Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Something my students will have to address.
Boardrooms Are Still Not Singing the Security Song
Despite all indications that cybersecurity is now 'top of mind' for company boardrooms, less than 50% of companies have a CISO position with a seat at the board. Boardrooms have learned all the words and they know all the notes, but they've never quite learned to sing the song.
This figure and others come from a November 2018 survey (PDF), conducted by Vanson Bourne and commissioned by Thycotic. It queried 200 CISOs in the UK and Germany from largely mid-size companies in both the public and private sector with at least 1,000 employees. Thycotic's chief security scientist and advisory CISO, Joseph Carson, believes the issues raised will affect most CISOs throughout the world.
The board is still seeing cybersecurity as something that is reactive and a cost rather than something that is an innovation or a business strategy."
More than 60% of the respondents believe senior management considers their role to be basically defensive and protective. Only 37% believe management sees them as a business-positive force, enabling secure growth and gaining competitive advantage.


(Related) Something to stimulate conversation.
WEF2019 Global Risk Report Ranks Cyber Attacks Among Most Likely Global Threats
… The WEF2019 global risk report has named cyber attacks and data breaches as the fourth and fifth most serious risks facing the world, the second year in a row in which these threats have been present in the top five.




For our self-driving car debate. (They need to come up with a more driver-friendly headline.)
Robot valets will drag your car into a parking spot at UK airport
In August, the U.K. airport will begin a three-month-long pilot program in which robots codenamed “Stan” park travelers’ cars for them — and if all goes well with the trial, the bots could become a common sight in parking lots across the globe.
According to a planning application submitted to the Crawley Borough Council by the Gatwick Airport, a driver will park their car in one of eight newly built cabins and summon a Stan via a nearby touchscreen before catching a shuttle to the airport terminal.
A Stan will roll to the front of the car and lift the vehicle up, similarly to how a forklift lifts a pallet. The bot will then ferry the car to one of 270 available parking spaces. The robot valet service knows each passenger’s flight info and will retrieve their car when they return to the Gatwick Airport, placing it in one of the cabins for pick-up.




For our AI debate.
Artificial intelligence will become the next new human right
… it was back in 2016 that the United Nations decreed Internet access should be considered a basic right.
While a non-binding premise, the UN still considers deliberate Internet disruption as a human rights violation.
… The Salesforce CEO said that AI is becoming a "new human right" at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland this week, as reported by Business Insider.
In the same way that Internet access prompted what is known as the "Digital Divide" -- the 'have' and 'have nots' when it comes to reliable, stable Internet services depending on location and economic levels – AI is also expected to create a similar separation.
According to Benioff, AI is going to become a service which everyone will need. Countries and companies alike will be "smarter," "healthier," and "richer" if they have AI, whereas those without will be "weaker and poorer, less educated and sicker," the publication reports.




Toward our goal of replacing all the lawyers?
Legal AI – Its Definition and Its Value to the Legal World
Artificial Lawyer – “‘AI’ is an awkward term. Just as ‘technology’ can mean everything from cave persons shaping flints to make spearheads, to the first electric toasters of the early 20th century, to quantum computing today, the term ‘AI’ also has a broad remit. Some flippantly say it means ‘any technology that is new’, others tend to feel it must mean some sort of ‘human-like machine’, and others may think in prosaic terms of ‘a computer that can think’. Unfortunately, this doesn’t really help us in the legal world and the latter two ideas are way too ambitious as definitions compared to what we actually have in the real world of early 2019. Doc review software using natural language processing (NLP) that has been improved with machine learning (ML) is all there is to it. Software, useful software, that’s all it is. Labelling anything ‘legal AI’ is clearly open to interpretation, but, many people who work in this area use the term in confidence and know what they mean. In which case, let’s stick with it.
OK then, but…..what does it mean? To Artificial Lawyer it primarily means using NLP and ML to achieve a cognitive task, such as reading a text, spotting certain semantic features, and then telling the user what it has found. That is it. This core legal AI capability can be harnessed to other software, such as expert systems, for example, (i.e. rules-based logic trees) and workflow automation tools, to become more effective. And, when you start to think through the broader ramifications of software that can read and respond in an automated manner….well….then you start to see that this may be a narrow ‘skill’, but its applicability is very broad – especially in the text-based world of the law…”




Perspective.
Automation and Artificial Intelligence: How machines are affecting people and places
At first, technologists issued dystopian alarms about the power of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to destroy jobs. Then came a correction, with a wave of reassurances. Now, the discourse appears to be arriving at a more complicated understanding, suggesting that automation will bring neither apocalypse nor utopia, but instead both benefits and stress alike. Such is the ambiguous and sometimes disembodied nature of the “future of work” discussion.
Hence the analysis presented here. Intended to bring often-inscrutable trends down to earth, the following report develops both backward and forward-looking analyses of the impacts of automation over the years 1980 to 2016 and 2016 to 2030 to assess past and upcoming trends as they affect both people and communities in the United States.




Python now, more languages soon. (Still free!)
Kite raises $17 million for its AI-powered developer environment
Kite, which suggests code snippets for Python developers in real time, has raised $17 million in a series A round led by Trinity Ventures. The latest version of the free developer tool no longer relies on the cloud, meaning it runs locally, and it adds a nifty feature called Line-of-Code Completions.




For our programmers…
… The good news is that top tier companies have become enthusiasts. So start tracking these coding challenges for money or jobs and grab that career breakthrough today.




For the next Math class.
Learning Math For Machine Learning And Artificial Intelligence Programming
Last year, I started writing about my experiences taking courses on machine learning and artificial intelligence. One of the big, unexpected problems I ran into was calculus and linear algebra. I've found that many online courses say you don't need much mathematics fundamentals to be a programmer, but inevitably, even in beginner courses, the underlying math was important to understand what was going on.
… After spending a lot of time online trying to sort through this haystack of do-it-yourself calculus blogs, college class PDFs, and other resources, I came away with two websites that were outstanding for teaching basic calculus and linear algebra: Khan Academy and an on-demand tutoring service called Yup.




Top up your toolkit!
An introduction to tools for creating infographics, timelines and other data visualizations
Jess Rios – Harvard Law School Library – “Particularly when we talk about large numbers, it can be difficult to fully understand their impact. With an ever-increasing amount of data and information available to us, data visualization is becoming more important to help people truly understand the meaning of the information that is collected. Whether you are teaching in a classroom or presenting in front of clients, the ability to distill and contextualize data is one that will set you apart and the tools in this guide will help you to do just that.


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