Category «Search Engines»

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, November 9, 2024

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Turning On “Do Not Track” Is Practically Useless; Using Google Authenticator? Read this; She Tried to Opt Out of Election Texts, Got a ‘Text-Pocalypse’; and Google Asked to Remove 10 Billion “Pirate” Search Results.

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Legal Research, Search Engines

How your online world could change if big tech companies like Google are forced to break up

The Department of Justice may be on the verge of seeking a break-up of Google in a bid to make it less dominant. Renaud Foucart explains that if the government goes ahead and is successful in the courts, it could mean the company being split into separate entities – a search engine, an advertising company, a video website, a mapping app – which would not be allowed to share data with each other.

Subjects: E-Commerce, Legal Research, Search Engines, United States Law

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 21, 2024

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: FTC Says Social Media Platforms Engage in ‘Vast Surveillance’ of Users; AI voices are officially too realistic; Tor Network Denies Report That ‘Anonymity Is Completely Canceled’; ‘Terrorgram’ Charges Show US Has Had Tools to Crack Down on Far-Right Terrorism All Along; and DuckDuckGo Joins AI Chat, Promises Enhanced Anonymity.

Subjects: AI, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Internet Trends, Privacy, Search Engines, Search Strategies, Social Media, Spyware, Technology Trends

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 14, 2024

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Why digital identity should be a priority for the next president; Google, TSA Testing New “ID Pass” in Wallet, Created by Scanning Passport; Google sued over AI-driven tool for customer service call review; and Reolink’s battery-powered security camera can record for days without subscription fees; and This Tool Finds Matching Usernames Across 400 Social Media Networks.

Subjects: AI, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Financial System, Law Library Management, Privacy, Search Engines, Search Strategies

ChatGPT is bullshit

Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce human-like text and dialogue. Applications of these systems have been plagued by persistent inaccuracies in their output; these are often called “AI hallucinations”. Dr. Michael Townsen Hicks, Dr. James Humphries and Dr. Joe Slater argue that these falsehoods, and the overall activity of large language models, is better understood as bullshit in the sense explored by Frankfurt (On Bullshit, Princeton, 2005): the models are in an important way indifferent to the truth of their outputs. They distinguish two ways in which the models can be said to be bullshitters, and argue that they clearly meet at least one of these definitions. They further argue that describing AI misrepresentations as bullshit is both a more useful and more accurate way of predicting and discussing the behaviour of these systems.

Subjects: AI, Big Data, Information Management, Internet Resources, KM, Legal Research, Search Engines, Technology Trends

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, August 17, 2024

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Six highlights from this week: How to stop the government from deleting itself; Six ransomware gangs behind over 50% of 2024 attacks; Thousands of Corporate Secrets Were Left Exposed. This Guy Found Them All; The California Journalism Preservation Act takes a step forward; Microsoft Tweaks Fine Print To Warn Everyone Not To Take Its AI Seriously; Study finds 94% of business spreadsheets have critical errors.

Subjects: AI, Business Research, Competitive Intelligence, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Economy, Financial System, Freedom of Information, Government Resources, Legal Research, Privacy, Search Engines

Power-hungry AI is driving a surge in tech giant carbon emissions. Nobody knows what to do about it

Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, the world has seen an incredible surge in investment, development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) applications. According to one estimate, the amount of computational power used for AI is doubling roughly every 100 days. Researchers Gordon Noble and Fiona Berry turn our attention to the environmental impacts which have been largely overlooked. A single query to an AI-powered chatbot can use up to ten times as much energy as an old-fashioned Google search.

Subjects: AI, Energy, Search Engines, Technology Trends

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, August 9, 2024

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Nearly 3 billion people just had their data leaked!!; Text message exploits are scarier than ever, but you can protect yourself with these tips; Government IT systems in the hands of a single vendor puts agencies at risk; Apple says Safari protects your privacy. We fact-checked those claims; and Lawmakers look to clarify electronic medical device use in secure facilities.

Subjects: Big Data, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Data Mining, Financial System, Healthcare, Privacy, Search Engines, Search Strategies, Social Media