The Weekly Weird #4

AI FUD, China will find you, Assange on trial again, Germany removes a genocide memorial, chemical weapon possession in Leicester, and an AI Christmas carol

Hello again everyone and welcome to The Weekly Weird, where we wander wonderingly (or wonder wanderingly?) about the world’s dystopian happenings.

We’ve got a bumper edition for your Christmas stocking this week.

AI FUD

The founders of the Center for Humane Technology, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to discuss AI. Part of their conversation included a good description of the emergent properties seen in large language models (LLMs):

The description given of how capabilities emerge from within the ‘black box’ of AI is a very important one, because it helps make clear a major issue: Abilities or tendencies the AI develops within itself are not things that can be undone by amending code after the fact. A programmer can’t just get in there with a patch and bug-fix what an LLM has evolved.

Raskin goes on to talk about ‘alignment’, which sounds like something you heard while creating your character in Dungeons & Dragons but actually refers to how closely the AI’s way of doing things will be to human preferences. Since we know humans aren’t exactly aligned amongst ourselves, it’s a much queasier question than the above clip gets into.

You might also remember the Center for Humane Technology as being behind the documentary film The Social Dilemma that hit Netflix a few years back. Worth a watch if you haven’t seen it. Personally, I found it good overall, just a little too sad-core and reliant on dramatised sequences.

In March this year, the Center released a one-hour video called The A.I. Dilemma, which you can watch here if you’re inclined.

A couple of months ago, they put out this video, which gives you an idea of the tone of their concern in a much punchier way, if the above is a little TL;DW.

I don’t entirely share the apocalyptic vision they have, although I do find it a little on-the-nose that China named its surveillance system SkyNet. It’s been relatively well-documented since it was founded, although not with the regularity and volume that a programme of this severity deserves.

Remember when NPR thought surveillance and government intrusion were bad?

If you’re not familiar with The Terminator story universe, here’s Arnie explaining why SkyNet is a hilariously poor-taste name to give a networked system plugged into a state’s military apparatus:

You can check out a Chinese state media statement on SkyNet from 2017 here. From the Google Translate version:

“China has built the world's largest video surveillance network - "China Skynet" […]

The system that "Skynet" relies on can monitor and distinguish motor vehicles, non-motor vehicles and pedestrians in real time, and can accurately identify the type of vehicle and the clothing, gender and even age of pedestrians.”

In March 2022, the CCP released their SkyNet 2022 plan…

China Will Find You

SkyNet has gone beyond domestic use since it was deployed, and is now part of China’s global “repatriation” programme for locating people and returning them to China for legal punishment, run by “the International Fugitive Recovery and Cross-border Corruption Management Office of the Central Anti-Corruption Coordination Group”.

“We have made unremitting efforts to pursue fugitives and recover stolen property, and have made great efforts to promote cross-border corruption management, and have achieved remarkable results in various tasks.”

Examples of the rampant fugitive criminality China is trying to crack down on include, from Radio Free Asia, “a video clip of a Uyghur mother and her 13-year-old daughter crying for help after being detained in Saudi Arabia and told they would be sent to China recently surfaced on social media, highlighting China's use of pliant allies to circumvent criminal justice processes and ensure political refugees and Muslims are sent back.”

Safeguard Defenders, an EU-based human rights NGO, described SkyNet and its expansion in March 2022 as “a broad strategy to silence dissent and stifle an individual’s defence from extradition or deportation.” They continued with a rather Terminator-like statement: “The Chinese Communist Party will stop at nothing to obtain the return of those it seeks.”

Or, in the words of Kyle Reese…

From the Safeguard Defenders report:

Following the inauguration of the National Supervisory Commission (NSC), for all intents and purposes a State front for the Party body CCDI - established by the 13^th People’s Congress in 2018 to be the highest anti-corruption and supervisory organ independent of the State Council, Supreme Court, and Supreme Prosecutor -, Sky Net came under the NSC’s direct command and has since overseen operations to capture anyone considered a “fugitive” by the CCP.

The National Supervision Law (NSL) that set up the NSC defines ‘anti-corruption international fugitive repatriation’ as an international operation leading to the arrest of ‘suspects’ who have fled China. According to an official legal interpretation of that law by the CCDI, while extradition is the formal and ideal channel to bring targets back to China, officials can also consider using repatriation, persuasion, remote prosecution, and ‘irregular methods’, such as kidnapping and entrapment, ‘where the suspect is lured to the territory of the entrapping country, international high seas, international airspace or a third country with an extradition treaty, and then arrested or extradited’.

Between 2014 and February 2022, official CCDI data inform that 10,105 people - including foreign citizens - have been forcefully returned to China from over 120 countries, mostly via ‘irregular methods’. While formal extradition cases only account for 1% among the returnees, around 250 individuals have been sent to China through formal extradition procedures in EU member states.

Speaking of extradition and ‘irregular methods’…

Assange On Trial Again

Julian Assange has been given a court date for his final final final hearing that should finally determine what finally happens to him, after being holed up since 2012 and held in Belmarsh since 2019.

The US wants him extradited, although there seems to be rather frothy controversy over what exactly he has actually done to merit any legal action at all. A public hearing at the High Court in London on February 20 and 21 is apparently his last chance to escape Uncle Sam’s clutches.

Reuters’ coverage of the story seems to downplay the severity of what Assange faces in the US by saying he is “wanted by U.S. authorities on 18 counts, including one under a spying act”. A spying act is not exactly a reasonable explanation or description of the Espionage Act of 1917, which is the law in question. Since Assange’s role at Wikileaks in relation to the act he is wanted for was that of a publisher, there are serious questions and ramifications about the application of the Espionage Act to what in essence was the publication of factual material in the public interest. Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle on the NSA, faces similar charges if he surfaces in a country that has an extradition agreement with the US, except in his case he actually took the material himself. If Assange ends up getting sent to the US and is successfully prosecuted for essentially hosting something on his website, what newspaper, magazine, blog, or social media platform will be safe?

Germany Removes Genocide Memorial

In a country famous for sausages, beer, and industrial-scale genocide, where denying the Holocaust is a crime, the city council of the German city of Cologne has made the news for removing a memorial to the Armenian genocide under pressure from Millî Görüş, one of the leading Turkish diaspora organisations in Europe, called National Vision in English.

The Armenian Mirror-Spectator, which is a media site I now know exists, has probably the most in-depth coverage, unsurprisingly.

The city council said they needed to get rid of the monument to put in a cycle lane, or to prevent social unrest, or for a few other reasons, before eventually going through with it presumably on the basis that there are more Turks than Armenians in Cologne, and those Turks don’t like hearing about what the Ottomans did to the Armenians.

Here’s Turkey’s leader Erdogan laying some deep linguistic empretzelement on a descendant of one of the survivors of the Armenian genocide:

“Who performed genocide on whom?”

*Chef’s kiss*

News like this makes me wonder what the purpose of a genocide memorial is, exactly. Aren’t the people that really need to see it the very people who don’t want to see it, or don’t believe the thing commemorated actually happened, or think it was fine and no big deal? Isn’t a protest against commemorating a factually documented genocide on the basis that it didn’t happen or wasn’t that bad exactly the kind of ‘teachable moment’ the memorial is there to serve?

Tomorrow’s episode of our podcast is with CJ Hopkins, an American author living in Germany, who has been brought up on charges for re-tweeting an image of his own book cover which contained a swastika, even though showing images of the swastika is legal for educational, editorial, and historical purposes in Germany. Make sure you check it out.

Chemical Weapon Possession In Leicester

A rather un-Christmas-y bummer of a story from the UK now.

David Rollins, a disabled man on benefits in Leicester, went to his local Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) office to protest the cutting of his benefits and attempted suicide there by drinking poison.

From the linked-to article:

He has spent the last six months on remand in prison, after recovering from the suicide attempt, but he has now been released on bail before he is sentenced next month.

He had already pleaded guilty to intentionally or recklessly causing a public nuisance, but on Monday, at Leicester Crown Court, he also pleaded guilty to possessing a chemical weapon.

A further charge of developing or producing a chemical weapon will lie on the court’s files.

The phrase “adding insult to injury” certainly comes to mind. It takes a special kind of system to pile that on a guy after what he’s been through. Also, isn’t “causing a public nuisance” a really demeaning way to describe a suicide attempt? The crime was how annoying it was to bystanders?

An AI Christmas Carol

I thought it might be nice to end with an uplifting Christmas carol.

To that end, I asked ChatGPT to “write me a Christmas carol on the theme of dealing with dystopia”.

Then I pasted the lyrics into Suno.ai and generated this banger for your Yuletide delectation.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.