Thursday, May 27, 2021

It’s not exactly war, so what should we call it?

https://news.softpedia.com/news/japan-expects-russian-cyberattacks-on-tokyo-summer-olympics-533044.shtml

Japan Expects Russian Cyberattacks on Tokyo Summer Olympics

… It appears to be the retaliation for the exclusion of Russian teams from the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang and Tokyo over widespread doping allegations. We expect massive cyberattacks on the Tokyo Olympics, he adds.





So, let’s be anti-social.

https://www.makeuseof.com/does-social-media-do-more-harm-than-good/

Does Social Media Do More Harm Than Good for Society?

Media has always had the power to influence our society, but it wasn't until the social media boom that we saw it on this scale and magnitude. While it has potential for good, social media has been also been harmful to society because of how we use it.

Here's how social media is harming our mental health, self-image, communication skills, and society at large—potentially causing more harm than good overall.





Case or no case? If you face is marked “public” can it also be “private?” Will expectations or privacy policies rule?

https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/27/22455446/clearview-ai-legal-privacy-complaint-privacy-international-facial-recognition-eu

Clearview AI hit with sweeping legal complaints over controversial face scraping in Europe

Privacy International (PI) and several other European privacy and digital rights organizations announced today that they’ve filed legal complaints against the controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI. The complaints filed in France, Austria, Greece, Italy, and the United Kingdom say that the company’s method of documenting and collecting data — including images of faces it automatically extracts from public websites — violates European privacy laws. New York-based Clearview claims to have built “the largest known database of 3+ billion facial images.”

PI, NYOB, Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights, and Homo Digitalis all claim that Clearview’s data collection goes beyond what the average user would expect when using services like Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube. “Extracting our unique facial features or even sharing them with the police and other companies goes far beyond what we could ever expect as online users,” said PI legal officer Ioannis Kouvakas in a joint statement.





No clear direction yet, but lots of potential for Privacy lawsuits.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/27/office-surveillance-digital-leash-on-workers-could-be-crossing-a-line.html

Bosses putting a ‘digital leash’ on remote workers could be crossing a privacy line

A recent report by the Institute for the Future of Work, a British research and development group, said that algorithmic systems typically used in monitoring the performance of warehouse workers or delivery riders have pervaded more and more industries.

Prospect has published some research into workers’ attitude to these technologies. The majority of respondents in one survey said they were uncomfortable with the likes of camera monitoring or keystroke monitoring.

This technology is catching more and more attention from critics. Microsoft faced a backlash over its “productivity score” in Microsoft 365, which allowed managers to track an employee’s output. Microsoft has since rowed back on the product’s features, minimizing the data collected on individuals.

PwC was criticized last year for developing a facial recognition tool for finance firms that would monitor an employee and ensure they are at their desk when they’re supposed to be. A PwC spokesperson told CNBC that the tool was a “conceptual prototype.”



(Related)

https://www.politico.eu/article/ai-workplace-surveillance-facial-recognition-software-gdpr-privacy/

Your boss is watching: How AI-powered surveillance rules the workplace

Companies are buying increasingly intrusive artificial intelligence tools to keep an eye on their workers.





No matter how brilliant this idea is, it will never get by human politicians. (Unless we declare an AI as human?)

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/27/europeans-want-to-replace-lawmakers-with-ai.html

More than half of Europeans want to replace lawmakers with AI, study says

Researchers at IE University’s Center for the Governance of Change asked 2,769 people from 11 countries worldwide how they would feel about reducing the number of national parliamentarians in their country and giving those seats to an AI that would have access to their data.

The results, published Thursday, showed that despite AI’s clear and obvious limitations, 51% of Europeans said they were in favor of such a move.





My AI suggests we should listen to this…

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/robotics/artificial-intelligence/can-a-robot-be-arrested-hold-a-patent-pay-income-taxes

Can a Robot Be Arrested? Hold a Patent? Pay Income Taxes?

When horses were replaced by engines, for work and transportation, we didn’t need to rethink our legal frameworks. So when a fixed-in-place factory machine is replaced by a free-standing AI robot, or when a human truck driver is replaced by autonomous driving software, do we really need to make any fundamental changes to the law?

My guest today seems to think so. Or perhaps more accurately, he thinks that surprisingly, we do not; he says we need to change the laws less than we think. In case after case, he says, we just need to treat the robot more or less the same way we treat a person.

A year ago, he was giving presentations in which he argued that AIs can be patentholders. Since then, his views have advanced even further in that direction. And so last fall, he published a short but powerful treatise, The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law, published by Cambridge University Press. In it, he argues that the law more often than not should not discriminate between AI and human behavior.





The potential for error is stunning. Imagine the effort required to determine who tweaked the data enough to make it dangerous!

https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/synthetic-datas-growing-role-healthcare-ai-machine-learning-and-robotics

Synthetic data's growing role in healthcare AI, machine learning and robotics

Today there is a bottleneck in the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning – real-world data collection. AI and machine learning models require large datasets to become proficient at a task.

But preparing these datasets for model training is both costly and labor intensive. It is a conundrum, and the lack of large, accurately labeled datasets for specific applications is holding back the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Some say synthetic data offers a solution – data that imitates real-world data. Instead of manually collecting and labeling datasets from the real-world, synthetic data is instead computer-generated.





Interesting read…

https://onezero.medium.com/a-i-is-solving-the-wrong-problem-253b636770cd

A.I. Is Solving the Wrong Problem

People don’t make better decisions when given more data, so why do we assume A.I. will?





Is that really me bungee jumping from the bridge over I25 last Tuesday? Of course not. Here’s a video of me surfing in Maui on Tuesday. And another of me having tea with Queen Elizabeth.

https://www.bespacific.com/the-threat-of-deepfakes-in-litigation-raising-the-authentication-bar-to-combat-falsehood/

The Threat of Deepfakes in Litigation: Raising the Authentication Bar to Combat Falsehood

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2021: “Deepfakes are all over the internet—from shape-shifting comedians and incoherent politicians to disturbingly realistic fake pornography. Emerging technology makes it easier than ever to create a convincing deepfake. What used to take significant time and money to develop is now widely available, often for free, thanks to rapid advances in deepfake technology. Deepfakes threaten individual rights and even democracy. But their impact on litigation should not be overlooked. The US adversarial system of justice is built on a foundation of seeking out the truth to arrive at a just result. The Federal Rules of Evidence serve as an important framework for this truth-seeking mission, and the authentication rules, in particular, should play a key role in preventing deepfake evidence from corrupting the legal process. This Article looks at the unique threat of deepfakes and how the authentication rules under the Federal Rules of Evidence can adapt to help deal with these new challenges. It examines authentication standards that have emerged for social media evidence and suggests a middle-ground approach that redefines the quantity and quality of circumstantial evidence necessary for a reasonable jury to determine authenticity in the age of deepfakes. This middle-ground approach may raise the evidentiary bar in some cases, but it seeks to balance efficiency with the need to combat falsehood in the litigation process.”





Resources for my Business students.

https://www.bespacific.com/competitive-intelligence-a-selective-resource-guide-updated-may-2021/

Competitive Intelligence – A Selective Resource Guide – Updated May 2021

Via LLRX Competitive Intelligence – A Selective Resource Guide – Completely revised and updated May 2021, By Sabrina I. Pacifici

This guide on competitive intelligence resources on the web was first published in 2005, and I have continued to edit, revise and update it over the course of 16 years. My objective is to provide researchers with a current, well vetted, reliable, actionable subject matter specific pathfinder on a wide range of sites and services to assist in the delivery of outstanding customer service. Seasoned researchers, law librarians and knowledge managers routinely use free or low cost value added and content rich sites as components in the delivery of more robust and comprehensive work products. This “Best of the Web CI Guide” seeks to engage researchers with topical search engines, portals, government sponsored and open source databases, news and topical alerts and data archives, as well as academic, corporate and publisher specific services and applications. The sites I have included are benchmarks for internet search and discovery, monitoring, analyzing and reviewing current and historical data; news; reports, analysis and commentary; statistics; and profiles on companies, markets, countries, people and issues, from a national and a global perspective. My recommendations are accompanied by links to trusted and targeted content and sources produced by reputable media and publishing companies, businesses, government organizations, academe, IGOs and NGOs, and expert legal and technology professionals.



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