First the ransom, then the ‘little things.’ Update your plan!

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3632854/7-unexpected-ransomware-costs.html#tk.rss_all

7 unexpected ransomware costs

Indirect costs related to a ransomware attack can add up over time. These are the expenses and financial risks that CISOs should be aware of.

Some thoughts for your AI plan.

https://www.bespacific.com/harms-of-ai/

Harms of AI

NBER – Harms of AI, Daron Acemoglu, Working Paper 29247 DOI 10.3386/w29247 Issue Date September 2021. “This essay discusses several potential economic, political and social costs of the current path of AI technologies. I argue that if AI continues to be deployed along its current trajectory and remains unregulated, it may produce various social, economic and political harms. These include: damaging competition, consumer privacy and consumer choice; excessively automating work, fueling inequality, inefficiently pushing down wages, and failing to improve worker productivity; and damaging political discourse, democracy’s most fundamental lifeblood. Although there is no conclusive evidence suggesting that these costs are imminent or substantial, it may be useful to understand them before they are fully realized and become harder or even impossible to reverse, precisely because of AI’s promising and wide-reaching potential. I also suggest that these costs are not inherent to the nature of AI technologies, but are related to how they are being used and developed at the moment – to empower corporations and governments against workers and citizens. As a result, efforts to limit and reverse these costs may need to rely on regulation and policies to redirect AI research. Attempts to contain them just by promoting competition may be insufficient.”

A first, but is it enough?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/healthily-best-practice-ai-publish-113600647.html

Healthily and Best Practice AI publish world's first AI Explainability Statement reviewed by the ICO

One of the world's leading AI smart symptom checkers has taken the groundbreaking decision to publish a statement explaining how it works.

Healthily, supported by Best Practice AI together with Simmons & Simmons and Jacob Turner of Fountain Court Chambers today publish the first AI Explainability Statement to have been reviewed by the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

The Healthily AI Explainability Statement explains how Healthily uses AI in its app including why AI is being used, how the AI system was designed and how it operates.

The statement, which can be viewed here, provides a non-technical explanation of the Healthily AI to its customers, regulators and the wider public.

Trust in Google?

https://www.bespacific.com/small-law-relies-on-google-but-doesnt-trust-it/

Small Law Relies on Google – But Doesn’t Trust It

Artificial Lawyer: “A new report by LexisNexis on the world of Small Law shows that Google is the number one resource for legal research, however 46% said ‘it is risky to use the open web’ for that very same legal research, and only 5% ‘trust the accuracy’ of free legal information that is found there. The survey sample were 305 lawyers from small and SME-scale law firms in the UK. This type of smaller legal business makes up the vast majority of firms, not just in the UK, but across the planet. Yet, as the survey shows, they are grappling with plenty of problems – and tech is central to them…”

• The full report – Bellwether 2021: The good, the bad and the new – Exploring the issues facing independent law firms following the COVID‐19 pandemic

Is it time to end “Double Secret Probation?”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/us/supreme-court-fisa-surveillance-rulings.html

At the Supreme Court, a Plea to Reveal Secret Surveillance Rulings

Last year, six months before he was nominated to be attorney general, Judge Merrick B. Garland wrote a forceful opinion on the importance of openness in the justice system.

Court decisions, he said, are public documents. “Indeed,” he wrote, “since at least the time of Edward III, judicial decisions have been held open for public inspection.”

“At bottom,” he wrote, this “reflects the antipathy of a democratic country to the notion of ‘secret law,’ inaccessible to those who are governed by that law.”

Last month, the Justice Department led by Mr. Garland told the Supreme Court that the public had no right of access under the First Amendment to secret decisions issued by a federal court.

… His general point about secret law, though, provides an important framework, according to a brief supporting the A.C.L.U. in the new case filed by two groups that do not always agree — the Brennan Center for Justice, which leans left, and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a libertarian group affiliated with the Koch family.

“Secret law of all types causes several concrete harms that are antithetical to democratic norms,” their brief said. “Secret law prevents the public from understanding and shaping the law and thus inhibits democratic accountability; disables checks on governmental abuses of the law; and weakens the quality of the law itself.”

Worth scanning. I like #7

https://www.bespacific.com/40-one-sentence-email-tips/

40 One-Sentence Email Tips

Josh Spector: “Email doesn’t have to be a nightmare. Here are a collection of concepts to help you write better emails, optimize your inbox, and keep your sanity…”

[From the article:

7. The more your email sounds like you speak, the more effective it will be.