Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Could Digital A.I. Redistribute Wealth For Us?


I once cried because I had no shoes to play soccer, but one day, I met a man who had no feet. 

– Zinedine Zidane ZZ of Amens


Could A.I. Redistribute Wealth For Us?

Wealth inequality is one of the great moral issues of our time. In an era when the world has more money than ever before, billions still live on less than $3 a day. The disparity becomes more striking in the light of studies that show most income inequality comes down to luck, with people of average talent able to shoot to the top of the ladder by being in the right place at the right time

Subject: China’s ZTE was built to spy and bribe, court documents allege
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/china-s-zte-was-built-to-spy-and-bribe-court-documents-allege-20180531-p4ziqd.html
“China’s Ministry of Aerospace founded ZTE as a front to send officers abroad under non-diplomatic covers such as scientists, businessmen and executives for the purpose of collecting intelligence,” the documents filed in the 191st District Court of Dallas reveal.
The claims go much further than a 2012 report on ZTE by the US House Intelligence Committee and have not been refuted as part of the court proceedings by the company. The allegations feed into long-held security concerns around ZTE, which is partly state-owned, and is banned from selling products to US government departments or the military.

Text as Data – Matthew Gentzkow, Stanford; Bryan T. Kelly, Yale and AQR Capital Management; Matt Taddy, Chicago Booth: “An ever increasing share of human interaction, communication, and culture is recorded as digital text. We provide an introduction to the use of text as an input to economic research. We discuss the features that make text different from other forms of data, offer a practical overview of relevant statistical methods, and survey a variety of applications.”


Artificial Intelligence: Emerging Opportunities, Challenges, and Implications for Policy and Research; GAO-18-644T: Published: Jun 26, 2018. Publicly Released: Jun 26, 2018. “Artificial intelligence (AI) could improve human life and economic competitiveness—but it also poses new risks. The Comptroller General convened a Forum on AI to consider the policy and research implications of AI’s use in 4 areas with the potential to significantly affect daily life:
  • cybersecurity,
  • automated vehicles,
  • criminal justice, and
  • financial services.

The Biggest Digital Heist in History Isn’t Over Yet - Bloomberg: Carbanak’s suspected ringleader is under arrest, but $1.2 billion remains missing, and his malware attacks live on.


“Since late 2013, this band of cybercriminals has penetrated the digital inner sanctums of more than 100 banks in 40 nations, including Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S., and stolen about $1.2 billion, according to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency. The string of thefts, collectively dubbed Carbanak—a mashup of a hacking program and the word “bank”—is believed to be the biggest digital bank heist ever. In a series of exclusive interviews with Bloomberg Businessweek, law enforcement officials and computer-crime experts provided revelations about their three-year pursuit of the gang and the mechanics of a caper that’s become the stuff of legend in the digital underworld. Besides forcing ATMs to cough up money, the thieves inflated account balances and shuttled millions of dollars around the globe. Deploying the same espionage methods used by intelligence agencies, they appropriated the identities of network administrators and executives and plumbed files for sensitive information about security and account management practices. The gang operated through remotely accessed computers and hid their tracks in a sea of internet addresses. “Carbanak is the first time we saw such novel methods used to penetrate big financial institutions and their networks,” says James Chappell, co-founder and chief innovation officer of Digital Shadows Ltd., a London intelligence firm that works with the Bank of England and other lending institutions. “It’s the breadth of the attacks, that’s what’s truly different about this one.”…
 


Business rescue is a legitimate use of the corporate form and we will work with those in this category to provide education and advice.



5 Reasons Horrible Dictators Always Catch Us Off Guard Cracked








Rendezvous with Oblivion: Reports from a Sinking Society(excerpt) Thomas Frank, American Empire Project. Selected essays. This, from 2006 in the Times (when Frank, then a guest columnist, was still publishable in the United States)appears to be the title essay.





Where’s the “Gig Economy?” Kim Moody, Jacobin. I’m reading Moody’s new book, On New Terrain. So far, it’s really good.
Extreme Inequality Creates Global Disorder James Galbraith, The Nation



Why personal agency matters more than personal data Project VRM

Privacy and security issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health/medical, to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways our privacy and security is diminished, often without our situational awareness.