MIL-OSI Parser

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Luiz Leomil, PhD candidate, Political Science, Carleton University

The United States government recently announced it will allow companies to resell Venezuelan oil to Cuba amid a severe fuel shortage on the island. Earlier this year, the U.S. cut off oil shipments to Cuba from its main supplier, Venezuela, after American forces abducted that country’s president.

Cuba’s ambassador to Canada, Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz, recently told Canadian MPs on the House foreign affairs committee that the U.S. was “suffocating an entire people.” He was referring to the decades-long American embargo against Cuba, which has become even more severe in recent weeks.

In his remarks, Diaz also urged Canada to follow through on a promised aid package to Cuba. Canadian officials have committed to sending an additional $8 million, which will be channelled through international aid organizations operating in Cuba.

This represents a modest and indirect commitment, especially in comparison with the initiatives undertaken by other countries. Mexico has sent more than 2,000 tons of direct humanitarian aid while continuing diplomatic talks on resuming oil supplies, and other countries in the Global South are reportedly preparing similar, more tangible responses.

In January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a widely praised address in Davos, Switzerland, that many saw as an apt diagnosis of the failings of the U.S.-led “rules-based international order.” In it, he urged middle powers such as Canada to act with greater honesty and consistency, applying the same standards to allies and rivals so that states can co-exist in an international order that actually functions as advertised.

The Davos speech set high expectations. These are now, however, fading as Carney’s government wavers in sending robust aid to the people of Cuba and in denouncing the most recent unlawful coercive measures imposed by the U.S.

Explaining restraint

Canada has crafted a longstanding image as one of the largest humanitarian contributors in the world. It also has historical and economic ties with Cuba. Canada was one of the few American allies to maintain diplomatic relations with Cuba following the 1959 revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed regime.

Cuba is Canada’s top market in the Caribbean, and Canada is the Cuba’s largest source of tourists as well as its second-largest source of direct investment. Canada is also among the overwhelming majority of United Nations member states that regularly vote in support of resolutions condemning the U.S. blockade.

However, three factors help explain the gap between the Canadian government’s rhetoric and its actions.

First, geopolitical constraints are significant. Like other middle powers, Canada’s freedom to act in open defiance of the U.S. is tightly limited. Canada’s fundamental economic and security interests are reliant on the U.S., and this is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Canada is open to a high risk of American retaliation if it chooses to aid Cuba. Such risk is even more heightened under the Trump government, which has demonstrated a willingness to use coercive measures against Canada.

Read more:
3 ways Canada can navigate an increasingly erratic and belligerent United States

Second, domestic politics shape foreign-policy choices. Contrary to simplified assumptions in classical international relations theory, state behaviour is not determined only by systemic incentives but also by domestic constituencies and how important particular issues are to segments of the population.

In Canada today, there is no broad public movement demanding robust government aid to Cuba. By contrast, there are vocal constituencies mobilized in support of Ukraine that keep assistance to that country politically salient and prioritized.

Third, officials in Global Affairs Canada have long favoured taking what they regard as a pragmatic approach toward Cuba. That posture helps explain Canada’s reluctance to provide direct, high-profile assistance during acute shortages or crises.

Canada did not intervene during Cuba’s 2024 blackout crisis, for example. On the other hand, the same approach has also led Canada to be less critical of political issues in Cuba, unlike its firmer stance toward the Venezuelan or Nicaraguan governments.

This approach has generally allowed Canada to preserve a baseline level of diplomatic engagement and safeguard economic and strategic interests. In recent years, this posture has become partly institutionalized within Global Affairs Canada and is regarded as the most workable and sustainable policy line.

Aid by proxy, unfulfilled commitments

In recent years, Canada has preferred to send assistance to Cuba through international aid organizations, but these efforts are unlikely to be sustainable given the scale of the humanitarian needs the country may face.

It remains unclear whether Canada will adopt a more robust strategy, departing from this established approach, to support Cubans. While facing their own constraints, it’s more likely that leadership in countries from the Global South, including Mexico, China and Brazil, will take action.

The outcome is twofold. Not only is the Canadian government failing to live up to a humanitarian image it has promoted on the world stage, but the international community also applauded a Davos speech that was both conflicting and somewhat disingenuous.

At times in his speech, Carney was realistic and incisive, exposing the weaknesses in the United States-led rules-based order. At key moments, however, Carney suggested that Canada still supported those rules and was willing to defend them through a more honest and equitable approach. Here, the tension between diagnosis and prescription was never resolved.

When it comes to the U.S. blockade of Cuba, Canada’s options are widely perceived as limited, and the country is seen as being forced to “go along to get along,” as Carney said in Davos. However, the blockade also presents Canada with an opportunity to showcase how middle powers can chart their own course.

Carney also said middle powers have the “the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.” If Canada continues to equivocate on Cuba, Carney’s speech will come to reflect a familiar pattern in Canadian foreign policy: rhetorical candour about global inequities combined with reluctance to challenge them.

Luiz Leomil does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How Canada-Cuba relations must navigate the dangers of the U.S. embargo – https://theconversation.com/how-canada-cuba-relations-must-navigate-the-dangers-of-the-u-s-embargo-276875

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Hugh Gusterson, Professor of Anthropology & Public Policy, University of British Columbia

Following horrifying revelations about Jeffrey Epstein’s systematic sexual assaults and trafficking of underage girls, the United States Department of Justice has been forced to publicly release millions of the late sex offender’s emails and texts.

I am an anthropologist of elites who conducted field work among the secretive community of nuclear weapons scientists. The Epstein files opens a window into the even more closely guarded world of capitalism’s 0.1 per cent.

Anthropologists study people through what renowned American anthropologist Clifford Geertz called “deep hanging out” — mingling informally and taking notes on what we see. We call this “participant observation.”

People like Bill Gates and Elon Musk do not welcome anthropologists bearing notebooks. But the Epstein files, where the global elite are talking to each other in private — or so they thought — open a peephole into their world.

Read more:
Andrew’s arrest: will anything like this now happen in the US? Why hasn’t it so far?

And what do we find there?

On a mundane level, we can see how they spend sums of money most of us can only dream about.

For example, we learn that in 2011, billionaire Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of the New York Post and U.S. News and World Report, spent US$219,000 on his collection of horses, $50,000 on skiing and $86,000 to insure his private art collection.

But the Epstein files are most interesting for what they reveal about a web of gifts, favours and financial transactions that knit together what would otherwise be a disparate sprawl of bankers, developers, tech bros, media personalities and high-profile academics.

A web of gifts and favours

A century ago, French anthropologist Marcel Mauss argued in The Gift that, across cultures, gifts are a way to create relationships of solidarity and obligation.

“No gift is given but in the expectation of a return,” he wrote.

This is evident in Epstein’s relationship with Leon Black, at the time the billionaire CEO of Apollo Global Management and chairman of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Epstein claimed his advice on Black’s finances saved the billionaire as much as $2 billion. In exchange, Black steered at least $158 million to Epstein and gave $10 million to one of Epstein’s charities, Gratitude America.

Black then made Epstein a trustee of the Debra and Leon Black Foundation, and Epstein invested in a startup where two of Black’s sons were on the board.

Epstein also helped Black manage his $2.8 billion art collection. He advised on selling individual works at a profit, getting paid by museums for loaning artworks and using art as collateral for bank loans.

Incidentally, one of the lessons I take from this is that billionaires do not look at art the way I do. I may buy (modestly priced) artworks because I like to look at them. Billionaires like Black and Zuckerman see them as investments.

Favours could also be exchanged, zig-zag style, among several people to create network solidarity. Epstein asked Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, to make sure Woody Allen’s daughter was admitted, while also gifting Allen $10,000 worth of shirts and luxury underwear.

Brad Karp, head of the Paul Weiss law firm, asked Epstein if he could intercede with Allen to get a job on his movie set for his son. In turn, Epstein asked Karp for help with a woman’s visa, and Karp steered $158 million from his client, the aforementioned Leon Black, to Epstein.

Collecting academics

When there is an asymmetry among the resources of two people, gifts lead to subordination, not reciprocity. Mauss referred to this as the “poison in the gift.”

We see this in Epstein’s transactions with academics whose research he bankrolled. He collected academics the way his billionaire friends collected artwork — Botstein, president of Bard; Larry Summers, president of Harvard; Lawrence Krauss, celebrity physicist; Dan Ariely, organizational psychologist; and the evolutionary psychologists and biologists Steven Pinker, Robert Trivers, Stephen Kosslyn, Martin Nowak, Joscha Bach and Nathan Wolfe to name a few.

Epstein was drawn to these academics because of his interest in eugenics, which he needed them to legitimize. He thought Black people were intellectually inferior and wondered if they could be improved through genetic modification. In a typo-ridden message, he texted German cognitive scientist Bach:

“Maybe climate change is a good way of dealing with overpopulation.. The earths forest fire… too many people, so many mass executions of the elderly and infirm make sense… if the brain discards unused neurons, why shold society keep their equivalent.”

And he talked about creating new superhumans by seeding batches of women with his own sperm.

After spending days reading Epstein’s messages to his associates, it reveals something essential about the contemptuous way they view the rest of the world.

One of them, lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler, texted Epstein that she would “get gas at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, will observe all of the people there who are at least 100 pounds overweight … and will then decide that I am not eating another bite of food for the rest of my life out of fear that I will end up like one of these people.”

Hopefully, most of the world is not like them.

Hugh Gusterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What the Jeffrey Epstein files reveal about how elites trade toxic gifts and favours – https://theconversation.com/what-the-jeffrey-epstein-files-reveal-about-how-elites-trade-toxic-gifts-and-favours-275727

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Christy Zhou Koval, Professor, Smith School of Business, Queen’s University, Ontario

Self-control has long been regarded as one of the strongest predictors of success. Most of us can picture that colleague who never misses a deadline, volunteers for extra projects and keeps everything running smoothly.

Research shows individuals who can resist short-term temptations in pursuit of long-term goals tend to fare better across nearly every aspect of life.

As a researcher who has spent years studying workplace dynamics, I set out to examine what happens to these highly disciplined individuals. What I found was surprising: the very trait that makes them valuable — their high levels of self-control — can also come with hidden costs.

Self-control as a social signal

My colleagues and I conducted six studies examining how people treat others based on their perceived self-control. We defined perceived self-control as a person’s beliefs about someone else’s level of self-control, such as resisting temptations, staying focused and persisting in the pursuit of goals.

Across our studies, self-control functioned as a powerful social signal.

In one study, participants read about a student who either resisted the temptation to purchase music online (demonstrating self-control) or gave in to it, then imagined working with this student on a group project. Participants expected substantially higher performance from the student who had demonstrated self-control, even though resisting an impulse to buy music had nothing to do with academic ability.

We replicated this pattern in a workplace context. Participants read about an employee who either stuck to a savings goal or struggled with it. Even though saving money has nothing to do with job performance, participants expected the self-controlled employee to have an accuracy rate roughly 15 per cent higher than the employee who showed less self-control.

In another experiment, we asked people to delegate proofreading work among student volunteers. Participants consistently assigned about 30 per cent more essays to volunteers they believed had high self-control, compared to those with moderate or low self-control, even when all volunteers were described as academically qualified.

The hidden costs of high self-control

A particularly revealing set of findings suggests that observers typically underestimate the cost of self-control.

In one study, we asked participants to complete a demanding typing task requiring a high degree of self-control. Observers who were told that someone had high self-control estimated the task required less effort. But those actually doing the work found it equally draining regardless of their self-control levels. This perceptual gap is problematic because it demonstrates that exerting self-control is physically costly.

Recent research shows people will pay money to avoid having to exercise self-control. In experiments where dieters could pay to remove tempting food from their presence, most did; and they paid more when stressed or when temptation was stronger.

High self-control individuals are doing more cognitively demanding work than their peers. They are exercising self-control more frequently. And because they do it well, observers don’t see the effort required. Research suggests that people with high self-control are perceived as more robot-like, as if their discipline means they don’t struggle like everyone else.

In one of our studies using 360-degree feedback data, we analyzed archival survey data collected from MBA students and their coworkers and supervisors.

Employees who were higher in self-control reported making more personal sacrifices and feeling more burdened by coworkers’ reliance. Their colleagues, however, did not recognize this burden. While they acknowledged the sacrifices these individuals made, they did not perceive the strain they were under.

The spillover into home life

The more capable you seem, the more you’re asked to carry. For high self-control individuals, that reputation can become a fast track to burnout in the office and at home.

In an experiment with romantic couples, participants with high self-control reported feeling more burdened by their partners’ reliance on them. This sense of burden reduced their overall relationship satisfaction.

When people high in self-control are overwhelmed at home because partners assume they can handle everything, that exhaustion can carry over into work. Similarly, when high self-control individuals are overburdened at work, it can diminish their energy and presence in their personal relationships.

This creates a vicious cycle in which highly self-controlled individuals are asked to do more at both work and at home, and the cumulative demands can result in burnout.

Burnout is a widespread issue in the workplace. A Deloitte survey found that 77 per cent of professionals have experienced burnout at their current job.

Breaking the cycle

Our findings revealed a problematic cycle: the more self-control individuals were perceived to have, the more others expected of them and the more responsibility they were assigned.

For people with high self-control, our findings underscore the importance of setting boundaries in the workplace. Saying yes to everything is unsustainable. Because disciplined employees often make demanding tasks appear effortless, colleagues and loved ones may underestimate how much they are asking of them.

For managers, our findings suggest the importance of distributing responsibilities fairly and checking in with employees about workload. Managers should ask explicitly about their employees’ capacity rather than inferring it from past performance.

Self-control remains one of the most valuable traits a person can have. But when we assume it comes effortlessly to those who demonstrate it, we risk burning out the people we depend on most. Acknowledging the hidden burden is necessary if we want capable people to thrive.

Christy Zhou Koval does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Self-control is a strength, but being too good at discipline can backfire – https://theconversation.com/self-control-is-a-strength-but-being-too-good-at-discipline-can-backfire-275634

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor, The Conversation

This article was first published in The Conversation UK’s World Affairs Briefing email. Sign up to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.

It would be wrong to say Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, four years ago this week, came out of the blue. For months there had been worrying reports of a huge build-up of Russian troops on Ukraine’s border. Through the winter of 2021/22, Moscow scoffed at suggestions it was planning to invade its neighbour as “alarmist”. But at the same time the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was making aggressive noises, issuing demands for Nato to pull its troops back from its eastern front and calling for a ban on Ukraine’s accession to the western alliance.

And on February 21, he made a speech in which he called Ukraine “an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space” which had been taken over by a neo-Nazi “puppet regime” that should be removed.

Still, it was a shock to wake in the early hours of Thursday February 22 to learn that Putin had launched what he called a “special military operation … to protect people who have been subjected to abuse and genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years”. Images began to emerge of tanks and armoured vehicles with the now-familiar “Z” (a Russian victory symbol) streaming across the borders from Russia and Belarus, the latter the shortest route to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

Four years and about 1.8 million casualties later, Russia has gained about 75,000sq km of territory, about 12% of Ukraine to add to the 7% it had occupied since it annexed Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014. The war has developed into a “meat-grinder” – Russia’s advances have been glacially slow and very costly, an estimated 78 casualties per square kilometre in 2025.

But if, as many insist, the war on the battlefield itself has slowed into something resembling a stalemate, the geopolitical shifts that have accompanied the conflict have been considerable – particularly since Donald Trump was elected for a second term as US president, promising to end the conflict, “in a single day”. Of course, like many of his campaign promises this has proved to be pie in the sky, but the US president’s cordial relations with Putin, his decision to curtail US financial aid to Kyiv and his apparent support for many of the Russian president’s war aims have come as an unpleasant surprise for Ukraine and its allies.

Another big feature of this war, the biggest armed conflict in Europe since 1945, has been the huge technological changes we’ve seen employed on the battlefield. Stefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko call it the “drone war”, as both sides have become heavily reliant on unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs) for both combat and reconnaisance. Wolff – an expert in international security at the University of Birmingham – and Malyarenko – of the National University Odesa Law Academy – have been regular contributors to our coverage of the conflict since February 2022.

This week they are part of a panel of experts analysing the four years of conflict, alongside Wolff’s colleague Mark Webber as well as Scott Lucas of University College Dublin, both also regular contributors. They have looked into the key issues raised by the four years of conflict, including the way the war has been prosecuted, the involvement of the US president and the potential for China and/or Europe to break the stalement: Beijing potentially abandoning its support for Moscow or Europe vastly increasing its support for Ukraine in an attempt to tip the balance in Kyiv’s favour.

Read more:
Ukraine war: after four surprising years, where does it go next? Experts give their view

It’s hard to imagine any reasons to be cheerful about the conflict. But optimists may take heart at the prospect of trilateral talks in March between Ukraine, Russia and the US. Realistically the prospect of the talks achieving anything significant seem pretty bleak at present. Russia continues to take Ukrainian territory and even if these are snail’s pace advances, Putin will consider that they add leverage to Russia’s negotiating position. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, will consider that the cost of this slow pace of advance, both in terms of casualties and the damage the war is now certainly doing to Russia’s economy, are good reasons to keep going. Surveys suggest he is supported in this by the majority of Ukrainians.

In the end it will probably be sheer exhaustion that forces and end to the conflict, writes Alex Titov of Queen’s University Belfast. Without the wholehearted support of the US president, Ukraine cannot defeat Russia on the battlefield. And, despite the massive advantage in manpower, Russia is really beginning to feel the
effects of this war of attrition – both on the health of its economy and its ability to attract enough new recruits to replace the casualties who are being either killed or wounded faster than they can be replaced. For this reason alone, Titov sees chinks of light in what is a very dark time.

Read more:
Ukraine: after four years of war, exhaustion on both sides is the main hope for peace

Let’s share Titov’s cautious optimism for the present. Say a peace deal is struck sometime soon, Ukraine is faced with a massive task of rebuilding. The most recent World Bank estimate is that this will take more than a decade and cost around US$588 billion (£435 billion). The biggest and most immediate question facing Kyiv and its allies, writes Olena Borodyna, a senior geopolitical risks advisor at ODI Global is how this can be funded.

The consensus is that Ukraine will need to find ways to incentivise private-sector investment in reconstruction, something for which Borodyna sees varying amounts of enthusiasm for from Ukraine’s partners and friends. Part of the problem is the volatile security situation, which represents a considerable risk moving forward. Add to that the corruption which has dogged Ukraine since well before the invasion and the incentive to invest looks very shaky indeed.

Another big problem, she writes, is that so many Ukrainians left the country since February 2022, which has caused acute labour shortages. The challenge of persuading people to return will be paramount and here again, the lack of security will work against Ukraine.

There is also the strong possibility that political developments in Europe could affect the level of support for Kyiv, with elections in countries such as France, Italy and Denmark. There are already several EU members which are pretty openly hostile to the notion of supporting Ukraine, including Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary – the latter is already trying to obstruct a vital €90 billion (£78 billion) to help cover Ukraine’s needs for 2026 and 2027.

Peace deal or not, it’s a long and hard road ahead for Ukraine.

Read more:
The three big challenges facing Ukraine when the war ends

But adversity can often be inspiring. Hugh Roberts, an expert in language and culture at the University of Exeter, has been charting the upsurge in Ukrainian poetry since the invasion. He has unearthed two poets who have come to represent this cultural renaissance: Yaryna Chornohuz and Artur Dron’.

Both have served in Ukraine’s armed forces. Chornohuz is still a drone operator of the Ukrainian Marine Corps in the frontline city of Kherson. Dron’ signed up in February 2022, four years before he reached the age of conscription. He’s now a veteran following serious injury. The words of both are available in English and both have been recognised with major literary awards in their home country.

Roberts gives us some of their most moving lines.

Read more:
Lines from the frontline: the poet soldiers defending Ukraine

Death in Mexico

Also this week, we heard of the death of Mexican drug kingpin Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also known as El Mencho, in what was reportedly a massive military operation involving what appears to have been hundreds of troops and the killing of 74 people, including 25 national guard officers.

Repercussions will continue for some time, writes Raul Zepeda Gil, an expert in crime and conflict at King’s College London. The apprehension or killing of a cartel boss often causes a spike in violence as other criminal groups try to cut in on the cartel’s operations. There also likely to be a bitter and violent power struggle within El Menche’s organisation, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

Read more:
Mexico may pay a steep price for the killing of Jalisco cartel leader El Mencho

There has already bee speculation that Oseguera may be succeeded by his wife, Rosalinda González Valencia. Otherwise known as “La Jefa” (the boss), she is alleged to control the cartel’s finances, although apart from a five-year jail spell for money laundering, there has reportedly never been enough evidence of the wrongdoing of which she is suspected to charge her with anything else.

Adriana Marin, who specialises in terrorism, organised crime, and transnational threats in Latin America, examines the prominent role some women have played in organised crime gangs.

Read more:
La Jefa: the wife of slain drug kingpin El Mencho and the women at the heart of the cartels

Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

– ref. Four years of bitter conflict in Ukraine – https://theconversation.com/four-years-of-bitter-conflict-in-ukraine-277000

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Amy Hume, Lecturer In Theatre (Voice), Victorian College of the Arts, The University of Melbourne

Few actors are imitated as often as Michael Caine. Even Michael Caine has imitated Michael Caine.

His voice has been used in birthday card greetings and been the source of jokes in various comedy sketches. It is synonymous with a certain type of Britishness.

Last week, artificial intelligence company ElevenLabs announced Caine has licensed his voice to the company. It will be available on their ElevenReader app, which allows you to listen to any text in a voice of your choosing, as well as being available on their licensing platform, Iconic Marketplace.

To understand why Caine’s voice is so iconic (and wanted by AI) we need to look deeper at what people actually hear in it.

Why do people love listening to Michael Caine?

Caine was born in London in 1933. His mother was a cook and a cleaner, and his father worked in a fish market. Caine speaks with a Cockney accent, setting him aside from most other actors of his generation.

Cockney hails from London’s East End and is often associated with London’s working class – think Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady, the Artful Dodger from Oliver!, or Bert the Chimney Sweep from Mary Poppins (although Dick van Dyke’s accent is not the most accurate, it’s still recognisably Cockney).

Traditionally, you were said to be a true Cockney if you were born within earshot of the Bow Bells – the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow church on Cheapside.

That distinctiveness matters because the accent carried heavy class meaning in mid-20th century Britain.

We don’t hear many contemporary examples of Cockney. Accents change and evolve over time and it has gradually been replaced by a new dialect called Multicultural London English (MLE).

While most actors of his age acquired a “stage accent” – known as Received Pronunciation (RP) – Caine made a conscious decision to hold onto his working-class roots and not change his accent. Instead, he built his career on it.

He once said,

I could’ve gone to voice lessons, but I always thought if I had any use […] I could fight the class system in England.

His accent became cultural capital and helped him land roles in Alfie (1966), The Italian Job (1969) and Jack Carter (1971). By the 1970s, he was a British cultural icon.

What do we hear when we hear celebrity voices?

Hearing a person’s voice is never just about acoustics. We hear social meaning: culture, identity, character and story.

Sociolinguist Asif Agha coined the term “enregisterment” to describe how a way of speaking becomes publicly recognised as signalling particular social types and values.

Over time, Caine’s voice has become enregistered as a recognisable Cockney accent associated with East London and historically linked to a working-class identity. Hearing his voice activates a socially shared register of meanings attached to Cockney.

This contrasts with, say, Queen Elizabeth II, whose accent was enregistered with royalty, prestige and wealth.

Another useful concept here is what sociolinguists sometimes call “dialectal memes”: the images and character types that circulate around particular accents. These memes are transmitted through books, television, film, and even celebrity figures themselves.

Caine has been a carrier of Cockney dialectal memes in popular culture.

When you look at it this way, AI voice licensing commodifies not just the acoustic properties of Caine’s voice, but the enregistered social meanings audiences recognise in it.

What AI licensing means for Caine

ElevenLabs describes its Iconic Marketplace platform as “the performer-first approach the entertainment industry has been calling for”. Through licensing, actors maintain ownership of their voices in a digital, AI landscape.

Caine licensing his voice theoretically ensures he receives credit and compensation, and prevents unauthorised clones appearing elsewhere.

It is possible this is exactly the direction actors want AI to go in – for use of their voice to be controlled by themselves, with clear credit and payment.

However, this model is not without risk to the actor or the listener. We should ask: do we need to hear something in Caine’s voice? Will we process information differently or hear it with more authority if it’s delivered in the voice of a cultural icon like Caine?

Giving power over to machines

People who admire Caine may want him to read to them. Some will be willing to pay for it. We need to remain conscious of the decisions we are making here.

In the 1960s, computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum, creator of the world’s first chatbot, Eliza, warned about the dangers of forming relationships with machines. He was alarmed to see users confiding in Eliza and responding to the chatbot as if it actually understood them, even when they knew it did not.

What happens if an AI voice is not actually generic, but recognisably tied to a real human?

An actor’s likeness and voice may be protected with licensing, but their human self is not. That creates a pathway to attachment or even infatuation.

Caine is not just licensing his voice, but also the Cockney persona audiences recognise in it. Suddenly, a machine speaks with the authority of a real human behind it.

Amy Hume does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Michael Caine’s voice is iconic. Why would he sell that to AI? – https://theconversation.com/michael-caines-voice-is-iconic-why-would-he-sell-that-to-ai-276506

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Nicholas Morieson, Research Fellow, Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University

Artificial intelligence (AI) is at a very Chinese time in its life. Recent moves from Chinese AI labs are throwing the dominance of American “frontier labs” such as Google and OpenAI into question.

Last week ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, released an AI video-generating tool called Seedance 2.0 which produces high-quality film-like clips from text prompts, with a casual disregard for copyright concerns. This week Anthropic, the US company behind the chatbot Claude, said three Chinese AI labs created thousands of fake accounts to harvest Claude’s answers in a practice called “distillation” which can be used to improve AI models.

These events have led to suggestions that China may be gaining the upper hand in the battle to dominate AI. So, is China winning the “AI race”?

Cheap, widely used tools

While most advanced frontier models are still made by American companies, China is pushing hard to develop cheap, widely used AI tools, which could create global dependence on Chinese platforms.

Reuters reports the industry is bracing for a “flurry” of low-cost Chinese AI models, with Chinese systems repeatedly driving usage costs down.

What’s the plan? China’s official AI policy documents suggest China sees AI as “a new engine for building China into both a manufacturing and cyber superpower”, and “a new engine of economic development”.

Since 2017, China has recognised that the technology is at the centre of “international competition”. “By 2030,” one key policy document says, China’s AI “technology and application should achieve world-leading levels, making China the world’s primary AI innovation center”.

This focus on becoming the dominant player in AI helps explain why Chinese firms are pushing hard on price. If you can make your AI cheap enough, you might just make it globally ubiquitous.

Cost helps determine who adopts AI first, and which models are first implemented in software and services. Even if the United States remains ahead on most elite benchmarks, Chinese products could still become globally influential if they are widely used and widely depended upon.

High-tech soft power

But China does not present its AI technology to the world as only benefiting itself. Instead, it’s pitched as a contribution to humanity.

A 2019 statement of “governance principles” from a national AI governance expert committee argues that AI development should enhance “the common well-being of humanity” and “serve the progress of human civilization”.

These phrases portray AI as a technology that advances the human story itself, rather than only serving Chinese interests. It suggests Chinese AI leadership is good for everyone.

This is an example of Chinese soft power. Tools such as Seedance may threaten Hollywood’s business model, but they do something else too. High-quality, low-cost generative media can spread quickly.

If Chinese systems become widespread, they can influence creators, developer habits, and platform dependencies, especially in non-Western markets that need affordable tools and may dislike American tech dominance.

The spread of the ‘Chinese model’

For liberal democracies such as the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, the growth of Chinese AI tools creates a strategic headache. It will not be easy to manage security concerns about Chinese technology while avoiding technological isolation if Chinese AI tools become widely adopted.

There is a darker side to China’s AI tools. US think-tank Freedom House describes China as having the world’s “worst conditions for internet freedom”, and suggests other nations are now “embracing the ‘Chinese model’ of extensive censorship and automated surveillance”.

In 2022, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued rules for the algorithms that curate news feeds and short video platforms. Providers are required to “uphold mainstream value orientations” and “vigorously disseminate positive energy”.

These algorithms are important because they shape what people see and what is suppressed. As a result, these rules suggest the Chinese government is deeply concerned with controlling information across its social media platforms and AI tools.

A dilemma for third parties

Not every Chinese AI tool is a propaganda weapon. Rather, China is building world-class AI technology within an authoritarian system that prioritises the control of information.

This means China’s ability to make generative AI commercially powerful will likely also, despite its claims about serving “human civilisation”, make censorship and narrative management cheaper and easier.

China’s business and soft-power model is a much bigger story than just Seedance’s cavalier attitude towards copyright or Anthropic’s concerns about intellectual property. China’s goal is to build AI tools that rival those created by America’s tech giants, and to make them inexpensive and adopted globally.

For other countries, this may create a dilemma. Once a technology becomes a standard, it can be difficult to justify using a different product.

The question that remains is whether liberal democracies can adopt China’s low-cost products without drifting into dependence on systems shaped by an authoritarian political model.

Nicholas Morieson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How China is betting cheap AI will get the world hooked on its tech – https://theconversation.com/how-china-is-betting-cheap-ai-will-get-the-world-hooked-on-its-tech-276878