Becca Ricks

Research, art, public interest technology. ☺︎ Public interest tech @ Data & Society. Previously: open source research @mozilla @HRW @ITP_NYU. she/her.

[Becca Ricks @baricks]

Hi! After 16 years of posting on this platform (🤡), I'm closing up shop here and stepping away. You can find me over at Bluesky (https://t.co/x6ZjpEQTpx) and Mastodon (https://t.co/agPKpWAuEC) where I'll be posting more regularly.

[esme harrington @esme_harrington]

Very happy to announce that @A__W______O and @mozilla have launched our report on researcher access to closed foundation models, written by @mathver and I!✍️

Check out the blog and full research here: https://t.co/mNinHFVRRB

[Leon Yin @LeonYin]

Our methodology is inspired by Aaron and @dmehro’s Jalopnik piece on Uber and a Lyft fares and @dcalacci’s Shipt calculator SMS bot that offers pay transparency to Target gig workers.
https://t.co/IGWnQCnIuO
https://t.co/so66LwnHQi

[Veena Dubal @veenadubal]

Incredible data journalism. This Article shows exactly what "algorithmic wage theft" looks like. We need more than the minimum wage & data transparency: we need new laws of work to prevent algorithmic wage discrimination.
https://t.co/vrB2cdFSOl

[Tech Won't Save Us @techwontsaveus]

DATA VAMPIRES is a four-part series exploring the costs of hyperscale data centers and why tech billionaires are desperate to build more.

In Part 1, we examine where “the cloud” came from and how it expands Amazon, Microsoft, and Google’s power.

Full ep: https://t.co/em6cWLTqGG

[Becca Ricks @baricks]

Loved this reflection from @biancawylie on the use of AI to summarize meetings. She says that the "inefficiency" of transcribing & synthesizing notes forces us to sit with what requires our attention. https://t.co/0Nr2Kf5BZC

[Bellingcat @bellingcat]

Great news! Bellingcat just launched the new Online Investigations Toolkit. In the toolkit you can discover tools for everything from satellite imagery analysis, to social media scraping, transportation tracking or archiving research material. https://t.co/FaeMqX6gUX

[Meredith Whittaker @mer__edith]

NEW PAPER!

1. Small AI models often perform better than big in context.

2. Obsession w bigness has bad consequences, from climate, to power concentration, to surveillance, to research capture.

This & what to do c/o @GaelVaroquaux, @SashaMTL and me ♥️👇

https://t.co/dCOcOwVqd2

[Dhruv Mehrotra @dmehro]

NEW: Armed with a fanny pack full of radios, WIRED investigated reports of a secretive surveillance technology being deployed at the DNC.

Here’s the story about what we found:

https://t.co/qXvWDHyX6p

[Mozilla @mozilla]

🎉 New Grant Opportunity for #MozillaAlumni!📢
Today we open applications for our Alumni Connections Grants; a program built to support Mozilla Fellows and Awardees as they continue their critical work on issues that directly affect the future of #AI and the health of our internet⤵️ https://t.co/84J2HthEkl

[Brian Merchant @bcmerchant]

If you haven't yet read Ted Chiang's essay on generative AI and art, get on it. For my money, it's one of the best things written on AI, period—it gets to the heart of what's so dismaying about AI in a single haunting sentence:

"It reduces the amount of intention in the world."

[Reuters Institute @risj_oxford]

Meta is shutting down CrowdTangle, a tool popular among researchers to investigate disinformation on Facebook and Instagram.

@mozilla says over 50,000 people have signed letters and petitions asking Meta to stop or pause its plans - via @darakerr @NPR

https://t.co/xgyZdeUVqF

[Distributed AI Research Institute is on Mastodon @DAIRInstitute]

We, along with @AINowInstitute and
@logic_magazine, are proud to support Surveillance Watch: an interactive map revealing the intricate connections between surveillance companies, their funding sources and affiliations.

https://t.co/RzvlMp5WSz

[Joseph Cox @josephfcox]

New from 404 Media: we got a massive leak from inside Nvidia (emails, Slack chats, documents) which show how it created a yet-to-be-released AI model. The leak shows that Nvidia scraped YouTube en masse, had clearance from highest levels of the company https://t.co/iLaGPgIDSD

[Jack Hardinges @jhardinges]

📣 Introducing the eight initiatives now supported by the Data Empowerment Fund. It's a great group, empowering people with data to tackle the climate crisis, advocate for fair work, govern artificial intelligence and address other critical challenges: https://t.co/0BGG7Ihipd

[Becca Ricks @baricks]

@deblebrown @hrw @a_bacci @samdubberley @notzachcampbell Congrats!

[Becca Ricks @baricks]

@dcalacci Yes yes yes to all this ❤️

[Alex Hanna (اليكس حنٌا) @alexhanna]

New zine alert! Collective Action in Tech and @DAIRInstitute zine on workers stories and (mis)dealings with generative AI. It was a pleasure to work with an amazing team on this!!

[Sarah Myers West @sarahbmyers]

This was a sharp convo with Cynthia Conti-Cook, @paromitashah and @nassereledroos, a few of my co-authors on the shadow report - and makes clear how distant this industry-driven policymaking process was from the concerns orgs like ours have been working on for years.