Greetings you ghouls. I hope you’re all having a spooktacular day. Obviously this newsletter got a bit distracted earlier in the week, what with all the pumpkins to be carved and the dressing up to be done.
In the facial recognition naughty corner this week is a piece by Big Brother Watch addressing the use of facial recognition algorithms in retail stores. Its particularly interesting, i think, because of the detail regarding the process for blacklisting people (or the lack thereof). Not to be outdone, however, the NY Times has a piece on how two students rigged smartglasses with facial recognition tech, and used it to retrieve their info – including at times their address and phone number. Yikes.
On the military AI front, The Register has a piece on a new force protection tool that can (apparently) ‘detect and classify persons’ features, their behavior, and whether they’re armed in real time’.
The Washington Post also has a piece on a hospital transcriber tool inventing chat, which could have devastating consequences if used to summarise notes, etc. And which reminds me of a story we featured a while back on the use of similar tools in social care in the UK.
Don’t stress though. Its not all bad.
I hope you all have a lovely week, and weekend.
And obviously, inevitably, this week’s song needs no introduction…
Although, this was a close second.
Oh, and there was a third place runner up.
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The New York Times, Two Students Created Face Recognition Glasses. It Wasn’t Hard. (the consequences, however, may be more difficult to address)
The Register, US Army turns to ‘Scylla’ AI to protect depot
The Washington Post, White House orders Pentagon and intel agencies to increase use of AI
The Register, Google reportedly developing an AI agent that can control your browser
DefenseOne, New rule aims to stop US investors from funding Chinese AI, quantum
DefenseOne, White House issues AI guidelines for national-security agencies
Smithsonian, Amateur Mathematician Discovers the Largest Known Prime Number, With More Than 41 Million Digits (wins $3000 prize, which seems slightly anti-climatic)
AlgorithmWatch, Show Your Face and AI Tells Who You Are
Big Brother Watch, The Spectator – Has your local shop blacklisted you?
Tortoise, Will facial recognition technology transform policing?
Privacy International, Non-fitted devices in the Home Office’s surveillance arsenal: Investigating the technology behind GPS fingerprint scanners | Privacy International
WIRED, Liquid AI Is Redesigning the Neural Network
The New York Times, Yankees have ‘mechanisms’ to keep banned fans from stadium: Source
The Washington Post, Meta’s new fix for locked-out users: scanning their faces
The Guardian, Michael Parkinson is back, with an AI voice that can fool even his own family
The Washington Post, Despite uncertain risks, many turn to AI like ChatGPT for mental health
The Washington Post, Researchers say an AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said
The Conversation, Talking to dead people through AI: the business of ‘digital resurrection’ might not be helpful, ethical… or even legal
The Conversation, Fighting antibiotic resistance at the source – using machine learning to identify bacterial resistance genes and the drugs to block them
WIRED, This Is a Glimpse of the Future of AI Robots
UNESCO, Promoting the Ethical Principles of the Artificial Intelligence at the 2nd Global Forum
Blogs
Just Security, The U.S. National Security Memorandum on AI: Leading Experts Weigh In
Podcast:
The Guardian, AI images, child sexual abuse and a ‘first prosecution of its kind’