Josephine Lulamae (she/her)

Reporter

Photo: Julia Bornkessel, CC BY 4.0

Josephine Lulamae reports on the latest developments in the field of AI. Prior to that, she worked as a paralegal and journalist in Berlin, Bristol, and Mytilene. Her work has been published in outlets including The Daily Beast, Coda Story, The New Republic, Gizmodo, Popula, Slate, and Quartz. She has a law degree from BPP University and a Bachelors degree in Philosophy from Cambridge University.

Articles for AlgoritmWatch

Story4 April 2023

AI surveillance rumors: gay adult content creators face sanctions

Early last month, many gay fetish accounts were charged for distributing online porn to minors, a criminal offense in Germany. Many suspect an automated tool, but no one knows for sure.

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Foto von Daniel Lloyd Blunk-Fernández auf Unsplash

Story28 March 2023

In Germany, a daycare allocation algorithm is separating siblings

To allocate this year's limited number of daycare slots, the city of Münster used an algorithm with a known limitation: it did not direct siblings to the same school. Parents were not pleased.

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Foto von Adam Birkett auf Unsplash

Story23 February 2023

A dollar for your face: Meet the people behind Machine Learning models

To train machine learning models, tech companies are hiring a Germany-based service provider to buy selfies and pictures of ID cards from underpaid gig workers, whose rights are often disregarded.

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Foto von Mika Baumeister auf Unsplash

Story12 January 2023

Does a simple algorithm help against domestic violence?

Police officers in the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania predict the likelihood of a future incident of domestic violence using ODARA, a Canadian tool with unproven reliability. It helps cooperation with social workers, but does not work all the time.

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Photo by Greg Bulla on Unsplash

Story26 October 2022

Visa-free travelers to the EU will undergo “risk” checks from 2023. Who counts as risky remains unclear

Two EU agencies, Frontex and eu-LISA, are developing ETIAS, a new system that automatically assesses the “risk” posed by some travelers. The sorting algorithm will be trained in part with past decisions by border guards.

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CPAC 2022 con Hermann Tertsch y Victor Gonzalez | | flickrCC0 1.0

Story10 October 2022

Italian neofascists considered building an authoritarian AI to solve unemployment. They are far from alone.

The neofascist party Brothers of Italy proposed to use Artificial Intelligence to assign young people mandatory jobs. The idea has a lot in common with “algorithmic solutions” to unemployment in other EU countries.

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Photo by Jared Brashier on Unsplash

Story23 September 2022

Greece plans automated drones to spot people crossing border

The Greek Migration Ministry announced it would use EU-funded drones with “Artificial Intelligence” to track people seeking refuge at the border. Promises that they will also improve search and rescue operations ring hollow. 

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Joannii, Adobe (edited)

Story8 September 2022

Details of the Doctolib contract shed light on hiccups in Berlin’s vaccination drive

New documents indicate how the city of Berlin let Doctolib manage vaccination appointments at the height of the pandemic, when glitches left some patients waiting months for their shot.

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Image by Ritupon Baishya auf Unsplash

Story5 September 2022

The BAMF’s controversial dialect recognition software: new languages and an EU pilot project

"Pretty much hopeless", says computer linguist from the center where BAMF buys its training data.

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Philipp Schmitt & AT&T Laboratories Cambridge / Better Images of AI / Data flock (faces) / CC-BY 4.0
Philipp Schmitt & AT&T Laboratories Cambridge / Better Images of AI / Data flock (faces) / CC-BY 4.0

Story3 August 2022

War Crimes OSINT, Harassment, Doxxing Police and Protesters: Face Recognition for Everyone

With FindClone and similar services like PimEyes and Search4faces, a privacy "nightmare scenario" is already a reality. What are the (mis)use cases for face recognition tools that anyone can pay to use?

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