New data is hard to get. Will old data will help AI confirm the flat earth theory?

https://apnews.com/article/ai-chatbot-training-data-libraries-idi-e096a81a4fceb2951f232a33ac767f53

AI chatbots need more books to learn from. These libraries are opening their stacks

Everything ever said on the internet was just the start of teaching artificial intelligence about humanity. Tech companies are now tapping into an older repository of knowledge: the library stacks.

Nearly one million books published as early as the 15th century — and in 254 languages — are part of a Harvard University collection being released to AI researchers Thursday. Also coming soon are troves of old newspapers and government documents held by Boston’s public library.

Cracking open the vaults to centuries-old tomes could be a data bonanza for tech companies battling lawsuits from living novelists, visual artists and others whose creative works have been scooped up without their consent to train AI chatbots.

“It is a prudent decision to start with public domain data because that’s less controversial right now than content that’s still under copyright,” said Burton Davis, a deputy general counsel at Microsoft.

Because, why?

https://taskandpurpose.com/military-life/army-reserve-lt-col-tech-execs/

Army bringing in big tech executives as lieutenant colonels

The Army said the new senior officers, including Meta's Andrew Bosworth and Palantir's Shyam Sankar, will attend a six-week course at Fort Benning and be required to pass Army PT and marksmanship tests.

Four senior executives of tech giants like Meta and Palantir are being sworn into the Army Reserve as direct-commissioned officers at the unusually high rank of lieutenant colonel as part of a new program to recruit private-sector experts to speed up tech adoption.

The Army calls the program to recruit Silicon Valley executives Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps. One of the executives, Andrew Bosworth of Meta (formerly Facebook) posted on X that the “201” monicker was a nod to an HTTP coding command, in which a “201” response indicates the creation of a new programming resource.

… The Detachment 201 program is aimed at bringing in part-time advisors from the private sector to help the service adopt and scale commercial technology like drones and robots into its formations. The idea of incorporating private-sector expertise is right out of Ukraine as soldiers there who are engineers or computer scientists in their day jobs are MacGyvering makeshift drones or 3D printing parts to use on the front lines against Russia.

No different here?

https://www.bespacific.com/harnessing-gen-ai-in-law/

Harnessing Gen AI in law

Harnessing Gen AI in law. Lessons from the front lines in Europe  – European law firms are ramping up efforts to embrace the potential of Gen AI. In a recent report by The Global Legal Post in association with LexisNexis, senior lawyers and executives from leading firms in Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Belgium said they expect Gen AI tech to transform how they deliver legal services and the way their lawyers will work on a day-to-day basis. From testing and piloting Gen AI tools to roll out and adoption, there is no single approach to follow; instead, it will be dictated by the size of the firm and its culture. “The smaller ones will be able to implement very quickly, because the disruption would be quite limited,” said Sebastien Bardou, VP strategy in the CEMEA region at LexisNexis. “For the larger ones, it’s better to implement in waves. You can’t just turn on a switch and say everyone is going to use it.” Firms should also ensure they have support programmes in place to bolster adoption efforts and reduce the chances Gen AI tools will go unused. For example, some firms are providing support such as technical training and access to prompt libraries to make it easier for lawyers to get the information they need. “We really want to ensure a good user experience from the very first moment and also make sure our junior lawyers are trained from the beginning,” said Eric Wagner, a partner at Gleiss Lutz in Germany… As Gen AI changes the way lawyers work on a daily basis, expectations around service delivery are also likely to evolve as the technology redraws relationships between firms and their clients. For now, there remains a diverse range of attitudes towards AI among legal services buyers, which potentially makes it more challenging for firms to roll out AI technology firmwide. “Some clients are very much into AI themselves and so are already buying licenses for AI products, some ask us agnostically how we are using AI tools, and then there are others who just say we shouldn’t use AI tools when serving them,” said Margarida Saragoça, Business and Knowledge Director at VdA. “This means our policies have to be spread out so everybody is in tune and knows what AI tools can be used or shouldn’t be used…”

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.makeuseof.com/excel-trimrange-cleanup/https://www.makeuseof.com/excel-trimrange-cleanup/

Clean Up Data Effortlessly With Excel's New TRIMRANGE Function

You shouldn’t need five steps to clean a column. Or a script. Or a headache. Excel’s new TRIMRANGE function quietly solves a huge pain point. And if you work with imported or user-entered data, this one’s a lifesaver.

Food for thought?

https://pogowasright.org/using-facial-recognition-three-recent-articles-of-interest/

Using facial recognition? Three recent articles of interest.

A few reports we were reading this week about facial recognition that we found of note.

First, Odia Kagan of Fox Rothschild writes:

Following the Federal Trade Commission’s decision in December 2023 to ban Rite Aid from using AI facial recognition, it has become crystal clear that U.S. regulators expect a risk assessment when a retailer uses facial recognition technology.

A new, and detailed, report from the New Zealand privacy commission provides helpful considerations for such Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs). They include:

• Was the data trained on minorities?

• How long will the retailer retained data that wasn’t matched?

• Data minimization techniques (including when to share among stores and when to add to a watchlist).

• How accurate should the match be to trigger consideration (92.5%)?

Second, over in Ireland, the DPC announced the conclusion of its investigation into use of facial matching technology in connection with the Public Services Card by the Department of Social Protection (DSP). The four-year investigation followed an earlier investigation. The findings if the current investigation were that DSP:

• Infringed Articles 5(1)(a), 6(1), and 9(1) GDPR by failing to identify a valid lawful basis for the collection of biometric data in connection with SAFE 2 registration at the time of the inquiry;

• Having regard to the preceding finding, infringed Article 5(1)(e) GDPR by retaining biometric data collected as part of SAFE 2 registration;

• Infringed Articles 13(1)(c) and 13(2)(a) GDPR by failing to put in place suitably transparent information to data subjects as regards SAFE 2 registration; and

• Infringed Articles 35(7)(b) and (c) GDPR by failing to include certain details in the Data Protection Impact Assessment that it carried out in relation to SAFE 2 registration.

In light of the infringements identified above, the DPC has (1) reprimanded the DSP, (2) issued administrative fines totalling €550,000, and (3) issued an order to the DSP requiring it to cease processing of biometric data in connection with SAFE 2 registration within 9 months of this decision if the DSP cannot identify a valid lawful basis.

Read more about the investigation and findings on the DPC’s site.

And third, let us also take this opportunity to remind entities of the need to consider at what point the use of facial recognition is even warranted. Joe Cadillic sent along a recent item from The Guardian in the UK about a retail store customer who was put on a facial ID watchlist at Home Bargains after dispute over 39 pence of paracetamol they accused her of stealing. She firmly denies stealing it, but her complaint notes:

“To be clear: [she] did not steal the paracetamol during the first visit. The allegations by Home Bargains are false. However, even taking Home Bargains’ allegations at face value, their – and Facewatch’s – biometric processing was clearly not in the substantial public interest.

“The watchlist entry was created and acted upon in order to apprehend someone supposedly guilty of (on one occasion) stealing goods valued at less than £1. It is scarcely possible to imagine a less serious ‘offender’.”

Worth exploring…

https://www.bespacific.com/ai-ethics-with-professor-casey/

AI Ethics with Professor Casey

AI Ethics with Professor Casey – “For nearly five years, I’ve (Casey Fiesler aka Professor Casey) been creating social media content (largely on TikTok and Instagram) about artificial intelligence, especially as related to ethics, policy, and social impact. This page is intended as a syllabus of sorts–a post-hoc curated collection of videos that provide introductions, examples, and deep dives into various concepts.  In addition to the resources below, I also maintain a spreadsheet of AI ethics and policy news that is categorized into similar buckets, for further reading.  This document is very much under construction!  Though I’m officially sharing it as of June 2025 with a skeleton of some favorite videos, it will continue to be populated with both old and new content, and I will also continue to add many more references to further readings and resources from others. I am also in the process of uploading all of these videos to my YouTube channel as well. Some links will initially only be to TikTok because that’s where they were originally shared but more videos will be populated with YouTube links in the coming days!

Table of Contents
1  What is AI and what can it do?
2  Information literacy and mis/disinformation
3  Bias and fairness
4  IP and data
5  Labor and creativity
6  Education
7  Sustainability
8  Regulation
9  (Yet) uncategorized

Perspective. (And a philosophy?)

https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-denmark-is-dumping-microsoft-office-and-windows-for-libreoffice-and-linux/

Why Denmark is dumping Microsoft Office and Windows for LibreOffice and Linux

Denmark's Minister of Digitalization, Caroline Stage, has announced that the Danish government will start moving away from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. Why? It's not because open-source is better, although I would argue that it is, but because Denmark wants to claim "digital sovereignty." In the States, you probably haven't heard that phrase, but in the European Union, digital sovereignty is a big deal and getting bigger.

A combination of security, economic, political, and societal imperatives is driving the EU's digital sovereignty moves. EU leaders are seeking to reduce Europe's dependence on foreign technology providers, primarily those from the United States, and to assert greater control over its digital infrastructure, data, and technological future.

Why? Because they're concerned about who controls European data, who sets the rules, and who can potentially cut off access to essential services in times of geopolitical tension.  

Always something new.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nyc-woman-found-phone-buried-105000183.html

NYC woman found a phone buried in her lawn — and police say it’s a new tactic thieves use to spy on homeowners

… Mary Kehoe, who’s lived in her Forest Hill home for 35 years, spotted the strange device outside. It looked like an Android phone wrapped in black tape, with only the camera exposed — like it was made to watch, not call.

… Experts warn that these kinds of planted devices may be part of a growing tactic used by burglars to spy on homeowners, tracking their daily routines or scouting for valuables. And it’s not just an isolated case — similar incidents have popped up across the Tri-State Area.

Shouldn’t we have an alternative before we toss out the old rules?

https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/10/trump_cybersecurity_eo_digital_ids/

Trump guts digital ID rules, claims they help 'illegal aliens' commit fraud

President Donald Trump late Friday signed a cybersecurity-focused executive order that, in the White House's words, "amends problematic elements of Obama and Biden-era Executive Orders."

In his last few days in office, President Biden signed a executive order (EO) focused on cybersecurity that aimed to eliminate the use of stolen and fake identities by criminal gangs, because they are used to "systemically defraud public benefits programs costs taxpayers and wastes Federal Government funds."

To accomplish this goal, Biden’s presidential mandate directed federal agencies to work with states to develop and issue mobile driver's licenses and the infrastructure needed to verify these types of digital ID cards.

Trump’s order wipes out a section of the Biden order, titled "Solutions to Combat Cybercrime and Fraud".

Coming soon to a city near you?

https://www.bespacific.com/waymo-false-flag-militarizing-america-through-psychological-warfare/

Waymo False Flag: Militarizing America Through Psychological Warfare

MindWar: The Psychological War on Democracy – “As tanks are sent en masse to the nation’s capital, complete with revolutionary insignia, for a propaganda event this Saturday, one of the president’s top advisors is accusing the government of the State of California of aiding and abetting “an invasion”—a condition for a charge of treason—while the “Border Czar” threatens to arrest the governor. What we’re seeing is a clumsy, transparent psychological warfare campaign being executed by the federal government against American citizens. It is, of course, totally illegal and unconstitutional, but regardless, Los Angeles is being used as an example and as psychological conditioning for a national rollout of this strategy. As I wrote, the raids by ICE were a PSYACT, a psychological action, designed to provoke a reaction—the peaceful protests on Friday night.

That reaction, protests, was met by another PSYACT, the completely unnecessary deployment of National Guard troops to the streets of Los Angeles against the will of the Mayor and the Governor. This provocation was designed to provoke another reaction—even bigger protests. And so on. Added to the mixture, like a constant flow of kerosene, is the massive propaganda platform controlled by the federal government with the cooperation of the majority of the media, which portrayed LA as consumed by fire, as an out-of control insurrection, worthy of state violence or, as the president’s son suggested, vigilanteism. Nonsense…”

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.bespacific.com/duck-ai/

Duck.AI

“Duck.ai is a free feature that allows you to have private conversations with 3rd-party AI chat models, anonymized by us. It currently supports Anthropic’s Claude 3 Haiku, Meta’s Llama 3.3 70B, Mistral AI’s Mistral Small 3 24B, and OpenAI’s GPT-4o mini. Each model relies on unique algorithms and datasets and will respond to your prompts differently. You can use Duck.ai to get answers to questions, compose an email, summarize text, or just have an interesting conversation. Navigate there directly, or move from traditional search results to ask follow-up questions. Return to past conversations with Duck.ai’s Recent Chats feature, which stores chats locally on your device – not on DuckDuckGo or other remote servers. Recent chats can be deleted individually or with a click of the Fire Button. You can add or remove the Duck.ai button in your DuckDuckGo browser from browser settings, and hide the Duck.ai buttons on the search results page from search settings. DuckDuckGo’s approach to AI is to provide private, useful, and optional AI features that don’t track how you use them, store your prompts, or train on your data. More information about optional AI-assisted answers on our search engine can be found here …

We have agreements with model providers to further protect your privacy. As noted above, we call model providers on your behalf so your personal information (for example, IP address) is not exposed to them. In addition, we have agreements in place with all model providers that further limit how they can use data from these anonymous requests, including not using Prompts and Outputs to develop or improve their models, as well as deleting all information received once it is no longer necessary to provide Outputs (at most within 30 days, with limited exceptions for safety and legal compliance)…”

I need to think about how I think about AI…

https://www.attorneyatwork.com/richard-susskind-on-ai-for-lawyers-a-review-of-how-to-think-about-ai/

Richard Susskind on AI for Lawyers: A Review of ‘How to Think About AI’

Richard Susskind is what I call a Big Thinker — the kind of legal technology sage who delivers keynote speeches by the dozen and publishes deep thoughts in serious journals. He has a rare talent for synthesizing complex ideas and explaining them in a clear and engaging way. For lawyers and policymakers trying to make sense of AI’s impact, ”How to Think About AI: A Guide for the Perplexed”  may be Susskind’s most timely and clarifying work yet.

An AI enabled education?

https://www.bespacific.com/welcome-to-campus-heres-your-chatgpt/

Welcome to Campus. Here’s Your ChatGPT.

The New York Times no paywall – “OpenAI, the firm that helped spark chatbot cheating, wants to embed A.I. in every facet of college. First up: 460,000 students at Cal State. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has a plan to overhaul college education — by embedding its artificial intelligence tools in every facet of campus life. If the company’s strategy succeeds, universities would give students A.I. assistants to help guide and tutor them from orientation day through graduation. Professors would provide customized A.I. study bots for each class. Career services would offer recruiter chatbots for students to practice job interviews. And undergrads could turn on a chatbot’s voice mode to be quizzed aloud ahead of a test. OpenAI dubs its sales pitch “A.I.-native universities.” “Our vision is that, over time, A.I. would become part of the core infrastructure of higher education,” Leah Belsky, OpenAI’s vice president of education, said in an interview. In the same way that colleges give students school email accounts, she said, soon “every student who comes to campus would have access to their personalized A.I. account.” To spread chatbots on campuses, OpenAI is selling premium A.I. services to universities for faculty and student use. It is also running marketing campaigns aimed at getting students who have never used chatbots to try ChatGPT. Some universities, including the University of Maryland and California State University, are already working to make A.I. tools part of students’ everyday experiences. In early June, Duke University began offering unlimited ChatGPT access to students, faculty and staff. The school also introduced a university platform, called DukeGPT, with A.I. tools developed by Duke. OpenAI’s campaign is part of an escalating A.I. arms race among tech giants to win over universities and students with their chatbots. The company is following in the footsteps of rivals like Google and Microsoft that have for years pushed to get their computers and software into schools, and court students as future customers…”

Secure in spirit only?

https://www.bobsguide.com/cyber-rulebook-in-shreds-as-trump-rewrites-the-playbook/

Cyber rulebook in shreds as Trump rewrites the playbook

A new Executive Order signed by President Donald J. Trump on Friday has abruptly altered the landscape of U.S. cybersecurity policy. Marking a decisive pivot away from the compliance-centric frameworks of the Biden and Obama eras.  The order reverses key initiatives on software supply chain security, digital identity, and artificial intelligence, signaling a philosophical shift towards operational flexibility over regulatory mandates.

For Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and risk managers in the financial and fintech sectors, this move dismantles established compliance pathways and introduces a new wave of strategic uncertainty. While some may welcome the reduction in regulatory burden. The changes place a greater onus on individual firms to navigate a less-defined security environment, particularly concerning vendor risk and digital transformation.

The new order, Sustaining Select Efforts to Strengthen the Nation’s Cybersecurity, explicitly amends or repeals major components of previous directives. With the White House fact sheet criticizing the prior administration’s last-minute policies as “problematic and distracting.”