Artificial Intelligence and the use of algorithms in unseen ways is a hot media topic now, but we’ve been on the case for a long time, including almost a year ago how ‘Diversity in Recruiting’ at LinkedIn Implements Feature Allowing Recruiters to Find People by Their Demographics.

You may remember our online event in July 2023, regarding Discrimination By Algorithm – the “ultimate showdown between equity and equality is going to take place at a technological level” IVIDEO at link], where we explored how bias was built in to achieve de facto racial and other quotas.

This “discrimination by algorithm” problem was the subject of an Op-Ed by Kemberlee and me in The NY Post last month, Google’s Gemini AI Is Just The Tip Of The ‘Discrimination By Algorithm’ Bias Problem:

Everyone is laughing at the Google Gemini AI rollout. But it’s no joke.

The problem is more nefarious than historically inaccurate generated images.

The manipulation of AI is just one aspect of broader “discrimination by algorithm” being built into corporate America, and it could cost you job opportunities and more.

A few days ago we had anoter Op-ed at the NY Post relating to AI, The plight of a Kansas newspaper shows the new face of censorship via AI:

As more tech behemoths look to Artificial Intelligence to automate tasks, it becomes more apparent that AI is not ready for prime time and poses a threat to human autonomy.

No one can forget the ridiculous fiasco in which Google’s prized AI bot, Gemini, kept spitting out images of black Vikings, female Popes, and changing the ethnicity of every founding father to a person of color.

Now, the Kansas Reflector, a non-profit news operation, is fighting a losing war with Facebook’s AI bot.

Facebook flagged an article about climate change as a security threat, and then blocked the domains of any publication that tried to share or repost the article.

Users who attempted to post the article received auto-generated messages explaining that the content posed a security risk, without further explanation.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads is unrepentant, and says it has no idea why the Kansas Reflector’s innocuous post was blacklisted by its AI bot, but attributed the problem to likely “machine learning error.”

Of course there is zero accountability for these errors that result in immeasurable damage to brands and their reputations.

The promise of AI, we hear over and over again, is that it’s a tool to help humans do better, automating tasks to free up worker time for other things. But instead, AI looks far more like HAL 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” a computer that overtakes its human masters’ ability to control it and turns against humanity.

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At the Equal Protection Project (Equalprotect.org), we’ve been screaming about the dangers of AI for over a year, and how bias in the name of anti-bias is being programmed into systems. Behind the scenes and out of sight, AI and social media algorithms can be used to determine what you are allowed to post, what you will be able to read, and ultimately what you will think.

Despite the promises of simplifying workflows and managing tasks, there’s far too much evidence of AI destruction to be ignored.

When it comes to AI, be afraid, be very afraid.

Click the link above for the rest of the Op-ed.

They gave us almost a full page spread for it in the print newspaper, which was nice.

We are going to keep on the AI trail.

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