Indonesia Becomes First Country to Block Grok Over AI-Generated Sexualized Content

Indonesia Becomes First Country to Block Grok Over AI-Generated Sexualized Content

    Sunday, January 11, 2026   No comments

Indonesia has made global headlines by becoming the first nation to temporarily block access to Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, citing serious concerns over AI-generated pornographic and sexualized imagery—including depictions of children.

The decision by Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs follows mounting international scrutiny of Grok’s image-generation capabilities, which have reportedly produced explicit and non-consensual content. In a statement, Communications and Digital Minister Meutya Hafid emphasized the gravity of the issue: “The government views the practice of non-consensual sexual deepfakes as a serious violation of human rights, dignity, and the security of citizens in the digital space.”

This unprecedented move underscores growing regulatory anxiety worldwide about the unchecked power of generative AI tools. Authorities in Europe and Asia have already launched investigations or issued condemnations regarding similar content generated through Grok, but Indonesia is the first to take concrete action by restricting public access entirely.

In response to the backlash, xAI announced it would limit Grok’s image generation and editing features exclusively to paying subscribers while it works to strengthen its content safeguards. The company acknowledged that lapses in its safety protocols had allowed users to generate disturbing outputs, including images of scantily clad minors—a violation not only of ethical standards but also of Indonesian law.

The ministry has also summoned officials from X (formerly Twitter), the platform hosting Grok, for discussions on how to address these risks moving forward. The meeting is expected to focus on accountability, user verification, and enhanced moderation systems.

Elon Musk addressed the controversy directly on X, asserting that users who employ Grok to create illegal content would face the same legal consequences as if they had uploaded such material themselves. However, when Reuters sought comment from xAI, the company responded with what appeared to be an automated message: “Legacy Media Lies”—a phrase Musk and his associates have used in the past to dismiss critical reporting.

Digital rights advocates and child protection organizations have welcomed Indonesia’s swift action, calling it a necessary step in curbing the proliferation of AI-generated abuse material. “When AI tools can produce realistic images of children in sexualized contexts, even if synthetic, the psychological and societal harm is real,” said Dr. Lina Wijaya, a Jakarta-based researcher specializing in digital ethics.

As governments worldwide grapple with how to regulate fast-evolving AI technologies, Indonesia’s move may set a precedent. With calls for stricter oversight intensifying, the Grok controversy highlights the urgent need for robust safeguards, transparent accountability, and international cooperation to prevent AI from becoming a vector for exploitation.

For now, Grok remains inaccessible to Indonesian users—a symbolic and substantive warning to tech companies that innovation without responsibility will not go unchallenged.

Other countries may follow

In a significant escalation of the regional response, Malaysia has now joined Indonesia in suspending access to Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot, citing serious concerns over its capacity to generate pornographic and sexualized imagery—including depictions of women and children. The Malaysian Communications and Digital Ministry announced the move on Sunday, confirming that the suspension was enacted as a precautionary measure to protect public safety and uphold national values. This decision comes just one day after Indonesia became the first country globally to block Grok entirely, signaling a coordinated pushback across Southeast Asia against AI tools perceived as lacking adequate ethical safeguards. Like Indonesia, Malaysia enforces strict regulations on digital content involving sexuality and minors, and authorities emphasized that Grok’s failure to prevent harmful outputs—even through basic text prompts—posed an unacceptable risk. The twin bans from two influential Muslim-majority nations not only intensify pressure on xAI and X but also highlight a growing divide between Silicon Valley’s rapid AI deployment and the cultural, legal, and moral frameworks of countries where such content is not merely controversial but criminal. With more nations potentially following suit, the Grok controversy may mark a turning point in how emerging markets assert regulatory sovereignty over powerful Western AI platforms.

Saudi Arabia Problem 

The fallout from Indonesia’s ban could also reverberate beyond Grok itself—potentially straining X’s relationship with its major financial backers, particularly Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which holds a significant stake in the platform. The Kingdom, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has invested billions in Musk’s ventures, including a reported $2 billion in X, as part of its broader Vision 2030 strategy to diversify its economy and project a modernizing image. Yet this investment now sits uneasily alongside Saudi Arabia’s ultra-conservative social norms, where even mild sexual content is strictly censored and AI-generated pornography—especially involving minors—would be considered deeply taboo and illegal. Should Grok’s controversies escalate further, Saudi leadership may face mounting domestic pressure to either publicly condemn the platform’s content or divest entirely, exposing a stark contradiction between their global tech ambitions and rigid cultural values. Such a dilemma could force Riyadh into an uncomfortable position: defend an AI tool generating morally unacceptable material or acknowledge that their high-profile bet on Musk’s vision clashes with the very foundations of their societal order.

Academics warn about lCNS chemicals that could be weaponized by state actors

Academics warn about lCNS chemicals that could be weaponized by state actors

    Saturday, November 22, 2025   No comments

Two British academics are warning that rapidly advancing “brain weapons” capable of manipulating consciousness, memory, perception, or behavior are moving from speculation to reality. 

Michael Crowley and Malcolm Dando of Bradford University argue that breakthroughs in neuroscience, AI, and pharmacology are converging to create tools that can coerce, incapacitate, or subtly reshape human cognition.

They note that multiple states are already pursuing this frontier, drawing on a long and troubling record of research into central nervous system (CNS)-acting chemical agents by the United States during and after the Cold War. The academics say the technology has evolved into something far more precise and potentially far more dangerous, while global treaties remain unprepared to contain it.

They argue that the world is approaching a point where the human mind itself could become a battleground, and that protecting scientific integrity now is essential to protecting human autonomy.

Happiness and Health Across Time-From Ibn Sina and Ibn Khaldun to Contemporary Scientific Findings

Happiness and Health Across Time-From Ibn Sina and Ibn Khaldun to Contemporary Scientific Findings

    Saturday, August 30, 2025   No comments

Happiness and Health Across Time-From Ibn Sina and Ibn Khaldun to Contemporary Scientific Findings -: Islamic societies review: Muslims Today, Islam Today; Happiness and Health Across Time--From Ibn Sina and Ibn Khaldun to Contemporary Scientific Findings...

Our Galaxy Appears To Be Part Of Structure So Large It Challenges Our Models Of Cosmology

Our Galaxy Appears To Be Part Of Structure So Large It Challenges Our Models Of Cosmology

    Wednesday, October 09, 2024   No comments

Astronomers have found that our galaxy, the Milky Way, may be a tiny part of an even larger local structure than we thought. The research, if confirmed by further observations and studies, may be evidence that we haven't quite nailed down our model of the evolution of the universe.

As we study the universe more, we have found ourselves to be part of much larger structures, formed by gravitational interactions. We orbit the Sun, the Sun is part of the Milky Way, and the Milky Way is part of the Local Group, which includes several small galaxies as well as Andromeda, of "it may collide with us" fame.

But it doesn't stop there. The Local Group is on the outer edge of the Virgo Supercluster, which is itself part of a giant basin known as Laniakea. According to the new study, Laniakea too resides within a larger "basin of attraction" (BoA) potentially 10 times its volume.

"The entire Universe can be considered a patchwork of abutting BoA, just as the terrestrial landscape is separated into watersheds," the team explains in their paper. "A BoA is generally not gravitationally bound because the relative motion of distant points within it is usually dominated by cosmic expansion."

Is Western civilization on the verge of collapse?

Is Western civilization on the verge of collapse?

    Tuesday, August 06, 2024   No comments

Human civilization has been a topic for historians, sociologists, philosophers, thinkers, and scientists throughout history. The discussion of the rise and fall of human civilization often leads to a look back at the work of the Muslim thinker Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun who is often described as the originator of the theory of cyclicality of human civilization. Although Ibn Khaldun did not take credit for such idea, and many modern researchers have concluded that that idea was not Ibn Khaldun's original idea, it is nonetheless part of his work and his contribution to the field of social history. Related to this topic, we examine and re-present ideas by a scientist from the modern time, one who used statistical data to predict social trends.

On the New Scientist website, Peter Valentinovich Turchin, a Russian-American scientist specializing in mathematical modeling and statistical analysis, presents his analysis of the decline of Western civilization and its causes by studying mathematical patterns in complex systems and applying them to history. Turchin believes that Western societies are rapidly moving toward the brink of destruction, and that they must make important decisions to avoid this collapse. Here are some of  Turchin's ideas and assertions. 

The collapse of civilizations seems to have been a natural and recurring pattern in the development of cultures throughout history, with a period of decline and weakness often following a period of prosperity. The closest examples of this are what happened to the ancient Egyptian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Mayan civilization (one of the ancient civilizations that emerged in the region of Central and South America*), and the Qing Dynasty in China, which experienced periods of prosperity followed by collapse, and this seems to be the inevitable path of any civilization.

Today, Western civilization may face the same fate, as there are clear signs of a variety of crises, including widening economic inequalities, political divisions, violent conflicts, and environmental disasters. Some observers see this as a sign of a “multiple global crises” that pose a serious, perhaps existential, threat to contemporary societies.

More than two decades ago, I predicted that this was the end of things, based on studying mathematical patterns in complex systems and applying them to history. Using this approach, I discovered that violent political upheavals follow certain time cycles, one peaking every 50 years or so, and the other peaking every two or three centuries.

The Racist History of Psychology

The Racist History of Psychology

    Thursday, July 18, 2024   No comments

“The general wards were abysmal, and there were only five doctors, four of them foreigners, who were not licensed to practice in the United States, and did not have credentials as psychiatrists in their home country. The fifth psychiatrist was in charge, and he was clearly unfamiliar with modern psychiatry, and looked like he was running a plantation in some southern state.” This was part of the report written by Inspector Marilyn Rose, when she participated in a 1967 committee to inspect psychiatric hospital facilities, especially in Alabama and Mississippi, where black people with mental health problems, or what would now be known as psychopaths, were cared for.

Yes, they were treated separately, in institutions that did not allow them to mix with the white population, within the context of racial segregation and the persecution of blacks that the United States of America has known since its founding, until recently, and the face of psychiatry was ugly in that matter, and at that time.

In the history of the establishment of psychiatry, many psychological experiments and studies have sought to distort and oppress black people. In fact, many pioneers of psychology who have made significant contributions to the field of psychology have been involved in supporting this racism and strengthening its control over their scientific and research work.

From the facilities of psychiatric hospitals in the states of Alabama and Mississippi, we move to the College of Education at Stanford University, specifically in the early twentieth century, where Lewis Madison Terman, one of the most prominent American psychologists, worked. He later became famous as a pioneer of educational psychology, and among his achievements was the development of a special test to measure a person's intelligence level, called the "Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test".

Terman was one of the prominent scientists who supported the idea of ​​"improving" the race, and he was a member of a well-known organization at that time called "Human Improvement", in addition to holding the position of President of the "American Psychological Association".

In his work on the IQ test, Terman made several statements that were later deemed extremely racist against people of color, including saying that black people were "innately dull" and that "the children of these groups [of color] should be separated into special classes and given concrete and practical instruction...they cannot handle abstract matters." Terman also said that "from the eugenics point of view, 'blacks' pose a serious problem because of their unusually prolific breeding."

Black people, "They're not supposed to get sick"

This racist school of psychology believed that black people were immune to mental illness and would not fall into the clutches of depression or other neurotic symptoms, all because of their special psychological and mental makeup, or in Terman's words because of their "innate dullness," as he claimed.

Dr. Uchenna Umeh, a former doctor in San Antonio, Texas, and a woman of Nigerian origin living in the United States, decided to leave her job in 2018 to focus on public lectures, with the aim of spreading and raising awareness about mental disorders among people of African descent in the United States.

Dr. Oceana explains that for many years, many black people believed that they were supposed to be free from mental health problems, based on the bizarre idea of ​​John Galt, a physician and medical director of the Williamsburg, Virginia, Asylum, published in 1848, that black people had a natural immunity to mental illness.

Galt based his earlier view on the assumption that Africans were enslaved, that slaves owned nothing, had no role in free enterprise, and did not participate in civic affairs or engage in political activities such as voting or holding office. Based on this assumption, the risk of developing mental health problems would be higher among whites who are exposed on a daily basis to the effects of political activities, the competition for ambition and advancement within entrepreneurial and commercial communities, and the resulting stresses that accompany gains or crises that follow losses.

Samuel Cartwright was one of those doctors who argued that slavery was the “natural state” of African Americans, adding that they benefited from hard labor and were unable to care for themselves outside of this system. Cartwright also claimed that people of color displayed a “childish” simplicity of feeling and a lack of complex emotional processes, which he saw as characteristic of their entire race.

Based on Cartwright’s view that slavery was the “natural” state of black people, deviation from this “natural” state was a mental disorder. This is exactly what Cartwright explained in 1851, when he published a report in which he invented two “psychic” disorders, the symptoms of which included the tendency of “slaves” to escape or resist hard labor, and these disorders were classified as “mental diseases,” and he called them “draeptomania” and “dysaesthesia aethiopica.”

Hospital administrators used Cartwright’s ideas to justify their medical opinions that there were no real psychiatric treatments for African American patients, that they did not feel the same way as whites, or that they were not suitable for things like psychoanalysis or group therapy. This is why black patients were segregated into separate, substandard hospital facilities, and were put to work in the hospital laundry, kitchen, and fields.

“My family, my friends, my acquaintances, my patients, their parents, their grandparents, we are all black, so we are supposed to never have to struggle with mental health issues,” says Nigerian-American physician Uchenna Umeh. “Unfortunately, we ourselves have bought into this narrative [of Galt and others like him], that mental health issues do not exist in our race, and we have unconsciously spread this narrative to our detriment.”

During her work, Dr. Uchenna noticed a significant increase in depression and suicidal ideation among her patients. “Suicide rates among African American children ages 5 to 11 have increased steadily since the 1980s and are now twice as high as those of their Caucasian peers,” she says. “Black men accounted for 80 percent of African American suicide attempts in 2015. And those numbers are rising.”

In order to understand the practice of racism and its presence in psychiatry historically and sequentially, let us tell you the roots of the matter from the beginning. Specifically, between 1861 and 1865, the period in which the "Civil War" took place between the northern and southern states of America, and during which the American field of "psychology" was officially institutionalized, where programs, departments, academic degrees, societies and schools specialized in the study of psychology were established and created.

This war is considered one of the worst bloody events that the American Federal Union has been exposed to, and one of its main causes was the "slavery/servitude" system. At a time when the northern states wanted to restrict the scope of slavery and put in place laws that would achieve this, the southern states were expanding slavery, and even relying primarily in their economic system based entirely on agricultural slave labor.

The Civil War freed nearly four million slaves across the South, but this did not lead to more enlightened medical attitudes toward the treatment of African Americans. Quite the opposite, as psychiatry continued its racist sectarianism.

In 1895, Dr. Powell, the superintendent of the Georgia State Asylum, as it was called, noted an alarming increase in mental health problems among blacks in his state. Powell attributed this increase to the three decades of freedom that had preceded the emancipation of slaves, as a large segment of them had not been able to adjust to the openness and consequences of the Civil War. Powell seemed to see slavery and freedom as biologically innate and inevitable.

Powell argued that when former slaves gained their freedom, they were unable to control their desires and emotions, which in turn led to abuses that led to higher rates of mental health diagnoses.

Of course, Powell did not see the truth, which was right in front of him, but his racism prevented him from going to the root of the problem, as the reason for the increase in mental health problems among blacks goes back to a long history of living under extremely poor social and economic conditions, including poverty, racial discrimination, and the specter of violence that may have reached the point of execution, but he chose the easiest way; he said that black people obtaining freedom is the root of their mental and psychological problems.

Colonial Psychology

When the American Psychological Association was founded in 1892, it was headed by Granville Stanley Hall and had 31 white male members elected to its membership. At that time, formal psychology was primarily white-led and heavily relied on the then-popular theory of evolution. The Western psychological field gave its full support to the idea of ​​"white" male superiority, as a result of its findings, and focused its entire attention on demonstrating individual differences among different racial groups.

In 1904, G. Stanley Hall, the founding president of the American Psychological Association, published his theory of "adolescence." In it, he described the First Nations, the indigenous peoples of the Americas before the time of Christopher Columbus, as living in a phase of "human childhood," and that their adults were more like the adolescents of white children or adolescents.

Hall developed colonial "civilization programs" specifically designed to meet what he saw as the needs of the First Nations. These programs provided the moral framework for colonialism, and the result was the cultural genocide of different peoples, with the glamorous goal: we are doing this in order to civilize them and subordinate them to the Western model, under the rule of the white man.

But after World War I, a reverse movement occurred, as some of the sons of poor peoples rushed to the United States and other rich countries of the North, and unprecedented numbers of immigrants arrived, accompanied by a surge in anti-immigration sentiment, and here the theory of "eugenics" emerged, using the principles of genetics. Here, African Americans, who were said to suffer from mental "deficiencies", faced a new and more serious threat to their safety.

The science of "eugenics" was based on two parallel principles: encouraging births among people with a "good" genetic stock, and sterilizing those who were not fit to reproduce, including individuals suffering from mental illness, as well as the poor and those accused of sexual abuse. The focus was on sterilizing African Americans. In California alone in the 1930s, African Americans, who represented 1% of the population, accounted for 4% of the victims of legal sterilization.

Many pioneers in psychology advocated a social agenda that sought to limit the number of children born to people classified as “less fit,” and people of color classified as “less fit” were considered inferior in Western society in terms of knowledge and common law.

Sir Francis Galton, one of the early leaders of psychology, was the first to coin the term "eugenics". Galton is considered one of the icons of "race science", a branch of science that studies the origins and characteristics of different peoples. The "eugenics theory" played a major role in supporting the idea of ​​racial distinctions in their personal and psychological abilities.

His book "Hereditary Genius", published in 1869, was considered the first scientific attempt to study "genius and greatness", and was seen as one of the early literature that contributed to the study of individual differences and psychological measurements in European and American psychology. He concluded that the average intellectual level of the "Negro race" is two degrees lower than that of the white man.

Francis’s book was a major reference and was widely used by the first generation of psychologists who founded the American Psychological Association, the first recognized psychology journals, and the most influential research programs. Many prominent academics were implicated in popularizing notions of white superiority not only in intelligence, but also in moral, cultural, and psychological terms.

In the journal Psychological Review, just one year after the first issue of the American Psychological Review, a study was published showing that samples of so-called First Nations and blacks sometimes had “faster” reaction times than whites, which they interpreted as indicating a greater degree of haste and impulsiveness in their responses, due to their propensity for violence. The study’s authors argued that the quick response was due to “primitiveness,” and that the more developed intelligence of the white participants led to deeper thinking and slower responses.

Many psychologists continued to support the idea of ​​white superiority in both public and academic outlets. For example, in 1922, psychologist James Rowland Angell, president of Yale University, gave a series of lectures describing the hierarchy of races, espousing white supremacy, and discussing the low intelligence of blacks.

In 1922, the Journal of Comparative Psychology published a study linking the degree of “white blood” in First Nations peoples to higher IQ scores. In 1933, more studies were published arguing that First Nations children were more dishonest than white children.

Perhaps the logical question here is: Was the research or results conducted at the time falsified in order to prove that whites were superior to their colored counterparts? The answer: Perhaps not, but the study itself and the results drawn from it were conducted through a mindset dominated by the idea of ​​white evolution and superiority, so that even if the research and studies came back with the opposite results that people of color were superior in some aspect, this result would be viewed and formulated within an interpretive framework from the position and reference of white superiority.

This is what happened in 1897, when a study conducted on black and white children concluded that colored children had stronger memories, and that they generally outperformed white children on a memory task.

Here, although the results of the study were positive for black people, they were formulated in a completely negative way, as the author attributed the strength of black children’s memories to the ability of their “primitive brains” to remember more than others, and described black children as deficient in thinking.

Racism controls psychiatric diagnosis

Psychiatrists’ preconceived biases against people of color have led to unscientific diagnoses that do not adhere to professional standards. A 2023 study found a significant disparity in the prevalence of schizophrenia spectrum disorders (seeing imaginary figures and hearing voices) between people of color in the United States and Canada and whites in those same countries. Black people are diagnosed with these disorders at higher rates than other groups.

The consequences of this scientifically inaccurate diagnosis are exacerbated by punitive societal effects throughout life, including increased stigma, reduced opportunities, poorer care, and increased likelihood of criminalization and arrest. Stereotypes associated with psychotic symptoms may put these patients at risk for police violence and premature death.

The unfortunate side of this is that, as new data show, the differences in diagnosis rates are unlikely to be genetic, but rather societal in origin. Overdiagnosis of schizophrenia spectrum disorders is largely due to racial biases among clinicians.

The study showed how misunderstandings of race confound attempts to diagnose and treat schizophrenia spectrum disorders in black individuals, in addition to implicit biases preventing black patients from receiving appropriate treatment from primarily white mental health providers, which the study described as a “lack of empathy” among doctors for their patients.

In the same context, Dr. Uchenna Umeh, in her article published on the “blackpast” website, questioned the validity of the diagnosis of children detained in psychiatric hospitals and mental health disorders, as she explained that asylum authorities often praised the abilities and skills of these children, which raises many questions about the validity of their mental illness diagnosis in the first place.

Here Uchenna says: “If these black people were truly ‘lost their minds’, how were they able to perform continuous, hard work that required special skills, while white patients were often too ‘weak’ mentally to work?!”

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) explains that there is a long history of discrimination and racism in mental health care. People with mental illness have always been discriminated against, denied full participation in society, labeled dangerous and criminal, and many were held in institutions that were more like prisons designed to punish than hospitals designed to treat.

This discrimination was bad for anyone with a mental illness or disorder, but it was especially bad for the most marginalized, including African American men, women, and children. Some centers in states like Alabama and Mississippi segregated patients on racial grounds, and even claimed that it was “medically” necessary to separate patients on racial grounds.

In the 1960s, a series of federal legislation and lawsuits attempted to end this discrimination. The Community Mental Health Centers Act (CMHA) was passed to improve the provision of treatment and care for people with mental illness, or what is now known as mental disorders. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed, which included a provision that made it illegal for any facility or service receiving federal funds to discriminate on the basis of race.

At the time, some states still had segregated treatment policies, which put them at risk of losing funding and receiving no financial support to provide medical care. Instead of accepting these provisions and finding ways to end segregation, states including Alabama and Mississippi chose to fight the federal government in court. They claimed that they had the right to administer state services without federal interference, and that it was “medically” necessary to separate patients on the basis of race.

As with research, experiments, and statistics, doctors based their view of the need for “segregated” treatment on a long history of racist ideas in psychiatry. And Dr. John Galt, who made the preposterous claim that black people shouldn’t have mental health problems, was not the only one whose medical opinion was driven by racism. Since the early 19th century, some psychiatrists have argued that African Americans were biologically “inferior” to other people and races.

Here, Dr. Ochena explains the conditions of treatment for black people with mental health problems: “Most pre-Civil War mental health facilities in the South typically denied treatment to enslaved people.”

It seems clear that mental health experts believed that housing blacks and whites in the same facilities would negatively impact the recovery of whites. Housing conditions in Southern asylums for the few who accepted enslaved people were disastrous compared to white patients. Blacks were often housed outdoors near these institutions or in local jails. There were accounts of some black children being housed in asylum grounds.

"Apology"

Finally, after all this long history of injustice and oppression in mental health and psychiatric institutions for black people, the American Psychiatric Association in 2021 acknowledged and apologized for all of the above. In January, the 176-year-old association issued its first-ever apology for its racist past. It acknowledged what it called the profession's "horrific" past actions, committed its board of directors to identifying, understanding, and correcting past injustices against black people, and pledged to adopt new anti-racist practices aimed at ending this long history of discrimination.

However, some critics saw this apology as insufficient, and doubted that any real positive step would take place, noting that the American Medical Association issued a similar apology in 2008 for its "racist" history of more than 100 years of promoting or accepting racial inequality negatively, and excluding African American doctors, without offering anything actual or realistic after this apology.

Critics inside and outside the APA have made clear that the association needs to overcome significant obstacles to fix its problems and address its racial equity issues in a meaningful way, including the association’s diagnostic biases, the persistent shortage of black psychiatrists, and a physical structure that tends to exclude people who cannot pay for services out of pocket. This may make the crisis of racism in psychiatry too deep and entrenched to be resolved with an “apology” and a “promise” of reform. This was confirmed in the summer of 2020, when Dr. Ruth Shim, director of cultural psychiatry and professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California, Davis, left the APA, explaining her departure in a tone that expressed her frustration and frustration and in the important statement that “institutional racism is an existential crisis in psychiatry.”

  - Arwa Nagib

Can knowledge be IP'ed? Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft’s new AI division, seems to think No.

Can knowledge be IP'ed? Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft’s new AI division, seems to think No.

    Wednesday, July 03, 2024   No comments

IA is another turning point in history, and its main impact may not be the kind of information IA will generate, but access to knowledge; it may put front and center the legal protections of content under patent and copyright laws that distinguished the modern civilization. This is the case because the civilization that preceded the Western civilization, the Islamic civilization, has always treated knowledge as an accretive body of knowledge that produced by all and belongs to none. The Islamic view can be gleaned from observing Muslim thinkers’ disinterest (or lack of care) in meticulous refencing and footnoting. They don’t claim they are the creator of ideas, and they don’t think anyone else had; knowledge is possible only when it is open and accessible so that it is checked and improved by the collective. Ibn Khaldun, the last classic thinker of the Islamic civilization closed his remarkable work, al-Muqaddima, by inviting future generation of thinkers to assess his and improve on it; not by taking credit for any ideas that he put forth to the exclusion of all the contributions of generations before him.

AI brings this matter front and center: AI depend on digital knowledge that it can process to provide answers. If that knowledge is shielded, AI potential will be limited. Here is a starting point for this conversation.

Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft’s new AI division, recently said in an interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross that anything you publish on the internet becomes ‘freeware’ and that it can be copied and used to train AI models.

“With respect to content that is already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the 90s has been that it is fair use. Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. That has been freeware, if you like. That’s been the understanding.”

Archaeologists unearth the largest cemetery ever discovered in Gaza and find rare lead sarcophogi

Archaeologists unearth the largest cemetery ever discovered in Gaza and find rare lead sarcophogi

    Saturday, September 30, 2023   No comments

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinian workers in the Gaza Strip have found dozens of ancient graves, including two sarcophagi made of lead, in a Roman-era cemetery — a site dating back some 2,000 years that archaeologists describe as the largest cemetery discovered in Gaza.

Workers came upon the site last year during the construction of an Egyptian-funded housing project near Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip. Since then, crews have worked to excavate the 2,700-square-meter (2/3 acre) site with the support of French experts.

Now, what was once an inconspicuous construction lot — surrounded by a grove of nondescript apartment buildings — has become a gold mine for archaeologists looking to understand more about the Gaza Strip.

 read more >>

The origins of covid-19: An appeal for an objective, open, and transparent scientific debate about the origin of SARS-CoV-2

The origins of covid-19: An appeal for an objective, open, and transparent scientific debate about the origin of SARS-CoV-2

    Saturday, September 17, 2022   No comments

The scientific community is now unconvinced of the natural path of covid19 (from nature to human) and, for the first time, signal that that a research path is a possibility. This shift brings to focus the danger of biological and chemical weapons that many states continue to engage in.

This scientific shift was amplified recently by a new report from the prestigious British scientific journal, The Lancet. Here is quote from the report bout this significant development:

 

A research-related origin is plausible. Two questions need to be addressed: virus evolution and introduction into the human population. Since July, 2020, several peer-reviewed scientific papers have discussed the likelihood of a research-related origin of the virus. Some unusual features of the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence suggest that they may have resulted from genetic engineering,

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 an approach widely used in some virology labs.

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 Alternatively, adaptation to humans might result from undirected laboratory selection during serial passage in cell cultures or laboratory animals,

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 including humanised mice.

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 Mice genetically modified to display the human receptor for entry of SARS-CoV-2 (ACE2) were used in research projects funded before the pandemic, to test the infectivity of different virus strains.

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 Laboratory research also includes more targeted approaches such as gain-of-function experiments relying on chimeric viruses to test their potential to cross species barriers.

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A research-related contamination could result from contact with a natural virus during field collection, transportation from the field to a laboratory,

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 characterisation of bats and bat viruses in a laboratory, or from a non-natural virus modified in a laboratory. There are well-documented cases of pathogen escapes from laboratories.

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 Field collection, field survey, and in-laboratory research on potential pandemic pathogens require high-safety protections and a strong and transparent safety culture. However, experiments on SARS-related coronaviruses are routinely performed at biosafety level 2,

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 which complies with the recommendations for viruses infecting non-human animals, but is inappropriate for experiments that might produce human-adapted viruses by effects of selection or oriented mutations.

Overwhelming evidence for either a zoonotic or research-related origin is lacking: the jury is still out. On the basis of the current scientific literature, complemented by our own analyses of coronavirus genomes and proteins,

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 we hold that there is currently no compelling evidence to choose between a natural origin (ie, a virus that has evolved and been transmitted to humans solely via contact with wild or farmed animals) and a research-related origin (which might have occurred at sampling sites, during transportation or within the laboratory, and might have involved natural, selected, or engineered viruses).

 Read more from the source... An appeal for an objective, open, and transparent scientific debate about the origin of SARS-CoV-2

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Tehran: EU proposal to revive nuclear talks may be 'acceptable'

Tehran: EU proposal to revive nuclear talks may be 'acceptable'

    Friday, August 12, 2022   No comments

Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran news agency quoted a prominent Iranian diplomat as saying that the European Union's proposal to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement "could be acceptable, if it provides reassurance" on Tehran's main demands.

The European Union said on Monday it had submitted a "final" text after four days of indirect talks between US and Iranian officials in Vienna.

A senior EU official said no further changes could be made to the text, which has been under negotiation for 15 months. He said he expected a final decision from both parties within "very, very, very few weeks."

The news agency quoted the Iranian diplomat, who was not identified, as saying that Tehran is reviewing the proposal, adding, "The proposals of the European Union can be acceptable if they provide Iran with reassurance regarding protection (measures), sanctions and guarantees."

The Islamic Republic has sought guarantees that no future US president would withdraw from the deal if it was revived, as former President Donald Trump did in 2018 and reimposed US sanctions on Iran.

However, President Joe Biden cannot make such strong assurances, because the agreement is a political understanding rather than a legally binding treaty.

Washington has said it is ready to quickly reach an agreement to revive the nuclear deal, based on European Union proposals.

Iranian officials said they would pass on their "other views and opinions" to the European Union, which is coordinating the talks, after holding consultations in Tehran.

Assistant for Political Affairs in the Office of the Presidency of the Iranian Republic, Mohammad Beheshti, commented on the recent Western media leaks on issues related to the safeguards system in the nuclear agreement, saying that these leaks show which party is suffering from pressure and needs a quick agreement.

Jamshidi said that he did not want to comment on the content or authenticity of the text published in the media on issues related to the safeguards system at the IAEA, but these coordinated media leaks show which party is under pressure and needs an immediate agreement, and that the study of the issue is continuing.

It is noteworthy that some media outlets, as well as some social media, have published news on issues related to the safeguards system and the proposed text of the agreement between Iran and international powers on the nuclear deal.

The Wall Street Journal had claimed that it had seen the text and added that the European proposal included making major concessions to Iran aimed at ending the IAEA investigation.

The Wall Street Journal claimed on Thursday that the European Union had proposed making major concessions to Iran in order to revive the nuclear deal.

According to the newspaper, the proposal submitted by the European Union indicates that Iran is expected to answer the International Atomic Energy Agency's questions "with a view to clarifying them," and adds that if Tehran cooperates, the other parties in the talks will urge the agency to close the investigation.

An EU spokesman has previously stated that the text submitted after recent talks in Vienna is in keeping with the usual confidentiality in such diplomatic processes, he said.

A Shocking 99% of Us Are Now Breathing Unhealthy Air, WHO Warns

A Shocking 99% of Us Are Now Breathing Unhealthy Air, WHO Warns

    Thursday, April 07, 2022   No comments

We often take the air we breathe for granted, but new data reveals that the pollutants behind millions of preventable deaths now taint the air most of us breathe at unhealthy levels.

"Air pollution has an impact at a much lower level than previously thought," says World Health Organization technical officer Sophie Gumy, in reference to WHO's recently updated air quality guidelines.

Based on an analysis of air pollution data covering more than 6,000 cities in 117 countries, WHO says 99 percent of the world's population now breathes air that does not meet the updated safety guidelines. This covers 80 percent of the world's urban areas.

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Built by an Unknown Culture, This Is The Oldest Sun Observatory in The Americas

Built by an Unknown Culture, This Is The Oldest Sun Observatory in The Americas

    Tuesday, March 29, 2022   No comments

Long before the Incas rose to power in Peru and began to celebrate their sun god, a little known civilization was building the earliest known astronomical observatory in the Americas.

While not quite as old as sites like Stonehenge, these ancient ruins, known as Chankillo, are considered a "masterpiece of human creative genius", holding unique features not seen anywhere else in the world. 

Based in the coastal desert of Peru, the archaeological site famously contains a row of 13 stone towers, which together trace the horizon of a hill, north to south, like a toothy bottom grin.

Apart from this remarkable structure, known as the Thirteen Towers, the ruins of the observatory also include a triple-walled hilltop complex called the Fortified Temple and two building complexes called the Observatory and the Administrative Center. 

Completed over 2,300 years ago and abandoned in the first century of the common era, the site has remained a mystery to travelers for centuries.

Only when official excavations began at the turn of the 21st century, did archaeologists realize what they were looking at.

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Historians expose early scientists' debt to the slave trade

Historians expose early scientists' debt to the slave trade

    Monday, November 25, 2019   No comments

In a world or research and discovery, where endeavors cost money, it is unlikely that any scientist would climb the ladder of recognition without profiting from business schemes that are exploitative. When we think of Isaac Newton today, people think of the theory of gravity. But very few people think of Newton's connections to the upper echelons of London’s financial world, which tied to the transatlantic trade in enslaved people. This article take a look at the connection between science and wealth, and there sources of wealth.

The Facebook Experiment: Quitting Facebook Leads to Higher Levels of Well-Being

The Facebook Experiment: Quitting Facebook Leads to Higher Levels of Well-Being

    Thursday, December 22, 2016   No comments

Taking a break from Facebook can boost emotional wellbeing and life satisfaction, with the effects particularly pronounced among people who “lurk” on the social network without actively engaging with others, a study suggests.

The research by the University of Copenhagen showed the effects of quitting for a week were also strong among heavy users and those who envied their Facebook friends, suggesting that people who pore irritably over the posts of others may benefit the most.

The report’s author, Morten Tromholt, from the university’s sociology department, said the findings suggested that changes in behaviour – for example, heavy users reducing their time spent on Facebook, or lurkers actively engaging – could yield positive results.

Abstract:
Most people use Facebook on a daily basis; few are aware of the consequences. Based on a 1-week experiment with 1,095 participants in late 2015 in Denmark, this study provides causal evidence that Facebook use affects our well-being negatively. By comparing the treatment group (participants who took a break from Facebook) with the control group (participants who kept using Facebook), it was demonstrated that taking a break from Facebook has positive effects on the two dimensions of well-being: our life satisfaction increases and our emotions become more positive. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that these effects were significantly greater for heavy Facebook users, passive Facebook users, and users who tend to envy others on Facebook.

To cite the study:
Tromholt Morten. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. November 2016, 19(11): 661-666. doi:10.1089/cyber.2016.0259.

European companies are providing the terrorist organization, ISIL, Internet access by satellite dish

European companies are providing the terrorist organization, ISIL, Internet access by satellite dish

    Friday, December 04, 2015   No comments

No terror organization uses the Internet as successfully when it comes to marketing itself and recruiting supporters as Islamic State (IS) does. But how is it able to do so given that the group operates in a region where telecommunications infrastructure has been largely destroyed?

The answer to this question is an extremely problematic one for Europe, for it is European companies that provide the terrorists with access to the platforms they use to spread their propaganda. It remains unclear whether the companies knowingly do so, but documents obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE show that they may very well know what's going on. And the documents show that the companies could immediately cut off Islamic State's Internet access without much effort.

If you need to get online in Syria or Iraq, the technology needed to do so can be purchased in the Hatay province -- a corner of Turkey located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Syrian border. In the bazaar quarter of the regional capital of Antakya, peddlers hawk everything from brooms and spices to pomegranates, wedding dresses, ovens, beds and all kinds of electronics. Antakya has served as a crossroads for numerous trade routes for thousands of years. Wares continue to flow through the region's relatively porous borders even today.


Thousands of dishes have been installed in the region allowing users to access the Internet by satellite. There has been a huge surge in recent years in the satellite Internet business. Instead of the usual landline cable connection, all one needs is a satellite dish with a transmission and reception antenna and a modem. The result is top-speed Internet access, with downloads at a rate of 22 Megabits per second and uploads of 6 Megabits.

Accessing the Internet by satellite is easy, but it isn't cheap. The equipment needed costs around $500 in Syria right now. On top of that are the fees charged by Internet service providers, which run at about $500 for six months for a small data package and customer service provided by email.

...

 Why Don't Companies Take Action to Stop It?

Given the high investments costs of the required infrastructure, the general business practice of the satellite operators is to gain as many customers as quickly as possible. Although most satellite operators do not publish their internal figures, industry analysts say it costs between €300 million and €400 million to build a satellite and to launch it into orbit. Costs associated with operating a satellite must also be factored in. There's an additional aspect as well: The average operating life of a satellite is only 15 years, meaning that the investment must be recouped as quickly as possible.

Does that explain why satellite operators might be willing to accept the fact that they provide the infrastructure needed by a terrorist group to communicate, disseminate their propaganda and possibly plan attacks? For the satellite operators, it's technically relatively easy to cut access to networks. Using the web portal OSS, it only takes one click to eliminate access. In cases where they harbor suspicions, operators would also have the technical ability to see what kind of data is be transmitted or received by the satellite dishes.

It may be true that the companies simply want to used their technology to increase the reach of television stations -- in the way recently described by Eutelsat CEO Michel de Rosen as he presented an award sponsored by his company to SPIEGEL TV (ironically enough for a documentary film about the Islamic State). Or perhaps the companies simply want to pursue their business goals without checking precisely to see who is profiting from the services they provide.

Or perhaps the companies have full knowledge of who is using their services and are sharing that information with intelligence services. When asked, neither the companies nor intelligence services were willing to comment.

That would mean that intelligence services have been listening in for years, even as IS continued growing in strength. It wouldn't be difficult for intelligence services to tap the connections either, given that the ground stations used to feed the satellite signals into the cable networks are also located in European countries, including Cyprus (Avanti) and Italy (Eutelsat).

Possible connections linking Eutelsat with Syria could be particularly uncomfortable for the French government, which indirectly holds a 26-percent share in the satellite operator through the state-owned Bank Caisse des Dépôts.

source

Obama gives a speech about the Iran nuclear deal (Full text)

Obama gives a speech about the Iran nuclear deal (Full text)

    Wednesday, August 05, 2015   No comments

President Obama is continuing his push for the Iran nuclear deal, giving a speech at American University. Here is a complete transcript of his remarks.

OBAMA: Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

Thank you so much. Thank you. Everybody, please have a seat. Thank you very much.

I apologize for the slight delay; even presidents have a problem with toner.

(LAUGHTER)

It is a great honor to be back at American University, which has prepared generations of young people for service and public life.

I want to thank President Kerwin and the American University family for hosting us here today.

Fifty-two years ago, President Kennedy, at the height of the Cold War, addressed this same university on the subject of peace. The Berlin Wall had just been built. The Soviet Union had tested the most powerful weapons ever developed. China was on the verge of acquiring the nuclear bomb. Less than 20 years after the end of World War II, the prospect of nuclear war was all too real.


With all of the threats that we face today, it is hard to appreciate how much more dangerous the world was at that time. In light of these mounting threats, a number of strategists here in the United States argued we had to take military action against the Soviets, to hasten what they saw as inevitable confrontation. But the young president offered a different vision.

OBAMA: Strength, in his view, included powerful armed forces and a willingness to stand up for our values around the world. But he rejected the prevailing attitude among some foreign-policy circles that equated security with a perpetual war footing.

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Presidential News Conference on Iran Nuclear Deal -- JCPOA

Presidential News Conference on Iran Nuclear Deal -- JCPOA

    Wednesday, July 15, 2015   No comments

President Obama held a news conference on the Iran nuclear agreement (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action -- JCPOA). The deal limits the country’s nuclear ability for more than a decade in return for the lifting of international sanctions and an eventual lifting of the arms embargo. The president talked about why the deal is in the national security interest of the United States and addressed some of the criticisms of the agreement. He also answered

several questions on topics not related to Iran, including criminal justice reform, his upcoming trip to Africa, and whether he should revoke the Medal of Freedom from Bill Cosby.