Tuesday, December 28, 2021

My concern: AI may convince either side that it can win the conflict if given the freedom to act now!

https://thediplomat.com/2021/12/how-does-china-aim-to-use-ai-in-warfare/

How Does China Aim to Use AI in Warfare?

Chinese military thinkers believe that under conditions of informatized warfare, dominating a system of systems confrontation rather than the large-scale attrition of enemy forces is the key factor in winning. Therefore, the PLA’s main strategy to defeat an adversary on the battleground is by creating disruption or paralysis on the enemy side through a system of systems operations. AI is believed to play a central role in intelligentized warfare to target and crash key elements of opponent operational systems. A PLA Senior Colonel Li Minghai pointed out that algorithms, unmanned platforms and extreme domains are emerging factors contributing to the form of intelligentized warfare.



Papers, citizen.

https://www.pogowasright.org/idea-of-national-patient-ids-revives-privacy-fight/

Idea of national patient IDs revives privacy fight

Ben Leonard reports:

Advocates of unique IDs to match patients to their health records may be close to lifting a decadeslong congressional ban on using federal funds to develop the system.
The effort, long mired in broader debates over patient privacy, gained steam this fall when the Senate for the first time left the ban out of a fiscal 2022 spending package. But its ultimate fate is still tied to uncertainties surrounding the appropriations process and an overdue report on the benefits and risks from the Department of Health and Human Services’ health information technology office that could influence the system’s design.

Read more at Politico.



Worried that Covid will spread throughout the population or simply ensuring that the infected never enter my neighborhood?

https://www.pogowasright.org/canadas-public-health-agency-admits-it-tracked-33-million-mobile-devices-during-lockdown/

Canada’s public health agency admits it tracked 33 million mobile devices during lockdown

Swikar Oli reports:

The Public Health Agency of Canada accessed location data from 33 million mobile devices to monitor people’s movement during lockdown, the agency revealed this week.
Due to the urgency of the pandemic, (PHAC) collected and used mobility data, such as cell-tower location data, throughout the COVID-19 response,” a spokesperson told National Post. The program’s existence was first brought to wider attention by Blacklock’s Reporter.
[…]
In March, the Agency awarded a contract to the Telus Data For Good program to provide “de-identified and aggregated data” of movement trends in Canada.

Read more at National Post.



Take a minute and catch up.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/artificial-intelligence-2021

2021's Top Stories About AI

2021 was the year in which the wonders of artificial intelligence stopped being a story. Which is not to say that IEEE Spectrum didn't cover AI—we covered the heck out of it. But we all know that deep learning can do wondrous things and that it's being rapidly incorporated into many industries; that's yesterday's news. Many of this year's top articles grappled with the limits of deep learning (today's dominant strand of AI) and spotlighted researchers seeking new paths.

Here are the 10 most popular AI articles that Spectrum published in 2021, ranked by the amount of time people spent reading them. Several came from Spectrum's October 2021 special issue on AI, The Great AI Reckoning.



Imagine a technology that seems a short term miracle and hides its long term danger...

https://www.unite.ai/tackling-the-us-governments-pdf-mountain-with-computer-vision/

Tackling the US Government’s PDF Mountain With Computer Vision

Adobe’s PDF format has entrenched itself so deeply in US government document pipelines that the number of state-issued documents currently in existence is conservatively estimated to be in the hundreds of millions. Often opaque and lacking metadata, these PDFs – many created by automated systems – collectively tell no stories or sagas; if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, you’ll probably never find a pertinent document. And if you did know, you probably didn’t need the search.



Perspective.

https://www.makeuseof.com/facebook-big-tech-not-trusted-shows-poll/

New Poll Shows People Don't Trust Big Tech, but Especially Facebook

… About 44% of Americans trust Apple and Microsoft. Google does better with 48% trust. Amazon does really well comparatively, as it has the trust of a majority 53% of users (Amazon and Washington Post are both owned by Jeff Bezos). Other users either distrust these four companies or have no opinion.

When it comes to social media, it is more meaningful to speak of distrust rather than trust. As a net figure, users distrust all social media companies. A solid 60% distrust Instagram and 63% distrust TikTok, while 53% distrust WhatsApp and YouTube.

However, Facebook is off the charts, with an overwhelming 72% sitting in the distrust camp. Only 20% of users trust Facebook and 8% have no opinion.


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