Facebook May Be Exploiting Emotions of Young Audiences
June 26, 2017
Open Rights Group, a privacy advocacy group is demanding details of a study Facebook conducted on teens and sold its results to marketing companies. This might be a blatant invasion of privacy and attempt to capitalize on emotional distress of teens.
In a press release sent out by the Open Rights Group and titled Rights Groups Demand More Transparency over Facebook’s ‘Insights’ into Young Users, the spokesperson says:
It is incumbent upon Facebook as a cultural leader to protect, not exploit, the privacy of young people, especially when their vulnerable emotions are involved.
This is not the first time technology companies have come under heavy criticism from privacy rights groups. Facebook through its social media platform collects information and metrics from users, analyzes it and sells the results to marketing companies. However, Facebook never explicitly tells the user that they are being watched. Open Rights Group is demanding that this information is made public. Though there is no hope, will Facebook concede?
Vishal Ingole, June 26, 2017
Legal Media Search Site Baits Pirates with Keywords
June 26, 2017
How do you attract a (media) pirate? Apparently, with targeted keywords. Torrent Freak reports, “Film Industry’s Latest Search Engine Draws Traffic with ‘Pirate’ Keywords.” Interesting tactic. Apparently a Dutch answer to Hollywood’s legal-content-finder WhereToWatch, the search engine Film.nl returns legal content. However, they’ve peppered their descriptions with keywords associated with pirated content. For example, “Don’t Wrestle With Nasty Torrents. Ignore the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story torrent.” Intriguing tactic. Reporter Ernesto writes:
Those who scroll down long enough will notice that each page has a targeted message for pirates as well. The descriptions come in a few variations but all mention prominent keywords such as ‘torrents’ and reference ‘illegal downloading’ and unauthorized streaming. …
While the piracy related messaging is unusual, it’s actually quite clever. Since a lot of people are searching for ‘torrent,’ ‘streaming’ and ‘download’ related terms combined with movie and TV-show titles, it helps to keep search traffic away from pirate sites. In other words, it’s a smart search engine optimization trick, helping it to directly compete with pirate sites on this front. The big question is whether people who search for ‘Movie X torrent’ will be satisfied with the results Film.nl offers. That said, from a movie industry perspective, it definitely beats doing nothing at all.
Does it? When prospective viewers learn their desired content is not yet legally available, we suspect most will simply navigate away to more shady destinations. Will a significant number be persuaded to wait for the legal version by Film.nl’s combination of keyword bait and moralizing? I doubt it. But it is an interesting play to note.
Cynthia Murrell, June 26, 2017
eDiscovery to Get a Fillip with DISCO
June 23, 2017
A legal technology company has unveiled the next generation AI platform that will reduce time, efforts and money spent by law firms and large corporations on mundane legal discovery work. Named DISCO, the program was in beta phase for two years.
PR distribution platform BusinessWire in a release titled DISCO Launches Artificial Intelligence Platform for Legal Technology quotes:
While there will be many applications for DISCO AI, initially the focus is to dramatically reduce the time, burden, and cost of identifying evidence in legal document review — a process known as eDiscovery.
Many companies have attempted to automate the process of eDiscovery, the success rates, however, have been far from encouraging. Apart from disrupting the legal industry, automated processes like the ones offered by DISCO will render many people in the industry jobless. AI creators, however, say that their intention is to speed up the process and reduce costs to organizations. But again, as technology advances, job losses are inevitable.
Vishal Ingole, June 23, 2017
Can an Algorithm Tame Misinformation Online?
June 23, 2017
UCLA researchers are working on an algorithmic solution to the “fake news” problem, we learn from the article, “Algorithm Reads Millions of Posts on Parenting Sites in Bid to Understand Online Misinformation” at TechRadar. Okay, it’s actually indexing and text analysis, not “reading,” but we get the idea. Reporter Duncan Geere tells us:
There’s a special logic to the flow of posts on a forum or message board, one that’s easy to parse by someone who’s spent a lot of time on them but kinda hard to understand for those who haven’t. Researchers at UCLA are working on teaching computers to understand these structured narratives within chronological posts on the web, in an attempt to get a better grasp of how humans think and communicate online.
Researchers used the hot topic of vaccinations, as discussed on two parenting forums, as their test case. Through an examination of nearly 2 million posts, the algorithm was able to come to accurate conclusions, or “narrative framework.” Geere writes:
While this study was targeted at conversations around vaccination, the researchers say the same principles could be applied to any topic. Down the line, they hope it could allow for false narratives to be identified as they develop and countered by targeted messaging.
The phrase “down the line” is incredibly vague, but the sooner the better, we say (though we wonder exactly what form this “targeted messaging” will take). The original study can be found here at eHealth publisher JMIR Publications.
Cynthia Murrell, June 23, 2017
IBM Bans Remote Work
June 22, 2017
The tech blog SiliconBeat reveals a startling development in tech-related employment in, “IBM: So Much for Working from Home.” Thousands of professionals who have built their lives around their remote-work arrangements are now being required to come into the office. For many, the shift would mean packing up and moving closer to one of the company’s locations. As writer Rex Crum puts it:
That’s right. Find your way to an office cubicle, or hit the bricks. The Wall Street Journal reported that IBM began instituting the new you-can’t-work-from-home policy this week, and that the company is ‘quietly dismantling’ the program that has been in place for decades. The Journal said the retrenchment on its employees working remotely was being done so that IBM could ‘improve collaboration and accelerate the pace of work.’ It also happens to be taking place not long after IBM reported its 20th-straight quarter of declining year-over-year revenue. Legendary all-time investor Warren Buffett also said this month that Berkshire Hathaway has cut its holdings in IBM by one-third from the 81 million shares the company owned earlier this year.
But will herding all their talent into their buildings really solve IBM’s financial woes? Not according to this Forbes article. Crum recalls that Yahoo made the same move in 2013, when Marissa Mayer put a stop to remote work at that company. (How has that been going?) Will more organizations follow?
Cynthia Murrell, June 22, 2017
The Voice of Assistance Is Called Snips
June 22, 2017
Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa are the most well known digital assistants, but there are other companies that want to get the same recognition. Snips is a brand new (relatively) company with the byline: “Our Mission Is To Make Technology Disappear By Putting An AI In Every Device.” It is a noble mission to enable all technological devices with tools to make our lives better, easier, and more connected. How did their story begin?
Snips was founded in 2013 as a research lab in AI. Through our projects, we realized that the biggest issue of the next decades was the way humans and machine interact. Indeed, rather than having humans make the effort to use machines, we should use AI to make machines learn to communicate with human. By making this ubiquitous and privacy preserving, we can make technology so intuitive and accessible that it simply disappears from our consciousness.
Snips offer their digital assistant for enterprise systems and it can also be programmed for other systems that need an on-device voice platform, using state of the art Deep Learning. Snips offer many features, including on-device natural language understanding, customizable hotwords, on device automatic speech recognition, cross-platform, and it is also built using open source technology.
Snips also have their own unique bragging right: they are the only voice platform that is GDPR compliant. GDPR is a new European regulation mean to protect an individual’s privacy more on connected devices. If Snips wants to reach more clients in the European market, they might do well partnering with Spain-based Bitext, a company that specializes in linguistic analytics.
Whitney Grace, June 22, 2017
Google: The Full Back Up
June 21, 2017
I read “Google Drive Will Soon Back Up Your Entire Computer.” Sounds good, right? The GOOG will make a bit for bit copy of the data and programs on one’s computer. In the event of a crash, Mother Google will be there. One can search for a file and restore it. That email archive from Thunderbird circa 2011, no problem.
I learned from the write up:
There have been requests for Dropbox to add something like this for ages, and it’s yet to get around to it. Instead, like Drive, people have always had to store files directly in the app’s local folder. For anyone looking for a bit more flexibility in their syncing apps, Google seems like it’s about to become the winning option.
I like the “winning option” for a service about which some details are fuzzy.
My question is, “Will Google scan the backed up data in order to place ads in the service? What about the availability of these data to governments when appropriate documentation is provided to the Google? What happens if the data are part of a legal matter between a person and a corporation?”
Yep, convenient.
Stephen E Arnold, June 21, 2017
Alphabet Google: Just Jobs? Not Likely
June 21, 2017
The is “Connecting More Americans with Jobs.” Sounds good. People want to work, right? Sounds like the right idea even though the notion of universal basic income is floating around like a Loon balloon. With smart software poised to displace MBAs in some of the IPO process steps, jobs are a big deal. Here in Harrod’s Creek, there are quite a few people out of work. There are even some families in which there are two or more generations of people who have never held a full time job. But that’s not a problem.
Google states:
We’re taking the next step in the Google for Jobs initiative by putting the convenience and power of Search into the hands of job seekers. With this new experience, we aim to connect Americans to job opportunities across the U.S., so no matter who you are or what kind of job you’re looking for, you can find job postings that match your needs.
When I read about job aggregation, I thought about the numerous online job services which I have observed over the years. Does anyone remember the BNA’s love affair with job hunting services? And Monster? Love that Monster thing!
From my vantage point, there are several angles to this Google service:
First, aggregating jobs is a useful source of data about people, competitors, and hiring trends. Quick example: Decades ago I was involved in a database called Pharmaceutical News Index. The hot feature of this database was that a person in the pharmaceutical industry could look up a company and see what jobs big wheels and wizards were taking. The information had high value because hires provide direct information about certain types of research initiatives. Now imagine the value of the data of Google can scrape and crunch the job data its announcement references. Valuable information? Yep, definitely above average in my book.
Second, job aggregation is a foundation stone. The service makes it possible to take another step: Matching candidates to jobs. Hey, if you are in the Google system and you want a job, why not let Google’s smart software process your profile and generate a list of potential opportunities. Google has a mostly overlooked dossier function and the nifty analytic tools to make this a walk in the part. Employers might be interested in get information from Google about hiring trends, salaries, and Glassdoor-type insights into what a company is “really like.”
Third, Google’s smart software can knit together a number of items of information about a person or a company. This “federation” of data provides an opportunity for Google to use the Recorded Future technology or a similar home brew technology to predict what is likely to happen for sectors, companies, and even product innovations.
Should Microsoft / LinkedIn be worries?
Yep.
Stephen E Arnold, June 21, 2017
Bing Focuses on Chatbots
June 21, 2017
Chatbot enthusiasts may want to turn to Bing, because now “Bing Makes it Easier to Find Chat Bots,” according to SearchEngine Journal.” Writer Matt Southern reveals:
Bing has released an update designed to make it easier to find chat bots for instant messaging platforms. Searching for a command such as ‘travel bots’ will return a dedicated answer box where you can browse through chat bots for Facebook, Skype, Slack, and Telegram. Bots can be added to messaging platforms directly from search results by clicking on the ‘Add bot’ button. Bing is piloting a test program which allows searchers to interact with chat bots on Bing itself. Searching for specific restaurants in the Seattle area can return a dedicated bot which you can chat with for more information about the restaurant.
Bing hopes to expand the restaurant service to more cities “eventually.” Meanwhile, they have been developing an InfoBot to answer users’ questions with entries from Wikipedia and, later, from other information sites like WebMD and AllRecipies. We’re also told that developers can use the Microsoft Bot Framework to design Bing chatbots, which may be made available to users after a review process.
Cynthia Murrell, June 21, 2017
Instantaneous Language Translation in Your Ear
June 21, 2017
A common technology concept in cartoons and science-fiction series is an ear device that acts as a universal translator. The wearer would be able to understand and speak any language in the world. The universal translator has long been one of the humanity’s pipe dream since the Tower of Babel and as technology improves we could be closer to inventing it. The Daily Mail shares, “The Earpiece That Promises To Translate Language In Seconds: £140 Will Be Available Next Month.”
International travelers’ new best friend might be Lingmo International’s One2One translator that is built on IBM Watson’s artificial intelligence system. Unlike other translation devices, it does not reply on WiFi or BlueTooth connectivity. It supports eight languages: English, Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese, German, and Chinese (does that include Mandarin and Cantonese?). If the One2One does not rely on the Internet, how will it translate languages?
Instead, it uses IBM Watson’s Natural Language Understanding and Language Translator APIs, which intuitively overcomes many of the contextual challenges associated with common languages, as well as understanding the nuances of local dialects…This allows it to translate what you’re saying, almost in real-time.
Lingomo might be relying on IBM Watson for its natural language API, they should also consider using Bitext, especially when it comes to sentimental analysis. Some languages have words with multiple meanings that change based on a voice’s inflection and tone.
The ramifications for this device are endless. Can you imagine traveling to a foreign country and being able to understand the native tongue? It is the dream of billions, but it could also end some serious conflicts.
Whitney Grace, June 21, 2017
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