Articles and Columns for July 2023

• Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) 2023 – As stated by Ethereum, “a DAO is a collectively-owned, blockchain-governed organization working towards a shared mission.” Marcus P. Zillman features resources on how DAOs can impact business operations, identifies challenges to participation, and delivers a diverse bibliography of NFT resources that includes governance, regulation, blockchain and law.
• AI in Banking and Finance – July 30, 2023 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government reports and industry white papers as well as academic papers on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions. Each entry includes the publication name, date published, article title and abstract. Four highlights from this week: What The Generative AI Boom Means For Your Job, The Economy And The S&P 500; BloombergGPT: A Large Language Model for Finance; Generative AI and the future of work in America; and Will AI Cause ‘Explosive’ Economic Growth?
• AI in Banking and Finance – July 15, 2023 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government reports and industry white papers as well as academic papers on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions. Each entry includes the publication name, date published, article title and abstract. Four highlights from this week: OECD: 60% of finance and manufacturing workers fear AI replacement; Wharton professor says ‘things that took me weeks to master in my PhD’ take ‘seconds’ with new ChatGPT tool; AI, trust, and data security are key issues for finance firms and their customers; and Finance Professionals May Find A Research Assistant In AI.
• How book-banning campaigns have changed the lives and education of librarians – Nicole A. Cooke, Augusta Baker Endowed Chair and a Professor at the School of Library and Information Science, at the University of South Carolina, identifies the significant and socially charged work of librarians who are defending the rights of readers and writers in the battles raging across the U.S. over censorship, book challenges and book bans. Cooke states, “as long as there have been book challenges, there have been those who defend intellectual freedom and the right to read freely. Librarians and library workers have long been crucial players in the defense of books and ideas. At the 2023 annual American Library Association Conference, scholar Ibram X. Kendi praised library professionals and reminded them that “if you’re fighting book bans, if you’re fighting against censorship, then you are a freedom fighter.”
• Why Does the U.S. Copyright Office Require Libraries to Lie to Users about Their Fair Use Rights? They Won’t Say – Rick Anderson, University Librarian at Brigham Young University, contends that the copyright warning notice prescribed by the US Copyright Office misleads library patrons about their fair use rights, and must change.
• Eliminating bias in AI may be impossible – a computer scientist explains how to tame it instead – Professor Emilio Ferrara supports the position that removing bias from AI is a laudable goal, but blindly eliminating biases can have unintended consequences. Instead he suggests that bias in AI can be controlled to achieve a higher goal: fairness.
• FTC probe of OpenAI: Consumer protection is the opening salvo of US AI regulation – As a researcher of social media and AI, Prof. Anjana Susarla recognizes the immensely transformative potential of generative AI models, but believes that these systems pose risks. In particular, in the context of consumer protection, these models can produce errors, exhibit biases and violate personal data privacy.
• Law Unlimited: Welcome to the re-envisioned legal profession – Will Generative AI destroy law firms? Jordan Furlong argues this may only occur if lawyers are too fixed in their ways to see the possibilities that lie beyond who we’ve always been and what we’ve always done.
• LegalTech’s AI Race: A Sign of What’s to Come – Nicole L. Black notes the milestone of Thomson Reuters announcement that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Casetext, a legal research software company, for $650 million. For the past decade, Casetext has provided a legal research platform grounded in AI technology. The company consistently developed innovative features that utilized AI technology to streamline legal research and brief creation, most recently releasing CoCounsel, a generative AI legal assistant tool powered by GPT-4, which is the same technology that powers ChatGPT Plus.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, July 29, 2023 – Four highlights from this week: New Tool Shows if Your Car Might Be Tracking You, Selling Your Data; Crypto Sector Is Rife With ‘Fraud’ and ‘Hucksters’ Warns Gary Gensler; This Stalkerware is Spying On Thousands: Here’s What To Do; and How researchers broke ChatGPT and what it could mean for future AI development.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, July 22, 2023 – Four highlights from this week: 81% of Americans unaware digital health apps can sell personal data; How NIST is helping to guide the government conversation on AI; You may deactivate anyone’s WhatsApp account with a simple email; and The scary world of online behavioral advertising.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, July 15 , 2023 – Four highlights from this week: OECD: 60% of finance and manufacturing workers fear AI replacement; Wharton professor says ‘things that took me weeks to master in my PhD’ take ‘seconds’ with new ChatGPT tool; AI, trust, and data security are key issues for finance firms and their customers; and Finance Professionals May Find A Research Assistant In AI.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, July 8, 2023 – Four highlights from this week: New EPIC Report Sheds Light on Generative A.I. Harms; Don’t Store Your Money on Venmo, U.S. Govt Agency Warns (or PayPal); FTC Says Ring Employees Illegally Surveilled Customers, Failed to Stop Hackers from Taking Control of Users’ Cameras; and Twitter withdraws from EU’s disinformation code as bloc warns against hiding from liability.

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