Imagine this technology online for any high school kid to use.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/03/21/ukraine-rolls-out-target-seeking-terminator-drones/?sh=319e3db53b44

Ukraine Rolls Out Target-Seeking Terminator Drones

A video from Ukrainian drone fundraiser Serhii Sternenko released on March 20^th demonstrates new technology: an attack drone which locks on with machine vision and does not require a human pilot.

… In the video an FPV attack drone with automatic target recognition homes in on a Russian tank from long distance. Even after the video link is lost, the drone successfully completes the attack.

(Related)

https://mwi.westpoint.edu/swarm-clouds-on-the-horizon-exploring-the-future-of-drone-swarm-proliferation/

SWARM CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON? EXPLORING THE FUTURE OF DRONE SWARM PROLIFERATION

A 2020 New America report cataloged thirty-eight states with armed drone programs, twenty-eight with programs in development, and eleven that have used drones in combat. In less than four years since that report was published, drones’ rapidly growing influence on battlefields from Nagorno-Karabakh to Ukraine to Gaza has almost certainly increased states’ interest in developing armed drone programs. As such, existing programs are likely to expand, new programs created, and new states pursuing and using drones. This explosion in drone interest comes as global warfare is entering a third age of drone warfare, defined by autonomy, saturation attacks, increased precision and range, and full-spectrum drone warfare across land, sea, and air.

This will no doubt be interesting...

https://www.bespacific.com/heres-the-u-s-governments-antitrust-case-against-apple/

Here’s the U.S. Government’s Antitrust Case Against Apple

404 Media: “Thursday [March 21, 2024], the Department of Justice and 16 states filed a massive, years-long antitrust case against Apple. Ahead of the DOJ’s press conference, 404 Media has obtained the full suit from PACER, the federal legal database. As a public service, we are providing the document here: We have not yet reviewed the full implications of the document. This post will be updated…”

(Related) Some push back…

https://sixcolors.com/post/2024/03/u-s-versus-apple-a-first-reaction/

U.S. versus Apple: A first reaction

Perspective.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-chain-of-thought-reasoning-helps-neural-networks-compute-20240321/

How Chain-of-Thought Reasoning Helps Neural Networks Compute

Large language models do better at solving problems when they show their work. Researchers are beginning to understand why.

… While these systems might ace questions involving a few steps of arithmetic, they’ll often flub problems involving many steps, like calculating the sum of two large numbers. But in 2022, a team of Google researchers showed that asking language models to generate step-by-step solutions enabled the models to solve problems that had previously seemed beyond their reach. Their technique, called chain-of-thought prompting, soon became widespread, even as researchers struggled to understand what makes it work.

Now, several teams have explored the power of chain-of-thought reasoning by using techniques from an arcane branch of theoretical computer science called computational complexity theory. It’s the latest chapter in a line of research that uses complexity theory to study the intrinsic capabilities and limitations of language models. These efforts clarify where we should expect models to fail, and they might point toward new approaches to building them.

Tools & Techniques. Looking for a forensic tool.

https://www.bespacific.com/the-8-best-ai-image-detector-tools/

The 8 Best AI Image Detector Tools

MakeUseOf: “Key Takeaways

• Hive Moderation offers a free and quick detector tool for AI images and texts, including a browser extension for Google Chrome.

• Illuminarty provides a simple AI image detector with a premium plan for detailed analysis and API access.

• AI or Not is an easy-to-use tool for detecting AI images with both free and paid plans available.

• V7’s Fake Profile Detector Chrome extension helps you spot AI-generated profile pictures.

• Hugging Face is good at detecting AI images created by older AI models, with an upgraded, more complex version available as well.

• Content at Scale lets you quickly identify whether an image is AI-generated or human-made.

• Is It AI is an AI image detector that uses percentages to demonstrate human or AI origin.

• Fake Image Detector quickly detects AI-generated images and also offers Error Level Analysis for accuracy.”

It always comes down to asking the right questions.

https://www.bespacific.com/keep-up-with-claude-3-it-reads-and-analyzes-so-you-dont-have-to/

Keep Up With Claude 3: It Reads and Analyzes So You Don’t Have To!

Via LLRX – Keep Up With Claude 3: It Reads and Analyzes So You Don’t Have To! – Discover the power of Claude 3, the AI-powered news analyst that can help you stay on top of the news without spending hours sifting through articles and podcasts. Sarah Gotschall recently put Claude 3 to the test by asking it to analyze the controversy surrounding Fani Willis and her prosecution of Donald Trump, and the results were impressive – a comprehensive summary, detailed timeline, and categorized evidence, all in just a matter of minutes. Gotschall says Claude 3 is definitely worth checking out at just $20 a month for access to the most intelligent Opus model.

Perspective.

https://petapixel.com/2024/03/21/annie-leibovitz-says-shes-not-worried-about-ai/

Annie Leibovitz Says She’s Not Worried About AI

The world’s most famous photographer Annie Leibovitz says she’s not worried about artificial intelligence (AI) and that photography itself isn’t real.

… “That doesn’t worry me at all,” she tells AFP. “With each technological progress, there are hesitations and concerns. You just have to take the plunge and learn how to use it.”

… “Photography itself is not really real… I like to use Photoshop. I use all the tools available.”

She adds that even framing a shot implies “editing and control on some level.”

Resources.

https://www.kdnuggets.com/collection-of-guides-on-mastering-sql-python-data-cleaning-data-wrangling-and-exploratory-data-analysis

Collection of Guides on Mastering SQL, Python, Data Cleaning, Data Wrangling, and Exploratory Data Analysis

https://www.kdnuggets.com/5-free-books-to-master-statistics-for-data-science

5 Free Books to Master Statistics for Data Science

This needs to be weeded out quickly!

https://www.bespacific.com/the-disconnect-between-law-firms-and-clients-on-use-of-gen-ai/

The Disconnect Between Law Firms and Clients on Use of Gen AI

“Senior leaders at large law firms and executives in corporate legal departments are largely in agreement that Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) tools are likely to have a dramatic impact on the practice of law in the years ahead. But there are some notable and intriguing gaps between how firm leaders and their clients are thinking about a future in which Gen AI is a routine part of their workflows. In January of 2024, LexisNexis surveyed 216 managing partners and other senior leaders at large law firms, as well as 50 executives in corporate legal departments at Fortune 1000 companies, to better understand the business impact of Gen AI technology on the legal industry. Our survey found that a similar share of law firm leaders (75%) and corporate legal executives (81%) have used Gen AI tools themselves, and roughly the same number of senior executives expect their investments in Gen AI technologies to increase either “significantly” or “modestly” over the next five years (90% in law firms, 86% in corporations). But there was an interesting disconnect between law firm leaders and their in-house counterparts when we asked for their predictions and expectations surrounding how Gen AI will impact the law firm/client relationship… Download a free report of our 2024 Investing in Legal Innovation Survey: The Rise of Gen AI at Top Firms and Corporations.”

Will we enjoy sports more when every play is optimized by AI?

https://www.ft.com/content/e5a64dd3-7fe0-4db4-9f65-6f7517c2c573

Google DeepMind unveils AI football tactics coach honed with Liverpool

Google DeepMind has developed a prototype artificial intelligence football tactician in collaboration with Premier League club Liverpool, in the latest push to use the technology to master the ebb and flow of big-money sports. The computerised coach’s suggested improvements to players’ positions at corner kicks — a large potential source of goals — mostly won approval from human experts, according to a paper published in Nature Communications on Tuesday.

Would it be easier and cheaper to not publish any picture?

https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/4541518-why-a-california-police-department-is-replacing-suspects-faces-with-lego-heads/

Why a California police department is replacing suspects’ faces with Lego heads

The Murrieta, California, police department has gained recognition this year for its creative placement of Lego heads over suspects’ faces in images taken during arrests and bookings, leaving many of their Instagram followers wondering why.

In a message posted Monday, the Police Department explained that on Jan. 1, a new law restricted how and when law enforcement agencies in California can share photos and mugshots.

Perspective.

https://www.bespacific.com/which-ai-should-i-use-superpowers-and-the-state-of-play/

Which AI should I use? Superpowers and the State of Play

One Useful Thing – And then there were three, Ethan Mollick: “For over a year, GPT-4 was the dominant AI model, clearly much smarter than any of the other LLM systems available. That situation has changed in the last month, there are now three GPT-4 class models, all powering their own chatbots: GPT-4 (accessible through ChatGPT Plus or Microsoft’s CoPilot), Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus, and Google’s Gemini Advanced1. There is a lot of debate over which of these models are best, with dueling tests suggesting one or another dominates, but the answer is not clear cut. All three have different personalities and strengths, depending on whether you are coding or writing. Gemini is an excellent explainer but doesn’t let you upload files, GPT-4 has features (namely Code Interpreter and GPTs ) that greatly extend what it can do, and Claude is the best writer and seems capable of surprising insight. The models all have different guardrails and biases, though those are always changing as the AI labs fine-tune their models further. But beyond the differences, there are four important similarities to know about…”

Reiterating the importance of an “OFF” switch.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-68599027

Commercial Bank of Ethiopia glitch lets customers withdraw millions

Ethiopia's biggest commercial bank is scrambling to recoup large sums of money withdrawn by customers after a "systems glitch".

The customers discovered early on Saturday that they could take out more cash than they had in their accounts at the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE).

More than $40m (£31m) was withdrawn or transferred to other banks, local media reported.

It took several hours for the institution to freeze transactions.

Perspective.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/19/business/ai-jobs-economy-productivity/index.html

He predicted the ’08 crash. Now he’s betting AI will turbocharge the US economy

… Hatzius told CNN in an exclusive interview that he is very confident AI will significantly accelerate economic growth over time by making workers far more efficient.

“I see it as a productivity enhancer,” Hatzius said. “A large number of workers in the economy will become more productive. That is very, very likely.”

That productivity boost is expected to be so significant that it led Goldman Sachs last year to upgrade its long-term US gross domestic product (GDP) forecast.

Any hardware beyond drones?

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/03/drones-and-the-us-air-force.html

Drones and the US Air Force

Fascinating analysis of the use of drones on a modern battlefield—that is, Ukraine—and the inability of the US Air Force to react to this change.

The F-35A certainly remains an important platform for high-intensity conventional warfare. But the Air Force is planning to buy 1,763 of the aircraft, which will remain in service through the year 2070. These jets, which are wholly unsuited for countering proliferated low-cost enemy drones in the air littoral, present enormous opportunity costs for the service as a whole. In a set of comments posted on LinkedIn last month, defense analyst T.X. Hammes estimated the following. The delivered cost of a single F-35A is around $130 million, but buying and operating that plane throughout its lifecycle will cost at least $460 million. He estimated that a single Chinese Sunflower suicide drone costs about $30,000—so you could purchase 16,000 Sunflowers for the cost of one F-35A. And since the full mission capable rate of the F-35A has hovered around 50 percent in recent years, you need two to ensure that all missions can be completed—for an opportunity cost of 32,000 Sunflowers. As Hammes concluded, “Which do you think creates more problems for air defense?”

Ironically, the first service to respond decisively to the new contestation of the air littoral has been the U.S. Army. Its soldiers are directly threatened by lethal drones, as the Tower 22 attack demonstrated all too clearly. Quite unexpectedly, last month the Army cancelled its future reconnaissance helicopter - which has already cost the service $2 billion—because fielding a costly manned reconnaissance aircraft no longer makes sense. Today, the same mission can be performed by far less expensive drones—without putting any pilots at risk. The Army also decided to retire its aging Shadow and Raven legacy drones, whose declining survivability and capabilities have rendered them obsolete, and announced a new rapid buy of 600 Coyote counter-drone drones in order to help protect its troops.

Inevitable.

https://www.elgaronline.com/monochap/book/9781035307555/book-part-9781035307555-6.xml

Chapter 1: General introduction to Taxing Artificial Intelligence

Apples and oranges?

https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/ethical-ai-is-not-about-ai/

Ethical AI is Not about AI

The equation Ethics + AI = Ethical AI is questionable.

… Additivity between two entities requires ontological likeness. Adding ethics and AI is based on ontological assumptions about what AI is and what ethics is, namely that the two entities are of the same nature or, at least, some of their components are.

Economics is best understood in hindsight.

https://reason.com/2024/03/16/seattle-law-mandating-higher-delivery-driver-pay-is-a-disaster/

Seattle Law Mandating Higher Delivery Driver Pay Is a Disaster

Just two weeks after the law went into effect, Seattleites had to contend with $26 coffees and $32 sandwiches.

In 2022, Seattle's City Council passed an ordinance mandating a minimum earnings floor for app-based food delivery drivers in the city. The law finally went into effect in January 2024, but so far the main result has been customers deleting their delivery apps en masse, food orders plummeting, and driver pay cratering.

We’ve got lots of information. Some of it may be true.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/newsletters/curated/threat-status/issue/54/

AI 'hallucinations' spark U.S. intel concern

U.S. intelligence says new Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) is providing opportunities for American spies collecting and analyzing open-source information, but also serious challenges given that those tools sometimes produce “hallucinations” — essentially inventing answers with demonstrably false information.

National Security Tech Reporter Ryan Lovelace has a deep-dive on the “Intelligence Community Open-Source Intelligence (IC-OCINT) Strategy for 2024-2026,” an unclassified version of which was made public this month by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and CIA Director William Burns. The document says the intelligence community needs new tradecraft and training to prepare analysts and operatives to combat the dangers of GAI, including the production of false information that some warn could trigger bad decisions or a global disaster.

“OSINT tradecraft and training must be updated and refined to mitigate the potential risks of GAI, including inaccuracies and hallucinations,” the strategy document states.