The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
Google's Gemini Tells Us Exactly What's Wrong with Silicon Valley
Episode 493 of the Cyberlaw Podcast
This episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast kicks off with the Babylon Bee's take on Google Gemini's woke determination to inject a phony diversity into images of historical characters: "After decades of nothing but white Nazis, I can finally see a strong, confident black female wearing a swastika. Thanks, Google!" Jim Dempsey and Mark MacCarthy join the discussion because Gemini's preposterous image diversity quotas deserve more than snark. In fact, I argue, they were not errors; they were entirely deliberate efforts by Google to give its users not what they want but what Google in its wisdom thinks they should want. That such bizarre results were achieved by Google's sneakily editing user prompts to ask for, say, "indigenous" founding fathers simply shows that Google has found a unique combination of hubris and incompetence. More broadly, Mark and Jim suggest, the collapse of Google's effort to control its users raises this question: Can we trust AI developers when they say they have installed guardrails to make their systems safe?
The same might be asked of the latest in what seems an endless stream of experts demanding that AI models defeat users by preventing them from creating "harmful" deepfake images. Later, Mark points out that most of Silicon Valley recently signed on to promises to combat election-related deepfakes. In the 2010s, we all learned to hate the tech companies; in the 2020s, it seems, they've learned to hate us.
Speaking of hubris, Michael Ellis covers the State Department's stonewalling of a House committee trying to find out how generously the Department funded a group of ideologues trying to cut off advertising revenues for right-of-center news and comment sites. We take this story a little personally, having contributed op-eds to several of the blacklisted sites.
Michael explains just how much fun Western governments had taking down the infamous Lockbit ransomware service. I credit the Brits for the humor displayed as governments imitated Lockbit's graphics, gimmicks, and attitude. There were arrests, cryptocurrency seizures, indictments, and more. It was fun while it lasted. But a week later, Lockbit was claiming that its infrastructure was slowly coming back on line.
Jim unpacks the FTC's case against Avast for collecting the browsing habits of its antivirus customers. He sees this as another battle in the FTC's war against corporate claims that privacy can be preserved by "de-identifying" personal data.
Mark notes the EU's latest investigation into TikTok. And Michael explains how the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act relates to Tucker Carlson's ouster from the Fox network.
Mark and I take a moment to promote next week's review of the Supreme Court oral argument over Texas and Florida social media laws. The argument was happening while we were recording, but it was already clear that the outcome will be a mixed bag. Tune in next week for more.
Jim explains why the administration has produced an executive order about cybersecurity in America's ports, and the legal steps needed to bolster port security.
Finally, in quick hits:
- We dip into the trove of leaked files exposing how China's cyberespionage contractors do business
- I wish Rob Joyce well as he departs NSA and prepares for a career in cyberlaw podcasting
- I recommend the most cringe-inducing and irresistible long read of the week: How I Fell for an Amazon Scam Call and Handed Over $50,000
- And in a scary taste of the near future, a new research paper discloses that advanced LLMs make pretty good autonomous hacking agents.
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