Hard Pass

https://youtube.com/watch?v=lPHc68RIYAo

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1450230/chatgpt-keeps-signing-fake-new-yorker-cartoons-with-real-artists-names

The federal government has withdrawn sponsorship of a European disinformation conference that includes panels discussing the U.S. government as a foreign interference risk.

Samantha Lafleur, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada (GAC), said the government took issue with the framing of some panels at the event organized by EU DisinfoLab, a non-profit based in Brussels.

The conference features panels about the U.S. as a source of "foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI)," a phenomenon where foreign governments or actors on their behalf manipulate information to confuse, divide or mislead the public and erode confidence in institutions.

GAC — Ottawa's diplomatic arm — Lithuania's Foreign Ministry and the European External Action Service were initially listed as supporters of the annual conference largely attended by researchers and civil society organizations.

As the gathering got underway in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Wednesday, their names were covered up on signs spotted around the conference, according to photos shared with CBC News. As of writing, the French government remains a sponsor.

In a statement to CBC News, GAC did not deny that it had concerns with describing the U.S. as a foreign interference threat.

"Following changes to the framing of several panel discussions, GAC decided to revise its participation in those sessions at the EU DisinfoLab 2026 conference," wrote Lafleur.

She did not respond to questions about particular changes GAC took issue with or whether the U.S. raised concerns.

According to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, the description of Wednesday's panel discussing how to push back on the U.S. as a foreign interference threat appears to have been unchanged since Sept. 9. GAC no longer chairing Arctic panel

A GAC official also pulled out of chairing a session on disinformation in the Arctic scheduled for Thursday, said presenter Ben Shultz with the American Sunlight Project.

The panel proposes to talk about Greenland and "growing evidence that the United States has, in specific Arctic contexts, operated as a FIMI actor."

Shultz shared the initial plan for the panel from months ago, which includes talking about the U.S. as a foreign interference actor.

He called three governments withdrawing a "shock" and questioned whether they were pressured.

"Thankfully every speaker has still shown up, which is awesome, and I think a testament to the resolve of the research community. But it's definitely put a bit of a damper on the atmosphere," he said in an interview.

The European External Action Service, the EU's diplomatic service, said in a statement it asked to have its logo removed from the material associated with the conference "in view of the content of the programme."

Asked if it was related to the U.S. foreign interference panel, an EU spokesperson repeated that the EEAS logo was removed because "organizers chose to frame some of the discussions in a way which does not align with the official positions held by the EU."

Neither Lithuania's Foreign Ministry nor the conference organizers responded to a request for comment.

Canada's withdrawal comes the same week the Globe and Mail reported that some people involved in campaigning for Alberta independence had met on both sides of the border with U.S. entities.

CBC News previously reported that some of those meetings took place in U.S. State Department offices in Washington, D.C., last year.

GAC's move also comes as the country is embroiled in an often bitter and personal trade dispute with U.S. President Donald Trump's administration.

Lafleur said Canada "remains firmly committed to addressing the challenge of disinformation and misinformation" and that Global Affairs Canada officials "look forward to engaging with partners and stakeholders on efforts to counter disinformation."

The Thélyson Orélien controversy raises new questions about whether detection software can be trusted

A lot of people here might already be aware of how AI checkers are unreliable at best, and more often just terrible. What I learned from this article is that they might actually harm some groups of people more than others.

NOTE: The original title of this article was "Bestselling Novelist Dropped from Major Prize over Suspected AI Use". I added the extra context because people might not read the body of the post.

Here are some excerpts that I thought were relevant, with bold emphasis applied by me. Please check out the full article if you want more context outside of what I am highlighting here:

This time, the controversy surrounds C’était ça ou mourir, the first novel by Haitian Canadian author Thélyson Orélien, which has already become a huge success in France. On September 26, the prestigious Académie Goncourt announced it was dropping the title from the longlist for its eponymous literary prize because the prize administrators had concluded it was written with the help of AI. The AI-detection software Pangram determined there was a 100 percent chance the novel was at least in part AI generated.

The author denies using AI, and his French publisher, Grasset, has come out strongly in his defence. Grasset said in a statement that it “strongly objected” to the allegations, which it characterized as “malicious.” The Globe and Mail quoted the French publisher as calling the accusations against Orélien “fake news.” His original French-language Canadian publisher, by contrast, has taken a more measured response to the allegations. The Quebec publisher, Les Éditions du Boréal, told the New York Times, “[A]t this stage, it is impossible for us to confirm or deny the allegations the author is facing.” They went on to say that it is important “not to draw hasty conclusions.”

This is not the first time an award-nominated author has faced accusations of using AI to create written work. Earlier this year, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize encountered criticism after Jamir Nazir’s regional winner, “The Serpent in the Grove,” was accused by social media users of having been written with AI. After a review that included interviews with all the regional winners and examinations of early drafts, edits, and time-stamped emails, the organization that runs the award decided there was no basis to believe Nazir used AI in his writing. The story went on to win the overall Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

The issue of false positives is not incidental: somewhere around 90 percent of the texts used to train large language models are in English, so the French language would throw up difficulties for AI checkers, which themselves use AI to make their determinations. In addition, Orélien is Haitian by background and employs a style of writing heavily influenced by Caribbean oral tradition, which relies on repetition and other tropes often cited as determinants of AI assistance. “I come from a Haitian and Caribbean literary tradition in which poetry, imagery, repetition, and rhythm carry a living voice,” he said in a statement quoted by the CBC. “One might debate my style, but treating its techniques as evidence of artificial intelligence has nothing to do with literary criticism.”

Sutherland, who, like Orélien, is Black, made a similar observation to the Globe about her award-winning story. “This story is rooted in Vincentian oral storytelling tradition, which by nature is formulaic and relies on repetition, rhythm, and patterned language as core elements of their structure,” she said.

The biases and blind spots in AI-detection software are only one issue. Equally troubling is the notion of using AI to detect AI use, an apparent tautology that doesn’t have many safeguards or levels of verifiability. Then there are the people using the software themselves. The accusations against Orélien arose via an anonymous X account run in part by Samuel Fitoussi, a journalist at the right-wing newspaper Le Figaro. His stated reason for using the account to publicize his accusation, according to the New York Times, is that “he thought an anonymous account would be trusted more than his column in a right-leaning newspaper.” Fitoussi may be correct about that, if only because the French right wing has become increasingly antipathetic to immigrant communities in the country.

A ProPublica investigation revealed that federal immigration agents have detained hundreds of U.S. citizens, including children, amid a massive surge in arrests across the D.C. metropolitan area since Donald Trump returned to office.

The post ICE Crackdown Sweeps Up U.S. Citizens as D.C. Region Faces Intensified Enforcement appeared first on The Washington Informer.

Love this spaghetti eating Mona Lisa, so I took a picture.

Looked at the whole picture later and had to laugh over “Offer to help the chef” at the bottom.

To whomever arranged the store items, well done! 👏🏼