Articles and Columns for April 2024

• Violence Against Women and International Law, April 2024 Update – Sabrina I. Pacifici’s April update comprises recent news, reporting and social media postings. It also includes a report issued by the UN acknowledging that…”Based on the information it gathered, the mission team found clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment has been committed against hostages and has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing against those still held in captivity.”
• Move Over Law Professors? AI Likes to Write Law Review Articles Too! – Sarah Gotschall describes this deep dive into how AI is used to write law review articles, with illustrations that detail the complexity and limitations of the effort. Claude (aka the illustrious author Claudia Trey) penned a 77-page extensively footnoted law review article on SSRN entitled “Bloodlines Over Merits: Exposing the Discriminatory Impact of Legacy Preferences in College Admissions.” Though not setting the world on fire in the sense that the article is interesting or that anyone wants to read it, it showcases Claude’s abilities. Now, we all know that AI text generators can churn out an endless stream of words on just about any topic if you keep typing in the prompts. However, Claude can not only generate well-written text, but it can also provide footnotes to primary legal materials with minimal hallucination, setting it apart from other AI text generators such as ChatGPT-4. And, although Claude’s citations to other sources are generally not completely accurate, it is usually not too difficult to find the intended source or a similar one based on the information supplied.
• AI in Banking and Finance, April 30, 2024 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches 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. Four highlights from this post: Banks told to anticipate risks from using AI, machine learning; Banks don’t talk about the energy AI guzzles. Here’s why they should; Chatbot answers are all made up. This new tool helps you figure out which ones to trust; and AI is becoming a big deal for big banks.
• FTC Cracks Down on Telehealth Addiction Service, Monument, for Sharing Health Data – Katie Palmer reports on the April 11, 2024 Federal Trade Commission action against alcohol addiction telehealth company Monument, affirming its promise to crack down on digital health companies’ misuse of personal health data.
• TikTok fears point to larger problem: Poor media literacy in the social media age – In the past few years, Professor Nir Eisikovits and his colleagues at UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center have been studying the impact of AI systems on how people understand themselves. Here’s why I think the recent move against TikTok misses the larger point: Americans’ sources of information have declined in quality and the problem goes beyond any one social media platform.
• Climate change is shifting the zones where plants grow – With the arrival of spring in North America, many people are gravitating to the gardening and landscaping section of home improvement stores, where displays are overstocked with eye-catching seed packs and benches are filled with potted annuals and perennials. But some plants that once thrived in your yard may not flourish there now. To understand why, Dr. Matt Kasson looks to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent update of its plant hardiness zone map, which has long helped gardeners and growers figure out which plants are most likely to thrive in a given location.
• AI in Banking and Finance, April 15, 2024 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government reports, NGO/IGO papers, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches 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. Six highlights from this post: Economics of Artificial Intelligence: Political Economy Challenges; Artificial Intelligence Ethics for the Estate Planner; AI Could Soon Replace Entry-Level Wall Street Analysts; Economics of Artificial Intelligence: Political Economy Challenges; Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Financial Services; and City of London leaders turn to AI bots to fight financial crime.
• What Happens When Your Art is Used to Train AI – A conversation with web cartoonist Dorothy Gambrell on the curdled internet, labor, and how we became just numbers.
• Trapped in Darkness: Women in Europe remain defenseless against gender-based violence – A new cross-border data investigation by the European Journalism Network reveals gaps in the registration of femicides in Europe and the ineffective protection of women against crimes of sexual, physical, psychological and economic violence over the last decade. Reporting by Janine Louloudi, Nikos Morfonios, and Kostas Zafeiropoulos.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 27, 2024 – Four highlights from this week: Why Microsoft is a national security threat; You Should Make Your Apple ID Recoverable Right Now; How to change your Social Security Number; and Cops Are Now Using AI to Generate Police Reports.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 20, 2024 – Four highlights from this week: 1st-of-its-kind law protects ‘neural data’; Chinese Mafias’ New US Goldmine: Gift Cards; Fair Digital Finance Framework; and The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 13, 2024 –Four highlights from this week: Hijacked Facebook Pages are pushing fake AI services to steal your data; China-backed operatives used fake social profiles to gauge US political division, Microsoft says; LastPass: Hackers targeted employee in failed deepfake CEO call; Insurers Are Spying on Your Home From the Sky; and Hospital websites share visitors’ data with Google, Meta.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 6, 2024 –Four highlights from this week: Cyber Safety Review Board: Microsoft security culture; DA says he shut down 21 sites stealing millions through crypto scams ‘inadequate’; CISA Publishes New Webpage Dedicated to Providing Resources for High-Risk Communities; and Does wiretap law apply to cookies on hospital websites?

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