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Category Archives: E-Records

The Nightmare of AI-Powered Gmail Has Arrived

New York Mag – The Intelligencer: “With the release of tools like DALL-E and ChatGPT, Google — once the presumptive industry leader in artificial-intelligence research — suddenly finds itself playing catch-up. The rise of OpenAI was reportedly a “code red” emergency at the company, which had quietly been working on, but not really releasing, similar tools for years. Now, quickly, Google is retrofitting its product line with AI. Last month, it demonstrated its take on a chatty version of its search engine. Yesterday, it shared more details about AI-assisted Gmail and Google Docs. In Gmail, there are tools that will attempt to compose entire emails or edit them for tone as well as tools for ingesting and summarizing long threads. In Docs, there are tools for generating text from simple prompts or other content. A lengthy email discussion is turned into a “brief” and then a slide deck, which is then illustrated with generated imagery…

Google has AI tools ttools for summarizing long emails and threads. Tools for shortening content. Tools for ingesting and filtering out the massive quantities of material generated in the world, by people or maybe machines, and synthesizing it into something useful, actionable, or just legible…”

North Korean hackers using Chrome extensions to steal Gmail emails

Bleeping Computer: “A joint cybersecurity advisory from the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the National Intelligence Service of the Republic of Korea (NIS) warn about Kimsuky’s use of Chrome extensions to steal target’s Gmail emails. Kimsuky (aka Thallium, Velvet Chollima) is a North Korean threat group that uses spear… Continue Reading

TSA confirms plans to mandate mug shots for domestic air travel

Papers Please: “In an on-stage interview [March 14, 2023] at South By Southwest by a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, the head of the US Transportation Security Administration made explicit that the TSA plans to make collection of biometric data mandatory for airline travel: According to a report in [March 15, 2023] of the… Continue Reading

Why You Should Opt Out of Sharing Data With Your Mobile Provider

Krebs on Security: “A new breach involving data from nine million AT&T customers is a fresh reminder that your mobile provider likely collects and shares a great deal of information about where you go and what you do with your mobile device — unless and until you affirmatively opt out of this data collection. Here’s… Continue Reading

Can chatbots remember what you type? NCSC issues warning

TechHQ: “Being careful with whom you share your secrets is always good advice. And that tip applies to advanced chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In fairness, OpenAI does provide user guidelines in its FAQs. “We are not able to delete specific prompts from your history,” writes the developer. “Please don’t share any sensitive information in… Continue Reading

16 Agencies Create One Confidential Data Process to Rule Them All

NextGov: “Through three years, 16 federal agencies, more than 1,300 datasets and a cascade of privacy laws and interagency agreements underpinned by decades-old entrenched processes, a team of federal employees launched the Standard Application Process in December, creating for the first time a single portal for U.S. researchers to request access to the mountains of… Continue Reading

Don’t get hacked on Facebook. Do these 6 things now.

Washington Post: “Everyone is a potential target for hackers on Facebook. Even you. Grandparents who only post the occasional photos, people checking in on their neighborhood groups, and Gen Zers who think they can spot a scam a mile away are all vulnerable. We know because it is overwhelmingly the biggest problem we hear about… Continue Reading

The stupidity of AI

The Guardian: “Artificial intelligence in its current form is based on the wholesale appropriation of existing culture, and the notion that it is actually intelligent could be actively dangerous.. The entirety of this kind of publicly available AI, whether it works with images or words, as well as the many data-driven applications like it, is… Continue Reading

ChatGPT and AI Applications for In-house Lawyers

ACC Docket: “The explosive emergence of ChatGPT as a consumer tool has catapulted Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its subfield, natural language processing (NLP), to the technology stage. As AI and NLP continue to evolve, the use of AI-powered tools, such as the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), in the legal industry has become increasingly prevalent. Many… Continue Reading

ClearGov Launches ChatGPT Tool for Municipal Budgets

Government Technology: “ChatGPT is getting a chance to prove itself in municipal budgeting via a new tool from Massachusetts-based government technology vendor ClearGov. AI is perhaps the hottest new thing in gov tech, poised to play a role in everything from education to transit to public agency communications. Few tasks are more important to government… Continue Reading

Americans Can’t Consent to Companies Use of their Data

Americans Can’t Consent – Companies’ Use of Their Data – They Admit They Don’t Understand It, Say They’re Helpless to Control It, and Believe They’re Harmed When Firms Use Their Data —Making What Companies Do Illegitimate: A Report from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania – “Overview – Consent has always been a… Continue Reading

Satellite data: The other type of smartphone data you might not know about

Via LLRX – Satellite data: The other type of smartphone data you might not know about – Subject matter experts Tommy Cooke. Alicia Sabatino, Benjamin Muller and Kirstie Ball used critical code and documentary research methods to identify that raw satellite location measurement data are perpetually created in our devices all the time. Because satellite data… Continue Reading