Is this the court’s fault?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/ai-tool-used-thousands-criminal-cases-facing-legal-challenges-rcna149607

An AI tool used in thousands of criminal cases is facing legal challenges

Cybercheck's founder has said the software tops 90% accuracy. Defense lawyers have said he lied under oath about his expertise and made false claims about when and where the technology has been used.

Law enforcement agencies and prosecutors from Colorado to New York have turned to a little-known artificial intelligence tool in recent years to help investigate, charge and convict suspects accused of murder and other serious crimes.

But as the software, called Cybercheck, has spread, defense lawyers have questioned its accuracy and reliability. Its methodology is opaque, they’ve said, and it hasn’t been independently vetted.

The company behind the software has said the technology relies on machine learning to scour vast swaths of the web and gather “open source intelligence” — social media profiles, email addresses and other publicly available information — to help identify potential suspects’ physical locations and other details in homicides and human trafficking crimes, cold cases and manhunts.

The tool’s creator, Adam Mosher, has said that Cybercheck’s accuracy tops 90% and that it performs automated research that would take humans hundreds of hours to complete. By last year, the software had been used in nearly 8,000 cases spanning 40 states and nearly 300 agencies, according to a court decision that cited prosecutors in a New York case that relied on the tool.

Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg thinks this is true?

https://apnews.com/article/facebook-election-misinformation-ads-trump-democrats-meta-5326da196688d2de85c5eb448dfa4e15

Democratic officials criticize Meta ad policy, saying it amplifies lies about 2020 election

Several Democrats serving as their state’s top election officials have sent a letter to the parent company of Facebook, asking it to stop allowing ads that claim the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

In the letter addressed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the secretaries of state from Colorado, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Vermont said allowing such ads will further erode trust in elections and fuel threats of political violence against election workers, which already has led some to leave the profession. Also signing the letter was Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski, who does not oversee elections.

Can I make a ‘deepfake’ video of myself? For example, I might want to create a Rap version of my campaign speech.

https://www.wpri.com/news/politics/house-passes-bill-to-ban-ai-generated-media-90-days-before-elections/

House passes bill to ban AI-generated media 90 days before elections

… The legislation defines deep fakes, or synthetic media, as images, audio recordings or video recordings of someone’s “appearance, speech or conduct that has been intentionally manipulated with the use of generative adversarial network techniques or other digital technology to create a realistic but false image, audio or video.”

The ban itself would concern any depiction of political candidates that are made to look authentic and would “present a fundamentally different understanding or impression of the appearance, action or speech” than if it were real media.

If the person who made the deep fake discloses it is AI-generated, then this bill’s ban wouldn’t apply.

It can’t hurt. Googling “list of default passwords” was the first step for any hacker.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/05/the-uk-bans-default-passwords.html

The UK Bans Default Passwords

The UK is the first country to ban default passwords on IoT devices.

On Monday, the United Kingdom became the first country in the world to ban default guessable usernames and passwords from these IoT devices. Unique passwords installed by default are still permitted.

The Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 (PSTI) introduces new minimum-security standards for manufacturers, and demands that these companies are open with consumers about how long their products will receive security updates for.

The UK may be the first country, but as far as I know, California is the first jurisdiction. It banned default passwords in 2018, the law taking effect in 2020.

This sort of thing benefits all of us everywhere. IoT manufacturers aren’t making two devices, one for California and one for the rest of the US. And they’re not going to make one for the UK and another for the rest of Europe, either. They’ll remove the default passwords and sell those devices everywhere.

Another news article.

What price poor security?

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/01/unitedhealth-ceo-says-company-paid-hackers-22-million-ransom.html

UnitedHealth CEO tells lawmakers the company paid hackers a $22 million ransom

… Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., held up a bright yellow copy of “Hacking for Dummies” during the hearing, saying the breach is UnitedHealth’s responsibility to fix.

“This is some basic stuff that was missed, so shame on internal audit, external audit and your systems folks tasked with redundancy, they’re not doing their job,” Tillis said.

Resource.

https://tech.co/news/google-ai-essentials

Google AI Essentials: Learn How to Use Generative AI for Work

… The course from Google — titled AI Essentials — is designed to give students some hands-on experience with generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, so they can feel comfortable using it in a work setting.

Is this the same as asking for compensation because I might have read an article in your newspaper (or a competitor’s) and might have incorporated “a fact” into the answer to a user’s question?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/business/media/newspapers-sued-microsoft-openai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.oU0.rw13.BUd-iupR_iNx&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

8 Daily Newspapers Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I.

Eight daily newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital sued OpenAI and Microsoft on Tuesday, accusing the tech companies of illegally using news articles to power their A.I. chatbots.

The publications — The New York Daily News, The Chicago Tribune, The Orlando Sentinel, The Sun Sentinel of Florida, The San Jose Mercury News, The Denver Post, The Orange County Register and The St. Paul Pioneer Press — filed the complaint in federal court in the U.S. Southern District of New York. All are owned by MediaNews Group or Tribune Publishing, subsidiaries of Alden, the country’s second-largest newspaper operator.

In the complaint, the publications accuse OpenAI and Microsoft of using millions of copyrighted articles without permission to train and feed their generative A.I. products, including ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. The lawsuit does not demand specific monetary damages, but it asks for a jury trial and said the publishers were owed compensation from the use of the content.

The complaint said the chatbots regularly surfaced the entire text of articles behind subscription paywalls for users and often did not prominently link back to the source. This, it said, reduced the need for readers to pay subscriptions to support local newspapers and deprived the publishers of revenue both from subscriptions and from licensing their content elsewhere.

Do I have a right to not identify myself?

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-declines-block-texas-pornography-restriction-rcna149877

Supreme Court declines to block Texas pornography restriction

… The challengers said the 2023 law violates the Constitution’s First Amendment by requiring anyone using the platforms in question, including adults, to submit personal information.

Is this spontaneous or directed? We need to find out quick!

https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2024/04/state-ag-demands-answers-about-meta-ai-chatbots-false-accusations/396144/

State AG demands answers about Meta AI chatbot’s false accusations

State Attorney General Letitia James sent a letter to Meta, the parent company of Facebook, demanding answers about the company’s AI chatbot fabricating allegations of sexual harassment against state lawmakers. The letter is dated April 27, one day after City & State reported that the Meta AI chatbot was informing users about completely made-up allegations of harassment concerning elected officials.

In the letter, which directly cites City & State’s reporting, James wrote that her office tested the chatbot and found it “yielded similar results, including citations to fabricated source articles.” “We are deeply concerned about the creation and dissemination of such misinformation, which is likely to harm the reputation of New York State officials and mislead New York residents,” James wrote.

I make it 18 of 50.

https://www.insideprivacy.com/privacy-and-data-security/nebraska-enacts-nebraska-data-privacy-act/

Nebraska Enacts Nebraska Data Privacy Act

On April 17, the Nebraska governor signed the Nebraska Data Privacy Act (the “NDPA”) into law. Nebraska is the latest state to enact comprehensive privacy legislation, joining California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Iowa, Indiana, Tennessee, Montana, Oregon, Texas, Florida, Delaware,  New Jersey, New Hampshire, Kentucky, and Maryland. The NDPA will take effect on January 1, 2025. This blog post summarizes the statute’s key takeaways.

Any ideas for tapping that market?

https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2024/04/26/legal-tech-market-will-be-worth-50bn-by-2027-because-of-genai-gartner/

‘Legal Tech Market Will Be Worth $50bn by 2027…Because of GenAI’ – Gartner

Technology market analysts Gartner have announced that ‘the legal tech market will reach $50 billion in value by 2027’– with genAI as the key driver for growth. In comparison, one recent estimate from Fairfield research stated that the market in 2022 was worth $25.6 billion. So, that’s quite a big leap.

This looks like the tip of an iceberg to me.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/28/chatgpt-gdpr-complaint-noyb/

ChatGPT’s ‘hallucination’ problem hit with another privacy complaint in EU

OpenAI is facing another privacy complaint in the European Union. This one, which has been filed by privacy rights nonprofit noyb on behalf of an individual complainant, targets the inability of its AI chatbot ChatGPT to correct misinformation it generates about individuals.

… Now noyb is filing the latest GDPR complaint against ChatGPT with the Austrian data protection authority on behalf of an unnamed complainant (described as a “public figure”) who found the AI chatbot produced an incorrect birth date for them.

Under the GDPR, people in the EU have a suite of rights attached to information about them, including a right to have erroneous data corrected. noyb contends OpenAI is failing to comply with this obligation in respect of its chatbot’s output. It said the company refused the complainant’s request to rectify the incorrect birth date, responding that it was technically impossible for it to correct.

Instead it offered to filter or block the data on certain prompts, such as the name of the complainant.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.bespacific.com/transcribe-anything-for-free-with-this-privacy-respecting-ai-tool/

Transcribe anything for free with this privacy-respecting AI tool

Fast Company: “…an AI tool that runs completely on a web page in your browser. It’s useful, too. There’s no account needed, and your data doesn’t leave your own device—so you don’t have to worry about privacy. It’s the kind of thing that demonstrates why so many companies want AI applications to run on our own phones and computers in the future. And it’s available for you to use right this minute, today—if you know where to look. Your personal (and private) AI transcriber. Once, audio transcription was done the hard way. Someone would have to listen to an audio file and type it into text. Now, there are so many great ways to turn the spoken word into text—including the free, open-source AI tool we’re about to go over. Named Whisper Web, this application actually downloads and0 runs OpenAI’s Whisper AI model in your browser while you’re viewing the web page. The work isn’t happening on some distant cloud server—it’s happening right on your computer or phone. You can try this out in about 10 seconds. Whether you have a recording of a meeting or you’d just like to speak into your microphone and turn whatever you say into text, it’s easy…”

Tools & Techniques. Plenty to choose from and play with…

https://www.aitoolsclub.com/

AI Tools Club

Find cool artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Our expert team reviews and provides insights into some of the most cutting-edge AI tools available.

Building SkyNet? (We could do this. We should do this. We must do this.)

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003421849-6/ethical-analysis-ai-based-systems-military-use-gregory-reichberg-henrik-syse

Ethical analysis of AI-based systems for military use

AI-enabled technologies can have two different functions in battlefield settings. On the one hand, by collecting data and issuing targeting recommendations, machines will provide support for human decision-making; inversely, decision-making can be delegated to machines, enabling them to engage with targets without the direct intervention of human operators. Regarding the first function, we show how machine-issued target-identification and target-engagement recommendations, despite the notable efficiency gains, also involve possible ethical downsides. These are discussed in terms of the ‘overfitting problem,’ ‘classification problem,’ ‘information overload,’ ‘automation bias’ and ‘automation complacency.’ Regarding the second function – autonomous weapon systems (AWS) – we survey the ethical arguments that have been proposed for and against their deployment on the battlefield. Afterwards, distinguishing the deliberate misuse of AI systems from problems associated with accidents and safety, we explain how precautions, including rigorous testing, must be introduced early on when new systems are designed. Later, during military training, feedback loops will ensure that systems can be appropriately modified vis-à-vis user experience. The interaction of designers, autonomous technologies and end-users can fruitfully be assessed under the rubric of ‘virtue ethics,’ as is shown in the chapter's concluding section.

(Related) Is this a ‘first step?’

https://irjaeh.com/index.php/journal/article/view/142

Automating Traffic Law Enforcement: Leveraging AI for Real-Time Number Plate Recognition and Owner Identification

The enforcement of traffic laws is a critical aspect of maintaining safety and order on roadways. Traditional methods of traffic law enforcement have relied heavily on manual intervention, resulting in inefficiencies, inaccuracies, and resource-intensive processes. However, with recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision technology, there lies a significant opportunity to revolutionize traffic law enforcement through automated systems. This paper explores the utilization of AI for real-time number plate recognition and owner identification as a means to enhance traffic law enforcement. By leveraging sophisticated algorithms and deep learning techniques, AI systems can accurately detect and interpret license plate information from images or video streams captured by surveillance cameras or patrol vehicles. Furthermore, through integration with existing databases, these systems can swiftly identify vehicle owners and verify their compliance with traffic regulations.