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Today's Topics:
1. Re: The Bitter Lesson versus The Garbage Can (Marghanita da Cruz)
2. Social media minimum age legislation passed (Marghanita da Cruz)
3. Wired: Palantir / Deloittes / Accenture central to the Trump
Autocracy (Roger Clarke)
4. ChatGPT users shocked to learn their chats were in Google
search results (Kim Holburn)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2025 12:50:03 +1000
From: Marghanita da Cruz <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [LINK] The Bitter Lesson versus The Garbage Can
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Sadly, not many people learnt the GiGo principle. "In computer science,
garbage in, garbage out (GIGO)"..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_in,_garbage_out.
Your post reminded me of episode on Big Bang theory episode at
https://bigbangtrans.wordpress.com/series-6-episode-01-the-date-night-variable/
and about Anthropic Principle More about principle at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
While, I am expounding the virtues of Big Bang Theory
sitcom("Coincidentally, Robertson had recently read Simon Singh's 2004
book Big Bang,[55][56] and at the concert he improvised a freestyle rap
about the origins of the universe."..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_Theory).
I was surprised to learn Tom Lehrer only just passed and that was his
song and not the sitcom's homage to him. '"The Elements" has been
featured in popular culture many times. ..In The Big Bang Theory "The
Pants Alternative"'.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_(song)
Of course, Star Trek is a Big part of the series.
Of course visit to Google last week indicated they have an international
policy on garbage bin colours (or should it be "colors", more on Bins
"OTTO is a leading waste management solutions company, offering
comprehensive waste handling related products and services from more
than 10 production facilities located in 7 countries."...
https://ottobins.com.au/pages/about-us )
Marghanita
On 7/31/25 19:13, Antony Barry wrote:
> The article "The Bitter Lesson versus The Garbage Can" explores the
> challenge of AI adoption in organizations through two influential ideas:
> the Garbage Can Model from organizational theory and the Bitter Lesson
> from
> AI research.
>
> - **Garbage Can Model**: Organizations are often much messier and less
> rational than they appear. When teams tried to map out their company?s
> processes, they found confusion, redundancy, and a disconnect between
> official strategy and on-the-ground reality. This model describes
> organizations as chaotic combinations of problems, solutions, and
> decision-makers, making decisions when these elements randomly interact
> rather than through orderly processes[1].
>
> - **The Bitter Lesson (Richard Sutton)**: In AI, attempts to encode human
> expertise into computers (e.g., chess strategies) consistently get
> outperformed by general-purpose AI methods with enough computing power and
> data. Instead of mimicking human reasoning, the best results come from
> letting the AI figure things out itself?even if its methods are opaque to
> human observers[1].
>
> - **Tension in AI Adoption**: Most companies attempt to clarify their
> messy
> processes before integrating AI, believing automation requires clear
> rules.
> But the Bitter Lesson suggests the opposite might be true: focus on
> defining good outputs (e.g., a high-quality sales report) and let AI
> navigate the chaos to produce those outputs, potentially finding more
> efficient?if less transparent?paths through organizational mess[1].
>
> - **Human vs. AI Strengths**: Especially for non-profit and mission-driven
> organizations, not all valuable outputs are easily measured. Social
> cohesion, trust, or team morale?outputs that matter deeply?are hard to
> specify and may depend on the very "messiness" AI aims to bypass.
> There's a
> risk that AI will only optimize what can be measured and neglect aspects
> that require human judgment or emotional intelligence.
>
> - **Fundamental Question**: Will organizations, like chess, eventually
> yield to scalable AI approaches if we provide good output examples? Or are
> they too complex and value-laden for such brute force methods to succeed?
> The article suggests that the answer is not yet clear?companies must
> experiment to discover whether the Bitter Lesson or organizational
> complexity ("the Garbage Can") will prevail[1].
>
> - **Key Takeaway**: The core message is that organizations should
> reconsider whether mapping every process is necessary before AI adoption.
> Instead, defining success clearly and providing sufficient examples for AI
> to learn from may be enough, but human understanding remains crucial for
> complex, value-driven goals. The debate between relying on AI's
> brute-force
> capability versus respecting the "mess" of human organizations is ongoing,
> and its resolution will shape the future of work.
>
> Sources
> [1] The Bitter Lesson versus The Garbage Can
> https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-bitter-lesson-versus-the-garbage
> [2] The Bitter Lesson versus The Garbage Can
> https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-bitter-lesson-versus-the-garbage?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5afe61f0-bbcf-41c6-9c50-45169ad5d08b_7520x2240.png&open=false
> [3] Comments - The Bitter Lesson versus The Garbage Can
> https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-bitter-lesson-versus-the-garbage/comments
> [4] Comments - The Bitter Lesson versus The Garbage Can
> https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-bitter-lesson-versus-the-garbage/comments?triedRedirect=true
> [5] One Useful Thing | Ethan Mollick | Substack
> https://www.oneusefulthing.org
> [6] Ethan Mollick https://substack.com/@oneusefulthing
> [7] Archive https://www.oneusefulthing.org/archive
> [8] Ethan Mollick's Post
> https://www.linkedin.com/posts/emollick_the-bitter-lesson-versus-the-garbage-can-activity-7355577304275714048-eURS
> [9] This is a great little exploration of AI inside orgs. | Tom ...
> https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomcritchlow_the-bitter-lesson-versus-the-garbage-can-activity-7355588907901546499-ln34
> [10] The Bitter Lesson versus The Garbage Can
> https://boredreading.com/articles/all/recent/read/152593871/
> [11] The main problem with the ?Bitter Lesson? is that there's ...
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44627888
>
--
Marghanita da Cruz
Telephone: 0414-869202
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://ramin.com.au
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2025 13:04:35 +1000
From: Marghanita da Cruz <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Social media minimum age legislation passed
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Let the Spamming begin. Today, I had a phonecall from a distressed past
Instagram user.
I think she got caught by Physhing SPAM and was having difficulty
getting into her Instagram Account.
Social media minimum age legislation passed:
> 4 December 2024
> New legislation has passed through Parliament, setting a minimum age
> limit for social media platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook,
> Instagram and X.
>
> The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024
> amends the /Online Safety Act 2021/ and requires ?age-restricted
> social media platforms? to take reasonable steps to prevent
> Australians under 16 years from having accounts on their platforms.
>
> Social media platforms operating in Australia have 12 months to
> develop and roll out systems to enforce the age restrictions, which
> are expected to be in place by the end of 2025.
https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/department/media/news/social-media-minimum-age-legislation-passed
No mention of SPAM on? E-Commissioner's website:
> Social media age restrictions
>
> The Australian Government is protecting young Australians at a
> critical stage of their development, through world-first social media
> age restrictions.
>
> Part 4A of the /Online Safety Act 2021/ introduces an obligation on
> age-restricted social media platforms to prevent children under 16
> years from having accounts on their services, by December 2025. This
> obligation is one part of a broader strategy to create safer digital
> spaces for everyone.
>
> The change aims to strengthen existing measures for protecting young
> users, especially where there are particular risks associated with
> accessing potentially harmful social media content and features such
> as persistent notifications and alerts that have been found to have a
> negative impact on sleep, stress levels and attention.
>
> The onus is on the applicable service providers to introduce systems
> and processes that ensure people under the minimum age cannot create
> or keep a social media account. This means there will be no penalties
> for age-restricted users who gain access to an age-restricted social
> media platform, or for their parents or carers.
>
> Details about how the age restrictions will operate, how and when they
> will be enforced, which services will be affected and other relevant
> information will be developed throughout 2025 and provided on this
> website. The information will help Australians ? including children
> under-16, parents, carers, educators ? and the online industry
> understand and prepare for the change.
>
https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/industry-regulation/social-media-age-restrictions
--
Marghanita da Cruz
Telephone: 0414-869202
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://ramin.com.au
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2025 21:23:47 +1000
From: Roger Clarke <[email protected]>
To: Privacy List <[email protected]>, apfmediaarchive
<[email protected]>, link <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Wired: Palantir / Deloittes / Accenture central to the
Trump Autocracy
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
> ... Last week, Palantir and Deloitte announced a partnership that
includes what they call the ?Enterprise Operating System? (EOS) to unify
data across organizations. ...
> ?We are teaming up with Accenture Federal Services to accelerate AI
across the U.S. Government, working to address federal agencies?
highest-priority operational challenges,? Palantir posted to X last month.
Palantir Is Extending Its Reach Even Further Into Government
Palantir has become one of the few winners in the Trump administration?s
cost-cutting efforts, offering other contractors a lifeline while
consolidating its own reach and power.
MAKENA KELLY
Wired
AUG 1, 2025 6:30 AM
https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-government-contracting-push/
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP?S administration has dramatically expanded its
work with Palantir, elevating the company cofounded by Trump ally Peter
Thiel as the government?s go-to software developer. Following massive
contract terminations for consulting giants and government contractors
like Accenture, Booz Allen, and Deloitte, Palantir has emerged ahead.
Now the data analytics firm is partnering with those companies?offering
them a lifeline while consolidating its own power.
Palantir has become one of the few winners in the Trump administration?s
cost-cutting efforts, receiving more than $113 million in federal
spending since the beginning of the year, according to The New York
Times. Palantir?s US government revenue has grown by more than $ 370
million compared to this time last year, according to the company?s most
recent quarterly earnings report. Before making remarks at last week?s
AI Summit in DC, Trump thanked a variety of cabinet secretaries and tech
leaders, including Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar. ?We
buy a lot of things from Palantir,? Trump said. ?Are we paying our
bills? I think so.?
Instead of replacing these more traditional contractors, Palantir?s
software is becoming the core tool deployed by them in government
systems, placing Palantir in a newly central role.
The White House itself is thrilled by this partnership: ?The Trump
Administration has high-standard [sic] when spending American?s
hard-earned tax dollars?which is why agencies have partnered with
Palantir, a top-tier American company renowned for their longstanding
history of innovation, results, and increasing government efficiency,?
says White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers.
Palantir did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In April, WIRED reported that Palantir was working alongside IRS
engineers to build what sources called a ?mega API,? which would unify
all data across the agency. An API, or application programming
interface, enables applications and databases to exchange data and
possibly compare it against other interoperable datasets. Once
completed, this mega API could become the ?read center of all IRS
systems.? Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracted Palantir for
$30 million to track self-deportations in April. The company has also
won federal contracts more recently, like a $795 million award from the
Pentagon in May to expand its Maven Smart System program. The total
contract ceiling for the Army?s Maven program is now $1.3 billion.
This growth comes as some of the companies Palantir has chosen to
partner with have lost billions in government contract cuts. In April,
defense secretary Pete Hegseth announced plans to cut $5.1 billion in IT
consulting contracts with companies including Accenture, Booz Allen, and
Deloitte. In a memo announcing the cuts, Hegseth said that the Pentagon
would be forced to bring more of its IT work in-house.
?These contracts represent non-essential spending on third party
consultants to perform services more efficiently performed by the highly
skilled members of our DoD workforce using existing resources,? Hegseth
wrote.
Palantir?s partnerships with these companies vary, but each one makes it
easier for Palantir to extend the reach of its software and AI
technology across the federal government. With Accenture?s government
branch, Palantir will train and certify at least 1,000 Accenture workers
on its Foundry software as well as its AI tech, according to an
Accenture press release The companies also said that together they could
create ?a 360-degree view? of government agency budgets, something the
so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has sought to build
and use to review federal spending. (Palantir partnered with Accenture
before in 2022, but this is the first partnership to focus on US
government clients.)
?We are teaming up with Accenture Federal Services to accelerate AI
across the U.S. Government, working to address federal agencies?
highest-priority operational challenges,? Palantir posted to X last month.
"What makes this partnership so uniquely powerful is Accenture?s
expertise working with the federal government and our ability to bring
commercial capabilities to government solutions, combined with
Palantir?s deep experience in government software," Julie Sweet, chair
and CEO of Accenture, said in a press release. ?Together, we will
harness the ever-growing power of AI to help the federal government
succeed in its critical mission to modernize and reinvent its
operations?with stronger data flows, transparency and resilience?to
better serve warfighters, citizens and all its stakeholders.?
Accenture did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While Palantir has become a major government contractor in its own
right, partnering with contracting giants could enable the software
company to scale at a much faster rate, leveraging long-standing
relationships these larger contractors have with virtually every federal
agency. ?It's actually a pretty savvy business decision on the part of
both Palantir, then also what you would call a traditional, more
legacy-oriented, like defense or just government contractors,? says
Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law at
George Washington University. ?If they?re newer to certain areas and
others have that footprint, that?s how it would benefit Palantir.?
Last week, Palantir and Deloitte announced a partnership that includes
what they call the ?Enterprise Operating System? (EOS) to unify data
across organizations. At government agencies like the Internal Revenue
Service and reportedly at the Social Security Administration (SSA),
Palantir is already working to combine agency datasets, allowing what
were previously disparate datasets to communicate with one another more
easily.
"Deloitte shares Palantir's commitment to decisive action and a
dedication to delivering meaningful, lasting results for commercial and
government clients," said Jason Girzadas, Deloitte US CEO, said in a
press release announcing the partnership. "Expanding our preferred
relationship at this pivotal moment provides our clients with Palantir's
latest advances in AI, combined with Deloitte's engineering scale and
deep sector experience."
Deloitte did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Palantir struck some of these deals prior to Trump taking office as
well. In December of last year, Booz Allen partnered with Palantir
specifically, working together on building out defense IT infrastructure.
?To have one company monopolize and become the gatekeeper of software in
the government, to become an ?app factory,? for the government, in a
sense, where they're in every agency, they're part of the defense
complex and the intelligence complex, brings huge concerns regarding
fairness, regarding competition, and puts Palantir in a very unique
position that maybe has never existed,? says Juan Sebasti?n Pinto, a
former Palantir employee and critic of the company.
--
Roger Clarke mailto:[email protected]
T: +61 2 6288 6916 http://www.xamax.com.au http://www.rogerclarke.com
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Visiting Professorial Fellow UNSW Law & Justice
Visiting Professor in Computer Science Australian National University
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2025 09:37:57 +1000
From: Kim Holburn <[email protected]>
To: EFA Privacy List <[email protected]>, Link mailing list
<[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] ChatGPT users shocked to learn their chats were in
Google search results
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/chatgpt-users-shocked-to-learn-their-chats-were-in-google-search-results/
Faced with mounting backlash, OpenAI removed a controversial ChatGPT feature
that caused some users to unintentionally allow their
private?and highly personal?chats to appear in search results.
Fast Company exposed the privacy issue on Wednesday, reporting that thousands
of ChatGPT conversations were found in Google search
results and likely only represented a sample of chats "visible to millions."
While the indexing did not include identifying
information about the ChatGPT users, some of their chats did share personal
details?like highly specific descriptions of
interpersonal relationships with friends and family members?perhaps making it
possible to identify them, Fast Company found.
OpenAI's chief information security officer, Dane Stuckey, explained on X that
all users whose chats were exposed opted in to
indexing their chats by clicking a box after choosing to share a chat.
Fast Company noted that users often share chats on WhatsApp or select the
option to save a link to visit the chat later. But as Fast
Company explained, users may have been misled into sharing chats due to how the
text was formatted:
"When users clicked 'Share,' they were presented with an option to tick a box
labeled 'Make this chat discoverable.' Beneath that,
in smaller, lighter text, was a caveat explaining that the chat could then
appear in search engine results."
At first, OpenAI defended the labeling as "sufficiently clear," Fast Company
reported Thursday. But Stuckey confirmed that
"ultimately," the AI company decided that the feature "introduced too many
opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they
didn't intend to." According to Fast Company, that included chats about their
drug use, sex lives, mental health, and traumatic
experiences.
Carissa Veliz, an AI ethicist at the University of Oxford, told Fast Company
she was "shocked" that Google was logging "these
extremely sensitive conversations."
OpenAI promises to remove Google search results
Stuckey called the feature a "short-lived experiment" that OpenAI launched "to
help people discover useful conversations." He
confirmed that the decision to remove the feature also included an effort to
"remove indexed content from the relevant search
engine" through Friday morning.
Google did not respond to Fast Company's reporting, which left it unclear what
role it played in how chats were displayed in search
results. But a spokesperson told Ars that OpenAI was fully responsible for the
indexing, clarifying that "neither Google nor any
other search engine controls what pages are made public on the web. Publishers
of these pages have full control over whether they
are indexed by search engines."
OpenAI is seemingly also solely responsible for removing the chats, perhaps
most quickly by using a tool that Google provides to
block pages from appearing in search results. But that tool does not stop pages
from being indexed by other search engines, so it's
possible chats will disappear sooner in Google results than other search
engines.
V?liz told Fast Company that even a "short-lived" experiment like this is
"troubling," noting that "tech companies use the general
population as guinea pigs," attracting swarms of users with new AI products and
waiting to see what consequences they may face for
invasive design choices.
"They do something, they try it out on the population, and see if somebody
complains," V?liz said.
To check if private chats are still being indexed, a Fast Company explanation
suggests that users who still have access to their
shared links can try inputting the "part of the link created when someone
proactively clicks 'Share' on ChatGPT [to] uncover
conversations" that may still be discoverable on Google.
OpenAI declined Ars' request to comment, but Stuckey's statement suggested that
the company knows it has to earn back trust after
the misstep.
"Security and privacy are paramount for us, and we'll keep working to maximally
reflect that in our products and features," Stuckey
said.
The scandal notably comes after OpenAI vowed to fight a court order that
requires it to preserve all deleted chats "indefinitely,"
which worries ChatGPT users who previously felt assured their temporary and
deleted chats were not being saved. OpenAI has so far
lost that fight, and those chats will likely be searchable soon in that
lawsuit. But while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman considered the
possibility that users' most private chats could be searched to be "screwed
up," Fast Company noted that Altman did not seem to be
as transparently critical about the potential for OpenAI's own practices to
expose private user chats on Google and other search
engines.
--
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
+61 404072753
mailto:[email protected] aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request
------------------------------
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