Dr. Damien P. Williams, Magus

Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Data Science, UNCC
PhD in Science, Technology, and Society from Virginia Tech for research in Algorithms, Disability Studies, Marginalized Lived Experience, Values, Machine Consciousness, Pop Culture, and Magic
Master of Science in STS
Master of Arts in Philosophy & Religious Studies.
He/Him

Public Key

npub15lsrt2jukr6rx6ujdq2t38rkvgd74v406k66j7wgvnkswwwwthyquj0238

NIP-05 Address

wolven_at_ourislandgeorgia.net@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs20cp44fwtpapndwfxs99cn3mxyxl2k2hatddf08yxfmg88889mjqrh8gwf

Author Public Key

npub15lsrt2jukr6rx6ujdq2t38rkvgd74v406k66j7wgvnkswwwwthyquj0238

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Last Notes

2024-06-16 21:37:12

Yeah no, I'm out. Some of y'all need to get your houses in order, and a LOT of y'all need to look in a mirror or otherwise take a moment of deep introspective reflection before you address other people.

2024-06-16 16:51:37

Mastodon has features to limit discovery and visibility, but it really needs features that allow everyone to see your shit but only some people to reply.
And if you can't immediately understand a use-case for that, then you need to stop and think about why that is.

2024-06-14 16:14:36

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Every single thing about "AI" as currently construed is inextricably woven with carcerality, capitalism, white supremacy (with racism, ableism, sexism, & LGBTQ+ hate being foundational thereto), hegemony, and kyriarchy, and we must name, examine, and deconstruct those before we can build something better.
I've been saying this since roughly 2012; like, there are inklings of it in my earlier stuff, but that's when i started to get explicit about it. And that's just me; to do that i necessarily had to *Build on People Who Were Doing Similar Work Long Before Me*.
But because of certain deeply vested interests, we're still out here having this fight.

2024-06-14 15:11:29

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https://ourislandgeorgia.net/system/media_attachments/files/112/615/606/788/204/898/original/e076a0a81dbd2dec.jpg

2024-06-14 15:08:23

So. Literally everything that i and many others who have thought and written truly carefully about the social implications of "AI" have said in the past decade pretty much amounts to "Do Not Do This Exact Kind of Thing; In Fact UNDO How Often You've Done This Exact Kind of Thing." And yet here we are.
The FUCKING NSA, openAI?! JFC y'all
https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24178079/openai-board-paul-nakasone-nsa-safety

2024-06-08 00:49:49

Every single time I've been online this past week, there's been some significant number of interactions that are just shitty and wearying and outright fucking hostile for no goddamn reason and I know we're scared, and I know things are terrible, but get your shit together, fix your hearts, and work on helping.

2024-06-06 22:18:46

Adobe is trying to claim right of access to all of your projects, regardless of things like NDA, meaning that they are willing to violate HIPAA laws, FERPA laws, and any number of binding civil structures:
https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/06/06/adobes-new-terms-of-service-unacceptably-gives-them-access-to-all-of-your-projects-for-free
If you're in the US, you can contact the FTC here: https://www.ftc.gov/media/71268
and provide them with this contact information
Adobe
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704
Tel: 408-536-6000
Fax: 408-537-6000
I don't know the specifics of the process in the EU, but here might be a good place to start:
https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection_en

2024-06-03 20:01:38

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Edit: Some of you need to rethink your lives.
IS2FG if one more of you says "just put linux on it," thus completely ignoring that a) not everyone has the ability to do that to a computer on which they work, b) it's not just about me, and c) not everyone has NOR SHOULD THEY HAVE TO HAVE the skillset to do a linux move, even if they have the inclination, I am going to LOSE it.

2024-06-03 19:47:46

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Sent a very angry, very detailed email to my University's Vice-Chancellor for IT/CIO; I mean what else can I fucking do about it right now?

2024-06-03 19:40:13

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And for anyone who's like "PShh! no organization dealing with sensitive data is gonna allow machines that ship with this into their org's networking ecosystem!": You're wrong.
I *Just This Last Week* got a new laptop from my university and copilot was already enabled, and pressing the "copilot" (reskinned context menu) button overrides even the group policy editor-level fix to turn it off, immediately reactivating it and resetting the GPE toggle to default.
So. Yeah. Bad.

2024-06-03 19:08:20

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Since I don't think some people are grasping how bad this is:
Bank Data;
Health Data;
Passwords;
Student Data;
Privileged Information (NDA's contracts, etc.)
Addresses
Unless a) your job has some version of windows that doesn't have these systems and tools in it, and b) work/life firewalls are PRISTINE, and I mean literally ZERO interconnections, even via email or calendars, the entire windows 11 OS, and any ecosystem of which it's a component, has just become a threat surface.

2024-06-03 16:58:24

Windows Recall doesn't just screenshot things, it OCR's the shots, and then stores the OCR as plaintext in a local SQLlite database.
I mean what the FUCK??!
I've said it before and I'll say, again, & again, & again, that jamming "AI" into everything without considering the privacy and security implications is a) going to cause a major breach of at least two US laws, and b) just a really silly and terrible idea which is going to put a lot of people in danger, and this "recall" shit is among the worst of it i've seen.
Windows 11 has just become a complete capture system disguised as an OS. Every keystroke, work session, video call, and downtime window, logged, correlated, and extrapolated. And they're trying to sell it to you as being a SERVICE.
So let me be as clear as possible about this: Fuck That, Forever.
Roll it BACK, microsoft
https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/3/24170305/microsoft-windows-recall-ai-screenshots-security-privacy-issues

2024-06-01 15:58:52

Magneto Was Right.
…I mean "Happy Pride."

2024-05-29 18:02:06

So google is admitting that their product is making misinformation worse and also underestimating how MUCH worse
https://www.404media.co/google-says-ai-now-leading-disinformation-vector-and-is-severely-undercounting-the-problem/
Historically, the next step after this is google saying they're going to "roll back" or "investigate" this "experimental" "preliminary" "AI" overview "feature;" then they're going shutter it and strip it for parts, and never speak of it again.
Remember Wave? Yeah. That's what I thought. But at least Wave was useful.
And then there's this potential leak of over 2500 pages worth of internal google documents, showing the sausage-making of google search itself:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/28/24166177/google-search-ranking-algorithm-leak-documents-link-seo
On LinkedIn you can find three classes of reaction to this news: Claims that Google's search is now worthless; Strategies for how to capitalize on the leak; and Denial that the leak means anything at all.
All of which says to me that people are straight-up freaking out about where google is right now.
I mean, when you— the biggest, shiniest, geekiest tech company in the WORLD— have lost the overarchingly technocratic parade that is LinkedIn? You have well and truly lost the plot.
Going to be an interesting next couple of weeks.

2024-05-25 18:11:24

SO WHY DID YOU FUCKING LAUNCH IT, SUNDAR?!
(I know the answer, shut up)
https://futurism.com/the-byte/ceo-google-ai-hallucinations

2024-05-25 14:43:44

I genuinely long for the day someone puts the CEOs of google, meta, openAI, amazon, microsoft, and twitter at a table where they're forced to respond to and be held accountable by someone who actually knows what, how, and why the fuck these technologies can and can't do what they can and can't do.

2024-05-24 04:05:39

Google is a great example of how, whenever you declare you're gonna change the world, you should always specify "for the better," and then lay out exactly what "better" means to you.

2024-05-19 14:35:14

"If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound.
"They won't even admit the knife is there."
Happy birthday to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, called Malcom X. In his honour, at least admit the knife is there.

2024-05-16 02:31:12

OpenAI, Google, and all the other GPT hype-merchants have been outright lying to everyone about their capabilities and accomplishments, which: We told you so.
But I do appreciate @npub1zgq…9vw8 always doing the solid work to lay it out plain.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/opinion/artificial-intelligence-ai-openai-chatgpt-overrated-hype.html
https://ourislandgeorgia.net/system/media_attachments/files/112/448/409/832/091/664/original/f804973f3f1e1a0a.png

2024-05-15 21:15:01

Oh my god the closing keynote at this event just gave a booster talk that was literally every cautionary tale i give to my students about how their data and movements are or might be tracked by the university
Like, this dude was "rah rah yay" about deploying technologies and practices which i discuss as a way to make studets pause and rethink their digital lives and choices. I mean holy shit.

2024-05-15 19:25:38

Just learned that North Carolina State Senate passed a public masking ban out of committee into the full state senate, and that it has no exceptions for health. Like, it hasn't been passed by the full state legislature YET, but even the fact that it passed committee has me genuinely enraged and horrified by the direction of this country.

2024-05-14 22:48:22

I can only stay mad at my students for so long for stealing their classmates' work and running it through LLM-based auto-thesaurus-ers, when this is the kind of shit that is happening at the largest, most prestigious journals in the entire academy. I just… This shit is so deeply, darkly systemic.
https://www.wsj.com/science/academic-studies-research-paper-mills-journals-publishing-f5a3d4bc?st=sgc2yq1xhe54ij4&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
https://ourislandgeorgia.net/system/media_attachments/files/112/441/876/215/169/301/original/c8dd175a542e964a.png

2024-05-14 18:13:32

No, but for real: I'm seriously worried that capitalism has blossomed into some kind of species-wide death urge that is way too likely to sweep all of us up with it, and it is legit terrifying.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/raw-milk-sales-spike-despite-cdcs-warnings-of-risk-associated-with-bird-flu
https://ourislandgeorgia.net/system/media_attachments/files/112/440/809/900/756/376/original/934e6ecac6d4cfd6.png

2024-05-03 14:28:20

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Wrong side of history.
https://ourislandgeorgia.net/system/media_attachments/files/112/377/615/762/254/714/original/130d07034971520f.jpeg

2024-05-03 03:45:33

Yo, you not gonna see this, but too many of y'all still believe the lies you were told about the Black Panthers and it shows.

2024-05-02 21:13:47

Biden fucked up.
1) He responded to peaceful protests in a way that greenlit further violent crack downs from University admins and cops— the ones who've been the real instigators of any "chaos."
And 2) his response was ahistorical, to boot, omitting the rich history of disruption as a core component of student-led protest. I mean, what do you think SNCC were doing sitting down at those Woolworth's counters, if not disrupting the status quo? Why do you think campus Vietnam war protests were so successful at capturing the nation's attention? Why do think Kent State happened?
"Recalling Civil Rights Era Abuses, [The NAACP Legal Defense Fund] Roundly Condemns Rising Violations Against Peaceful Protesters and Calls for Immediate Federal Intervention"
https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/recalling-civil-rights-era-abuses-ldf-roundly-condemns-rising-violations-against-peaceful-protesters-and-calls-for-immediate-federal-intervention/

2024-05-01 17:37:42

Oh good. Someone in the realm of institutional knowledge and memory NOT deepthroating every stochastic statistical pattern matching system they can get their hands on.
https://www.404media.co/national-archives-bans-employee-use-of-chatgpt/

2024-05-01 06:34:55

Going to be thinking about this a lot over the next few days
https://ourislandgeorgia.net/system/media_attachments/files/112/364/437/037/530/767/original/baafe859447d0082.jpg

2024-05-01 01:58:46

NYPD have stormed Columbia University campus using tear gas (as reported by WKCR) and drawn weapons (as reported by Washington Post) to remove protesting students. They have removed student radio and other professional journalists from the scene. Eric Adams has called the protesting students "professional outside agitators." WKCR-FM 88.9 has ongoing live updates. Do not look away from this, and do not let it pass unremarked.

2024-04-27 18:07:35

Something very weird about going to a place and giving a talk about how technology, religion, and logics of domination intersect, and strategies of resistance against the oppression resulting from said intersection, and then having that same place engaged and occupied by protesting students later that week.
Like, even when you logically know one had nothing to do with the other, it's got a particular feel to it.
https://www.wabe.org/pro-palestinian-cop-city-protesters-arrested-on-emory-university-campus/