men

"“We're going to try and do what the people want, like with the jirga in Afghanistan, to put it into practice, and we're trying to do it without being naive, we're not gullible. We'll continue with our work, with our duty, but we want to make sure that we will no longer be stubborn about things, stuck, or obtuse.""

""Talking with jihadists and fighting terrorism is not contradictory,”"

"We believe we need to strengthen our permanent crisis committee in Mali, which can be activated as soon as a crisis arises in one of our region’s countries. The Economic Community of West African States should also have a rapid response mechanism that includes 15 countries, so that the response from the region is a coordinated one. The same mechanism should exist in all regions of Africa and the whole world."

"“I have a duty and a mission today to create all possible spaces and to do everything possible so that, by one means or another, some kind of appeasement can be achieved. It's time certain avenues were explored,""

"I personally called for a general mobilization of all Malian citizens, to make the response to Ebola a major national cause, with everyone, at all levels, committed: elected officials, traditional leaders, religious leaders, teachers, artists and the general public. Everyone must do their utmost to raise awareness and send prevention messages so that Ebola is soon no more than an unpleasant memory."

"Yes. It is essential that states continue to support each other and that warning mechanisms be established on an international level to enable a global response adapted to each setting, regardless of its nature."

"Second, I agree with Commissioner Stoddart and with overlapping testimony by Professor Valerie Steeves, both of whom have stated that PIPEDA’s language needs to be strengthened in a way that reasserts its orientation towards human rights. As Professor Steeves attests, privacy rights are not reducible to data protection, which itself is not reducible to a balancing of interests. Enshrining privacy as a human right, as PIPEDA does, reflects a profound and crucial set of underlying democratic values and commitments. Privacy rights are not merely a tradeoff for business or governmental convenience. PIPEDA needs stronger human rights language."

"Mama raised me right. Among other things, she taught me that you don’t accept a dinner invitation and then complain to your hosts about what is being served. Mama’s gentle wisdom notwithstanding, I would like to conclude my remarks today by making two uncomfortable observations."

"When technologies are in-between human users and natural prompters, we may qualify them as first-order (Figure 13). Listing first-order technologies is simple. The ones mentioned earlier all qualify. More can easily be added, such as the plough, the wheel, or the umbrella. The axe is probably the first and oldest kind of first-order technology. Nowadays, a wood-splitting axe is still a first-order technology between you, the user, and the wood, the prompter. A saddle is between you and a horse"

"But the benefits of this technology go beyond digital photo albums, he says. "Medical researchers can use it to study hundreds of MRI images all at once and identify problems," he says, to give just one practical example."

"But here is the rub. These AIs are designed in ways that raise unique challenges for privacy. Many use machine learning to excel at decision-making; this means AIs can go beyond their original programming, to make “discoveries” in the data that human decision-makers would neither see nor understand."

"It is worth taking a moment to drill down with real life examples. IBM Watson is used by H&R Block to make expert decisions about people’s tax returns. At the same time, governments are using AI to determine who is cheating on their taxes. Big Law uses ROSS to help its clients avoid legal risk. Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies use similar applications to decide which individuals will commit crimes and which prisoners will reoffend. Banks use AI to decide who will default on a loan, universities to decide which students should be admitted, employers to decide who gets the job, and so on."

"I would therefore submit that PIPEDA requires a duty to explain decision-making by machines. A duty to explain addresses “transparency” and “meaningful consent” concerns but goes further in order to ensure fundamental rights to due process and the presumption of innocence. Arguably, such a duty is enshrined in the forthcoming EU GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Even if it is not, Canada should lead by enacting such a duty. I would go even further, following EU GDPR Article 22, and suggest that PIPEDA should also to enshrine “a right not to be subject to a decision that is based solely on automated processing.” PIPEDA was enacted to protect human beings from technological encroachment. Decision-making about people must therefore maintain meaningful human control. PIPEDA should prohibit fully automated decision-making that does not permit human understanding or intervention. And, to be clear, I make these submissions not to ensure EU “adequacy.” I make these submissions because they are necessary to protect privacy and human rights."

"I think that this is the sort of reason a number of experts have told you that we need greater transparency or, as some have put it: “algorithmic transparency.” But it is my respectful submission that transparency does not go far enough. It is not enough for companies or governments to disclose what information has been collected or used. When AI-decisions affect our life chances and opportunities, those who use the AIs have a duty to explain those decisions in a way that allows us to challenge the decision-making process itself. This is a basic privacy principle enshrined in data protection law worldwide."

"People with gene mutation A are more likely to get disease B"

"Our approach is different: instead of a linear analysis, we look at all the possible variables all at once and put together hypotheses that simultaneously try to figure out what all the images are about.""

"Human beings differ from other animals because they are sufficiently intelligent to wish that they could stop working and reasoning – and free enough to toil harder than other creatures to pursue both these aims in order to eventually enjoy free time. It follows that Homo faber and Homo sapiens are only contingent consequences of the truly essential Homo ludens. The fact that philosophers do not typically endorse this view only clarifies why they rarely qualify as champions of common sense."

"The great opportunity offered by ICTs comes with a huge intellectual responsibility to understand them and take advantage of them in the right way."

"I am listing the scores for the question "Overall, how would you rate this instructor?" for ALL course evaluations available at www.usc.edu/course-eval in 2010 and earlier and some additional ones. The scores mean: 1 = poor, 2 = below average, 3 = average, 4 = above average, 5 = excellent. The scores of on-campus and DEN (= Distance Education Network) students get reported separately. Three scores means that I taught two sections since there are two scores for on-campus students and one for DEN students."

"For example, the traditional approach to organizing images is a step-by-step analysis that says, 'if there's colour then do this, and once you've completed that step, then see if there's a border around the image and then do this,' and so on."

"For the millions of people on the planet who use digital cameras, the work of Dr. Frey and his team has the potential to make it easier to organize and sort through countless pictures stored on a computer's hard drive."

"The same tools can also be used to analyze documents by grouping together similar sentences and summarizing their meaning.""

"Having reinforced these views, the majority of my remarks will focus on two of the central themes raised by this study: transparency and meaningful consent. I will use this framing language to orient your thinking but, in truth, both of these concepts require expansion in light of dizzying technological progress."

"Finally, I also agree with those who recognize the need for meaningful consent. In particular, I agree with the four-point proposal put forward by Professor Michael Geist. I have a further proposal outside of my main submission, which I would like very much to share with you. I am hoping that one of you will jot this down and ask me about it during the question period."

"When PIPEDA was enacted, the dominant privacy metaphor was George Orwell’s 1984—“Big Brother is Watching you.” Strong privacy rights were seen as an antidote to the new possibility of dataveillance—the application of information technologies by government or industry to watch, track and monitor individuals by investigating the data trail they leave through their activities. Though perhaps no panacea, PIPEDA’s technology neutral attempt to limit collection, use and disclosure was thought to be a sufficient corrective."

"However, technological developments in the 17 years since PIPEDA go well beyond watching. Today, I will focus on a single example: the use of AI to perform risk assessment and delegated decision-making. The substitution of machines for humans shifts the metaphor away from the watchful eye of Big Brother, towards what Professor Daniel Solove has characterized as “a more thoughtless process of bureaucratic indifference, arbitrary errors, and dehumanization, a world where people feel powerless and vulnerable, without any meaningful form of participation in the collection and use of their information.” This isn't George Orwell’s 1984—its Franz Kafka’s Trial of Joseph K. Since the enactment of PIPEDA, the world we now occupy permits complex, inscrutable AI to make significant decisions that affect our life chances and opportunities. These decisions are often processed with little to no input from the people they affect, and little to no explanation as to how or why these decisions were made. Such decisions may be “unnerving, unfair, unsafe, unpredictable, unaccountable”—and unconstitutional. They interfere with fundamental rights, including the right to due process and even the presumption of innocence."

"Permitting such decisions without an ability to understand them can have the effect of eliminating challenges that are essential to the rule of law. When an institution uses your own personal information and data about you to decide that you don’t get a loan, or that your neighborhood will undergo more police surveillance, or that you don’t get to go to university, you don’t get the job, or you don’t get out of jail, and those decisions cannot be explained by anyone in any meaningful way, such uses of your data interfere with your privacy rights."

"This “emergent behavior” is what makes these AIs so useful. It also makes these AIs inscrutable. Machine learning, Knowledge Discovery in Databases, and other AI techniques produce decision-making models differing so radically from the way humans make decisions that they resist our ability to make sense of them. Ironically, AIs display great accuracy—but those who use them (even their programmers) often don’t know exactly how or why."

"The design of good interfaces takes time and ingenuity"

"Technologies as users interacting with other technologies as prompters, through other in-between technologies: this is another way of describing hyperhistory as the stage of human development"

"The illusion that there might be a single, correct, absolute answer independently of context, purpose and perspective, that is independently of the relevant interface, leads to paradoxical nonsense"

"In short, human intelligent design (pun intended) should play a major role in shaping the future of our interactions with each other, with forthcoming technological artefacts, and with the infosphere we share among us and with them. After all, it is a sign of intelligence to make stupidity work for you."

"According to recent estimates, life on Earth will last for another billion years, until it will be destroyed by the increase in solar temperature"

"One of the most obvious features that characterizes any technology is its in-betweenness. Suppose Alice lives in Rio de Janeiro, not in Oxford. A hat is a technology between her and the sunshine. A pair of sandals is a technology between her and the hot sand of the beach on which she is walking"

"ICTs are modifying the very nature of, and hence what we mean by, reality, by transforming it into an infosphere. Infosphere is a neologism coined in the seventies. It is based on ‘biosphere’, a term referring to that limited region on our planet that supports life. It is also a concept that is quickly evolving."

"The technophile and the technophobe ask the same question. What's next?"

"In 2011, the total world wealth1 was calculated to be $231 trillion, up from $195 trillion in 2010.2 Since we are almost 7 billion, that was about $33,000 per person, or $51,000 per adult, as the report indicates. The figures give a clear sense of the level of inequality. In the same year, we spent $498 billion on advertisements.3”."

"Recorded memories tend to freeze and reinforce the nature of their subject. The more memories we accumulate and externalize, the more narrative constraints we provide for the construction and development of our personal identities. Increasing our memories also means decreasing the degree of freedom we might enjoy in redefining ourselves. Forgetting is part of the process of self-construction. A potential solution, for generations to come, may be to be thriftier with anything that tends to crystallize the nature of the self, and more adept in handling new or refined skills of self-construction. Capturing."

"First, as I appear before you today, I think it is fair to say that my sense of déjà vu is not unwarranted. With the exception of a few new points (such as my submission in favour of a new duty to explain), much of what I have said, indeed much of what everyone who has appeared before you has said, has all been said before. Although many of the honourable members of this Committee are new to these issues, those who have done their homework will surely know that we have already done this dance in hearings on Bill S-4, Bill C-13, the Privacy Act, the hearings on Privacy and Social Media and, of course, the PIPEDA Review of 2006. And yet we have seen very little in the way of substantive legislative change. Although ongoing study is important, I say, with respect, that you are not Zamboni drivers. The time has come to stop circling round the same old ice. It is time now for you to make some much needed changes to the law."

"After the human genome was sequenced, we had the text, but we didn’t know how to make sense of it, Now we have a ‘deep genomics’ engine – a machine-learning system where you feed in the genetics and it will tell you what’s going to happen in the cells."

"We put it all together into one big system, Our ability to interpret the genome is growing very rapidly now. I think in 10 years we’re going to understand most of what the genome does, which mutations cause which diseases and why. Even if we could just address 10 per cent of genetic disease more accurately, it would have a huge impact on people’s lives.."

"The kind of research we do is leading edge in information technology."

"Second, as I prepare for question period, I look around the table and all I see is men. Inexplicably, your Committee itself is composed entirely of men. Yes, I realize that you have called upon a number of women to testify during the course of these proceedings. This, of course, makes sense. After all, a significant majority of privacy professionals are women. Indeed, I think it is fair to say that global thought-leadership in the field of privacy is, by majority, the result of contributions made by women. So I find it astonishing and unjustifiable that you have no women on your Committee, a decision as incomprehensible as any made by an algorithm. And so, I feel compelled to close my remarks by making this observation a part of the public record."

"Similar pictures - for instance, all pictures of beach vacations - would be grouped together automatically by a computer program."

"I am proud of my teaching scores (which are consistently between "above average" and "excellent" for all classes that I teach). These scores are listed below for your information. I work really hard on the classes I teach both because teaching is important to me and because I am enthusiastic about computer science, especially artificial intelligence and robotics, and I want the students to be as enthusiastic about these topics as I am. Four of my teaching assistants won best teaching assistant awards."

"I believe that if you work really hard on researching and coming up with new ideas, then everything else will fall into place."

"First, to put it colloquially, the call for stronger enforcement through order making powers, the ability of the OPC to impose meaningful penalties, including fines, is by now a total no-brainer. As Michael Vonn of the BCCLA recently testified before you, “there is no longer any credible argument for retaining the so-called ombudsperson model.” This has already been acknowledged by Commissioner Therrien, and former Commissioners Stoddart and Bernier, fortified by testimony from Canadian jurisdictions that already have order making power, which Commissioners Clayton and McArthur have described as advantageous. Strong investigatory and order making powers are a necessary component of effective privacy enforcement, especially in a global environment. Lets get it done."

"But it was not only the Brahmans, who were thus put in a state of terror of forcible conversion, for, in this same month, a Raja of the Kshatriya family of Parappanad, also "Tichera Terupar (Trichera Thiruppad), a principal Nayar of Nelemboor (Nilamboor)” and many other persons, who had been carried off to Coimbatore, were circumcised and forced to eat beef. The Nayars in desperation, under those circumstances, rose on their oppressors in the south, and the Coorgs too joined in."

"Cromwell Massey, who kept a secret diary during his captivity, wrote: "I lost with the foreskin of my yard all those benefits of a Christian and Englishman which were and ever shall be my greatest glory.""

"James Scurry, a British sailor, was taken prisoner by the French and was among the 500 British prisoners of war handed over to Haidar by the French Admiral Suffrein in June 1782. Scurry was barely sixteen years old then. After being lodged in Bangalore for a few months, he and several of his batch of prisoners were packed off to Srirangapatna. Here, after shaving off their heads, the unfortunate prisoners were to learn that Haidar had ordered for their forced circumcision and thereby a conversion to Islam. Scurry writes: ‘A mat, and a kind of sheet, was provided for each of us, wewere ordered to arrange ourselves in two rows, and then lie down on our mats. This being done, the guards, barbers . . . came among us, and seizing the youngest, Randal Cadman, a midshipman, they placed him on a cudgeree pot, when four of these stout men held his legs and arms, while the barber performed his office [circumcised him]. In this manner, they went through the operation, and in two hours, the “pious” work wasfinished, and we were laid on our separate mats.’56 Even as they lay writhing in pain and being fed a strong opiate, majum, priests were ushered in to instruct the ‘converts’ on the theology of their new faith and its tenets. The converted were then drafted into Haidar’s chela (slave) battalion. Their ears were pierced and a slave’s mark put on each of them. They were normally given excruciating tasks and many kept fainting while they did these. The chelas were bundled together in dank, dingy rooms, with little place to even breathe and surrounded by mounds of filth that was seldom cleaned. All of this led to the outbreak of numerous diseases and fatal epidemics.57 Scurry managed to escape only in 1791 and reached a small fort that was under Maratha control and thereafter joined a British detachment operating with the Maratha army near Dharwad. Another prisoner of war James Bristow recounts the horrific ritual of forcible conversion and circumcision that took place in September 1781 at the behest of one Sergeant Dempster whose name repeatedly occurs in all accounts as the collaborator conducting this act: This incident spread general terror amongst the rest of the prisoners, everyone apprehending that he might be the next victim devoted to Mahometism; nor were our fears groundless, for early in January 1782, the same persons entered our prison, accompanied by Sergeant Dempster, and made a second selection of fourteen, in which number I had the misfortune to be included. As Dempster was suspected of a share in this horrid business, at least so far as pointing out the objects on whom the choice ought to fall; every one of us were highly exasperated against him, and it was fortunate for him that he was protected by his guards. The treatment the first victim had undergone, served in some degree to apprise us of the inutility of resistance. With horror and indignation, we swallowed the narcotic potion, and those whom the dose had no effect upon, were forcibly seized and pinioned by stout coffres whilst the operation [circumcision] was performed (having previously shaved us in the customary manner). After the operation, our right ears were perforated and small silver rings with round knobs fixed in them, this being the mark of slavery amongst the Mahometans. As soon as we had recovered from this diabolical ceremony, we were transferred to what is termed the tyrant’s Chaylah battalions (that is, slaves), these are composed of such of his own subjects as have been condemned to perpetual slavery, and such unfortunate captives as he takes in war . . . after we had been made what was termed Musselmen, we neglected no opportunity of evincing our contempt for the religion of our tormentors, and the cruel force they had employed against us, by catching dogs and bandicoots and circumcising them publicly."