Bytes: What’s new in tech
Parler’s porn problem
Would-be Twitter competitor Parler is being overrun by porn bots, said Craig Timberg in The Washington Post. Touted as a “bastion of free speech” by conservatives who claim that their views have been “censored” on Twitter and Facebook, the site’s “lax moderation policies” have created a dilemma. As Parler has surged in popularity after the election, it has become “a magnet for pornographers, escort services, and online sex merchants using hashtags targeting conservatives, such as #keepamericasexy” and “#girlswithguns.” Parler has said it will allow “everything that the First Amendment protects as speech.” While Twitter has “automated systems that prevent excessive rapid posting as well as other spammy behavior,” Parler relies on a “community jury” of 200 volunteers as moderators.
No Zuckerberg deed goes unpunished
A panel on San Francisco’s board of supervisors took a step toward condemning the naming of the city’s only public hospital after Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, said Theodore Schleifer in Vox.com. San Francisco General Hospital was renamed after Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician, donated $75 million in 2015. At the time it was the “largest single private gift to a public hospital ever.” But Facebook has since become a “political piñata,” and a group of nurses, anti-Facebook activists, and progressive lawmakers began to mobilize this summer. The condemnation, which still needs to be approved by the full board, is merely symbolic and not legally binding; Zuckerberg’s name will remain on the building.
Google’s culture war over AI ethics
Google parted ways with a top AI ethicist, said Zoe Schiffer and Kim Lyons in TheVerge.com. Timnit Gebru had run into resistance from superiors about a research paper that asked “thorny questions” about “inherent biases in large language models.” The paper addresses issues such as the carbon cost of high-powered AI systems and the opportunity cost of pursuing AI research. After Google told Gebru and four other Google researchers to remove their names from the paper, Gebru emailed activist groups questioning Google’s diversity efforts. She told managers she would “work on a transition plan” to leave, but the company said it was immediately accepting her resignation. The move prompted “an outpouring of support from colleagues” for Gebru, who made headlines in 2018 for research on facial-recognition biases against darker-skinned people.