Notices by Timnit Gebru (she/her) (timnitgebru@dair-community.social), page 3

Is there any African who is constantly invited to news orgs as an "expert" of a European country & seen as such by a bunch of European citizens? Does anyone see how bizarre it is that these ppl are elevated to "experts" because someone needs a white person to invite as "neutral"?

Now on CNN, to discuss the situation in England, with us is "England expert" Timnit Gebru.

Now on BBC, to discuss the situation in Norway, with us is "Norway expert" Timnit Gebru.

Everyone I talk to, regardless of the sector, is getting pressure from donors or what to "use AI" somehow. Maybe they think its like sprinkling a little bit of magic. Smh. It is unreal seeing all this unfold.

"The Nonprofit’s principal beneficiary is humanity, not OpenAI investors."

And legislators are so bought that they salivate when they see CEOs selling this.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2023-05-16%20-%20Bio%20&%20Testimony%20-%20Altman.pdf

I can't emphasize enough my disdain for the whole AGI scam. Used to centralize & consolidate power by the already rich & powerful while selling a techno-utopia they promise will come any day now, if we just let them continue to kill the environment, exploit labor & steal data 👍

If you are a tech worker, go to http://notechforapartheid.com to learn about the #NoTechForApartheid movement & email notech4apartheid@protonmail.com to get involved. If you work at Google or Amazon, fill out http://bit.ly/NotaGoogleIntake or http://bit.ly/NotaAmazonIntake to join the movement.

What Matt said about soldiers playing a game of which unit is adding the most Palestinian faces to the face recognition database, and getting days off and bonuses as a result is just 🤬. The level of dehumanization is out of this world.

And Ariel told us that a Palestinian Google intern named Mai R. Ubeid was killed by Israeli air strikes. Google has yet to issue a statement on her killing. And google has YET to issue a statement! May she rest in power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSb_lgNawK0

Thank you to Caroline Hunter, Marwa Fatafta, Mona Shtaya, Matt Mahmoudi, Antony Loewenstein and Ariel Koko for educating us. Palestine is indeed the canary in the coalmine. As Marwa said, if you think this issue is too "radioactive" & you don't want to touch it, rest assured it will come to you.

It was so fascinating to hear Caroline speak about her experience. Did you know she co-founded the first divestment movement in the US against apartheid South Africa? Hearing her describe the violence, the retaliations, we have a lot to learn from our elders.

As Antony said, this needs to be an election issue. The US military industrial complex is only expanding. And to the responsible AI community, you can't ignore this issue and do responsible anything. There are so many awful "AI" tools getting battle tested on Palestinians.

This part that Marwa mentioned really broke me. I didn't know. She told us that many Palestinian families decide to live separately so that their entire bloodlines are not wiped out. It is in this context that their communication infrastructure is deliberately targeted.

And take a look at how Mona was shadow banned just for performing and sharing analysis about anti-Palestinian bias in content moderation: https://twitter.com/Monashtayya/status/1725515196506976756

I am incredibly grateful to our speakers & this summary only scratches the surface. There are too many important points that I couldn't fit into this post. I highly, highly recommend that you watch the full recording. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVrjA-5Ak0U&t=3s

I wrote this short summary of our @DAIR #NoTechForApartheid event co-hosted with Haymarket Books. I came away from the event thinking that this is even worse than I knew and that we have even more of a responsibility to say #NoTechForApartheid. This is the post: https://dair-institute.org/blog/NoTechForApartheid/

I stand by my words 😂

“It’s repulsive to me,” says Gebru. “I honestly think there’s more of a chance that I would go back to Google—I mean, they won’t have me and I won’t have them—than me going to OpenAI.”
https://www.wired.com/story/women-in-tech-openai-board/

Our #NoTechForApartheid event in partnership with Haymarket Books is gonna be on Monday Nov 27 11:30am-2:30pm pacific. Join us!

We don't have the registration page up yet but you can add your email here: 634jyapidgs.typeform.com/to/t0PwJvkI to make sure to get updates on the event or sign up for our newsletter at (https://www.dair-institute.org/)

Details about our incredible lineup in thread 👇

(PS this is where quote tooting would be helpful e.g.).

I saw this type of entitled vitriol during #TigrayGenocide too towards anyone expressing any sympathy for those who were under siege. People's vitriol during genocides is out of this world.

"He began the letter by saying he was outraged by the Hamas terror attacks of October 7 and he prayed for the safe return of every hostage.

"“the continuing indiscriminate bombing of Gaza is unconscionable,” & that Israeli airstrikes were the “collective punishment...

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/for-arabs-in-tech-a-time-of-fear-and-a-culture-of-silence?s=09

of a besieged & helpless people....

While many recipients thanked him..., the letter prompted 15 people—some of whom Ali had known for decades—to sever professional ties with him. One person replied with a dark promise: “I will make sure you will never be successful.”

"“Basically you have a laboratory, an artificial laboratory, that you can play with on your PC in ways that you could never do ethically, certainly, in the real world.”"

I don't even know what to say. Tech solutionism at its finest because people can't NOT be racist.

"The model will ultimately create a virtual version of each and every one of the 15 million people who live in Israel and the Palestinian territories, each imbued with demographics, religious beliefs, & moral values..."

Not dystopian at all.

"The reason the UN is turning to AI in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to Lane, is that it simply has nowhere else to turn."

Don't even know what to say to that last one.

What a painful article to read my god.

"Shults & Lane...were on the ground as part of a contract they signed with the UN in August to develop a first-of-its-kind AI model that they hope will help analyze solutions to the Israel-Palestinian conflict."

"The digital twin Lane is speaking of is CulturePulse’s multi-agent AI model that they are currently building for the UN."

The UN needs a spine not a "multi-agent AI model."

https://www.wired.com/story/culturepulse-ai-israeli-palestinian-crisis/

Smart Shooter pointed at Palestinians, the most dystopian weapon I've ever seen (with the motto one shot, one hit): https://twitter.com/marwasf/status/1573574943106908162

Number of casualties in the Tigray war and genocide: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-63291747

The late Desmond Tutu on Israeli Apartheid: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/presbyterian-general-assembly_b_5499395

The book IBM and the Holocaust detailing IBM's alliance with Nazi Germany: https://ibmandtheholocaust.com/