Thursday, August 29, 2019


Subtle, but something. Not sure this was a very important database. Probably more like a list of shipping in the Gulf.
US Waged Cyberattack on Database Used by Iran to Target Tankers: NY Times
The United States staged a secret cyberattack in June against a database used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to plot attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf, The New York Times reported.
The newspaper, quoting senior US officials, said the June 20 attack had degraded the ability of Iran's paramilitary force to target shipping in the Gulf.
… It said the database targeted in the attack was used by the Guards to choose which tankers to target.




Too late to avoid a GDPR fine?
Apple Apologizes for Listening to Siri Talk, Sets New Rules
Apple on Wednesday apologized for its digital assistant Siri sharing some of what it heard with quality control workers as it unveiled new rules for handling data from conversations.
Under the changes, Apple will allow its employees to review conversations only from customers who opt into the "Siri grading" program to improve the voice recognition technology. Apple will also delete by default any recordings used for the program.
"We realize we haven't been fully living up to our high ideals, and for that we apologize," Apple said in a post.
… If customers opt in, only Apple employees will be allowed to listen to audio samples of Siri interactions and they will "work to delete any recording which is determined to be an inadvertent trigger" of the voice-commanded digital assistant, according to the company.




A bit too optimistic?
Jack Ma says 12-hour work week could be the norm when AI benefits kick in
Billionaire Jack Ma, long an outspoken advocate for China's extreme work culture, says that people should be able to work just 12 hours a week with the benefits of artificial intelligence.
People could work as little as three days a week, four hours a day with the help of technology advances and a reform in education systems, the Alibaba Group Holding Ltd co-founder said at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on Thursday (Aug 29).
Ma cited electricity as an example of how developments in technology can free up time for leisure.




How to automate lawyering?
A Primer on Using Artificial Intelligence in the Legal Profession
LexBlog – A Primer on Using Artificial Intelligence in the Legal Profession: “What’s artificial intelligence (“AI”) and why should lawyers care about it? On a practical level, lawyers should be aware that software powered by AI already carries out legal tasks. Within a few years, AI will be taking over (or at least affecting) a significant amount of work now done by lawyers. Thirty-nine percent of in-house counsel” expect that AI will be commonplace in legal work within ten years. On a more philosophical level, lawyers should understand that the “decisions” made by AI-powered software will raise significant legal questions, including those of tort liability and of criminal guilt. For example, if AI is controlling a driverless car and someone’s killed in an accident, who’s at fault? While the philosophical questions are important to resolve, this Comment will focus on the practical issues. To provide an overview of what AI is and how it will be used in the legal profession, this Comment addresses several questions…”




How not to automate lawyering?
Lawyering Somewhere Between Computation and the Will to Act: A Digital Age Reflection
Lipshaw, Jeffrey M., Lawyering Somewhere Between Computation and the Will to Act: A Digital Age Reflection (August 5, 2019). Legal Studies Research Paper Series Research Paper 19-21 August 5, 2019. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3432635 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3432635
This is a reflection on machine and human contributions to lawyering in the digital age. Increasingly capable machines can already unleash massive processing power on vast stores of discovery and research data to assess relevancies and, at times, to predict legal outcomes. At the same time, there is wide acceptance, at least among legal academics, of the conclusions from behavioral psychology that slow, deliberative “System 2” thinking (perhaps replicated computationally) needs to control the heuristics and biases to which fast, intuitive “System 1” thinking is prone. Together, those trends portend computational deliberation – artificial intelligence or machine learning – substituting for human thinking in more and more of a lawyer’s professional functions. Yet, unlike machines, human lawyers are self-reproducing automata. They can perceive purposes and have a will to act that cannot be reduced to mere third-party scientific explanation. For all its power, computational intelligence is unlikely to evolve intuition, insight, creativity, and the will to change the objective world, characteristics as human as System 1 thinking’s heuristics and biases. We therefore need to be circumspect about the extent to which we privilege System 2-like deliberation (particularly that which can be replicated computationally) over uniquely human contributions to lawyering: those mixed blessings like persistence, passion, and the occasional compulsiveness.




May become more useful in the future.
Partnership on AI’s Terah Lyons talks ethics washing, moonshots, and power
There’s no organization in the world quite like the Partnership on AI.
Formed in September 2016 by a coalition of the largest tech companies in AI — Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM, and Microsoft — it is a nonprofit organization that advises corporations and governments on AI policy and seeks to answer big questions about the future, like how AI will influence the economy and society and how best to make safety-critical or transparent AI systems. Of the more than 100 notable organizations active on five continents that compose the Partnership, more than half are human rights groups like Amnesty International, Future of Life Institute, and GLAAD. They sit alongside some of the world’s most influential tech companies, think tanks, and other organizations.




It’s all statistics and other math.
Former MLB Pitcher’s DC Startup Lands $23M for Sports Betting Platform
Ex-MLB pitcher Michael Schwimer’s new District-based venture, Jambos Picks, brings a machine learning-based approach to sports betting by analyzing public and commercial data sets.
The service’s most noteworthy feature is a bold guarantee: Picks will be profitable or bettors will get their subscription fee back, plus additional money.
The discounts vary depending on subscription length. The full 17-week plan costs $3,000 and has a $10,000 refund if the picks don’t make money overall. But you’ll need to bet a lot.
For example, on a $3,000 subscription including 1,000 recommended bets, you would receive $10,000 back if you followed the Jambos method – $300-plus bets – and did not profit.




Is it worth $5? (iPhone & iPad only)
Quickly and easily search case citations using your camera
    • Speed – In a time-pressed court room, you don’t have time to go to the internet and type in a case citation. Opinion Minion takes you right to the case you need!
    • Text-Recognition – Opinion Minion utilizes text-recognition software and a custom algorithm to identify case citations.
    • Accessibility – Opinion Minion is powered by Google Scholar, so all of your starred cases are automatically shared across all of your devices connected to Google…”



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