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Daily Archives: March 13, 2023

Thinking of “hiring” an AI tool for your development needs?

CSO – “Ever since ChatGPT was released in late 2022, the internet has been abuzz with equal parts doom and optimism. Love it or hate it, AI is coming to your development organization. Even if you don’t plan on developing an AI product or hiring an AI development bot to write code for you, it may still be integrated into the tooling and platforms used to build, test, and run your artisanal, handmade source code. And AI tools will bring unique risks that potentially offset the huge gains in productivity offered by automating tasks that once required human brain cycles. These risks stem from how the AI is trained, built, hosted, and used—all of which are different than other software tooling currently used by developers. Understanding risk is the first step in managing it, and to help you understand potential risks associated with your incoming AI tooling, we’ve written some interview questions that should be part of the onboarding process. These questions should be asked regardless of the AI’s type or purpose.

  • Where will it be hosted? Modern AIs currently require dedicated and expensive hardware to do the astounding tasks we’re seeing make headlines today. Unless you’re going to acquire a brand-new data center, your AI bot will work remotely and require the same security considerations as remote human workers using remote access and offsite data storage.
  • What kind of safeguards are in place to prevent IP loss as code leaves the boundary? Everything from smart TVs to cars are reporting usage data to their manufacturers. Some are using that data to improve their software, but others are selling it to advertisers. Understand exactly how your AI tool will use or dispose of source code or other private data it uses for its primary task.
  • Will your inputs be used in future training for the AI? Ongoing training of the AI models will be an increasing area of concern both for owners and those whose data is used to train the model. Owners, for example, may want to keep advertisers from biasing the AI bot in a direction that benefits their clients. Artists who share works online have had AI image-generation bots replicate their styles and are very concerned about the loss or theft of creative identity.
  • What is the fidelity of its results? ChatGPT’s most well-known drawback is the inaccuracy of its results—it will confidently assert falsehoods as truths. This has been referred to as the AI “hallucinating.” Understanding how and where an AI may hallucinate can help manage it when it does…”

These Interactive Tools Reveal Your Home’s Future Flood, Heat, and Wind Risk

Lifehacker: “Floods are the most expensive natural disaster in the United States, costing over $1 trillion since 1980 (when you take inflation into account), according to Flood Defenders. And while many people use FEMA flood maps to check whether their home has a high flood risk, they are outdated by a decade, according to Scientific… Continue Reading

How AI could write our laws

MIT Technology News: “Nearly 90% of the multibillion-dollar federal lobbying apparatus in the United States serves corporate interests. In some cases, the objective of that money is obvious. Google pours millions into lobbying on bills related to antitrust regulation. Big energy companies expect action whenever there is a move to end drilling leases for federal… Continue Reading

Hate crimes in U.S. rose to highest level in 2021, FBI says

Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Data Explorer: “Hate Crime data for the nation are derived from National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and Summary Reporting System (SRS) reports voluntarily submitted to the FBI. The 2021 FBI Hate Crime statistics for the nation are based on data received from 11,883 of 18,812 law enforcement agencies in the… Continue Reading

Why Are We Letting the AI Crisis Just Happen?

The Atlantic: “New AI systems such as ChatGPT, the overhauled Microsoft Bing search engine, and the reportedly soon-to-arrive GPT-4 have utterly captured the public imagination. ChatGPT is the fastest-growing online application, ever, and it’s no wonder why. Type in some text, and instead of getting back web links, you get well-formed, conversational responses on whatever… Continue Reading

Funding news: How Gen Z and Millennials pay for or donate to news

American Press Institute: “As the economics of journalism continue to evolve, a defining question about the future is whether the news media can create content that consumers are willing to pay for or donate to directly. Central to answering that question is understanding the behavior of what many publishers call the next generation of news… Continue Reading

Coral Reefs and Climate Change: A Legal Solution to Preserving Global Ecosystems

ABA: “Coral reefs are dying at a rapid pace. In fact, half of the world’s corals are gone.  The death of these biologically diverse underwater structures will result in job loss, the destruction of crucial ecosystems, and limited food supply to over half a billion people worldwide.  Despite the essential benefits coral reefs bring, reefs… Continue Reading

The Artificial Intelligence Glossary

Law.com – The Artificial Intelligence Glossary  – “A guide to the key terms you need to know and understand when discussing AI. Artificial intelligence is dominating conversations across all industries, including legal. To help legal professionals navigate this fast evolving space, below, we define many of the key terms and concepts relating to AI. This… Continue Reading

OpenCorporates OpenRefine service

Open Refine Reconciliation API: version 0.4.8 – Introduction – The Open Refine Reconciliation API allows OpenRefine users to match company names to legal corporate entities. This is especially useful when you have an existing spreadsheet or dataset featuring lots of companies. Matching (or reconciling) to legal entities allows you to get more information about the… Continue Reading