Smart Software: The White House and Its Artificial Intelligence Lean Back
October 13, 2016
I am not sure how influential White House reports are. But I scanned “Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence” looking for what’s ahead. I did not notice any reference to the Sillycon Valley outfits and some cohorts getting together to chat about keeping artificial intelligence docile like digital bunny rabbits. I did not see a reference to IBM Watson’s WOW conference (If you don’t know about this, check out the five day event here. For $2,395 you will be so much smarter.) Nor did the report inject any factoids about Deep Mind and the London underground tunnel into my flawed gray matter.
You can, for now, download a copy of the report from this link. US government content can move around, so keep in mind that you may have to do some searching if the link does not work. Hopefully your research will be less of a challenge than looking for some Library of Congress reports.
For me, the take away is that standards are needed. Perhaps the folks from IBM, Facebook, and Google plus some smart academic outfits have already volunteered to provide wizards to work on the standards? How will those standards apply to companies operating in nation states other than the US? Will smart software advance more rapidly than the work on standards? Will companies deploying “non standard” smart software make changes to match the standards? The report does not address these issues and it is a nice write up which contains footnotes too like a high school research paper.
Alexa, play Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.”
Stephen E Arnold, October 13, 2016
Yahoo and Its PR Challenge
October 13, 2016
Navigate to “Why We Should All Dump Yahoo Now.” (I am not sure about the “all,” of course.) The site provides a form, which looks like this:
The text takes the form of an “oath.” These are similar to the documents folks sign for some jobs and certain government work. The lingo states:
By signing this pledge, I confirm that I have deleted my Yahoo account because I care about my own privacy and security and I want to make it clear to the government, to Yahoo and to other internet companies that they cannot compromise my security, privacy and safety without consequence. I have shared this information with my friends and family whose safety and security may also be at risk.
The idea is that Yahoot is a company which compromised users’ security. Heck, the Office of Personnel Management and the people leaving unsecured laptops in airport lounges do this too.
The difference is that Yahoot is a bit of a fumbler when it comes to management. There’s the peanut butter memo, the Xoogler steering the Purple Monster toward digital sandbars, and the thrill of sagging revenues.
Yahoo, in short, has a bit of a PR problem. Who is mounting this campaign? No clue. The Icann whois may be wonky now but it may be Fight for the Future / Center for Rights:
Yahoooooot.
Stephen E Arnold, October 13, 2016
Stephen E Arnold, October 21, 2016
The Dark Web Casts a Shadow Toward Facebook
October 13, 2016
I read “Facebook Marketplace Becomes Black Market for Drugs and Guns.” The Dark Web is small, sort of a hassle, and generally disappointing for some of its most enthusiastic cheerleaders.
What’s that mean?
According to the write up:
Facebook launched Marketplace on Monday, October 3, offering users the opportunity to buy and sell items within their local community. On the day of its launch, the eBay and Craigslist competitor was already being used to list adult services, animals, drugs and other items that breach Facebook’s policies.
I learned:
Users took to social media to report listings on Marketplace, which included a hedgehog, a gun, a snake and a baby.
Facebook is in modification mode. Allegedly the company said via a spokesperson:
We are working to fix the problem and will be closely monitoring our systems to ensure we are properly identifying and removing violations before giving more people access to Marketplace.”
Several observations:
- Facebook reaches lots of people. The Dark Web doesn’t. Ergo. The Dark Web’s tendrils will reach toward the Facebook thing.
- Bad actors on the Dark Web are probably easier and quicker for authorities to observe.
- Facebook’s me too did not anticipate that its customers would bring the darkness to the otherwise sunny climes of grandmothers and their friends.
- Facebook’s strategic planning seems to have a bit of a gap.
Worth monitoring. From a distance.
Stephen E Arnold, October 13, 2016
Definitions of Search to Die For. Maybe With?
October 13, 2016
I read “Search Terminology. Web Search, Enterprise Search, Real Time Search, Semantic Search.” I have included glossaries in some of my books about search. I did not realize that I could pluck out four definitions and present them as a stand alone article. Ah, the wonders of content marketing.
If you want to read the definition with which one can die, either for or with, have at it. May I suggest that you consider these questions prior to your perusing the content marketing write up thing:
Web search
- What’s the method for password protected sites and encrypted sites which exist under current Web technology?
- What Web search systems build their own indexes and which send a query to multiple search systems and aggregate the results? Does the approach matter?
- What is the freshness or staleness of Web indexes? Does it matter that one index may be a few minutes “old” and another index several weeks “old”?
Enterprise search
- How does an enterprise search system deliver internal content points and external content pointers?
- What is the consequence of an enterprise search user who accesses content which is incomplete or stale?
- What does the enterprise search system do with third party content such as consultants’ reports which someone in the organization has purchased? Ignore? Re-license? Index the content and worry later?
- What is the refresh cycle for changed and new content?
- What is the search function for locating database content or rich media residing on the organization’s systems?
Real time search
- What is real time? The indexing of content in the millisecond world of Wall Street? Indexing content when machine resources and network bandwidth permit?
- How does a user determine the latency in the search system because marketers can write “real time” while programmers implement index update options which the search administrator selects?
- What search system indexes videos in real time? YouTube struggles with 10 minute or longer latency with some videos requiring hours before the index points to those videos?
Semantic search
- What is the role of human subject matter experts in semantic search?
- What is the benefit of human-intermediated systems versus person-machine or automated smart indexing?
- How does one address concept drift as a system “learns” from its indexing of information?
- What happens to taxonomies, dictionary lists of entities, and other artifacts of concept indexing?
- What does a system do when encountering documents, audio, and videos in a language different from the language of the majority of a system’s users?
Get the idea that zippy, brief definitions cannot deliver Gatorade to the college football players studying in the dorm the night before a big game?
Stephen E Arnold, October 13, 2016
National Geographic Quad View
October 13, 2016
Google Maps and other map tools each have their unique features, but some are better than others at helping you find your way. However, most of these online map tools have the same basic function and information. While they can help you if you are lost, they are not that useful for topography. National Geographic comes to our rescue with free topographic PDFs. Check them out at PDF Quads.
Here are the details straight from the famous nature magazine:
National Geographic has built an easy to use web interface that allows anyone to quickly find any quad in the country for downloading and printing. Each quad has been pre-processed to print on a standard home, letter size printer. These are the same quads that were printed by USGS for decades on giant bus-sized pressed but are now available in multi-page PDFs that can be printed just about anywhere. They are pre-packaged using the standard 7.5 minute, 1:24,000 base but with some twists.
How can there be twists in a topographic map? They are not really that surprising, just explanations about how the images are printed out. Page one is an overview map that, pages two through five are standard topographic maps sized to print on regular paper, and hill shading is added to provide the maps with more detail.
Everyone does not use topography maps, but a precise tool is invaluable to those who do.
Whitney Grace, October 13, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Labor Shortage of Cyber Security Professionals
October 13, 2016
It’s no surprise that hackers may be any age, but that teenagers could cause 60 million pounds worth of damage to a corporation is newsworthy, regardless of age. The Telegraph published an article, From GCHQ to Google: the battle to outpace hackers in the cyber race, reporting on this. A 15-year-old boy hacked the TalkTalk computer network stole personal data, including financial information, of 157,000 customers. This comes at a time when the UK government announced plans to invest £1.9 billion in cyber security over the next five years. We also learned,
No amount of money will help overcome one of the greatest difficulties in the security industry though: the lack of skilled people. By 2019 there will be a global shortfall of 1.5 million security professionals, according to ISC Squared, a security certification and industry education body. And the numbers could in fact be significantly higher, given that there are already more than 1 million cybersecurity positions unfilled worldwide, according to a 2015 Cisco report. Heading up the government’s move to train more cyber defenders is spook agency GCHQ, which sponsors academic bursaries, runs summer camps and training days, holds competitions and has created a cyber excellence accreditation for top universities and masters programmes. The intention is to spot talent in children and nurture them through their education, with the end goal being a career in the industry.
The problem of for any rocketing industry ready to blast off always seems to boil down to people. We have seen it with big data in all of it’s forms from electronic medical records to business analytics to cyber security. It seems industry is most fertile when people and technology work best stride-by-stride.
Megan Feil, October 13, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Deindexing: A Thing?
October 12, 2016
There was the right to be forgotten. There were reputation management companies promising to scrub unwanted information for indexes using humans, lawyers (a different species, of course), and software agents.
Now I have learned that “dozens of suspicious court cases, with missing defendants, aim at getting web pages taken down or deindexed.” The write up asserts:
Google and various other Internet platforms have a policy: They won’t take down material (or, in Google’s case, remove it from Google indexes) just because someone says it’s defamatory. Understandable — why would these companies want to adjudicate such factual disputes? But if they see a court order that declares that some material is defamatory, they tend to take down or deindex the material, relying on the court’s decision.
Two thoughts:
- Have reputation management experts cooked up some new broth?
- How quickly will the lovely word “deindex” survive in the maelstrom of the information flow.
I love the idea of indexing content. Perhaps there is a new opportunity for innovation with the deindexing thing? Semantic deindexing? Structured deindexing? And my fave unstructured deindexing in federated cloud based data lakes. I wish I were 21 years old again. A new career beckons with declassification codes, delanguage processing, and even desmart software.
Stephen E Arnold, October 22, 2016
Pindrop: Will It Make Burner Phones Less Attractive to Bad Actors
October 12, 2016
I read “Lloyds to Use Pindrop Tech to Identify Fraudulent Calls.” The company has technology which fingerprints a voice call. The approach considers such factors as “‘location, background noise, number history and call type, among others.” The “others” includes about 140 other items of information the system can extract or generate. The idea is that a fraudulent call can be flagged and appropriate action taken. The company, like Recorded Future, is partially funded by Alphabet Google.
The company was founded in 2011 and uses smart software to provide an early warning system when an in bound call is potentially fraudulent. Each monitored call receives an “audio fingerprint”; that is, a numerical identifier which allows calls to be analyzed. Terbium Labs uses a fingerprinting technique to identify certain types of content on Dark Web and other online sites.
The idea is that a customer service representative can be alerted when a back actor calls to transfer money or request a new credit card.
Can the system identify fraudulent calls from burner phones. These are devices which place calls and use one time SIM cards? What other applications will Pindrop bring to market? What happens if the technology is applied to Google’s new voice actuated home devices?
For more information about Pindrop, navigate to the company’s About page. Presumably Pindrop’s stakeholders can hear a pin drop and may more.
Stephen E Arnold, October 12, 2016
Alphabet Google: From Search to Stuff in Market Nooks
October 12, 2016
I worked through some of the write ups about the Google tangible products. One excellent point appeared in a British tabloid in “Why Google May Have a Big Problem with Its New Pixel Phone.” The Pixel phone is expensive.
Here in Harrod’s Creek, we noticed that the blue model emulates the colors of the University of Kentucky.
Is Alphabet Google have a Barnes & Noble Nook moment. Building gizmos to take on market leaders seems so easy. How did that Nook thing work out for the bookstore company? Right. Bookstores are chugging along. The Nook? Hmmm.
None of the articles were scanned pointed out that Alphabet Google is trying to become something other than search. Sure, a Pixel phone helps generate search traffic, but we think there are other forces at work; for example:
- Apple envy. Thos margins on high end software are as tasty as a hot apple pie
- Control. The GOOG has been struggling to maintain its “ah, shucks” approach to lock in with digital services. Maybe gizmos are a way to achieve control without so much oversight from regulators.
- A lack of ideas. The Alphabet Google thing is not doing too well in the Facebook space. Amazon invented a new hardware category so the kids in Mountain View can do a me too, not a “Eureka.” Ah, imitation.
As the dust settles from the Google stuff blast off, one of the goslings asked, “Do you think Alphabet Google is falling into the Barnes & Noble Nook pitfall?”
Great question. Shifting from search advertising to making products is a bit of a change. Leopards can, I suppose, can change their spots. Easy in Photoshop. Tough in the real world.
Stephen E Arnold, October 12, 2016
Mid Tier Consulting Firm: Big Data Fear
October 12, 2016
I love it when mid tier consulting firms become contrarians. Navigate to “Gartner Warns Big Data’s Bubble May Burst As Enterprises Cut Investment.” The write up informed me:
Gartner has found. In its latest survey of 199 technology executives, the analyst firm found that many companies have struggled to obtain insights that make a real difference to their bottom line.
I don’t want to get into the Statistics 101 lecture about sampling, but keep in mind that there may be some wobbles in who was asked and who answered the “survey.”
Let’s assume that the mid-tier outfit did a pretty good job with its 199 objective respondents. I learned that:
the number of companies that are planning to invest in Big Data in the next two years has fallen by 6 percent, from 31 percent in 2015 to just 25 percent this year. Another telling statistic is that while roughly three-quarters of companies have invested, or are planning to invest, in Big Data, the overwhelming majority of those firms remain stuck at the pilot stage.
The write up points to another mid tier outfit’s research which suggests that Big Data may not be the home run that some pundits assert. Is Big Data doomed? Nah, a third mid tier outfit predicts that the Big Data market will grow “three times as fast as the overall information technology market.”
Whew. For a moment I thought the sky was falling.
Several observations:
- Fear sells.
- Uncertainty sells.
- Seemingly authoritative research sells.
What’s the common factor? The mid tier outfits are working overtime to generate interest in their services. Perhaps the economy is putting some pressure on the mid tier folks. Go with fear.
Even snakes flee from earth tremors. There may be Big Data to quantify that fear as long as one can point and click, not think about data integrity, and have to do math. I love it. 199.
Stephen E Arnold, October 12, 2016
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