The announcement of Libra, Facebook’s crypto-currency, has provoked violent reactions and harsh criticism. Some well-founded, others less so.
by Andrea Monti – originally published in Italian
Continue reading “The Dangers of Lybra”
EU Court of justice to rewrite (wrongly) the rules of the Internet
Two judgments redefine the “right to be forgotten” and search engine obligations creating more confusion than certainty (originally published in Italian by PC Professionale)
In two judgments published in September 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that the de-indexing of information from a search engine’s database can only be ordered within the country of the person concerned (Case C-507/17) and that a search engine operator is obliged, albeit with certain limitations, to de-list regardless of who originally published the information then indexed (Case C-136/17). Continue reading “EU Court of justice to rewrite (wrongly) the rules of the Internet”
Tar Lazio to affirm the economic value of personal data. Is this the end of free-services?
By partially sustaining the Antitrust sanction to Facebook, Tar Lazio confirms that personal data “worth”. What does this mean for the Internet ecosystem?
by Andrea Monti Continue reading “Tar Lazio to affirm the economic value of personal data. Is this the end of free-services?”
WikiTribune. Is your privacy worth less than 90 Euro?
The challenge of social networking in Wikipedia sauce is to survive without getting paid in data. But it is more complicated than it seems.
by Andrea Monti Continue reading “WikiTribune. Is your privacy worth less than 90 Euro?”
“AI” and the importance of “Neuter”
An article by Simone Cosimi on Repubblica.it re-sings the old refrain of “the computer is stronger than a human playing chess” in the variant “Go” (which is a Chinese game, but that the journalist qualifies with Japanese terms about a Korean player, despite being the game known and played for centuries in Japan and Korea).
A semantic rigour aside, that a computer – or better, a software, can be “stronger” than a human being – is hardly a news. Everyone who plays chess knows that, having honed their skills with the many programs, some really excellent, available to the general public. As it is hardly a news the fact that the software is so advanced as to put in difficulty professionals or even champions.
But from here, to say – or to suggest – that we are dealing with a system that is more “intelligent” than Man, there is a huge gap. It would be like saying that since a mechanical arm makes perfect welds that no human being can replicate, it should be considered as able to “think”.
The problem, here, is the absence – or rather the disappearance – of the “neuter” genre in the language, because the trick of the narrative about “artificial” intelligence is in the words. Software does neither “learn” or “understand” but simply modifies its functioning at various levels of autonomy. Continue reading ““AI” and the importance of “Neuter””