PossibleThreat Articles

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Emerging Technology

ComputerWorld Independent 

Q&A: TIAA's CIO touts top AI projects, details worker skills needed now

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is already having a significant effect on businesses and organizations across a variety of industries, even as many businesses are still just kicking the tires on the technology.

Those that have fully adopted AI claim a 35% increase in innovation and a 33% increase in sustainability over the past three years, according to research firm IDC. Customer and employee retention has also been reported as improving by 32% after investing in AI.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

EEOC Commissioner: AI system audits might not comply with federal anti-bias laws

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Keith Sonderling, commissioner of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), has for years been sounding the alarm about the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to run afoul of federal anti-discrimination laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It was not until the advent of ChatGPT, Bard, and other popular generative AI tools, however, that local, state and national lawmakers began taking notice — and companies became aware of the pitfalls posed by a technology that can automate efficiencies in the business process.

Instead of speeches he’d typically make to groups of chief human resource officers or labor employment lawyers, Sonderling has found himself in recent months talking more and more about AI. His focus has been on how companies can stay compliant as they hand over more of the responsibility for hiring and other aspects of corporate HR to algorithms that are vastly faster and capable of parsing thousands of resumes in seconds.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

EEOC chief: AI system audits might comply with local anti-bias laws, but not federal ones

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Keith Sonderling, commissioner of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), has for years been sounding the alarm about the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to run afoul of federal anti-discrimination laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It was not until the advent of ChatGPT, Bard, and other popular generative AI tools, however, that local, state and national lawmakers began taking notice — and companies became aware of the pitfalls posed by a technology that can automate efficiencies in the business process.

Instead of speeches he’d typically make to groups of chief human resource officers or labor employment lawyers, Sonderling has found himself in recent months talking more and more about AI. His focus has been on how companies can stay compliant as they hand over more of the responsibility for hiring and other aspects of corporate HR to algorithms that are vastly faster and capable of parsing thousands of resumes in seconds.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

ChatGPT creators and others plead to reduce risk of global extinction from their tech

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Hundreds of tech industry leaders, academics, and others public figures signed an open letter warning that artificial intelligence (AI) evolution could lead to an extinction event and saying that controlling the tech should be a top global priority.

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” read the statement published by San Francisco-based Center for AI Safety.

The brief statement in the letter reads almost like a mea culpa for the technology about which its creators are now joining together to warn the world.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

G7 leaders warn of AI dangers, say the time to act is now

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Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) nations on Saturday called for the creation of technical standards to keep artificial intelligence (AI) in check, saying AI has outpaced oversight for safety and security.

Meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, the leaders said nations must come together on a common vision and goal of trustworthy AI, even while those solutions may vary. But any solution for digital technologies such as AI should be “in line with our shared democratic values,” they said in a statement.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Senate hearings see a clear and present danger from AI — and opportunities

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There are vital national interests in advancing artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline public services and automate mundane tasks performed by government employees. But the government lacks in both IT talent and systems to support those efforts.

“The federal government as a whole continues to face barriers in hiring, managing, and retaining staff with advanced technical skills — the very skills needed to design, develop, deploy, and monitor AI systems,” said Taka Ariga, chief data scientist at the US Government Accountability Office.

Daniel Ho, associate director for Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) at Stanford University, agreed, saying that by one estimate the federal government would need to hire about 40,000 IT workers to address cybersecurity issues posed by AI.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Q&A: At MIT event, Tom Siebel sees ‘terrifying’ consequences from using AI

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Speakers ranging from artificial intelligence (AI) developers to law firms grappled this week with questions about the efficacy and ethics of AI during MIT Technology Review’s EmTech Digital conference. Among those who had a somewhat alarmist view of the technology (and regulatory efforts to rein it in) was Tom Siebel, CEO C3 AI and founder of CRM vendor Siebel Systems.

Siebel was on hand to talk about how businesses can prepare for an incoming wave of AI regulations, but in his comments Tuesday he touched on various facets of the debate of generative AI, including the ethics of using it, how it could evolve, and why it could be dangerous.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

As Europeans strike first to rein in AI, the US follows

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A proposed set of rules by the European Union would, among other things. require makers of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT,to publicize any copyrighted material used by the technology platforms to create content of any kind.

A new draft of European Parliament’s legislation, a copy of which was attained by The Wall Street Journal, would allow the original creators of content used by generative AI applications to share in any profits that result.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Three issues with generative AI still need to be solved

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Disclosure: Qualcomm and Microsoft are clients of the author.

Generative AI is spreading like a virus across the tech landscape. It’s gone from being virtually unheard a year ago to being one of, if not the, top trending technology today. As with any technology, there are issues that tend to surface with rapid growth, and generative AI is no exception.

I expect three main problems to emerge before the end of the year that few people are talking about today.

The critical need for a hybrid solution

Generative AI uses massive language models, it’s processor-intensive, and it’s rapidly becoming as ubiquitous as browsers. This is a problem because existing, centralized datacenters aren’t structured to handle this kind of load. They are I/O-constrained, processor-constrained, database-constrained, cost-constrained, and size-constrained, making a massive increase in centralized capacity unlikely in the near term, even though the need for this capacity is going vertical. 

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Tech bigwigs: Hit the brakes on AI rollouts

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More than 1,100 technology luminaries, leaders, and scientists have issued a warning against labs performing large-scale experiments with artificial intelligence (AI) more powerful than ChatGPT, saying the technology poses a grave threat to humanity.

In an open letter published by Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit organization with the mission to reduce global catastrophic and existential risks to humanity, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined other signatories in agreeing AI poses “profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research and acknowledged by top AI labs.”

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