Perspective.

https://www.bespacific.com/the-rapid-adoption-of-generative-ai/

The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI

NBER – The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI.  Alexander Bick. Adam Blandin & David J. Deming. Working Paper 32966.  DOI 10.3386/w32966. Issue Date September 2024.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a potentially important new technology, but its impact on the economy depends on the speed and intensity of adoption. This paper reports results from the first nationally representative U.S. survey of generative AI adoption at work and at home. In August 2024, 39 percent of the U.S. population age 18-64 used generative AI. More than 24 percent of workers used it at least once in the week prior to being surveyed, and nearly one in nine used it every workday. Historical data on usage and mass-market product launches suggest that U.S. adoption of generative AI has been faster than adoption of the personal computer and the internet. Generative AI is a general purpose technology, in the sense that it is used in a wide range of occupations and job tasks at work and at home.

The law business is changing…

https://hbr.org/2024/10/gen-ai-makes-legal-action-cheap-and-companies-need-to-prepare

Gen AI Makes Legal Action Cheap — and Companies Need to Prepare

Last year, in order to enhance tax compliance, the U.S. Treasury Department proposed a rule designed to increase cryptocurrency disclosures. The crypto industry thought the obligations were too broad and pushed back hard — with the support of an unconventional ally.

The “LexPunk Army,” a community of lawyers and developers providing open-source legal support for the decentralized finance industry, released an AI bot that anyone could use to file comments on the proposed rule. The effect was threefold: First, anyone with a comment could easily file it in the correct format. Second, an onslaught of comments slowed down Treasury action, potentially delaying or jeopardizing the rule. Third, the comments laid groundwork for a future legal challenge.

The median number of comments on a new regulation is three, but in this case the rule elicited 120,000 comments.

… Is this a one-off victory for a niche group savvy about technology and the law? Or is it indicative of a broader disruption in how individuals and businesses will engage with the law?

We believe it is the latter — a prototypical example of how technology will amplify legal services and processes in new ways that pose great promise and great challenges to governments and companies alike.

Perspective.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-future-is-hybrid?emailConfirmed=true&supportSignUp=true&supportForgotPassword=true&email=bob_voorhees%40hotmail.com&success=true&code=success&bc_nonce=vzncx4rlizpucvad6eons

The Future Is Hybrid

Last year Dan Myers and Anne Murdaugh introduced generative AI in several courses at Rollins College. But they did more than tell students it was OK to use those tools in assignments. They required them to.

Students completed semester-long research projects using Claude and Copilot to brainstorm paper topics, conduct literature reviews, develop a thesis, and outline, draft, and revise their papers. At each step, students used logbooks to write down the prompts they used, the responses they received, and how the experience shaped their thinking.

The two professors were impressed with how engaged the students were in the process, while the students described where they thought the AI had helped, such as in brainstorming and outlining, and where it wasn’t as useful. Meaningful literature reviews still required lots of independent work, for example, and many found AI writing underwhelming, preferring their own words.

… This shift toward collaborating with AI doesn’t unsettle Myers or Murdaugh in the way that it has many professors. The reason, they say, is that the skills that students use to engage thoughtfully with AI are the same ones that colleges are good at teaching. Namely: knowing how to obtain and use information, thinking critically and analytically, and understanding what and how you’re trying to communicate.

I wonder if Google can scan its street images to extract this kind of information?

https://www.bespacific.com/license-plate-readers-are-creating-a-us-wide-database-of-political-lawn-signs-and-bumper-stickers/

License Plate Readers Are Creating a US-Wide Database of Political Lawn Signs and Bumper Stickers

Wired: While people put up signs in their yards or bumper stickers on their cars to inform people of their views and potentially influence those around them, the ACLU’s Stanley says it’s intended for “human-scale visibility.” not to that of machines. “They may want to express themselves in their communities, to their neighbors, but they don’t necessarily want to be registered in a national database that law enforcement can access,” Stanley says. Weist says the system, at a minimum, should be able to filter out images that do not contain license plate data and not make errors. “Any number of times is too many, especially when it comes to finding things like what people are wearing or lawn signs,” Weist says. “License plate recognition (LPR) technology supports public safety and community services, from helping find kidnapped children and stolen vehicles to automating toll collection and reducing insurance premiums by mitigating insurance fraud,” says Jeremiah DRN President Wheeler said in a statement. Weist believes that given the relatively small number of images showing bumper stickers compared to the large number of vehicles that have them, Motorola Solutions may be attempting to filter images containing bumper stickers or other text. Wheeler did not respond to WIRED’s questions about whether there are limits on what can be searched in license plate databases, why images of houses with lawn signs but no vehicles in sight appeared in search results, or if filters are used to reduce these images. “DRNsights complies with all applicable laws and regulations,” says Wheeler. “The DRNsights tool allows authorized parties to access license plate information and associated vehicle information that is captured in public locations and visible to everyone. Access is restricted to customers for certain purposes permitted by law, and those who violate these purposes have their access revoked.”

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.bespacific.com/deleted-tweet-finder-tool/

Deleted Tweet Finder Tool

Digital Digging – Deleted Tweet Finder V2.3 Search for deleted tweets across multiple archival service: Your Best Shot at Finding Impossible-to-Find Tweets is made by AI. Have you ever encountered a broken link to a tweet and wondered what it said? Or maybe you’re curious about a particular user’s past tweets? The Deleted Tweet Finder tool can help you uncover those missing tweets. Claude 3.5 Sonnet programmed it with the help of Henk van Ess.

Tools & Techniques. (Useful for police and stalkers?)

https://www.404media.co/someone-put-facial-recognition-tech-onto-metas-smart-glasses-to-instantly-dox-strangers/

Someone Put Facial Recognition Tech onto Meta's Smart Glasses to Instantly Dox Strangers

The technology, which marries Meta’s smart Ray Ban glasses with the facial recognition service Pimeyes and some other tools, lets someone automatically go from face, to name, to phone number, and home address.

A pair of students at Harvard have built what big tech companies refused to release publicly due to the overwhelming risks and danger involved: smart glasses with facial recognition technology that automatically looks up someone’s face and identifies them. The students have gone a step further too. Their customized glasses also pull other information about their subject from around the web, including their home address, phone number, and family members.

The project is designed to raise awareness of what is possible with this technology, and the pair are not releasing their code, AnhPhu Nguyen, one of the creators, told 404 Media. But the experiment, tested in some cases on unsuspecting people in the real world according to a demo video, still shows the razor thin line between a world in which people can move around with relative anonymity, to one where your identity and personal information can be pulled up in an instant by strangers.

Interesting. It’s not just physical or financial harm?

https://natlawreview.com/article/damages-social-media-lawsuits-understanding-psychological-and-financial-effects

Damages in Social Media Lawsuits: Understanding the Psychological and Financial Effects of Social Media Harm

Social media harm is a significant concern for users of all ages. However, studies have identified particular mental health concerns among children and teens who use social media platforms, and social media companies are now facing social media addiction lawsuits across the country from families who are grappling with the effects of social media harm.

These lawsuits are important for a couple of reasons. First, if successful, they will ensure that companies like Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Google (YouTube), ByteDance (TikTok), and Snap (Snapchat) are held accountable for developing and promoting high-risk online social media platforms. Second, they provide families of young users affected by social media harm the opportunity to recover just compensation. This includes not only compensation for the direct out-of-pocket costs they incur, but compensation for the psychological effects their children experience due to their social media use as well. 

Perspective. (and an interesting graphic)

https://theconversation.com/wondering-what-ai-actually-is-here-are-the-7-things-it-can-do-for-you-239843

Wondering what AI actually is? Here are the 7 things it can do for you

… We see AI systems as having seven basic kinds of capability, each building on the ones below it in the stack. From least complex to most, these are: recognition, classification, prediction, recommendation, automation, generation and interaction.

I’m sure someone can explain why this is sealed. Who are they keeping it secret from?

https://www.reuters.com/legal/amazon-wins-partial-dismissal-us-ftcs-antitrust-lawsuit-2024-10-01/

Amazon wins partial dismissal of US antitrust lawsuit

Amazon.com Inc won partial dismissal of a U.S. Federal Trade Commission lawsuit accusing it of maintaining illegal monopolies, though the details of the ruling by a federal court in Seattle on Monday were not immediately clear.

… Chun issued a sealed ruling, partially granting Amazon's motion. The FTC will be allowed to continue to pursue any claims the judge did not permanently dismiss, court records showed.

Worth checking if my data is (was?) on one of these systems.

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/09/systems-used-by-courts-and-govs-across-the-us-riddled-with-vulnerabilities/

Systems used by courts and governments across the US riddled with vulnerabilities

Public records systems that courts and governments rely on to manage voter registrations and legal filings have been riddled with vulnerabilities that made it possible for attackers to falsify registration databases and add, delete, or modify official documents.

Over the past year, software developer turned security researcher Jason Parker has found and reported dozens of critical vulnerabilities in no fewer than 19 commercial platforms used by hundreds of courts, government agencies, and police departments across the country. Most of the vulnerabilities were critical.

One flaw he uncovered in the voter registration cancellation portal for the state of Georgia, for instance, allowed anyone visiting it to cancel the registration of any voter in that state when the visitor knew the name, birthdate, and county of residence of the voter. In another case, document management systems used in local courthouses across the country contained multiple flaws that allowed unauthorized people to access sensitive filings such as psychiatric evaluations that were under seal. And in one case, unauthorized people could assign themselves privileges that are supposed to be available only to clerks of the court and, from there, create, delete, or modify filings.

… The 19 affected platforms are:

Tools & Techniques. (Did your AI lead you astray?)

https://www.bespacific.com/how-i-use-microsoft-word-to-instantly-check-documents-for-plagiarism/

How I Use Microsoft Word to Instantly Check Documents for Plagiarism

How to Geek: “Microsoft Word isn’t just for typing documents; it has a built-in feature called the Similarity Checker that checks your document plagiarism right from your word editor. This tool not only highlights potential plagiarism but also guides you in citing sources correctly. [This is a front line use case, and other applications are recommended in addition to this or as more robust substitutes.]

Is there a solution? I would like to train my AI on recent history...

https://www.bespacific.com/inside-the-621-million-legal-battle-for-the-soul-of-the-internet/

Inside the $621 Million Legal Battle for the ‘Soul of the Internet’

RollingStone via MSN [no paywall]: “Major record labels have sued the online library Internet Archive over thousands of old recordings, raising the question: Who owns the past? Before founding the Internet Archive, Kahle worked as a computer scientist, making major contributions to personal computing and the early internet during the Eighties and Nineties. With the Archive, he says, “The whole idea was to build the Library of Alexandria for the digital age. To build universal access to all knowledge.” The Archive is best known for its preservation of the ephemeral expanses of the World Wide Web, available through its one-of-a-kind archive/search engine, the Wayback Machine. But this is just one facet of its collection: Working with museums, libraries, and individual donors and contributors, the Archive has amassed more than 145 petabytes of material (if you took more than 4,000 digital photos every day for the rest of your life, you might end up with 1 petabyte). Much of this material is obsolete or out of print – books, microfilm and microfiche, old software, video games, obscure VHS tapes, TV news programs, historic radio shows, and hundreds of thousands of concert recordings. “It’s a research library. It’s there to record and make available an accurate version of the past,” Kahle says. “Otherwise, we’ll end up with a George Orwell world where the past can be manipulated and erased.” But this work has long rankled one of the most powerful forces in the United States – rights holders – and the threat of copyright lawsuits has always loomed over the Archive. Lawrence Lessig, the legal scholar and Archive ally, even predicted Kahle would wind up in court in a 2001 New York Times interview, days after the Wayback Machine launched. It took nearly two decades – during which the Archive occasionally faced smaller legal challenges – but Lessig was right. In June 2020, several book publishers sued the Internet Archive following the launch of its pandemic-era National Emergency Library, which made its collection of scanned books available to borrow freely and without restrictions amid school, university, and library closures. The publishers claimed mass, willful copyright infringement and won a summary judgment in the lower courts last March. (The Archive appealed, but lost again earlier this month.)…”

Perspective.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/09/ai-and-the-2024-us-elections.html

AI and the 2024 US Elections

For years now, AI has undermined the public’s ability to trust what it sees, hears, and reads. The Republican National Committee released a provocative ad offering an “AI-generated look into the country’s possible future if Joe Biden is re-elected,” showing apocalyptic, machine-made images of ruined cityscapes and chaos at the border. Fake robocalls purporting to be from Biden urged New Hampshire residents not to vote in the 2024 primary election. This summer, the Department of Justice cracked down on a Russian bot farm  that was using AI to impersonate Americans on social media, and OpenAI disrupted an Iranian group using ChatGPT to generate fake social-media comments.

It’s not altogether clear what damage AI itself may cause, though the reasons for concern are obvious—the technology makes it easier for bad actors to construct highly persuasive and misleading content. With that risk in mind, there has been some movement toward constraining the use of AI, yet progress has been painstakingly slow in the area where it may count most: the 2024 election.

(Related)

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russia/lies-russia-tells-itself

The Lies Russia Tells Itself

The Country’s Propagandists Target the West—but Mislead the Kremlin, Too