streetfestival

To no one’s surprise, women and girls are disproportionately targeted, making image-based abuse not just a technology issue but a gendered form of violence rooted in misogyny and power. In fact, in Laura Bates’ book “The New Age of Sexism”, she cites research that says that of the 96% of deepfakes that are non-consensual sexually explicit images, 99% of those depict women. In fact, most of the apps, bots and websites that will create deepfake explicit images don’t even work on pictures of men. Deepfakes can be used to humiliate, silence, intimidate, or punish women for speaking publicly, participating online, or simply existing in digital spaces. In the UK, women have reported being filmed by men wearing smart glasses while being approached in public spaces, with recordings subsequently uploaded to social media attracting sexualised and other gross comments. Similar “pickup” content has emerged in the US, where men have used smart glasses to record interactions with women in airports, gyms, and other public spaces, often turning those encounters into viral online content. Last year, an Auckland man used the Ray-Ban Smart Glasses to covertly record a sex worker without her consent while she was naked. The recording was detected only because the woman noticed him activating the device (by touching the side of the glasses). He pleaded guilty to attempting to make an intimate visual recording, but was discharged without conviction - to the dismay of the brothel owner. This is particularly concerning because wearable devices are designed to blend into everyday life. A child may not recognise that a pair of ordinary-looking sunglasses contains a camera. They may not realise they are being recorded, and will have little ability to control what happens to that image/footage afterwards. Consent becomes much harder to meaningfully give or refuse when recording devices are hidden inside objects that look completely ordinary. Too often, we’re told that women and girls should simply be more careful, more alert, and more aware of their surroundings, remain vigilant, and constantly assess whether they are being recorded, instead of placing responsibility on those who design, deploy, and profit from technologies with foreseeable risks of misuse. The same is true for children and young people, who should not need levels of technological awareness beyond their developmental capacity simply to protect themselves from covert recording.

mstdn.social/@grickle/116924830102921661

mastodon.social/@MrLovenstein/116918612882977832

But Trump’s FCC has decided that this system is no longer working for them. Last month, they released a public notice announcing that they would like to force the TVOMB to change their ratings. Why? “Recently, parents have raised concerns that controversial gender identity issues are being included or promoted in children’s programs without providing any disclosure or transparency to parents. Specifically, the industry guidelines that parents rely on are rating shows with transgender and gender non-binary programming as appropriate for children and young children, and doing so without providing this information to parents, thereby undermining the ability of parents to make informed choices for their families.” That’s right: parents somewhere are scared of their children simply seeing TV shows with transgender and nonbinary people or characters, and so now the federal government is stepping in to protect them by forcing the industry to adopt trigger warnings.

Last week, Big Oil’s top-funded Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Representative Harriet Hageman (R-WY) introduced a bill called the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026. They framed it as a way to “protect American energy from leftist legal crusades punishing lawful activity.” What it actually does is give the fossil fuel industry a permanent shield against lawsuits and state laws that seek to hold the industry financially accountable for climate change, and for misleading the public about the catastrophic health, economic and environmental consequences of using their products. The gun industry achieved a similar type of legal immunity in 2005. That law, called Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, has largely prevented victims of gun violence from seeking justice against irresponsible industry actors, and has sometimes resulted in victims being forced to pay gun industry legal fees.

same source:

We are in the relief phase of ambient scribing. The efficiency gains are real and the risks are not yet visible in our outcome data — partly because we haven’t looked, and partly because the timescales are too short. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Shocking and outrageous.

and was saying a lot of technical stuff out loud

The quality article I linked to in another comment, from an early adopter turned critic of 'ai scribing', suggests you're right that they're not saying that for your benefit, they're saying it for the scribe, to structure the note to their liking. This is an example of how the encounter/interaction with the patient changes as a result of using this software

Thanks for sharing!

consent

That's an important word, because as the main-linked article says, and my experience corroborates: medical offices seldom explain what exactly patients are 'consenting' to with 'AI scribing' well enough for people to be informed enough to thus be able to truly consent.

I come from a research background and when my family doctor casually asked me if I was fine with him using AI for note-writing upon entering the examination room and sitting down, I was internally like, "ughh, no consent form, explanation, etc.?" But I was there for something sensitive and wanted to 'go along to get along.' So, I casually agreed. A few minutes later, I noticed he wasn't typing, so I said, "I notice you're not typing, is my voice being recorded?"

Needless to say, I soon after wrote the office saying I did not consent to the use of that in my care henceforth.

https://benngooch.substack.com/p/i-was-an-enthusiastic-early-adopter

This is not a small thing. The clinical note in general practice is not merely a medicolegal record. It is, as research in the Journal of General Internal Medicine has articulated, a form of narrative medicine — a clinician-authored story that reflects how the physician understood the patient’s situation at that moment in time. The act of writing it is itself a cognitive process: it forces synthesis, prioritisation, and reflection. It is, in a real sense, how we think.

When an AI records everything rather than what we chose to record, this feedback loop breaks. The note stops being a reflection of clinical reasoning and becomes a verbatim archive. And as a PMC piece on note bloat explicitly warns, this risks obscuring the most medically important information under a volume of equally-weighted detail.

The problem is not just that notes become longer. It is that they become less curated, less authored, less ours. And the clinical memory they are supposed to scaffold — the ability to pick up a case six weeks later and immediately reorient — degrades with them.

At a recent appointment, Emily’s physical therapist (who knows some about her research) said, “Before we get started, there’s something I want to ask you about.” The something was an automatic “scribing” system their office is trialling for two weeks and deciding whether to purchase. These systems take in a (presumably audio-only) recording of the patient encounter and then output a draft patient note for the chart.

So what’s the big deal with “AI” charting? Here are nine reasons why we recommend refusing to consent to the use of scribing tools in healthcare settings: