Articles and Columns for June 2024

• Protecting the Vulnerable: Navigating Online Risks for Minors – Veronica Garrick’s paper is an insightful, factual and timely discussion of how in today’s digital age, minors are exposed to technology at a young age, presenting both great opportunities and risks. Online risks include data privacy breaches, access to inappropriate, cyberbullying, and online child predators. These challenges can have negative long-lasting effects, including privacy, mental, emotional, and physical safety. Addressing these risks associated with increased technology among minors requires a collaborative effort across many sectors. If communities, government, law enforcement, online platforms, and tech companies work together, they can minimize these risks. Once they start prioritizing online safety and implementing new safeguards, children can explore the digital world securely and safely.
• PowerPoint Has Its Problems – Jerry Lawson discusses how antipathy toward slide shows is understandable but misdirected. A slide show is a tool, an instrument like a hammer, airbrush or violin. Lawson advocates the position that good slide shows can help presenters better educate, persuade, and even inspire.
• AI in Banking and Finance, June 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. Six highlights from this post: AI in finance is like ‘moving from typewriters to word processors’; IMF – AI Preparedness Index Dashboard; Broadening the Gains from Generative AI: The Role of Fiscal Policies; Monkeys, Models, And Markets: AI Vs. Behavioral Finance; and Banking on the Future – The Next Era of Fintech.
• Are You a Renaissance Leader? – Kevin Novak continues his discussion on critical strategies and managing people in workplaces which have increasingly shifted to indirect, digitized operations and communications. The basic toolkit for successful leaders has changed and will continue to evolve as the work environment shifts. Leaders still need the basics to run the business, but the role has changed from a top-down decision-maker to an empathetic and facilitative colleague. We know it’s a lot to ask leaders to be group dynamics pros, but person-to-person skills as a wise mentor is invaluable with younger workers. It is and always will be important to “read the room” or in today’s terms “read the screen.”
• Generative AI Resources 2024 – Referencing an article in this month’s Georgetown Law Technology Review, “…traditional AI algorithms normally operate by carrying out a specific function or completing a task using a data set that contains information on how that function or task has previously been done In other words, traditional AI is able to follow a set of rules, make predictions, or utilize instructions to complete a task; but it is not creating anything new in doing so. Generative AI (GAI) has the ability to create something new, specifically new content.” Marcus P. Zillman’s new resource guide spans subject matters including law, economics, education, information technology, planning and strategic deployment and use of GAI, as well a best practices and governance.
• Here’s how machine learning can violate your privacy – Jordan Awan, Assistant Professor of Statistics, Purdue University explains how machine learning has pushed the boundaries in several fields, including personalized medicine, self-driving cars and customized advertisements. Research has shown, however, that these systems memorize aspects of the data they were trained with in order to learn patterns, which raises concerns for privacy.
• Mindful Management: The Power of Gratitude and Building Trust – The post-Covid workplace is one in which the issue of trust, mindfulness and gratitude are increasingly hot button issues. Being grateful is an expectation in our personal lives, yet “gratitude in the workplace is especially critical because it satisfies the higher psychological need to feel a sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves – to feel a sense of meaning at work. Gratitude is seeing and hearing a workforce as a group of individuals. Trust is the foundation that builds a healthy organization. As Kevin Novak explains the combination of the two should be the North Star for retaining a workforce and cultivating its potential.
• AI in Banking and Finance, June 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. Four highlights from this post: Artificial Intelligence and the Skill Premium; Rising Cyber Threats Pose Serious Concerns for Financial Stability; The Future Of Banking: Morgan Stanley And The Rise Of AI-Driven Financial Advice; and The Pitfalls of Mixing Up AI and Automation in Finance.
• Independent voters are few in number, influential in close elections – and hard for campaigns to reach – As the 2024 campaign cycle unfolds, campaign strategists, pollsters and political scientists have been closely watching independent voters. Professor of Political Science Julio Borquez addresses why it appears that independents are important – including to political science scholars like himself.
• Mortgage Brokers Sent People’s Estimated Credit, Address, and Veteran Status to Facebook – When someone applies for a mortgage, they trust a home loan lender or mortgage broker with some of the most sensitive information they have: information about their credit, their home, and the personal details of their lives. Unbeknownst to those prospective homeowners, they may also be sharing that information with Facebook. The Markup tested more than 700 websites that offer loans for people looking to purchase or refinance a home, from major online brokers to lesser-known regional lenders, and found that more than 200 of them share some amount of user data with Facebook. On their sites, these companies embedded the Meta Pixel, a small piece of tracking software that shares visitors’ information with Facebook. As users filled out mortgage applications or requested quotes for mortgage rates, the pixel tracked information about their credit, veteran status, occupation, the specific homes they wanted, and more. Experts told Colin Lecher and Ross Teixeira of The Markup that it might be against the law for mortgage lenders to feed this kind of information to Facebook.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, June 29, 2024 – Five highlights from this week: AI Tools Make It Easy to Clone Someone’s Voice Without Consent; Red Tape Is Making Hospital Ransomware Attacks Worse; Interpol Arrests Almost 4,000 People in Crackdown on International Online Scams; Zero-Day Exploits: Definition & How It Works (With Examples); and U.S. Bans Kaspersky – Here Are the Best Antivirus Alternatives.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, June 22, 2024 – Five highlights from this week: Top news app caught sharing “entirely false” AI-generated news; The Best Free and Paid AI Document Summarizer Tools In 2024; Microsoft: New Outlook security changes coming to personal accounts; Sick of scams? Stop answering your phone; and Feds Sue Adobe for ‘Trapping’ Customers in Long, Expensive Subscriptions.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, June 15, 2024 – Five highlights from this week: Want free and anonymous access to AI chatbots? DuckDuckGo’s new tool is for you; Windows Recall is changing in 3 key aspects after user backslash; Harvard, MIT and Wharton research reveals pitfalls of relying on junior staff for AI training; AI in law enforcement is risky, but holds promise; and The NSA’s guide to keeping your phone and yourself safe.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, June 8, 2024 – Four highlights from this week: The Ticketmaster Data Breach May Be Just the Beginning; The Snowflake Attack May Be Turning Into One of the Largest Data Breaches Ever; You Should Browse With Incognito More Often: Here’s Why; and How algorithms, influencers, and users work together to spread misinformation.

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