Sounds like a ‘great idea’ came up a bit short when it hit the real world.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/04/clever-cryptocurrency-theft.html

Clever Cryptocurrency Theft

Beanstalk Farms is a decentralized finance project that has a majority stake governance system: basically people have proportional votes based on the amount of currency they own. A clever hacker used a “flash loan” feature of another decentralized finance project to borrow enough of the currency to give himself a controlling stake, and then approved a $182 million transfer to his own wallet.

It is insane to me that cryptocurrencies are still a thing.

A variety of surveillance the US will never see? Somehow I doubt it.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/19/1049996/south-africa-ai-surveillance-digital-apartheid/

South Africa’s private surveillance machine is fueling a digital apartheid

As firms have dumped their AI technologies into the country, it’s created a blueprint for how to surveil citizens and serves as a warning to the world.

Automating lawyers is too easy.

https://www.bespacific.com/a-human-being-wrote-this-law-review-article-gpt-3-and-the-practice-of-law/

A Human Being Wrote This Law Review Article: GPT-3 and the Practice of Law

Cyphert, Amy, A Human Being Wrote This Law Review Article: GPT-3 and the Practice of Law (November 1, 2021). UC Davis Law Review, Volume 55, Issue 1, WVU College of Law Research Paper No. 2022-02, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3973961

“Artificial intelligence tools can now “write” in such a sophisticated manner that they fool people into believing that a human wrote the text. None are better at writing than GPT-3, released in 2020 for beta testing and coming to commercial markets in 2021. GPT-3 was trained on a massive dataset that included scrapes of language from sources ranging from the NYTimes to Reddit boards. And so, it comes as no surprise that researchers have already documented incidences of bias where GPT-3 spews toxic language. But because GPT-3 is so good at “writing,” and can be easily trained to write in a specific voice — from classic Shakespeare to Taylor Swift — it is poised for wide adoption in the field of law. This Article explores the ethical considerations that will follow from GPT-3’s introduction into lawyers’ practices. GPT-3 is new, but the use of AI in the field of law is not. AI has already thoroughly suffused the practice of law. GPT-3 is likely to take hold as well, generating some early excitement that it and other AI tools could help close the access to justice gap. That excitement should nevertheless be tempered with a realistic assessment of GPT-3’s tendency to produce biased outputs. As amended, the Model Rules of Professional Conduct acknowledge the impact of technology on the profession and provide some guard rails for its use by lawyers. This Article is the first to apply the current guidance to GPT-3, concluding that it is inadequate. I examine three specific Model Rules — Rule 1.1 (Competence), Rule 5.3 (Supervision of Nonlawyer Assistance), and Rule 8.4(g) (Bias) — and propose amendments that focus lawyers on their duties and require them to regularly educate themselves about pros and cons of using AI to ensure the ethical use of this emerging technology.”

Not supportive enough? Putin reminds them who made them rich?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/putin-signs-decree-remove-russian-135326392.html

Putin signs decree to remove Russian stocks from overseas exchanges in huge blow to the nation's billionaires

Perspective.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/04/16/history-shows-trump-personality-cult-end-00024941

The One Way History Shows Trump’s Personality Cult Will End

… She had seen enough of Donald Trump’s behavior over the preceding five years to know how neatly he lined up with other strongmen she had studied and how his autocratic tendencies would influence his behavior whether he won or lost.

“I just predicted that he wouldn’t leave in a quiet manner,” Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University told me recently. “He’s an authoritarian, and they can’t leave office. They don’t have good endings and they don’t leave properly.”