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Editor’s note: This is a translation of a story about how the crime-tracking app Citizen has been giving away free subscriptions to elderly Asians in the Bay Area. Find the English language version here.

本文是与普利策中心的人工智能问责网络合作撰写的。

当外面天黑的时候，约瑟芬·赵（Josephine Zhao）哪怕只是走几个街区就能回到旧金山的家，有时也会多叫一双“眼睛”——字面意义的眼睛。

赵打开手机上的Citizen App，通过一个名为“实时监控”的功能，与该平台的一个客服人员建立联系。而该平台也可以通过网络追踪到赵的GPS位置，客服只要点击另一个按钮，就可以得到打开她手机摄像头的授权。这样该平台就可以“看到我所看到的东西”，赵说。通常来说，她甚至不会和客服人员进行对话，但她知道“这时有人和我一起走”，这会让赵感到安心一些。

这是赵最近采取的最新安全措施之一：她也避免乘坐公共交通工具，以及在城市里走路的时候，会在她的钥匙链上挂着一个长长的尖头装置。这个装置是一个浅粉色的塑料制品，必要的时候会变成一个武器。

但在她看来，Citizen这样一个允许用户报告和跟踪附近犯罪通知的超级本地应用程序是她最好的保护手段之一，这种数据驱动的DIY安全措施能够保护一个长期被忽视的群体。

“我们在教育、公共安全、住房、交通方面上的需求，都没有得到满足和关切。就好像我们不重要一样。”赵说，她目前也是多家教育非政府组织的代课教师和社区联络员，“我们的需求没有得到尊重，我们的需求没有得到满足，人们到处都轻视我们。”

“我真的相信Citizen是一个维持社会正义和种族正义的工具。”

“我们必须实施一些行动来保护我们的社群，”她补充道。“Citizen是最完美的工具。”

在当地持续发生基于种族的攻击、以及一系列针对亚裔居民的大规模枪击事件之后，许多亚裔和太平洋岛民（AAPI，Asian-American and Pacific Islander）社群的居民们都告诉《麻省理工科技评论》他们欢迎这款应用程序，认为它可以解决反亚仇恨带给他们的焦虑。

对于这些受到严重创伤的人们来说，Citizen成为了让他们获得安心的一种方式。

Citizen的转型

对于这款应用来说，这种积极的反响似乎有些奇怪。毕竟因放大了人们对犯罪的幻想，并帮助白人居民实行种族门禁，它长期以来一直都在遭受着批评的声音。Citizen最初被命名为“治安警员”，因为它有一段曲折的历史：苹果应用商店在该款应用2016年推出后的一周内就将其下架，因为它违反了苹果的《开发者审查指南》，该指南规定应用程序不得鼓励身体伤害。2021年，该公司的首席执行官要求他的员工悬赏3万美元，寻找一名他误认为在洛杉矶纵火的人，这在当时成为了头条新闻。而且该款应用的客户也经常因发表种族主义言论而受到批评。

正是在这种情况下，这款应用现在正在积极地争取像赵这样的用户。从2022年9月开始，通过社区团体如奥克兰华埠商会（Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce）或者旧金山美国华商总会（Chinese American Association of Commerce in San Francisco）组织的活动，Citizen一直在湾区招募中国裔和其他亚裔居民，其中包括许多老年人，他们加入服务可以免费获得价值240美元的一年高级订阅服务。（虽然该应用程序的免费版本会向用户发送值得注意的事件警报，但要是想获得与Citizen雇员实时连线监控服务，则需要更高级的版本）。目前，赵直接与Citizen合作，帮助将其应用程序界面翻译成中文，并帮助其在她的人际圈中进行宣传。

该应用程序的最终目标，是想从该地区的AAPI社群招募2万名新用户，这可以带来相当于价值约500万美元的一年付费订阅。Citizen组织的产品负责人达雷尔·斯通（Darrell Stone）表示，目前已经有700人注册了他们的应用程序。

旧金山湾区的项目也是对应用程序更广泛改造的测试，它成功地吸引一些可能经常得不到警察保护的弱势群体，从亚特兰大的黑人跨性别社群到芝加哥地区的帮派暴力受害者。“我真的相信Citizen是一个维持社会正义和种族正义的工具，”特雷弗·钱德勒（Trevor Chandler）说，他在去年担任Citizen组织的政府事务和公共政策主管时，领导了该应用程序在旧金山湾区的试点项目。

但是，一些与湾区亚裔社群合作的倡导者，以及专注于弱势人群中的不实信息研究领域的专家，却怀疑这种快速危险预警技术是否真正解决了核心问题，即它是否真的能让人们更安全，而不仅仅是让他们感觉更安全一点。除此之外，他们还怀疑Citizen应用程序是否有时会让事情变得更糟，因为它可能会放大对这个社群的偏见，特别是在全球疫情大流行给地方和全国的亚裔社群带来无尽创伤的时候。

“几乎每天你都可以在任何社交媒体上看到该款应用程序向群众征集的信息，在整个技术生态圈中被疯狂和快速地传播，在我看来这完全是不正常的，”倡导亚裔社群的社会、政治和经济福祉的非营利组织OCA的公共事务副总裁肯德尔·小佐井（Kendall Kosai）说。

他说，他在自己的手机上安装了Citizen，并对一些用户针对某些事件提交的偏见评论而感到吃惊。“这对我们社群居民的心理到底有什么样的影响呢？”他提问道，“很明显，这一切可能很快就会失控。”

获得“正确的信息”

“我很高兴能使用它，”49岁的爱丽丝·金（Alice Kim）说，她和丈夫在旧金山北部的里士满区经营着一家名为Joe’s Ice Cream的冰淇淋店，该区域的大约三分之一人口是亚裔，金表示最近会看到各种破坏事件和汽车盗窃案件的增加。

和许多其他亚裔美国人一样，金氏夫妇觉得，对他们安全的担忧在很长一段时间里都被置若罔闻，基本上被当地政客忽视了。“感觉他们生活在另一个世界，”爱丽丝的丈夫肖恩·金(Sean Kim)说。

在2021年的几个月里，他们的商店发生了三次企图闯入事件，当爱丽丝说她要求人们不要使用卫生间时，人们甚至几次向她扔垃圾，或者开始争吵。

“每天早上我来上班的时候都会有点焦虑，我的商店有没有被盗窃，会不会又看到一扇破损的窗户，”爱丽丝告诉我，“尤其在疫情期间，我感觉非常紧张和不安全。”

2022年秋天，爱丽丝让肖恩在她的手机上安装了Citizen应用程序，他之前一直向爱丽丝说明该款应用程序的各种好处。在该应用程序开始向AAPI社群宣传前，肖恩就一直在使用Citizen应用程序，并且当他的朋友赵给他们一个免费试用的高级版本时，他果断地升级了该款应用程序。

肖恩认为Citizen比其它本地信息应用程序如NextDoor更可靠，因为他感觉到Citizen所提供的消息似乎是得到了验证。（除了依赖各种公共数据来源的紧急情况信息外，Citizen员工表示，他们还会在发布犯罪信息之前对用户报告的犯罪信息进行审查。）

“我们在尝试要求人们仔细检查微信群中所转发的信息，”因为“这些信息有时会造成其他人恐慌。”

“我认为越来越多的人使用Citizen，是因为很多人来核实这些信息。”肖恩继续解释说， “所以至少我知道，哦，那不是一声枪响。如果没有这个应用程序，我听到了一声枪响的时候，我完全不知道发生了什么事。我觉得这是一个有效的工具。我知道正确的信息，这让我感觉很安全。”

对爱丽丝来说，能够通过Citizen的高级功能与客服建立联系，可以解决一些可能没有达到真正犯罪门槛、但却让她感觉很不安全问题的一种方式。在应用程序的地图上，红点表示严重事件的报告，比如有人被车撞了或被武器袭击了；黄点表示较温和的一些预警信息，比如报告有武装人员或检测到气体气味，灰点表示值得注意但没有威胁性的问题，比如丢失的宠物。

和金一家人一样，湾区的许多亚裔居民们都积极接受监控，因为他们觉得长期以来都被忽视了。AAPI社群的居民已经在旧金山和奥克兰的华埠组织了各种自发的巡逻活动（尽管金氏夫妇还没有参与其中）。这对夫妇支持一项有争议的法案，该法案允许警方在业主允许的情况下，在24小时内调取私人监控录像。肖恩和爱丽丝还和其他小企业主谈到了安装私人监控设备的问题，附近奥克兰的华埠企业主们也采取了这一措施。对他们来说，Citizen只不过是另一个密切关注他们周围发生的事情的工具。

钱德勒认为，围绕Citizen的许多负面言论都忽略了这一观点，而且像金氏夫妇这样的一些核心用户，之所以依赖这一工具，是因为他们生活的家门口就面临着犯罪。

“Citizen和它的付费版本并不是一款万灵药，它不会解决世界上所有的问题，也不会阻止世界各地的犯罪的发生。它不是为了这些，”钱德勒说，“但这款应用程序成为了让边缘化社群表达他们的声音的一种非常强大的方式。”

“可惜的是，他们的助手里没有人会说中文”

“虽然Citizen的想法很棒。但因为我们社群的独特性，我确实带着一种善意的怀疑态度来看待这个问题，”OCA的小佐井说。“我一直在想的一件事是，它对最脆弱的成员的可及性到底是怎样的？”

他指出，美国的亚裔社群包括“50个不同的种族和100种不同的语言”，而且“不同的社区围绕这些公共安全问题，与当地执法部门进行着不同的互动。”

目前，Citizen只支持英语操作界面。奥克兰华埠商会的执行主任陈巧伦（Jessica Chen）说，要想真正有效，它必须使用中文或其他亚洲语言提供服务。（Citizen的斯通在一封电子邮件中表示，它正在“积极投资”自然语言处理技术，“将使我们能够实时地将应用程序翻译成不同的语言”，但他没有提供这些举措的细节或时间表。）

在实践层面上，当一个群体的成员对使用科技和获取信息有不同程度的熟悉度时，很难帮助他们采用同一种技术，当英语还不是他们的第一语言时就更难了。特别是对于英语非母语的老年人，从注册这个平台、到理解平台所发布的消息都是非常困难的。

“我有时间教他们吗？以及我是合适的教他们的人吗？”陈问。

75岁的约瑟芬·惠(Josephine Hui)已经在奥克兰生活了40年，她是一名金融教育工作者，经常通勤到华埠工作。最近，她和其他几位老人在一次由Citizen主办的活动上了解到这款应用程序，该活动由关注奥克兰安全问题的非营利组织亚裔犯罪委员会(Asian Committee on Crime)和奥克兰华埠商会联合举办。她在应用程序中看到了奥克兰警察局的公共安全介绍。

Read More

————

By: Lam Thuy Vo
Title: Citizen如何通过招募亚裔老年人来重塑自己
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/16/1069873/citizen-crime-tracking-app-bay-area-asian-community-chinese/
Published Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2023 21:58:56 +0000

Did you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/the-download-advertising-on-junk-ai-websites-and-forest-bathing-in-vr/

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The Download: Uber’s flawed facial recognition, and police drones

Published

10 hours ago

on

September 27, 2023

By

1f5bc

This is today’s edition of The Download our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Uber’s facial recognition is locking Indian drivers out of their accounts

One evening in February last year, a 23-year-old Uber driver named Niradi Srikanth was getting ready to start another shift, ferrying passengers around the south Indian city of Hyderabad. He pointed the phone at his face to take a selfie to verify his identity. The process usually worked seamlessly. But this time he was unable to log in.

Srikanth suspected it was because he had recently shaved his head. After further attempts to log in were rejected, Uber informed him that his account had been blocked. He is not alone. In a survey conducted by MIT Technology Review of 150 Uber drivers in the country, almost half had been either temporarily or permanently locked out of their accounts because of problems with their selfie.

Hundreds of thousands of India’s gig economy workers are at the mercy of facial recognition technology, with few legal, policy or regulatory protections. For workers like Srikanth, getting blocked from or kicked off a platform can have devastating consequences. Read the full story.

—Varsha Bansal

I met a police drone in VR—and hated it

Police departments across the world are embracing drones, deploying them for everything from surveillance and intelligence gathering to even chasing criminals. Yet none of them seem to be trying to find out how encounters with drones leave people feeling—or whether the technology will help or hinder policing work.

A team from University College London and the London School of Economics is filling in the gaps, studying how people react when meeting police drones in virtual reality, and whether they come away feeling more or less trusting of the police.

MIT Technology Review’s Melissa Heikkilä came away from her encounter with a VR police drone feeling unnerved. If others feel the same way, the big question is whether these drones are effective tools for policing in the first place. Read the full story.

Melissa’s story is from The Algorithm, her weekly newsletter covering AI and its effects on society. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Twitter won’t be able to cope with the next natural disaster
Its looser moderation and verification make it harder to sift out reliable information. (Wired $)
The platform is now poorly equipped to fend off bad actors too. (Slate $)
There’s still no clear viable alternative to Twitter. (The Verge)
Twitter’s potential collapse could wipe out vast records of recent human history. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Crypto’s staunchest defenders are trying to rewrite history 
The same people who lobbied against regulations are now criticizing the US government for not reigning in Sam Bankman-Fried. (The Atlantic $)
FTX’s collapse was triggered by its reliance on four tokens. (WSJ $)
Goldman Sachs is planning a crypto spending spree. (Reuters)

3 Neuralink is being investigated for animal cruelty
The number of deaths is higher than it needs to be, according to staff complaints. (Reuters)

4 Women are suing Apple after their exes used AirTags to stalk them
Despite the company’s claim the device is “stalker-proof.” (Bloomberg $)

5 Facebook is threatening to pull news from its platform in the US
If Congress passes new pro-publisher legislation. (WSJ $)

6 America’s drug shortages are getting worse
Essential drug shortages are becoming more frequent, and longer-lasting. (Vox)
The pandemic has likely changed children’s microbiomes. (The Atlantic $)
The next pandemic is already here. Covid can teach us how to fight it. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Who should pay for gene therapy?
While it’s possible the cost will drop over time, we don’t know how long the effects of the therapies will last. (Wired $)
This family raised millions to get experimental gene therapy for their children. (MIT Technology Review)

8 A spirituality influencer’s fans keep getting arrested 
Rashad Jamal’s followers have been accused of killing several people. (Motherboard)

9 How TikTok makes, and breaks, aspiring singers
Wannabe artists can perform to online audiences of millions before they’ve played a single in-person show. (New Yorker $)
TikTok is expected to ride out the social media advertising freeze. (FT $)

10 Microscopic replicas of famous paintings could help to foil forgers
🖼
Thanks to a bit of inspiration from butterflies. (New Scientist $)

Quote of the day

“Do we really need to say,

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————

By: Rhiannon Williams
Title: The Download: Uber’s flawed facial recognition, and police drones
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/06/1064334/download-uber-flawed-facial-recognition-police-drones/
Published Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2022 13:10:00 +0000

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I met a police drone in VR—and hated it

Published

12 hours ago

on

September 27, 2023

By

screenshot3

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.

I’m standing in the parking lot of an apartment building in East London, near where I live. It’s a cloudy day, and nothing seems out of the ordinary.

A small drone descends from the skies and hovers in front of my face. A voice echoes from the drone’s speakers. The police are conducting routine checks in the neighborhood.

I feel as if the drone’s camera is drilling into me. I try to turn my back to it, but the drone follows me like a heat-seeking missile. It asks me to please put my hands up, and scans my face and body. Scan completed, it leaves me alone, saying there’s an emergency elsewhere.

I got lucky—my encounter was with a drone in virtual reality as part of an experiment by a team from University College London and the London School of Economics. They’re studying how people react when meeting police drones, and whether they come away feeling more or less trusting of the police.

It seems obvious that encounters with police drones might not be pleasant. But police departments are adopting these sorts of technologies without even trying to find out.

“Nobody is even asking the question: Is this technology going to do more harm than good?” says Aziz Huq, a law professor at the University of Chicago, who is not involved in the research.

Screenshot from VR experiment
UCL DEPT OF SECURITY AND CRIME SCIENCE

The researchers are interested in finding out if the public is willing to accept this new technology, explains Krisztián Pósch, a lecturer in crime science at UCL. People can hardly be expected to like an aggressive, rude drone. But the researchers want to know if there is any scenario where drones would be acceptable. For example, they are curious whether an automated drone or a human-operated one would be more tolerable.

If the reaction is negative across the board, the big question is whether these drones are effective tools for policing in the first place, Pósch says.

“The companies that are producing drones have an interest in saying that [the drones] are working and they are helping, but because no one has assessed it, it is very difficult to say [if they are right],” he says.

It’s important because police departments are racing way ahead and starting to use drones anyway, for everything from surveillance and intelligence gathering to chasing criminals.

Last week, San Francisco approved the use of robots, including drones that can kill people in certain emergencies, such as when dealing with a mass shooter. In the UK most police drones have thermal cameras that can be used to detect how many people are inside houses, says Pósch. This has been used for all sorts of things: catching human traffickers or rogue landlords, and even targeting people holding suspected parties during covid-19 lockdowns.

Virtual reality will let the researchers test the technology in a controlled, safe way among lots of test subjects, Pósch says.

Even though I knew I was in a VR environment, I found the encounter with the drone unnerving. My opinion of these drones did not improve, even though I’d met a supposedly polite, human-operated one (there are even more aggressive modes for the experiment, which I did not experience.)

Ultimately, it may not make much difference whether drones are “polite” or “rude” , says Christian Enemark, a professor at the University of Southampton, who specializes in the ethics of war and drones and is not involved in the research. That’s because the use of drones itself is a “reminder that the police are not here, whether they’re not bothering to be here or they’re too afraid to be here,” he says.

“So maybe there’s something fundamentally disrespectful about any encounter.”

Deeper Learning

GPT-4 is coming, but OpenAI is still fixing GPT-3

The internet is abuzz with excitement about AI lab OpenAI’s latest iteration of its famous large language model, GPT-3. The latest demo, ChatGPT, answers people’s questions via back-and-forth dialogue. Since its launch last Wednesday, the demo has crossed over 1 million users. Read Will Douglas Heaven’s story here.

GPT-3 is a confident bullshitter and can easily be prompted to say toxic things. OpenAI says it has fixed a lot of these problems with ChatGPT, which answers follow-up questions, admits its mistakes, challenges

Read More

————

By: Melissa Heikkilä
Title: I met a police drone in VR—and hated it
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/06/1064323/police-are-rolling-out-new-technologies-without-knowing-their-effects-on-people/
Published Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2022 11:05:42 +0000

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The Download: China’s EV success in Europe, and ClimateTech is coming

Published

14 hours ago

on

September 27, 2023

By

This is today’s edition of The Download our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Meet Europe’s surprising best-selling Chinese EV maker

China’s electric vehicle sector has been lavished with fame and attention. But its global ambitions hit a roadblock this month when the European Commission launched an investigation into whether Chinese-made EVs benefit from excessive government subsidies.

If the inquiry finds evidence for this claim, which experts say is very likely, it could result in increased import duties for Chinese-made EVs, which would likely make them less competitive in European markets.

Many of the Chinese brands that are causing concern are well-known names in China, like the established giant BYD and the promising startup Nio. But there’s one name in the mix you might not expect—former British luxury sports car maker MG. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

Zeyi’s story is from China Report, MIT Technology Review’s weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things happening in tech in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

If you’re interested in reading more about China’s car sector, why not check out:

+ Europe is about to crack down on Chinese electric cars. The European Commission is set to launch an anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese automakers. Here’s what you need to know about the likely impact.

+ From generous government subsidies to support for lithium batteries, here’s how China managed to build a world-leading industry in electric vehicles.

China’s car companies are turning into tech companies. China has already won the race to electrify its vehicles. Now it’s pushing ahead and adding more features and services to attract new customers. Read the full story.

+ A race for autopilot dominance is giving China the edge in autonomous driving. Electric vehicle makers and AI companies are taking Tesla FSD-like systems to China, but it’s still out of reach for most consumers. Read the full story.

ClimateTech is coming

How can we build a sustainable, greener future? Next week, MIT Technology Review is holding our second annual ClimateTech conference to discuss the innovations accelerating the transition to a green economy.

ClimateTech is taking place at the MIT Media Lab on MIT’s campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 4-5. You can register for the event and either attend in-person or online, here—before it’s too late!

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The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Amazon is being sued by the FTC in a landmark monopoly case
It’s accused of using illegal tactics to stifle online competition. (Wired $)
Head honcho Andy Jassy is facing an uphill climb. (NYT $)
The Federal Trade Commission avoided calling to break Amazon up. (Bloomberg $)

2 OpenAI is seeking a new valuation
To the tune of between $80 billion and $90 billion, to be exact. (WSJ $)
ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like. (MIT Technology Review)

3 An astronaut has touched down on Earth after 371 days in space
That’s a new US record. (CBS News)
Traveling to space should teach us how to better accommodate disabled people. (Wired $)

4 Linda Yaccarino’s first 100 days at X have been a wild ride
Forget pressure from advertisers: managing Elon Musk is her biggest challenge. (FT $)
X appears to have disabled an election misinformation reporting measure. (Reuters)

5 YouTube rewarded a creator who livestreamed attacks on Indian Muslims
Hindu nationalist Monu Manesar has been linked to multiple killings this year. (WP $)

6 Microsoft wants to use nuclear energy to power its AI data centers
It’s looking to nuclear fission to keep those expensive centers ticking over. (CNBC)
We were promised smaller nuclear reactors. Where are they? (MIT Technology Review)

7 Maybe we didn’t need to learn to code after all
Generative AI is making it easier than ever to write code, even if it’s far from perfect. (The Atlantic $)
Learning to code isn’t enough. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Inside China’s brave online feminist revolution
The country’s burgeoning women’s rights movement is fighting back against a conservative society. (Rest of World)

9 Attempting to reverse your age is

Read More

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By: Rhiannon Williams
Title: The Download: China’s EV success in Europe, and ClimateTech is coming
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2023/09/27/1080342/the-download-chinas-ev-success-in-europe-and-climatetech-is-coming/
Published Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2023 12:10:00 +0000

Did you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/the-metaverse-fashion-stylists-are-here/

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