Google: Getting AI Advice from Humans, Not AI
March 27, 2019
If your blood pressure is high when thinking about machine learning, you are not alone. If you believe the headlines, we are all (no matter the industry) on the cusp of being replaced by AI and machine learning. However, there is hope for meager humans like us, as we discovered in a recent Forbes article, “A Reminder That Machine Learning Is About Correlations Not Causation.”
According to the story:
“Developers and data scientists increasingly treat their creations as silicon life forms “learning” concrete facts about the world, rather than what they truly are: piles of numbers detached from what they represent, mere statistical patterns encoded into software. We must recognize that those patterns are merely correlations amongst vast reams of data, rather than causative truths or natural laws governing our world.”
Worry not, please.
Google has launched a global artificial intelligence council. The council will advise AI companies about artificial intelligence and ethics, according to Reuters. We noted:
The council, which is slated to publish a report at the end of 2019, includes technology experts, digital ethicists, and people with public policy backgrounds, Kent Walker, Google’s senior vice president for global affairs, said at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology conference.
Will Google remember or selectively forget to listen to the inputs from the council? Yes, the council includes a drone expert. No, the council does not include a screenwriter who worked on Terminator.
Stephen E Arnold, March 27, 2019
Google: Forgetting or Selective Remembering?
March 27, 2019
Google created many useful and brilliant projects from its trademark search to Gmail and its free office suite. Google also has its share of failures, most notably Google+ and now the admission that they “forgot” about a microphone in its Nest Secure security system. BGR reports that, “Congress Wants Google To Explain How It Forgot About The Nest Secure Microphone.”
Google says they entirely “forgot” about a microphone inside their Nest Secure security system. Smart home security systems, such as the Nest Secure, are popular among homeowners, because it allows them to monitor their homes remotely, maintain a constant camera feed, and more. Smart security systems are supposed to protect individuals and their privacy, but some US senators are concerned about citizens’ privacy and Google’s “forgotten” microphone.
Senators and their constituents are worried that large tech companies are taking advantage of their end users and are not being transparent. Google maintains its commitment to transparency and its chief privacy officer said so during a Us Senate Committee hearing. Google will respond further to the issue in mid to late March 2019 with answers about the Nest Secure’s technical specifications, how they communicated with consumers, and what stage it was forgotten.
Google is taking the full blame:
“As we mentioned last week, Google has already released a pretty bare-bones mea culpa about this, sharing a statement with Business Insider that says the mike was never meant to be a secret and should have been included in the tech specs. ‘That was an error on our part.’ The company went on to explain that ‘the microphone has never been on and is only activated when users specifically enable the option.’ The long and short of this is that if you bought Nest’s $500 home security system, which is only a year old, you’re just now learning that you’ve inadvertently had a microphone in your home for a year or more that you didn’t know was there. The ball is now in Google’s court to respond to the questions raised in the Senators’ letter…”
Perhaps someone at Google should read Surveillance Capitalism. No, forget that.
Whitney Grace, March 27, 2019
Google, the Ad Giant, Funds Local Media
March 26, 2019
I found “Exclusive: Google Funds Creation of New Local Media Companies” quite interesting. Some publishers Google directly contributed to many publications slide into a sluggish Sargasso of red ink.
The write up states:
McClatchy [Google’s first news partner] will be the first of many “experiments” within the Local Experiment Project. The goal is to use the lessons from McClatchy’s efforts, and others in the future, to create a network of shared insights that can be leveraged by everyone in the local news business.
Yep, everyone except those selected by the new Local Experiments Project.
One question, “How long will the experiment last?” If Google kills the service, what happens to the partners? What happens to everyone? Perhaps Tim Andrews of Patch local news fame will return to the GOOG to get news back on track? That’s the net net net, as Mr. Andrews has been known to say.
Stephen E Arnold, March 26, 2019
Apple News: Another Search Fail?
March 26, 2019
Apple is a bit of a mystery to me. Example: Navigate to the Apple app store. Type in a word like “disc recovery”? What do you get? Which app does what? I need to recover now, not conduct a day long click, read, and compare. Now try: “bootable iso”? Helpful, right? A suggestion or a link to Apple help might be useful? Next what app is best for a particular task like hotel reservation? Give up yet? Now go to Garageband and enter in the help or search box, “no audio for the microphone”? Get any help from the help system? Tip: Look for audio HDMI in utilities on a Mac laptop. The volume sliders get reset. How? Who knows? What about finding a book in Apple iTunes’ audiobook section? Type in an author’s name but misspell it by omitting a letter? Learn to spell, gentle reader.
I thought of these example when I read “Apple News Plus Is a Fine Way to Read Magazines, but a Disappointment to Anyone Wishing for a Real Boost for the News Business.” I noted this statement in the article:
It’s actually a little hard to even find L.A. Times and Journal content in Apple News Plus because they don’t fit into the magazine UX it’s dependent on. Tap “Browse the Catalog” in Plus and you can scroll all day, but you’ll never find either paper, because they’re not contained in “issues.”
Findability. Stated another way, Apple is not particularly good at search and retrieval. Gloss and PR are covered. Finding information? Not on the radar in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, March 26, 2019
Facebook Problems: A Ripple or a Category 5 Alert
March 26, 2019
When hurricanes hit hapless Florida, the devastation is not confined to a single trailer court. Even the big money McMansions can lose their roofs. Fortune Magazine identifies Facebook and its problems in an insightful way in “Facebook Ever-More Vulnerable to Policy Risks, Analysts Warn.”
Financial analysts and politicos see the anti-Facebookism as something different. Different may mean it is time to cash out and distance oneself from the poster child of high school science club management. Unfortunately the quote round up from assorted experts takes an understandably narrow focus.
The write up concludes:
Facebook shares gained as much as 1.3 percent on Wednesday. The stock has rallied 25 percent year-to-date, versus a 13 percent gain for the S&P 500, though it has fallen almost 3 percent in the past year, compared to the market’s 4 percent rise.
The negativism has generated some financial upside.
What’s Fortune ignoring?
In my opinion, Facebook is one of those early warning gizmos the IBM Weather Channel uses to explain that the hurricane forming will be terrible. If the hurricane forms and tracks over Florida, the damage is going to be extensive.
The Facebook problem may take out other properties as well. In Wall Street’s environment, big losses could be a bit of a problem.
Stephen E Arnold, March 26, 2019
Short Honk: NLP Tools
March 26, 2019
Making sense of unstructured content is tricky. If you are looking for opens source natural language processing tools, “12 Open Source Tools for Natural Language Processing” provides a list.
Stephen E Arnold, March 26, 2019
DarkCyber for March 26, 2019, Now Available
March 26, 2019
The program is a production of Stephen E Arnold. It is the only weekly video news shows focusing on the Dark Web, cybercrime, and lesser known Internet services.
This week’s story line up includes: A call to block Tor in the European Union; Mimikatz, a key hacking tool; and SSL/TLS exploits; a look at IntSights’ marketing of its intelligence software and services; and a Bitcoin poster boy captured in Australia.
This week’s feature reviews IntSights, a cyber intelligence firm which has experienced rapid growth. Most firms providing services to law enforcement and intelligence agencies maintain a low profile. IntSights has published a sponsored book and promoted Digital Risk Protection for Dummies written by a former Forrester consultant. The company also released some financial information, which is a departure from the less open approach taken by other companies in this low profile niche.
The second major story concerns the founder of Auscoin, an Australian digital currency. The Australian Federal Police arrested an advocate of Bitcoin for dealing in controlled substances and operating a drug syndicate. The AFP seized about 60 pounds of cocaine, MDMA, and methamphetamines and the alleged wrongdoer’s bright green Lamborghini. Now faced with 14 charges related to controlled substances, the association of criminal activity and digital currency is difficult to ignore.
The “Cybershots” for this week include:
1. Wolfgang Sobotka’s call for blocking access to Tor (The Onion Router) within the European Union. Tor facilitates access to hidden Web sites, some of which facilitate the sale of drugs and other contraband. Tor may be criminalized after Sobotka’s presentation at the February 2019 European Police Congress.
2. The Mimikatz hacking tool is widely used by hackers around the world. DarkCyber describes this free software and explains where it can be obtained.
3. As cyber security becomes more effective, wrongdoers are seeking new ways to compromise systems. One active approach is to compromise SSL and TLS functions. DarkCyber provides information about obtaining a new, free report about this method of attack written by researchers at Georgia State University and the University of Surrey.
A new blog Dark Cyber Annex is now available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress. Cybercrime, Dark Web, and company profiles are now appearing on a daily basis.
Kenny Toth, March 26, 2019
Quote to Note: HP Boss and the HP Management Style
March 25, 2019
I read “The Tech Lawsuit of the Year: HPE v Mike Lynch and Sushovan Hussain.” The write up contains a remarkable passage. The sentences in the article include a quote to note. Here’s what I circled as memorable. Your mileage may vary, of course:
In court filings seen by The Register, Lynch accused HPE chief exec Meg Whitman of responding to concerns he raised in HP management meetings shortly after the Autonomy buyout by “playing country music to the meeting [and] instructing the senior executives attending to take the meaning of the country music songs and apply them to their own management methods”. Lynch also claimed that he was “placed on gardening leave for six months” after telling Whitman that “we are now rapidly losing a lot of good people”.
For me the description of management approach sounds a chime of truth. Here is the statement next to which I placed an exclamation point and a note to myself saying, “Yes”:
playing country music to the meeting [and] instructing the senior executives attending to take the meaning of the country music songs and apply them to their own management methods“. [emphasis added]
As I considered this observation, two songs in the genre of country, particularly the Wild West of Silicon Valley, activated:
- I’d Be Better Off in a Pine Box
- I Bought the Boots That Just Walked Out On Me.
HP and its management methods?
Stephen E Arnold, March 25, 2019
Amazonia for March 25, 2019
March 25, 2019
The Bezos bulldozer has encountered a landscape with tropical weathered granite. The diesel engine is under some stress.
Amazon Brands: Not Like Costco’s
Bloomberg reported that Amazon is not batting 1.000 with its house brands. “Most Amazon Brands Are Duds, Not Disrupters, Study Finds” asserts:
Turns out most Amazon-branded goods are flops that don’t threaten other businesses at all, according to Marketplace Pulse. In a study, the New York e-commerce research firm examined 23,000 products and found that shoppers aren’t more inclined to buy Amazon brands even when the company elevates them in search results.
Unlike the “your motherboard is compromised”, this write up has a source, Marketplace Pulse. Not much information about the methodology, but that’s par for the “real news” putting course.
Why the NYC Queens’ Disintegrated
I noted this write up in the Daily Mail, a remarkable source of information:
Mayor Bill De Blasio Implies That Jeff Bezos’ High-Profile Affair with News Anchor Lauren Sanchez Was the Reason Amazon Pulled Out of Its New York Headquarters Deal
The write up states:
De Blasio hinted that the Amazon CEO’s affair with news anchor Lauren Sanchez that erupted in the public eye ruined Amazon’s plans to create a sprawling headquarters. ‘I think we can all say that unusual things were happening within the Amazon family at that time. And that was said politely. There was clearly some unusual factors happening,’ de Blasio said with a smirk on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday.
I found the phrase “pulled out” and the use of the word “smirk” interesting. There was a source: another news organization’s interview.
Preparing for the Amazon Revolution
Biz Journals reported that Amazon is continuing its effort create Amazon savvy technologists. According to “Amazon Web Services Joins Capital CoLAB, an Effort to Prepare Young Workers for Tech Jobs”:
Capital CoLAB members help train students for STEM-related fields through programs and internships…The program strives to equip students with skills for areas such as data analytics, visualization and cybersecurity.
No mention appeared about getting the skills needed to work in an Amazon warehouse or driver an Amazon Sprinter delivery van. No tech skills needed I assume.
uDroppy Picks Up AWS Speed
A uDroppy executive explains how to use an AWS API call to eliminate the cost of a traditional file upload. The trick is to remember that Amazon’s S3 is a storage service, not a content delivery network. The write up explains:
The client sends the file via a PUT HTTP request to S3, and if all requirements are satisfied the file is correctly uploaded. The benefit of this approach is that our server has to handle just a simple API call where there’s no file data. The upload itself is processed by the client, leaving our server free and ready to process the next request very quickly. As you can imagine this method is very scalable, and at the same time not very expensive.
Trick or feature? The write up does not express an opinion.
Sisense: A Cyber Intel and Analytics Vendor Joins the Amazon Bandwagon
Amazon has a number of cyber intelligence and analytics companies as clients. According to “Sisense Accelerates Cloud Analytics with Amazon Web Services”:
the release of its new Elastic Data Hub, a unique offering in the BI space that allows organizations to easily connect and mashup live, real-time data with cached in-memory data on the same dashboard. This breakthrough offering leverages Sisense powerful, live data connector with Amazon Redshift from Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), a fast and powerful, fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud.
Is Amazon becoming the “roundhouse” for the cyber intelligence high speed trains?
Amazon: Squeezing Elastic
If you want a run down of Amazon’s squeezing of the Elastic open source Elasticsearch system, navigate to “With its Elasticsearch Distribution, Amazon Web Services Sends More Shockwaves Through Open-Source Software.” For many cyber intelligence companies, Elasticsearch is useful because it provides utility search and can accommodate add ins, add ons, proprietary modules, and the other enhancements. The article states:
Elastic CEO Shay Banon did not take kindly to AWS’s move, suggesting in his own blog post last week that AWS first approached Elastic wanting “preferential treatment” compared to other customers before Elastic said no and AWS released its version. “We have a commitment that we will treat a single developer contributing to our products the same as others,” he wrote.
More excitement to follow as Amazon implements its version of IBM’s approach to software lock in.
Pinterest Spend at AWS
GeekWire reported that Pinterest cut a deal with Amazon Web Services that requires it to spend $750 million by 2023.
AWS Embraces Nvidia Server Chips
Marketwatch reported that Nvidia’s latest server chips have now been adopted by AWS. Google and Alibaba also use the company’s silicon. Marketwatch stated:
The Santa Clara, Calif.,-based chip maker said its T4 Tensor Core graphics processing units, or GPUs, would be deployed to Amazon Web Services through Elastic Compute Cloud G4 in the coming weeks. While other public cloud services have been chipping away at market share over the past few years, Amazon’s AWS still ranks as a global market-share leader in public cloud services.
Stephen E Arnold, March 25, 2019
Forbes Raises Questions about Facebook Encryption
March 25, 2019
I am never sure if a story in Forbes (the capitalist tool) is real journalism or marketing. I was interested in a write up called “Could Facebook Start Mining Decrypted WhatsApp Messages For Ads And Counter-Terrorism?” The main point is that Facebook encryption could permit Facebook to read customers’ messages. The purpose of such access would be to sell ads and provide information to “governments or harvesters.” The write up states:
The problem is that end-to-end encryption only protects a message during transit. The sender’s device typically retains an unencrypted copy of the message, while the recipient’s device necessarily must decrypt the message to display to the user. If either of those two devices have been compromised by spyware, the messages between them can be observed in real-time regardless of how strong the underlying encryption is.
No problem with this description. Intentionally or unintentionally, the statement makes clear why compromising user devices is an important tool in some government’s investigative and intelligence toolbox. Why decrypt of the bad actor’s mobile device or computer just emails the information to a third party?
I noted this statement as well:
The messaging app itself has access to the clear text message on both the sender and recipient’s devices.
If I understand the assertion, Facebook can read the messages sent by its encrypted service.
The write up asserts:
As its encrypted applications are increasingly used by terrorists and criminals and to share hate speech and horrific content, the company will come under further pressure to peel back the protections of encryption.
Even if Facebook wants to leave encrypted information in unencrypted form, outside pressures may force Facebook to just decrypt and process the information.
The conclusion of the write up is interesting:
Putting this all together, it is a near certainty that Facebook did not propose its grand vision of platform-wide end-to-end encryption without a clear plan in place to ensure it would be able to continue to monetize its users just as effectively as in its pre-encryption era. The most likely scenario is a combination of behavioral affinity inference through unencrypted metadata and on-device content mining. In the end, as end-to-end encryption meets the ad-supported commercial reality of Facebook, it is likely that we will see a dawn of a new era of on-device encrypted message mining in which Facebook is able to mine us more than ever under the guise of keeping us safe.
Speculation? Part of the capitalist toolkit it seems. Is there a solution? The write up just invokes Orwell. Fear, uncertainty, doubt. Whatever sells. But news?
Stephen E Arnold, March 25, 2019
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
