computery guy @CompSciOxford, @KelloggOx. HCI; ML; privacy; security; political econ of tech. [email protected] #THFC he/him [email protected]
London
Joined July 2009
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I'm going to be tweetin' less here and tootin' more over on the Fediverse - find me at [email protected] for EXCLUSIVE CONTENT
Reuben Binns @[email protected] retweeted
Episode 6 is live. Your boss might be an algorithm.
@RDBinns led the Oxford team that analysed 1.5M Uber trips: Uber takes more per trip, drivers earn less, and nobody outside can see how the numbers are set.
Full episode:
youtube.com/watch?v=dHJLcSl1…
Reuben Binns @[email protected] retweeted
New paper by @rdbinns and myself on why genAI hallucinates and its implications in terms of libel and data protection is now strangely relevant after David Mayer-gate 🤣 where individuals may or may have used law to remove themselves fromChatGPT arxiv.org/abs/2412.06356
Reuben Binns @[email protected] retweeted
new from me: I’ve teamed up with @anastasiabekt to explore why so much policy work is basically pointless. We walk through the mistakes tech companies, consultancies, think tanks, and lobbyists make, how it impoverishes debate, and how we can improve it. 🧵
Reuben Binns @[email protected] retweeted
1. Firms that lure workers with false earnings claims are breaking the law.
@FTC has taken action against @Lyft for deceiving drivers about how much they could expect to earn on its platform.
We've ordered Lyft to stop this conduct & pay $2.1 million.
ftc.gov/news-events/news/pre…
Reuben Binns @[email protected] retweeted
If you want to see the other graph you need, to understand our world, it is this one. It depicts the rising wealth/income ratio. Basically, the value of all wealth (businesses, real estate, financial assets, etc) is rising much faster than all income (which is just GDP).
Reuben Binns @[email protected] retweeted
🚨PhD student + team player sought. Please share, repost, or apply.. Are you passionate about how digital technologies affect citizens, curious about the social element of those technologies, and eager to work in a truly interdisciplinary team? Then, you may want to consider joining us in the #RegTech4AI project at the Law & Tech Lab in the beautiful city of Maastricht (Netherlands). As of this month, we already have a team of four outstanding interdisciplinary researchers, trying to define the future of AI & Digital Technologies.
Link to application site: vacancies.maastrichtuniversi…
Project details: regtech4ai.maastrichtlawtech…
You'll come a-texting Matilda with me
NSW Ambulance has completed a dramatic rescue, retrieving a woman who was stuck upside down between rocks in the Hunter Valley.
Matilda Campbell dropped her phone between the rocks while walking with friends, and when she attempted to retrieve it she fell and became trapped, hanging by her feet.
She was there for seven hours, and specialist rescue paramedics had to remove boulders weighing up to 500 kilograms to free her.
Campbell was eventually freed and only sustained minor scratches and bruises, but unfortunately her phone did not survive.
Reuben Binns @[email protected] retweeted
I doubt any of this is true. At most these comments highlight a woeful lack of expertise in Whitehall on application of GDPR/DPA and the common law duty of confidentiality. All ICO really did was provide assurances that data protection wasn't a barrier.
xitter.cf/Dominic2306/status/184…
💯🎯 Also NB. during covid, I had to tell the Cabinet Secretary to tell the ICO to effectively publicly suspend GDPR (which they did) under threat of getting the PM to say publicly 'ignore GDPR' because Whitehall left to itself literally prioritised 'legal advice on EU GDPR compliance' over lives and suffering and people all over the system said 'we can't do X unless you get officials to shut up about GDPR' - e.g there would have been *no shielding program* because Cabinet Office thought it was effectively legally impossible to connect the databases. As you shd expect this issue has been buried by Inquiry because doesn't fit narratives Whitehall want discussed. Similar insanity happens daily. MPs ignore it all
Reuben Binns @[email protected] retweeted
From our Dying For Data webinar, @RDBinns explains how dynamic pricing is affecting drivers’ pay.
Watch the full video on Youtube shorturl.at/SDv0V
Reuben Binns @[email protected] retweeted
NEW: Should Europe invest billions in A𝗜?
Without redirecting the current trajectory, Europe's industrial policy risks further entrenching Big tech's dominance. But there are alternative pathways forward!
This collection of essays by @AINowInstitute sets out to provide EU policy makers with policy research, perspectives, and evidence about the challenges of expanding public investment in a highly concentrated global AI market.
ainowinstitute.org/redirecti…
Curated by: @F_Kaltheuner @SaariLeevi @ambaonadventure @sarahbmyers
Contributors incl: @francesca_bria @CeciliaRikap
@sarahchander @ZWarso @Caffar3Cristina @sedyst
@margaridasilva2 @JeroenMerk @kimvsparrentak @burcuno @thornet @udbhav_tiwari @franzbonf @FiekeJ @markscott82
NEW: Amidst a frenzy around public AI investment in Europe, our new report takes us back to the drawing board.
What kind of (digital) future does Europe want? What role can (should) AI play? Who should have a say?
Read expert perspectives: ainowinstitute.org/redirecti…
1/
Reuben Binns @[email protected] retweeted
Awesome, it screws over everything that the UK is good at (arts) in favour of some tech billionaires from the US who don't even pay taxes here
NEW: The UK government is set to consult on a scheme that would allow AI companies to scrape content from publishers and artists unless they “opt out”, in a move that will rile the creative industry. W/ @DanielThomasLDN
ft.com/content/26bc3de1-af90…
Maybe people who believe LLMs can reason are actually using a different meaning of 'reason', which is exactly the same as ours except it also includes pattern matching by LLMs 🤔🤔🤔
'LLMs can't really reason, they just pattern match'
Wittgenstein: 'ah, but how do we know they aren't following their own private reasoning rules which are the same as ours, except when the reasoning problem has superficial differences to their training data?'
"A new paper from Apple draws attention to a persistent problem in LLMs: their reliance on pattern matching rather than genuine logical reasoning. As a result, adding irrelevant information—can lead to vastly different answers from the models."
macrumors.com/2024/10/14/app…
Reuben Binns @[email protected] retweeted
NYC has a min wage formula that penalizes companies for inefficiency. The busier drivers seem, the less each ride is worth. To keep wages low, Uber and Lyft inflate driver efficiency stats by erasing idle time. We estimate millions at stake monthly.
bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-…
Reuben Binns @[email protected] retweeted
📺Watch our webinar replay:
➡️James DiGiovanni on how @nyctaxi use data to protect pay & cut congestion
➡️@RDBinns analyses our data to show harm of Uber dynamic pricing to UK workers
➡️@veenadubal on algorithmic wage discrimination & the political economy
youtube.com/watch?v=OrlM4pzE…
New short paper: 'If the Difference Principle Won’t Make a Real Difference in Algorithmic Fairness, What Will?'
An invited response to Ulrik Franke's excellent ‘Rawlsian Algorithmic Fairness and a Missing Aggregation Property of the Difference Principle’ link.springer.com/article/10…
These include the situational level (e.g. applying existing non-discrimination law to algorithms), the institutional (e.g. new rules banning high risk systems), and the systemic level (e.g. tech that helps build alternative power structures).
I conclude that political philosophy approaches to algorithmic fairness would benefit from stepping out of the shadow of Rawlsianism, and embracing other paradigms. Available here: link.springer.com/article/10… and OA preprint here: philpapers.org/rec/BINITD
