Your second sentence is pretty much true everywhere, just the strength of the correlation varies. Even in places that try to be even handed the simple fact that a wealthy person has more resources makes them freer.
They certainly have no problem sending billions of tax payer money and sign missiles to m*rder children.
I think the point here is to prime the public for this discriminatory use of AI. Today it's "bad hamas", tomorrow it can be whatever the current government deems "bad". And by then, it'll be too late.
The article is pretty scant on details in terms of how the judgment would be made but using AI to process for an initial review followed by a final human review seems like a slam dunk choice imo
Is there going to be a review of the false positive and false negative rates? Will the humans review negative and positive results equally well? Will any of the process be transparent?
Why are you asking me? I already said this article that half of HN is raging at is scant on any detail. If you don’t know the answers to these questions, which would make sense because this article basically says nothing, and it’s important to you you should probably look into it.
Let me say as an international PhD student- I have marched for the freedom of Palestinian people, talk about it, and I won’t allow this Big Brother tactic influence my decision one bit going forward.
This comment (while possibly well-intentioned) seems very disconnected from the ground level realities of how a large number of opinions are conflated (often deliberately) with support for Hamas: ranging from expressing horror at the killing and maiming of children, to expressing concern over arms exports to criticizing statements of specific politicians.
Will that nuance be understood by the models? It might be understood by people, of course, but will the models take into account that some people might support Palestine because of the alleged crimes against humanity commited by the attacker, and that some people might support Palestine because they are represented by HAMAS?
What will be the reasoning taken, what are the guidelines for AI to make this choice? If, as a government official, you are using AI for any action, you should be required to publish the model you are using and the specific prompt you are using.
An analysis could then be run on many different seeds for the model and prompt - some will label you as a 100% traitor to democracy, some will label you as a fighter for justice. That is almost certain.
Now what is the extent you are comforable with? Should we ban somebody whose actions are marked as traitorous in 10% of seeds? 20%? 80%? Do you actually believe anybody in the government, making these decisions, sees this nuance?
Yeah, the super magic big brother AI will definetely only target explicit supporters of Hamas and not anyone else, with no room for any abuse whatsoever :)
Yes, Trump during the campaign being careful to distinguish between protests against Israeli human rights violations in Palestine vs. those actually supporting Hamas during the campaign, the specificness of the searches the Administration has used when seeking to ban "DEI" topics from government funding, and the absence of hallucination in modern AI, all combine to give a high degree of confidence that this administration deploying AI to target Hamas supporters will not hit a variety of other (especially, but probably not exclusively, pro-Palestinian) targets.
Well, consider me. I believed that leaving Saddam Hussein and the Baath party in charge of Iraq was preferable to finding some replacement, and I believe the same thing about Assad in Syria. Am I a Baathist?
Of course not. But is this view, that these Baathists should have remained in place support of them? In some way it must be, since it prefers them over something, right?
Even so, this is purely motivated by that I believe that their alternatives would slaughter or permit slaughter of all the minorities, in particular Christians, which is what happened at least in Iraq, so in practice it means that my view, rather than supporting any of these guys per se leads to opposition only to destabilizing these countries or other attempts to root them out.
So I suppose it depends on how you define support.
Most people I have seen on the news advocating for Isreal to stop their genocide have been taxed of "supporting Hamas". I do not trust this administration, or "AI" to show any discernment.
I’m glad to live in a country where also the state has to follow the law. It’s an incredible privilege in today’s world and also a mark of how civilized the society here is.
Well most of the west still does, its just that US is right now much bigger evil and bully to rest of the world than China is or ever was. Expect some realignment in next 4 years, maybe oil won't be yet traded in CNY but who knows.
>its just that US is right now much bigger evil and bully to rest of the world than China is or ever was
Always has been. And part of the reason the US gets away with it (other than the threat of overwhelming nuclear-tipped military violence) is the effectiveness of Sinophobia and fear of the existential threat of "Communism" in manufacturing global consent for American imperialist hegemony.
The US can be toppling regimes and carpet-bombing weddings across the entire Western hemisphere, kidnapping people to CIA torture sites, spying on everyone and killing them over their metadata, and China can be doing nothing and Westerners will still be more afraid of China because "those insidious reds must be up to something."
I'm disappointed, but not surprised. Seeing the American culture from Europe, it's obvious to me that "American freedom" is a meme. Not saying that Europe is perfect, but I'm happy to live on this side of the pond.
Come on. Sweden looking to ban signal, italy can block any website for copyright violation without any oversight from any judge. In fact in italy rt is banned because it is propaganda (completely true), but propaganda spreading things like fox news or liberoquotidiano do not get blocked.
We're not as bad as USA in a lot of respects, but we're getting there.
Unless they open-source the AI, I assume it's just going to revoke visas of students with Arabic names or students with even a modicum of support for Palestinians. Then they can launder that practice by saying an AI did it.
Oh, shut up! Ukraine is not "our greatest ally." They never wear suits to meetings, and they never say thank you. Why should we care what happens to them? /s
This is one of the many initiates where the process and details matter. What’s the due process here, can people see the prompt that judges them to be supporters? Is AI just highlighting “supporting” content for human review?
Even if you support the idea in principle, the actual practical implementation should be treated with skepticism.
I’m not sure why you're being downvoted for this. the article does not state that the AI tool proposed to be used is an LLM. in all likelihood it is, but why assume?
There's no "due process" for US visa applications. The process is, possibly deliberately, kafka-esque. Edit: I wrote about my visa process here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23942466
Even if it is intended as a hint to human observers, during a big scandal in my country a few years ago turned out all the gov officials where blindly following the computer advise. Many where falsely accused of fraud by tax authorities, almost all where from ethnic minorities.
> The effort involves AI-assisted reviews of tens of thousands of student visa holders' social media accounts
> We see people marching at our universities and in the streets of our country ... calling for Intifada, celebrating what Hamas has done ... Those people need to go," Rubio stated.
No one want terrorist apologist in their country, but I think everyone can see how it's the cursor position that matters. Now you ban terrorist apologist, tomorrow you ban someone who criticized Israel and it's human rights violation.
I see no difference between the Hamas and an Israeli fanatic who claim the Arabians have no right to live on the sacred soil that God gave them 2 thousand year ago, legitimizing the bombardment of civilians, forced deportations of gaza citizens, illegal Israeli settlements and so on.
Yet this is only about one side.
I fear this is instead going to be used as a tool to shut freedom of talk when it's not supportive of Israel.
> tomorrow you ban someone who criticized Israel and it's human rights violation.
I think it's today, actually. They just want to censor any voice that would dare criticize Israel's abhorrent action. Pretending anyone who shows sympathy for the suffering of Palestinians supports Hamas is an old strategy.
And to think they thought Trump was to be "the most peaceful president ever" or that he would "restore free speech". What fools.
Remember how he suddenly 'gave' Jerusalem to Israel, acknowledging it officially? That was a moment of desperation across whole sunni arab world, making it clear that palestinian cause is dead. Not saying whether I agree with any of this, just remembering few facts.
He was too busy pleasing that murderous p.o.s. MBS and forcing them into 'peace agreement' with Israel at all costs, which as we all know lasted few months. Thats his style, lack of any sort of emotional intelligence to understand actual complexities of politics make people do horrible things to others. All clinical sociopaths struggle with this their entire lives, not that they care.
I strongly believe that events of 7.10. were directly caused by this, thats what happens when you have part of population having no issue with terrorism for their cause being literally cornered and losing all hope - a vicious emotional attack.
He is an elephant in porcelain shop, servant of chaos with some outright evil traits. That guy caused, is causing and will cause biggest loss of civilian life in modern times, putting him well within the category of Mao, Hitler, Stalin and so on. Happy to be proven wrong by history on this since it comes back to literally all of us, but so far thats how facts look like.
You fear? Or, it's all but guaranteed? The current administration has openly advanced Israel's plan to ethnically cleanse 2 million Palestinians from their homes. Trump specifically stated that he's giving Israel everything they need to "finish the job."
I don't believe in giving both parties the benefit of the doubt anymore.
This bot just scans people's social media. I would assume you can just fake someone's social media account and get their visa denied. I'm sure this thing won't account for multiple people having the same name. It would also be funny to run this on Elon's account and see if he'd get denied for his thinking emoji replies to antisemites, or to run this on a fake Rubio account where he's terribly photoshoped next to Bin Laden.
Other issues aside, how does this get around the constitutional right to free speech? There must be some court ruling that lets speech affect the visa process.
If it's before they get here, there's no constitutional right at play. They're not a citizen nor in the US.
Once they're here, it would be weighted against their rights and the public interests. Previously I would assume it would get shot down by SCOTUS, but it seems like a coin flip these days imho.
Another example of history repeating itself... 80 years ago, McCarthy and the HUAC were going after alleged communist supporters, now the Trump admin is going after alleged Hamas supporters.
Maybe we should all study more of history, with an open mind, instead of assuming that everything is different now and people have never been in a similar situation before.
> 'Supporting' in this context means committing crimes including acts of violence.
this is incorrect. Rubio has stated quite plainly that it's based on monitoring speech on social media, and made no mention of "crimes" or "violence". furthermore, simply being anti-Zionist (against an ethnostate built on the colonization of an existing population) is now considered antisemitism by the United States [1]. this used to be a far-right position but through lobbying has become normalized.
AI is going to usher in a wonderful world of increased surveillance and authoritarianism. It will be a truly transformative technology, and isn't is great that Silicon Valley is working so hard to bring it to us, as hard and fast as possible?
83 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 214 ms ] threadso an American citizen’s freedom is directly correlated with their net worth in USA dollars
I think the point here is to prime the public for this discriminatory use of AI. Today it's "bad hamas", tomorrow it can be whatever the current government deems "bad". And by then, it'll be too late.
Exactly what will the humans review?
Question is, are you ok with this interpretation or not?
The US govt can do whatever it damn pleases.
What will be the reasoning taken, what are the guidelines for AI to make this choice? If, as a government official, you are using AI for any action, you should be required to publish the model you are using and the specific prompt you are using.
An analysis could then be run on many different seeds for the model and prompt - some will label you as a 100% traitor to democracy, some will label you as a fighter for justice. That is almost certain.
Now what is the extent you are comforable with? Should we ban somebody whose actions are marked as traitorous in 10% of seeds? 20%? 80%? Do you actually believe anybody in the government, making these decisions, sees this nuance?
How can you believe there's any good faith in this?
Of course not. But is this view, that these Baathists should have remained in place support of them? In some way it must be, since it prefers them over something, right?
Even so, this is purely motivated by that I believe that their alternatives would slaughter or permit slaughter of all the minorities, in particular Christians, which is what happened at least in Iraq, so in practice it means that my view, rather than supporting any of these guys per se leads to opposition only to destabilizing these countries or other attempts to root them out.
So I suppose it depends on how you define support.
Color me extremely skeptical.
Always has been. And part of the reason the US gets away with it (other than the threat of overwhelming nuclear-tipped military violence) is the effectiveness of Sinophobia and fear of the existential threat of "Communism" in manufacturing global consent for American imperialist hegemony.
The US can be toppling regimes and carpet-bombing weddings across the entire Western hemisphere, kidnapping people to CIA torture sites, spying on everyone and killing them over their metadata, and China can be doing nothing and Westerners will still be more afraid of China because "those insidious reds must be up to something."
We're not as bad as USA in a lot of respects, but we're getting there.
If not, I'm afraid you're going to get your visa revoked..
Even if you support the idea in principle, the actual practical implementation should be treated with skepticism.
Not all AIs are LLMs...
If it were GOFAI, you can rephrase as "can people inspect the decision tree implemented by if-else blocks?"
https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
> We see people marching at our universities and in the streets of our country ... calling for Intifada, celebrating what Hamas has done ... Those people need to go," Rubio stated.
No one want terrorist apologist in their country, but I think everyone can see how it's the cursor position that matters. Now you ban terrorist apologist, tomorrow you ban someone who criticized Israel and it's human rights violation.
I see no difference between the Hamas and an Israeli fanatic who claim the Arabians have no right to live on the sacred soil that God gave them 2 thousand year ago, legitimizing the bombardment of civilians, forced deportations of gaza citizens, illegal Israeli settlements and so on.
Yet this is only about one side.
I fear this is instead going to be used as a tool to shut freedom of talk when it's not supportive of Israel.
The ones in power pushing this literally fit into the other group you described, so what a surprise.
I think it's today, actually. They just want to censor any voice that would dare criticize Israel's abhorrent action. Pretending anyone who shows sympathy for the suffering of Palestinians supports Hamas is an old strategy.
And to think they thought Trump was to be "the most peaceful president ever" or that he would "restore free speech". What fools.
He was too busy pleasing that murderous p.o.s. MBS and forcing them into 'peace agreement' with Israel at all costs, which as we all know lasted few months. Thats his style, lack of any sort of emotional intelligence to understand actual complexities of politics make people do horrible things to others. All clinical sociopaths struggle with this their entire lives, not that they care.
I strongly believe that events of 7.10. were directly caused by this, thats what happens when you have part of population having no issue with terrorism for their cause being literally cornered and losing all hope - a vicious emotional attack.
He is an elephant in porcelain shop, servant of chaos with some outright evil traits. That guy caused, is causing and will cause biggest loss of civilian life in modern times, putting him well within the category of Mao, Hitler, Stalin and so on. Happy to be proven wrong by history on this since it comes back to literally all of us, but so far thats how facts look like.
I don't believe in giving both parties the benefit of the doubt anymore.
Once they're here, it would be weighted against their rights and the public interests. Previously I would assume it would get shot down by SCOTUS, but it seems like a coin flip these days imho.
Maybe we should all study more of history, with an open mind, instead of assuming that everything is different now and people have never been in a similar situation before.
this is incorrect. Rubio has stated quite plainly that it's based on monitoring speech on social media, and made no mention of "crimes" or "violence". furthermore, simply being anti-Zionist (against an ethnostate built on the colonization of an existing population) is now considered antisemitism by the United States [1]. this used to be a far-right position but through lobbying has become normalized.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-resolutio...
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43285384
https://swprs.org/why-israel-created-hamas/