of Media.

Media executives across a host of different industries believe that the rise of inexpensive AI tools will revolutionize their businesses leading to a number of different results—from Hollywood now relying on AI for scriptwriting, special effects, and editing; to the publishing and podcast industries looking to create books and episodes at a torrential scale. But the rise of this non-stop content, at this unrelenting rate, is undermining business’ credibility, and it’s unclear whether their customers actually have much interest in AI-generated content (with much of it being labeled “slop.”)

AI has already flooded the internet, social media, libraries and schools. What will it mean for the future of media? Join @jasonkoebler and @samleecole at the Central Library on Sunday, May 31st at 2PM for How AI is Threatening the Future of Media.

The Los Angeles Public Library’s LA Made series is collaborating with 404 Media, for a discussion that explores the ways technology is shaping—and is shaped by—our world, is proud to present How AI is Changing (or threatening) the Future of Media.

Media executives across a host of different industries believe that the rise of inexpensive AI tools will revolutionize their businesses leading to a number of different results—from Hollywood now relying on AI for scriptwriting, special effects, and editing; to the publishing and podcast industries looking to create books and episodes at a torrential scale. But the rise of this non-stop content, at this unrelenting rate, is undermining business’ credibility, and it’s unclear whether their customers actually have much interest in AI-generated content (with much of it being labeled “slop.”)

AI has already flooded the internet, social media, libraries and schools. What will it mean for the future of media? Join @jasonkoebler and @samleecole at the Central Library on Sunday, May 31st at 2PM for How AI is Threatening the Future of Media.

The FBI wants to buy access to automated license plate readers (ALPRs) nationwide, which would likely allow the agency to track the movements of vehicles—and by extension people—across the country without a warrant, according to FBI procurement records reviewed by 404 Media.

The documents show that ALPRs continue to be a sought-after tool for law enforcement, not just for local police and individual communities, but federal agencies too. The news also comes as protests and pushback against ALPRs have spread around the country.

Read now at 404media.co

The FBI wants to buy access to automated license plate readers (ALPRs) nationwide, which would likely allow the agency to track the movements of vehicles—and by extension people—across the country without a warrant, according to FBI procurement records reviewed by 404 Media.

The documents show that ALPRs continue to be a sought-after tool for law enforcement, not just for local police and individual communities, but federal agencies too. The news also comes as protests and pushback against ALPRs have spread around the country.

Read now at 404media.co

The FBI wants to buy access to automated license plate readers (ALPRs) nationwide, which would likely allow the agency to track the movements of vehicles—and by extension people—across the country without a warrant, according to FBI procurement records reviewed by 404 Media.

The documents show that ALPRs continue to be a sought-after tool for law enforcement, not just for local police and individual communities, but federal agencies too. The news also comes as protests and pushback against ALPRs have spread around the country.

Read now at 404media.co

Across the US, people in cities and rural towns are fighting back against the construction of AI data centers in their backyards, and in many cases, they’re winning. For one, Ypsilanti Township in Michigan has cut off the flow of water to a planned $1.2 billion data center that would power a new generation of nuclear weapons research. Today on the pod, we’re joined by Britt Paris, a critical informatics scholar and Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Rutgers University’s School of Communication & Information. Her work focuses on Internet infrastructure, artificial intelligence-generated information objects, digital labor, civic data, and social epistemology. She tells 404 Media’s @samleecole what gives her hope.

Find 404 Media on YouTube or wherever you get your fave podcasts to listen now.

University of Washington researchers planned to have preschool teachers wear cameras that would record everything they saw from a first-person perspective, including the children they were teaching, then use that footage to develop AI models.

A parent who received the document said they were “taken aback” after reading it. “I am troubled by the idea of using my child’s likeness in unknown AI tools and how this could be abused,” she added. “I was particularly concerned about families’ ability to give informed consent. As a native English speaker, the vague language in the handout left me with a slew of questions. Many families in our school are migrants and non-native English speakers, but forms were not provided in any of their native languages.” 404 Media granted the parent anonymity to avoid repercussions.

The document presents participation in the research as “completely voluntary.” But it is not an opt-in model. Instead, parents have to opt-out if they don’t want their children to be recorded by a teacher-worn camera and have that footage processed by AI. “You may decline or withdraw your child from the research at any time. Your decision will not affect your child’s enrollment or standing in the program,” it says. Now, it’s been shelved. @evystadium has more.

Read at 404media.co now.

Just a week after a speaker was booed for bringing up artificial intelligence in a commencement speech at the University of Central Florida’s College of Arts and Humanities and Nicholson School of Communication, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, faced the same backlash at his commencement speech at the University of Arizona. “You will help shape artificial intelligence,” Schmidt said, leading to a roar of boos throughout the crowd. The students’ audible disapproval continued until his speech was done.

Head to 404media.co to read more.

Scientists have identified four men who died in Sir John Franklin’s disastrous expedition of 1845, a British mission to chart a passage through the Arctic that ended in misery, starvation, and cannibalism, leaving no survivors. Then: the sights and sounds of an Arctic seafloor, a glimpse into the guts of ice giants, and a wedding kiss of death. This week on The Abstract with @beckyjferreria

Head to 404media.co to read now.

ArXiv, the open-access repository of preprint academic research, will ban authors of papers for a year if they submit obviously AI-generated work.

Late Thursday evening, Thomas Dietterich, chair of the computer science section of ArXiv, wrote on X: “If generative AI tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading content, and that output is included in scientific works, it is the responsibility of the author(s). We have recently clarified our penalties for this. If a submission contains incontrovertible evidence that the authors did not check the results of LLM generation, this means we can’t trust anything in the paper.”

Examples of incontrovertible evidence, he wrote, include “hallucinated references, meta-comments from the LLM (‘here is a 200 word summary; would you like me to make any changes?’; ‘the data in this table is illustrative, fill it in with the real numbers from your experiments’.”

“The penalty is a 1-year ban from arXiv followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue,” Dietterich wrote.

Read now at 404media.co

ArXiv, the open-access repository of preprint academic research, will ban authors of papers for a year if they submit obviously AI-generated work.

Late Thursday evening, Thomas Dietterich, chair of the computer science section of ArXiv, wrote on X: “If generative AI tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading content, and that output is included in scientific works, it is the responsibility of the author(s). We have recently clarified our penalties for this. If a submission contains incontrovertible evidence that the authors did not check the results of LLM generation, this means we can’t trust anything in the paper.”

Examples of incontrovertible evidence, he wrote, include “hallucinated references, meta-comments from the LLM (‘here is a 200 word summary; would you like me to make any changes?’; ‘the data in this table is illustrative, fill it in with the real numbers from your experiments’.”

“The penalty is a 1-year ban from arXiv followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue,” Dietterich wrote.

Read now at 404media.co

ArXiv, the open-access repository of preprint academic research, will ban authors of papers for a year if they submit obviously AI-generated work.

Late Thursday evening, Thomas Dietterich, chair of the computer science section of ArXiv, wrote on X: “If generative AI tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading content, and that output is included in scientific works, it is the responsibility of the author(s). We have recently clarified our penalties for this. If a submission contains incontrovertible evidence that the authors did not check the results of LLM generation, this means we can’t trust anything in the paper.”

Examples of incontrovertible evidence, he wrote, include “hallucinated references, meta-comments from the LLM (‘here is a 200 word summary; would you like me to make any changes?’; ‘the data in this table is illustrative, fill it in with the real numbers from your experiments’.”

“The penalty is a 1-year ban from arXiv followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue,” Dietterich wrote.

Read now at 404media.co