It’s not just hospitals… Should we assume all transcripts have been (or should have been) edited? What does that do to their evidentiary value?

https://apnews.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-health-business-90020cdf5fa16c79ca2e5b6c4c9bbb14

Researchers say an AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said

Tech behemoth OpenAI has touted its artificial intelligence-powered transcription tool Whisper as having near “human level robustness and accuracy.”

But Whisper has a major flaw: It is prone to making up chunks of text or even entire sentences, according to interviews with more than a dozen software engineers, developers and academic researchers. Those experts said some of the invented text — known in the industry as hallucinations — can include racial commentary, violent rhetoric and even imagined medical treatments.

… The full extent of the problem is difficult to discern, but researchers and engineers said they frequently have come across Whisper’s hallucinations in their work. A University of Michigan researcher conducting a study of public meetings, for example, said he found hallucinations in 8 out of every 10 audio transcriptions he inspected, before he started trying to improve the model.

A machine learning engineer said he initially discovered hallucinations in about half of the over 100 hours of Whisper transcriptions he analyzed. A third developer said he found hallucinations in nearly every one of the 26,000 transcripts he created with Whisper.

Sensible?

https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/26/worker_surveillance_credit_reporting_privacy_requirement/

Worker surveillance must comply with credit reporting rules

The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday published guidance advising businesses that third-party reports about workers must comply with the consent and transparency requirements set forth in the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

… "Workers shouldn't be subject to unchecked surveillance or have their careers determined by opaque third-party reports without basic protections," declared CFPB director Rohit Chopra in a statement. "The kind of scoring and profiling we've long seen in credit markets is now creeping into employment and other aspects of our lives. Our action today makes clear that longstanding consumer protections apply to these new domains just as they do to traditional credit reports."

A very foreign foreign policy?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-has-regularly-held-secret-talks-with-vladimir-putin/

Musk Has Regularly Held Secret Talks With Vladimir Putin

… The report is alarming on several fronts, as Musk has taken on an outsized role in former President Donald Trump’s campaign for re-election. He holds top-secret clearance as the head of SpaceX, which launches satellites that are vital to U.S. national security, and he owns X, a social media platform with 600 million active users.

… It’s not clear from the report whether Musk was already talking to the Russians when he was in the process of buying X, formerly Twitter, in the fall of 2022. But since the contact started, he’s begun criticizing U.S. military aid in Ukraine, allowed Russian disinformation to run rampant on X and become Trump’s second-biggest campaign booster.

Too expensive? (LinkedIn’s 2024 revenue was $16.37 billion)

https://thehackernews.com/2024/10/irish-watchdog-imposes-record-310.html

Irish Watchdog Imposes Record €310 Million Fine on LinkedIn for GDPR Violations

The Irish data protection watchdog on Thursday fined LinkedIn €310 million ($335 million) for violating the privacy of its users by conducting behavioral analyses of personal data for targeted advertising.

"The inquiry examined LinkedIn's processing of personal data for the purposes of behavioral analysis and targeted advertising of users who have created LinkedIn profiles (members)," the Data Protection Commission (DPC) said. "The decision [...] concerns the lawfulness, fairness, and transparency of this processing."

Perspective. (On the other hand, would it be as good an investment as Standard Oil?)

https://thenextweb.com/news/how-online-world-change-big-tech-companies-google-forced-break-u

How your online world could change if big tech companies like Google are forced to break up

The downsides of a big tech break up

The US Department of Justice may be on the verge of seeking a break-up of Google in a bid to make it less dominant. If the government goes ahead and is successful in the courts, it could mean the company being split into separate entities – a search engine, an advertising company, a video website, a mapping app – which would not be allowed to share data with each other.

While this is still a distant prospect, it is being considered in the wake of a series of rulings in the US and the EU which suggest that regulators are becoming increasingly frustrated by the power of big tech. That power tends to be highly concentrated, whether it’s Google’s monopoly as a search engine, Meta’s data gathering from Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, or by small businesses becoming dependent on Amazon.

Well, not everything…

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/23/1105192/ai-hype-index-nov-dec-2024/

Introducing: The AI Hype Index

Everything you need to know about the state of AI.

… Our first index is a white-knuckle ride that ranges from the outright depressing—rising numbers of sexually explicit deepfakes; the complete lack of rules governing Elon Musk’s Grok AI model—to the bizarre, including AI-powered dating wingmen and startup Friend’s dorky intelligent-jewelry line.

Click an icon to read more on the topic.

Because… (Easy to print and share)

https://www.bespacific.com/national-security-agency-mobile-device-best-practices/

National Security Agency Mobile Device Best Practices

NSA Mobile Device Best Practices report offers tips to thwart hackers and attackers from assaulting your mobile device. One method is as simple as turning your phone off and on.

Perspective.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/10/the-global-surveillance-free-for-all-in-mobile-ad-data/

The Global Surveillance Free-for-All in Mobile Ad Data

Not long ago, the ability to digitally track someone’s daily movements just by knowing their home address, employer, or place of worship was considered a dangerous power that should remain only within the purview of nation states. But a new lawsuit in a likely constitutional battle over a New Jersey privacy law shows that anyone can now access this capability, thanks to a proliferation of commercial services that hoover up the digital exhaust emitted by widely-used mobile apps and websites.

Surveillance is inevitable? (At least in public spaces…)

https://www.404media.co/lawsuit-argues-warrantless-use-of-flock-surveillance-cameras-is-unconstitutional/

Lawsuit Argues Warrantless Use of Flock Surveillance Cameras Is Unconstitutional

A civil liberties organization has filed a federal lawsuit in Virginia arguing that widespread surveillance enabled by Flock, a company that sells networks of automated license plate readers, is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.

“The City of Norfolk, Virginia, has installed a network of cameras that make it functionally impossible for people to drive anywhere without having their movements tracked, photographed, and stored in an AI-assisted database that enables the warrantless surveillance of their every move.

We can, therefore we must.

https://variety.com/2024/biz/news/news-corp-dow-jones-ny-post-sue-perplexity-copyright-infringement-1236184900/

Dow Jones and New York Post Sue AI Startup Perplexity, Alleging ‘Massive’ Copyright Infringement

… “Perplexity is a generative artificial intelligence company that claims to provide its users accurate and up-to-date news and information in a platform that, in Perplexity’s own words, allows users to ‘Skip the Links’ to original publishers’ websites,” the companies said in the federal lawsuit, filed Monday. “Perplexity attempts to accomplish this by engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers’ copyrighted works and diverting customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders. This suit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity’s brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce.”

Perspective.

https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/gartner-it-symposium-xpo-highlights-2024

IT Symposium/Xpo 2024

Gartner experts explore the technology, insights and trends shaping the future of IT and business at IT Symposium/Xpo 2024 in Orlando, FL.

… Download your detailed guide to the Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2025 and learn how they align to your digital ambitions. 

My AI and I need a side hustle…

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/10/ai-and-the-sec-whistleblower-program.html

AI and the SEC Whistleblower Program

… Today, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is engaged in a modern-day version of tax farming. And the potential for abuse will grow when the farmers start using artificial intelligence.

… In one case, the SEC’s largest ever, it paid $279 million to an individual whistleblower. That single award was nearly one-third of the funding of the SEC’s entire enforcement division last year.

Imagine an enemy targeting the US without Google Maps…

https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/21/tesla_tsmc_china_legal_worries/

Tesla, Intel, deny they're the foreign company China just accused of making maps that threaten national security

… The Ministry of State Security (MSS) last Wednesday accused the unnamed firm of evading supervision and hiding its true motive, and equated it to spying.

"According to China's laws and regulations, the original data of surveying and mapping geographic information may involve high-precision measurement information such as military centers and key departments, and there is a risk that it will be used abroad to mark China's key core parts," explained the ministry. In this particular scenario, the foreign entity allegedly controlled the flow of data, and ordered it transferred overseas.

AI vs a classroom full of law students? Which way did the ‘agreement’ lean?

https://krcgtv.com/news/local/mizzou-professor-trains-artificial-intelligence-to-negotiate-with-law-students

Mizzou professor trains artificial intelligence to negotiate with law students

Renee Henson trained an AI chatbot to conduct a legal negotiation with her law students.

… Students in Henson'sLawyering: Problem-Solving and Dispute Resolution class engaged in a products liability case with the trained AI Chatbox deemed "Toby."

"My class collectively represented the plaintiff. Toby represented the defendant. And we were able to come to an agreement.," Henson said.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.bespacific.com/ditttext/

DittText

• What is Diff Text? A simple diff checker tool to quickly find the difference between two blocks of text.

• What can it be used for? It can be used to compare changes with plain text, code, json, yaml, html, css, markdown, and more.

• What do the colors mean? Green means the text was added, red means the text was removed, and the rest is unchanged.

• What is the difference between comparison modes? “Word” compares the text broken down by words, while “char” compares the text broken down by individual characters.

• Can I compare files directly without copy and pasting? Yes, click the open file button or simply drag and drop the file into the text inputs.

• Is my text secure? Yes, all text is processed client-side and never leaves your browser.

Is AI the answer?

https://bpasjournals.com/library-science/index.php/journal/article/view/2284

An Analysis of the Impact of Artificial Intelligence in the Legal Sector

Use of Artificial Intelligence in the legal field has made drastic changes to the traditional practices of legal profession by improving on the aspects of efficiency, accuracy and access. This paper looks at how innovations in AI like machine learning, natural language processing, and predictive analytics help or hinder the several processes of work in law including case studies, contracts, and legal decisions. The paper examines the efficiencies which include cutting down on costs and time, the reduction of human errors, and risk assessment of the legal operations through integration of AI technologies, the disadvantages of introducing the free use of AI, the ethical consideration, and issue that might be a hindrance in the integration process such as bias in the application of AI and the dilemma of data privacy. Therefore, while summarising the opportunities and challenges AI provides for the purpose of the legal work presented in this paper it is possible to conclude that this scholarship outlines how the AI is changing the nature of the legal services and the directions of such alterations in the future.

Would AI be fair?

https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap-oa/book/9781035337934/book-part-9781035337934-22.xml

Chapter 14: Artificial intelligence and the right to a fair trial

In the administration of justice, the court’s decision is based on the processing of information, regardless of the type of case or the nature of the proceedings. When a case is brought to court, the parties present certain information in the form of allegations and evidence. This information is then often supplemented or modified in the course of the proceedings by the formulation of new allegations or the taking of further evidence which is a source of information relevant to the case. In the end, the courts process and evaluate this information, draw conclusions, and make a decision about the case.

It is theoretically possible to attempt to reduce the judicial process to a simple ‘calculation’ in which the input, in the form of information about the law, evidence, and facts of a particular case, is the basis for the generation of the output, i.e. a decision by the court. In this view, the use of algorithms or artificial intelligence (AI) to generate court decisions on the basis of information provided by the parties, derived from the content of the evidence taken and illustrating the state of the law, is a theoretically feasible solution for the practice of justice. Indeed, some court cases today are not so informationally complex that they cannot be resolved using AI mechanisms.

AI is driving this market.

https://thenextweb.com/news/marvel-fusion-breaks-ground-on-150m-laser-facility-in-colorado

Marvel Fusion breaks ground on $150M laser facility in Colorado

German startup Marvel Fusion and Colorado State University have broken ground on a $150M laser facility in a bid to commercialise fusion energy.

Dubbed ATLAS, the facility will use three ultra-high intensity lasers to fire 7 petawatts of power — over 5,000 times the electrical generation capacity of the US — at a target roughly the width of a human hair.  

The blast will last approximately 100 quadrillionths of a second. However, it will produce enough heat and pressure to fuse atoms together, initiating the same reaction that powers the Sun and stars.

Tools & Techniques. Useful as an evidence gatherer?

https://simonwillison.net/2024/Oct/17/video-scraping/

Video scraping: extracting JSON data from a 35 second screen capture for less than 1/10th of a cent

The other day I found myself needing to add up some numeric values that were scattered across twelve different emails.

I didn’t particularly feel like copying and pasting all of the numbers out one at a time, so I decided to try something different: could I record a screen capture while browsing around my Gmail account and then extract the numbers from that video using Google Gemini?

This turned out to work incredibly well.

Long story short, I couldn’t agree more. I use Feedly.

https://www.bespacific.com/you-should-be-using-an-rss-reader/

You should be using an RSS reader

Pluralistic: “…RSS (one of those ancient internet acronyms with multiple definitions, including, but not limited to, “Really Simple Syndication”) is an invisible, automatic way for internet-connected systems to public “feeds.” For example, rather than reloading the Wired homepage every day and trying to figure out which stories are new (their layout makes this very hard to do!), you can just sign up for Wired‘s RSS feed, and use an RSS reader to monitor the site and preview new stories the moment they’re published.  Wired pushes about 600 words from each article into that feed, stripped of the usual stuff that makes Wired nearly impossible to read: no 20-second delay subscription pop-up, text in a font and size of your choosing. You can follow Wired‘s feed without any cookies, and Wired gets no information about which of its stories you read.  Wired doesn’t even get to know that you’re monitoring its feed. I don’t mean to pick on Wired here. This goes for every news source I follow – from CNN to the New York Times. But RSS isn’t just good for the news! It’s good for everything. Your friends’ blogs? Every blogging platform emits an RSS feed by default. You can follow every one of them in your reader. Not just blogs. Do you follow a bunch of substackers or other newsletters? They’ve all got RSS feeds. You can read those newsletters without ever registering in the analytics of the platforms that host them. The text shows up in black and white (not the sadistic, 8-point, 80% grey-on-white type these things all default to). It is always delivered, without any risk of your email provider misclassifying an update as spam: https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/

Did you know that, by default, your email sends information to mailing list platforms about your reading activity? The platform gets to know if you opened the message, and often how far along you’ve read in it. On top of that, they get all the private information your browser or app leaks about you, including your location. This is unbelievably gross, and you get to bypass all of it, just by reading in RSS…”

Broad implications… How much research is enough? How much information can I withhold?

https://www.bespacific.com/the-illusion-of-information-adequacy/

The illusion of information adequacy

Gehlbach H, Robinson CD, Fletcher A (2024) The illusion of information adequacy. PLoS ONE 19(10): e0310216.  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310216: “How individuals navigate perspectives and attitudes that diverge from their own affects an array of interpersonal outcomes from the health of marriages to the unfolding of international conflicts. The finesse with which people negotiate these differing perceptions depends critically upon their tacit assumptions—e.g., in the bias of naïve realism people assume that their subjective construal of a situation represents objective truth. The present study adds an important assumption to this list of biases: the illusion of information adequacy. Specifically, because individuals rarely pause to consider what information they may be missing, they assume that the cross-section of relevant information to which they are privy is sufficient to adequately understand the situation. Participants in our preregistered study (N = 1261) responded to a hypothetical scenario in which control participants received full information and treatment participants received approximately half of that same information. We found that treatment participants assumed that they possessed comparably adequate information and presumed that they were just as competent to make thoughtful decisions based on that information. Participants’ decisions were heavily influenced by which cross-section of information they received. Finally, participants believed that most other people would make a similar decision to the one they made. We discuss the implications in the context of naïve realism and other biases that implicate how people navigate differences of perspective.”

Did I miss this?

https://www.bespacific.com/civil-rights-implications-of-federal-use-of-facial-recognition-technology/

The Civil Rights Implications of Federal Use of Facial Recognition Technology

The Civil Rights Implications of the Federal Use of Facial Recognition Technology. September 19, 2024. Meaningful federal guidelines and oversight for responsible FRT use have lagged behind the application of this technology in real-world scenarios. With the advent of biometric technology and its widespread use by both private and government entities, the Commission studied how the Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are utilizing this technology, in compliance with existing civil rights laws. Currently, there are no laws that expressly regulate the use of FRT or other AI by the federal government, and no constitutional provisions governing its use.

Report

Fact Sheet

Press Release

I knew it!

https://www.bespacific.com/how-social-media-distorts-perceptions-of-norms/

How social media distorts perceptions of norms

Claire E. Robertson, Kareena S. del Rosario, Jay J. Van Bavel, Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms, Current Opinion in Psychology, Volume 60, 2024, 101918, ISSN 2352-250X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2024.101918.  “The current paper explains how modern technology interacts with human psychology to create a funhouse mirror version of social norms. We argue that norms generated on social media often tend to be more extreme than offline norms which can create false perceptions of norms–known as pluralistic ignorance. We integrate research from political science, psychology, and cognitive science to explain how online environments become saturated with false norms, who is misrepresented online, what happens when online norms deviate from offline norms, where people are affected online, and why expressions are more extreme online. We provide a framework for understanding and correcting for the distortions in our perceptions of social norms that are created by social media platforms. We argue the funhouse mirror nature of social media can be pernicious for individuals and society by increasing pluralistic ignorance and false polarization.”

Resource.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/15/1105441/intro-ai-beginners-guide-artificial-intelligence-course/

Intro to AI: a beginner’s guide to artificial intelligence from MIT Technology Review

It feels as though AI is moving a million miles a minute. Every week, it seems, there are product launches, fresh features and other innovations, and new concerns over ethics and privacy. It’s a lot to keep up with. Maybe you wish someone would just take a step back and explain some of the basics.

Look no further. Intro to AI is MIT Technology Review’s first newsletter that also serves as a mini-course. You’ll get one email a week for six weeks, and each edition will walk you through a different topic in AI.

Sign up here to receive it for free. 

Perspective.

https://sifted.eu/articles/state-of-ai-report-2024-air-street

State of AI report 2024: Where is Europe winning?

London-based AI investment firm Air Street Capital has released its latest State of AI report, an annual deep dive into the big themes shaping what has become the VC industry’s favourite sector.

The seventh edition of the report describes how entrepreneurs are starting to get to grips with large language models (LLMs) and other generative technologies in video, image and audio, learning how to get the best out of them, as well as addressing their shortcomings.

And while it’s US tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Meta — not to mention ChatGPT maker OpenAI — that get the lion’s share of attention in the report (particularly when it comes to research), there are some notable European success stories.

Perspective.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2024/10/15/escalating-cyber-threats-demand-stronger-global-defense-and-cooperation/

Escalating Cyber Threats Demand Stronger Global Defense and Cooperation

Microsoft customers face more than 600 million cybercriminal and nation-state attacks every day, ranging from ransomware to phishing to identity attacks. Once again, nation-state affiliated threat actors demonstrated that cyber operations—whether for espionage, destruction, or influence—play a persistent supporting role in broader geopolitical conflicts. Also fueling the escalation in cyberattacks, we are seeing increasing evidence of the collusion of cybercrime gangs with nation-state groups sharing tools and techniques.  

We must find a way to stem the tide of this malicious cyber activity. That includes continuing to harden our digital domains to protect our networks, data, and people at all levels. However, this challenge will not be accomplished solely by executing a checklist of cyber hygiene measures but only through a focus on and commitment to the foundations of cyber defense from the individual user to the corporate executive and to government leaders.

These are some of the insights from the fifth annual Microsoft Digital Defense Report, which covers trends between July 2023 and June 2024. 

For your consideration…

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/14/1105249/data-strategies-for-ai-leaders/

Data strategies for AI leaders

… The expectation that generative AI could fundamentally upend business models and product offerings is driven by the technology’s power to unlock vast amounts of data that were previously inaccessible. “Eighty to 90% of the world’s data is unstructured,” says Baris Gultekin, head of AI at AI data cloud company Snowflake. “But what’s exciting is that AI is opening the door for organizations to gain insights from this data that they simply couldn’t before.”

https://www.snowflake.com/resource/data-strategies-for-ai-leaders/?utm_source=mit&utm_medium=web-lp-mit-site&utm_campaign=na-us-en&utm_content=mit-report-data-strategies-for-ai-leaders

I suppose artificial intelligence is better than no intelligence…

https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202410.0360/v1

The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Political Decision-Making

The use of artificial intelligence for political decision-making is in an early stage of development; however, there are several questions that arise about its current and hypothetical uses. These questions often come from areas of philosophy such as ethics, political philosophy, and logic. In this article, first, the theoretical approaches from which the current and hypothetical uses of artificial intelligence for political decision-making can be interpreted will be presented. These approaches include realistic politics, bureaucracy theory, and conflict theory. Then, the possible uses that artificial intelligence could have in politics, as well as the attempts that have already been made, will be discussed. Subsequently, the logical, ethical, and political problems that the use of artificial intelligence for political decision-making could cause will be outlined. Next, a basic experiment will be presented on what kind of political decisions artificial intelligence could suggest. Finally, the points previously discussed will be analyzed from the mentioned theories. The conclusion reached was that, at the present time, the use of artificial intelligence for political decision-making could align more with the approaches of Machiavelli, focusing primarily on achieving goals such as maintaining power, while downplaying moral dilemmas.

Avoiding dystopia does not result in utopia.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Douglas-Youvan/publication/384665784_Orwell_Huxley_and_AI_Dystopian_Fiction/links/6701d398b753fa724d5fa84b/Orwell-Huxley-and-AI-Dystopian-Fiction.pdf

Orwell, Huxley, and AI Dystopian Fiction

In the realm of dystopian fiction, few authors have shaped our collective imagination as profoundly as George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World present chilling visions of future societies, each shaped by technological control yet distinct in their methods. 1984 illustrates a world dominated by surveillance and truth manipulation, while Brave New World explores the dangers of a comfort-driven society where individuality is sacrificed for convenience. These classic works offer cautionary insights into the ethical implications of technology, surveillance, and control. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into modern life, the themes explored by Orwell and Huxley remain profoundly relevant. Modern AI-driven dystopian fiction builds on these authors' legacies, prompting questions about data privacy, personal autonomy, and social responsibility. By examining the intersection of AI and dystopian themes, we can explore pathways for ethical AI development that respect human dignity and uphold freedom, drawing inspiration from cautionary tales to foster a balanced, conscientious approach to technology.

Another look at the uses of AI.

https://appinventiv.com/blog/machine-learning-in-retail/

How Machine Learning in Retail is Redefining the Sector - Key Business Opportunities and Challenge

… To help you gain a better understanding of how ML is changing the retail industry, here are some of the key applications that make it a game-changing solution for retailers:

Keep AI in perspective.

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/llms-dont-do-formal-reasoning-and

LLMs don’t do formal reasoning - and that is a HUGE problem

A superb new article on LLMs from six AI researchers at Apple who were brave enough to challenge the dominant paradigm has just come out.

Everyone actively working with AI should read it, or at least this terrific X thread by senior author, Mehrdad Farajtabar, that summarizes what they observed. One key passage:

“we found no evidence of formal reasoning in language models …. Their behavior is better explained by sophisticated pattern matching—so fragile, in fact, that changing names can alter results by ~10%!”

One particularly damning result was a new task the Apple team developed, called GSM-NoOp

The obvious outcome of self surveillance.

https://gizmodo.com/hacked-robot-vacuums-across-the-us-started-yelling-slurs-2000511013

Hacked Robot Vacuums Across the U.S. Started Yelling Slurs

It’s a tale as old as… the Internet of Things era. Robot vacuums made by Ecovacs have been reported roving around people’s homes, yelling profanities at them through the onboard speakers after the company’s software was found to be vulnerable to intrusion.

… He opened the vacuum’s app to find a stranger was accessing its live camera feed and remote control feature, but assumed it might be an error. After resetting the password and rebooting the robot, the vacuum quickly started moving again:

This time, there was no ambiguity about what was coming out of the speaker. A voice was yelling racist obscenities, loud and clear, right in front of Mr Swenson’s son.

“F*** n******s,” screamed the voice, over and over again.

What would you build?

https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2024/10/11/yale-law-school-introduces-numerous-ai-focused-initiatives/

Yale Law School introduces numerous AI-focused initiatives

… Through the Tsai Leadership Program, Scott Shapiro, professor of law and philosophy, heads an AI lab where students build AI tools for legal use. Currently, Shapiro is supervising a student building and coding a defamation detector. This AI model will be programmed to detect defamatory material and flag it for legal review.

Perspective.

https://darioamodei.com/machines-of-loving-grace#basic-assumptions-and-framework

Machines of Loving Grace

… In this essay I try to sketch out what that upside might look like—what a world with powerful AI might look like if everything goes right. Of course no one can know the future with any certainty or precision, and the effects of powerful AI are likely to be even more unpredictable than past technological changes, so all of this is unavoidably going to consist of guesses. But I am aiming for at least educated and useful guesses, which capture the flavor of what will happen even if most details end up being wrong. I’m including lots of details mainly because I think a concrete vision does more to advance discussion than a highly hedged and abstract one.

Perspective. (With implications for most businesses.)

https://warontherocks.com/2024/10/ai-and-intelligence-analysis-panacea-or-peril/

AI and Intelligence Analysis: Panacea or Peril?

In today’s chaotic world, professional intelligence analysts must contend with nearly endless data streams, which risk overwhelming them while also exacerbating the impact of cognitive biases. Is AI the answer, or do the flaws that currently afflict AI create yet more risks?

In fact, AI is neither a panacea nor a peril. Like other emerging technologies, AI is not an instant “out of the box” solution but rather a capability that continues to evolve. Today, AI can augment human capabilities and enhance the analysis process by tackling specific challenges. However, AI is not without issues. This means its value lies in serving as a complementary capability to the expertise and judgment of human intelligence analysts.

Before the wholesale adoption of AI in support of intelligence analysis, it is essential to understand the specific problems facing analysts: coping with large volumes of data; the acquisition of data from non-traditional sources; and, perhaps most vexing of all, the impacts of cognitive biases that impact the objectivity of intelligence assessments. AI can play a valuable role in alleviating these challenges, but only if humans are kept in the loop.

Perspective.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/generative-ai-the-american-worker-and-the-future-of-work/

Generative AI, the American worker, and the future of work

The launch of ChatGPT-3.5 at the end of 2022 captured the world’s attention and illustrated the uncanny ability of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to produce a range of seemingly human-generated content, including text, video, audio, images, and code. The release, and the many eye-catching breakthroughs that quickly followed, have raised questions about what these fast-moving generative AI technologies might mean for work, workers, and livelihoods—now and in the future, as new models are released that are potentially much more powerful. Many U.S. workers are worried: According to a Pew Research Center poll, most Americans believe that generative AI will have a major impact on jobs—mainly negative—in the next two decades. 

Despite these widely shared concerns, however, there is little consensus on the nature and scale of generative AI’s potential impacts and how—or even whether—to respond. Fundamental questions remain unanswered: How do we ensure workers can proactively shape generative AI’s design and deployment? What will it take to make sure workers benefit meaningfully from its gains? And what guardrails are needed for workers to avoid harms as much as possible? 

These animating questions are the heart of this report and a new multiyear effort we have launched at Brookings with a wide range of external collaborators

No wonder they rely on AI to read for them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/

The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books

… This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.

“My jaw dropped,” Dames told me. The anecdote helped explain the change he was seeing in his students: It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.

Are we slipping down the slope toward fully autonomous drones?

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2024/10/new-ai-powered-strike-drone-shows-how-quickly-battlefield-autonomy-evolving/400179/

New AI-powered strike drone shows how quickly battlefield autonomy is evolving

Small drones have been changing modern warfare at least since 2015, when Russia and Ukraine began to use them to great effect for rapid targeting. The latest addition is a strike-and-intelligence quadcopter that its builder hopes will do more things with a lot less operator attention.

The point of the Bolt-M, revealed by Anduril today, is to make fewer demands on the operator and offer more information than, easy-to-produce first-person-view strike drones, the type that Ukraine is producing by the hundreds of thousands. The U.S. Army, too, is looking at FPV drones for infantry platoons. But they require special training to use and come with a lot of operational limits. The Bolt-M, according to an Anduril statement, works “without requiring specialized operators.” The company has a contract from the U.S. Marine Corps’ Organic Precision Fires – Light, or OPF-L, program to develop a strike variant.

Inevitable?

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/10/germany-rushes-expand-biometric-surveillance

Germany Rushes to Expand Biometric Surveillance

Germany is a leader in privacy and data protection, with many Germans being particularly sensitive to the processing of their personal data – owing to the country’s totalitarian history and the role of surveillance in both Nazi Germany and East Germany.

So, it is disappointing that the German government is trying to push through Parliament, at record speed, a “security package” that would increase biometric surveillance at an unprecedented scale. The proposed measures contravene the government’s own coalition agreement, and undermine European law and the German constitution.

… The German government wants to allow law enforcement authorities to identify suspects by comparing their biometric data (audio, video, and image data) to all data publicly available on the internet. Beyond the host of harms related to facial recognition software, this would mean that any photos or videos uploaded to the internet would become part of the government’s surveillance infrastructure.

This only applies if you’re young?

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tiktok-sued-14-attorneys-general-rcna174395

Fourteen AGs sue TikTok, accusing it of harming children's mental health

Fourteen attorneys general, led by officials in New York and California, filed lawsuits Tuesday accusing the social media platform TikTok of damaging young users’ mental health and collecting their data without consent.

The legal broadside, organized by a bipartisan coalition of 14 law enforcement officers, alleges TikTok violated state laws by falsely claiming its service is safe for young people. The lawsuits were filed individually.

Perspective.

https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/10/08/who-u-s-adults-follow-on-tiktok/

Who U.S. Adults Follow on TikTok

Adult TikTok users in the U.S. use the platform to follow pop culture and entertainment accounts much more than news and politics