Links - 18th December 2019 (1)

Behavioural evidence for a transparency–efficiency tradeoff in human–machine cooperation - "Recent advances in artificial intelligence and deep learning have made it possible for bots to pass as humans, as is the case with the recent Google Duplex—an automated voice assistant capable of generating realistic speech that can fool humans into thinking they are talking to another human. Such technologies have drawn sharp criticism due to their ethical implications, and have fueled a push towards transparency in human–machine interactions. Despite the legitimacy of these concerns, it remains unclear whether bots would compromise their efficiency by disclosing their true nature. Here, we conduct a behavioural experiment with participants playing a repeated prisoner’s dilemma game with a human or a bot, after being given either true or false information about the nature of their associate. We find that bots do better than humans at inducing cooperation, but that disclosing their true nature negates this superior efficiency. Human participants do not recover from their prior bias against bots despite experiencing cooperative attitudes exhibited by bots over time. These results highlight the need to set standards for the efficiency cost we are willing to pay in order for machines to be transparent about their non-human nature."

Can a computer fool you into thinking it is human? - "Brian Christian, author of The Most Human Human, a book about the Turing test, points out that most modern chatbots do not even try to pass it.There are exceptions: Ivana-esque chatbots were used by Ashley Madison, a website designed to facilitate extramarital affairs, to hide the fact that very few human women used the site. It seems we are less likely to notice a chatbot is not human when it plugs directly into our libido.Another tactic is to wind us up. The MGonz chatbot tricks people by starting an exchange of insults. Politics - perhaps most notoriously the 2016 US election campaign - is well-seasoned with social media chatbots pretending to be outraged citizens, tweeting lies and insulting memes... The economist Adam Smith explained in the late 1700s that productivity is built on a process of dividing up labour into small specialised tasks. Modern chatbots work on the same principle.This logic leads economists today to argue that automation reshapes jobs rather than destroying them. Jobs are sliced into tasks. Computers take over the routine tasks and humans supply the creativity and adaptability."

Hot or bot? How to tell if your Tinder match is a real live human - "It can take a while for a bot to trip up and reveal its non-human self, since online dating conversations between actual humans tend to be superficial at the beginning regardless.No one knows this better than Robert Epstein, a Harvard-educated psychologist and expert on artificial intelligence who was duped by a chatbot years ago, in the days before Tinder. Epstein was "dating" a woman he met through an online dating service for months, under the auspices that she was a Russian immigrant (which explained her sometimes poor English) Eventually, however, he started to get suspicious from their complete lack of phone calls and the fact that no progress was being made on actually meeting in person. Perhaps she wasn't real, he thought, but how can you ask a robot who might be a human if she's really a robot and not sound like a jerk?So he tried this instead. "I tricked the Russian chatbot by typing random alphabet letters—one of the simplest tricks," Epstein told me. "She/it replied as if I had sent real speech."Specifically, he sent a sentence that read "asdf;kj as;kj I;jkj;j ;kasdkljk ;klkj ‘klasdfk; asjdfkj. With love, /Robert." The bot, not understanding the first part, simply ignored it and responded with more details about her family.Other chatbots will use similar tactics when random letters are introduced. For instance, if you say, "I love jkhfkdjh," the bot might respond, "What do you love about jfhfkdjh?" simply repeating the phrase back to you. A human would likely respond, "WTF?"... Epstein tried his hand at online dating again after his incident with "the Russian" and ran into another "female" bot. He chatted with her for a bit before the programmer himself cut off the conversation. "The programmer quickly realized who I was and confessed his deception (which he also made me promise not to reveal)," he told me. "He was very proud of his creation.""

Don’t Mention the Corpses: The Erasure of Violence in Colonial Writings on Southeast Asia
Ironically, trying to position colonial violence as unique is another form of historical erasure

Russian man sues Apple for 'turning him gay' - "The GayCoin cryptocurrency arrived with a note saying, "Don't judge until you try," according to the complaint."I thought, in truth, how can I judge something without trying? I decided to try same-sex relationships," the complainant wrote."Now I have a boyfriend and I do not know how to explain this to my parents ... my life has been changed for the worse and will never become normal again," he added."

Saudi Arabia: Unmarried foreign couples can now rent hotel rooms - "The government move comes amid efforts by Saudi Arabia to grow its tourism industry... The new visa regulations state that female tourists are not required to fully cover up but are still expected to dress modestly.Alcohol remains banned."

The Internet’s horrifying new method for installing Google apps on Huawei phones - "Just make a Chinese website your device's remote administrator. It'll be fine!... Huawei has already been asked if it is behind Lzplay, and honestly, at this point, that would probably be the best-case scenario, given how powerful Lzplay is. Huawei shot down this idea, though, and gave the following statement to Android Central: "Huawei's latest Mate 30 series is not pre-installed with GMS, and Huawei has had no involvement with www.lzplay.net."Further research is not really possible right now, since, as Wu writes, the Lzplay app is "obfuscated/encrypted by QiHoo Jiagu (奇虎加固), and is non trivial to reverse engineer." So somebody went out of their way to hide exactly what Lzplay is doing, so we have no idea how it works or who made it... If a Huawei-aligned entity created Lzplay for the purposes of alleviating Google app anxiety for potential Mate 30 customers, it really seems to have backfired now. The future state of apps like Google Pay is in flux, and Lzplay highlights just how shady and compromising life outside the Google ecosystem can be. Huawei could fix all of this by giving users full control over their devices and allowing them to unlock the bootloader, so normal Google app flashing techniques would work, but so far, it doesn't seem to want to do that."

Meet The Dominatrix Who Requires The Men Who Hire Her To Read Black Feminist Theory - "Over time, Mistress Velvet said she began “doing a lot of theorizing” about the power dynamics of a black woman holding that kind of supremacy over a white cisgender man. She began introducing black feminist theory into her sessions with clients, who’ve told her their relationship in that space has impacted their behavior outside of it.One client said he noticed he only held the door open for black women. Another, whom Mistress Velvet educated about the systemic oppression of black women, founded a nonprofit to support black mothers on Chicago’s South Side."
The clients are masochists after all

Why I ditched my therapist to hire a dominatrix instead - "In addition to more typical services like fetish play, bondage and corporal punishment, some professional dominatrixes offer life coaching services that focus on confidence-building and improving self-esteem, though many also offer help with anything from fitness goals, dating and professional development."

Math is racist: Seattle schools’ math curriculum looks at things like ‘Power and Oppression’ and ‘Resistance’ - "RealClearInvestigations’ Mark Hemingway brought our attention to this document headed, “SEATTLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS: K-12 Math Ethnic Studies Framework,” and it’s more frightening than Common Core ever dreamed of being. Apparently “Math Ethnic Studies” for kindergartners through high schoolers looks at things like “What does it mean to do math?” and, more importantly, “How is math manipulated to allow inequality and oppression to persist?”"
No wonder Americans are so bad at maths when indoctrination into grievance politics is prioritised

National bans on smacking children linked to less teenage violence - "The analysis found that thirteen-year-olds from places with full smacking bans were less likely to get into frequent fights as those from nations where it is allowed everywhere – in boys, who fought the most, the rates for frequent fighting were 8.5 per cent and 12 per cent respectively.This suggests “bans not only keep children safe from adults, but also from their peers”, says Alana Ryan, of the UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which has long campaigned for a ban on smacking in the home.But Catey Bunce of the Royal Statistical Society says this makes the mistake of assuming that a correlation between two things means one causes the second. It could be that the second causes the first – for instance teenagers who get into lots of fights might grow up to be tougher disciplinarians as parents, and so reject smacking legislation. Or perhaps both factors – smacking and teenage fights – are affected by a third, such as broader societal attitudes... Another caveat to the latest findings is that there was just a small difference in frequent fighting between countries with full bans, like Sweden, and partial bans, like England and the US. In boys the rates were 8.5 per cent versus 10 per cent, a gap too small to be statistically significant in this analysis."
This cross-sectional methodology is remarkably bad

Man who does not understand consent has right to pursue sex, court rules - "The court of protection has ruled that a man who cannot understand the issue of consent must be allowed to pursue sexual relationships.Mrs Justice Roberts ruled that the man, who has autism with impaired cognition and lives in a supported residential placement, has a “fundamental right to sex”.The court considers issues relating to people who might lack the mental capacity to make decisions.A clinical psychologist submitted a report saying that the 36-year-old man, referred to as JB, represents a “moderate risk” of sexual offending to women, particularly to those who are vulnerable, and that JB cannot understand that a woman’s consent is relevant in sexual situations, nor that attempting sex without consent is likely to be a criminal offence. However, the judge said that insisting that JB understands the issue of consent before being allowed to pursue sexual relationships would be discrimination because it would “impose on him a burden which a capacitous individual may not share”.She said not having that knowledge might result in criminal prosecution but JB was “entitled to make the same mistakes which all human beings can, and do, make in the course of a lifetime”. JB has never been charged with any criminal offence but because of his behaviour towards women he has been subject to a care plan by his local authority since 2014 which has imposed significant limitations on his freedoms... “The capacity test in civil law is set as low as possible so that, for example, a 70-year-old woman with dementia who sometimes can’t remember who her husband is, can’t be banned from having sex with him.“But there is an interesting tension in these cases which has never been tested in the supreme court illustrated in this case, where JB is judged to have capacity but is nevertheless 100% at risk of being arrested for a crime if he tries to have sex with someone without their consent.”"

Facebook exempts political ads from ban on making false claims - "Facebook has quietly rescinded a policy banning false claims in advertising, creating a specific exemption that leaves political adverts unconstrained regarding how they could mislead or deceive, as a potential general election looms in the UK.The social network had previously banned adverts containing “deceptive, false or misleading content”, a much stronger restriction than its general rules around Facebook posts. But, as reported by the journalist Judd Legum, in the last week the rules have narrowed considerably, only banning adverts that “include claims debunked by third-party fact-checkers, or, in certain circumstances, claims debunked by organisations with particular expertise”."
Or maybe having big tech be the arbiter of truth is inherently problematic

S’pore influencer accused of racism after posting photo of Sikh men’s turbans & calling them ‘obstructions’
Apparently if you're Sikh, you're suddenly transparent and are incapable of blocking visible light

Sikh peer quits Today programme's Thought for the Day slot after 35 years - "Lord Singh of Wimbledon has quit BBC Radio Four's Thought for the Day after more than three decades, blasting the over-sensitivity of the corporation's bosses.The peer, who has been a Sikh voice on the Today programme for 35 years, said the BBC tried to block him from discussing a guru from his religion who fought against the forced conversion of some Hindus to Islam in 17th century India.A celebrated interfaith activist, Indarjit Singh hit out at the BBC for its 'prejudice and intolerance' after he was told the broadcast, which did not criticise Islam, may have offended Muslims... He also hit out at the BBC's 'misplaced sense of political correctness' that forces contributers to only say non-controversial statements that no listener could complain about. Lord Singh told the newspaper: 'It was like saying to a Christian that he or she should not talk about Easter for fear of giving offence to the Jews.'... He was not informed of anyone listening being offended by his broadcast... 'The need for sensitivity in talking about religious, political or social issues have now been taken to absurd proportions with telephone insistence on trivial textual changes right up to going into the studio, making it difficult to say anything worthwhile.'The aim of Thought for the Day has changed from giving an ethical input to social and political issues to the recital of religious platitudes and the avoidance of controversy with success measured by the absence of complaints.'He said he believed Sikhism founder Guru Nanak and even Jesus Christ would not be 'allowed near Thought for the Day' if they were alive today."