It’s not rocket science, but it does take a commitment from management.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/how-disaster-recovery-planning-can-help-avoid-government-sanctions/

How Disaster Recovery Planning Can Help Avoid Government Sanctions

Cyberattacks are disruptive. From dealing with data loss to frustrated customers, any company that has suffered an attack knows the impact reaches far beyond the original breach. And, for companies that are dealing with a ransomware attack, another issue arises: the question of whether or not to pay your attackers a large sum of money to recover systems, applications and data being held “hostage”.

… What’s more, research commissioned by Arcserve has shown that consumers are growing increasingly intolerant of cyberattacks and the downtime that’s often associated with them. The report found that 37% of consumers would switch to a competitor if a company isn’t up and running within 24 hours following an attack, and an additional 41% would walk away from the business within two to three days. That’s some serious pressure for businesses to recover quickly.

Paying a ransom doesn’t just mean taking a hit to your bottom line anymore. In an effort to curb cybercrime, the U.S. government has started imposing sanctions against paying ransoms to certain hacking groups, like the Evil Corp gang that recently attacked smart watch manufacturer Garmin and demanded a $10 million ransom. Evil Corp ultimately got their payout – but at what cost to Garmin? Not only are they short $10 million and still dealing with the fallout from the attack and its impact on customers, but they’re now also facing potential sanctions from the government.

No shocking new revelations.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/3-things-businesses-need-to-know-about-the-shifting-privacy-landscape-of-2020/

3 Things Businesses Need To Know About the Shifting Privacy Landscape of 2020

Over the last couple of years, consumer and regulatory pressure has forced corporate legal departments to adopt higher and more methodical standards when it comes to protecting and managing consumer data.

… Here are three major trends and events to look out for as we close out the year and head into 2021.

1. A new California privacy law is on the way, and the federal government is up for grabs.

2. The EU continues to change how companies will transfer data internationally

3. Big tech players are responding to new consumer expectations

Hacking privacy.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/10/reverse-engineering-the-redactions-in-the-ghislaine-maxwell-deposition.html

Reverse-Engineering the Redactions in the Ghislaine Maxwell Deposition

Slate magazine was able to cleverly read the Ghislaine Maxwell deposition and reverse-engineer many of the redacted names.

We’ve long known that redacting is hard in the modern age, but most of the failures to date have been a result of not realizing that covering digital text with a black bar doesn’t always remove the text from the underlying digital file. As far as I know, this reverse-engineering technique is new.

Another tool that’s been flying under my radar.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/10/26/grayshift-the-startup-that-breaks-into-unlocked-iphones-for-the-feds-raises-47-million/#1a3247451738

Grayshift, The Startup That Breaks Into Unlocked iPhones For The Feds, Raises $47 Million

… Grayshift’s Graykey, the existence of which was first revealed by Forbes in 2018, is used by a wide range of federal agencies, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection to the FBI and the Oval Office. As revealed in recent research from nonprofit Upturn, it’s also used by a massive number of local police agencies across America.

… The GrayKey is believed to be capable of hacking iPhones up to the iPhone 11, though it’s unclear how effective the tool is against the iPhone 12. “It’s most likely they can’t do much, if anything at all, with the iPhone 12 and iOS 14,” said Vladimir Katalov, CEO of another forensics company, Elcomsoft. “Perhaps they just want to cash out.”

Thinking about regulating AI thinking.

https://www.bbva.com/en/opinion/what-should-be-taken-into-account-if-artificial-intelligence-is-to-be-regulated/

What should be taken into account if Artificial Intelligence is to be regulated?

In this article, Juan Murillo, Senior Manager of Data Strategy at BBVA, and Jesús Lozano, Manager of Digital Regulation at BBVA, analyze the potential implications of Artificial Intelligence regulations and share their insights into the considerations that should be taken into account to ensure that regulatory aspects support the proper development of this discipline in the future.

In my case, that’s a long list...

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-10-figure-dont.html

How to figure out what you don't know

… When it comes to forecasting the weather or predicting trends in the stock market, any model that makes good predictions is valuable. But Engel says that for biologists, the goals are different:

"Because we are interested in scientific interpretation and actually discover hypotheses from the data, we not only need to fit the model to the data, but we need to analyze or understand the model which we get, right? So we want to look, as I said, we want to look into model structure and the model mechanism to make inference that this is maybe how the brain works."

It's possible to make good predictions using wrong assumptions, Engel said, pointing to the ancient model of the solar system that accurately predicted the movements of celestial bodies while positing that those bodies revolved around the Earth, not the Sun. So it was important to consider how well particular models of neural networks could be trusted.

Perspective.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/26/the-no-code-generation-is-arriving/?guccounter=1

The No-Code Generation is arriving

… Older generations were going to be wiped out by younger workers who were more adaptable to the needs of the modern digital economy, upending our routine notion that professional experience equals value.

Of course, that was just a narrative. Facility with using computers was determined by the ability to turn it on and log in, a bar so low that it can be shocking to the modern reader to think that a “divide” existed at all. Software engineering, computer science and statistics remained quite unpopular compared to other academic programs, even in universities, let alone in primary through secondary schools. Most Gen Xers and millennials never learned to code, or frankly, even to make a pivot table or calculate basic statistical averages.

There’s a sociological change underway though, and it’s going to make the first divide look quaint in hindsight.

Over the past two or so years, we have seen the rise of a whole class of software that has been broadly (and quite inaccurately) dubbed “no-code platforms.” These tools are designed to make it much easier for users to harness the power of computing in their daily work. That could be everything from calculating the most successful digital ad campaigns given some sort of objective function, or perhaps integrating a computer vision library into a workflow that calculates the number of people entering or exiting a building.

… Projects that once took a team of engineers some hours to build can now be stitched together in a couple of clicks through a user interface.

The Privacy Foundation at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law will host a Zoom Seminar “FACIAL RECOGNITION & PRIVACY” on FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30TH 2020 from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM

The Colorado Supreme Court Office of CLJE has awarded 3 general credits to the seminar.

Facial Recognition & Privacy Registration

“We have the tool. We use the tool. What’s the problem?”

https://www.bespacific.com/police-are-using-facial-recognition-for-minor-crimes-because-they-can/

Police are using facial recognition for minor crimes because they can

Cnet – Law enforcement is tapping the tech for low-level crimes like shoplifting, because there are no limits. But the tool often makes errors. “… The US has no federal regulations on facial recognition, leaving thousands of police departments to determine their own limits. Advocates say that’s a concern for civil liberties. While some members of Congress propose an indefinite nationwide ban on police use, other bills suggest it could still be allowed with a warrant, or they prevent only businesses from using it. Police often frame facial recognition as a necessary tool to solve the most heinous crimes, like terrorist attacks and violent assaults, but researchers have found that the technology is more frequently used for low-level offenses.

…In a recent court filing, the NYPD noted that it’s turned to facial recognition in more than 22,000 cases in the last three years. “Even though the NYPD claims facial recognition is only used for serious crimes, the numbers tell a different story,” said Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. “As facial recognition continues to grow, it’s being routinely deployed for everything from shoplifting to graffiti.” Asked for comment, an NYPD spokeswoman pointed to a 2019 opinion article by police commissioner James O’Neill titled “How Facial Recognition Makes You Safer.” In the piece, O’Neill talked about how facial recognition had been used to make arrests in murder, robbery and rape cases, but he didn’t disclose how often it was used for low-level crimes…”

Lose a tool, find a new tool.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/10/imsi-catchers-from-canada.html

IMSI-Catchers from Canada

IMSI-Catchers from Canada

Gizmodo is reporting that Harris Corp. is no longer selling Stingray IMSI-catchers (and, presumably, its follow-on models Hailstorm and Crossbow) to local governments:

L3Harris Technologies, formerly known as the Harris Corporation, notified police agencies last year that it planned to discontinue sales of its surveillance boxes at the local level, according to government records. Additionally, the company would no longer offer access to software upgrades or replacement parts, effectively slapping an expiration date on boxes currently in use. Any advancements in cellular technology, such as the rollout of 5G networks in most major U.S. cities, would render them obsolete.

The article goes on to talk about replacement surveillance systems from the Canadian company Octasic.

Octasic’s Nyxcell V800 can target most modern phones while maintaining the ability to capture older GSM devices. Florida’s state police agency described the device, made for in-vehicle use, as capable of targeting eight frequency bands including GSM (2G), CDMA2000 (3G), and LTE (4G).

Working for your AI?

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/dont-fear-ai-it-will-lead-to-long-term-job-growth

Don't fear AI. It will lead to long-term job growth.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated technological advances and the automation of many routine tasks – from contactless cashiers to robots delivering packages. In this environment, many are concerned that artificial intelligence (AI) will drive significant automation and destroy jobs in the coming decades.

Just a few decades ago, the internet created similar concerns as it grew. Despite skepticism, the technology created millions of jobs and now comprises 10% of US GDP. Today, AI is poised to create even greater growth in the US and global economies. Sixty-three percent of CEOs believe AI will have a larger impact than the internet, according to PwC’s Annual Global CEO Survey.

Closer.

https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2020/10/25/determining-likelihood-ai-patent-application-will-allowed-uspto/id=126687/

Determining the Likelihood that an AI Patent Application Will Be Allowed at the USPTO

… In the United States, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has taken steps to adapt to AI inventions, asking in August of 2019 for public comment on questions ranging from AI inventorship to how to best consider AI elements of inventions. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has also asked similar questions, as part of its conversation on intellectual property (IP) and AI, which published its first Draft Issues Paper on IP policy and AI in December of 2019 and is continuing to hold meetings on the topic.

https://www.ipwatchdog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/One-For-The-Team.jpg

You mean no more 40 hour days?

https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2020/10/26/ai-and-the-legal-business-model-why-time-is-up-for-the-billable-hour/

AI and the Legal Business Model: Why Time is Up for the Billable Hour

Law firms are increasingly looking for ways to meet client expectations while also maintaining profitability themselves. When I started out as an M&A associate over 20 years ago, meeting client and business demands was all about billing over 3,000 hours a year, leaving little room for a single day off despite the firm’s “unlimited” vacation policy. But the game has changed substantially for law firms today—the evolution of the legal business model is underway and artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a big role in calling time on the billable hour.

Mechanizing, if not automating, war.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/attack-drones-dominating-tanks-as-armenia-azerbaijan-conflict-showcases-the-future-of-war

Attack Drones Dominating Tanks as Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict Showcases the Future of War

Azerbaijan’s Turkish and Israeli drones are wiping out tanks, artillery, and soldiers as the Armenians lose ground in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

… Ian Williams, an expert in missile defense and missile proliferation at the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Daily Beast that what we see right now in Nagorno-Karabakh is the evolution of warfare.

“We have for a long time declared tanks to be dead without it happening. However, the Armenian tanks have not done well in the current crisis,” said Williams. “Drones are relatively cheap for countries that would not normally be able to afford air support. The current crisis shows us what kind of damage they can do to an opponent without drones.”

Perspective.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/technology/seesaw-school-app.html

Schools Clamored for Seesaw’s App. That Was Good News, and Bad News.

… The number of student posts on its app increased tenfold from February to May, Seesaw says, and the paid customer base has tripled from last year. The app is now used in more than three-quarters of American schools, including big districts like Dallas and Los Angeles.

“In a matter of two days the world flipped upside down,” said Victoria Lawyer, global sales manager at Seesaw. Seesaw usually pitched large districts for six months or so before one signed up. Suddenly, she said, those districts were saying: “We need to get set up by tomorrow. What can you do?”

… All this happened while Seesaw, like many other companies, closed its headquarters and shifted employees to working from home, where many juggled their work with their own children’s classes.

The Jack Benny question?

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3713650

Your Data or Your Life

Data, in particular personal data, is often described as the ‘new oil’ powering the information economy. It’s an attractive metaphor — evoking transformations underway in a fourth industrial revolution, heralding a world of artificial intelligence and limitless possibilities. Unfortunately, that metaphor is wrong in almost every way. Oil is finite, companies pay millions to extract it, and each barrel can be used only once . Data, by contrast, is infinite, consumers give it to you for free, and you can keep using it for as long as you like.

This essay considers the nature of personal data and recent proposals to amend Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act.

Can’t hurt.

https://www.techradar.com/news/microsoft-wants-to-make-sure-we-dont-fall-victim-to-murderous-ai

Microsoft wants to make sure we don't fall victim to murderous AI

Anyone worried about the threat of a Skynet-esque rise of the machines may be able to rest a little easier after the release of new protective measures designed to avoid a potential AI uprising.

The nonprofit MITRE Corporation has teamed up with 12 top technology companies, including the likes of Microsoft, IBM and Nvidia to launch the Adversarial ML Threat Matrix.

The group says the system is an open framework created to help security analysts spot, alert, respond to and address threats targeting machine learning (ML) systems.

https://github.com/mitre/advmlthreatmatrix

Collecting thinking.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-Comparative-Analysis-of-Industry-Human-AI-Wright-Wang/e55360f0cf3932c90dfa8e0897ff46c14ab1c4dd

A Comparative Analysis of Industry Human-AI Interaction Guidelines

With the recent release of AI interaction guidelines from Apple, Google, and Microsoft, there is clearly interest in understanding the best practices in human-AI interaction. However, industry standards are not determined by a single company, but rather by the synthesis of knowledge from the whole community. We have surveyed all of the design guidelines from each of these major companies and developed a single, unified structure of guidelines, giving developers a centralized reference. We have then used this framework to compare each of the surveyed companies to find differences in areas of emphasis. Finally, we encourage people to contribute additional guidelines from other companies, academia, or individuals, to provide an open and extensible reference of AI design guidelines at https://ai-open-guidelines.readthedocs.io/.

(Related)

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Good-AI-for-the-Present-of-Humanity-Correa/51699de84962ecaf7d74c316962904293d0796bb

Good AI for the Present of Humanity

There is a link between critical theory and some genres of literature that may be of interest to the current debate on AI ethics. While critical theory generally points out certain deficiencies in the present to criticize it, futurology, and literary genres such as Cyber-punk, extrapolate our current condition into possible dystopian futures to criticize the status quo. Given the advance of the AI industry in recent years, an increasing number of ethical matters have been pointed and debated, and we have converged into a couple of principles, like Accountability, Explainability, and Privacy as the main ones. But certainly, this can't be all. While most of the current debates around AI Ethics revolve around making AI"good", we see little effort made to make AI good for everyone. This raises questions as, what published ethical guidelines fail to cover? Like critical theory and literature warns us, what kind of future are we creating? At the expenditure of who? Does AI governance occur inclusively and diversely? In this study, I would like to present two aspects omitted or barely mentioned in the current debate on AI ethics. The current humanitarian costs of our new industrial automatize revolution and the lack of diversity in this whole modernization process.

Automating judges?

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/AI-lead-Court-Debate-Case-Investigation-Ji-Zhu/cbbb56a8f9e883d5e3c0457d60bf7dcd248ae083

AI-lead Court Debate Case Investigation

The multi-role judicial debate composed of the plaintiff, defendant, and judge is an important part of the judicial trial. Different from other types of dialogue, questions are raised by the judge, The plaintiff, plaintiff’s agent defendant, and defendant’s agent would be to debating so that the trial can proceed in an orderly manner. Question generation is an important task in Natural Language Generation. In the judicial trial, it can help the judge raise efficient questions so that the judge has a clearer understanding of the case. In this work, we propose an innovative end-to-end question generation model-Trial Brain Model (TBM) to build a Trial Brain, it can generate the questions the judge wants to ask through the historical dialogue between the plaintiff and the defendant. Unlike prior efforts in natural language generation, our model can learn the judge’s questioning intention through predefined knowledge. We do experiments on real-world datasets, the experimental results show that our model can provide a more accurate question in the multi-role court debate scene.

(Related)

https://www.dovepress.com/the-increasing-role-of-artificial-intelligence-in-health-care-will-rob-peer-reviewed-article-IJGM

The Increasing Role of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care: Will Robots Replace Doctors in the Future?

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) pertains to the ability of computers or computer-controlled machines to perform activities that demand the cognitive function and performance level of the human brain. The use of AI in medicine and health care is growing rapidly, significantly impacting areas such as medical diagnostics, drug development, treatment personalization, supportive health services, genomics, and public health management. AI offers several advantages; however, its rampant rise in health care also raises concerns regarding legal liability, ethics, and data privacy. Technological singularity (TS) is a hypothetical future point in time when AI will surpass human intelligence. If it occurs, TS in health care would imply the replacement of human medical practitioners with AI-guided robots and peripheral systems. Considering the pace at which technological advances are taking place in the arena of AI, and the pace at which AI is being integrated with health care systems, it is not be unreasonable to believe that TS in health care might occur in the near future and that AI-enabled services will profoundly augment the capabilities of doctors, if not completely replace them. There is a need to understand the associated challenges so that we may better prepare the health care system and society to embrace such a change – if it happens.

The robot did it!

https://scholarship.law.edu/lawreview/vol69/iss2/9/

Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Drivers: Autonomous Vehicles and AI-Chaperone Liability

The future of mainstream autonomous vehicles is approaching in the rearview mirror. Yet, the current legal regime for tort liability leaves an open question on how tortious Artificial Intelligence (AI) devices and systems that are capable of machine learning will be held accountable. To understand the potential answer, one may simply go back in time and see how this question would be answered under traditional torts. This Comment tests whether the incident involving an autonomous vehicle hitting a pedestrian is covered under the traditional torts, argues that they are incapable of solving this novel problem, and ultimately proposes a new strict liability tort: AI-Chaperone Liability. Because advancement in technology requires advancement in the law, AI-Chaperone Liability is a step forward in unchartered territory.

We’re not there yet.

https://telrp.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41039-020-00141-9

Making context the central concept in privacy engineering

There is a gap between people’s online sharing of personal data and their concerns about privacy. Till now, this gap is addressed by attempting to match individual privacy preferences with service providers’ options for data handling. This approach has ignored the role different contexts play in data sharing. This paper aims at giving privacy engineering a new direction putting context centre stage and exploiting the affordances of machine learning in handling contexts and negotiating data sharing policies. This research is explorative and conceptual, representing the first development cycle of a design science research project in privacy engineering. The paper offers a concise understanding of data privacy as a foundation for design extending the seminal contextual integrity theory of Helen Nissenbaum. This theory started out as a normative theory describing the moral appropriateness of data transfers. In our work, the contextual integrity model is extended to a socio-technical theory that could have practical impact in the era of artificial intelligence. New conceptual constructs such as ‘context trigger’, ‘data sharing policy’ and ‘data sharing smart contract’ are defined, and their application is discussed from an organisational and technical level. The constructs and design are validated through expert interviews; contributions to design science research are discussed, and the paper concludes with presenting a framework for further privacy engineering development cycles.

Skills you should have by age 5. We call it keyboarding now.

https://www.makeuseof.com/learn-or-practice-faster-touch-typing-on-computers/

5 Sites to Learn or Practice Faster Touch Typing on Computers

50 things to do while hiding from the pandemic. (What to do next week?)

https://beerandbrewing.com/best-in-beer-readers-choice-top-50-beers-of-2020/

Best in Beer Readers’ Choice: Top 50 Beers of 2020

But it really, really sounds true!

https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/22/21528745/trump-twitter-hack-claim-dutch-security-researcher-victor-gevers-maga2020?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4

Twitter and White House deny claims that researcher hacked Trump’s account

A security researcher claims he hacked President Donald Trump’s Twitter account earlier this month, guessing that his password was “maga2020!” and possibly posting a tweet where Trump appeared to take a satirical article seriously. Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant and magazine Vrij Nederland reported the news earlier today, citing screenshots and interviews with the researcher, Victor Gevers.

But when reached for comment, both Twitter and the White House vigorously denied the claim.

“We’ve seen no evidence to corroborate this claim, including from the article published in the Netherlands today,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Verge. “We proactively implemented account security measures for a designated group of high-profile, election-related Twitter accounts in the United States, including federal branches of government.”

White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere also denied the report. “This is absolutely not true,” he told The Verge, “but we don’t comment on security procedures around the President’s social media accounts.”

China’s version of the GDPR.

China Releases First Draft of Personal Information Protection Law

Covington & Burling have published a client advisory that will be of interest to many readers. It begins:

On October 21, 2020, the National People’s Congress (“NPC”), China’s top legislative body, released its first draft of the Personal Information Protection Law (the “Draft Law”) for public comment (official Chinese version available here). The period for public comment ends on November 19, 2020 and comments can be submitted through NPC’s official website.

As the country’s first comprehensive law in the area of personal information protection, the Draft Law aims to “protect the rights and interests of individuals,” “regulate personal information processing activities,” “safeguard the lawful and orderly flow of data,” and “facilitate reasonable use of personal information” (Art. 1).

Although bearing a resemblance to the European Union’s (“EU”) General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and other recent privacy legislation in major jurisdictions in some important areas, the Draft Law introduces a number of provisions that are consistent with recent trends in other Chinese laws in the areas of data and technology, such as the draft Data Security Law and the newly enacted Export Control Law. These include, for example, rules establishing extraterritoriality of the Draft Law and a “black list” that would restrict or prohibit listed foreign organizations from receiving personal information from China.

Read more on Cov.com (pdf).

Confirmation?

https://www.bespacific.com/consumer-reports-study-finds-marketplace-demand-for-privacy-and-security/

Consumer Reports Study Finds Marketplace Demand for Privacy and Security

Consumer Reports – “American consumers are increasingly concerned about privacy and data security when purchasing new products and services, which may be a competitive advantage to companies that take action towards these consumer values, a new Consumer Reports study finds. The new study, “Privacy Front and Center” from CR’s Digital Lab with support from Omidyar Network, looks at the commercial benefits for companies that differentiate their products based on privacy and data security. The study draws from a nationally representative CR survey of 5,085 adult U.S. residents conducted in February 2020, a meta-analysis of 25 years of public opinion studies, and a conjoint analysis that seeks to quantify how consumers weigh privacy and security in their hardware and software purchasing decisions. Given the rapid proliferation of internet connected devices, the rise in data breaches and cyber attacks, and the demand from consumers for heightened privacy and security measures, there’s an undeniable business case for companies to invest in creating more private and secure products.

This study shows that raising the standard for privacy and security is a win-win for consumers and the companies,” said Ben Moskowitz, the director of the Digital Lab at Consumer Reports. “Given the rapid proliferation of internet connected devices, the rise in data breaches and cyber attacks, and the demand from consumers for heightened privacy and security measures, there’s an undeniable business case for companies to invest in creating more private and secure products.”..

Should I turn my blog over to my AI?

https://interestingengineering.com/machines-predicted-to-do-half-of-all-jobs-by-2025-per-report

Machines Predicted to Do Half Of All Jobs By 2025, per Report

Half of all work tasks will be carried out by machines by 2025, a World Economic Forum (WEF) report has predicted.

Though the oncoming "robot revolution” will create 97 million jobs worldwide, it will get rid of almost the same number, and will likely increase inequality and the digital divide, the think tank said.

The forecast is based on surveys carried out across 300 of the world's biggest companies, who between them employ approximately eight million people globally, the BBC reports.

Over 50 percent of employers surveyed said they expect the automation of certain roles in their companies to speed up in the coming years, and 43 percent feel they will cut jobs due to technology.

Administration and data processing jobs are the most likely to be cut by automation, WEF explained in its forecast, while new jobs are likely to emerge in care, big data, and the green economy.

Tweets indicate twits?

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-10-artificial-intelligence-students-outcomes-based.html

Artificial intelligence can predict students' educational outcomes based on tweets

Ivan Smirnov, Leading Research Fellow of the Laboratory of Computational Social Sciences at the Institute of Education of HSE University, has created a computer model that can distinguish high academic achievers from lower ones based on their social media posts. The prediction model uses a mathematical textual analysis that registers users' vocabulary (its range and the semantic fields from which concepts are taken), characters and symbols, post length, and word length.

Every word has its own rating (a kind of IQ). Scientific and cultural topics, English words, and words and posts that are longer in length rank highly and serve as indicators of good academic performance. An abundance of emojis, words or whole phrases written in capital letters, and vocabulary related to horoscopes, driving, and military service indicate lower grades in school. At the same time, posts can be quite short—even tweets are quite informative. The study was supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (RSF), and an article detailing the study's results was published in EPJ Data Science.

Low hanging fruit.

https://www.bespacific.com/where-to-find-public-records-online/

Where to Find Public Records Online

Life Hacker – “You can use the internet to find almost anything: a good restaurant, a recording of a half-remembered old commercial, recommendations for a good book, a podcast about basically anything, and yes, even public records. While our most private information (usually) can’t be found online, you can track down items like birth certificates, marriage and divorce information, obituaries, licenses, and mortgage and bankruptcy info. Keep reading to learn where to find public records online. First, a brief note – All of the following web sites and methods of discovery are absolutely free, unless stated otherwise. There are many sites out there that advertise themselves as being free, but once you enter in the details of what you’re looking for, they’ll try to charge for their services—and even then, they typically are not providing anything that you can’t find yourself. If you do end up having to pay for something, it will most likely involve heading to a physical location (i.e., a courthouse) in order to procure a copy of a particular public document…”

Teflon management.

https://dilbert.com/strip/2020-10-23

So could police ask citizens for help identifying ‘bad guys?’

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/technology/facial-recognition-police.html

Activists Turn Facial Recognition Tools Against the Police

In early September, the City Council in Portland, Ore., met virtually to consider sweeping legislation outlawing the use of facial recognition technology. The bills would not only bar the police from using it to unmask protesters and individuals captured in surveillance imagery; they would also prevent companies and a variety of other organizations from using the software to identify an unknown person.

During the time for public comments, a local man, Christopher Howell, said he had concerns about a blanket ban. He gave a surprising reason.

“I am involved with developing facial recognition to in fact use on Portland police officers, since they are not identifying themselves to the public,” Mr. Howell said. Over the summer, with the city seized by demonstrations against police violence, leaders of the department had told uniformed officers that they could tape over their name. Mr. Howell wanted to know: Would his use of facial recognition technology become illegal?

Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, told Mr. Howell that his project was “a little creepy,” but a lawyer for the city clarified that the bills would not apply to individuals. The Council then passed the legislation in a unanimous vote.

Perspective.

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/putting-responsible-ai-into-practice/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mitsmr+%28MIT+Sloan+Management+Review%29

Putting Responsible AI Into Practice

… Ethics frameworks and principles abound. AlgorithmWatch maintains a repository of more than 150 ethical guidelines. A meta-analysis of a half-dozen prominent guidelines identified five main themes: transparency, justice and fairness, non-maleficence, responsibility, and privacy. But even if there is broad agreement on the principles underlying responsible AI, how to effectively put them into practice remains unclear. Organizations are in various states of adoption, have a wide range of internal organizational structures, and are often still determining the appropriate governance frameworks to hold themselves accountable.

Suggested by my AI...

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/22/1011057/reasonable-robot-ryan-abobott-excerpt-tax-robots/

It’s time to rethink the legal treatment of robots

In this excerpt from "The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law", Ryan Abbott argues that laws should treat robots more like people.

...and we thought ‘accidental opt-in’ was a problem.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/22/21528133/google-nest-hub-smart-display-proximity-wake-word-ultrasound

Google tests smart displays that activate without a wake word

A new feature being internally tested at Google could remove the need to say “Hey Google” before voicing commands to Nest Hub smart displays, Android Central reports. Instead, the feature codenamed “Blue Steel” could allow the device to simply sense your presence, and proactively listen for commands without first needing to hear the wake word.

Perspective.

https://venturebeat.com/2020/10/21/the-2020-data-and-ai-landscape/

The 2020 data and AI landscape

When COVID hit the world a few months ago, an extended period of gloom seemed all but inevitable. Yet many companies in the data ecosystem have not just survived but in fact thrived.

Perhaps most emblematic of this is the blockbuster IPO of data warehouse provider Snowflake that took place a couple of weeks ago and catapulted Snowflake to a $69 billion market cap at the time of writing – the biggest software IPO ever (see the S-1 teardown).

… Many economic factors are at play, but ultimately financial markets are rewarding an increasingly clear reality long in the making: To succeed, every modern company will need to be not just a software company but also a data company.

Sounds like a useful tool.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90565801/descript-video-editing

This app makes editing videos as easy as editing text

Media editing software Descript is becoming a full-blown video editor with multitrack tools, overlays, transitions, and more.

For the past few years, Descript has offered an intuitive way to edit podcasts, letting you cut, paste, and delete from a written transcript to modify the corresponding audio.

Now, Descript is applying that same idea to multitrack video editing. Instead of having to fiddle with video timelines in tools like Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere, creators on YouTube or elsewhere can edit their videos just by rearranging the text of what they said.

My favorite was: “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.” Or maybe “Shakespeare lied.”

https://www.bespacific.com/satirist-tom-lehrer-has-put-his-songs-into-the-public-domain/

Satirist Tom Lehrer has put his songs into the public domain

Via Mary Whisner – news that Tom Lehrer Has Put His Songs into the Public Domain, Marketplac  [if you are not familiar with his work, and have not been singing the lyrics to his songs like “Pollution” for many decades as have I, now is your chance to become a Lehrer enthusiast and an aficionado!)

• Songs and Lyrics by Tom Lehrer, https://tomlehrersongs.com/

• Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke Law, https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/