Keeping score.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/dla-piper-annual-gdpr-and-data-breach-report-2022-a-record-year-for-gdpr-fines-despite-drop-in-breach-count/

DLA Piper Annual GDPR and Data Breach Report: 2022 a Record Year for GDPR Fines Despite Drop in Breach Count

DLA Piper’s annual report covering EU data breaches and GDPR fines reports a record year in penalties, with a total of €2.92 billion levied throughout the bloc in 2022. This is in spite of a small drop in the overall breach count, but it is important to remember that fines are often assessed for complaints and cases that were initiated years before.

The report also indicates that the bloc’s regulators are making AI more of a priority, as concerns run rampant about everything from facial recognition tools to ChatGPT.

Guidelines or serious thought?

https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2023/01/when-may-robot-kill-new-dod-policy-tries-clarify/382215/

When May a Robot Kill? New DOD Policy Tries to Clarify

Did you think the Pentagon had a hard rule against using lethal autonomous weapons? It doesn’t. But it does have hoops to jump through before such a weapon might be deployed—and, as of Wednesday, a revised policy intended to clear up confusion.

The biggest change in the Defense Department’s new version of its 2012 doctrine on lethal autonomous weapons is a clearer statement that it is possible to build and deploy them safely and ethically but not without a lot of oversight.

That’s meant to clear up the popular perception that there’s some kind of a ban on such weapons. “No such requirement appears in [the 2012 policy] DODD 3000.09, nor any other DOD policy,” wrote Greg Allen, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Governance Project and a senior fellow in the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

What the 2012 doctrine actually says is that the military may make such weapons but only after a “senior level review process,” which no weapon has gone through yet, according to a 2019 Congressional Research Service report on the subject.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.bespacific.com/nonprofits-release-free-tool-to-detect-ai-written-student-work/

Nonprofits release free tool to detect AI-written student work

Fast Company: “As concerns rise about students’ use of generative artificial intelligence like ChatGPT to complete schoolwork, a pair of education nonprofits have created a free system to help teachers detect AI-assisted essays. The tool, called AI Writing Check, was developed by the writing nonprofits Quill and CommonLit using an open-source AI model designed to detect the output of ChatGPT and related systems. It enables teachers (or anyone else) to copy and paste text and within a few seconds receive a determination on whether the work in question was written by ChatGPT. AI Writing Check, which the nonprofits began to develop in December, comes as surveys indicate growing concern among teachers over machine-generated essays. Other tools, including one called GPTZero, have also been released recently to detect automated writing…”

Well, maybe not everything

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/what-is-chatgpt

What is ChatGPT? Everything you need to know

… The ChatGPT chatbot is so smart that The New York Times reports

(opens in new tab)

that it represents a "red alert" for Google's search business. And Google subsidiary DeepMind is reportedly releasing its own chatbot

(opens in new tab)

in beta, dubbed Sparrow, sometime in 2023.

Don’t worry, this article was still written by a human — though if you want to see how ChatGPT writes, check out the interview we conducted with the AI about what it is and what it can do. We know that lots of people are trying to figure out how to use this new technology and what its limitations are.

If you want to know how to use the chatbot AI check out our guide on how to use ChatGPT, but here we answer all your top questions about ChatGPT.

That seems a bit harsh.

https://www.bespacific.com/should-using-an-ai-text-generator-to-produce-academic-writing-be-plagiarism/

Should Using an AI Text Generator to Produce Academic Writing Be Plagiarism?

Frye, Brian L., Should Using an AI Text Generator to Produce Academic Writing Be Plagiarism? (December 3, 2022). Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4292283

“AI text generators are becoming increasingly sophisticated. In particular, the OpenAI ChatGPT chatbot is capable of responding to a prompt with text that appears remarkably sophisticated. Many people are concerned that AI text generators like ChatGPT will present a huge problem for educators, because it will soon become impossible for them to determine whether a text was produced by a student or an AI. Should we be worried? Is using AI to generate academic writing a form of plagiarism? Who knows. Why don’t we ask the AI? I “wrote” this article by asking ChatGPT the questions in bold and copying its responses. My conclusion is that we have little to worry about. If students can provide satisfactory answers to your questions by using an AI text generator, then you are asking superficial questions. And if an AI text generator can compete with your scholarship, then you are superficial thinker.”

This is the first time I’ve heard of a hack. I hope they have evidence that it actually occurred and had a significant impact.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/23/ticketmaster-cyberattack-taylor-swift-tickets-00079119

Ticketmaster says cyberattack disrupted Taylor Swift ticket sales

The disclosure comes ahead of grilling by lawmakers over antitrust concerns in the ticketing industry.

Ticketmaster was hit by a cyberattack in November that led to the problems with ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s upcoming U.S. tour, the president of its parent company plans to tell a congressional committee Tuesday.

A massive influx of traffic on the Ticketmaster website caused the slowdown in ticket sales, and part of that was due to a cyberattack, Joe Berchtold, president of Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation, will tell the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to prepared remarks.

During the Swift concert sales, Ticketmaster was “hit with three times the amount of bot traffic than we had ever experienced, and for the first time in 400 Verified Fan on-sales, they came after our Verified Fan access code servers,” Berchtold plans to say.

… “While the bots failed to penetrate our systems or acquire any tickets, the attack required us to slow down and even pause our sales,” Berchtold will say. In his testimony Berchtold describes an “arms race” between companies like Ticketmaster and the scalpers and cyber criminals looking to illegally obtain tickets for resale, and apologized to Swift and fans alike for the consumer experience.

… Two people familiar with the cyberattack, granted anonymity to speak about the incident ahead of the hearing, said that a culprit for the attack — which took several hours for the company to address — has not yet been identified. They said Ticketmaster reported the attempted attack to the Federal Trade Commission and to the FBI, which are looking into the incident.

An over reaction to the use of AI? How much is too much?

https://ipwatchdog.com/2023/01/24/copyright-office-officially-cancels-registration-ai-graphic-novel/id=155686/

Copyright Office Officially Cancels Registration for AI Graphic Novel

“If there is no ability to register a generative work with the USCO, or understanding of the points at which —or circumstance around when— the use of AI tools may qualify, it remains unclear as to where this leaves such works for purposes of ownership, exploitation…and protection.”

On Monday, January 23, the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) officially cancelled the registration for a graphic novel that was made using the AI text-to-image tool, Midjourney. The USCO previously registered the work in September 2022. However, a month later, and following significant press attention, the Office issued a notice indicating that the registration may be cancelled. With Monday’s development, the cancellation is now final.

… As part of the September 2022 Notice, the Office asked Kashtanova to provide details “to show that there was substantial human involvement in the process of creation of this graphic novel.”

Van Lindberg, Partner at Taylor English, served as Kashtanova’s counsel in drafting the response to the USCO’s cancellation notice. The response letter argued that there was sufficient creativity in the prompts and inputs used which, when combined with the artist’s use of and control over the tool, should have been sufficient for protection.

Perhaps these are earth shaking, but I doubt it. Still might be worth exploring…

https://www.inc.com/nick-hobson/if-youre-not-already-doing-these-10-productivity-hacks-in-chatgpt-youre-definitely-missing-out.html

If You're Not Already Doing These 10 Productivity Hacks in ChatGPT, You're Definitely Missing Out

In case you've missed the buzz, OpenAI just publicly launched its latest language generation robot, ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a powerful language model that uses deep learning techniques to generate human-like text. In other words, the robot is capable of answering all of your questions and prompts like an intelligent human would.

The model can be fine-tuned for specific tasks, such as language translation, summarization, and question answering. Here are 10 different ways you can use ChatGPT to do work for you and increase your productivity.

Seems like ChatGPT is all the rage.

https://www.deseret.com/2023/1/23/23562681/chatgpt-artificial-intelligence-critical-thinking-dark-ages

Perspective: ChatGPT and the dawn of the new Dark Ages

In a post-literate era, those who continue to read and to practice critical thinking skills will increasingly be unable to effectively communicate with those who don’t

… There’s some larger questions here, though. With the advent of ChatGPT, there has been increasing discussion about whether Western civilization is moving into a “post-literate” era. We’re at a 40-year low in the U.S. in terms of young people reading for pleasure, according to Pew Research. Bosses complain their younger employees boast that they don’t read emails — even work emails — at all. Universities are dropping requirements for standardized test scores and even personal statements from applicants. Short TikTok videos and 280-character tweets are the limited and limiting daily fare of the rising generation. One high school student told a writer that “I should be on TikTok, because Andrew Tate is, and because it’s neither here nor there if I write books because his generation doesn’t read.”

Of course there’s an App for that.

https://hackaday.com/2023/01/21/all-your-keys-are-belong-to-keydecoder/

ALL YOUR KEYS ARE BELONG TO KEYDECODER

Physical security is often considered simpler than digital security since safes are heavy and physical keys take more effort to duplicate than those of the digital persuasion. [Maxime Beasse and Quentin Clement] have developed a smartphone app that can duplicate a key from a photo making key copying much easier.

KeyDecoder is an open source Android app that can generate all the necessary bitting info to duplicate a key from just an image. Luckily for the paranoid among us, the image must be taken with the key laying flat without a keyring on an ISO/CEI 7810 ID-1 ID or credit card. A passerby can’t just snap a photo of your keys across the room and go liberate your home furnishings, but it still would be wise to keep a closer eye on your keys now that this particular cat hack is out of the bag.

Ensuring that no one ever sees an alternative point of view?

https://www.bespacific.com/florida-teachers-told-to-remove-books-from-classroom-libraries-or-risk-felony-prosecution/

Florida teachers told to remove books from classroom libraries or risk felony prosecution

My Sun Coast: “Manatee County Schools Spokesperson Michael Barber confirms that communication has been sent to principals of schools to vet books teachers have in their classroom. In December, House Bill 1467 stated that School Library and Instructional Materials requires school district to adopt procedures for determining and reviewing content for library media centers. This has been extended to books in the classroom. Educators who reached out to ABC7 say that their books are being inspected Friday and books that don’t meet the guidelines will be removed. All books in teacher classrooms must be vetted to determine they have been approved. The Department of Education must publish and update a list of materials that were removed or discontinued by district school boards as a result of an objection and disseminate the list to school districts for consideration in their instructional materials selection… You can read the guidance in its entirety below: Per the new statutory changes to House Bill 1467 – Section 1006.40 (3) (d), F.S. All material in school and classroom libraries or included on a reading list must be:

1. Free of Pornography and material prohibited under S. 847.012, F.S.

2. Suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented.

3. Appropriate for the grade level and age group for which the materials are used and made available.

Each elementary school must publish on its website, in a searchable format prescribed by the department, a list of all materials maintained in the school library media center or required as part of a school or grade-level reading list. Penalty for Violating Section 847.012, F.S. Any person violating any provision of this section commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in S. 775.082, S. 775.083, or s. 775.084.”

(Related)

https://www.bespacific.com/students-want-new-books-thanks-to-restrictions-librarians-cant-buy-them/

Students want new books. Thanks to restrictions, librarians can’t buy them.

Washington Post: Schools are struggling to keep their shelves stocked as oversight by parents and school boards intensifies – “States and districts nationwide have begun to constrain what librarians can order. At least 10 states have passed laws giving parents more power over which books appear in libraries or limiting students’ access to books, a Washington Post analysis found. At the same time, school districts are passing policies that bar certain kinds of texts — most often, those focused on issues of gender and sexuality — while increasing administrative or parental oversight of acquisitions…”

My English teacher friend strongly disagrees…

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgyjm4/ai-writing-tools-like-chatgpt-are-the-future-of-learning-and-no-its-not-cheating

AI Writing Tools Like ChatGPT Are the Future of Learning & No, It’s Not Cheating

ChatGPT is the most advanced technology of its kind and its popularity is growing fast. Especially among students.

… Already, in the US, some schools have already “banned” the URL to mitigate fears of negative effects on students. ChatGPT has quickly become synonymous with “cheating.”

… But computer science experts, and even the universities themselves, say this technology is only the beginning of a new era of learning.

“I think it’s an increase in human capability moment that we’re looking at right now,” co-director at Deakin University’s Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning, Phillip Dawson, told VICE.

“I think a student that graduates in five years’ time is going to be able to do so much more than what we are capable to do now because they’ll be using these sorts of tools.”

Dawson described ChatGPT as a writing tool and compared students using it to help them write essays to a pilot learning how to fly a modern plane.

“Yeah, you need to be able to use all the instruments and you need to know how all those work, but you also need to be able to do it when all those instruments fail. You still need to be able to land that plane.”

Perspective.

https://thenextweb.com/news/how-will-chatgpt-dall-e-and-other-ai-tools-impact-the-future-of-work-we-asked-5-experts

How will ChatGPT, DALL-E and other AI tools impact the future of work? We asked 5 experts

From steam power and electricity to computers and the internet, technological advancements have always disrupted labor markets, pushing out some careers while creating others. Artificial intelligence remains something of a misnomer — the smartest computer systems still don’t actually know anything — but the technology has reached an inflection point where it’s poised to affect new classes of jobs: artists and knowledge workers.

… To jump ahead to each response, here’s a list of each:

Creativity for all – but loss of skills?
Potential inaccuracies, biases and plagiarism
With humans surpassed, niche and ‘handmade’ jobs will remain
Old jobs will go, new jobs will emerge
Leaps in technology lead to new skills

If I never use social media, am I flagged as ‘suspicious?’

https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/social-media-intelligence/317161

Social Media Intelligence: AI Applications for Criminal Investigation and National Security

This chapter aims at discussing how social media intelligence (SOCMINT) can be and has been applied to the field of criminal justice. SOCMINT is composed of a set of computer forensic techniques used for intelligence gathering on social media platforms. Through this chapter, readers will be able to better understand what SOCMINT is and how it may be helpful for criminal investigation and national security. Different aspects of SOCMINT are addressed, including application in criminal justice, intelligence gathering, monitoring, metadata, cyber profiling, social network analysis, tools, and privacy concerns. Further, the challenges and future research directions are discussed as well. This chapter is not meant to serve as a technical tutorial as the focus is on the concepts rather than the techniques.

I find the debate interesting but suspect the answer will always be “AI = person”

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12369-022-00958-y

Can Robots have Personal Identity?

This article attempts to answer the question of whether robots can have personal identity. In recent years, and due to the numerous and rapid technological advances, the discussion around the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Agents or simply Robots, has gained great importance. However, this reflection has almost always focused on problems such as the moral status of these robots, their rights, their capabilities or the qualities that these robots should have to support such status or rights. In this paper I want to address a question that has been much less analyzed but which I consider crucial to this discussion on robot ethics: the possibility, or not, that robots have or will one day have personal identity. The importance of this question has to do with the role we normally assign to personal identity as central to morality. After posing the problem and exposing this relationship between identity and morality, I will engage in a discussion with the recent literature on personal identity by showing in what sense one could speak of personal identity in beings such as robots. This is followed by a discussion of some key texts in robot ethics that have touched on this problem, finally addressing some implications and possible objections. I finally give the tentative answer that robots could potentially have personal identity, given other cases and what we empirically know about robots and their foreseeable future.

Wrong by design?

https://scholarship.richmond.edu/pilr/vol26/iss1/8/

From Ban to Approval: What Virginia's Facial Recognition Technology Law Gets Wrong

Face recognition technology (FRT), in the context of law enforcement, is a complex investigative technique that includes a delicate interplay between machine and human. Compared to other biometric and investigative tools, it poses unique risks to privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. At the same time, its use is generally unregulated and opaque. Recently, state lawmakers have introduced legislation to regulate face recognition technology, but this legislation often fails to account for the complexities of the technology, or to address the unique risks it poses. Using Virginia’s recently passed face recognition law and the legislative history behind it as an example, we show how legislation can fail to properly account for the harms of this technology.

AI as slave?

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/legal-studies/article/bridging-the-accountability-gap-of-artificial-intelligence-what-can-be-learned-from-roman-law/8B2B88D50E0A795F358C2F53958BDB43

Bridging the accountability gap of artificial intelligence – what can be learned from Roman law?

This paper discusses the accountability gap problem posed by artificial intelligence. After sketching out the accountability gap problem we turn to ancient Roman law and scrutinise how slave-run businesses dealt with the accountability gap through an indirect agency of slaves. Our analysis shows that Roman law developed a heterogeneous framework in which multiple legal remedies coexist to accommodate the various competing interests of owners and contracting third parties. Moreover, Roman law shows that addressing the various emerging interests had been a continuous and gradual process of allocating risks among different stakeholders. The paper concludes that these two findings are key for contemporary discussions on how to regulate artificial intelligence.

Interesting failure of their Terms of Service. “You must allow us to ignore the GDPR if you want to use this service…: How many others will also fail?

https://thehackernews.com/2023/01/whatsapp-hit-with-55-million-fine-for.html

WhatsApp Hit with €5.5 Million Fine for Violating Data Protection Laws

… At the heart of the ruling is an update to the messaging platform's Terms of Service that was imposed in the days leading to the enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018, requiring that users agree to the revised terms in order to continue using the service or risk losing access.

The complaint, filed by privacy non-profit NOYB, alleged that WhatsApp breached the regulation by compelling its users to "consent to the processing of their personal data for service improvement and security" by "making the accessibility of its services conditional on users accepting the updated Terms of Service."

"WhatsApp Ireland is not entitled to rely on the contract legal basis for the delivery of service improvement and security," the DPC said in a statement, adding the data collected so far amounts to a contravention of GDPR.

Are the cars smart enough to know what they’ve been asked to do is not right?

https://news.yahoo.com/self-driving-cars-create-opportunities-152405455.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACx_DY-Lhl4gKRDSG-2TP3395ulVIsYtDml74m8nMKotCcgsSTImDy0jSDBqVQV6ytCyjXSEOEVyShsepskAAWLWVuHRoNu-G7r9SI-wEgqDES06vGJ4LJYboz4LcYJS9aWiVdTeN7P8nH-1KJlLZKNCLYsDI67UkisboeTzFUQe

Self-driving cars create new opportunities for terrorist attacks, says FBI Director Chris Wray

The expanding use of self-driving cars opens up new ways for terrorists to harm Americans, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Speaking on a panel on national security, Wray said the FBI views autonomous vehicles as both a possible tool to cause physical harm and a potentially valuable source of personal data that could become a target.

Apparently, China wants to be the first “totally lawyer free” country.

https://www.dw.com/en/how-chinas-ai-is-automating-the-legal-system/a-64465988

How China's AI is automating the legal system

… A court in the city of Hangzhou located south of Shanghai started employing AI in 2019. The judge's assistant program called Xiao Zhi 3.0, or "Little Wisdom," first assisted in a trial of 10 people who had failed to repay bank loans.

Previously, it would have taken 10 separate trials to settle the issue, but with Xiao Zhi 3.0, all the cases were resolved in one hearing with one judge and a decision was available in just 30 minutes.

At first, Xiao Zhi 3.0 took over repetitive tasks such as announcing court procedures during hearings.

Now, the technology is used to record testimony with voice recognition, analyze case materials, and verify information from databases in real time.

I thought we had concluded that AI would start reading works created by AI, thus reinforcing a pro-AI bias…

https://www.bespacific.com/what-happens-when-ai-has-read-everything/

What Happens When AI Has Read Everything?

The Atlantic – The dream of an artificial mind may never become a reality if AI runs out of quality prose to ingest—and there isn’t much left. What Happens When AI Has Read Everything? “Artificial intelligence has in recent years proved itself to be a quick study, although it is being educated in a manner that would shame the most brutal headmaster. Locked into airtight Borgesian libraries for months with no bathroom breaks or sleep, AIs are told not to emerge until they’ve finished a self-paced speed course in human culture. On the syllabus: a decent fraction of all the surviving text that we have ever produced.”..

The trouble is that, like other high-end human cultural products, good prose ranks among the most difficult things to produce in the known universe. It is not in infinite supply, and for AI, not any old text will do: Large language models trained on books are much better writers than those trained on huge batches of social-media posts. (It’s best not to think about one’s Twitter habit in this context.) When we calculate how many well-constructed sentences remain for AI to ingest, the numbers aren’t encouraging. A team of researchers led by Pablo Villalobos at Epoch AI recently predicted that programs such as the eerily impressive ChatGPT will run out of high-quality reading material by 2027. Without new text to train on, AI’s recent hot streak could come to a premature end…”

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/science-technology/how-to-use-ai-tools-like-chatgpt-in-your-business/441616

Here's How Your Business Can Use 3 Popular AI Content Creation Tools

… Artificial intelligence is not only altering the course of the internet but also impacting the future of business. While some fear that it will have harmful economic repercussions by replacing people in jobs, AI can also serve as a game-changing tool to grow a business and increase its efficiency — help with everything from lead generation to content creation.

Here are a few popular new platforms and how you can apply them:

Another way to use ChatGPT…

https://dilbert.com/strip/2023-01-17

I suspect this will further complicate an already complicated area.

https://www.insideprivacy.com/gdpr/gdpr-rights/court-of-justice-of-the-eu-decides-that-gdpr-right-of-access-allows-data-subjects-to-request-the-identity-of-each-data-recipient/

Court of Justice of the EU Decides that GDPR Right of Access Allows Data Subjects to Request the Identity of Each Data Recipient

On January 12, 2023, the Court of Justice of the EU (“Court”) decided that the GDPR’s right of access gives a data subject the choice between asking a controller for (i) the identity of each data recipient to whom the controller will or has disclosed the data subject’s personal data or (ii) only the categories of data recipients. The controller must comply with the data subject’s request, unless it is impossible to identify those recipients (e.g., because they are not yet known) or the controller demonstrates that the data subject’s access request is “manifestly unfounded or excessive.”

According to the Court, this interpretation of Article 15(1)(c) GDPR is in line with the GDPR’s principle of transparency and is necessary to enable data subjects to exercise their other GDPR rights (e.g., right of rectification, erasure and opposition). This interpretation is also confirmed by Article 19 GDPR, which expressly grants data subjects the right to receive from the controller the name of each data recipient, in the context of the controller’s obligation to inform all the recipients of the exercise of the data subject’s rights of rectification, erasure and opposition.

A failure to evolve or are we exposing weaknesses that have always been exploitable?

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-01-15/hacked-evidence-and-stolen-data-swamp-english-courts

Hacked evidence and stolen data swamp English courts

A multimillion-pound high court case between an authoritarian Gulf emirate and an Iranian-American businessman has revealed how hacked evidence is being used by leading law firms to advance their clients’ claims.

The case has included allegations that a former Metropolitan Police officer hired Indian hackers and that lawyers from a top City firm held a secret “perjury school” in the Swiss Alps to prepare false witness testimonies about how they got hold of illegally obtained information.

In November the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Sunday Times exposed the criminal activities of Aditya Jain, a 31-year-old computer security expert who set up a “hack-for-hire” operation from his apartment in Gurugram, India.

… A striking feature of the English legal system is that a judge will accept hacked emails as evidence in court in the interests of justice unless persuaded to exclude it. Peter Ashford, a London solicitor and expert in the admissibility of evidence, claims the English system is “the most liberal”. He added: “Even if you’ve done the hacking, you’ve still got a pretty good chance of getting it in [to the court].”

Do you suppose they have a smarter version of ChatGPT than we do?

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/China-trounces-U.S.-in-AI-research-output-and-quality

China trounces U.S. in AI research output and quality

… Looking at quantity, the number of AI papers exploded from about 25,000 in 2012 to roughly 135,000 in 2021. This mirrors the AI boom that began around 2012, when deep learning came to the fore.

China has consistently stood atop the heap in terms of the volume of papers, the study shows. For 2021, it produced 43,000 papers – roughly twice as many as the U.S.

Inextricably embedded ethics, I like it!

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003189466-19/values-artificial-intelligence-systems-justin-biddle

Values in Artificial Intelligence Systems

This chapter argues that ethical values are inextricably embedded in Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. AI systems assist in driving our cars and screen job applications for companies looking to hire new employees. In developing an AI system, researchers must make decisions about which problem is to be addressed and how this problem is to be framed. AI systems that involve the collection, use, and storage of data about human beings – including social media platforms, personal digital assistants, and contact tracing systems – have design features that significantly impact privacy. In creating an AI system that classifies individuals into categories, designers must decide which type of fairness they wish to encode into the system – which conceptions of fairness they wish to prioritize and which they are willing to violate. In creating an AI system that classifies individuals into categories, designers must decide which type of fairness they wish to encode into the system.

Are lawyers beginning to sweat?

https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/an-ai-lawyer-will-challenge-speeding-tickets-in-court-next-month/

AI as Lawyer: It's Starting as a Stunt, but There's a Real Need

Next month, AI will enter the courtroom, and the US legal system may never be the same.

An artificial intelligence chatbot, technology programmed to respond to questions and hold a conversation, is expected to advise two individuals fighting speeding tickets in courtrooms in undisclosed cities. The two will wear a wireless headphone, which will relay what the judge says to the chatbot being run by DoNotPay, a company that typically helps people fight traffic tickets through the mail. The headphone will then play the chatbot's suggested responses to the judge's questions, which the individuals can then choose to repeat in court.

It's a stunt. But it also has the potential to change how people interact with the law, and to bring many more changes over time. DoNotPay CEO Josh Browder says expensive legal fees have historically kept people from hiring traditional lawyers to fight for them in traffic court, which typically involves fines that can reach into the hundreds of dollars.

(Related)

https://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/news/2023/01/15/can-artificial-intelligence-displace-attorneys.html

Can artificial intelligence displace attorneys? A ‘conversation’ about law with OpenAI

… As an attorney, I cannot help but wonder if artificial intelligence has the ability to replace me? Can artificial intelligence formulate the same responses to client questions that I, an attorney of 25 years of experience would?

When we compared OpenAI versus lawyers, lawyers seem have the upper hand today, but how soon will that change?

Here is the request I entered into OpenAI (using the GPT-3 model): Describe the power of OpenAI and why that may scare a lawyer in six paragraphs.

OpenAI’s response: OpenAI’s research has had a profound impact on the AI field as a whole, as well as various industries. OpenAI’s breakthroughs in natural language processing (NLP) have enabled machines to communicate with humans in a more natural way. OpenAI has also made advances in reinforcement learning, which has enabled machines to learn from their environment and take action without explicit instructions. OpenAI has also developed bots that have been able to beat the world’s best players in games like Dota 2 and Go.

The power of OpenAI may scare a lawyer because of its potential to automate many aspects of the legal profession. For example, OpenAI has developed GPT-3, an NLP system that can perform legal research and write legal documents. This could potentially make the work of lawyers much easier, but could also lead to job losses in the legal profession. Additionally, OpenAI’s research could lead to the development of AI-powered systems that can make decisions on legal cases, potentially leading to a shift away from human-centric legal decision-making.

OpenAI’s advances could also lead to new challenges in the legal field. For example, OpenAI’s research on AGI could lead to the development of systems that can make decisions and take action autonomously. This could lead to difficult questions about the legal responsibility of these systems and how to regulate them. Additionally, OpenAI’s research could lead to new challenges in terms of data privacy, as OpenAI’s systems have access to large amounts of data that could be used for nefarious purposes.

The power of OpenAI could lead to a revolution in many fields, including the legal profession. While OpenAI’s research could lead to many benefits in the legal field, it could also lead to new challenges that lawyers will have to grapple with. For this reason, OpenAI’s power may be something that lawyers need to be aware of and prepare for.

Never mind that OpenAI’s response was four paragraphs, this is a pretty good answer, although it’s missing some fundamental issues.

Which will go first, lawyers or judges?

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4319969

The Rule of Algorithm and the Rule of Law

Can AI adjudicative tools in principle better enable us to achieve the rule of law by replacing judges? This article argues that answers to this question have been excessively focussed on 'output' dimensions of the rule of law – such as conformity of decisions with the applicable law – at the expense of vital 'process' considerations such as explainability, answerability, and reciprocity. These process considerations do not by themselves warrant the conclusion that AI adjudicative tools can never, in any context, properly replace human judges. But they help bring out the complexity of the issues – and the potential costs – that are involved in this domain.

An interesting perspective?

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-17992-1_6

The Future

In the twenty-first century, the pace of change has become exponential. This means that we are now in a period of exponential ethics that we might call “hyper-ethics.” Hence, a reliable ethical framework is important to ensure that our technological advances do not yield deleterious outcomes. This chapter describes the various technological innovations that will remake our physical beings and our internal selves and that will result in artificial intelligence (AI), that is many orders of magnitude more intelligent than humans—a “transhumanist” future. A host of pivotal questions arises from these developments including how to address challenges such as fewer jobs, less equality, body enhancements, altered family structures, and radical life extension. How should Judaism respond to these fundamental issues which in essence require the reconsideration of what it means to be human?