That is as we speak’s version of The Obtain, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a day by day dose of what’s happening on the earth of know-how.
It’s shockingly simple to purchase delicate information about US navy personnel
For as little as $0.12 per document, information brokers within the US are promoting delicate non-public information about each active-duty navy members and veterans, together with their names, addresses, geolocation, web price, and faith, and details about their kids and well being circumstances.
In an unsettling examine revealed as we speak, researchers from Duke College approached 12 information brokers and bought 1000’s of data about American service members with minimal vetting.
The examine highlights the acute privateness and nationwide safety dangers created by information brokers. These firms are a part of a shadowy multibillion-dollar business that collects, aggregates, buys, and sells information, practices which are at the moment authorized within the US, exacerbating the erosion of non-public and shopper privateness. Learn the total story.
—Tate Ryan-Mosley
The within scoop on watermarking and content material authentication
Final week, President Biden launched his govt order on AI, a sweeping algorithm and pointers designed to enhance AI security and safety. The order put nice emphasis on watermarking and content material authentication instruments, which intention to label content material to find out whether or not it was made by a machine or a human. The White Home is making a giant guess on these strategies as a approach to battle AI-generated misinformation.
The White Home is encouraging tech firms to create new instruments to assist customers discern if audio and visible content material is AI-generated, and plans to work with the group behind the open-source web protocol referred to as the Coalition for Content material Provenance and Authenticity, or C2PA. Tate Ryan-Mosley, our senior tech coverage reporter, has written a helpful information to C2PA, what it could possibly obtain, and, crucially, what it could possibly’t. Learn the total story.
This story is from The Technocrat, our weekly e-newsletter masking tech and politics Enroll to obtain it in your inbox each Friday.
How AI impacts free speech on-line
AI is all over the place proper now. However whereas it could not have constitutional rights, is the content material it creates or serves up protected speech? That is simply one of many fascinating subjects we’ll be exploring at EmTech MIT 2023, our flagship know-how occasion kicking off 14 November.
You possibly can register now for in-person or digital entry for the two-day occasion. And that’s not all: readers of The Obtain get a particular 30% low cost too—discover out extra right here.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to seek out you as we speak’s most enjoyable/essential/scary/fascinating tales about know-how.
1 Elon Musk’s xAI startup has launched its first chatbot
Full with juvenile jokes and “a rebellious streak.” (WSJ $)
+ Fortunate X subscribers shall be first in line for entry. (TechCrunch)
+ Chatbots have a fair larger hallucination downside than beforehand thought. (NYT $)
2 The Israel-Hamas battle has ushered in a brand new age of disinformation
Researchers say the geopolitical tensions have created never-before-seen ranges of propaganda. (NYT $)
+ Meta’s generative AI stickers are producing youngster troopers. (The Guardian)
Three Europe’s House Summit is kicking off as we speak
Attendees hope to thrash out plans to compete with the US-based SpaceX. (Reuters)
+ SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched for the 18th time on Friday. (Ars Technica)
four Surveillance is huge enterprise lately
And it’s no shock Silicon Valley is sidelining its libertarian ideas to become involved. (Economist $)+ Loads of startups need to promote their AI wares to the US authorities. (NYT $)
+ The world’s largest surveillance firm you’ve by no means heard of. (MIT Expertise Evaluation)
5 Porn deepfakes of teenage ladies are flooding the web
And victims really feel powerless to forestall the onslaught. (WP $)
+A horrifying AI app swaps ladies into porn movies with a click on. (MIT Expertise Evaluation)
6 Tech’s utopian Californian metropolis is gaining traction
The challenge’s billionaire backers are snapping up land, and annoying locals within the course of. (Bloomberg $)
7 Amazon’s supply drone program is 10 years outdated
However how far has it come, actually? (NYT $)
eight The universe is stuffed with large black holes
And the JWST is unearthing an sudden abundance of them. (Wired $)
+ How the James Webb House Telescope broke the universe. (MIT Expertise Evaluation)
9 Animal influencers are the anti-meat motion’s secret weapon
Esther the lovable pig gave meals a face. (Vox)
+ Lab-grown meat simply reached a significant milestone. Right here’s what comes subsequent. (MIT Expertise Evaluation)
10 How AI helps us to decipher the thriller of cats
Algorithms are significantly better at classifying their facial expressions. (The Guardian)
Quote of the day
“I’ll do my very own stunts, yeah. I’ll do all my very own typing.”
—Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang jokes that whereas he thinks Jackie Chan ought to play him in a film model of his life, he’s pleased to behave as his personal hardworking stunt double, Insider studies.
The large story
What does GPT-3 “know” about me?
August 2022
One of many largest tales in tech is the rise of enormous language fashions that produce textual content that reads like a human might need written it.
These fashions’ energy comes from being skilled on troves of publicly obtainable human-created textual content hoovered up from the web. If you happen to’ve posted something even remotely private in English on the web, chances are high your information is perhaps a part of a few of the world’s hottest LLMs.
Melissa Heikkilä, MIT Expertise Evaluation’s AI reporter, puzzled what information these fashions might need on her—and the way it may very well be misused. So she put OpenAI’s GPT-Three to the check. Examine what she discovered.
We will nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre instances. (Obtained any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ These never-before-seen footage of the Rolling Stones are good enjoyable.
+ What’s a Nazgul to do? That weekly store gained’t do itself.
+ RIP Lego Modulex, we hardly knew ye.
+ It seems that the Sphinx could not have been constructed completely from scratch in any case.
+ Charlie from Ladies lived in a real architectural surprise.
