Sunday, December 06, 2020

Because we can!”

https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-sidewalk-has-automatically-switched-on-in-your-alexa-app/

Amazon Sidewalk has automatically switched "on" in your Alexa app

It might be time to check your settings, if you have an Echo smart speaker or Ring camera.

If you have a new Amazon Echo smart speaker, a Ring Spotlight Cam or a Ring Floodlight Cam, you might want to check your Alexa app settings: Amazon is automatically switching on Sidewalk, a new feature that slices off some of your Wi-Fi bandwidth to create a farther-reaching network for Amazon devices using Bluetooth or 900MHz radio signals to communicate.

Amazon Sidewalk has the potential to increase the range of your smart home devices – making them more reliable at greater distances from your router and other gear – but its privacy and security implications remain largely untested.

While Sidewalk is not live yet, some privacy experts have expressed concerns about the automatic opt-in. Users have reported the switch online,, and I myself found Sidewalk to be set to "on" in my Alexa app, despite intentionally not activating it during initial setup.





Another privacy concern begins to bubble up?

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/new-york-city-considers-regulating-ai-hiring-tools.aspx

New York City Considers Regulating AI Hiring Tools

Employers would be required to inform job applicants if and how they are using artificial intelligence (AI) technology in hiring decisions under a bill being considered by the New York City Council.

In addition, AI technology vendors would have to provide bias audits of their products before selling them and offer to perform ongoing audits after purchase.

Lawmakers like the bill's sponsor, Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, D-Brooklyn, and many others across industry, academia and government have expressed concerns about bias being embedded in employment-screening and assessment technologies using AI.





To clone or not to clone… Can AI think any other way?

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600834.2020.1850174

Human digital thought clones: the Holy Grail of artificial intelligence for big data

This article explores the legal and ethical implications of big data’s pursuit of human ‘digital thought clones’. It identifies various types of digital clones that have been developed and demonstrates how the pursuit of more accurate personalised consumer data for micro-targeting leads to the evolution of digital thought clones. The article explains the business case for digital thought clones and how this is the commercial Holy Grail for profit-seeking big data and advertisers, who have commoditised predictions of digital behaviour data. Given big data’s industrial-scale data mining and relentless commercialisation of all types of human data, this article identifies some types of protections but argues that more jurisdictions urgently need to enact legislation similar to the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe to protect people against unscrupulous and harmful uses of their data and the unauthorised development and use of digital thought clones.





Long live the debate! But I want answers now!

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Veronica_Nabbosa/publication/346170706_Societal_and_Ethical_Issues_of_Digitalization/links/5fbca4de458515b797641d38/Societal-and-Ethical-Issues-of-Digitalization.pdf

Societal and Ethical Issues of Digitalization

The paper intends to analyze two timely trends: Digitalization and associated Digital Ethics, both of which are deepening their roots globally. Data is thought to be the cornerstone of these trends: where once firms were overwhelmed by large quantities of unused structured and unstructured data, they are increasingly adapting their operations and value creation models, guided both by new digital tools and the data themselves. Website cookies, mobile applications, and surveillance cameras, as well as data from thirdparty vendors, have thus become the new “digital oil”, as firms exploit process and customer data in pursuit of digitalization. Established firms’ core business models have shifted in response to data availability: Apple Pay and Google Pay (operating systems), AliPay (e-commerce), and Lufthansa’s Miles & More purchase enabled loyalty card (travel) emerged from old, established businesses. Still, other firms are partially or wholly digitizing existing business processes in order to respond to the challenges posed by digitalization. Banks, for instance, are using fingerprint and facial recognition to make their services more convenient and to improve security. These developments are not only visible among competitive private sector firms: the public sector is also becoming digitalized, not only to promote efficiency but also to promote transparency and accountability. However, customers and citizens are waking up to the fact that their information is being collected by both private and public entities, and have begun to demand control and transparency. Governments and other regulating bodies (ISO, ACM, and IEEE, among others) are taking a more proactive role in responding to these demands. This paper will delve into the tensions inherent in digitalization, zooming in on digital ethics, shifts in societal values, utilitarian benefits and risks, the future of digitalization, the role of technology in digital ethics, and other themes which could impact all society stakeholders and raises question about ethical issues in several topics.





Many thinkers…

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12599-020-00675-8

AI-Based Information Systems

In this special issue, we set out to stimulate a conversation about how Artificial Intelligence, a long-established subfield of computer science, is going to shape organizations of the future. We explicitly asked authors to consider if AI and its sub-disciplines such as natural language processing, deep learning algorithms, pattern recognition, knowledge-based systems, or robotics would change organizations. By directing scholars’ attention to the economic and organizational perspective of AI and machine learning, we hoped to gather insights into topics such as organizational AI readiness, the influence of virtual assistants, and aspects of fairness and acceptance of AI.

We received 16 manuscripts that provide a comprehensive coverage of various theories, methods, and contexts. After a developmental peer-review process, four papers remained. We are delighted to include these four papers in our issue.





A book worth reading? Not yet in my local library but you can rent it on Amazon.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-981-15-8689-7

Risks and Regulation of New Technologies





Now I have to design a program that emulates sleep?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lack-of-sleep-could-be-a-problem-for-ais/

Lack of Sleep Could Be a Problem for AIs

Some types of artificial intelligence could start to hallucinate if they don’t get enough rest, just as humans do





Humans make mistooks, us AI never do.”

http://www.uel.br/revistas/uel/index.php/iuris/article/view/42207

The use of robots / artificial intelligence by the courts and the trial within a reasonable time.

Artificial Intelligence has reached the legal environment, making it easier for Courts and expanding the possibilities of conflict resolution benefiting countless people. Thus, the advance was directed at the judges and the Judiciary. Faced with such a social and professional transformation, this work presents the commitment of technological systems at the service of Brazilian Courts. Due to the number of lawsuits in Brazil and the possibility of solving this problem through learning machines and robots, the question arises: what could be done through Artificial Intelligence to optimize the Judiciary in judgments? To resolve this issue, the research applied the bibliographic review methodology and the results used the deductive method. The objectives focus on analyzing the use of Artificial Intelligence as a tool for procedural speed, identifying their characteristics and applicability through robots, as well as, verifying the productivity of robots and other Artificial Intelligence tools, analyzing the functions of robots in the Courts of Justice. The relevance is to collaborate with the studies of the area avoiding that the Law and its sectors, are delayed before a digital society in evolution. The results show that Artificial Intelligence applied to the Judiciary Power, brings speed and judgment.





I like the European test as it is.

https://thetslr.unitn.it/article/view/717

The Notion of Defectiveness Applied to Autonomous Vehicles: The Need for New Liability Bases for Artificial Intelligence

Both the US and the EU product liability regimes are based on the notion of defectiveness of the product. However, in the case of damages caused by autonomous vehicles, such notion proves to be profoundly inadequate for consumer protection. In fact, from the European perspective, the defectiveness of a product is assessed through the so-called consumer expectation test, according to which a product is defective when it does not provide the safety a person is entitled to expect. However, such approach is inadequate in the context of autonomous vehicles as it leads to unreasonably high safety expectations. By contrast, the US product liability doctrine adopts the so-called risk-utility test, according to which a product is defective if the foreseeable risks of harm could have been reduced or avoided by the adoption of a reasonable alternative design. Such approach is nonetheless undesirable as it links safety to market forces. This article aims at analyzing in comparative perspective the current legislation concerning damages caused by autonomous systems, with a view to devising new possible solutions and alternative approaches to product liability for Artificial Intelligence.



(Related)

https://thenextweb.com/shift/2020/12/05/whos-to-blame-when-a-self-driving-car-has-an-accident-syndication/

Recap: Who’s responsible if a self-driving car has an accident?





I should have realized something like this existed.

https://www.makeuseof.com/free-virtual-internship-sites-students/

The 4 Best Free Virtual Internship Sites for Students

If there is one thing that can define the post-pandemic “new normal," it is remote work. As full-time and part-time employees retreat back home to work in the comfort of their bedroom, internship positions are of no exception.

Here are the top websites that offer virtual internship programs for students—and the best part is, they are all free.





Didn’t Napoleon invent this management principle?

https://dilbert.com/strip/2020-12-06



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