Latest news with #JewishOnliner
The National
04-04-2025
- Politics
- The National
Jewish Onliner: AI-powered site that resulted in pro-Palestine Yale scholar's suspension addresses criticism
A scholar of international law is continuing her fight against Yale University following a suspension she said was prompted by website Jewish Onliner, which uses artificial intelligence to expose "anti-Israel movements'. The site claimed Helyeh Doutaghi was connected to the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, which the US Treasury Department in 2024 designated a 'sham charity' and an 'international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist organisation'. In a statement posted to X, Ms Doutaghi called the report untrue and said Jewish Onliner was using AI as a weapon 'to target students, faculty and organisers who dare to speak out against genocide, systemic starvation and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians'. She also said Jewish Onliner's report falsely accused her of being a terrorist. A petition calling on Yale University to reinstate Ms Doutaghi has so far received more than 1,100 signatures and she has retained legal counsel amid the suspension. Not much is known about the origins of Jewish Onliner, and efforts to learn about the owner of the site through the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) do not yield many results. According to Icann, the registrant contact information listed for the site is Perfect Privacy LLC, a VPN provider. The URL is privately registered through the limited liability company with a mailing address in Jacksonville, Florida. The site was registered on December 12, 2024. Jewish Onliner describes itself as 'your online hub for insights, investigations, data and exposes about issues impacting the Jewish community. Empowered by AI capabilities". Stories on the site often lack by-lines and there is an emphasis on anonymity. "The reason for the anonymity is pretty straightforward – and unfortunately necessary in today's climate, where anti-Semitism has reached truly disturbing levels,' Jewish Onliner said in an email to The National, adding that those who operate the site are from various countries. "Given the nature of the Jewish Onliner initiative and the kind of work we're trying to do – often investigating individuals and organisations with troubling connections – keeping things anonymous is the best way for all of us on the team to stay protected and avoid potential personal risks." As for Ms Doutaghi's accusations that the report on her is false, the site is not backing down. 'She is not necessarily refuting claims of membership in Samidoun – she is merely rejecting the characterisation of herself as a terrorist,' a follow-up article read. 'Despite multiple opportunities to do so, Ms Doutaghi has yet to explicitly deny her membership in Samidoun.' In recent weeks, the use of AI by institutions and governments as a tool to target perceived enemies has come under increased scrutiny. A report in Axios suggested the US State Department could use AI potentially to revoke the visas of international students accused of supporting Hamas. The State Department told The National it 'is committed to protecting our nation and its citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process'. Craig Smith, a partner at the Boston-based Lando and Anastasi law firm, said the State Department's potential use of AI was problematic. 'In addition to the free speech issues, the use of artificial intelligence tools without transparency is concerning. AI tools are only as good as the models they are based on and how they are trained,' he told The National, referring to the potential for bias. "AI tools are effective at summarising known information but interpreting the meaning of that information is more difficult." In an email to The National, Jewish Onliner defended its use of AI: "While AI plays a significant role in enhancing and accelerating our work and content, we want to emphasise that it's only a tool." The email added that content on the site is based on open-source data and articles are ultimately done by the site's human fact-checking team. "We understand the concern about AI bias and the potential for missing nuance, which is why we make sure our human team carefully oversees content before publication," the email read. "We believe the quality of our content speaks for itself and should assuage any concerns or criticism about the use of AI." Jewish Onliner also said it had "interesting plans" to expand the types of content on the site but did not elaborate. Other endeavours and similar sites using AI and techniques like data-scraping have come under criticism. Several weeks after the Israel-Gaza war began in 2023, the social networking platform LinkedIn sent a cease-and-desist letter to website accusing it of breaching the site's policies. The letter came amid criticism that unfairly highlighted various users who used hashtags such as #FreeGaza and #PrayForPalestine, and mentioned their place of employment. 'Using automated tools to scrape LinkedIn violates our terms of service,' a representative for the Microsoft-owned site told The National last year. 'And we work to notify sites when they do.' is no longer active. Meanwhile, Yale's suspension of Ms Doutaghi shows no sign of being overturned. 'In response to allegations about potential unlawful conduct, the appropriate process is to place an employee on a temporary administrative leave while a review is conducted to understand the facts of the matter. Such an action is never initiated based on a person's protected speech," said Alden Ferro, a representative of Yale Law School. "We take these allegations extremely seriously and immediately opened an investigation into the matter to ascertain the facts. Helyeh Doutaghi's short-term position as an associate research scholar with the LPE Project expires next month. Until then, she has been placed on an immediate administrative leave pending the outcome of this investigation.'
Middle East Eye
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Yale scholar says she has been terminated over AI-powered accusation
A Muslim Iranian scholar at Yale said on Tuesday that she has been terminated by the institution after being barred from campus two weeks ago. The move was prompted by allegations on a lesser-known, largely AI-powered news site called Jewish Onliner, which said that Doutaghi had ties to the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, better known as Samidoun. The group was sanctioned in the US and declared a terrorist group in Canada in October 2024. Helyeh Doutaghi's lawyer told Middle East Eye at the time that Yale appeared to be retaliating because of Doutaghi's pro-Palestinian speech. On Tuesday, in a statement posted to X, Doutaghi said she "will not legitimise a process driven by Zionist actors", referring to the pro-Israeli lawyer the university hired to question her. Yale, she added, has not "presented a single shred of evidence demonstrating any unlawful connection or act on my part. I have been terminated based on unproven allegations". "The legal technologies developed to manage and punish Global South actors who challenge Western oppression and domination are increasingly being redeployed inward, turning their gaze onto scholars, activists, organizations, and movements that critique the US or Israeli regimes," Doutaghi wrote.
The National
26-03-2025
- Politics
- The National
Creators of AI-powered site address criticism from suspended Yale scholar
Future Technology Legal scholar suspended from Yale University over Jewish Onliner report says site is using artificial intelligence as a weapon against pro-Palestine activists
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Yale Law Scholar Suspended After AI Calls Her a Terrorist
Since the first publicly available large language model (LLM) ChatGPT hit the scene in November of 2022, the tech has exploded. AI has infested search engines, social media platforms, customer service portals, job interviews, and news articles. Despite being marketed as "artificial intelligence," LLMs are decidedly not intelligent on their own, but rather crafty algorithms made to look smart, thanks to clever engineering and no small amount of your data. Evidently that's a lesson Yale administrators have yet to learn, as demonstrated by the suspension of international law scholar Helyeh Doutaghi last week based on the whims of an LLM. Doutaghi, an outspoken advocate of Palestinian rights, began her job as deputy director of Yale's Law and Political Economy project in 2023. Her work was cut short when the university's admin banned her from campus and put her on administrative leave, following accusations that she was a "terrorist" by Jewish Onliner, a far-right blog that describes itself as "empowered by AI capabilities." In a recent investigation into far-right AI bots, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently noted that Jewish Onliner has been linked to Israeli disinformation campaigns, using LLM-powered bot accounts to troll and harass users whose posts it disagreed with. In this case, the blog had accused Doutaghi of membership in Samidoun, an international advocacy group organizing to raise awareness of Palestinian political prisoners. Though Israel has designated Samidoun a terrorist group — an accusation it shares with organizations like Defense for Children International and the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association — the US has not. Regardless, the AI-powered blog's accusation noted the scholar's speaking engagement on panels it alleged were sponsored by Samidoun, indicting her as a member of the group. Doutaghi, for her part, denied that she was a member in a statement on Mondoweiss. "I was given only a few hours' notice by the administration to attend an interrogation based on far-right AI-generated allegations against me," the statement reads, "while enduring a flood of online harassment, death threats, and abuse by Zionist trolls... Just a few hours later, [Yale] placed me on leave, revoked my IT access — including email — and banned me from campus." The swiftness with which AI-powered allegations were leveraged against Doutaghi is raising concern for free speech, especially in light of Donald Trump's executive order targeting antisemitism, which is seen by some as a gateway to criminalizing pro-Palestinian speech. It also comes as pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was hauled out of his Columbia University dorm by plainclothes ICE agents last Saturday, as part of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's "Catch and Revoke" campaign, which uses AI to scrub social media for the expression of anti-Israel sentiment. Despite not being charged with a crime, Khalil — a lawful permanent resident of the US — was ripped from his pregnant wife and whisked to a federal detention facility in Louisiana, leaving his whereabouts unknown to his family and attorneys for over 24 hours. Failing to declare formal charges or evidence of criminal activity, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that Khalil was arrested "in support of President Trump's executive orders prohibiting antisemitism." It's a bone-chilling precedent for free speech in the US, harkening back to the second red scare, when union organizers, peace activists, and civil rights leaders were forced out of their jobs and stalked by law enforcement on the basis of ideology alone. The difference? This time, AI's helping call the shots. More on AI: Police Department Testing AI-Powered Detective on Real Crimes
Middle East Eye
13-03-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Muslim scholar of international law barred from Yale University after AI-powered accusation
In October 2023, the Law and Political Economy project at the prestigious Yale Law School (YLS), one of the most influential and respected academic and legal institutions in the country, brought on a young Iranian Muslim scholar of international law to become deputy director of the team. Then last week, that deputy director, Helyeh Doutaghi, was barred from campus altogether. The move was prompted by allegations on a lesser-known, largely AI-powered news site called Jewish Onliner, which said that Doutaghi had ties to the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, better known as Samidoun. The group was sanctioned in the US and declared a terrorist group in Canada in October 2024. 'The initial email from the general counsel had specifically linked to the Jewish Onliner article and said that was the trigger of the investigation, so there's no dispute about that,' Eric Lee, Doutaghi's lawyer, told Middle East Eye on Thursday. Doutaghi suggested Yale had barely carried out an investigation. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters 'Rather than investigate the source of these allegations first, the nation's 'top law school' accepted them at face value, and shifted the burden of proof from the accuser to the accused, treating me, prima facie, as guilty until proven otherwise,' she wrote in a statement posted to X. The Jewish Onliner describes itself as an "online hub for insights, investigations, data, and exposes about issues impacting the Jewish community. Empowered by AI capabilities." According to an investigation by the Israeli paper Haaretz, the site is linked to FactFinderAI, a programme not only prone to mistakes, but also linked to pro-Israel activists. A vocal critic of Israeli policy, Doutaghi denied all the allegations against her, and called Yale's actions 'a blatant act of retaliation against Palestinian solidarity - a violation of my constitutional rights, free speech, academic freedom, and fundamental due process rights'. "I am being targeted for one reason alone,' she added. 'For speaking the truth about the genocide of the Palestinian people that Yale University is complicit in.' 'Capitulating' Despite large-scale student protests in 2024, the institution refused to divest from companies that produce the weapons that the US provides to Israel. David Ring, the general counsel brought in by Yale to interview Doutaghi, has ties to the US State Department and US weapons manufacturers, and she did not feel he could conduct a 'fair' interview. 'It is reprehensible that YLS would appoint a counsel who profits from the machinery of Palestinian death to 'interview' an employee about their public anti-genocide and pro-Palestine positions,' she wrote on X. Lee, Doutaghi's lawyer, told MEE that the interview never ended up taking place, because Ring would not permit a 'religious accommodation" for the day, given Doutaghi was fasting for Ramadan and had been enduring online harassment ever since the Jewish Onliner published its article. 'She'd been dealing with an immense amount of abuse, and was overwhelmed by the situation,' he said. By the close of the business that day, 'I received the email notifying us from Yale's general counsel that she had been put on administrative leave and on the grounds that we had failed to cooperate with their investigation, which was ridiculous,' Lee said. 'It is completely capitulating to Trump's effort to establish a dictatorship and eviscerate academic freedom' - Eric Lee, lawyer Doutaghi is just one of many academics in the US targeted for their advocacy against Israel and its war on Gaza - a practice by Zionist groups that long preceded the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel. But she may be the first to be immediately suspended after an obscure AI-run site makes claims that she has links to terrorists. 'I am a scholar of international law and geopolitical economy. My research engages… the forms of knowledge produced in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to obscure and shield US military operations from accountability,' she wrote on X. Her lawyer told MEE that the very project she was hired to help direct 'was ostensibly established to investigate the source of the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump'. 'It is completely capitulating to Trump's effort to establish a dictatorship and eviscerate academic freedom. It is perhaps not surprising. Nonetheless, it should shock people that not a single professor at Yale has stood up publicly to oppose what the university is doing.' Lee said he is now requesting that Yale reinstate Doutaghi, give her back access to her email account, and also issue a public statement 'restoring her reputation, which has been damaged by their actions'.
