The spy who AI’d me

We all love James Bond’s gadgets supplied by Q branch, from the snorkel with the fake seagull atop in Goldfinger to the smart blood used to track 007 in Spectre.

But the future is software, and Artificial Intelligence specifically, according to the head of GCHQ, the UK spy agency. Writing in the Financial Times, its director Jeremy Fleming says AI “can learn to solve problems at a scale and speed impossible for humans”, even James Bond.

AI was allowing its analysts to “deal with ever increasing volumes and complexity of data, improving the quality and speed of decision-making. Its applications are broad: from identifying and countering ‘troll farms’ pedalling disinformation to mapping and tracking international networks that are helping to traffic people, drugs or weapons”.

However, he raises the issue, and makes the commitment, of using AI in a “legal, proportionate and ethical way”, whereas “in the hands of an adversary with little respect for human rights, such a powerful technology could be used for oppression”.

Helen Warrell reports GCHQ could use AI to identify false online identities known as “deepfakes”, as well as for the automatic detection and blocking of botnets and other sources of misleading content online. AI could also be used to defend cyber attacks by helping spies find malicious software and tracing it to its source. GCHQ could also analyse complex chains of financial transactions and uncover the involvement of hostile states or terrorists.

While GCHQ’s director refers to the UK’s G7 presidency as a chance to build consensus on international rules to make the tech a force for good, the move into AI and the use of machine learning also reflects the huge amounts of personal data now available for analysis by the security services.

“The increased reliance on algorithms when it comes to our sensitive information should raise alarm bells over the sheer scale of snooping currently carried out on us,” says Megan Goulding, a lawyer at the human rights campaign group Liberty.

The Internet of (Five) Things

1. India imposes sweeping social media rules
India has announced sweeping rules that could force social media companies to break into encrypted messages and take down posts New Delhi deems contentious. Government officials said on Thursday that the new guidelines would help end “double standards” by making platforms more accountable to the law.

2. Australia passes Big Tech news law
Australia’s parliament has enacted a contentious law aimed at forcing Big Tech to pay for news content. It creates a government-appointed arbitrator that can set the rates tech companies must pay news publishers if commercial negotiations fail. Facebook and Google hope to persuade the government not to designate them under the regulation by striking enough deals with publishers.

3. Coinbase reveals crypto financials
Coinbase, the largest US-based cryptocurrency exchange, revealed the scale of its business for the first time in paperwork for a long-awaited public listing that comes during a booming market for bitcoin and other digital coins. Coinbase generated $1.3bn in revenue last year, up from $534m the year prior, enabling the company to turn a profit of $322m in 2020 after losing $30m in 2019.

4. Nvidia to ride out chip shortages
Graphics card chipmaker Nvidia said gaming had been particularly affected by semi shortages, but it still reported revenues rising 67 per cent in its latest quarter from that business and predicted a 71 per cent sales rise in the current quarter, well ahead of Wall Street expectations.

5. ViacomCBS pins hopes on Paramount Plus
The world probably does not need another streaming service, but ViacomCBS says it is hoping to grow streaming revenues to more than $7bn annually by 2024 and reach 65m subscribers across services spearheaded by Paramount Plus. From March, it will offer viewers access to thousands of television episodes and films, spanning hits such as The Godfather, Titanic, Star Trek and SpongeBob SquarePants, for $10 a month.

Forwarded from Sifted — the European start-up week

The fashion in digital challenger banks was once metal bank cards; now, increasingly it is wooden, biodegradable cards. It is a shift symptomatic of a new generation of “green” fintech start-ups that are emerging in Europe and challenging more established neobanks such as Monzo and Robinhood as well as larger lenders. Who are Europe’s “green” fintechs though?Meanwhile, Taavet Hinrikus, the cofounder of Wise (the payments company called TransferWise until this week) this week revealed that he is one of Europe’s most prolific angel investors, having put money into over 100 early-stage start-ups.

Elsewhere in European start-ups, a Cambridge-based company called Nyobolt came out of stealth mode to reveal its electric battery that you can charge in under a minute; and economist Mariana Mazzucato explained how we need to rethink the platform economy.

Tech tools — My Heritage’s ‘deep nostalgia’

I thought Amazon’s new Echo Show device that followed your movements was a bit creepy yesterday, but this one is otherworldly. Sid Venkataramakrishnan reports that MyHeritage, a website where users can research their family trees, has announced a “deep nostalgia” feature that can turn even a single photo of a relative into a video where they can smile, nod and wink back at them. The feature, created with the Israeli computer vision firm D-ID, is the latest milestone for artificial intelligence-generated media. The technology allows MyHeritage’s 60m users to map their photographs over the facial expressions of real people, in this case MyHeritage employees, to create realistic videos in which lips, eyes and faces move.

Published at Thu, 25 Feb 2021 20:03:45 +0000

The spy who AI’d me

We all love James Bond’s gadgets supplied by Q branch, from the snorkel with the fake seagull atop in Goldfinger to the smart blood used to track 007 in Spectre.

But the future is software, and Artificial Intelligence specifically, according to the head of GCHQ, the UK spy agency. Writing in the Financial Times, its director Jeremy Fleming says AI “can learn to solve problems at a scale and speed impossible for humans”, even James Bond.

AI was allowing its analysts to “deal with ever increasing volumes and complexity of data, improving the quality and speed of decision-making. Its applications are broad: from identifying and countering ‘troll farms’ pedalling disinformation to mapping and tracking international networks that are helping to traffic people, drugs or weapons”.

However, he raises the issue, and makes the commitment, of using AI in a “legal, proportionate and ethical way”, whereas “in the hands of an adversary with little respect for human rights, such a powerful technology could be used for oppression”.

Helen Warrell reports GCHQ could use AI to identify false online identities known as “deepfakes”, as well as for the automatic detection and blocking of botnets and other sources of misleading content online. AI could also be used to defend cyber attacks by helping spies find malicious software and tracing it to its source. GCHQ could also analyse complex chains of financial transactions and uncover the involvement of hostile states or terrorists.

While GCHQ’s director refers to the UK’s G7 presidency as a chance to build consensus on international rules to make the tech a force for good, the move into AI and the use of machine learning also reflects the huge amounts of personal data now available for analysis by the security services.

“The increased reliance on algorithms when it comes to our sensitive information should raise alarm bells over the sheer scale of snooping currently carried out on us,” says Megan Goulding, a lawyer at the human rights campaign group Liberty.

The Internet of (Five) Things

1. India imposes sweeping social media rules
India has announced sweeping rules that could force social media companies to break into encrypted messages and take down posts New Delhi deems contentious. Government officials said on Thursday that the new guidelines would help end “double standards” by making platforms more accountable to the law.

2. Australia passes Big Tech news law
Australia’s parliament has enacted a contentious law aimed at forcing Big Tech to pay for news content. It creates a government-appointed arbitrator that can set the rates tech companies must pay news publishers if commercial negotiations fail. Facebook and Google hope to persuade the government not to designate them under the regulation by striking enough deals with publishers.

3. Coinbase reveals crypto financials
Coinbase, the largest US-based cryptocurrency exchange, revealed the scale of its business for the first time in paperwork for a long-awaited public listing that comes during a booming market for bitcoin and other digital coins. Coinbase generated $1.3bn in revenue last year, up from $534m the year prior, enabling the company to turn a profit of $322m in 2020 after losing $30m in 2019.

4. Nvidia to ride out chip shortages
Graphics card chipmaker Nvidia said gaming had been particularly affected by semi shortages, but it still reported revenues rising 67 per cent in its latest quarter from that business and predicted a 71 per cent sales rise in the current quarter, well ahead of Wall Street expectations.

5. ViacomCBS pins hopes on Paramount Plus
The world probably does not need another streaming service, but ViacomCBS says it is hoping to grow streaming revenues to more than $7bn annually by 2024 and reach 65m subscribers across services spearheaded by Paramount Plus. From March, it will offer viewers access to thousands of television episodes and films, spanning hits such as The Godfather, Titanic, Star Trek and SpongeBob SquarePants, for $10 a month.

Forwarded from Sifted — the European start-up week

The fashion in digital challenger banks was once metal bank cards; now, increasingly it is wooden, biodegradable cards. It is a shift symptomatic of a new generation of “green” fintech start-ups that are emerging in Europe and challenging more established neobanks such as Monzo and Robinhood as well as larger lenders. Who are Europe’s “green” fintechs though?Meanwhile, Taavet Hinrikus, the cofounder of Wise (the payments company called TransferWise until this week) this week revealed that he is one of Europe’s most prolific angel investors, having put money into over 100 early-stage start-ups.

Elsewhere in European start-ups, a Cambridge-based company called Nyobolt came out of stealth mode to reveal its electric battery that you can charge in under a minute; and economist Mariana Mazzucato explained how we need to rethink the platform economy.

Tech tools — My Heritage’s ‘deep nostalgia’

I thought Amazon’s new Echo Show device that followed your movements was a bit creepy yesterday, but this one is otherworldly. Sid Venkataramakrishnan reports that MyHeritage, a website where users can research their family trees, has announced a “deep nostalgia” feature that can turn even a single photo of a relative into a video where they can smile, nod and wink back at them. The feature, created with the Israeli computer vision firm D-ID, is the latest milestone for artificial intelligence-generated media. The technology allows MyHeritage’s 60m users to map their photographs over the facial expressions of real people, in this case MyHeritage employees, to create realistic videos in which lips, eyes and faces move.

Published at Thu, 25 Feb 2021 20:03:45 +0000