We speak with Timnit Gebru, a leader in the field of AI ethics, about how artificial intelligence is entrenching societal biases and inequality. Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, a group of academics, activists and engineers who produce research rooted in the belief that technology should benefit everyone. She also co-founded Black in AI, a nonprofit that works to increase the inclusion and visibility of Black people in the field of AI. Gebru previously served as co-lead of the Ethical AI research team at Google but was fired in 2020 for writing a paper that warned about the financial and environmental costs of large language models, as well as their propensity to […]

Militaries across the world are in an “AI arms race,” says Heidy Khlaaf, a chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, which just released a joint report with Airwars titled “Anatomy of an AI Kill Chain.” “What it is is a series of different types of AI algorithms that are chained together, each with their own pitfalls, each with their own flaws,” she says. “And these systems build off of each other and feed into one another to, unfortunately, end up resulting in civilian casualties.” This can lead to faulty targeting because “humans are prone to just accepting recommendations of AI algorithms without corroborating that evidence,” adds Khlaaf.

The Washington Post reported Monday that due to an alleged Iranian threat to assassinate President Trump, he secretly swapped planes before departing the July NATO summit in Turkey — leaving senior administration officials, staff and members of the press corps on board. “The Israelis passed a tip, a concern, that the plane and potentially the president was under threat,” says Dan Lamothe, one of the Washington Postreporters who broke the story. But it turns out the ”CIA had low confidence” in the Israeli tip, according to a more recent Post story Lamothe co-authored on Thursday. “I think that kind of leaves the Secret Service in a tough spot of assessing: What do you do in this zero-fail mission to keep the president safe?”

Declassified Pentagon Report Found U.S. Killed 153 Civilians in Yemen Last Year, Sailors on U.S. Aircraft Carrier Attempt to Jump Overboard as Lengthy Deployment Grinds On, CIA Had “Low Confidence” in Israeli Claim That Iran Sought to Shoot Down Air Force One, Firefighters Accuse Israeli Forces of Deliberately Starting Wildfires in Southern Lebanon, “A Policy of Attrition by Design”: MSF Condemns Israeli Blockade of Crucial Supplies, Israeli Settlers Besiege Palestinian Homes in Occupied West Bank Village of Qusra, Hegseth Says Colombia Will Conduct Joint Military Operations with U.S., Urges Partners to Reject ICC, NYT: Fishermen in Ecuador Report Attacks by English-Speaking Assailants, Trump Admin Announces End of Federal Funding […]

From London, we revisit the Gaza Tribunal, an independent, nongovernmental inquiry into the United Kingdom’s complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The tribunal, held nearly one year ago, was chaired by our three guests: former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, Israeli professor of human rights law Neve Gordon and Palestinian legal scholar Shahd Hammouri. Their new book is titled The Gaza Tribunal: Britain’s Complicity in Genocide. We discuss the recent apology from Prime Minister Andy Burnham over the Labour Party’s early support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, the United Kingdom’s crackdown on the Palestine Action protest group under counterterrorism laws, and whether British policymakers will face any […]