Geek Stuff category archive

A tool for thievery? SFGate reports

A California hospital system lost nearly $3 million to an elaborate international fraud scheme in which scammers allegedly used advanced artificial intelligence to impersonate corporate executives and attorneys. . . .

An accessory before the fact? We’ll have to wait to see how the court rules.

A competent financial advisor? Let’s ask the man (who’s now living) on the street.

Mageia v. 10, successfully upgraded online from v. 9, with the Plasma desktop. Xclock is in the upper right; GKrellM in the lower right. The wallpaper is from my collection.

A competent 911 operator? Just hope it doesn’t take your emergency call.

Aside:

I had occasion to call customer service (I won’t mention the company) recently and got an AI bot. The only positive thing I can say about the AI experience was that, when I asked to talk to a real live human being, the AI bot actually listened and transferred me to a real live human being.

After a bit of a wait, during which I endured hold music which I am certain was composed by AI to make persons on hold hang up the phone, I found myself taking to a human being who was pleasant, competent, and efficient. We even had some chuckles during the conversation.

This was a couple of days ago and her name escapes me, but I wouldn’t mention it in any event, because she’d probably find herself terminated for actually providing customer service to a custome–oh, never mind.

In Pakistan, the quest for clicks goes fatally awry.

One more time, “social” media isn’t.

For the maintainers of one Facebook group, it’s been a battle with the bots, and now the bots have won.

A member of the Philadelphia City Council has proposed a tax on robots that take jobs away from humans. Here’s a snippet from the report from WHYY:

He contends the tax is basically designed to replace the wage tax revenue the city loses when companies use driverless vehicles or delivery robots instead of human workers.

I think he may be onto something.

AI frolics:

A sharing feature in Meta’s new artificial intelligence platform, Muse, left thousands of users’ private conversations accessible to the public, according to a Sunday report from an internet security firm. . . .

More at the link.

El Reg reports that the Zuckerborg is altering its terms of service so as to more thoroughly assimilate you. Here’s how the article starts:

Businesses using Facebook commercially may want to think twice about what information they share online. At the end of the month, Meta plans to introduce terms that would authorize it to collect content from websites associated with its business customers and use it to train AI models or otherwise improve its products.

Remember, you don’t use “social” eedia. “Social” media uses you.

Going rogue? At The Japan Times, Cory Alpert warns that “(w)e are entering an era in which AI systems can interpret instructions in unexpected ways, including by breaking the law.”