I still love MODL. And Alphabet's earnings are tomorrow (again). Help.
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Ahead of Alphabet earnings tomorrow, I just want to say: I love MODL on @TheTerminal. Just love it. Big fan. Huge.
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Davey Alba
@daveyalba
reporter / Google, Big Tech, misinfo / daveyalba.com / ask for my Signal / @daveyalba@mastodon.social
Davey Alba’s Tweets
Clarence Thomas said he was advised he didn’t have to disclose private jet flights and luxury vacations paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow because, although a close friend, Crow “did not have business before the court.”
But...Crow did.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/ via
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Everyone let's agree right now we're not gonna do this again
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excuse me
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TUCKER CARLSON OUT AT FOX NEWS
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“If you want to stay on at Google, you have to serve the system and not contradict it,” told me. "You have to become more monarchist than the king.”
bloomberg.com/news/features/
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In particular, I'm glad they gave prominent attention to @L_badikho and the way they've censored his work on LLMs. Leadership did everything they could to stop this paper from being published, while lavishing praise on silly Medium posts by senior VPs.
arxiv.org/abs/2209.15259
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I'm super excited to help launch Bloomberg's new newsletter Washington Edition, focused on the intersection of money, business and politics. We're aiming to do what Bloomberg does best: follow the money and keep an eye on the markets.
Sign up here: bloomberg.com/account/newsle
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Thank you and for reporting on the ethics crisis and repression patterns within in .
One of the greatest dangers of 's #ChatGPT unsafe release is that it drastically lowered all #BigTechs' safety standards.
bloomberg.com/news/features/
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🧵Yesterday I learned that my newsroom, , where I have worked since 2016, will be shut down.
I need a job.
My work has been impactful. It has influenced tech coverage, won a Mirror Award, and a fellowship at Harvard. Here are a few of my best stories.
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"The trusted internet-search giant is providing low-quality information in a race to keep up with the competition," --- this phrasing makes it starkly clear that it's a race to nowhere good.
bloomberg.com/news/features/
From at
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“If you want to stay on at Google, you have to serve the system and not contradict it,” told me. "You have to become more monarchist than the king.”
bloomberg.com/news/features/
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In particular, I'm glad they gave prominent attention to @L_badikho and the way they've censored his work on LLMs. Leadership did everything they could to stop this paper from being published, while lavishing praise on silly Medium posts by senior VPs.
arxiv.org/abs/2209.15259
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Here is a list of BuzzFeed News reporters, editors, and talent that you should follow (and if this applies to you... hire):
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Katie was the heart and soul (and disgusting brain) of BuzzFeed, I think we can all agree
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RIP BuzzFeed News. I know a lot of my wonderful current and former colleagues are proud of the important and powerful work they did here, and rightfully so. But for me, I got to fuck around and post stupid shit with my buddies – literally my only life dream – for 11 years.
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Here's my very last day at the office, the place where I did some of my best accountability work, including reporting on sexual harassment and on the erosion of democracy in the Philippines because of Facebook. My heart goes out to all my ex-colleagues—hire them.
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Important reporting by and on Google's rush to compete with OpenAI and sloppily pushing things out via a "code red", ignoring the weak ethics review guidelines already in place.
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What a ferocious travesty and a huge loss to journalism.
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NEWS: BuzzFeed News is being shut down.
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what the actual fuck
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Interviews with 18 current & former Google staff show the search giant rushed out its Bard chatbot even as it provided low-quality and potentially harmful information; important reporting from and
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Mentioning that Google has moved more cautiously than others in driverless cars (and is still considered the leader in that tech).
Google didn't have a response to the iPhone for AWHILE and Android turned out...pretty good for Google.
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Worth reading in tandem:
@daveyalba & @byJuliaLove on Google employees' warnings that Bard gave bad information that could lead to deaths. Google launched it anyway. bloomberg.com/news/features/
@WillOremus on Google's sudden need for speed in AI: washingtonpost.com/technology/202
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sry I know im the queen of long threads, but I think this is worth a revisit. It was wild to hear Google's AI governance lead tell workers that on "fairness"—eradicating bias for underrepresented groups—it would be enough if the AI products that Google launched were at 80 or 85%.
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In Dec, Google exec Jen Gennai convened a meeting telling workers about "code red" and to pick up the pace.
She said of the generative AI products coming: “On ‘fairness,’ we might be at 80, 85 percent, or something” to be enough for a product launch.
bloomberg.com/news/features/
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oh geez, i did *not* consent to my website being used for LLM training. great reporting by washingtonpost.com/technology/int
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Sundar Pichai told 60 Minutes that companies must not "so get caught up in who’s first that we lose the potential pitfalls" of AI.
But some Googlers worry that's exactly what's happening as Google scrambles to roll out generative AI. From & me:
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Maybe don't ask Bard how to fly a plane.
Current and former employees say that in the AI footrace, Google is loosening its commitment to safety and ethical guardrails. by and bloomberg.com/news/features/ via
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anyways, instead of watching the infomercial that aired in primetime, read this great piece & !
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the recent @60Minutes piece on @Google's Bard was SO bad.
they cast the shoddy chatbot as a godlike gift to humanity, got basic facts about AI wrong, interviewed *only* @Google execs, & failed to push them on the litany of harms.
bloomberg.com/news/features/
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Google "is providing low-quality information in a race to keep up with the competition, while giving less priority to its ethical commitments, according to 18 current and former workers at the company and internal documentation reviewed by Bloomberg."
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Staffers responsible for the ethical implications of new products have been told not to get in the way or to try to kill any of the generative AI tools in development.
One worker told us: “If you want to stay at Google, you have to serve the system."
bloomberg.com/news/features/
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In response to q's, Google said responsible AI was still a top priority of the company.
At the same time, Google pledged in 2021 to double its team studying AI ethics & to give it more resources. Instead, they shed workers in the last round of layoffs. People are "demoralized."
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Workers told us about the lonely experience of voicing ethical AI concerns. They said they couldn't speak up because of "community guidelines" & described being siloed.
Others said they tried to work on fairness issues and were told it was getting in the way of their "real work"
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In Dec, Google exec Jen Gennai convened a meeting telling workers about "code red" and to pick up the pace.
She said of the generative AI products coming: “On ‘fairness,’ we might be at 80, 85 percent, or something” to be enough for a product launch.
bloomberg.com/news/features/
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In one listserv, an employee pleaded w/ Google: "bard is worse than useless: please do not launch." It was seen by nearly 7000 workers; many employees agreed that Bard's answers were contradictory or could even go off the rails on simple, factual queries.
bloomberg.com/news/features/
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Google asked ~80k employees to "dogfood" and test generative AI tools like Bard. Some employees concluded: Bard was "a pathological liar," "cringe-worthy" and gave dangerous advice, according to internal messages we reviewed.
Google launched Bard anyway.
bloomberg.com/news/features/
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NEW: For weeks, and I talked to current and ex-Googlers to understand the trade-offs between speed of deploying generative AI products—which Google has been doing under code red—and carefully considering the ethical consequences of such tech.
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I’m not NOT going to watch Succession after s4e3 but I also have to know if Kwame is well-meaning and redeemed or well-meaning but bad… this is truly a Sunday night of rage
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NEW: I've been corresponding with Elon about Twitter's "state-affiliated media" label on NPR's account. He said it might be a mistake. If so, he said it should be fixed. He asked for more info. I provided. Asked why label remains, he said they're still looking into it...… Show more
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After announcing the largest rounds of layoffs in their history, US big tech companies like #Google and #Amazon are now learning how difficult it is to reduce headcount in Europe.
With bloomberg.com/news/articles/ via
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Oh ffs come on
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new: ChatGPT said a law prof. sexually touched a student on a class Alaska trip, citing a 2018 WaPo article as proof.
There was no WaPo article. No trip. He said he'd never been accused of sexual assault.
What happens when chatbots lie. w/@WillOremus
washingtonpost.com/technology/202
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New: In '20 & '21, ten activists got hired undercover at Starbucks around Buffalo, where–like others at Amazon–they laid groundwork for union triumph. Now they're training new recruits on how to do the same at all sorts of companies bloomberg.com/news/features/ My feature in next
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The nonprofit CCDH also tested Bard and found similar results compared to Newsguard's research — 78 out of 100 false and harmful narratives without disclaimers were generated. (Newsguard found 76 out of 100 misinformation narratives were generated on Bard.)
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BREAKING: CCDH found that Google's new AI chatbot, Bard, generates misinformation on 78 out of 100 false and harmful narratives without disclaimers.
A thread 
thedailybeast.com/googles-ai-chaShow this thread
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Ah, generative AI can be prolific conspiracy theorists.
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NEW: It is trivially easy to get Bard, Google's answer to ChatGPT, to generate blog posts, op-eds, letters, paragraphs and more promoting known misinformation narratives, according to new research from @NewsGuardRating shared exclusively with us.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/
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