Tuesday, December 17, 2019


Many IoT devices have this same flaw.
Smart lock security flaw could leave your door wide open
Consultants at the cybersecurity firm F-Secure have discovered an exploitable design flaw in one brand of smart lock that can allow an attacker to easily pick the device.
Since the smart lock itself is unable to receive new firmware updates, the manufacturer can't patch the device to mitigate the flaw leaving users at risk unless they decide to physically uninstall their smart lock.




I predict failure. How significant remains unpredictable.
How New Voting Machines Could Hack Our Democracy
The United States has a disturbing habit of investing in unvetted new touchscreen voting machines that later prove disastrous. As we barrel toward what is set to be the most important election in a generation, Congress appears poised to fund another generation of risky touchscreen voting machines called universal use Ballot Marking Devices (or BMDs), which function as electronic pens, marking your selections on paper on your behalf. Although vendors, election officials, and others often refer to this paper as a “paper ballot,” it differs from a traditional hand-marked paper ballot in that it is marked by a machine, which can be hacked without detection in a manual recount or audit.




People held accountable? Inconceivable!
People should be held accountable for AI and algorithm errors, rights commissioner says
People need to be held accountable for the mistakes AI and algorithms make on their behalf, such as that seen in the government’s robodebt scandal, according to Australian human rights commissioner Ed Santow.
The proposal comes in a new discussion paper on the impact of new technologies on human rights in Australia, released by the commission on Tuesday.
After the Australian government backed down on the use of automatic debt notices based on income averaging, and had legislation for its facial recognition system rejected by a government-dominated parliamentary committee, Santow said it was time to set some rules to govern how these new technologies are used.
You can download the Human Rights and Technology Discussion Paper and make a submission at tech.humanrights.gov.au




Perspective. (One caught my eye.)
8 biggest AI trends of 2020, according to experts
Automated AI development
“In 2020, expect to see significant new innovations in the area of what IBM calls ‘AI for AI’: using AI to help automate the steps and processes involved in the life cycle of creating, deploying, managing, and operating AI models to help scale AI more widely into the enterprise,” said Sriram Raghavan, VP of IBM Research AI.




Perspective.
AI is outpacing Moore’s Law
AI performance is doubling nearly every 3 months, a new report shows.
According to a new report produced by Stanford University, AI computational power is accelerating at a much higher rate than the development of processor chips.
Prior to 2012, AI results closely tracked Moore’s Law, with compute doubling every two years,” the authors of the report wrote. “Post-2012, compute has been doubling every 3.4 months.”
Stanford’s AI Index 2019 annual report examined how AI algorithms have improved over time.




Perspective. Facebook is number one, and number two and number three and number four…
A Look Back At the Top Apps & Games of the Decade
Looking at the most downloaded apps of the decade, Facebook has dominated the mobile space representing the four most downloaded apps of the decade with Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram




I am not going to speculate on the jobs my students seem destined for…
Robot career guidance: AI may soon be able to analyse your tweets to match you to a job
Our study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science found different professions attract people with very different psychological characteristics.
When looking for a new career, you might visit a career adviser and answer a set of questions to identify your interests and strengths. These results are used to match you with a set of potential occupations.
However, this method relies on long surveys, and doesn’t account for the fact that many occupations are changing or disappearing as technology transforms the employment landscape.
We wondered if we could develop a data-driven approach to matching a person with a suitable profession, based on psychological traces they reveal online.
Studies have shown people leave traces of themselves through the language they post online and their online behaviours.




Also for my students.




For the student toolkit?
How to Use Zotero and Scrivener for Research-Driven Writing



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