External (portable) drives are often used to store evidence…

https://gizmodo.com/western-digital-confirms-my-book-live-drives-are-being-1847171372

Western Digital Confirms 'My Book Live' Drives Are Being Deleted Remotely

Unplug your drives from the internet right now to keep any data safe.

Western Digital’s popular My Book Live hard drives are being deleted remotely by an unknown attacker, according to the company. And there’s not much anyone can do at this point but unplug their drives from the internet.

“We have determined that some My Book Live devices have been compromised by a threat actor,” Western Digital’s Jolin Tan told Gizmodo early Friday by email. “In some cases, this compromise has led to a factory reset that appears to erase all data on the device.”

A whole new field to hack. Be the first one on your block to brick your neighbor’s Tesla.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/protecting-the-software-defined-vehicle/

Protecting the Software-Defined Vehicle

The move toward software-defined vehicles is enabling a wealth of safety, comfort and convenience innovations – and the innovations do not stop when those vehicles leave a dealership. Through over-the-air (OTA) updates, the software that runs the vehicle can continue to evolve and improve throughout its lifecycle, delighting consumers for years to come.

This is a powerful capability, but it requires an approach to development that always has cybersecurity in mind. Attacks might come from physical access to a vehicle, or even via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but cellular connections mean an attacker could potentially access the vehicle’s systems from anywhere in the world.

Could this idea spread?

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/06/banning-surveillance-based-advertising.html

Banning Surveillance-Based Advertising

The Norwegian Consumer Council just published a fantastic new report: “Time to Ban Surveillance-Based Advertising. ” From the Introduction:

The challenges caused and entrenched by surveillance-based advertising include, but are not limited to:

• privacy and data protection infringements

• opaque business models

• manipulation and discrimination at scale

• fraud and other criminal activity

• serious security risks

At least it was unarmed.

https://www.pogowasright.org/baltimore-spy-plane-program-was-invasion-of-citizens-privacy-court-rules/

Baltimore spy plane program was invasion of citizens’ privacy, court rules

Kim Lyons reports:

The city of Baltimore’s spy plane program was unconstitutional, violating the Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search, and law enforcement in the city cannot use any of the data it gathered, a court ruled Thursday. The Aerial Investigation Research (or AIR) program, which used airplanes and high-resolution cameras to record what was happening in a 32-square-mile part of the city, was canceled by the city in February.

Local Black activist groups, with support from the ACLU, sued to prevent Baltimore law enforcement from using any of the data it had collected in the time the program was up and running.

Read more on The Verge

EPIC.org writes:

The en banc 4th Circuit ruled today that Baltimore’s warrantless aerial surveillance program violates the Fourth Amendment because it “enables police to deduce from the whole of individuals’ movements[.]” The Aerial Investigation Research program was a public-private partnership with Persistent Surveillance Systems that flew several surveillance planes above Baltimore, capturing detailed video of 32 square miles of the city per second. Using the AIR pilot program, Baltimore Police were able to track individual movements throughout the city for up to 12 hours a day. The pilot program was not renewed at the end of its 6-month term last year. EPIC joined an amicus brief in the case, arguing that under Carpenter v. United States the Baltimore Police Department’s ability to track individuals with at least 45 days of flight video augmented by automated license plate reader systems constituted a search. EPIC previously filed an amicus brief in Carpenter v. United States and has long fought to limit drone surveillance and other forms of aerial spying.

Resource?

https://fpf.org/blog/fpf-partners-with-penn-state-and-university-of-michigan-researchers-on-searchable-database-of-privacy-related-documents/

FPF PARTNERS WITH PENN STATE AND UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN RESEARCHERS ON SEARCHABLE DATABASE OF PRIVACY-RELATED DOCUMENTS

FPF is collaborating with a team of researchers to build a searchable database of privacy policies and other privacy-related documents. The PrivaSeer project, led by researchers from Penn State and the University of Michigan, has received a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to ease the process of collecting and utilizing privacy documents and privacy-related data.

AI has a negative impact?

https://hai.stanford.edu/news/new-approach-mitigating-ais-negative-impact

A New Approach To Mitigating AI’s Negative Impact

Stanford launches an Ethics and Society Review Board that asks researchers to take an early look at the impact of their work.

… The Ethics and Society Review (ESR) requires researchers seeking funding from the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) to consider how their proposals might pose negative ethical and societal risks, to come up with methods to lessen those risks, and, if needed, to collaborate with an interdisciplinary faculty panel to ensure those concerns are addressed before funding is received.

(Related) If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em?

https://www.protocol.com/workplace/twitter-ethical-ai-meta

How Twitter hired tech's biggest critics to build ethical AI

… One year later, Twitter's commitment to Font's team has convinced even the most skeptical people in tech — the ethics research community itself. Rumman Chowdhury, notorious and beloved by her fellow researchers for her commitment to algorithmic auditing, announced that she would be leaving her new startup to become Twitter's META leader. Kristian Lum, a University of Pennsylvania professor renowned for her work building machine-learning models that could reshape criminal justice, will join Twitter at the end of June as their new head of research. And Sarah Roberts, famous for her critiques of tech companies and the co-director of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry at UCLA, will become a consultant for the META team this summer, researching what Twitter users actually want from algorithmic transparency.

I need this technology! It will also be fun to reverse the transformation…

https://thenextweb.com/news/nvidias-vid2vid-cameo-ai-turns-image-into-talking-head-video-videoconferencing

Nvidia AI could let you make video calls in your PJs without anyone knowing

… Nvidia has unveiled an AI model that converts a single 2D image of a person into a “talking head” video.

Known as Vid2Vid Cameo, the deep learning model is designed to improve the experience of videoconferencing.

If you’re running late for a call, you could roll out of bed in your pajamas and disheveled hair, upload a photo of you dressed to impress, and the AI will map your facial movements to the reference image — leaving the other attendees unaware of the chaos behind the camera. That could be a boon for the chronically unkempt, but you should probably test the technique before you turn up in your birthday suit.

This is an interesting story that could provide bad examples in so many areas.

https://www.databreaches.net/westfield-clerk-mayor-battle-over-spyware-installed-on-city-hall-computers/

Westfield clerk, mayor battle over spyware installed on city hall computers

Richard Essex reports:

Spyware was found on all of the computers in the Westfield clerk treasurer’s office, and now she and the mayor are battling in court about it.

This particular software allows remote access to all the data stored in that office, which includes information for a dozen city bank accounts, and personal information for city employees and taxpayers.

Cindy Gossard, Westfield’s clerk treasurer, says she never gave permission to anyone to install the software and she doesn’t know who has access to sensitive city information held by her office.

Read more on WISH-TV.

[From the article:

She believes the spyware was installed by the city’s information technology department in November. She discovered the software around the same time the mayor of Westfield, Andy Cook, sued her.

A simple overview.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/gdpr-three-years-in/

GDPR – Three Years In

May 2021 marks the third anniversary of the biggest shake up to data protection legislation for a number of decades. Even in draft form, GDPR promised disruption and enforcement in spades and although the final version had some changes, it still maintained its prowess. However, did the reality deliver on these and has the carrot won against the stick?

(Related) For good or evil?

https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2021/06/23/senator-gillibrand-announces-renewed-data-protection-act-2021/

Senator Gillibrand Announces Renewed Data Protection Act 2021

On June 17, 2021, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) announced the reintroduction of the Data Protection Act of 2021 (the “bill”), which would create an independent federal agency, the Data Protection Agency, to “regulate high-risk data practices and the collection, processing, and sharing of personal data.” The bill was first introduced in 2020 and has since been revised to include updated provisions intended to protect against privacy harms, oversee the use of “high-risk data practices” and examine the social, ethical, and economic impacts of data collection.

(Related)

https://www.zdnet.com/article/cybersecurity-firms-battle-dmca-rules-over-good-faith-research/#ftag=RSSbaffb68

Cybersecurity firms battle DMCA rules over good-faith research

The argument is that current rules are hampering ethical and effective vulnerability reporting.

I want a T-shirt with that slogan.

https://www.bespacific.com/big-data-with-great-data-comes-great-responsibility/

Big data: With great data comes great responsibility

Open Access Government – “Dr Florian Kerschbaum from the University of Waterloo. argues that with great data comes great responsibility in this big data focus. Big data helps us combat the pandemic and build cleaner tech-nology – amongst many other benefits. We collect exposure data to contain and trace the spread of the coronavirus. Genome databases can help build better medications and vaccines. Personalised medicine may eventually allow defeating cancer. We collect household energy consumption to build a smart grid that helps save energy and supports renewable energy sources. Car and ride-sharing services in combination with electrical cars will eventually revolutionise transportation and lead to significantly lower carbon emissions. All these services are based on the collection, processing and sharing of big data, personal data. They come with great societal benefits, but they also come with risks if not handled properly. Personal data stored within large repositories of companies are regularly exfiltrated in data breaches. Almost every individual in Western society has been subject to their data being exposed in almost always multiple data breaches. Nation-state actors have been exposed to conduct cyber-espionage on individuals and companies. Although it is 2021, George Orwell’s novel 1984 is a distinct possibility nowadays. So, we must ask ourselves: How do we combine Western civil liberties with the advance of ubiquitous data collection technologies?…”

Humans, the source of every problem in AI.

https://www.oreilly.com/radar/arguments-against-hand-labeling/

Hand Labeling Considered Harmful

… There’s another critical issue, which is in some ways upstream to the challenges of bias and explainability: while we seem to be living in the future with the creation of machine learning and deep learning models, we are still living in the Dark Ages with respect to the curation and labeling of our training data: the vast majority of labeling is still done by hand.

There are significant issues with hand labeling data:

• It introduces bias, and hand labels are neither interpretable nor explainable.

• There are prohibitive costs to hand labeling datasets (both financial costs and the time of subject matter experts).

• There is no such thing as gold labels: even the most well-known hand labeled datasets have label error rates of at least 5% (ImageNet has a label error rate of 5.8%!).

Perspective.

https://www.bespacific.com/gartner-51-of-global-knowledge-workers-will-be-remote-by-the-end-of-2021/

Gartner: 51% of global knowledge workers will be remote by the end of 2021

Tech Republic: “By the end of 2021, 51% of all knowledge workers worldwide are expected to be working remotely, up from 27% of knowledge workers in 2019, according to Gartner. The research firm also estimates that remote workers will represent 32% of all employees worldwide by the end of 2021. This is up from 17% of employees in 2019. Gartner defines knowledge workers are those who are involved in knowledge-intensive occupations, such as writers, accountants and engineers. Gartner defines a remote worker as an employee working away from their company, government entity or customer site at least one full day a week (hybrid workers), or who works fully from home (fully remote workers)…”

Tools & techniques. Try the free options first.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/8-free-mind-map-tools-best-use/

The 6 Best Free Mind Map Tools (And How to Best Use Them)

Mind maps are one of the best-known logical organization tools. It’s a graphic representation of connections between concepts and ideas. The idea starts from a central topic, and we gradually connect them with different branches and label it with notes, symbols, pictures, links, and more.

Cyber crime is big business.

https://threatpost.com/bec-losses-top-18b/167148/

BEC Losses Top $1.8B as Tactics Evolve

… BEC attacks are carried out by cybercriminals either impersonating someone inside an organization, or masquerading as a partner or vendor, bent on financial scamming. A new report from Cisco’s Talos Intelligence examined the tactics of some of the most dangerous BEC attacks observed in the wild in 2020, and reminded the security community that in addition to technology, smart users armed with a healthy skepticism of outside communications and the right questions to ask are the best line of defense.

… It’s easy to get hung up on the splashy breaches of major global companies. But the true revenue is being generated by smaller BEC attacks, the report said.

I’m worried that this starts us on the slippery slope to ‘papers’ required for everything, buying food, traveling, breathing…

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/vaccine-passports-market-decide/

Vaccine Passports: Why the Market Should Decide

In this opinion piece, Robert Field argues that the market, not state laws, should determine whether businesses can require proof of vaccination by customers and staff.

“No shoes, no shirt, no service.” You’ve almost certainly seen those words on a sign outside a store near a beach on a summer day. How about – “no vaccination, no verification, no visit”? Might we soon start to see words like those?

Privacy tool.

https://www.pogowasright.org/brave-launches-its-privacy-focused-no-tracking-search-engine/

Brave launches its privacy-focused no-tracking search engine

Lawrence Abrams reports:

Today, Brave launched their non-tracking privacy-centric search engine to bring another alternative to finding the information you want on the web without giving up your data.

Brave Search is being launched first in Beta so that users can test the new search engine while Brave continues to refine its features. Users who wish to test the latest search engine can try it in any existing browser, and it is the new default search engine for Brave Browser.

Read more on BleepingComputer.

Trust, but verify because employees are scum.

https://nbcmontana.com/news/nation-world/78-of-employers-admit-to-using-digital-surveillance-tools-on-remote-workers

78% of employers admit to using digital surveillance tools on remote workers

The shift to remote work during COVID-19 spawned a rapid growth in employee monitoring software to allow bosses to digitally drop in on their remote workforce to ensure they're getting the job done.

It's been called "tattleware" or "bossware." The programs can measure an employee's active and idle time, track keystrokes and websites visited, record emails, chats and phone calls, even take screenshots and access webcams.

Managers may be gaining insight into how their remote workers spend the day but the adoption of workplace surveillance technology is making employees uncomfortable.

What else have you agreed to?

https://www.pogowasright.org/wisconsin-no-more-drawing-blood-from-unconscious-motorists/

Wisconsin: No More Drawing Blood From Unconscious Motorists

From TheNewspaper.com:

Wisconsin Supreme Court tells police they need to get a warrant before taking blood from unconscious drivers.

Police in Wisconsin may no longer draw blood from unconscious motorists following a state Supreme Court ruling last week. The justices declared unconstitutional a provision of state law stating unresponsive motorists are deemed to give their consent to blood draws when they applied for a driver’s license. As a result of the decision, police will have to secure a warrant in cases like that of Dawn M. Prado, who was involved in a fatal collision on Highway MM in Fitchburg on December 12, 2014.

Read more on TheNewspaper.com.

That doctor – patient relationship without a hint of privacy.

https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-the-internet-of-behaviors-and-how-does-it-affect-you/

What Is the Internet of Behaviors and How Does It Affect You?

… Internet of Behaviors, also known as IoB, refers to the collection and analysis of data and information gotten from users' devices to influence their behavior. Internet of Behavior entails turning the data gotten from devices connected to the internet into information then into knowledge that can be used to better satisfy the user of that product, using the user's behaviors, interests, and preferences

Me, Myself, and AI podcast. (Transcript also)

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/audio/starting-now-on-technology-ethics-elizabeth-renieris/

Starting Now On Technology Ethics: Elizabeth Renieris

The founding director of the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab shares her views on corporate data governance.

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/audio/starting-now-on-technology-ethics-elizabeth-renieris/#audio-player__audio

Thinking about technology and law.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/autonomous-vehicles-as-a-killer-app-for-ai/

Autonomous vehicles as a “killer app” for AI

… Autonomous vehicles will likely transform our economy, including changing the role of humans in transportation-related industries and potentially reducing emissions and increasing safety, all of which should ultimately lead to economic growth. However, large-scale adoption of autonomous vehicles and the ensuing economic growth will likely take time. The technology is still in development and consumers remain wary of autonomous vehicles. Moreover, federal and state legislation is still nascent, and there are competing standards for communication between vehicles. All of this needs to be resolved before AVs can become a “killer app.”

Any change is hard. Any help is welcome.

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/changing-someones-mind-powerful-new-approach/

Changing Someone’s Mind: A Powerful New Approach

… No one likes to feel like someone is trying to influence them. The natural reaction to being told what to do, whether it’s to support a change initiative, accept a starting salary, or stop smoking, is to resist by pushing back. The more you allow for autonomy and allow people to participate in the process, the more effective you’ll be. Use one or a combination of four proven tactics for helping guide people to make the choice you prefer.

Suspicions confirmed?

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-57520169

The Lazarus heist: How North Korea almost pulled off a billion-dollar hack

In 2016 North Korean hackers planned a $1bn raid on Bangladesh's national bank and came within an inch of success - it was only by a fluke that all but $81m of the transfers were halted, report Geoff White and Jean H Lee. But how did one of the world's poorest and most isolated countries train a team of elite cyber-criminals?

… SPOILER ALERT: This is the story told in the 10-episode BBC World Service podcast, The Lazarus Heist - click here to listen. This article is a 20-minute read.

What if these claims are being filed by idle AI systems?

https://www.databreaches.net/maryland-has-detected-over-500000-potentially-fraudulent-unemployment-claim-in-last-six-weeks/

Maryland Has Detected Over 500,000 Potentially Fraudulent Unemployment Claim In Last Six Weeks

Normal government intrusion or something else?

https://www.pogowasright.org/nsa-agrees-to-release-records-on-fbis-improper-spying-on-16000-americans/

NSA Agrees to Release Records on FBI’s Improper Spying on 16,000 Americans

Zachary Stieber reports:

The National Security Agency (NSA) has agreed to release records on the FBI’s improper spying on thousands of Americans, the secretive agency disclosed in a recent letter.

The agreement may signal a rift between the NSA and the FBI, according to attorney Ty Clevenger.

Clevenger last year filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on behalf of The Transparency Project, a Texas nonprofit, seeking information on the FBI’s improper searches of intelligence databases for information on 16,000 Americans.

Read more on The Epoch Times.

(Related)

https://www.pogowasright.org/doj-asks-dc-court-to-compel-decryption-of-device-seized-in-a-capitol-raid-case/

DOJ Asks DC Court To Compel Decryption Of Device Seized In A Capitol Raid Case

Tim Cushing writes:

The DOJ is testing some waters it may not want to be troubling, not with hundreds of prosecutions stemming from the January 6 Capitol raid on the docket. It has asked the DC court to compel a defendant to decrypt his laptop so the FBI can search it for evidence. (h/t Marcy Wheeler )

The government is seeking an All Writs Act order [PDF] forcing the alleged device owner to unlock the device using either his face or his passcode.

Read more on TechDirt.

No privacy issues here! These are not the ‘droids you are looking for.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/mit-makes-an-ai-smart-carpet-for-monitoring-people-without-cameras/

MIT makes an AI smart carpet for monitoring people without cameras

Researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have come up with a way to use carpets to monitor humans without using privacy-invading cameras.

… The neural network uses sensors in the carpet to determine if the person is doing sit-ups, stretching, or other actions.

"You can imagine leveraging this model to enable a seamless health-monitoring system for high-risk individuals, for fall detection, rehab monitoring, mobility, and more," says Yiyue Luo, a lead author on a paper about the carpet.

MIT's focus is on 3D human pose estimation using pressure maps recorded by a tactile-sensing carpet.

Ethics ain’t easy? Worth reading...

https://www.morningbrew.com/emerging-tech/stories/2021/06/21/building-plane-fly-moment-qa-twitters-ethical-ai-lead-rumman-chowdhury

"A 'building the plane as you fly it' moment": Q&A with Twitter's ethical AI lead Rumman Chowdhury

Rumman Chowdhury has led responsible AI efforts from within major companies for years—first at Accenture, and now as director of the Machine Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability (META) team at Twitter.

… One of the last things I did at Accenture was publish a research paper on what companies need to do to be successful in responsible AI. There were a couple of critical things, and I can boil it down to three things that matter the most.

One is access to leadership.

The second is how success is measured—not just the success of individuals, but also how we measure success in our models and AI systems.

The third is how a company reacts to a bad situation.

Zeroing in on a real definition. A textbook, not in my local library.

https://www.bespacific.com/how-does-artificial-intelligence-work/

How Does Artificial Intelligence Work?

BuiltIn.com: “Less than a decade after breaking the Nazi encryption machine Enigma and helping the Allied Forces win World War II, mathematician Alan Turing changed history a second time with a simple question: “Can machines think?” Turing’s paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (1950), and its subsequent Turing Test, established the fundamental goal and vision of artificial intelligence. At its core, AI is the branch of computer science that aims to answer Turing’s question in the affirmative. It is the endeavor to replicate or simulate human intelligence in machines. The expansive goal of artificial intelligence has given rise to many questions and debates. So much so, that no singular definition of the field is universally accepted. The major limitation in defining AI as simply “building machines that are intelligent” is that it doesn’t actually explain what artificial intelligence is? What makes a machine intelligent? In their groundbreaking textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, authors Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig approach the question by unifying their work around the theme of intelligent agents in machines. With this in mind, AI is “the study of agents that receive percepts from the environment and perform actions.” (Russel and Norvig viii)…”

Download Preface: https://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/preface/0/1/3/4/0134610997.pdf

Perspective. Same old story, “garbage in, garbage out” and AI gets blamed.

https://www.statnews.com/2021/06/21/algorithm-bias-playbook-hospitals/

‘Nobody is catching it’: Algorithms used in health care nationwide are rife with bias

The algorithms carry out an array of crucial tasks: helping emergency rooms nationwide triage patients, predicting who will develop diabetes, and flagging patients who need more help to manage their medical conditions.

But instead of making health care delivery more objective and precise, a new report finds, these algorithms — some of which have been in use for many years — are often making it more biased along racial and economic lines.

Perspective. An AI can look over 10,000 shoulders at a time.

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-robots-are-coming-is-your-firm-ready/

The Robots Are Coming. Is Your Firm Ready?

If you’re worried that robots are coming for your job, you can relax — unless you’re a manager.

A new survey-based study explains how automation is reshaping the workplace in unexpected ways. Robots can improve efficiency and quality, reduce costs, and even help create more jobs for their human counterparts. But the study also finds that more robots can reduce the need for managers.

The study is titled “The Robot Revolution: Managerial and Employment Consequences for Firms.”

I strive to write gooder.

https://www.bespacific.com/umberto-ecos-36-rules-for-writing-well-in-english-or-italian/

Umberto Eco’s 36 Rules for Writing Well (in English or Italian)

You can read all 36 of Eco’s English-relevant writing rules at Clairval’s site. If you’d like to hear more of his writing advice, watch the Louisiana Channel interview clip we featured after his death in 2016...”

Tools to get my students jobs, so they can hire me as a consultant.

https://www.makeuseof.com/apps-for-job-seekers-to-organize-track-and-get-reminders-of-job-applications/

5 Apps for Job-Seekers to Organize, Track, and Get Reminders of Job Applications

A typical job search requires you to apply to many places, tailor your resume for each position, and follow up with them. You need a system to track all of these tasks and information. You can always use a spreadsheet or a manual folder, but a better option is to try one of these specialized job application tracker apps.

We need a new sheriff in town.

https://www.itproportal.com/features/ai-is-a-wild-west-and-proactive-governance-is-needed/

AI is a Wild West - and proactive governance is needed

For some time, there has been an acute need for a legal framework to govern artificial intelligence (AI). This is largely due to the number of longstanding regulatory and ethical concerns surrounding the technology since its inception. I am a firm believer that we need to properly govern AI to prevent issues such as unethical biases, the undermining of legal and regulatory norms, and the blurred lines of organizational accountability from happening.

(Related) But it’s okay in private?

https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/21/ban-biometric-surveillance-in-public-to-safeguard-rights-urge-eu-bodies/

Ban biometric surveillance in public to safeguard rights, urge EU bodies

There have been further calls from EU institutions to outlaw biometric surveillance in public.

In a joint opinion published today, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Wojciech Wiewiórowski, have called for draft EU regulations on the use of artificial intelligence technologies to go further than the Commission’s proposal in April — urging that the planned legislation should be beefed up to include a “general ban on any use of AI for automated recognition of human features in publicly accessible spaces, such as recognition of faces, gait, fingerprints, DNA, voice, keystrokes and other biometric or behavioural signals, in any context”.

(Related) We don’t think you can do it right, so don’t do it at all!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-21/eu-data-watchdogs-call-for-ban-on-facial-recognition-through-ai

EU Data Watchdogs Call for Ban on Facial Recognition Through AI

Because Excel…

https://www.makeuseof.com/best-websites-download-free-excel-templates/

The 5 Best Websites to Download Free Excel Templates

For my next Data Management class.

https://insidebigdata.com/2021/06/19/solidifying-absolute-and-relative-data-quality-with-master-data-management/

Solidifying Absolute and Relative Data Quality with Master Data Management

Contrary to popular belief, data are not the oil, fuel, energy, or life force coursing through the enterprise to inform decision-making, engender insights, and propel timely business action rooted in concrete facts.

Data quality is.

Without data quality, data science, big data, master data, and even metadata are all useless. Ensuring data quality is foundational to reducing risks and reaping any benefit from data themselves.

According to Profisee MDM Strategist Bill O’Kane, however, doing so is more difficult than it looks because there’s “absolute data quality and relative data quality. It could just be bad, unpopulated, mispopulated data.” Such common occurrences result in absolute data quality problems.

...but look at all the money we’re saving!

https://www.engadget.com/facial-recognition-failures-id-me-unemployment-benefits-172654494.html

Facial recognition systems are denying unemployment benefits across the US

A recent string of problems suggests facial recognition's reliability issues are hurting people in a moment of need. Motherboard reports that there are ongoing complaints about the ID.me facial recognition system at least 21 states use to verify people seeking unemployment benefits. People have gone weeks or months without benefits when the Face Match system doesn't verify their identities, and have sometimes had no luck getting help through a video chat system meant to solve these problems.

ID.me chief Blake Hall blamed the problems on users rather than the technology. Face Match algorithms have "99.9% efficacy," he said, and there was "no relationship" between skin tone and recognition failures. Hall instead suggested that people weren't sharing selfies properly or otherwise weren't following instructions.

(Related)

https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/71647

Development or dystopia? : an introduction to the accountability challenges of data processing by facial recognition technology

In parallel with the increasing deployment of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT), scholars are starting to pay attention to the inherent legal issues. We can identify a wide body of literature pointing out fairness concerns regarding the training and performance of these systems. Moreover, there is a scholarship stream that focuses on the threat that FRT might pose for the right to privacy in general and to data protection, in particular. However, most of these works do not provide an overview of the technology to prevent misunderstandings about how FRT works and what it can and cannot achieve. This analysis is necessary because it will inform a realistic and constructive debate around the legal implications of FRT deployment. For instance, the lack of consensus among sources when defining this technology, both from hard and soft law instruments, might reflect that different and separate stages of the actual process, or different functions, are being taken as FRT. Furthermore, although accountability has been spotted as a key feature to address the above mentioned fairness or privacy issues, there are no studies on how, and on what points through the FRT pipeline, accountability might arise. This results in positions ranging from risk assessment to extreme solutions such as banning.

How engineers view the issues surrounding AI?

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9456823

White Paper - IEEE Federated Machine Learning

Data privacy and information security pose significant challenges to the big data and artificial intelligence (AI) community as these communities are increasingly under pressure to adhere to regulatory requirements, such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. Many routine operations in big data applications, such as merging user data from various sources in order to build a machine learning model, are considered to be illegal under current regulatory frameworks. The purpose of federated machine learning is to provide a feasible solution that enables machine learning applications to utilize the data in a distributed manner that does not exchange raw data directly and does not allow any party to infer private information of other parties. This white paper intends to present an overview of the Federated Machine Learning (FML) technology that can be used as a basis for standards, certifications, laws, policies, and/or product ratings. This white paper targets an educated audience, including lawmakers, corporate and governmental policy makers, manufacturers, engineers, and standard setting bodies. However, this white paper is also easily understood by non-technical managers and policy makers as it provides system developers and manufacturers with an overview of Federated Machine Learning techniques.

(Related)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.08258

Identifying Roles, Requirements and Responsibilities in Trustworthy AI Systems

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are being deployed around the globe in critical fields such as healthcare and education. In some cases, expert practitioners in these domains are being tasked with introducing or using such systems, but have little or no insight into what data these complex systems are based on, or how they are put together. In this paper, we consider an AI system from the domain practitioner's perspective and identify key roles that are involved in system deployment. We consider the differing requirements and responsibilities of each role, and identify a tension between transparency and privacy that needs to be addressed so that domain practitioners are able to intelligently assess whether a particular AI system is appropriate for use in their domain.

Ethics vs ethics?

https://philpapers.org/rec/PETEGF

Ethical guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence and the challenges from value conflicts

The aim of this article is to articulate and critically discuss different answers to the following question: How should decision-makers deal with conflicts that arise when the values usually entailed in ethical guidelines – such as accuracy, privacy, non-discrimination and transparency – for the use of Artificial Intelligence clash with one another? To begin with, I focus on clarifying some of the general advantages of using such guidelines in an ethical analysis of the use of AI. Some disadvantages will also be presented and critically discussed. Second, I will show that we need to distinguish between three kinds of conflict that can exist for ethical guidelines used in the moral assessment of AI. This section will be followed by a critical discussion of different answers to the question of how to handle what we shall call internal and external values conflicts. Finally, I will wrap up with a critical discussion of three different strategies to resolve what is called a ‘genuine value conflict’. These strategies are: the ‘accepting the existence of irresolvable conflict’ view, the ranking view, and value monism. This article defends the ‘accepting the existence of irresolvable conflict’ view. It also argues that even though the ranking view and value monism, from a merely theoretical point of view, are better equipped to solve genuine value conflicts among values in ethical guidelines for artificial intelligence, this is not the case in real-life decision-making.

So tell me how to make money with AI…

http://www.jital.org/index.php/jital/article/view/223

Investigating the Socio-Economic Consequences of Artificial Intelligence: A Qualitative Research

It is without any doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) is set to radically disrupt humankind in various dimensions. The global economy is one of the dimensions in which AI is about to have an unsettling effect. Furthermore, AI is expected to change our societal structures in an unprecedented way. It might even change how humanity views concepts such as labour, education, and governance. However, there are conflicting predictions about those effects. Some scholars predict positive socio-economic effects. Conversely, other scholars remain fairly pessimistic. This research attempts to reconcile the gap between AI hype and AI reality by offering insight on AI’s potential impact on issues such as employment and economic growth and to highlight the ethical issues that already raise concerns for the future. This article determines the dimensions in which AI is about to have the most disruptive effect in a socioeconomic context. Semi-structured interviews with seasoned industry experts, academicians, and futurists with extensive knowledge of AI have been carried out for this purpose.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.marktechpost.com/2021/06/19/facebook-ai-open-sources-augly-a-new-python-library-for-data-augmentation-to-develop-robust-machine-learning-models/

Facebook AI Open Sources AugLy: A New Python Library For Data Augmentation To Develop Robust Machine Learning Models

Github: https://github.com/facebookresearch/AugLy