The AI Plays That Mostly Work
January 2, 2017
In case you missed “What Artificial Intelligence Can and Can’t Do Right Now,” let me highlight the plays that can lead to a first down some times. According to the estimable publication, smart software is capable. The write up identifies the ways in which artificial intelligence can deliver the pick up truck filled with cash to a savvy business; to wit:
- Index pictures (accuracy? not part of the write up)
- Approve a loan (default rate? not part of the write up)
- Target online ads (sales rate? not part of the write up)
- Speech to text (accuracy? not part of the write up)
- Translate text (accuracy? not part of the write up)
- Alert to machine or system failure (reliability? not part of the write up)
- Collision avoidance (reliability? not part of the write up)
The article states:
Much has been written about AI’s potential to reflect both the best and the worst of humanity. For example, we have seen AI providing conversation and comfort to the lonely; we have also seen AI engaging in racial discrimination. Yet the biggest harm that AI is likely to do to individuals in the short term is job displacement, as the amount of work we can automate with AI is vastly bigger than before. As leaders, it is incumbent on all of us to make sure we are building a world in which every individual has an opportunity to thrive. Understanding what AI can do and how it fits into your strategy is the beginning, not the end, of that process.
Begin that understanding by relying on a Tesla when driving toward white trucks while using Google Translate to covert a contract in Mandarin to Japanese in order to float a loan for a new online advertising play using Bing. The marketing plan can be crafted by a 20 something with a Harvard MBA.
Stephen E Arnold, January 2, 2017
Legal Clarity Recommended for Understanding Cyberthreat Offense and Defense
January 2, 2017
Recently a conference took place about cybersecurity in the enterprise world. In the Computer World article, Offensive hackers should be part of enterprise DNA, the keynote speaker’s address is quoted heavily. CEO of Endgame Nate Fick addressed the audience, which apparently included many offensive hackers, by speaking about his experience in the private sector and in the military. His perspective is shared,
“We need discontinuity in the adoption cure,” Fick said, “but you can’t hack back. Hacking back is stupid, for many reasons not just that it is illegal.” He argued that while it is illegal, laws change. “Remember it used to be illegal to drink a beer in this country, and it was legal for a kid to work in a coal mine,” he said. Beyond the issue of legality, hacking back is, what Fick described as, climbing up the escalatory ladder, which you can’t do successfully unless you have the right tools. The tools and the power or ability to use them legally has historically been granted to the government.
Perhaps looking toward a day where hacking back will not be illegal, Fick explains an alternative course of action. He advocates for stronger defense and clear government policies around cybersecurity that declare what constitutes as a cyberthreat offense. The strategy being that further action on behalf of the attacked would count as defense. We will be keeping our eyes on how long hacking back remains illegal in some jurisdictions.
Megan Feil, January 2, 2017
Austrian Ministers Wants to Look into Your Private Communications
January 2, 2017
Under the garb of curbing terrorist activities, an Austrian minister has proposed setting up of federal Trojan or an agency that can read encrypted messages over WhatsApp and Facebook.
DeepDotWeb in an article titled Austrian Government Wants a Federal Trojan to Patrol the Dark Web says:
Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka (ÖVP) is preparing to implement a “federal trojan” to patrol the dark net. With this state spying software, Austrian law enforcement authorities hope they can prevent cybercriminal activity on the dark web.
The minister is demanding that government should possess a Trojan or technology that will allow it to read what messages exchanged by people over WhatsApp and Facebook messenger. This ze feels is necessary to foil terrorist attacks in Austria.
The entire argument hinges on:
Multiple researches have proven that the Islamic State uses social media platforms and encrypted messaging for recruiting potential terrorists and for other communications. The German government is also working on a similar device by the Central Agency for Information Technology in the security area (Zitis). Currently, about 400 IT professionals are on the project.
This is the second attempt by the Interior Minister to get a Bill passed that allowed federal agencies to snoop on private citizens. The minister wants unfettered access to messages and other data of citizens; terrorists or not.
If the Bill is passed, it will have serious implications on privacy of citizens. However, what would be more interesting is to see how companies like Facebook, Google and Apple respond to it.
Vishal Ingole January 2, 2017
Alleged Google Loophole Lets Fake News Flow
January 1, 2017
I read a write up which, like 99 percent of the information available for free via the Internet, is 100 percent accurate.
The write up’s title tells the tale: “Google Does a Better Job with Fake News Than Facebook, but There’s a Big Loophole It Hasn’t Fixed.” What’s the loophole? The write up reports:
…the “newsy” modules that sit at the top of many Google searches (the “In the news” section on desktop, and the “Top stories” section on mobile) don’t pull content straight from Google News. They pull from all sorts of content available across the web, and can include sites not approved by Google News. This is particularly confusing for users on the desktop version of Google’s site, where the “In the news” section lives.Not only does the “In the news” section literally have the word “news” in its name, but the link at the bottom of the module, which says “More news for…,” takes you to the separate Google News page, which is comprised only of articles that Google’s editorial system has approved.
So why isn’t the “In the news” section just the top three Google News results?
The short answer is because Google sees Google Search and Google News as separate products.
The word “news” obviously does not mean news. We reported last week about Google’s effort to define “monopoly” for the European Commission investigating allegations of Google’s being frisky with its search results. News simply needs to be understood in the Google contextual lexicon.
The write up helps me out with this statement:
So why isn’t the “In the news” section just the top three Google News results? The short answer is because Google sees Google Search and Google News as separate products.
Logical? From Google’s point of view absolutely crystal clear.
The write up amplifies the matter:
Google does, however, seem to want to wipe fake news from its platform. “From our perspective, there should just be no situation where fake news gets distributed, so we are all for doing better here,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said recently. After the issue of fake news entered the spotlight after the election, Google announced it would ban fake-news sites from its ad network, choking off their revenue. But even if Google’s goal is to kick fake-news sites out of its search engine, most Google users probably understand that Google search results don’t have carry the editorial stamp of approval from Google.
Fake news, therefore, is mostly under control. The Google users just have to bone up on how Google works to make information available.
What about mobile?
Google AMP is not news; AMP content labeled as “news” is part of the AMP technical standard which speeds up mobile page display.
Google, like Facebook, may tweak its approach to news.
Beyond Search would like to point out that wild and crazy news releases from big time PR dissemination outfits can propagate a range of information (some mostly accurate and some pretty crazy). The handling of high value sources allows some questionable content to flow. Oh, there are other ways to inject questionable content into the Web indexing systems.
There is not one loophole. There are others. Who wants to nibble into revenue? Not Beyond Search.
Stephen E Arnold, January 1, 2017
Tor Anonymity Not 100 Percent Guaranteed
January 1, 2017
An article at Naked Security reveals some information turned up by innovative Tor-exploring hidden services in its article, “‘Honey Onions’ Probe the Dark Web: At Least 3% of Tor Nodes are Rogues.” By “rogues,” writer Paul Ducklin is referring to sites, run by criminals and law-enforcement alike, that are able to track users through Tor entry and/or exit nodes. The article nicely lays out how this small fraction of sites can capture IP addresses, so see the article for that explanation. As Ducklin notes, three percent is a small enough window that someone just wishing to avoid having their shopping research tracked may remain unconcerned, but is a bigger matter for, say, a journalist investigating events in a war-torn nation. He writes:
Two researchers from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachussets, recently tried to measure just how many rogue HSDir nodes there might be, out of the 3000 or more scattered around the world. Detecting that there are rogue nodes is fairly easy: publish a hidden service, tell no one about it except a minimum set of HSDir nodes, and wait for web requests to come in.[…]
With 1500 specially-created hidden services, amusingly called ‘Honey Onions,’ or just Honions, deployed over about two months, the researchers measured 40,000 requests that they assume came from one or more rogue nodes. (Only HSDir nodes ever knew the name of each Honion, so the researchers could assume that all connections must have been initiated by a rogue node.) Thanks to some clever mathematics about who knew what about which Honions at what time, they calculated that these rogue requests came from at least 110 different HSDir nodes in the Tor network.
It is worth noting that many of those requests were simple pings, but others were actively seeking vulnerabilities. So, if you are doing anything more sensitive than comparing furniture prices, you’ll have to decide whether you want to take that three percent risk. Ducklin concludes by recommending added security measures for anyone concerned.
Cynthia Murrell, January 1, 2017
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