Dorothea Baur - the ethics crusader

😁

Kudos to the Oxford Dictionary of English for reading AI
1. as Amnesty International
2. as artificial insemination,
3. and only then as ... AI.

😁

(picture from Shannon Vallor's great book "AI Mirror - @shannonvallor.bsky.social 🙏)

The Myth of AI Democratization - baur consulting AI companies create groundbreaking innovation. But when it comes to business ethics, they seem pretty ignorant. What are they missing?

"And attribution – or any other kind of recognition – is not just missing, it is actively prevented.

Democratization would mean participation, visibility, and credit. What we are seeing here is something else entirely." 2/2

From @dorotheabaur.bsky.social

On the Myth of AI Democratization

"This is not Robin Hood. It’s reverse Robin Hood. Value is extracted from underpaid authors, artists, and researchers in order to fuel systems that are controlled and monetized by some of the wealthiest and most powerful companies on the planet." 1/2

Oh, thank you!

Newsletter. Heute dabei:
- Warum KI-Unternehmen von Demokratie reden und Oligarchie meinen
- Wie Sam Altman unlautere Forschung als Anlass nimmt, um seinen Iris-Scanner und eine Kryptowährung zu pitchen
- Wie weiter nach dem Ende des Nachhaltigkeitshypes
mailchi.mp/312b885babf3...

YouTube video by The AI impact podcast Nick Clegg's Shocking AI Bankruptcy Claim: Meta's Secret Exposed!

Talking about Nick Clegg apparently turns me into a kind of middle-aged Greta Thunberg: "How dare you?" But I stand by it: his justification for the genAI industry's predatory business model is the bottom of the barrel. #AI #genAI #copyright
youtube.com/shorts/dgk4W...

My office for the next few weeks.

"most likely"... that's most likely an understatement ;)

A secret AI study. A biometric orb. A new internet ID. - baur consulting AI companies create groundbreaking innovation. But when it comes to business ethics, they seem pretty ignorant. What are they missing?

In the aftermath of the undercover study in which researchers from Zurich Uni tried to manipulate users, Reddit is considering using Sam Altman's Orb (an iris-scanning biometric surveillance tool linked to his cryptocurrency WorldCoin) in order to identify users.
baurconsulting.ch/en/a-secret-...

Hach, danke. 😅 Wahrscheinlich lebt Baur sogar umso mehr, je weniger man hier von Baur sieht...

AI sceptic Emily Bender: ‘The emperor has no clothes’ The computational linguist on her motivations for taking on Big Tech, the dangers of chatbots — and why AI is just a ‘glorified Magic 8 Ball’

Tech "built on top of the mess of society doesn’t just replicate its mistakes but reinforces them, because users think 'this ... can see everything" "therefore it has this view from nowhere'". But "there is no view from nowhere". @emilymbender.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/9029...

If a billion-dollar AI system can't "solve a problem that Herb Simon (one of the… godfathers of AI) solved with classical... AI techniques in 1957, the chances that models such as Claude or o3 are going to reach [AGI] seem truly remote" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... @garymarcus.bsky.social

The Myth of Automated Learning AI's real threat to education.

"AI’s use by high-school and college students to complete written assignments, to ease or avoid the work of reading and writing... puts the process of deskilling at education’s core. To automate learning is to subvert learning" www.newcartographies.com/p/the-myth-o...

Silicon Valley's Most Dangerous Cult While you argue about politics, the world's most dangerous ideology has already won.

TESCREAL people try "to fill the hole in their souls with integrated circuits and computational power instead of love and collaboration. They refuse to accept that we are not whole not because we are faulty, but because we are meant to work together" husseinhallak.substack.com/p/silicon-va...

The Orb Will See You Now An audacious startup co-founded by Sam Altman wants to prove you’re human. What else does it want?

Crypto sucks. Biometric data collection sucks. Combining the two? Full dystopia. How dare you extract my iris as proof of my humanity – just to force me into your shitcoin system? This isn’t innovation. It’s exploitation.
#WorldCoin #Sama #TheOrb
time.com/7288387/sam-...

Speaking - baur consulting Keynotes and workshops on ethics in AI, sustainability – and beyond. Delivered with clarity, insight, and a sense of ease.

I have finally revised my speaking website 😅

The rest is still work in progress, but at least this part is 99% done (bugs in mobile view will be fixed by my webmaster).

Have a look here: www.baurconsulting.ch/en/speaking

Study looking at AI chatbots in 7,000 workplaces finds 'no significant impact on earnings or recorded hours in any occupation' Despite AI’s promise to revolutionize white-collar work, most workers are using it sparingly—or hiding it from their boss.

"On average, employees saved 3% of their time, while just 3%-7% of their productivity gains came back to them in the form of higher pay". Did anyone really ever think that AI-based productivity gains would be passed on to workers in the form of higher pay? Not me. 😳 fortune.com/2025/05/18/a...

SAP: Jawohl, Herr Präsident, Frauen brauchen wir nicht! Donald Trump hat jetzt auch Einfluss auf Entscheidungen in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg. Hier, in der Firmenzentrale von SAP, ändert man plötzlich die Unternehmenspolitik.

Bisher beeinflusste die Anzahl Frauen in Führungsposition die Boni bei SAP. Neu ist es der "Business Health Culture Index", d.h. der allgemeine Gesundheitszustand der Belegschaft.
Super. Wenn kranke Angestellte den Bonus ruinieren, feuert man sie doch am besten gleich. www.zeit.de/2025/20/sap-...

Ich meinte natürlich "selbst dann nicht"... aber ich hoffe, das ist klar.

SNB und Klimapolitik: Warum der Verkauf von Chevron-Aktien kein Kurswechsel ist Der Ausstieg der SNB aus Chevron-Aktien mag Klimaaktivisten freuen – doch er ist kein Präzedenzfall für eine neue Anlagepolitik. Die Nationalbank muss sich vor einer Politisierung ihrer Bilanz hüten.

Die NZZ schreibt sinngemäss, dass die Nationalbank prinzipiell keine Erdölaktien verkaufen sollte. Selbst dann, wenn sie es aus wirtschaftlichen Gründen tut? Einfach deswegen nicht, weil sie damit Klimaaktivisten ermutigen könnte 😂 Realsatire! www.nzz.ch/meinung/die-...

For Silicon Valley, AI isn’t just about replacing some jobs. It’s about replacing all of them | Ed Newton-Rex AI will do the thinking, robots will do the doing. What place do humans have in this arrangement – and do tech CEOs care? says Ed Newton-Rex, founder of Fairly Trained

Gloomy insights into the mind of AI investors: "the money you can make in AI isn’t limited to the paltry market sizes of previous [tech] waves. You can replace the world’s workers - which means you can capture their salaries. All of them" @ednewtonrex.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

AI of dead Arizona road rage victim addresses killer in court Clip of Chris Pelkey, who died in 2021, says: ‘I believe in forgiveness’ after his sister fed an AI model videos of him

Not sure what's worse: the sister presenting the AI of her dead brother in court o the judge's reaction to it: “I loved that AI... As angry as you are, as justifiably angry as the family is, I heard the forgiveness... I feel that that was genuine” (sic!) www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Agree! Their newsletter on Substack and their book AI Snake Oil are highly recommended.

AGI is not a milestone There is no capability threshold that will lead to sudden impacts

"We do expect AI capabilities to keep increasing. But regardless of capability level, we can choose to ensure that AI remains a tool and is not given power and autonomy to operate without human oversight". Great essay from two of my favorite AI researchers. www.aisnakeoil.com/p/agi-is-not...

Das Schöne ist eben, dass das eine sachliche Diskussion frei von Hohn und Häme war. Das habe ich sehr geschätzt. Von beiden Seiten. Nur hat mich Glättli argumentativ mehr überzeugt.

YouTube video by SRF Kultur Sternstunden Migration und ihre Schattenseiten | Sternstunde Philosophie | SRF Kultur

Ich habe soeben die Sternstunde Philosophie zum Thema Migration mit @bglaettli.bsky.social und Frank Urbaniok geschaut und muss sagen: Grosses Kompliment an Balthasar Glättli! Hervorragend argumentiert. Sachlich, smart, analytisch überzeugend. Wirklich gut gemacht.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjMO...

AI hype is drowning in slopaganda Grifters gonna grift

AI slopaganda comes from "a circle of AI firms, VCs backing those firms, talking shops made up of employees of those firms, and the long tail is the hangers-on, content creators, newsletter writers and ‘marketing experts’ willing to say anything for cash" www.ft.com/content/2421...

Zwischen Datenhunger und Denkpausen Ein Frühlings-Newsletter über KI, Ethik – und warum Haltung sich erst zeigt, wenn sie nichts mehr bringt.

So, Newsletter ist raus. Themen u.a.:
– #KI-Zusammenfassungen & geklaute Inhalte
– Ethische Achterbahn mit #Klarna
– Reduktionismus, Verantwortung und Viktor Frankl
– #ESG: Was bleibt, wenn Haltung nichts mehr bringt?

Link (auf DE & EN):
mailchi.mp/fba395e7d9ef...

🐰🐣Frohe Ostern!

Ich bin auch in Geiselhaft von Duolingo. Seit mittlerweile 1182 Tagen! Solltest du es wagen, den Streak zu beenden, sage mir bitte, ob die Hölle erträglich ist.