Google Takes Bullets about Its Smart Software
June 23, 2022
Google continues it push to the top of the PR totem pole. “Google’s AI Isn’t Sentient, But It Is Biased and Terrible” is in some ways a quite surprising write up. The hostility seeps from the spaces between the words. Not since the Khashoggi diatribes have “real news” people been as focused on the shortcomings of the online ad giant.
The write up states:
But rather than focus on the various well-documented ways that algorithmic systems perpetuate bias and discrimination, the latest fixation for some in Silicon Valley has been the ominous and highly controversial idea that advanced language-based AI has achieved sentience.
I like the fact that the fixation is nested beneath the clumsy and embarrassing (and possibly actionable) termination of some of the smart software professionals.
The write up points out that the Google “distanced itself” from the assertion that Alphabet Google YouTube DeepMind’s (AGYT) is smart like a seven year old. (Aren’t crows supposed to be as smart as a seven year old?)
I noted this statement:
The ensuing debate on social media led several prominent AI researchers to criticize the ‘super intelligent AI’ discourse as intellectual hand-waving.
Yeah, but what does one expect from the outfit which wants to solve death? Quantum supremacy or “hand waving”?
The write up concludes:
Conversely, concerns over AI bias are very much grounded in real-world harms. Over the last few years, Google has fired multiple prominent AI ethics researchers after internal discord over the impacts of machine learning systems, including Gebru and Mitchell. So it makes sense that, to many AI experts, the discussion on spooky sentient chatbots feels masturbatory and overwrought—especially since it proves exactly what Gebru and her colleagues had tried to warn us about.
What do I make of this Google AI PR magnet?
Who said, “Any publicity is good publicity?” Was it Dr. Gebru? Dr. Jeff Dean? Dr. Ré?
Stephen E Arnold, June 23, 2022
Mir Books: Filling a Niche
June 23, 2022
Russian literature stereotypically compromises Tolstoy’s novels and works by scientists with unpronounceable names. Another Russian literature stereotype deals with fiction subject matter. It pokes fun at the prolonged, abject suffering of the country, how it has become the standard way of life for them, and that it makes them strong, resilient people. Despite actions by their politicians, the Russian people have a great sense of humor and love joking about their unyielding misery with themselves and foreigners.
As for their non-fiction works, especially in the sciences, there is an entire library of knowledge unknown to the majority of the world. Mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and other scientists are usually the only ones familiar with these works, but these fields have a limited audience.
Mir Books is the name of a defunct Soviet Union publisher as well as a blog maintained by a dedicated fan. The unnamed fan has made it their mission to share these out-of-print titles with the world, because of nostalgia and for posterity.
“An entire generation of Indians came of age with the titles from Mir Publications. But with the end of the Soviet era, the Mir saga came to an end. The Mir titles which at times were cheaply and easily available became scant. And finally ceased to be a part of the mainstream bookshops. The only places one could find them were in the used book shops, and that too became scarce as the years went by. This trend continues till date. To find a Mir title today even in a used book shop is nothing less than a MIRacle!! …
Many of the titles will be lost forever never to delight a new generation of readers. The knowledge that at least these books existed should not be lost. This blog is a project to make a comprehensive list of the titles published by Mir and over the years. So that the knowledge about these titles goes to the larger community, so that in the future someone can take up their digitization and / or republication. I urge and request all the people who owe even a little bit to books by Mir to contribute their knowledge about these books here…”
What is remarkable is that Mir Books published books for the Indian market. India and Russia are not normally associated with each other, but they are close neighbors and it only makes sense they are economic partners, especially in the Soviet age!
The blog creator digitized a lot of rare science texts, but the best are the children’s books. The Soviet Union printed propaganda material just like communist China and Nazi Germany to indoctrinate kids, but they also published educational materials with a Soviet slant. Despite complying with propaganda rules, they do contain scientific facts. The scientists with the unpronounceable names had to get the basics somehow.
Whitney Grace, June 23, 2022
Google Implements Financial Ad Verification System: What Was Inadequate Before This Change?
June 23, 2022
One might think it obvious that ads for financial services should be confirmed as legit, but it seems to have taken the threat of legal action for Google to implement a screening system. TechCrunch reports, “Google Expands Ads Verification Program to Tackle Financial Scams.” The pilot program was launched in the UK last year after that country’s Financial Conduct Authority put pressure on the company. Google has declared the project a success but, we are told, has supplied no evidence to support that claim. Next the company plans to expand the program to Australia, Singapore, and Taiwan with other countries and regions to follow. Writer Natasha Lomas tells us:
“The verification layer sits atop Google’s financial products and services policy — looping in a local financial regulator that advertisers must demonstrate they are authorized by in order to have their financial services ads accepted by Google — thereby adding a layer of security against the adtech giant accepting and running ads for crypto investment scams and the like. In the U.K. the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is the regulatory body that financial services advertisers must demonstrate they are authorized by. Equivalent oversight bodies will come into play in the three new markets. Google said advertisers wanting to promote financial products and services in these markets will be able to apply for verification at the end of June — with the policy slated to go into effect on August 30, 2022.”
After that date, Google promises, any advertisers that have not gone through verification will be dropped. A director at the company asserted:
“We work tirelessly to make sure the ads we serve are safe and trustworthy, and we know that partnering and collaborating with government regulators is critical to our success. That’s why we’re closely coordinating with regulators in these three markets to make sure this program is effective at scale.”
Sure it is. It has nothing to do with the FCA threatening to haul Google into court. That timing must have been pure coincidence.
Cynthia Murrell, June 23, 2022
A Reminder for Those Who Fantasize about Data Sharing: Keep Fantasizing
June 22, 2022
I read “Many Researchers Say They’ll Share Data — But Don’t” reports that a sample of 381 articles produced this finding:
But of the 1,792 manuscripts for which the authors stated they were willing to share their data, more than 90% of corresponding authors either declined or did not respond to requests for raw data (see ‘Data-sharing behaviour’). Only 14%, or 254, of the contacted authors responded to e-mail requests for data, and a mere 6.7%, or 120 authors, actually handed over the data in a usable format.
The “whys” reported in the article are fascinating; for example:
- No informed consent
- No ethics approval to share
- Researchers had “moved on”
- Gee, the dog ate the data
- Language issues (No habla nada) when interpreting comments
- “Fear of getting scooped”
- Data privacy
- Confidentially
- Data misuse downstream by those doing “secondary analyses”
I like the “dog ate my data”, an approach practiced at different times by Googley-type companies, reluctant witnesses, and wizards who produce non-reproducible results.
What about different governments’ desire for agency data sharing? Ho ho ho.
What about companies using the jargon “silo breakers”? Ho ho ho
What about government investigators sharing of data with other government investigators or inspectors general? You kidding or what?
What about researchers at a university with a US government grant? Tenure comes first, then maybe with a trusted post doc on my team and even then… maybe.
Stephen E Arnold, June 22, 2022
Time Warp: Has April Fool Returned Courtesy of the Google?
June 22, 2022
I delivered a lecture on June 16, 2022, to a group of crime analysts in a US state the name of which I cannot spell. In that talk, I provided a bit of information about faked content: Text, audio, video, and combinations thereof. I am asking myself, “Is this article “Ex-Google Worker: I Was Fired to Complaining about Wine Obsessed Religious Sect’s Influence?” “real news”?
My wobbly mental equipment displayed this in my mind’s eye:
Did the Weekly World News base its dinosaur on the one Google once talked about with pride? Dear Copyright Troll, this image appears in Google’s image search. I think this short essay falls into the category of satire or lousy “real journalism.” In any event, I could not locate this cover on the WWN Web site. Here’s a link to the estimable publication.
A dinosaur-consuming-a-humanoid news, right? Thousands of years ago, meh. The Weekly World News reported that a “real journalist” was eaten alive by 80 ft dinosaur.”
What about the Google Tyrannosaurus Rex which may have inspired the cover for my monograph “Google Version 2: The Calculating Predator?” Images of this fine example of Googley humor are difficult to find. You can view one at this link or just search for images on Bing or your favorite Web image search engine. My hunch is that Google is beavering away to make these images disappear. Hopefully the dino loving outfit will not come after me for my calculating predator.
What’s in the Daily Beast article about terminations for complaining about Google wine obsessed sect at the Google?
Let me provide a little reptilian color if I may:
- A religious sect called the Fellowship of the Friends operates in a Google business unit and exerts influence at the company.
- The Fellowship has 12 people working at the online ad giant
- The Fellowship professionals have allegedly been referred to the GOOG by a personnel outfit called Advanced Systems Group
- The so-called “sect” makes wine.
The point that jumps out at me is that Alphabet Google YouTube DeepMind or AGYD people management professionals took an action now labeled as a “firing” or wrongful termination.
Okay, getting rid of an employee is a core competency at AGYD. Managing negative publicity is, it appears, a skill which requires a bit more work. At least the Google dinosaur did not eat the former Google employee who raised a ruckus about a cult, wine, recruitment, etc. etc.
Stephen E Arnold, June 22, 2022
Lawyers Do Ads Just Like Everyone Else
June 22, 2022
A little known fact is that lawyers need to generate sales lead like other industries. Law might be a practice, but its foundation is similar to other fields. ReadWrite explores, “How Lawyers Use Digital Marketing To Generate Qualified Leads.” The article explains that it is necessary to create a sales funnel and use seven lead generation strategies to exploit the funnel for sales.
The seven lead strategies sound awfully generic for anyone attempting to start an online business: identify a niche, outline an ideal lead, develop a unique sales proposition, build a Web site, invest in SEO, launch a PPC campaign, and pay for lead generation services. The last subject heading is “Ready, Set, Grow’ and ends the article on this note:
“You can’t take a shotgun approach to lead generation. It simply doesn’t work in today’s marketplace. There’s far too much saturation in this industry. If you don’t have a disciplined and strategic approach to generating leads, you’ll consistently miss out on new clients at the hands of your competitors.
While no two lead generation strategies are identical, you can use some of the different tips outlined above to create a targeted approach that works for your law firm and your niche. It won’t always be easy, but the hard work of building out a sales funnel will produce fruit over the long run.”
It is a generic encouraging paragraph spliced with lawyer jargon. These sales techniques do work, but there should be an entire paragraph devoted to explaining they take a lot of time and need to be tended like a garden. The article also failed to mention one way to push leads was to publish articles about your expertise and niche services on “news” sites. Think Medium, similar blogs, or even a place like this.
Whitney Grace, June 22, 2022
Dally with Dall-E: Useful or Not?
June 22, 2022
It looks a lot like image-creation AI DALL·E 2 is getting creative with its captions. Wonderful Engineering reports, “This AI Has Apparently Invented Its Own Secret Language—Here Is All You Need to Know.” Writer Rameesha Sajwar tells us:
“By prompting DALL-E 2 to create images containing text captions, then feeding the resulting (gibberish) captions back into the system, the researchers concluded DALL-E 2 thinks Vicootes means ‘vegetables,’ while Wa ch zod rea refers to ‘sea creatures that a whale might eat.’ One possibility is the ‘gibberish’ phrases are related to words from non-English languages. For example, Apoploe, which seems to create images of birds, is like the Latin Apodidae, which is the binomial name of a family of bird species. This seems like a logical explanation. One point that supports this theory is the fact that AI language models don’t read the text the way humans do. Instead, they break input text up into ‘tokens’ before processing it.”
After a brief description of tokenization, the write-up goes on to suggest this phenomenon could be something much more random:
“The ‘secret language’ could also just be an example of the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ principle. DALL-E 2 can’t say I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ so it will always generate an image from the given input text.”
Either way, Sajwar asserts, this “secret language” could provide a route for users to bypass DALL·E 2’s filters that protect against problematic content. Is this an isolated case, or will other AIs generate their own languages? Perhaps they will start using them to talk to each other in secret codes. Uh-oh, a new spin on dallying?
Cynthia Murrell, June 22, 2022
Search the Web: Maybe Find a Nugget or Two for Intrepid Researchers?
June 21, 2022
“A Look at Search Engines with Their Own Indexes” has been updated. The article provides a run down of systems and services which offer Web search services.
Some of the factoids in the article are ones often overlooked by many of the “search experts” generating information about how to find information via open sources. Here are a few which deserve more attention from students of search:
- Bing is the most promiscuous supporter of metasearch
- YaCy is included in the “unusable” category; however, it is not. YaCy has some interesting properties of interest to cyber sleuths
- Neeva’s index is exposed as a mix of some original crawl content with Bing results. (Where’s the Google love for a former Googler’s search system.)
- Qwant is exposed for using Bing data
- Exalead, arguably better than Pertimm which influenced Qwant, takes some bullets. But Dassault is into other, more lucrative businesses than “search”
- Kagi is a for fee service which uses its own index and, like other metasearch systems, taps results from Bing and Google. (Is Google excited yet?)
- The Thunderstone service is noted. (How long has Thunderstone been around? Answer: A long time.)
Worth noting the links. Perhaps someone will create a list of the services indexing content for specialized software applications and government agencies. There are hundreds of “data aggregators” but how does one search them for useful results?
I addressed findability issue in my recent OSINT lecture for the National Cyber Crime Conference attendees and in a follow up session for the Mass. Asso. of Crime Analysts.
Stephen E Arnold, June 21, 2022
Cyber Security: PowerPoints Are Easy. Cyber Security? Not So Much
June 21, 2022
I received a couple of cyber security, cyber threat, and cyber risk reports every week. What’s interesting is that each of the cyber security vendors mentioned in the news releases, articles, and blog posts discover something no other cyber outfit talks about. Curious.
I read “Most Security Product Buyers Aren’t Getting Promised Results: RSA Panel.” The article explains that other people poking around in security have noticed some oddities, if not unexplained cyber threats too.
The article reports:
Hubback [an expert from ISTARI] said that “90% of the people that I spoke to said that the security technologies they were buying from the market are just not delivering the effect that the vendors claim they can deliver. … Quite a shocking proportion of people are suffering from technology that doesn’t deliver.”
I found this factoid in the write up interesting:
…vendors know their product and its strengths and weaknesses, but buyers don’t have the time or information to understand all their options. “This information asymmetry is the classic market for lemons, as described by George Akerlof in 1970,” said Hubback. “A vendor knows a lot more about the quality of the product than the buyer so the vendor is not incentivized to bring high-quality products to market because buyers can’t properly evaluate what they’re buying.”
Exploitation of a customer’s ignorance and trust?
Net net: Is this encouraging bad actors?
Stephen E Arnold, June 21, 2022
TikTok: Allegations of Data Sharing with China! Why?
June 21, 2022
If one takes a long view about an operation, some planners find information about the behavior of children or older, yet immature, creatures potentially useful. What if a teenager, puts up a TikTok video presenting allegedly “real” illegal actions? Might that teen in three or four years be a target for soft persuasion? Leaking the video to an employer? No, of course not. Who would take such an action?
I read “Leaked Audio from 80 Internal TikTok Meetings Shows That US User Data Has Been Repeatedly Accessed from China.” Let’s assume that this allegation has a tiny shred of credibility. The financially-challenged Buzzfeed might be angling for clicks. Nevertheless, I noted this passage:
…according to leaked audio from more than 80 internal TikTok meetings, China-based employees of ByteDance have repeatedly accessed nonpublic data about US TikTok users…
Is the audio deeply faked? Could the audio be edited by a budding sound engineer?
Sure.
And what’s with the TikTok “connection” to Oracle? Probably just a coincidence like one of Oracle’s investment units participating in Board meetings for Voyager Labs. A China-linked firm was on the Board for a while. No big deal. Voyager Labs? What does that outfit do? Perhaps it is the Manchester Square office and the delightful restaurants close at hand?
The write up refers to data brokers too. That’s interesting. If a nation state wants app generated data, why not license it. No one pays much attention to “marketing services” which acquire and normalize user data, right?
Buzzfeed tried to reach a wizard at Booz, Allen. That did not work out. Why not drive to Tyson’s Corner and hang out in the Ritz Carlton at lunch time. Get a Booz, Allen expert in the wild.
Yep, China. No problem. Take a longer-term view for creating something interesting like an insider who provides a user name and password. Happens every day and will into the future. Plan ahead I assume.
Real news? Good question.
Stephen E Arnold, June 21, 2022
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