If the data is there, why ignore it? Would this be like searching car registrations when you had part of the plate number?

https://www.greeleytribune.com/2023/05/05/google-reverse-keyword-search-warrant-colorado-supreme-court-arguments/

Colorado Supreme Court hears first-of-its-kind challenge to police’s use of Google search terms to ID murder suspects

The Colorado Supreme Court on Thursday grappled with privacy and freedom of speech concerns as the justices heard a legal challenge to a controversial new law enforcement technique that Denver police used to identify the three teenagers accused of killing five people in a house fire three years ago.

The groundbreaking legal case considers for the first time in Colorado — and, attorneys said, nationally — whether police can legally issue search warrants that require Google to turn over account information for any users who searched particular keywords in a particular time frame.

Such “reverse keyword search warrants” require Google to scan through potentially billions of search histories in order to find the keywords sought by law enforcement. Attorneys challenging the warrant said during oral arguments Thursday that the massive scope amounts to an illegal search that violates Google users’ constitutional protections for free speech and against unreasonable searches. Attorneys for Denver District Attorney Beth McCann argued it is an acceptable investigative tool that doesn’t violate constitutional rights or privacy rights.

“The keyword warrant here made Google search everybody who searched for anything over the course of more than two weeks,” said Michael Price, an attorney with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers who argued against the use of the warrant.

“Technology allows us to conduct a directed and targeted search for the information we are looking for,” said Katherine Hansen, senior deputy district attorney in the Denver DA’s office.

A Denver police detective relied on one such reverse keyword search warrant to identify the three teenagers now accused of setting a Green Valley Ranch house fire in August 2020 that killed five members of a single family, including a toddler and infant.

In case you thought this kind of stuff was over…

https://www.databreaches.net/san-bernardino-county-pays-1-1m-ransom-after-cyberattack-disrupts-sheriffs-department-systems/

San Bernardino County pays $1.1M ransom after cyberattack disrupts Sheriff’s Department systems

KABC reports an update to an attack disclosed last month:

San Bernardino County paid a $1.1 million ransom to hackers who infiltrated the Sheriff’s Department computers, officials acknowledged Friday.

Last month, the department admitted a hack encrypted many of its files, disrupting systems and blocking access to data.

County officials told ABC News on Friday that the county carries insurance for such attacks and its share of the ransom came out to just over $511,000.

Read more at KABC.

Contrast with our fear of AI. (Move fast and break things?)

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3219623/chinese-leader-xi-jinping-urges-country-seize-opportunities-artificial-intelligence-modernise

Chinese leader Xi Jinping urges country to seize opportunities in artificial intelligence to modernise industry

Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed the importance of developing China’s ability in artificial intelligence (AI) for the second time in less than a fortnight, as the Sino-US tech race in AI and semiconductors ratchets up.

During a key economic meeting on Friday, Xi said China should leverage its abilities in AI to help modernisation of the country’s industrial system, state news Xinhua reported.

Xi said China should seize opportunities presented by new scientific and technological breakthroughs, such as AI, to build a “holistic, advanced, and harm-free” modern industrial system. The remarks were made during a meeting of the Central Commission for Financial and Economic Affairs.

It was the second time in recent weeks that Xi has emphasised the development of AI. His comments come amid ongoing US moves to slow China’s development of AI by restricting China-bound exports of advanced semiconductors such as CPUs and GPUs, which are vital for training sophisticated AI models.

(Related)

https://singularityhub.com/2023/05/05/a-note-from-ray-kurzweil-on-the-recent-call-to-pause-work-on-ai-more-powerful-than-gpt-4/

A Note From Ray Kurzweil on the Recent Call to Pause Work on AI More Powerful Than GPT-4

Regarding the open letter to “pause” research on AI “more powerful than GPT-4,” this criterion is too vague to be practical. And the proposal faces a serious coordination problem: those that agree to a pause may fall far behind corporations or nations that disagree. There are tremendous benefits to advancing AI in critical fields such as medicine and health, education, pursuit of renewable energy sources to replace fossil fuels, and scores of other fields. I didn’t sign, because I believe we can address the signers’ safety concerns in a more tailored way that doesn’t compromise these vital lines of research.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.makeuseof.com/ways-to-use-chatgpt-without-openai-account/

4 Ways to Use ChatGPT Without an OpenAI Account

While ChatGPT is undoubtedly a powerful tool, there are privacy concerns surrounding the platform. Understandably, this is a dissuasive argument that may lead you to avoid ChatGPT. But there are alternative ways to use the tool. Here, we take a look at some of the ways you can use ChatGPT without an OpenAI account.

 If this turns out to be a useful tool, law students should be able to use it during the bar exam. Right?

https://legaltechnology.com/2023/05/04/lexisnexis-announces-the-launch-of-generative-ai-based-research-and-drafting-tool-lexis-ai/

LexisNexis announces the launch of generative AI-based research and drafting tool Lexis+ AI

LexisNexis today (4 May) announced the launch in beta of Lexis+ AI, which leverages generative AI to transform the way that users of its platform conduct research and draft resulting documents and communication with clients.

Generative document drafting guides customers throughout the legal drafting process, creating a first draft of a legal document or client email, and allowing users to change the language and tone using a prompt.

Stay Clam and Proofread. As always, be careful what you allow ChatGPT to see.

https://www.makeuseof.com/can-chatgpt-be-used-as-proofreader/

Can ChatGPT Be Used as a Proofreader?

… To directly answer the question, yes. ChatGPT can be used as a proofreader. However, there are limitations to what the AI can do for you and your writing.

When asked, ChatGPT explains how it can assist with proofreading and asks you to submit the work you want it to look over. It also asks that you clarify exactly what corrections ChatGPT needs to focus on. This would indicate that, though ChatGPT can look over your work, it is not capable enough to focus on everything proofreading entails.

This is encouraging.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90891522/the-learning-nonprofit-khan-academy-piloting-a-version-of-gpt-called-khanmigo

Learning nonprofit Khan Academy is piloting a version of GPT called Khanmigo

Sal Khan, founder and CEO of online learning nonprofit Khan Academy, wants to turn GPT into a tutor.

Khan Academy is testing a carefully managed version of OpenAI’s GPT that can help guide students in their studies, not enable them to cheat. A pilot is currently running with a handful of schools and districts to test the software, and Khan hopes to open a wider beta this summer.

… Khan hopes to be able to roll out the system more broadly within the next few months. Right now, individuals can enter a wait list to try Khanmigo, with those who are selected to test the product asked to commit to at least a $20-per-month donation. “Rest assured that bringing down this cost and making Khanmigo more accessible to a broader audience is something that everyone on the team wants to happen,” the company explains in its FAQ.

The Woz just blew his chance to be a Tesla spokesperson.

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/steve-wozniak-states-tesla-is-an-example-of-ai-trying-to-kill-you-in-every-chance-214436.html

Steve Wozniak States Tesla Is an Example of AI Trying To Kill You Every Chance It Gets

I don’t agree. Cyber War will focus on ‘non-military’ targets. On the other hand, there is no reason why insurance companies can’t calculate the risk and provide insurance for warlike actions.

https://www.databreaches.net/merck-entitled-to-1-4b-in-cyberattack-case-after-appeals-court-rejects-insurers-warlike-action-claim/

Merck entitled to $1.4B in cyberattack case after appeals court rejects insurers’ ‘warlike action’ claim

Angus Liu reports:

Merck may finally be entitled to a hefty insurance payout from the high-profile NotPetya cyberattack—if an appeals court ruling stands.

A New Jersey appellate court on Monday ruled that a group of insurers can’t use war as an argument to deny Merck coverage from the notorious cyberattack that afflicted the company and others back in 2017.

Upholding a prior ruling, the appeals court said in an opinion (PDF) that the “hostile/warlike action” exclusion clause shouldn’t be applied to a cyberattack on a non-military company—even if it originated from a government or sovereign power. In this case, the hack was tied to Russia as part of its aggression against Ukraine, according to U.S. officials.

Read more at Fierce Pharma.

A lot of insights for future leaders. Worth reading.

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2023/05/02/deep-learning-princetons-graduate-school

‘Deep learning’ at Princeton’s Graduate School

Claire Dennis, a graduate student in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, is steeping herself in math and computer code this spring. While she plans to enter the world of policy — and not that of algorithms and computer programming — she felt it was important to familiarize herself with how technology is transforming the way we process knowledge.

“We’re watching tech explode, and the implications for policy are huge,” said Dennis, who is preparing to receive her master’s in public affairs in May. “I’ve heard so many times that there’s this huge disconnect between policymakers and engineers, and there are very few people speaking both languages.”

Dennis, who plans to pursue a career in tech policy, is bridging her own knowledge gap through a new graduate course, “Machine Learning: A Practical Introduction for Humanists and Social Scientists.” The course, taught by Sarah-Jane Leslie, the Class of 1943 Professor of Philosophy, offers a primer on “deep learning” for graduate students.

The class assumes the students have no extensive knowledge of calculus or linear algebra, nor any prior experience with coding. By the end of the semester, students were able to code a variety of models themselves, including language and image recognition models, and gained an appreciation for the uses of machine learning in the humanities and social sciences, in particular. The last two weeks of the course focused on understanding how complex language models such as ChatGPT work.

“This course is really the best opportunity for me not to become a programmer, but to become familiar with the models, with the challenges in these models, the common tensions or tradeoffs, and to be able to be that intermediary as best as I can be when I when I graduate,” Dennis said. “It’s becoming all the more relevant every day.”

… “Even in an area seemingly far removed from machine learning, you can leverage these techniques to do scholarship that’s never been done before,” Leslie said.

(Related)

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3694896/skilling-up-the-security-team-for-the-ai-dominated-era.html#tk.rss_all

Skilling up the security team for the AI-dominated era

Defending against AI-enabled attackers and hardening enterprise AI systems will require new security skills. Threat hunters, data scientists, developers and prompt engineers are part of the answer.

As artificial intelligence and machine learning models become more firmly woven into the enterprise IT fabric and the cyberattack infrastructure, security teams will need to level up their skills to meet a whole new generation of AI-based cyber risks.

Forward-looking CISOs are already being called upon to think about newly emerging risks like generative AI-enabled phishing attacks that will be more targeted than ever or adversarial AI attacks that poison learning models to skew their output. And those are just a couple examples among a host of other new risks that will crop up in what's looking to be the AI-dominated era of the future.

Can you trust the results of a jail breaking prompt? Would you even recognize one?

https://www.makeuseof.com/what-are-chatgpt-jailbreaks/

What Are ChatGPT Jailbreaks? Should You Use Them?

ChatGPT is an incredibly powerful and multifaceted tool. But as much as the AI chatbot is a force for good, it can also be used for evil purposes. So, to curb the unethical use of ChatGPT, OpenAI imposed limitations on what users can do with it.

However, as humans like to push boundaries and limitations, ChatGPT users have found ways to circumvent these limitations and gain unrestricted control of the AI chatbot through jailbreaks.

… A ChatGPT jailbreak is any specially crafted ChatGPT prompt to get the AI chatbot to bypass its rules and restrictions.

Inspired by the concept of iPhone jailbreaking, which allows iPhone users to circumvent iOS restrictions, ChatGPT jailbreaking is a relatively new concept fueled by the allure of "doing things that you aren't allowed to do" with ChatGPT. And let's be honest, the idea of digital rebellion is appealing to many people.

If I do my impression of Elvis singing the national anthem what copyrights have I violated?

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/1/23703087/ai-drake-the-weeknd-music-copyright-legal-battle-right-of-publicity

Drake’s AI clone is here — and Drake might not be able to stop him

Major record labels are going after AI-generated songs, arguing copyright infringement. Legal experts say the approach is far from straightforward.

… The problem with going down the copyright path to remove songs like “Heart on My Sleeve” and “Winter’s Cold” is that the tracks aren’t copying anything concretely protected by the law. Both songs appear to be written by a human who isn’t Drake and fed into voice cloning software, so the compositions are new, original works. An artist’s voice, style, or flow is not protected by copyright (for the most part). If an up-and-coming artist wrote their own lyrics, made a simple beat, recorded the vocals and put it through The Weeknd machine, there’s no individual existing work that’s being copied. Promoting the new track as a song by The Weeknd would get dicey, but that would be closer to a trademark issue rather than copyright.

Luddites or leaders? Will this become common as AI moves into the workplace?

https://nypost.com/2023/05/01/hollywood-writers-demanding-studios-regulate-ai/

Hollywood writers demanding studios regulate AI so it doesn’t steal their jobs

… As part of current negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and the major TV and film studios they are demanding better pay and regulation on how AI is used so tech like ChatGPT, Bing and Bard doesn’t eventually take over.

(Related) Perhaps the future is writing prompts?

https://www.bespacific.com/prompt-engineer/

Prompt Engineer

Forbes: “A new career is emerging with the spread of generative AI applications like ChatGPT: prompt engineering, the art (not science) of crafting effective instructions for AI models. “In ten years, half of the world’s jobs will be in prompt engineering,” declared Robin Li, cofounder and CEO of Chinese AI giant, Baidu. “And those who cannot write prompts will be obsolete.” That may be a bit of big tech hyperbole, but there’s no doubt that prompt engineers will become the wizards of the AI world, coaxing and guiding AI models into generating content that is not only relevant but also coherent and consistent with the desired output. So, what exactly is prompt engineering? Getting generative AI to do what you want is no easy task, as anyone who has tried image generation systems like Dalle-E or MidJourney or language models like ChatGPT. While successful creations are dazzling, an untrained user’s results are likely to be deeply flawed or, with ChatGPT, even wrong. The same is true for AI code-writing generators…”

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.bespacific.com/beginners-guide-to-extracting-data-from-pdfs/

Beginner’s guide to extracting data from PDFs

Media Hack, Laura Grant: “Journalists get lots of data in PDF format — they can be tables of data that are embedded in reports or spreadsheets that have been thoughtfully saved as PDFs before they’re emailed to you — but until you can get that data into a spreadsheet, there’s not much you can do with it. , there are a few great tools that can liberate your data quickly and relatively easily. I’ve listed some of the ones that I’ve used most often here, but there are no doubt loads more out there.”

Is the FBI the right agency to combat China? Or is this just a bid for a larger bureaucracy?

https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/01/fbi_director_wray_china_testimony/

China has 50 hackers for every FBI cyber agent, says Bureau boss

… "A key part of the Chinese government's multi-pronged strategy to lie, to cheat, and to steal their way to surpassing us as the global superpower is cyber," Wray claimed. "The scale of the Chinese cyber threat is unparalleled. They've got a bigger hacking program than every other major nation combined and have stolen more of our personal and corporate data than all other nations big or small combined."

"To give you a sense of what we're up against: If each one of the FBI's cyber agents and intel analysts focused exclusively on the China threat – on nothing but China – Chinese hackers would still outnumber FBI cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1."

I see this as a tool to make access to ‘free to use’ sites easier. What is the harm?

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/openai-sends-shutdown-letter-to-gpt4free

OpenAI Threatens Popular GitHub Project With Lawsuit Over API Use

Anyone can use ChatGPT for free, but if you want to use GPT4, the latest language model, you have to either pay for ChatGPT Plus, pay for access to OpenAI's API, or find another site that has incorporated GPT4 into its own free chatbot. There are sites that use OpenAI such as Forefront

(opens in new tab)

and You.com

(opens in new tab)

, but what if you want to make your own bot and don't want to pay for the API?

A GitHub project called GPT4free

(opens in new tab)

allows you to get free access to the GPT4 and GPT3.5 models by funneling those queries through sites like You.com

(opens in new tab)

, Quora

(opens in new tab)

and CoCalc

(opens in new tab)

and giving you back the answers. The project is GitHub's most popular new repo, getting 14,000 stars this week.

Now, according to Xtekky, the European computer science student who runs the repo, OpenAI has sent a letter demanding that he take the whole thing down within five days or face a lawsuit.

I interviewed Xtekky via Telegram, and he said he doesn't think OpenAI should be targeting him since he isn't connecting directly to the company's API, but is instead getting data from other sites that are paying for their own API licenses. If the owners of those sites have a problem with his scripts querying them, they should approach him directly, he posited.

Holding robots accountable.

https://journalppw.com/index.php/jpsp/article/view/16476

Tort Liability Of Humanoid Robots' Damages A Comparative Study Between Civil Law And Rulings Of Islamic Jurisprudence

The robot (Humanoid Robot) is most notably outstanding feature of artificial intelligence. It has been used into several areas such as civil and customer service, medicine, industry, education, home and military service, and others, which raises many legal issues and obstacles, including but not limited to defining the concept of a robot, the extent of its legal personality, legal responsibility and legitimate basis that a robot liability can be established, represented in the theory of faulty products, theory of human representative liable for damages caused by robots, theory of guarding objects liability, and the theory of legal certainty of the Master on the work of his /her subordinates (Master-slave basis), as well as evaluating these theories, and Islamic jurisprudence point of view on that liability. Finally, the study followed by a conclusion that includes key findings and proposals.

Tools & Techniques. How to get the best out of your AI.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tools-to-improve-prompt-engineering-skills/

7 Online Tools to Improve Your Prompt Engineering Skills

Prompt engineering is easy to learn but hard to master. You might have trouble achieving your desired output as you execute complex, multi-step projects. AI won’t do what you want unless you explicitly explain your instructions and convey your message.

With that said, not all prompts must come from your imagination. Here are seven tools that will help you learn about various AI platforms, write effective prompts, and become a proficient prompt engineer.