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🗞️Diversity and inclusion news🗞️
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😮Racist kids😮
We saw Data from the Runnymede trust that in 2023, 11,619 children were suspended for racist behaviour, a 25% increase from the previous year, averaging nearly 60 suspensions a day.
Shockingly even more so, 1,413 of these children were still in primary school, with seven incidents involving kids as young as four.
Where do they learn this, well it's obviously at home. Read more here
Oh ps and don't forget to come to our BTF session about "Why is racism back in fashion and what are we going to do about it?
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👀More Racist AI👀
So there are two major highly respected academic journals in STEM, "Nature" and "Science" Getting published in either is often the culmination of a life's work in academic as only the most robust, cutting edge stuff makes the cut.🧪
So when we saw this headline in Science about something published in Nature, we paid attention👀
AI makes racist decisions based on dialect Large language models strongly associated negative stereotypes with African American English
with Nicole Holliday, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley who was not involved with the study stating “Every single person working on generative AI needs to understand this paper”🧠
The article in Science states, Just like humans, artificial intelligence (AI) is capable of saying it isn’t racist, but then acting as if it were. Large language models (LLMs) such as GPT4 output racist stereotypes about speakers of African American English (AAE), even when they have been trained not to connect overtly negative stereotypes with Black people, new research has found🤦🏿♂️
The models overwhelmingly associated the AAE texts with negative adjectives, saying the speakers were likely to be dirty, stupid, rude, ignorant, and lazy. The team even found that the LLMs ascribed negative stereotypes to AAE texts more consistently than human participants in similar studies from the pre–Civil Rights era😱
Read the article here
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🧠Things that make you go hmmm🧠
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😵X is banned (In Brazil)😵
So we went at least one week without mentioning Twitter (X).
Well turns out that following our earlier reporting a few weeks ago about their censorship spat with the Brazilian government that there has been a ruling that renders blocked. The platform has more than 21m users in Brazil making it one of its biggest consumer markers😵
In typical Elon fashion he encouraged and then posted at Meme's about VPN use in Brazil. Punishments for those caught bypass the blocking of X (by using a VPN for example in Brazil is now punishable with a fine of 50,000 reais (£6,760) a day (although its unclear how it will be enforced)💰
The ban comes after the company’s decision to “deliberately” ignore a court order to name a legal representative in Brazil suggested it “considered itself above the rule of law”.🧑🏾⚖️
They also went after starlink, Elon's other company prominent in Brazil, with the government blocking its finances. This was interesting because they are legally separate companies (With a large Elon Shareholding). Other shareholders of starlink may be concerned🤔
Elon's Starlink (Satellite company) since suggested it would ignore the X ban and therefore it is likely to face similar sanctions itself for ignoring a supreme court order which could have a big impact in the Brazilian Amazon, by bringing high-speed internet connection to remote regions with 90% of the Amazon’s municipalities having a starlink connection🇧🇷
So what?
Government v Elon is a battle worth watching. Both have a lot of face to lose by stepping back
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📲Telegram📲
Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of messaging app come social media platform Telegram, has been arrested in and investigated in France under concerns of into organised crime on the app. Having paid a €5m bail bond he can't leave France💰
Pavel Durov left his native Russia after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on the platform he now resides in Dubai (UAE)🇦🇪
Telegram claims to have over 950 million monthly active and prides itself as a platform where evasion from governments is possible by offering end to end encryption. It differs a bit from Whatsapp which limits group sizes to 1,000 users whereas up to 200,000 can be in a group on Telegram meaning it has been become a popular platform to share civil disobedience and war media📱
It is mainly funded by debt and makes it revenue through ads, username sales on the blockchain, and premium subscriptions.💸
So what?
It's almost (and we don't want to be taken to court) so we'll word this carefully), impossible to consider a case where illegal activity around organised crime hasn't happened on Telegram but how culpable Telegram are in that is the key question. It may take a while to get to the bottom of that, but hey there are definitely worse places to spend your time than france
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💆🏽♀️How Demure💆🏽♀️
Unless you've been under a social media rock and dont know anyone under the age of 30, you've probably heard the word Demure coming up in the last week🤳🏾
Why, well for no real reason influencer TikTok creator Jools Lebron went vital with her her videos about getting for work and her notorious catchphrase, “Very demure, very mindful”😅
Since going viral she has swept up a number of brand endorsements including, a Verizon ad and an appearance on ABC’S “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”📺
Naturally a number of folks rushed to register variations of “very demure” as trademarks in the USA leaving her bereft and her fans enraged as some got to it before her😢
Well turns out Trademark law does not care who popularised a word or phrase, only who used it first (or applied to register it first) in connection with the sale of goods or services so sort yourself out people👀
It'll take a number of months to see if the folks who got their first win out, but there are a number of grounds where they could fail and we suspect they may just do so especially because following a video posted Tuesday, where she said Lebron “We got it handled, and I’m gonna leave it that. We got it handled. Mama got a team now” without providing more details.🤔
So what?
Don't forget to be mindful protect your brand/business
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💻Let's look under the hood💻
Open Ai and Anthropic have formally agreed to give a US federal agency access to their upcoming AI models before public release😮
This is big news because well that's what a lot of regulators have hinted they would like👀
We ask a bigger question about, do they have the capabilities to understand what they may see, After All the best paid (And we assume most highly skilled) Tech AI jobs will be at the very companies such as Open AI and Anthropic🤔
The US Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), said it would help federal officials evaluate AI models for safety risks and providing feedback to Anthropic and OpenAI on potential safety improvements to their models, in close collaboration with its partners at the UK AI Safety Institute,” the department added.
You can read more here
So what?
Getting ahead of regulation is in vogue. The logic is its better to set your own standards than have them set for you and then also risk consequences for ill compliance
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📈 The tools behind the tech📉
📦Product📦
📏Design📏
👩🏿💻Code👩🏿💻
🏢The business behind the tech🏢
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🌐Partner Events & Opportunties 🌐
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💸We're hiring💸
Yes you read that right, We're looking for someone to join the team who is passionate about Venture, Startups and Education as our new Startup and VC lead
Take a look here if you're interested
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🙌🏾The latest from the Colorintech team🙌🏾
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