Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 18, 2023

Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 18, 2023 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Commerce, EU Data Protection, Government Documents, Legal Research, Privacy

How should AI systems behave, and who should decide?

Open AI : “We’re clarifying how ChatGPT’s behavior is shaped and our plans for improving that behavior, allowing more user customization, and getting more public input into our decision-making in these areas. OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) By AGI, we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically …

Subjects: AI, Internet, Knowledge Management

Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

The Economist: “That could have big political ramifications. For Adah Crandall, a high-school student in Portland, Oregon, a daily annoyance is family members asking when she is going to learn to drive. Ms Crandall, who is 16, has spent a quarter of her life arguing against the car-centric planning of her city. At 12 she …

Subjects: Climate Change, Courts, Environmental Law, Legal Research

PFAS Central

PFAS Central: “It’s impossible to completely avoid PFAS, a class of human-made chemicals that has been linked to a growing list of serious medical concerns. There are thousands of types of PFAS, and many are not well studied. Yet they’re in everything from stain-resistant rugs to dental floss, outdoor gear, food packaging and soil. “These …

Subjects: Environmental Law, Food and Nutrition, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research

The Future of Long COVID

The Atlantic – This emergency is not about to end. By Katherine J. Wu – “In the early spring of 2020, the condition we now call long COVID didn’t have a name, much less a large community of patient advocates. For the most part, clinicians dismissed its symptoms, and researchers focused on SARS-CoV-2 infections’ short-term …

Subjects: Health Care, Medicine

UChicago scientists develop new tool to protect artists from AI mimicry

University of Chicago News: “A new tool allows artists to upload digital images with slight changes that are nearly invisible to the human eye, but confound AI art generators searching for references. “Glaze” program makes miniscule changes to confound AI art generators. Last year, the arrival of powerful AI models capable of generating original images …

Subjects: AI, Intellectual Property, Internet, Legal Research

How to Watch Hundreds of Free Movies on YouTube

Open Culture: “We lived in the age of movie theaters, then we lived in the age of home video, and now we live in the age of streaming. Like every period in the history of cinema, ours has its advantages and its disadvantages. The quasi-religiosity of the cinephile viewing experience is, arguably, not as well …

Subjects: Internet

How does an EV battery actually work?

MIT Technology Review: “Are lithium batteries sustainable enough to fulfill the dream of the electric-car revolution? The batteries propelling electric vehicles have quickly become the most crucial component, and expense, for a new generation of cars and trucks. They represent not only the potential for cleaner transportation but also broad shifts in geopolitical power, industrial …

Subjects: Climate Change, Environmental Law, Transportation

Microsoft and the unreliable AI chatbot

Futurism: “Microsoft has finally spoken out about its unhinged AI chatbot. In a new blog post, the company admitted that its Bing Chat feature is not really being used to find information — after all, it’s unable to consistently tell truth from fiction — but for “social entertainment” instead. The company found that “extended chat …

Subjects: AI, Internet, Knowledge Management, Microsoft, Search Engines

Worsening climate shocks risk distracting from efforts to reduce carbon emissions, creating ‘doom loop’

“The world is entering a more difficult stage of the climate and ecological crisis where its symptoms are drawing attention away from efforts to tackle its root causes, according to a new report published by the IPPR and Chatham House think tanks. Huge resources are being deployed to respond to the growing number of climate …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Economy, Energy

Publishers Want to End How Libraries Lend Books Online

Medium: “When the pandemic began and schools and libraries around the country were forced to close their doors, teachers and librarians were at a loss over how to get digital books into the hands of young readers and their families. The problem was so drastic that the Internet Archive (IA), a nonprofit digital library, declared …

Subjects: Copyright, Courts, Digital Rights, Economy, Libraries