AI deserves our human paranoia
For most of my IT career I have seen promises of the “silver bullet” application. The modern iteration of this is the overused promise of Artificial Intelligence. Every man and his dog are jumping onto this marketing bandwagon and Microsoft has been no exception making it part of their database offerings.
They have also recently pumped US$1 billion into OpenAI, a US company that specialises in artificial general intelligence (AGI). This is distinguished from the holy grail of natural intelligence, being the type associated with humans. It was started back in 2015 as a non-profit. Part of the co-operation will be on expanding the Azure AI capabilities but also as the base to commercialise AI. According to one of the founders and CEO Sam Altman: “The creation of AGI will be the most important technological development in human history, with the potential to shape the trajectory of humanity.”
Since AGI is not natural intelligence I would disagree with that statement but given OpenAI’s charter to “ensure [AGI] is used for the benefit of all, and to avoid enabling uses of AI or AGI that harm humanity or unduly concentrate power” he may also be concerned about a potential Skynet so that is not a bad thing. OpenAI recently developed the GPT-2 model which was claimed could be used to generate news reports that were hard to distinguish from human-authored ones, so I’m not sure how that fits into the charter unless there are specific targets. The company is after all in California. They claim not to have released the trained model into the wild but these things have a way of getting out. The Microsoft funding will help to expand the hardware required to increase computational power. I would like to see some careful regulation around this evolving technology.
Today’s ironic story is about the two giants Amazon and Microsoft. The latter recently put up their licensing costs through what they called “changes” in Azure licensing. Amazon complained, so Microsoft halved their least expensive service, Azure Archive Storage. This holds least accessed information, but if you want to actually access it that will cost you. As a result, Amazon has been bad mouthing Microsoft about giving with one hand and taking away from the other. The irony here is that Amazon raised Prime prices in the US resulting in less developers contributing to open-source projects, so more of a take and lose.
It looks like Microsoft is a good source of news this week. It starts with a recent update for the Surface that breaks Wi-Fi for some users and includes battery problems for others. Batteries are swelling up for some users causing the screen to detach from the base. When you try and get a replacement for the case I read about, Microsoft informs that: “We no longer manufacture the Microsoft Surface 3 and Microsoft Surface Pro 3 device; both devices have reached their ‘End of Life’ and as such are no longer supported.” Since the batteries are glued in replacing them is typically not an option so when they go bad you have to throw your expensive device away. This all comes after a one-year limited hardware warranty. Now you know why I haven’t bought one for myself. They have them at work and to date I have yet to talk to a happy user.
Security is a major issue for some but not necessarily for all. I have indicated a number of times that the greatest weakness in any security system are the humans involved in the processes. A recent example is the bribe paid to AT&T staff to unlock 2 million smartphones. When it took too long, the buyers bought the employee’s login credentials to get the codes for themselves to install malware on AT&T’s computers and automate the code generation and downloading process. When the staffers were caught and fired the Pakistani gang paid someone else to install wireless routers on the internal network to provide a new backdoor. There is more to this story but the key takeaway is that no matter how good security is, when someone on the inside opens the door, people can get in and get stuff out.
Areminder for all not to stay with the default user and password that comes with any of your Internet of Things devices. Yes, manufacturers will use the same password for every device they sell, leaving it all up to you. Turns out nation-states are interested in breaking into your network. Lead recently by nation-state backed STRONTIUM, it mostly targets governments, IT, military, defence and engineering organisations, anti-doping agencies, political groups, and the hospitality industry, mostly.
After the secretive practice was exposed, Apple has declared they will no longer listen to recordings of people using its Siri digital assistant. Promise. They won’t stop recording or storing but you will have an option to opt out of contractors across the world from listening in to “grade” them. This will no doubt be an opt out approach.
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years’ standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.