Comments
vas pup •
ChatGPT sparks AI investment bonanza
https://www.dw.com/en/chatgpt-sparks-ai-investment-bonanza/a-65368393
“The artificial intelligence (AI) gold rush is truly underway. After the release last November of ChatGPT — a game-changing content-generating platform — by research and development company OpenAI, several other tech giants, including Google and Alibaba have raced to release their own versions.
Investors from Shanghai to Silicon Valley are now pouring tens of billions of dollars into startups specializing in so-called generative AI in what some analysts think could become a new dot-com bubble.
Businesses and organizations have quickly discovered ways to easily integrate generative AI into functions like customer services, marketing, and software development. Analysts say the enthusiasm of early adopters will likely have a massive snowball effect.
“The next two to three years will define so much about generative AI,” David Foster, cofounder of Applied Data Science Partners, a London-based AI and data consultancy, told DW. “We will talk about it in the same way as the internet itself — how it changes everything that we do as a human species.”
ChatGPT and the others are still far from perfect, however. They mostly assist in the creative process with prompts from humans but are not yet worker substitutes. But last month, an even more intelligent upgrade, ChatGPT-4 was rushed out, and version 5 is rumored for release by the end of the year.
=>Another advancement, AutoGPT, was launched at the end of last month, which can further automate tasks that ChatGPT needs human input for.
!!!Research last month by Deutsche Bank showed that total global corporate investment into AI has grown 150% since 2019 to nearly $180 billion (€164 billion), and nearly 30-fold since 2013. The number of public AI projects rose to nearly 350,000 by end of last year, with more than 140,000 patents filed for AI technology alone in 2021.
Startups don’t need to reinvent what’s already been created. Instead, they can focus on adapting the current generative AI platforms for specialist uses, including cures for cancers, smart finance and gaming.
While the US has until now led the world in AI development, China has recently closed the gap along with India. China is now responsible for 18% of all high-impact AI projects, compared to 14% for the US, according to Deutsche Bank.
=>”The Chinese government has been regulating AI because they see very clearly that it could cause them to lose control,” AI expert and MIT professor Max Tegmark told DW.
“So they’re limiting the freedom of companies to just experiment wildly with poorly understood stuff.[that sounds reasonable after COVID lab].
Tegmark is more concerned about the race by Western tech giants to push the technology toward the outer edges of acceptability and beyond. He noted that the US is hesitant to introduce AI regulations, due to lobbying by the tech sector. Repeated warnings about the need to avoid a so-called AI arms race have fallen on deaf ears.
…No company can pause alone because they’re just going to have their lunch eaten by the competition and get killed by their shareholders.”
Europe, meanwhile, is struggling to match the hunger of its US and Asian tech counterparts in the generative AI space due to investors being risk-averse.
“Same old story. Europe is lagging behind,” Ramge said. “It did not foresee this trend and is once again claiming it will be able to catch up.”
Ramge highlighted two potential stars — a German plan to create a European AI infrastructure known as LEAM, and the Heidelberg-based startup Aleph Alpha, despite the latter raising just $31.1 million to date, versus OpenAI’s $11 billion.
=>”What Europe is not able to do is to transfer the knowledge out of the universities into rapidly growing startups — unicorns — that in the end are able to bring the new technology to the world,” he told DW.”
Good videos inside as well.
Clive Robinson •
@ vas pup, ALL,
Re : AI is the new black.
“ChatGPT sparks AI investment bonanza”
Yup I saw this coming before it came over the horizon…
Now the wind in the sails of “Blockchain” development companies has died and Venture Capatilists are not raking it in with their faux-investment market nonsense, they need a new “fools gold” to seperate suckers from their money quasi-legally…
LLM AI nicely fits the hype, and where there if hype and evangelists and shills there are investors to be fleeced.
So the “sheeple shearing” has begun…
But… Note the absence of the “S Word” in the blurb…
Currently the only income generating use for this sort of AI is in various forms of back ends for “Surveillance” which is the real but hidden reason,
“Why Microsoft and Google are building them into their search engines.”
The European investors generally being slightly smarter / less gung-ho than US investors are not nibbling at what is actually according to some “against German legislation”. As Germany is effectively the biggest EU tech market country, you can see why EU investors might be more cautious with people saying that.
Clive Robinson •
@ vas pup,
I’ve been commenting on the vulnarability of subsea services for many years on this blog, and nobody appeared that interrsted…
Now some “Ghost Ships” are hanging around and both Nord Streams had news worthy sabotage the world is starting to “wake up” to the fact there are at the very least hundreds of billions of USD investments in subsea services and none of them can be effectively guarded.
Worse is the value of what sits on top of those services… Even a multiplier value appears incalculable.
As I noted quite some time ago, the more technically sophisticated a country the mor susceptible it’s infrastructure thus society is.
Cut the right subsea data cables and the economic value of the Internet stops and that’s a “trillian a day” loss prospect according to some.
But cut any subsea service you chose and a goat hearder on the side of an Afghanistan mountain will neither notice or care as he will not see how it could impact him.
Thus you see the real advantage of “asymetric warfare” that 9/11 opened the door to, when the use of “box cutters in the pocket” enabled a dozen people to turn high tech passenger aircraft into “guided missiles” of significant devistational capacity.
For those that no where to look, “the second sign post to disaster” can be found. It’s spotting the first sign post” that is usually difficult, but in the case of subsea services that sign post was obvious before the Piper Alpha disaster lit up the night sky more than a third of a century ago,
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_Alpha
As the saying has it the third signpost to disaster is usually obvious enough “for a blind man to see”…
It’s been over fourty years since I saw a sign post to this potential disaster senario and my subsequent study of industrial history shows people had concerns in the Victorian era about subsea cables being attacked and the British Royal Navy was tasked with looking into the problem. Which concluded there was nothing that could stop them being attacked easily and successfully.
Since then every one “Has done a Nelson” by “Turning a bind eye” to the problem…
YR •
From the register:
ChatGPT creates mostly insecure code, but won’t tell you unless you ask
https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/21/chatgpt_insecure_code/
“We found that, in several cases, the code generated by ChatGPT fell well below minimal security standards applicable in most contexts. In fact, when prodded to whether or not the produced code was secure, ChatGPT was able to recognize that it was not.”
“One thing that surprised me was when we asked [ChatGPT] to generate the same task – the same type of program in different languages – sometimes, for one language, it would be secure and for a different one, it would be vulnerable. Because this type of language model is a bit of a black box, I really don’t have a good explanation or a theory about this.”
ResearcherZero •
“among the victims are two critical infrastructure organizations in the energy sector, one in the U.S. and the other in Europe”
The attackers behind these breaches clearly have a successful template for software supply chain attacks and further, similar attacks cannot be ruled out.
‘https://symantec-enterprise-blogs.security.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/xtrader-3cx-supply-chain
Although the X_TRADER platform was reportedly discontinued in 2020, it was still available for download from the legitimate Trading Technologies website in 2022. This file was signed with the subject “Trading Technologies International, Inc” and contained the executable file Setup.exe that was also signed with the same digital certificate.
Eventually, the attacker was able to compromise both the Windows and macOS build environments. On the Windows build environment, the attacker deployed a TAXHAUL launcher and COLDCAT downloader that persisted by performing DLL side-loading through the IKEEXT service and ran with LocalSystem privileges. The macOS build server was compromised with POOLRAT backdoor using Launch Daemons as a persistence mechanism.
‘https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/3cx-software-supply-chain-compromise
–
Telecoms companies will always be a key target in intelligence gathering campaigns due to the access they can potentially provide to the communications of end-users.
‘https://symantec-enterprise-blogs.security.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/apt-attacks-telecoms-africa-mgbot
–
“inaccurate debts”
Commonwealth contracts to debt collection agents previously used by Services Australia are set to expire at the end of June and will not be renewed.
Robodebt victims told of being pushed to the brink of suicide after being chased by debt collectors.
‘https://www.9news.com.au/national/government-axes-use-of-external-debt-collectors-after-robodebt-cruelties-exposed/3b59a027-9737-4ad8-82d1-b3588e57b669
“We are in big trouble if we have to fall back on royal commissions to get facts, and we have to have a big conversation about that.”
‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-11/robodebt-scheme-government-royal-commission-fraud/102074840
“Actual period(s) worked should be obtained so that averaging only occurs for periods worked.”
“Before a case is referred to prosecutions acceptable documentary evidence must be obtained.”
‘https://web.archive.org/web/20180515194332/http:/operational.humanservices.gov.au/public/Pages/debts/107-02040020-01.html
“The new policy … relies solely on an algorithm. It casts the net widely, consciously targeting many who will turn out to have done nothing wrong…”
Many alleged overpayments were calculated using a formula that averaged earnings over the relevant year so did not account for fluctuations in income.
“Prior to 2015, the cases were risk profiled – only the highest discrepancies would move forward. In April 2015, the government agreed to switch off these existing safeguards … The data match in its raw form would be piped in, and staff would divide the ATO’s annual payment summary income figure by 26 using a tool… To understand what a person earns in a fortnight, you can’t just assume they work equally across the year.”
‘https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/dutton-misleads-with-shorten-robodebt-claim/
Angus Scott KC, McNamara said it was “useful” for the department if it could “influence his [the ombudsman’s] language to be more like ours”.
“It’s not essential but it’s useful, if we can achieve it, it’s great,” McNamara said.
‘https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/05/officials-given-chance-to-effectively-co-write-report-into-departments-handling-of-robodebt-inquiry-told
The published version of the report does not include the phrase “inaccurate debts”, along with other phrases DHS objected to.
‘https://www.ombudsman.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0022/43528/Report-Centrelinks-automated-debt-raising-and-recovery-system-April-2017.pdf
SpaceLifeForm •
I doubt many Linux folk will fall for this
‘https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/04/3cx-breach-was-a-double-supply-chain-compromise/
ESET said the malicious PDF file used in the scheme appeared to have a file extension of “.pdf,” but that this was a ruse. ESET discovered that the dot in the filename wasn’t a normal period but instead a Unicode character (U+2024) representing a “leader dot,” which is often used in tables of contents to connect section headings with the page numbers on which those sections begin.
“The use of the leader dot in the filename was probably an attempt to trick the file manager into treating the file as an executable instead of a PDF,” the researchers continued. “This could cause the file to run when double-clicked instead of opening it with a PDF viewer.”
ResearcherZero •
@SpaceLifeForm
There is sleep functionality built in.
‘https://www.reddit.com/r/crowdstrike/comments/125r3uu/20230329_situational_awareness_crowdstrike/
–
Speaking at the group’s annual general meeting in London on Thursday, chair Dominic Barton said strengthening Rio’s social licence was a key focus last year and the business was now “arguably more relevant and aligned with societal aspirations than we have ever been.”
‘https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/rio-tinto-says-mining-at-inflection-point-as-critical-minerals-take-centre-stage-20230406-p5cymd.html
The site’s fate rests with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, who is weighing whether mining copper in the area, and effectively destroying the site, violates the religious rights of local Indigenous peoples.
Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake authored legislation to transfer Oak Flat from Tonto National Forest to Resolution Copper, a British-Australian company owned by Rio Tinto and BHP.
‘https://www.salon.com/2023/04/18/its-been-a-place-of-worship-for-centuries-now-a-copper-mine-threatens-its-future_partner/
Mining giant Rio Tinto must rebuild a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal cave system it blew up.
‘https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55250137
–
The miners use mercury to separate gold from mud, and recent analyses show that Yanomami rivers contain mercury levels 8,600 percent as high as what is considered safe. Mercury can remain in the food chain for up to 100 years.
‘https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/18/brazil-yanomami-genocide/
“The measure is set to allow trade operations using gold to be audited using technological tools. The measure, effective July 3, comes as the new government doubles down on efforts to combat the humanitarian crisis of the Yanomami people caused by illegal mining in their territory.”
‘https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazils-revenue-service-launches-electronic-invoice-gold-curb-illegal-mining-2023-03-30/
Critics fault an international certification program used by manufacturers to show they aren’t using minerals that come from conflict zones, saying it is an exercise in greenwashing. Weak government oversight enabled by Bolsonaro, the son of a prospector himself, has only exacerbated the problem of illegal gold mining in protected areas.
‘https://apnews.com/article/business-environment-and-nature-brazil-sao-paulo-south-america-88796d9229f23a5479791f20f2517c23
The presumption of “good faith” in the gold supply chain since 2013 helped to obscure the true origins of Brazilian gold exports, roughly half of which are now estimated to be mined illegally.
‘https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-court-backs-crackdown-illegal-gold-mining-amazon-2023-04-05/
critical •
The retired nurse and self-proclaimed COVID expert again.
This time quoting an MP known not only as a conspiracy theorist, but also for his more than dubious lobbying activities. And that type accuses the WHO of a lack of transparency… You should indeed watch this, it’s pathetic.
pup vas •
@Winter. I agree. Content is inappropriate and emotional without providing logical base which trigger such posts.
If you don’t like the blog, just leave it.
On the other side: nothing is perfect by the way and explanation for removal posts by @Bruce and @Moderator in other not such obvious cases will improve the quality of blog and provide clear guidelines for future posts acceptance or rejection.
The only doubt is that @Bruce and @Moderator are doing removal by their own decision only and not influenced by outside forces (like Twitter and Facebook in 2020).
pup vas •
China building ability to hijack enemy satellites: report
https://www.dw.com/en/china-building-ability-to-hijack-enemy-satellites-report/a-65392829
=China is building hacking capabilities that will allow it to “seize control” of enemy satellites, the Financial Times (FT) reported Friday, citing a leaked report from the CIA.
The revelation comes amid ongoing tensions between Beijing and Washington over trade and geopolitics, as concerns rise that China may try to invade Taiwan, a territory it considers its own.
The FT said the CIA report was one of the dozens allegedly shared by a 21-year-old US Air National Guardsman in one of the worst intelligence breaches in a decade.
The report assessed that the plan to “deny, exploit or hijack” enemy satellites is a core part of China’s goal to control information, which Beijing considers to be a key “war-fighting domain.”
The Chinese cyber weapons would render Western satellites useless for communications or surveillance during wartime, the report said.
They would work by mimicking the signals that enemy satellites receive from their operators, tricking them into either being taken over completely or malfunctioning during crucial moments in combat.
This could knock out the ability of satellites, which tend to operate in clusters, to respond with each other, relay orders to weapons systems, or send back visual and intercepted electronic data, according to experts cited by the business daily.
The CIA revelations come a day after the chief of the US Space Force warned that the country was facing a “new era” of threats beyond Earth from the likes of Russia and China that goes much further than jamming.
General Bradley Chance Saltzman told CNBC that Washington’s rivals can use lasers and “dazzlers” that interfere with cameras to prevent the collection of satellite imagery. He also noted how Russia tested an anti-satellite missile in late 2021.
“We’re seeing satellites that actually can grab another satellite, grapple with it and pull it out of its operational orbit,” Saltzman said. “These are all capabilities they’re demonstrating on-orbit today, and so the mix of these weapons and the pace with which they’ve been developed are very concerning.”
Saltzman told the US Congress last month that China’s military has deployed 347 satellites, including 35 launched in the past six months, aimed at monitoring, tracking, targeting and attacking US forces in any future conflict.
The Washington Post this week reported how Russia is testing new technology that jams Ukraine’s access to the Starlink satellite internet operations that billionaire Elon Musk donated to Kyiv at the start of the war.
Lindy Cameron, director of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), part of Britain’s GCHQ eavesdropping spy agency, said China was not only “pushing for parity with Western countries, it is aiming for global technological supremacy.”
China is also using its cyber capabilities to acquire intellectual property, achieve its strategic geopolitical goals, and conduct global spying campaigns, Cameron told a government cybersecurity conference in Belfast on Wednesday.=
Clive Robinson •
@ critical,
Your “behaviours” have been sufficiently “deviant” that they’ve all previously been removed.
But you contribute nothing, and sources you’ve quoted have been slandering or politically biased by right wing view points.
All of which suggests that you may actually be having your view point being paid for as part of a disinformation / fake-news campaign.
And even if not is Trollish behaviour equivalent.
So at the very least you have proved by your own actions that you are a persistant Troll and almost certainly a “Sockpuppet”.
iAPX •
@Huh?
My own stance on privacy and anonymity means that I’m not going to require commenters to register a name or e-mail address, so that isn’t an option. And I really don’t want to disable comments.
Bruce Schneier on its commenting policy for the blog: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/03/commenting_poli.html
I fully agree, privacy and anonymity have a price, someone could be impersonated for example, and I am perfectly at ease with that.
My opinion being that its the comment that matter, not who wrote it, or if you prefer ignore the messenger and for god sake, read the message!
For many comments you could remove the chosen nickname and still link it to the previous messages wrote by the same exact person.
There are meaning convoyed here, and great people.
Clive Robinson •
@ vas pup, ALL,
Hmm got held for “death by black hole”, so fragmentation approach engaged,
Part 1,
Re : Hacking Satellites
It should be noted that there is nothing new in this.
The US military actually run an open to all hack a satellite competition and have done so for a number of years. The argument is it’s “defensive” but as with all technological development it could also be offensive as well.
The fact that China is doing similar is not exactly “secret” in any way. In fact nearly all Western Nations and other Nations with the ability, or money to buy the ability are doing exactly the same.
It’s why Russia attacked the system that the Ukrain were using for Satellite data / Internet connections just a short while ago, by bricking the down link modems.
Clive Robinson •
@ vas pup, ALL,
Part 2,
As I’ve mentioned before the problem is “Test harnesses” in “plain text” and the ability to “upload software changes” to get around hardware faults that happen and can not be repaired. This has been the norm since the 1970’s.
In effect there is little or no security in either satellite usage, or control.
As an example of the former is the relentless usage of US Navy UHF “transponder” satellites by various people in South Anerica using it like a very wide range Truckers-CB system.
Even with location and prosecution of the incautious, it goes on relentlessly and I fully expect it to do so untill the satellites are decommissioned by being “burnt up in descending orbit”.
Clive Robinson •
@ vas pup, ALL,
Part 3,
So the journalistic,
“China is building hacking capabilities that will allow it to “seize control” of enemy satellites, the Financial Times (FT) reported Friday, citing a leaked report from the CIA.”
Is not at all “secret” and the “CIA Report” apparently grossly over classified.
Exactly the same applies to the Chinese Lasers, the US is equiping US military ships and other vehicles with such laser systems and it’s well known that “the skys above the South China Seas are lit up by them”.
Mostly journalist try to report them as being “death rays” or ScFi style fantasy weapons (StarTreck Phasors etc). The problem is as weapons they would be “line of sight” and existing “Smart bombs” and similar first generation JADM systems would “fly back down the beam” quite easily,
‘https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Direct_Attack_Munition
Clive Robinson •
@ vas pup, ALL,
Part 4,
As for “Anti-SATellite”(ASAT) missiles it’s known publically that, the US, Russia, China, and India have all demonstrated the capability.
But there are other more curious “de-orbiting” technologies that can be used that do not cause the “space closing” Kessler Cascade/Syndrome ASATs do,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
Surrey Satellite near Guildford in the UK has long been a pioner in “de-orpiting payloads” designed to get rid of “space closing” junk that could easily and in some cases already has caused Kessler Cascades. Like all technology it can be used for “Good or Bad”.
Clive Robinson •
@ vas pup, ALL,
Part 5,
As for,
“China was not only “pushing for parity with Western countries, it is aiming for global technological supremacy.””
The reality is some what different to that. The US is the one pushing up Satellites at an ever increasing rate and every other Nation is far behind, and no chance of playing “catch-up” let alone beating US saturation deployment…
The US sought to “control space” by saying other nations could not put up Satellites that did not conform to what they dictated… One of which is that imaging resolution be less than that of most modern mobile phones. The US did the GWB “Cowboy strut of idiocy” and India turned around and said “up yours” and poped their ASAT up as a “Real Politic” demonstrator… Which also served to give notice to other nations they have their own equivelent “Iron Dome” or greater capabilities. Thus they are not as unprepared against nuclear attack as many other nations including the saber rattling nuclear capable countries of China, Pakistan, and Russia had thought.
Clive Robinson •
@ vas pup, ALL,
Part 6,
In part this is why an area China leads in Hypersonic stand off weapons are suddenly back on the US in particular agenda.
Of course all of the above, although open and public information can not be read by all those US Citizens with Security Clearences, because we know it will all be in those “oh so super secret” over classified reports the US Gov agences use to hide the “US growing capabilities gap” in, whilst begging the politicos for more US tax dollars to waste Empire Building.
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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
