Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Category Archives: Legal Research

Generative AI is sliding into the ‘trough of disillusionment’

ComputerWorld: “Market research firm Gartner [requires fee but this article sums up the report well] yesterday published its 2024 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, and the study revealed that generative AI (genAI) has passed the “peak of inflated expectations” and is now sliding down into the “trough of disillusionment.”Along with genAI, AI-augmented software engineering is… Continue Reading

Face Search Engine Reverse Image Search

“PimEyes is an online face search engine that goes through the Internet to find pictures containing given faces. PimEyes uses face recognition search technologies to perform a reverse image search. Find a face and check where the image appears online. Our face finder helps you find a face and protect your privacy. Facial recognition online… Continue Reading

New web crawler launched by Meta last month is quietly scraping the internet for AI training data

Fortune [no paywall]: “Meta has quietly unleashed a new web crawler to scour the internet and collect data en masse to feed its AI model. The crawler, named the Meta External Agent, was launched last month according to three firms that track web scrapers and bots across the web. The automated bot essentially copies, or… Continue Reading

Invisible Rulers – What Really Drives Online Content

Mark Scott, Digital Bridge, Politico: “After years of tracking online disinformation, propaganda and other digital nastiness, Renée diResta sees patterns where others see chaos. In her new book, “Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality,” the former Stanford University researcher tries to parse together a theory about why, seemingly out of the blue,… Continue Reading

EU Proposal for an ePrivacy Regulation

“The European Commission’s proposal for a Regulation on ePrivacy aims at reinforcing trust and security in the digital world. Why a reform of ePrivacy legislation? European legislation needs to keep up with the fast pace at which IT-based services are developing and evolving. The Commission has started a major modernisation process of the data protection… Continue Reading

Americans’ Views on Book Restrictions in U.S. Public Schools 2024

“A study from the Knight Free Expression Research Series produced by Knight Foundation in partnership with Langer Research Associates. Book challenges and restrictions in U.S. public schools have increased dramatically since 2021. Yet research on public awareness, attitudes and engagement in these activities is limited. In an effort to fill this critical knowledge gap in… Continue Reading

Multinational Enterprise Information Platform

Annie Burns-Pieper] via Data is Plural: “The Multinational Enterprise Information Platform, a collaboration between the OECD and the UN Statistics Division, provides publicly sourced data on the 500 multinational corporations with the largest market capitalization. Its “Global Register” dataset examines the companies’ structure, listing each subsidiary’s name, parent company, address, alternative names, and various unique… Continue Reading

Even laypeople use legalese

Even laypeople use legalese Eric Martínez, Francis Mollica and Edward Gibson – MIT. Published August 19, 2024. PNAS 121 (35). “Why are laws so complicated? Across two preregistered experiments, we found that people tasked with writing official laws wrote in a more convoluted manner than when tasked with writing unofficial legal texts of equivalent conceptual… Continue Reading

Rejecting Dogmas Around AI, User Privacy, and Tech Policy

Via LLRX – Rejecting Dogmas Around AI, User Privacy, and Tech Policy – The Markup’s Ross Teixeira had a virtual discussion with Jonathan Frankle, Chief Scientist at DataBricks, about the the ethics of companies using customer data to train models, the growing trend of integrating AI models into our personal devices and lives, and how people can… Continue Reading

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

Via LLRX – 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… Continue Reading

National Public Data Published Its Own Passwords

Krebs on Security: “New details are emerging about a breach at National Public Data (NPD), a consumer data broker that recently spilled hundreds of millions of Americans’ Social Security Numbers, addresses, and phone numbers online. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that another NPD data broker which shares access to the same consumer records inadvertently published the passwords… Continue Reading