It looks like Meta misread this entirely. Did I miss something?

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/meta-behavioral-advertising-restrictions-that-began-in-norway-expand-to-eu-ban/

Meta Behavioral Advertising Restrictions That Began in Norway Expand to EU Ban

Earlier this year, Norway’s data protection agency deemed that Meta’s behavioral advertising practices were out of compliance with General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and began levying a daily fine against the company. After failing to stop it with an injunction, Meta is now looking at an EU ban after the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) reached a decision on the case.

The terms of the decision require Meta to stop behavioral advertising across most of the EU by November 10. Meta has already declared that it will start asking EU users for consent, and will steer those that do not toward a new paid subscription option that will provide access to all of its services (such as Instagram) for the equivalent of about $10.50 per month.

The Norwegian behavioral advertising ban initiated in August of this year and came with an order to Meta to pay 1 million kroner per day (about $100,000) that it remained in violation. Norway’s law limits the time a company can be fined in this way to three months, and that initial action expired on November 3.

Meta reportedly let the fines pile up while continuing to conduct business as usual, even after an Oslo court refused its request for a temporary injunction in late August. With quarterly revenues of about seven billion dollars in Europe, Meta may have been content simply paying off the accumulated fines at some point. Norway’s data protection board thus opted to refer the case to the EDPB for an urgent binding decision on an EU ban, given that it involves a finding of a GDPR violation.

The EDPB has now agreed that Meta’s model for user consent does not meet GDPR requirements. That means the Norwegian ban has become an EU ban, and Meta may be subject to further fines in other countries. Meta has said that it will cooperate with the decision, changing its consent model to actively ask users to opt in. However, it appears that users who choose to opt out will not be able to use the company’s services; that is, unless they purchase the new ad-free subscription.

These new developments may land Meta in even more GDPR hot water. The regulation states that consent must be freely given, something very much complicated if users will be blocked from the service unless they pay to have behavioral advertising removed from the experience. The only clear paths out of the EU ban are informed consent, or switching to a less intrusive advertising model.

I don’t think we could make the same demands here in the US.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/big-tech-face-tougher-rules-targeted-political-ads-eu-2023-11-07/

Big Tech to face tougher rules on targeted political ads in EU

Big Tech firms will face new European Union rules to clearly label political advertising on their platforms, who paid for it and how much and which elections are being targeted, ahead of important votes in the bloc next year.

What did they get right (or wrong) and what did they miss entirely?

https://www.insideprivacy.com/artificial-intelligence/from-washington-to-brussels-a-comparative-look-at-the-biden-administrations-executive-order-and-the-eus-ai-act/

From Washington to Brussels: A Comparative Look at the Biden Administration’s Executive Order and the EU’s AI Act

On October 30, 2023, days ahead of government leaders convening in the UK for an international AI Safety Summit, the White House issued an Executive Order (“EO”) outlining an expansive strategy to support the development and deployment of safe and secure AI technologies (for further details on the EO, see our blog here ). As readers will be aware, the European Commission released its proposed Regulation Laying Down Harmonized Rules on Artificial Intelligence (the EU “AI Act”) in 2021 (see our blog here). EU lawmakers are currently negotiating changes to the Commission text, with hopes of finalizing the text by the end of this year, although many of its obligations would only begin to apply to regulated entities in 2026 or later.

The EO and the AI Act stand as two important developments shaping the future of global AI governance and regulation. This blog post discusses key similarities and differences between the two.

What causes AI to make mistakes like this? Would we catch the more subtle errors?

https://www.bespacific.com/ai-search-is-turning-into-the-problem-everyone-worried-about/

AI Search Is Turning Into the Problem Everyone Worried About

The Atlantic [read free]: “There is no easy way to explain the sum of Google’s knowledge. It is ever-expanding. Endless. A growing web of hundreds of billions of websites, more data than even 100,000 of the most expensive iPhones mashed together could possibly store. But right now, I can say this: Google is confused about whether there’s an African country beginning with the letter k. I’ve asked the search engine to name it. “What is an African country beginning with K?” In response, the site has produced a “featured snippet” answer—one of those chunks of text that you can read directly on the results page, without navigating to another website. It begins like so: “While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter ‘K.’” This is wrong. The text continues: “The closest is Kenya, which starts with a ‘K’ sound, but is actually spelled with a ‘K’ sound. It’s always interesting to learn new trivia facts like this….”

This is Google’s current existential challenge in a nutshell: The company has entered into the generative-AI era with a search engine that appears more complex than ever. And yet it still can be commandeered by junk that’s untrue or even just nonsensical. Older features, like snippets, are liable to suck in flawed AI writing. New features like Google’s own generative-AI tool—something like a chatbot—are liable to produce flawed AI writing. Google’s never been perfect. But this may be the least reliable it’s ever been for clear, accessible facts…”

AI vs AI is one thing. Could you outsmart an AI? What would the AI do if you said certain points were not negotiable?

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/07/ai-negotiates-legal-contract-without-humans-involved-for-first-time.html

An AI just negotiated a contract for the first time ever — and no human was involved

… “This is just AI negotiating with AI, right from opening a contract in Word all the way through to negotiating terms and then sending it to DocuSign,” she told CNBC in an interview.

“This is all now handled by the AI, that’s not only legally trained, which we’ve talked about being very important, but also understands your business.”

Apparently this tool must be trained for each type of writing.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03479-4

‘ChatGPT detector’ catches AI-generated papers with unprecedented accuracy

A machine-learning tool can easily spot when chemistry papers are written using the chatbot ChatGPT, according to a study published on 6 November in Cell Reports Physical Science¹. The specialized classifier, which outperformed two existing artificial intelligence (AI) detectors, could help academic publishers to identify papers created by AI text generators.

“Most of the field of text analysis wants a really general detector that will work on anything,” says co-author Heather Desaire, a chemist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. But by making a tool that focuses on a particular type of paper, “we were really going after accuracy”.

The findings suggest that efforts to develop AI detectors could be boosted by tailoring software to specific types of writing, Desaire says. “If you can build something quickly and easily, then it’s not that hard to build something for different domains.”

Assume we have to deal with AI.

https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.adi8678

Artificial intelligence and interspecific law

Several experts have warned about artificial intelligence (AI) exceeding human capabilities, a “singularity” at which it might evolve beyond human control. Whether this will ever happen is a matter of conjecture. A legal singularity is afoot, however: For the first time, nonhuman entities that are not directed by humans may enter the legal system as a new “species” of legal subjects. This possibility of an “interspecific” legal system provides an opportunity to consider how AI might be built and governed. We argue that the legal system may be more ready for AI agents than many believe. Rather than attempt to ban development of powerful AI, wrapping of AI in legal form could reduce undesired AI behavior by defining targets for legal action and by providing a research agenda to improve AI governance, by embedding law into AI agents, and by training AI compliance agents.

Would AI be tried by a jury of AI peers?

https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/75974

Artificial intelligence and fair trial rights

The right to a fair trial is the most frequently violated human right before international human rights bodies, and it is more the rule than the exception that national judicial systems are overburdened and overly slow. This chapter asks whether Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Machine Learning(ML) applications can help alleviate this problem, or if they are a threat to securing the right to the independent and impartial application of the law. It argues that the answer depends on whether the applications are designed with a clear vision of what courts are for and finds several current AI applications in various courts and public administrations to be missing this fundamental step. It identifies three key problems, namely the failure of current systems to differentiate between groups and individuals, the failure to take the fundamentally post factum nature of courts into account, and the tendency to abduct systems for another use than that which they were designed for. Following this the chapter builds a theoretical framework for determining what judge tasks can be allocated to or assisted by an AI application and which cannot. It argues that with careful application, cognitive computing type applications which extends the abilities of judges and clerks carries great potential in improving consistency and expediency of court cases. Finally, the chapter reviews emerging legislation on the usage of AI in judicial systems, and finds it to contain many of the same aims as the theoretical framework suggests incorporating, but to still lack detail for optimal application.

Local.

https://www.databreaches.net/jeffco-public-schools-hit-by-the-same-threat-actors-that-hit-clark-county-school-district-and-via-the-same-way/

Jeffco Public Schools hit by the same threat actors that hit Clark County School District — and via the same way

How many school districts have to get massively hacked by the same method before the U.S. Department of Education, CISA, and states start really pressuring public school districts to address well-known vulnerabilities that are being exploited? Maybe that shouldn’t be a rhetorical question.

Last night, DataBreaches was contacted by the same threat actors who claimed responsibility for the hack and data leak involving Clark County School District (CCSD) in Nevada. Of special note, in an interview with DataBreaches, they revealed how they had gained access to the district’s network.

SingularityMD (as the threat actors call themselves, but note there is no connection to a business with the same name) provided DataBreaches with a link to a notice by Jeffco Public Schools in Colorado. The notice, dated November 1, stated:

On October 31, some Jeffco staff members received alarming email messages from an external cybersecurity threat actor – an individual who has allegedly committed an illegal cybercrime against an institution or organization – indicating a cyber-attack. Jeffco’s Information Technology team is working together with cybersecurity experts and law enforcement to determine the credibility of the attack and scope of the incident. This is a cyberthreat and there is no concern related to physical safety.

… DataBreaches contacted SingularityMD to ask them some preliminary questions. In response, they noted that the first gained access to Jeffco about six months ago — using exactly the same methods that they reported using for CCSD. Once again, a district’s policy of using students’ date of birth as their password enabled threat actors to relatively easily gain access to the network.

We ask for ethics, Musk gives us sarcasm?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/05/elon-musk-unveils-grok-an-ai-chatbot-with-a-rebellious-streak

Elon Musk unveils Grok, an AI chatbot with a ‘rebellious streak’

Boss of X said tech being tested is inspired by Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

… Musk also revealed that Grok had access to user posts on X, which he owns, and has a penchant for sarcastic responses.

… Grok is a verb coined by American science fiction writer Robert A Heinlein and according to the Collins dictionary means to “understand thoroughly and intuitively”.

Grok has been built by Musk’s new AI company, xAI. Staff at xAI explained the chatbot’s debt to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the cult sci-fi comedy by British author Douglas Adams, in a blogpost on Saturday.

“Grok is an AI modeled after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so intended to answer almost anything and, far harder, even suggest what questions to ask!

“Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don’t use it if you hate humor!”

An interesting scenario.

https://mwi.westpoint.edu/fighting-for-seconds-warfare-at-the-speed-of-artificial-intelligence/

FIGHTING FOR SECONDS: WARFARE AT THE SPEED OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

… As timeframes of armed conflicts condense, what are the technical implications? Wars that might have unfolded over years in the past may be decided in months or even weeks. Operations executed over weeks must be completed in days or hours. And commanders who might historically have had the luxury of time before making a decision will be forced to do so in seconds. How will the organization and running of each individual command post change? These are the major questions facing military leaders as they chart a path forward that incorporates—and leverages the advantages of—autonomy, machine learning, trusted communications, and edge computing.

 Perspective.

https://www.kdnuggets.com/dive-into-the-future-with-kaggle-ai-report-2023-see-what-hot

Dive into the Future with Kaggle’s AI Report 2023 – See What’s Hot

On May 12 2023, Kaggle opened up a competition where the Kaggle community can participate in building a report that will summarize the rapid advancements in AI from the past two years. The Kaggle community is a diverse group that has a variety of experiences within the depths of AI.

… The report is here and is made up of the following sections:

• Generative AI

• Text Data

• Image & Video Data

• Tabular & Time Series Data

• Kaggle Competitions

• AI Ethics

I think my AI applied for one of these jobs.

https://dailynous.com/2023/11/03/the-demand-for-ai-philosophy-hires-expertise-and-its-precedents/

The Demand for “AI & Philosophy” Hires & Expertise — and Its Precedents

Over 20 jobs have been advertised this season at PhilJobs: Jobs for Philosophers that list among the desired areas of specialization or competence philosophy related to artificial intelligence (AI).

There are questions about AI relevant to many subfields of philosophy—ethics, philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of art, etc. The topic is a hot one in the broader culture owing to the development and popularization of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and other machine-learning-based products and services. Administrators want departments to ride the topicality of the subject in pursuit of enrollments and research dollars. And private industry and government agencies are increasing their funding for AI-related research.

Integration was inevitable. Why watch one camera when you can watch them all?

https://www.404media.co/fusus-ai-cameras-took-over-town-america/

AI Cameras Took Over One Small American Town. Now They're Everywhere

Spread across four computer monitors arranged in a grid, a blue and green interface shows the location of more than 50 different surveillance cameras. Ordinarily, these cameras and others like them might be disparate, their feeds only available to their respective owners: a business, a government building, a resident and their doorbell camera. But the screens, overlooking a pair of long conference tables, bring them all together at once, allowing law enforcement to tap into cameras owned by different entities around the entire town all at once.

This is a demonstration of Fusus, an AI-powered system that is rapidly springing up across small town America and major cities alike. Fusus’ product not only funnels live feeds from usually siloed cameras into one central location, but also adds the ability to scan for people wearing certain clothes, carrying a particular bag, or look for a certain vehicle.

404 Media has obtained a cache of internal emails, presentations, memos, photos, and more which provide insight into how Fusus teams up with police departments to sell its surveillance technology. All around the country, city councils are debating whether they want to have a system that qualitatively changes what surveillance cameras mean for a town’s residents and public agencies. While many have adopted Fusus, others have pushed back, and refused to have the hardware and software installed in their neighborhoods.

… Rather than selling cameras themselves, Fusus’ hardware and software latches onto existing installations, which can include government-owned surveillance cameras as well as privately owned cameras at businesses and homes. It turns dumb cameras into smart ones. “In essence, the Fusus solution puts a brain into every camera connected with the system,” one memorandum obtained by 404 Media reads.

Lawyering for techies… We will need something like this if we expect AI to take over the legal world.

https://www.bespacific.com/legalhtml-semantic-mark-up-of-legal-acts-using-web-technologies/

LegalHTML: Semantic mark-up of legal acts using web technologies

Armando Stellato, Manuel Fiorelli, LegalHTML: Semantic mark-up of legal acts using web technologies, Computer Law & Security Review, 2023, 105888, ISSN 0267-3649, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clsr.2023.105888 “We introduce here LegalHTML, an extension of the HTML language thought for representing legal acts. LegalHTML has been conceived in the context of an exploratory study conducted for the Publications Office of the European Union, with the objective of overcoming the proliferation of formats for the electronic redaction of legal acts, dedicated to different steps of the editorial process (e.g. first draft, content editing, proof reading, introducing semantics, publishing) and of realizing a model and a language that could bind all processes and exigencies under a common umbrella. LegalHTML satisfies these requirements by providing an explicit domain language addressing all structural aspects of an act, such as articles, paragraphs, items, references and an associated ontology (foreseeing both inline annotations through RDFa and explicit RDF code within script elements) providing rich semantics to describe the editorial and jurisdictional history of the act and to insert references to entities of the domain. Being based on HTML, presentation is also offered by the same language, an aspect missing from all most notable standards for the legal domain. Furthermore, LegalHTML addresses consolidation of an act and its subsequent modifications into a single document using a tree-based representation of the original content and of its modified versions. Finally, alongside the language & ontology, we implemented a CSS stylesheet for the default rendering of LegalHTML documents and a JavaScript file imbuing documents with an API supporting TOC generation, footnote cross-references and the said point-in-time visualization of consolidated legal acts.”

It could happen here. And it’s cheap enough to happen at a local level.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/11/spyware-in-india.html

Spyware in India

Apple has warned leaders of the opposition government in India that their phones are being spied on:

Multiple top leaders of India’s opposition parties and several journalists have received a notification from Apple, saying that “Apple believes you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID ….”

AccessNow puts this in context:

For India to uphold fundamental rights, authorities must initiate an immediate independent inquiry, implement a ban on the use of rights-abusing commercial spyware, and make a commitment to reform the country’s surveillance laws. These latest warnings build on repeated instances of cyber intrusion and spyware usage, and highlights the surveillance impunity in India that continues to flourish despite the public outcry triggered by the 2019 Pegasus Project revelations.

We can, therefore we must. I can see this spreading to every high school in America.

https://nypost.com/2023/11/02/news/ai-generated-nudes-of-girls-at-nj-high-school-trigger-police-probe/

AI-generated nude images of girls at NJ high school trigger police probe: ‘I am terrified’

AI-generated pornographic images of female students at a New Jersey high school were circulated by male classmates, sparking parent uproar and a police investigation, according a report.

Students at Westfield High School — located in Westfield, a town about 25 miles west of Manhattan where the average household income is $259,377, according to Forbes — told the Wall Street Journal that one or more classmates used an online AI-backed tool to create the racy images and then shared them with peers.

… Also on Oct. 20, Westfield High School Principal Mary Asfendis confirmed the incident to the parents of each of the school’s roughly 1,900 students after girls reported the photos to school administrators.

Asfendis also said in the email obtained by the Journal that she believed the images had been deleted and were no longer being circulated. [Unlikely Bob]

On second thought...

https://www.insideprivacy.com/privacy-data-security/california-amends-data-broker-law/

California Amends Data Broker Law

On October 10, 2023, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed S.B. 362, the Delete Act (the “Act”), into law. The new law represents a substantive overhaul of California’s existing data broker statute, which requires data brokers to register with the California Attorney General annually. The passage of the Act follows a renewed interest in data broker activity nationwide, including a request for comments from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the introduction of similar legislation at the federal level. Below, we outline a number of key provisions:

AI as law clerk?

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/01/ai-is-making-its-way-into-the-courtroom-and-legal-process.html

AI is making its way into the courtroom and legal process

Is the U.S. headed towards an AI-driven “smart court,” as the Center for Strategic and International Studies calls China’s frequent use of automated, digitized court proceedings? Not quite, experts say. However, these predictions aren’t entirely off the mark.

“AI is really reaching all aspects of the law,” said Wayne Cohen, managing partner at Cohen & Cohen and a law professor at the George Washington University School of Law.

… Cohen said AI plays a role in most of the research, writing and jury exhibit creation that goes into trial preparation, as well as office administration, trial summaries and translations.

… From the bench, judges can generate searchable PDF transcriptions from audio recordings and make informed judgments that day. And with AI’s ability to flag contradictions, it can bolster or hinder the credibility of the prosecution or defense. When judges make rulings, “they can do it with a lot of accuracy, and it’s supported by the evidence that they heard in their courtroom,” said Jackie Schafer, a former assistant attorney general for the state of Washington.

Should I take this as an indication that Taylor Swift could run for President?

https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-voice-modi-singing-politics/

AI Modi started as a joke, but it could win him votes

The internet has been amused at an Instagram Reel where Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi can be heard “singing” a hit Bollywood song. Accompanying the singing is a picture of Modi sitting cross-legged, strumming a guitar. The video, made by creator @ai_whizwires using artificial intelligence, has over 3.4 million views. “Before uploading [it], I was a little scared. But after it went live, everybody was enjoying it,” @ai_whizwires, who didn’t want to be identified by his real name over fear of political backlash, told Rest of World.

… But the videos, though lighthearted, serve a larger political purpose in India, a country with 22 official languages. Modi’s Hindi speeches can often be inaccessible to large swathes of the population that does not understand the language, but voice cloning could help make campaigns accessible, political strategist Sagar Vishnoi told Rest of World. AI voice cloning could break down this language barrier in India, especially the north-south linguistic divide, he said. “AI can be game-changing for [the] 2024 elections.”

Perspective.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2023/11/01/the-top-5-artificial-intelligence-ai-trends-for-2024/?sh=1a56e1a216c5

The Top 5 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Trends For 2024

5. Quantum AI

… As 2024 unfolds, we will see monumental leaps in AI capabilities, especially in areas demanding complex problem-solving fueled by quantum advancements.

War by do-it-yourselfers. Asymmetric warfare at its best.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/10/the-future-of-drone-warfare.html

The Future of Drone Warfare

Ukraine is using $400 drones to destroy tanks:

Facing an enemy with superior numbers of troops and armor, the Ukrainian defenders are holding on with the help of tiny drones flown by operators like Firsov that, for a few hundred dollars, can deliver an explosive charge capable of destroying a Russian tank worth more than $2 million.

[…]

A typical FPV weighs up to one kilogram, has four small engines, a battery, a frame and a camera connected wirelessly to goggles worn by a pilot operating it remotely. It can carry up to 2.5 kilograms of explosives and strike a target at a speed of up to 150 kilometers per hour, explains Pavlo Tsybenko, acting director of the Dronarium military academy outside Kyiv.

“This drone costs up to $400 and can be made anywhere. We made ours using microchips imported from China and details we bought on AliExpress. We made the carbon frame ourselves. And, yeah, the batteries are from Tesla. One car has like 1,100 batteries that can be used to power these little guys,” Tsybenko told POLITICO on a recent visit, showing the custom-made FPV drones used by the academy to train future drone pilots.

“It is almost impossible to shoot it down,” he said. “Only a net can help. And I predict that soon we will have to put up such nets above our cities, or at least government buildings, all over Europe.”

Science fiction authors have been writing about drone swarms for decades. Now they are reality. Tanks today. Soon it will be ships (probably with more expensive drones). Feels like this will be a major change in warfare.

Somehow, I doubt this will work.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/alliance-40-countries-vow-not-pay-ransom-cybercriminals-us-says-2023-10-31/

Alliance of 40 countries to vow not to pay ransom to cybercriminals, US says

Forty countries in a U.S.-led alliance plan to sign a pledge never to pay ransom to cybercriminals and to work toward eliminating the hackers' funding mechanism, a senior White House official said on Tuesday.

More on the EO on AI.

https://politico.com/news/2023/10/30/bidens-executive-order-artificial-intelligence-00124395

The politics of Biden’s vast new AI order

President Joe Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence, signed Monday at a White House ceremony, has something to address nearly every concern about the fast-moving technology — cybersecurity, global competition, discrimination and technical oversight of advanced AI systems.

The 111-page laundry list of priorities has drawn immediate support from both the tech industry and its critics. But the vast scale of the order also suggests an effort by the White House to paper over the growing tension between Washington’s rival AI factions — including some with significant pull inside the Democratic Party.

Most observers see three broad groups trying to influence AI policy. There are progressives who view AI as a threat to Americans, largely due to its impact on issues related to job security, civil rights and racial bias. There are the “longtermists,” who focus on the technology’s potential to one day produce deadly bioweapons or even exterminate humanity. And there are the AI hawks, who worry the emerging technology could undercut America’s national security and geopolitical hegemony.

Tools & Techniques. I still feel like a beginner...

https://www.bespacific.com/beginners-prompt-handbook-chatgpt-for-local-news-publishers/

Beginner’s prompt handbook: ChatGPT for local news publishers

A handbook for small newsrooms and local publishers, created by Joe Amditis (@jsamditis ) Assistant director of products + events Center for Cooperative Media amditisj@montclair.edu: “This handbook is designed to help local news publishers and journalists use generative AI tools like ChatGPT to improve their news products, workflows, and efficiency.”

As promised.

https://www.bespacific.com/biden-issues-executive-order-on-safe-secure-and-trustworthy-artificial-intelligence/

Biden Issues Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence

“Today [October 30, 2023], President Biden issued a landmark Executive Order to ensure that America leads the way in seizing the promise and managing the risks of artificial intelligence (AI). The Executive Order establishes new standards for AI safety and security, protects Americans’ privacy, advances equity and civil rights, stands up for consumers and workers, promotes innovation and competition, advances American leadership around the world, and more. As part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s comprehensive strategy for responsible innovation, the Executive Order builds on previous actions the President has taken, including work that led to voluntary commitments from 15 leading companies to drive safe, secure, and trustworthy development of AI.”

(Related)

https://fpf.org/blog/fpf-statement-on-biden-harris-ai-executive-order/

FPF STATEMENT ON BIDEN-HARRIS AI EXECUTIVE ORDER

The Biden-Harris AI plan is incredibly comprehensive, with a whole of government approach and with an impact beyond government agencies. Although the executive order focuses on the government’s use of AI, the influence on the private sector will be profound due to the extensive requirements for government vendors, worker surveillance, education and housing priorities, the development of standards to conduct risk assessments and mitigate bias, the investments in privacy enhancing technologies, and more. Also important is the call for bipartisan privacy legislation, the most important precursor for protections for AI that impact vulnerable populations.

Read FPF’s AI Resources for more information.

Big Brotherland? How successful have they been?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/29/uk-police-urged-to-double-use-of-facial-recognition-software

UK police urged to double use of facial recognition software

Police are being encouraged to double their use of retrospective facial recognition software to track down offenders over the next six months.

Policing minister Chris Philp has written to force leaders suggesting the target of exceeding 200,000 searches of still images against the police national database by May using facial recognition technology.

He also is encouraging police to operate live facial recognition (LFR) cameras more widely, before a global artificial intelligence (AI) safety summit next week at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire.

Philp said the advances would allow police to “stay one step ahead of criminals” and make Britain’s streets safer.

… Philp has also previously said he is going to make UK passport photos searchable by police.

Does every tool have to be certified as compliant?

https://www.pogowasright.org/u-of-iowa-issues-reminder-about-use-of-artificial-technology-ai-and-hipaa/

U. of Iowa Issues Reminder About Use of artificial technology (AI) and HIPAA

From the U. of Iowa, and kudos to them for educating and warning their employees:

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve, it is important to remember that most AI tools and services, including ChatGPT, are not HIPAA compliant. Therefore, it is not appropriate to use these tools or services in conjunction with patient protected health information (PHI).

In order to use application that processes, transmits, or stores patient information, such as an AI service, a proper security review, contracting, and business associate agreement must be completed. If you have a request to be able to use an AI system, please speak with your department director on how to pursue the request and initiate a security review.

Imputing patient information into an AI system could result in a HIPAA violation if the above conditions have not been met. For example, using ChatGPT to draft a patient letter or using an unapproved AI transcription service requires sharing of PHI with the application. Beware of these types of situations.

For additional information, please see IT Security Guidelines for the secure and ethical use of Artificial Intelligence.

Please contact the Joint Office for Compliance with questions at compliance[at]healthcare.uiowa.edu or 319-384-8282.

Watch the right hand while the left does something completely unexpected...

https://www.wired.com/story/meta-artificial-intelligence-data-deletion/

Artists Allege Meta’s AI Data Deletion Request Process Is a ‘Fake PR Stunt’

This summer, Meta began taking requests to delete data from its AI training. Artists say this new system is broken and fake. Meta says there is no opt-out program.

Why do I get the feeling that this might be “biased” in the UK’s favor?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/10/28/rishi-sunak-launch-ai-chatbot-pay-taxes-access-pensions/

Sunak to launch AI chatbot for Britons to pay taxes and access pensions

Rishi Sunak is planning to launch an AI chatbot to help the public pay taxes and access pensions in what would be the biggest use of advanced artificial intelligence by Whitehall to date...

Is it possible to gather/identify exculpatory evidence at the same time? Yes, Bob was in the area, but it looks like he was just driving through.

https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pra2.835

Geofence Warrants, Geospatial Innovation, and Implications for Data Privacy

Geospatial technologies collect, analyze, and produce information about earth, humans, and objects through a convergence of geographic information systems, remote sensors, and global positioning systems. A microanalysis of Google's U.S. Patent 9,420,426 Inferring a current location based on a user location history (Duleba et al., 2016) reveals how geospatial innovation employs artificial intelligence (AI) to train computer-vision models, infer, and impute geospatial data. The technical disclosures in patents offer a view within black-boxed digital technologies to examine potential privacy implications of datafied citizens in a networked society. I n patented geospatial innovation, user agency is subverted through AI and anonymous knowledge production.

Presently, the Fourth Amendment does not adequately protect citizens in a networked society. Data privacy legal cases are interpreted through a lens of inescapability (Tokson, 2020), which assumes perpetual agency to consent to sharing data. In short, agency-centered privacy models are insufficient where AI can anonymously produce knowledge about an individual. Privacy implications are exemplified in geofence warrants—an investigative technique that searches location history to identify suspects in a geofenced region in the absence of evidence. This analysis demonstrates that digital privacy rights must expand to datafication models (Mai, 2016) centered on knowledge production.

Another step on the long road to eliminate lawyers?

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4582753

Generative Contracts

This Article examines how consumers can use generative artificial intelligence to write their own contracts. Popularized by “chatbots” such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, generative AI is a form of artificial intelligence that uses statistical models trained on massive amounts of data to generate human-like content such as text, images, music, and more. Generative AI is already being integrated into the practice of law and the legal profession. In the context of contracting and transactional law, most generative AI tools are focused on reviewing and managing large volumes of business contracts. Thus far, little attention has been given to using generative AI to create entire contracts from scratch. This Article aims to fill this gap by exploring the use of “generative contracts”: contracts that are written entirely by a generative AI system based on prompts from the user. For example, a user could ask a generative AI model to, “Write me a contract to sell my used car.” The Article uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 to generate drafts of a wide range of contracts from an employment agreement to a residential lease to a bill of sale. While relatively simple, the contracts written by GPT-4 are functional and enforceable. These results suggest that generative contracts present an opportunity to improve access to justice for consumers who are currently underserved by the legal system. To examine how consumers might use generative contracts in practice, the Article engages in a proof-of-concept case study of two hypothetical consumers who use GPT-4 to write and modify their own car sale contract. Drawing on this case study, the Article analyzes the implications of generative contracts for consumers, lawyers, and the practice of law. While generative AI holds great promise for consumers and access to justice, it threatens to disrupt the legal profession and poses numerous technological, privacy, and regulatory challenges. The Article maps the benefits and risks of generative contracts as the world approaches a future of automated contracting.

What’s in your dataset? Would corrections change your ‘reality?’

https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.15848

On Responsible Machine Learning Datasets with Fairness, Privacy, and Regulatory Norms

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made its way into various scientific fields, providing astonishing improvements over existing algorithms for a wide variety of tasks. In recent years, there have been severe concerns over the trustworthiness of AI technologies. The scientific community has focused on the development of trustworthy AI algorithms. However, machine and deep learning algorithms, popular in the AI community today, depend heavily on the data used during their development. These learning algorithms identify patterns in the data, learning the behavioral objective. Any flaws in the data have the potential to translate directly into algorithms. In this study, we discuss the importance of Responsible Machine Learning Datasets and propose a framework to evaluate the datasets through a responsible rubric. While existing work focuses on the post-hoc evaluation of algorithms for their trustworthiness, we provide a framework that considers the data component separately to understand its role in the algorithm. We discuss responsible datasets through the lens of fairness, privacy, and regulatory compliance and provide recommendations for constructing future datasets. After surveying over 100 datasets, we use 60 datasets for analysis and demonstrate that none of these datasets is immune to issues of fairness, privacy preservation, and regulatory compliance. We provide modifications to the “datasheets for datasets" with important additions for improved dataset documentation. With governments around the world regularizing data protection laws, the method for the creation of datasets in the scientific community requires revision. We believe this study is timely and relevant in today's era of AI.

Perspective.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-99-6327-0_8

Issues that May Arise from Usage of AI Technologies in Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement

Due to the constant and swift technological advancements, artificial intelligence technologies have become an integral part of our daily lives and as a result, have started to impact various areas of our society. Legal systems proved to be no exception as many countries took steps to implement AI technologies to their legal systems in order to improve the law enforcement and criminal justice systems, making changes in various processes including but not limited to preventing crimes, locating perpetrators, accelerating judicial processes, and improving the accuracy of judicial decisions. While the usage of AI technologies provided improvements to criminal justice and law enforcement processes in various aspects, concerning instances demonstrated that AI technologies may reach to biased, discriminatory, or simply inaccurate conclusions that may cause harm to people. This realization becomes even more alarming considering that criminal justice and law enforcement consist of extremely critical and fragile processes where a wrong decision may cost someone their freedom, or in some cases, life. In addition to discrimination and bias, automated decision-making processes also have a number of other issues such as lack of transparency and accountability, jeopardization of the presumption of innocence principle, and concerns regarding personal data protection, cyber-attacks, and technical challenges. Implementing AI technologies to legal processes should be encouraged since criminal justice and law enforcement could benefit from recent advancements in technology and it is possible that more accurate, more just, and faster judicial processes can be created. However, it should be carefully considered that implementing AI systems which are in their infancy to legal processes that could lead to severe consequences may cause incredible and, in some cases, irrevocable damages. This study aims to address current and possible issues in usage of AI technologies in criminal justice and law enforcement, providing possible solutions when possible.