It’s like facial recognition, but without the need for your face. (Why are the cans of worms getting larger?) How do prove that DNA collected at a crime scene didn’t just blow in on the wind?

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/health/human-dna-captured-from-air-scn/index.html

Human DNA can now be pulled from thin air or a footprint on the beach. Here’s what that could mean

Footprints left on a beach. Air breathed in a busy room. Ocean water.

Scientists have been able to collect and analyze detailed genetic data from human DNA from all these places, raising thorny ethical questions about consent, privacy and security when it comes to our biological information.

The researchers from the University of Florida, who were using environmental DNA found in sand to study endangered sea turtles, said the DNA was of such high quality that the scientists could identify mutations associated with disease and determine the genetic ancestry of populations living nearby.

They could also match genetic information to individual participants who had volunteered to have their DNA recovered as part of the research that published in the scientific journal Nature Ecology & Evolution on Monday.

… However, the ability to capture human DNA from the environment could have a range of unintended consequences — both inadvertent and malicious, they added. These included privacy breaches, location tracking, data harvesting, and genetic surveillance of individuals or groups. It could lead to ethical hurdles for the approval of wildlife studies.

A simple argument: the first harm is the data breach.

https://www.databreaches.net/our-definition-of-harm-is-harmful/

Our Definition of Harm Is Harmful

Bill Fitzgerald writes:

In April 2023, the class action lawsuit against Illuminate Education was thrown out because the judge in the case determined that the people whose data was impacted by the breach could not show any harm, or any instances of identity theft, from the breach. This decision is both fully in line with past situations where companies have been let off the hook, and completely misrepresents and underestimates the various, different ways people get hurt by data breaches.

To put it in a different way: the judge’s decision shows how, in some cases, things that are defined as legal don’t come close to what is right. The way we define harm is harmful.

Read more at FunnyMonkey.com.

Resource.

https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-free-class-prompt-engineering-devs

OpenAI is offering a free class in prompt engineering for devs

… A short course in prompt engineering has been developed in partnership with OpenAI and is available via the DeepLearning.AI website. It’s delivered by OpenAI’s Isa Fulford alongside none other than Andrew Ng, a noted computer scientist who worked on AI at Google and Baidu before he founded DeepLearning.AI.

In just one hour, Ng and Fulford outline best practices in prompt engineering and give participants hands-on practice with the OpenAI API. The introductory course is aimed at developers but no previous experience with AI is required, just a basic understanding of Python. And for developers who have already started tinkering with large language models, the course will leave you with the instructions you need to build a chatbot of your own.

The course is currently free, but this will be for a limited period only. So now is a good time to grasp this opportunity and learn what makes this tech tool tick.