Smart Software: Is Control Too Late Arriving?
January 4, 2020
I read “US Government Limits Exports of Artificial Intelligence Software.” The main idea is that smart software is important. The insight may be arriving after the train has left the station. The trusty Thomson Reuters’ report states:
It comes amid growing frustration from Republican and Democratic lawmakers over the slow roll-out of rules toughening up export controls, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, urging the Commerce Department to speed up the process.
And the reason (presented via a quote from an expert) seems to be “rival powers like China.”
I took a quick spin through other items in my newsfeed this morning, Saturday, January 3, 2020. Here’s a selection of five items. Remember. It’s Saturday and a day when many Silicon Valley types get ready for some football.
- A.I. Is Learning to Read Mammograms. Will Google keep this technology from other countries? Google is a stakeholder in One Medical. Publicly traded companies have to generate revenue. Will Google and One Medical ignore revenue opportunities?
- A free book “Dive into Deep Learning”. Will this information be limited in its distribution? What about code on GitHub?
- “This Startup Is Raising $7 Million for a Technology That “Can Authenticate People Based on Their Typing Style”. A non US company, now based in Brooklyn, uses AI to identify individuals. What if the technology returns to the land of its birthplace and seeks customers to the East?
- “Mirriad’s AI Slips Ads into Empty Spaces in Online Videos”. Will this Five Eyes’ participant prevent an advertising company from deploying its smart software into other solutions in other countries?
- “Build, Train, and Deploy a Machine Learning Model” Will Amazon limit access to its machine learning how-to content online, at conferences, and in college classrooms?
Not far from where I am writing this, more than 100 exchange students are working in teams to master a range of technologies, including smart software. One group is Chinese; another is German. Will the smart software encountered by these students be constrained in some way? What if the good stuff has been internalized, summarized, and emailed to fellow travelers in another country?
DarkCyber has a question, “Is it perhaps a little late in the game to change the rules?”
Stephen E Arnold, January 4, 2020
Informatica: A Play for Greater Relevance in an Amazon Chess Game?
January 3, 2020
Informatica was set up in 1993. The company was private, then public, and now private. Its new CEO is a former McKinsey professional, a background which some may find reassuring and others terrifying. (McKinsey had a racketeering lawsuit dismissed. How does a consulting firm ensnare itself in an allegation of racketeering? I will leave it to you to answer that question.)
The big news, however, is that Informatica is making an attempt to retain its relevance and increase its impact among Fortune 1000 firms, investment banks, financial services firms, insurance companies, and other blue chip customers.
The method, its seems to DarkCyber, involves Amazon. Keep in mind that Informatica’s previous attempts to add some zing to its quarter century of database-related work involved Microsoft and Salesforce, both next big things.
According to “Informatica Aims to Better Track Data Lineage with AI-Powered Data Catalog,”
its AI-powered data catalog, called Catalog of Catalogs is notable because it is trying to track data lineage across ecosystems. Catalog of Catalogs includes metadata scanners for business intelligence, data warehouses, big data and third party repositories.
The “new” Informatica is represented in this graphic, which has a remarkable resemblance to Amazon Web Services blockchain diagrams:
Is this an Amazon diagram in recognizable AWS orange or an Informatica diagram?
There’s a hook to Amazon’s data marketplace technology, support for Amazon’s smart workflow, and the federation of metadata.
But what’s missing in this real news story?
Googler Does What Google Does Not Like: Talk about the Google
January 3, 2020
I am not sure how this will play out. Google likes employees to do their jobs in between Foosball, riding bikes, and roller blading. Even part timers have to keep quiet.
Medium’s “I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left” is likely to be the subject of some discussion after a tough game of volleyball. The story has legs because the Washington Post has jumped in what is a public relations tsunami. (Note: Paywalled story)
A Xoogler (that’s a former Googler) has talked about the “new” Google. You love, as many do, the GOOG. Apparently there are some flaws. Plus it seems to have taken 11 years to build up sufficient steam to power the Google style brain to write words for public consumption.
And what a write up.
The write up reveals that Google wants Chinese eyeballs:
I then realized that the company had never intended to incorporate human rights principles into its business and product decisions. Just when Google needed to double down on a commitment to human rights, it decided to instead chase bigger profits and an even higher stock price.
The write up states:
Senior colleagues bullied and screamed at young women, causing them to cry at their desks.
The reason for the Googley actions: People and money.
When did these changes take place? The date in the write up is 2008. Sorry. I don’t agree. Google shifted in first when it paid Yahoo to wiggle out of a legal jam about Overture.com ad technology in 2004. Then by 2006, the new and improved Google was ready for the big show. $100 billion in revenue. Stakeholders were really happy campers. A few overnighters sleeping the a Google parking lot may have had visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads too.
Now at least one person seems to care. Why speak out? Generate some political clicks maybe? Tarnish Google?
Stephen E Arnold, January 3, 2020
When Millennials Market, Craziness Ensues
January 3, 2020
How this for logic?
Assertion: What you read in blog posts stopped working months ago.
Logic problem: This assertion appears in a blog post “5 Marketing Trends for 2020 by a Grumpy Martech CEO.”
Observation: The statement is contradicted by its appearance in a blog post.
Your view may be more generous than mine. That’s what makes life interesting.
What else does the write up reveal in its logical flourish?
- Don’t do cold calls. Observation: Yeah, but that’s what conventions are based on. Walking up to a person and introducing oneself and engaging in a conversation. If you do this, your are making a big mistake. Alternative: Telepathy maybe?
- Marketing tools do the same thing. Yeah, that’s a bold statement. But isn’t there a difference between relying on a networking event armed with a — horror of horrors — a printed brochure and buying Google AdWords? Same thing? No, gentle reader. No, no, no.
- Words don’t work. Got it. Videos with music. There you go.
- Use a new channel like a — wait for it — a directory. Example: Capterra? What? Isn’t that a hollow shell with a bit of fluff added for impact.
Amazing!
Stephen E Arnold, January 3, 2019
Are Media Worthless? Matt Taibbi Says Yes
January 3, 2020
Robert Steele, a former US spy whom I know, and also the top reviewer for non-fiction books in English, has published Review: Hate Inc. Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another by Matt Taibbi and given the book five stars, calling it “”totally brilliant.”
I was drawn to this statement in Steele’s review:
There will come a time, guaranteed, when Americans pine for a powerful neither-party-aligned news network, to help make sense of things.
Steele’s review appears to provide a concise summary of the book that those who worry about accuracy, data integrity, ethics, and the concept of social value should find interesting. Steele concludes the review by noting:
The same is true of the intelligence community, and the academy, of non-profits and governments. Keep the money moving, never mind the facts.
Facts? Are facts irrelevant? Steele and Taibbi appear to agree that facts remain important. Dissenters: Possibly the “media?”
Stephen E Arnold, January 3, 2020
Trouble Ahead for Deep Fakes and Fancy Technology?
January 3, 2020
At a New Year’s get together, a person mentioned a review of the film “Cats.” I don’t go to movies, but the person’s comments intrigued me. I returned home and tracked down “How Cats Became a Box Office Catastrophe.”
I noted one sentence in the write which was:
We probably don’t need to remind you of the backlash the internet unleashed upon Cats the moment the Cats trailer dropped. Viewers gasped in horror as Universal’s vision of adding cat fur and features to the proportions of a human body was finally revealed. It was uncomfortable to look at, a clear example of the uncanny valley, where viewers are unsettled by artificially constructed beings that are just shy of realism.
The write then added:
Beyond subjective opinions, critics highlighted several issues including glitchy and unpolished CGI that could have been a result of its rushed production, that took place within a single year. In contrast, this year’s photo-realistic Lion King movie began work in 2016.
Two points: Backlash for the context and the “unpolished CGI.”
What happens when the rough hewn nature of other fantastical technology, swathed in investor hype and marketers’ misrepresentations, is understood?
Exciting for some in 2020.
Stephen E Arnold, January 3, 2020
Cognitive Search: A Silver Bullet?
January 2, 2020
Search is a basic function that requires tinkering to make it intuitive and a useful tool for enterprise systems. In the past, most out of the box search solutions stink and require augmentations from the IT department to work. Enterprise search, however, has dramatically improved and that makes a slow news day for search experts. Most headlines based enterprise search include the latest buzz topics, like, “Significance Of Cognitive Search In The Enterprise” posted on Analytics Insight.
Cognitive search is apparently the newest thing. It is basically enterprise search injected with machine learning/artificial intelligence steroids. An undeniable truth is that enterprise systems are pulling their data across many systems, on site and in the cloud. A good search tool will crawl each dataset and return the most accurate results. Cognitive search uses AI to make search smarter aka “more cognitive,” which basically means the search tool learns from search queries, make search suggestions, and offer predictions. The official jargon sounds smarter:
“Cognitive search is associated with the concept of machine learning, where a computer system processes new insights and convert the way it reacts based on the newly gained data. By using the form of AI, it provides more in-depth search outcomes based on local information, previous search history and other variables. It also brings more specific results to an end-user as the cognitive system learns how an individual or system acts these searches.
This makes the cognitive search method a variable implementation into an enterprise’s network search capability.”
In other words, based off the latest technology craze enterprise search is going to become smarter and more intuitive for users! Blah, blah, semantic search, blah, blah, search engines, blah, blah, algorithms. It is the same “new and improved” spiel that comes every year.
Whitney Grace, January 2, 2020
Alexa, the Mom
January 2, 2020
Amazon not only wants to sell computer technology and every conceivable item on Earth, but the company also wants to move into the healthcare industry. TechCrunch reports that “Amazon Launches Medication Management Features For Alexa.” Amazon’s Alexa, a smart speaker, is useful for a lot of things. Alexa can be used to set reminders, book appointments, order things from Amazon, play music, answer questions, contact emergency services, and spy on users for the CIA or FBI. While the latter has not been confirmed, Amazon wants Alexa to assist people with their medications.
Amazon developed a medication management feature that allows people to set medication reminders and request refills using Alexa. Currently the service is only available at Giant Eagle Pharmacy, a retailer in the Midwest and East Coast. Alexa is a tool of the future and simplifies tasks with vocal commands:
“ ‘Voice has proven to be beneficial for a variety of use cases because it removes barriers, and simplifies daily tasks. We believe this new Alexa feature will help simplify the way people manage their medication by removing the need to continuously think about what medications they’ve taken that day or what they need to take,’ noted Rachel Jiang, Head of Alexa Health & Wellness, in an announcement about the new features. ‘We want to make it easy for people to get the information they need and to manage their healthcare needs at home while maintaining the privacy and security of their information, and hope this feature is a step toward that vision,’ she added.”
Amazon’s move into the healthcare industry includes purchasing online pharmacy PillPack and Health Navigator. Amazon plans to transform Health Navigator into the company’s employee health program dubbed Amazon Care. The biggest barrier Amazon faces is guaranteeing that Alexa follows HIPPA laws. Amazon is developing protocols to be HIPPA compliant, such as deleting voice records from Alexa’s skills and creating personal passcodes. But secure? Surveillance centric? Hmmm.
Whitney Grace, January 2, 2020
Open Source: Big Company Point of View
January 2, 2020
DarkCyber noted a quite good and meaty Slashdot write up called “CNBC Reports Open Source Software Has Essentially ‘Taken Over the World’”. What makes the information interesting is that a big media company reports that other big companies are definitely into open source software. The sources for the information include:
- The Google
- Microsoft GitHub
- IBM Red Hat
There are a couple of slightly less power entities referenced as well; namely, the executive director of the Linux Foundation and a real live open source maintainer.
The main idea is encapsulated in this quote:
Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, even tells CNBC that 10,000 lines of code are added to Linux every day. “It is by far the highest-velocity, the most effective software development process in the history of computing… As the idea of sharing technology and collaborating collectively expands, we’re moving into open hardware initiatives, data-sharing initiatives. And that’s really going to be the future…
The write up does not mention the business actions underway to make open source into a 21st century type of proprietary software.
Perhaps this is not important? DarkCyber’s research team thinks this is important. Oh, there’s one open sourcey outfit not mentioned in the write up. Amazon is beavering away on open source forests as well.
Also, probably not important. Well, maybe Amazon is just a source for T shirts and electronic version of books?
Stephen E Arnold, January 2, 2020
Riding the Hypemobile for Quantum Computing
January 1, 2020
I am convinced that quantum computing will become a useful approach to solving certain types of problems. Google has already claimed the crown of big time quantum computerism. But IBM, by golly, is going to get to the top of the mountain. Too bad the mountain these outfits are confident flies their corporate flags are in China’s AI province. Yeah, China. Bummer.
But there’s hope for countries without big mountains like those like Amne Machin. No, Machin is not a corruption of machine.
Navigate to “Scientists At Lancaster University Use Legos In Quantum Computing Research.” The write up explains, albeit breathlessly:
Scientists at Lancaster University in England conducted an experiment in which they froze several Lego blocks to the lowest possible temperature, and what they discovered could be useful in the development of quantum computing.
Why?
Lego blocks could be used as thermal insulators. Note that some universities have quiet rooms, animals for students to pet, and counseling services available 24×7. Lego blocks, therefore, are likely to be abundant in some university facilities.
How did the experiment go? The write up reports without much enthusiasm:
“While it’s unlikely that Lego blocks per se will be used as a part of a quantum computer, we’ve found the right direction for creating cheap thermal insulators: 3D printing,” Zmeev [a quantum wizard] said. “Lego is made from ABS plastic and one can also create ABS structures simply by 3D printing them. We are currently studying the properties of such 3D printed structures at ultralow temperatures close to absolute zero.”
Ah, 2020 will usher in many insights into quantum computing which is, of course, just around the corner and may already be powering Google’s advertising machine.
Technology marches forward.
Stephen E Arnold, January 1, 2020
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