An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:The fallout from the YouTube boycott is likely to be felt through the rest of this year. Skittish advertisers have curtailed their spending until they are convinced Google can prevent their brands from appearing next to extremist clips promoting hate and violence… At one point, about 250 advertisers were boycotting YouTube… The list included big-spending marketers such as PepsiCo, Wal-Mart Stores, Starbucks, AT&T, Verizon, Johnson & Johnson, and Volkswagen. It’s unclear how many, if any, of those have returned to YouTube since Google promised to hire more human reviewers and upgrade its technology to keep ads away from repugnant videos. Both Verizon and AT&T, two companies that are trying to expand their own digital ad networks to compete with Google, told The Associated Press that they are still boycotting YouTube. FX Networks confirmed that it isn’t advertising on YouTube either. Several other boycotting marketers contacted by AP didn’t respond.

Thursday CEO Sundar Pichai told analysts that responding to the boycott, Google held “thousands and thousands” of conversations with advertisers, and one analyst now estimates reduced ad spending on YouTube and Google could cost the company $300 million this year alone.

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Source: Slashdot – Advertisers Are Still Boycotting YouTube Over Offensive Videos

An anonymous reader quotes CNN:
As robots begin to appear on sidewalks and streets, they’re being hazed and bullied. Last week, a drunken man allegedly tipped over a 300-pound security robot in Mountain View, California… Knightscope, which makes the robot that was targeted in Mountain View, said it’s had three bullying incidents since launching its first prototype robot three years ago. In 2014, a person attempted to tackle a Knightscope robot. Last year in Los Angeles, people attempted to spray paint a Knightscope robot. The robot sensed the paint and sounded an alarm, alerting local security and the company’s engineers… the robot’s cameras filmed the pranksters’ license plate, making it easy to track them down.

The company’s security robots are deployed with 17 clients in five states, according to the article, which notes that at best the robots’ cameras allow them to “rat out the bullies.” But with delivery robots now also hitting the streets in San Francisco and Washington D.C., “the makers of these machines will have to figure out how to protect them from ill-intentioned humans.”

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Source: Slashdot – Humans Are Already Harassing Security Robots

An anonymous reader writes:
“Dmitry Bogatov, Debian developer and Tor node admin, is still being held in a Moscow jail,” tweeted the EFF Saturday. IT Wire reports that the 25-year-old math teacher was arrested earlier this month “on suspicion of organizing riots,” and is expected to be held in custody until June 8. “The panel investigating the protests claims Bogatov posted several incitory messages on the sysadmin.ru forum; for example, one claim said he was asking people to bring ‘bottles, fabric, gasoline, turpentine, foam plastic’ to Red Square, according to a post at Hacker News. The messages were sent in the name of one Airat Bashirov and happened to be transmitted through the Tor node that Bogatov was running. The Hacker News post said Bogatov’s lawyer had produced surveillance video footage to show that he was elsewhere at the time when the messages were posted.
“After Dmitry’s arrest,” reports the Free Bogatov site, “Airat Bashirov continue to post messages. News outlets ‘Open Russia’ and ‘Mediazona’ even got a chance to speak with him.” Earlier this month the Debian GNU/Linux project also posted a message of support, noting Dmitry maintains several packages for command line and system tools, and saying their group “honours his good work and strong dedication to Debian and Free Software… we hope he is back as soon as possible to his endeavours… In the meantime, the Debian Project has taken measures to secure its systems by removing Dmitry’s keys in the case that they are compromised.”

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Source: Slashdot – Debian Developer Imprisoned In Russia Over Alleged Role In Riots

Wired’s founding executive editor Kevin Kelly wrote a 5,000-word takedown on “the myth of a superhuman AI,” challenging dire warnings from Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and Elon Musk about the potential extinction of humanity at the hands of a superintelligent constructs. Slashdot reader mirandakatz calls it an “impeccably argued debunking of this pervasive myth.” Kelly writes:
Buried in this scenario of a takeover of superhuman artificial intelligence are five assumptions which, when examined closely, are not based on any evidence…

1.) Artificial intelligence is already getting smarter than us, at an exponential rate.
2.) We’ll make AIs into a general purpose intelligence, like our own.
3.) We can make human intelligence in silicon.
4.) Intelligence can be expanded without limit.
5.) Once we have exploding superintelligence it can solve most of our problems…
If the expectation of a superhuman AI takeover is built on five key assumptions that have no basis in evidence, then this idea is more akin to a religious belief — a myth

Kelly proposes “five heresies” which he says have more evidence to support them — including the prediction that emulating human intelligence “will be constrained by cost” — and he likens artificial intelligence to the physical powers of machines. “[W]hile all machines as a class can beat the physical achievements of an individual human…there is no one machine that can beat an average human in everything he or she does.”

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Source: Slashdot – <em>Wired</em> Founding Editor Now Challenges ‘The Myth of A Superhuman AI’