Imagine what a copy of this data could reveal about you! Self surveillance just keeps getting easier.
‘Extensions of our mind’: Personalized artificial intelligence is on the way, courtesy of local company
A local company is taking the next steps toward creating individualized artificial intelligence with a digital vault of one’s mind.
… Thus, while the human brain keeps only a percentage of the information it takes in, the AI model will be able to retain everything for quick access
… “It’s kind of like a little assistant on your shoulder, and when you’re struggling to remember something, it whispers in your ear,” said Personal.ai head of finance Jonathan Bikoff. “The model gets larger and larger as you feed it data, and it’s your assistant — no one else gets to use it. [??? Bob] And unlike me, my model will never forget. So if I ever want to retrieve that data, instead of scattering through my internet history, emails or text messages to find whatever it was, I just ask my model.”
… Personal.ai’s model can receive information from across multiple platforms such as text messages, emails or chat apps, and rather than rely on keywords to locate the information, the model can learn the user’s way of describing the information that is needed and locate it that way.
“It will remember everything — it will contextualize it, understand it and help you recall it,” Bikoff said.
It’s a free service. Did they get what they paid for?
Controversy erupts over non-consensual AI mental health experiment [Updated]
On Friday, Koko co-founder Rob Morris announced on Twitter that his company ran an experiment to provide AI-written mental health counseling for 4,000 people without informing them first, Vice reports. Critics have called the experiment deeply unethical because Koko did not obtain informed consent from people seeking counseling.
Koko is a nonprofit mental health platform that connects teens and adults who need mental health help to volunteers through messaging apps like Telegram and Discord.
… During the AI experiment—which applied to about 30,000 messages, according to Morris—volunteers providing assistance to others had the option to use a response automatically generated by OpenAI's GPT-3 large language model instead of writing one themselves (GPT-3 is the technology behind the recently popular ChatGPT chatbot).
In his tweet thread, Morris says that people rated the AI-crafted responses highly until they learned they were written by AI, suggesting a key lack of informed consent during at least one phase of the experiment:
I too would like a list of vulnerable technology, so I know how to prioritize my hacks.
President Biden Signs Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act
In a new post on the Inside Tech Media blog, our colleagues discuss the “Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act,” which President Biden signed into law in the final days of 2022. The Act recognizes that current encryption protocols used by the federal government might one day be vulnerable to compromise as a result of quantum computing, which could allow adversaries of the United States to steal sensitive encrypted data. To address these concerns, the Act will require an inventory and prioritization of vulnerable information technology in use by federal agencies; a plan to migrate existing information technology systems; and reports to Congress on the progress of the migration and funding required.
(Related) Vulnerability is everywhere…
Government watchdog spent $15,000 to crack a federal agency’s passwords in minutes
TechCrunch:
“A government
watchdog has
published a scathing rebuke of the Department of the Interior’s
cybersecurity posture, finding it was able to crack thousands of
employee user accounts because the department’s security policies
allow easily guessable passwords like 'Password1234'.
The report
by
the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of the
Interior, tasked with oversight of the U.S. executive agency that
manages the country’s federal land, national parks and a budget of
billions of dollars, said that the department’s reliance on
passwords
as
the sole way of protecting some of its most important systems and
employees’ user accounts has bucked nearly two decades of the
government’s own cybersecurity guidance of mandating stronger
two-factor
authentication.
It concludes that poor password policies puts the department at risk
of a breach that could lead to a “high probability” of massive
disruption to its operations.
Something to read? Doctorow is a great ‘explainer.’ [Podcast]
What is chokepoint capitalism, with authors Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin
Last year, I spoke with Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin about their new book, Chokepoint Capitalism. It’s a book about artists and technology and platforms and how different kinds of distribution and creation tools create chokepoints for different companies to capture value that might otherwise go to artists and creators. In other words, it’s a lot of Decoder stuff.
As we were prepping this episode, the Decoder team realized it previews a lot of things we’re going to talk about in 2023: antitrust law; Ticketmaster; Spotify and the future of the music industry; Amazon and the book industry; and of course, being a creator trying to make a living on all of these platforms.
The best part of the book is that Rebecca and Cory have some good ideas about how to actually solve some of the problems they talk about. As you’ll hear Cory say, the book isn’t just expounding on all the problems — half the book is about solutions.
… The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Tools & Techniques.
Google Docs’ voice-to-text feature is getting major upgrades. Here’s how to use it
ZDNET: “Your voice is a powerful tool, and Google’s dictation tool can help you harness it, convert it, and even present it. With the Google suite’s voice-to-text capabilities, transferring thoughts from speech to digital copy is quick and simple. On top of that, Google just announced that its upcoming batch of voice-to-text improvements, coming in February, will make for a more reliable and accurate transcription process. The list of changes includes:
Reduction of transcription errors
Minimizing lost audio during transcription
Expanded support for major browsers
Captions in Slides will have auto-generated punctuation
While you will have to wait a few more weeks before you can fully benefit from the performance gains, allow me to first show you how to use Google’s voice dictation feature to type and edit on Google Docs and even transcribe speaker notes on Google Slides…”
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