The pendulum swings to overreaction? How much AI is too much?

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/21/meta-tagging-real-photos-made-with-ai/

Meta is tagging real photos as ‘Made with AI,’ say photographers

Earlier in February, Meta said that it would start labeling photos created with AI tools on its social networks. Since May, Meta has regularly tagged some photos with a “Made with AI” label on its Facebook, Instagram and Threads apps.

But the company’s approach of labeling photos has drawn ire from users and photographers after attaching the “Made with AI” label to photos that have not been created using AI tools.

The first of many.

https://news.usni.org/2024/06/21/gao-report-on-generative-ai-and-commercial-applications

GAO Report on Generative AI and Commercial Applications

… For this technology assessment, we were asked to describe generative AI and key aspects of its development. This report is the first in a body of work looking at generative AI In future reports, we plan to assess best practices and other factors considered for developing and deploying generative AI tools, societal and environmental effects of the use of generative AI, and federal development and adoption of generative AI technologies. To perform this assessment, we conducted literature reviews and interviewed several leading companies developing generative AI technologies. This report provides an overview of how generative AI works, how it differs from other kinds of AI, and examples of its use across various industries.

… Download the document here.

Ah! Clearly the end is in sight.

https://abovethelaw.com/2024/06/law-schools-are-preparing-for-ais-takeover-of-the-legal-profession/

Law Schools Are Preparing For AI’s Takeover Of The Legal Profession

I estimate that within five years, it will no longer be possible to be a successful lawyer without using AI.

— Professor Gary Marchant of Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, in comments given to Reuters on the rise of the use of artificial intelligence within the legal profession.

Better than GPT-4o?

https://venturebeat.com/ai/anthropics-claude-3-5-sonnet-wows-ai-power-users-this-is-wild/

Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet wows AI power users: ‘this is wild’

A new large language model (LLM) has apparently taken the performance crown from OpenAI’s GPT-4o about a month after its release: the new Claude 3.5 Sonnet chatbot and LLM from rival AI firm Anthropic, released today, bests all others in the world on key third-party benchmark tests, according to the company. And it does so while being faster and cheaper than prior Claude 3 models.

(Related) Maybe...

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/20/anthropic-claims-its-latest-model-is-best-in-class/

Anthropic claims its latest model is best-in-class

OpenAI rival Anthropic is releasing a powerful new generative AI model called Claude 3.5 Sonnet. But it’s more an incremental step than a monumental leap forward.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet can analyze both text and images as well as generate text, and it’s Anthropic’s best-performing model yet — at least on paper. Across several AI benchmarks for reading, coding, math and vision, Claude 3.5 Sonnet outperforms the model it’s replacing, Claude 3 Sonnet, and beats Anthropic’s previous flagship model Claude 3 Opus.

A ‘good journalism’ story.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/06/krebsonsecurity-threatened-with-defamation-lawsuit-over-fake-radaris-ceo/

KrebsOnSecurity Threatened with Defamation Lawsuit Over Fake Radaris CEO

On March 8, 2024, KrebsOnSecurity published a deep dive on the consumer data broker Radaris, showing how the original owners are two men in Massachusetts who operated multiple Russian language dating services and affiliate programs, in addition to a dizzying array of people-search websites. The subjects of that piece are threatening to sue KrebsOnSecurity for defamation unless the story is retracted. Meanwhile, their attorney has admitted that the person Radaris named as the CEO from its inception is a fabricated identity.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/can-ai-detectors-save-us-from-chatgpt-i-tried-5-online-tools-to-find-out/

Can AI detectors save us from ChatGPT? I tried 6 online tools to find out

With the sudden arrival of ChatGPT, educators and editors face a worrying surge of automated content submissions. We look at the problem and what can be done about it.

Hallucinate with confidence?

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01641-0

‘Fighting fire with fire’ — using LLMs to combat LLM hallucinations

The number of errors produced by an LLM can be reduced by grouping its outputs into semantically similar clusters. Remarkably, this task can be performed by a second LLM, and the method’s efficacy can be evaluated by a third.

Perspective.

https://www.lawnext.com/2024/06/is-gen-ai-creating-a-divide-among-law-firms-of-haves-and-have-nots.html

Is Gen AI Creating A Divide Among Law Firms Of Haves and Have Nots?

On Friday, I spoke to a group of trial lawyers on the use of generative AI in litigation. Many in the room were that increasingly rare breed of lawyer who actually go into court and try cases. Of several that I spoke to before and after my talk, they were proud of their courtroom skills and happy to share a war story or two. But when it came to talking about generative AI, most seemed to have barely given it a thought.

… Recently, 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kevin Newsom made news for his 32-page concurring opinion pondering the use of generative AI by courts in interpreting words and phrases. It’s a good read and worth your time.

But what struck me in his opinion as particularly sage advice — advice directly applicable to lawyers in smaller firms — were his concluding words.

“AI is here to stay,” he wrote. “Now, it seems to me, is the time to figure out how to use it profitably and responsibly.”

Perspective.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jun/20/the-atomic-human-by-neil-lawrence-review-return-of-the-terminator

The Atomic Human by Neil Lawrence review – return of the Terminator

There is, it seems, an unwritten law in the world of artificial intelligence, which I will attempt to distil here: “Any discussion of AI must include an early and robust reference to the Terminator”. Though the 1984 James Cameron film and its 1991 sequel are quite good, here are two equally made-up but probably mostly true facts: no one under the age of 30 has seen either film and, in any case, neither film has anything particularly insightful to say about AI. But here we are, and the relentless analyses of the moment we are in – where we apparently stand on precipices of revolutions, ushering in utopia or the apocalypse – tend to be written by men who have seen Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator failing to assassinate Sarah Connor many times over. If you can also allude to biblical creation, then you’re winning at AI bingo.

Should be an interesting if lengthy process.

https://www.oreilly.com/radar/how-to-fix-ais-original-sin/

How to Fix “AI’s Original Sin”

Last month, The New York Times claimed that tech giants OpenAI and Google have waded into a copyright gray area by transcribing the vast volume of YouTube videos and using that text as additional training data for their AI models despite terms of service that prohibit such efforts and copyright law that the Times argues places them in dispute. The Times also quoted Meta officials as saying that their models will not be able to keep up unless they follow OpenAI and Google’s lead. In conversation with reporter Cade Metz, who broke the story, on the New York Times podcast The Daily, host Michael Barbaro called copyright violation “AI’s Original Sin.”

At the very least, copyright appears to be one of the major fronts so far in the war over who gets to profit from generative AI. It’s not at all clear yet who is on the right side of the law. In the remarkable essay “Talkin’ ’Bout AI Generation: Copyright and the Generative-AI Supply Chain,” Cornell’s Katherine Lee and A. Feder Cooper and James Grimmelmann of Microsoft Research and Yale note:

Copyright law is notoriously complicated, and generative-AI systems manage to touch on a great many corners of it. They raise issues of authorship, similarity, direct and indirect liability, fair use, and licensing, among much else. These issues cannot be analyzed in isolation, because there are connections everywhere. Whether the output of a generative AI system is fair use can depend on how its training datasets were assembled. Whether the creator of a generative-AI system is secondarily liable can depend on the prompts that its users supply.

But it seems less important to get into the fine points of copyright law and arguments over liability for infringement, and instead to explore the political economy of copyrighted content in the emerging world of AI services: Who will get what, and why? And rather than asking who has the market power to win the tug of war, we should be asking, What institutions and business models are needed to allocate the value that is created by the “generative AI supply chain” in proportion to the role that various parties play in creating it? And how do we create a virtuous circle of ongoing value creation, an ecosystem in which everyone benefits?

Resources.

https://www.pcmag.com/articles/the-best-free-online-classes-to-level-up-your-ai-skills

The Best Free Online Classes to Level Up Your AI Skills and Understanding

Artificial intelligence is progressing at a breakneck pace, and if you want to keep up, we highly recommend checking out these top-notch courses from leaders at Google, IBM, and Microsoft.

Most of this will not rise to the level where journalists would find it news-worthy.

https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-local-races-deepfakes-2024-1d5080a5c916d5ff10eadd1d81f43dfd

AI experimentation is high risk, high reward for low-profile political campaigns

Adrian Perkins was running for reelection as the mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, when he was surprised by a harsh campaign hit piece.

The satirical TV commercial, paid for by a rival political action committee, used artificial intelligence to depict Perkins as a high school student who had been called into the principal’s office. Instead of giving a tongue-lashing for cheating on a test or getting in a fight, the principal blasted Perkins for failing to keep communities safe and create jobs.

The video superimposed Perkins’ face onto the body of an actor playing him. Although the ad was labeled as being created with “deep learning computer technology,” Perkins said it was powerful and resonated with voters. He didn’t have enough money or campaign staff to counteract it, and thinks it was one of many reasons he lost the 2022 race. A representative for the group behind the ad did not respond to a request for comment.

“One hundred percent the deepfake ad affected our campaign because we were a down-ballot, less resourced place,” said Perkins, a Democrat. “You had to pick and choose where you put your efforts.”

(Related) Do we need an Article 50?

https://www.bespacific.com/a-detailed-analysis-of-article-50-of-the-eus-artificial-intelligence-act/

A Detailed Analysis of Article 50 of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act

Gils, Thomas, A Detailed Analysis of Article 50 of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act (June 14, 2024). Chapter to appear in an upcoming commentary on the EU AI Act (Q3-4 2024)., https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4865427 – “Article 50 of the EU’s AI Act contains transparency requirements for (i) interactive AI systems; (ii) synthetic content (including synthetic audio, image, video or text content); (iii) emotion recognition systems and biometric categorisation systems; (iv) deep fakes, and; (v) synthetic text informing the public on matters of public interest. This commentary offers a detailed analysis of this provision, taking into account the position of article 50 within the AI Act and the broader AI policy context.”

Perspective.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/06/rethinking-democracy-for-the-age-of-ai.html

Rethinking Democracy for the Age of AI

There is a lot written about technology’s threats to democracy. Polarization. Artificial intelligence. The concentration of wealth and power. I have a more general story: The political and economic systems of governance that were created in the mid-18th century are poorly suited for the 21st century. They don’t align incentives well. And they are being hacked too effectively.

At the same time, the cost of these hacked systems has never been greater, across all human history. We have become too powerful as a species. And our systems cannot keep up with fast-changing disruptive technologies.

We need to create new systems of governance that align incentives and are resilient against hacking at every scale. From the individual all the way up to the whole of society.

For this, I need you to drop your 20th century either/or thinking. This is not about capitalism versus communism. It’s not about democracy versus autocracy. It’s not even about humans versus AI. It’s something new, something we don’t have a name for yet. And it’s “blue sky” thinking, not even remotely considering what’s feasible today.

Throughout this talk, I want you to think of both democracy and capitalism as information systems. Socio-technical information systems. Protocols for making group decisions. Ones where different players have different incentives. These systems are vulnerable to hacking and need to be secured against those hacks.

Interesting, but I suspect a very small audience.

https://www.dtnext.in/edit/bibliophiles-corner-now-read-the-classics-with-ai-powered-expert-guides-790255

Bibliophile’s corner: Now read the classics with AI-powered expert guides

For the past year, two philosophy professors have been calling around to prominent authors and public intellectuals with an unusual, perhaps heretical, proposal. They have been asking these thinkers if, for a handsome fee, they wouldn’t mind turning themselves into A.I. chatbots.

… As Dubuque envisioned it, the imprint would pair a world-class expert with a classic work and use technology similar to ChatGPT to replicate the dialogue between a student and teacher.

Is there a commercial technology we did not test on children?

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/06/kids-generative-ai/678694/?gift=2iIN4YrefPjuvZ5d2Kh300zjvd8M-WeJys073Nn3zn0&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

A Generation of AI Guinea Pigs

This spring, the Los Angeles Unified School District—the second-largest public school district in the United States—introduced students and parents to a new “educational friend” named Ed. A learning platform that includes a chatbot represented by a small illustration of a smiling sun, Ed is being tested in 100 schools within the district and is accessible at all hours through a website. It can answer questions about a child’s courses, grades, and attendance, and point users to optional activities.

As Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho put it to me, “AI is here to stay. If you don’t master it, it will master you.” Carvalho says he wants to empower teachers and students to learn to use AI safely. Rather than “keep these assets permanently locked away,” the district has opted to “sensitize our students and the adults around them to the benefits, but also the challenges, the risks.” Ed is just one manifestation of that philosophy; the school district also has a mandatory Digital Citizenship in the Age of AI course for students ages 13 and up.

Keep humans in the loop, but put AI in charge? Sounds wrong to me.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3266444/chinese-scientists-create-and-cage-worlds-first-ai-commander-pla-laboratory

Chinese scientists create and cage world’s first AI commander in a PLA laboratory

In China, where it is forbidden for artificial intelligence to lead the armed forces, scientists have created an AI commander.

This “virtual commander”, strictly confined to a laboratory at the Joint Operations College of the National Defence University in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, mirrors the human commander in all ways, from experience to thought patterns to personality – and even their flaws.

In large-scale computer war games involving all branches of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the AI commander has been granted unprecedented supreme command authority, learning and growing fast in the endlessly evolving virtual wars.

Perspective. Did Elvis or the Beatles ever have this much of an impact?

https://www.livemint.com/market/stock-market-news/taylor-swifts-london-eras-tour-poses-potential-delay-for-bank-of-england-rate-cut-cnbc-11718420430358.html

Taylor Swift's London Eras Tour poses potential delay for Bank of England rate cut: CNBC

Taylor Swift's Eras Tour in the U.K. is boosting consumer spending, potentially delaying a Bank of England interest rate cut. Analysts predict a cut in August, but Swift's impact on inflation data could affect the timeline.

This has got to be a bit confusing…

https://www.semafor.com/article/06/14/2024/microsoft-ai-ceo-mustafa-suleyman-audits-openais-code

Microsoft’s star AI chief peers into OpenAI’s code, highlighting an unusual rivalry

… lately, one of DeepMind’s founders, Mustafa Suleyman, has been doing the unthinkable: looking under the hood at OpenAI’s crown jewels — its secret algorithms behind foundation models like GPT-4, people familiar with the matter said.

That’s because Suleyman is now head of AI efforts at Microsoft, which has intellectual property rights to OpenAI’s software as part of its multibillion-dollar investment in the company.

His presence, though, has brought new attention to an unusual dynamic: Microsoft and OpenAI are inextricably linked; they are also competitors.

Don’t let the cute name fool you.

https://thehackernews.com/2024/06/new-attack-technique-sleepy-pickle.html

New Attack Technique 'Sleepy Pickle' Targets Machine Learning Models

… The attack method, per Trail of Bits, weaponizes the ubiquitous format used to package and distribute machine learning (ML) models to corrupt the model itself, posing a severe supply chain risk to an organization's downstream customers.

"Sleepy Pickle is a stealthy and novel attack technique that targets the ML model itself rather than the underlying system," security researcher Boyan Milanov said.

I don’t know how common deals like this might be, but it would seem to depend on how likely Clearview is to survive.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/business/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-settlement.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zk0.Y38c.x6rsOCxhWfmG

Clearview AI Used Your Face. Now You May Get a Stake in the Company.

The facial recognition start-up doesn’t have the funds to settle a class-action lawsuit, so lawyers are proposing equity for those whose faces were scraped from the internet.

A facial recognition start-up, accused of invasion of privacy in a class-action lawsuit, has agreed to a settlement, with a twist: Rather than cash payments, it would give a 23 percent stake in the company to Americans whose faces are in its database.

Whatever sells best?

https://www.bespacific.com/google-sued-by-top-textbook-publishers-over-ads-for-pirated-e-books/

Google sued by top textbook publishers over ads for pirated e-books

XM: “June 5 (Reuters) – Google was hit with a lawsuit on Wednesday by educational publishers Cengage, Macmillan Learning, McGraw Hill and Elsevier accusing the tech giant of promoting pirate copies of their textbooks. The publishers told the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that Google has ignored thousands of copyright-infringement notices and continues to profit from the sale of pirated digital versions of textbooks advertised through its dominant search engine. Google representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. The publishers’ attorney Matt Oppenheim of Oppenheim + Zebrak told Reuters that Google had become a “thieves’ den” for textbook pirates. The complaint said that Google searches for the publishers’ work feature heavily discounted, pirated e-book versions at the top of the results. “The artificially low-priced infringing works drown out the regularly priced legitimate works,” the lawsuit said. “Of course, the pirate sellers can sell their infringing works at such low prices because they did nothing to create or license them; they just illegally made digital copies.” According to the lawsuit, Google has made the piracy worse by restricting ads for licensed e-books. “As a result, the textbook market is upside down, as the world’s largest online advertising business advertises ebooks for pirates but rejects ebook ads for legitimate sellers,” the lawsuit said. The lawsuit said that the publishers have been complaining to Google about the ads since 2021 to no avail. They accused Google of copyright and trademark infringement and deceptive trade practices, requesting an unspecified amount of monetary damages. The case is Cengage Learning Inc v. Google LLC, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 1:24-cv-04274.”

Perhaps we too can survive an AI election…

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/06/ai-and-the-indian-election.html

AI and the Indian Election

As India concluded the world’s largest election on June 5, 2024, with over 640 million votes counted, observers could assess how the various parties and factions used artificial intelligence technologies—and what lessons that holds for the rest of the world.

The campaigns made extensive use of AI, including deepfake impersonations of candidates, celebrities and dead politicians. By some estimates, millions of Indian voters viewed deepfakes.

But, despite fears of widespread disinformation, for the most part the campaigns, candidates and activists used AI constructively in the election. They used AI for typical political activities, including mudslinging, but primarily to better connect with voters.

Is this an indication that Brazil does not have enough clerks (or paralegals or whatevers) to review the cases before default?

https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/brazil-hires-openai-cut-costs-court-battles-2024-06-11/

Brazil hires OpenAI to cut costs of court battles

Brazil's government is hiring OpenAI to expedite the screening and analysis of thousands of lawsuits using artificial intelligence (AI), trying to avoid costly court losses that have weighed on the federal budget.

The AI service will flag to government the need to act on lawsuits before final decisions, mapping trends and potential action areas for the solicitor general's office (AGU).

… The government estimated it would spend 70.7 billion reais ($13.2 billion) next year on judicial decisions where it can no longer appeal.

Tools & Techniques. Is it truly ‘good enough.’

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/how-to-use-ai-powered-grammarly-to-do-all-of-your-editing/

How to Use AI-Powered Grammarly to Do All of Your Editing

Mistake-free writing is within reach – and free.

Perhaps automating lawyers will have to wait.

https://www.bespacific.com/law-firms-start-training-summer-associates-on-using-generative-ai/

Law Firms Start Training Summer Associates on Using Generative AI

Bloomberg Law: “Some Big Law firms are now making summer associates learn the ins and outs of generative AI as they begin integrating what’s considered to be a game-changing technology for the profession. K&L Gates, Dechert, and Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe have incorporated training on the technology for this year’s class of summer associates, teaching them how to use research and chatbot tools now being used by the firms. The programs offer a window into what some firms believe artificial intelligence will mean for those now entering the profession. Future junior lawyers won’t be replaced by AI, as some fear, but they will need to harness it to be successful, said Brendan McDonnell, a K&L Gates partner and member of the firm’s AI solutions group. That includes understanding how to effectively interact with generative AI chatbots to unearth the most useful information for clients, he said. “That’s the whole idea about the training program: You need to teach people how this is going to impact the way they come to work,” said McDonnell. While AI will automate many tasks, he said, it’s also going to open up new lines of legal practice while freeing up new professionals’ time to learn and master the complex work they went to law school for. Most firms are still in an experimentation phase when it comes to deploying generative AI chatbot and research tools. Firms’ use of the tech is also dependent on clients’ openness to it. “We’re in a transition period,” said Alex Su, the chief revenue officer at Latitude Legal, a global flexible legal staffing firm. “It’s hard to say there’s going to be a huge impact in how law firms staff in the near-term.” Still, legal experts caution that future lawyers need to address the technology…”

(Related)

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

AI Now

Perkins, Rachelle Holmes, AI Now (May 24, 2024). Temple Law Review, Vol. 97, Forthcoming, George Mason Legal Studies Research Paper No. LS 24-14, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4840481 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4840481

“Legal scholars have made important explorations into the opportunities and challenges of generative artificial intelligence within legal education and the practice of law. This Article adds to this literature by directly addressing members of the legal academy. As a collective, law professors, who are responsible for cultivating the knowledge and skills of the next generation of lawyers, are seemingly adopting a laissez faire posture towards the advent of generative artificial intelligence. In stark contrast to law practitioners, law professors generally have displayed a lack of urgency in responding to the repercussions of this emerging technology. This Article contends that all law professors have an inescapable duty to understand generative artificial intelligence. This obligation stems from the pivotal role faculty play on three distinct but interconnected dimensions: pedagogy, scholarship, and governance. No law faculty are exempt from this mandate. All are entrusted with responsibilities that intersect with at least one, if not all three dimensions, whether they are teaching, research, clinical, or administrative faculty. It is also not dependent on whether professors are inclined, or disinclined, to integrate artificial intelligence into their own courses or scholarship. The urgency of the mandate derives from the critical and complex role law professors have in the development of lawyers and architecture of the legal field.”

Lawyers: We don’t need no stinking rules!

https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/5th-circuit-scraps-plans-adopt-ai-rule-after-lawyers-object-2024-06-10/

5th Circuit scraps plans to adopt AI rule after lawyers object

… The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it had decided not to adopt a rule it first proposed in November after taking into consideration the use of AI in the legal practice and public comment from lawyers, which had been largely negative.

The proposed rule aimed to regulate lawyers use of generative AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT and govern both attorneys and litigants appearing before the court without counsel.

It would have required them to certify that, to the extent an AI program was used to generate a filing, citations and legal analysis were reviewed for accuracy. Lawyers who misrepresented their compliance with the rule could face sanctions and the prospect of their filings being stricken.

… But members of the bar in public comments submitted to the 5th Circuit largely opposed its proposal, arguing that rules already on the books were good enough to deal with any issues with the technology, including ensuring the accuracy of court filings.

Who fools who? Has AI fooled the CEO/BoD?

https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/media-entities/2024/06/the-secs-intensified-focus-on-ai-washing-practices

The SEC’s Intensified Focus on AI Washing Practices

Litigation attorney Andrew Balthazor was a featured guest on the RiskWatch podcast hosted by Vcheck, where he discussed the growing concern of artificial intelligence (AI) washing. This deceptive practice involves companies exaggerating or misrepresenting their use of artificial intelligence to attract investor interest. Notably, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently taken steps against investment advisers for making false claims about their use of AI, leading to more explicit regulations and an anticipated increase in enforcement actions with stricter penalties. Throughout the episode, Mr. Balthazor emphasizes the need for caution in AI investing, highlights the importance of understanding a company's true AI capabilities and suggests practical due diligence measures to help cut through misleading misinformation.

(Related)

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/auditing-algorithmic-risk/

Auditing Algorithmic Risk

How do we know whether algorithmic systems are working as intended? A set of simple frameworks can help even nontechnical organizations check the functioning of their AI tools.

Tools & Techniques. (Don’t AI while angry.)

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/three-things-to-know-about-prompting-llms/

Three Things to Know About Prompting LLMs

These research-backed tips can help you improve your prompting strategies for better results from large language models.

Tools & Techniques. (When you want to be aggressive.)

https://www.bespacific.com/own-your-data-sort-of/

Own Your Data – Sort Of

YourDigitalRights.org – “Get organizations to delete your account or provide a copy of your personal information. Many organizations collect and sell your personal data, often without your consent. Use this free service to send them a data deletion or access request. Start by searching for an organization below…” [grain of salt etc.]

Scary? Solutions often are…

https://teachprivacy.com/kafka-in-the-age-of-ai-and-the-futility-of-privacy-as-control-2/

Kafka in the Age of AI and the Futility of Privacy as Control

Although writing more than a century ago, Franz Kafka captured the core problem of digital technologies – how individuals are rendered powerless and vulnerable. During the past fifty years, and especially in the 21st century, privacy laws have been sprouting up around the world. These laws are often based heavily on an Individual Control Model that aims to empower individuals with rights to help them control the collection, use, and disclosure of their data.

In this Essay, we argue that although Kafka starkly shows us the plight of the disempowered individual, his work also paradoxically suggests that empowering the individual isn’t the answer to protecting privacy, especially in the age of artificial intelligence. In Kafka’s world, characters readily submit to authority, even when they aren’t forced and even when doing so leads to injury or death. The victims are blamed, and they even blame themselves.

Although Kafka’s view of human nature is exaggerated for darkly comedic effect, it nevertheless captures many truths that privacy law must reckon with. Even if dark patterns and dirty manipulative practices are cleaned up, people will still make bad decisions about privacy. Despite warnings, people will embrace the technologies that hurt them. When given control over their data, people will give it right back. And when people’s data is used in unexpected and harmful ways, people will often blame themselves.

Kafka’s provides key insights for regulating privacy in the age of AI. The law can’t empower individuals when it is the system that renders them powerless. Ultimately, privacy law’s primary goal should not be to give individuals control over their data. Instead, the law should focus on ensuring a societal structure that brings the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data under control.

There may be more than a snicker here. Remember, the porn industry is an early adopter.

https://scholarshare.temple.edu/handle/20.500.12613/10289

Sex robots at home: A political-economic analysis of a changing sex industry

The advent of interactive and humanistic sex robots signifies a shift in the sex technology industry. Where objects such as sex dolls require an imagined personality, sex robots operate through artificial intelligence systems, allowing the user to communicate with the robot and shape its personality more directly. Even as stigmatization and fear revolve around the emergence of sex robots, the technology has implications for social robots and companion technologies. Discourse surrounding sex robots manifests across institutions with stakeholders attempting to guide the industry toward their vision of the future. The sex robot industry remains niche and its cultural impact is unclear; yet, social and legal regulations may have farther-reaching implications. This political-economic study examines how corporate (RealDoll), advocacy (Campaign Against Porn Robots and Prostasia Foundation), and government (local, state, national, and international) stakeholders envision the current and future standing of sex robots and their place in society. The analysis demonstrates the ways stakeholders draw on moral, capitalist, and androcentric language to celebrate or condemn the sex robot industry. This study’s data includes a critical discourse analysis of business and marketing materials, press releases and interviews, ownership details, and government legislation, a total of 442 artifacts. Through this examination, I argue that moralism and absolutism dominate the discourse, while the robots’ sexual functions obfuscate the ramifications of robotic artificial intelligence. Contextualized by broader discourses on technology and feminist inquiry, I additionally argue that sex robots are utilized as a focal point to debate broader issues of child abuse, rape and objectification, sexual privacy, and loneliness. Through ownership and lobbying facets, data reveals interconnections between stakeholder segments, indicating power and influence outside of the sex industry. In particular, Realbotix, the technological avenue of RealDoll, is attempting to expand its bespoke social robot offerings, the Campaign Against Porn Robots and Prostasia continue to lobby U.S. legislators to ban and reduce restrictions respectively, all while U.S. states implement restrictions on childlike sex robots without any regulatory advice on the AI privacy risks. I conclude the study with policy recommendations to clarify Supreme Court precedent and fortify consumer data protections.

All the same but with AI?

https://ejournal.iain-manado.ac.id/index.php/since/article/view/923

The Potential Application of Artificial Intelligence by Criminals in Transnational Crimes

This paper aims to explain the relevance of artificial intelligence in the development of criminal law and how it can create new crimes due to technological developments. This paper is qualitative research with an empirical juridical approach analysed with a descriptive method. The result of this study indicates that the phenomenon of artificial intelligence in the world of crime has the potential to increase the conventional crime sophistication of artificial intelligence and facilitate new crimes with artificial intelligence. Based on this, crimes can be classified as follows: First, crimes with artificial intelligence; Second, crimes by artificial intelligence; and third, crimes against artificial intelligence.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.howtogeek.com/how-i-use-ai-to-transcribe-and-organize-my-voice-notes/

How I Use AI to Transcribe and Organize My Voice Notes

… I have a three-part system where I use free apps and tools to transcribe, refine, and organize my voice notes. Here's a step-by-step guide showcasing how I use it.

Resource.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/06/security-and-human-behavior-shb-2024.html

Security and Human Behavior (SHB) 2024

This week, I hosted the seventeenth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior at the Harvard Kennedy School. This is the first workshop since our co-founder, Ross Anderson, died unexpectedly.

SHB is a small, annual, invitational workshop of people studying various aspects of the human side of security. The fifty or so attendees include psychologists, economists, computer security researchers, criminologists, sociologists, political scientists, designers, lawyers, philosophers, anthropologists, geographers, neuroscientists, business school professors, and a smattering of others. It’s not just an interdisciplinary event; most of the people here are individually interdisciplinary.

Our goal is always to maximize discussion and interaction. We do that by putting everyone on panels, and limiting talks to six to eight minutes, with the rest of the time for open discussion. Short talks limit presenters’ ability to get into the boring details of their work, and the interdisciplinary audience discourages jargon.

Since the beginning, this workshop has been the most intellectually stimulating two days of my professional year. It influences my thinking in different and sometimes surprising ways—and has resulted in some new friendships and unexpected collaborations. This is why some of us have been coming back every year for over a decade.

This year’s schedule is here. This page lists the participants and includes links to some of their work. Kami Vaniea liveblogged both days.

Here are my posts on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth SHB workshops. Follow those links to find summaries, papers, and occasionally audio/video recordings of the sessions. Ross maintained a good webpage of psychology and security resources—it’s still up for now.

Next year we will be in Cambridge, UK, hosted by Frank Stajano.