Saturday, April 29, 2023

Philosophy of zones

 When you’re looking to escape the tedium of modern and mainstream tourism, sometimes the only way is up. Today, our armchair travels will take us to some of the most remote (and highest) villages in the world, from middle America to roof of Egypt. 

But of course, we’re not just going to drop you on the highest mountain in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do! To inspire your next adventure we’ll research local activities, where to stay and discover obscure little anecdotes about these elevated villages frozen in time…Built in the Clouds, they’re the Highest Villages Frozen in Time



Chiseled over the entrance to the US Supreme Court are the words “Equal Justice Under Law.” The principle is foundational for a democracy. In 1974, when Richard Nixon faced the threat of impeachment for financial corruption and schemes to undermine democracy, he was forced to resign, and several of his top aides went to prison. There was broad celebration that the political system worked—that no one was above the law. “When the president does it…it is not illegal,” Nixon later claimed, but American presidents do not enjoy the privileges of kings and despots.

Too Big to Jail


ALEX BYRNE: Philosophy’s No-Go Zone. “An MIT professor describes the outraged reaction from fellow philosophers when he argued that a woman is an adult human female.”

Kafka could have written this piece as fiction.


Articles of Note

The evolutionary long game. Ants, saltwater clams, and mammals waited at least tens of millions of years before exploding in number. Why?... more »


New Books

The Derek Parfit scandal. In 1981, Oxford’s All Souls College refused him a promotion unless he wrote a book. Twenty months later, Reasons and Persons was complete... more »


Essays & Opinions

We like clear-cut rules, but life is full of extenuating circumstances. Enter discretion, an uncomfortable yet necessary virtue... more »



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Kyle Sandilands and bride Tegan - Amex users

She wanted a séance. I wanted a palm reading. 

So we found a happy medium.


The PM, a nightclub mogul and a former convict walk into a wedding. Kyle Sandilands’ invitation was too good to refuse


Kyle Sandilands and bride Tegan share a tender kiss after they officially become husband and wife - as newlyweds reveal the first glimpse of her stunning dress and who's who of celebs prepare to party


Rum Corp 2023 AD


21ST CENTURY FITNESS:  Half the men I know are using Ozempic to lose weight – the signs are hard to miss.


How Our Team Overturned the 90-Year-Old Metaphor of a ‘Little Man’ in the Brain Who Controls Movement Scientific American. If only we could do the same for Bond Villains in politics


Why elephants, otters and whales are nature’s secret weapons against climate breakdownGuardian 



Amex Customers – Above-Average-Income Consumers – Are Spending like Drunken Sailors, incl. on Travel & Restaurants

They’re the Big Spenders, they can move the needle. Millennials and Gen Z-ers are now the drivers of this growth.


John le Carré was disillusioned "in that special way which only affects those who have had very strong illusions in the first place"... more »


New Books

Is ballet a relic of outdated patriarchy, a cult-like system that conditions women to be obedient? Or is it “a laboratory of femaleness”? Both... more »


Essays & Opinions

“I’ve taken enormous walks and lived on rice and codfish tongues and I feel like a new man.” John Dos Passos was at home on Cape Cod... more »






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Friday, April 28, 2023

UK victims of cell phone theft angry with police; claim that even when they have tracked the location of the stolen phone police don’t act

 FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center releases elder fraud data for 2022

  • Losses reported nearly double, up 64%
  • Investment losses involving crypto up 300%
  • Victims sending money with crypto overall up 350%
  • Tech support fraud most common; twice the number of complaints as the next most common; doubled last year
  • But for money lost crypto investment fraud tops the list
  • Government impersonation nearly doubled
  • Also has state by state breakdowns
 


Thailand busts operation that called older people in the US, claimed to be law enforcement, that there was a problem with their bank and they needed to wire money to keep it “safe;” 21 arrested, from India and Thailand; $87 million lost to group
 
Australia releases 2020 fraud statistics
  • Reported losses went up from $176 million in 2020 to $569 million in 2022
  • Most common way for initial victim contact was text message
  • Investment fraud far and away the top source of losses
  • Older victims 65+ had most complaints and losses
  • Total fraud losses $3 billion
FBI warns of scammers calling Chinese speakers and claiming to be with the Chinese government, accusing the victim of fraud, and threatening to arrest or repatriate them; often use spoofed numbers of Chinese consulate  (link repaired)
 
Global Anti-Scam Alliance releases ten recommendations to fight online fraud worldwide
 
Much of what the public believes about fraud is simply and demonstrably wrong.  From victim blaming, to thinking that fraud is rare, to the implicit thought that only dumb people fall for frauds and that they are easily avoided, many people are simply mistaken, and of course that affects  how fraud stories are reported and how consumer education is written.  The Fraud Report is thrilled that retired Psychology professor and fraud expert Anthony Pratkanis has agreed to work on a fraud myth of the week. 
 
Myth 1:  Fraud victims, especially older ones, tend to be lonely with few social contacts.  In 1996, an AARP survey of older victims found just the opposite: Older fraud victims had extensive social networks and engaged in social and community activities the same or surpassing non-victims. Later studies confirmed these results and also revealed that con grifters will tailor their scam and pitch to fit the victim.  As the UK Office of Fair Trading described the results of their 2006 survey:  “Our research dispels the myth that only the vulnerable, elderly or naïve are taken in by scams. Anyone can be taken in because scams are customised to fit the profile of the people being targeted. There really is a scam for everyone.”

However, it should also be noted that fraud criminals will attempt to isolate a victim – for example, by creating false urgency in a grandparent scam, driving a wedge between the victim and family & friends, making an investment tip secret, attacking those who might intervene, urging the victim to hide their “romance,” creating a cohesive, but isolated network through seminars, social media, and derogating those who disagree as in MLM scams, plus other such tactics.  
 
 
Fraud Studies: Here are links to the studies I’ve written for the Better Business Bureau: puppy fraud, romance fraud; BEC fraud, sweepstakes/lottery fraud,  tech support fraud, romance fraud money mules, crooked movers, government imposters, online vehicle sale scams, rental fraud, gift cards,  free trial offer frauds,  job scams,  online shopping fraud, and crypto scams
 
Fraud News Around the worldHumor                                                                               FTC and CFPB  Virus Benefit Theft Business Email compromise fraud RansomwareData Breaches 
 
Bitcoin and cryptocurrencyATM SkimmingJamaica and Lottery FraudRomance Fraud and Sextortion
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The battle over authenticity — and coolness — following The Great Unverification

 The battle over authenticity — and coolness — following The Great Unverification



Dr Seuss, when he wrote the 1961 children’s story The Sneetches.

In it, creatures with no stars on their bellies feel left out and ostracised by those who do have stars, until a crafty entrepreneur named Sylvester McMonkey McBean offers to apply stars to anyone for just three dollars. Of course after that stars are no longer cool, and the star-havers remove theirs, leaving the original bare-bellies grumpy still, until both groups realise they’ve been manipulated.


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The laziness tax: Why your money isn’t accruing high interest

 The laziness tax: Why your money isn’t accruing high interest Felix Salmon, Axios


They said the blue ticks were going to disappear, but mine hasn't. It's mind games. For the avoidance of doubt, I didn't pay for it - so I'm still the product, not the customer.

Real I D Mitchell


David Mitchell


“The medieval Catholic Church deliberately and effectively splintered political power in Europe by forming temporal alliances, funding proxy wars, launching crusades, and advancing ideology to ensure its autonomy and power.”


Fox Can Deduct $787 Million Defamation Settlement Over Vote Fraud Claims


The eccentric pioneers of vegetable electricity BBC



How America’s most endangered cat could help save Florida National Geographic


UC Irvine biologists discover bees to be brew masters of the insect world (press release) University of California, Irvine


Rare-earth mining. “Shuang-Liang Liu et al.have compiled a dataset of 146 mining projects targeting rare-earth elements, which serve as “critical raw materials in many low-carbon technologies.” 

The dataset lists each project’s name, company, location, status, deposit type, estimated tonnage of deposits, element composition, and other details sourced from “company annual reports and public presentations, government reports, and papers in various scientific journals.”


Clarence Thomas Can Do No Wrong New York Times


300 Years of ‘Too Big to Jail’ New York Review of Books 


Scoopers at Ben & Jerry’s in Burlington Seek to Unionize Seven Days Vermont 


Feudalism by Design: On Quinn Slobodian’s “Crack-Up Capitalism” Los Angeles Review of Book 


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KPMG How professionals are using ChatGPT

 Raskolnikov: Yes, Tax The Rich—And Also The Merely Affluent


 

Inside the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT sound smart

 

How a Google Antitrust Case Could Determine the Future of AI Matt Stoller, BIG. Musical interlude

 

Google’s Rush to Win in AI Led to Ethical Lapses, Employees Say Bloomberg:

Shortly before Google introduced Bard, its AI chatbot, to the public in March, it asked employees to test the tool.

One worker’s conclusion: Bard was “a pathological liar,” according to screenshots of the internal discussion. Another called it “cringe-worthy.” One employee wrote that when they asked Bard suggestions for how to land a plane, it regularly gave advice that would lead to a crash; another said it gave answers on scuba diving “which would likely result in serious injury or death.”

Google launched Bard anyway. The trusted internet-search giant is providing low-quality information in a race to keep up with the competition, while giving less priority to its ethical commitments, according to 18 current and former workers at the company and internal documentation reviewed by Bloomberg.

Hard to believe. Google?

 

Artificial Intelligence in the Garden of EdenPeggy Noonan, WSJ


Personalized AI-Written Spam May Soon Be Flooding Your Inbox


Gizmodo: “…Now, the arms race between spam blockers and spam senders is about to escalate with the emergence of a new weapon: generative artificial intelligence. With recent advances in AI made famous by ChatGPT, spammers could have new tools to evade filters, grab people’s attention and convince them to click, buy or give up personal information. As director of the Advancing Human and Machine Reasoning lab at the University of South Florida, I research the intersection of artificial intelligence, natural language processing and human reasoning. I have studied how AI can learn the individual preferences, beliefs and personality quirks of people. This can be used to better understand how to interact with people, help them learn or provide them with helpful suggestions. But this also means you should brace for smarter spam that knows your weak spots – and can use them against you


From pope’s jacket to napalm recipes: how worrying is AI’s rapid growth? Google boss says issue keeps him up at night, while thousands have urged six-month pause on creation of ‘giant’ AIS


How profesionals are using ChatGPT

Edmund Tadros

The release of ChatGPT has brought into the mainstream a branch of technology that will transform the way white collar work is done around the world.


Experts say workers need to learn how to use these generative AI tools but the challenge is trying to get a foothold, especially for the non-tech savvy, in an area that is developing so quickly.

This blog will focus on how professionals from around the country are using the tools to help them do their work. It will spend time examining how the technology works only when it relates back to the specific examples.

It will also feature short interviews with workers from around Australia describing the specific ways they have used these tools and the pros and cons of their experiments. We’ll also highlight the specific prompts used, the outcomes (redacting any sensitive information) and our take on it.

We’re particularly interested in highlighting how people without technical backgrounds are making imaginative use of the technology.

This will be an evolving experiment and will at first focus upon how the ChatGPT tool is being used.

We welcome submissions at edmundtadros@afr.com.au with “AI Blog” in the subject line. Please include your contact details (not for publication), the specific use case, the pros and cons of the example, the prompt(s) used and the material produced by the tool.

Extracting data for PDFs using ChatGPT

Edmund Tadros

Brisbane-based Accountant Jason Andrew has been using ChatGPT to create emails, edit blog posts and general life admin.

But what got our attention was the way he has used the tool to take much of the hassle out of the dreaded task of extracting data from a PDF file.

Accountant Jason Andrew is using ChatGPT to extract data from PDFs. 

“I recently used it to help with data cleansing and restructuring copied data from a PDF into Excel,” Mr Andrew, the director and head of growth at SBO Financial, said.

“I would typically task our analyst team to do this spreadsheet grunt work – it would probably take them at least an hour. ChatGPT did it in seconds.”

Asked if he would use the tool to carry out such a task again, he replied: “Hell, yes.”

ChatGPT 3.5 prompt:

hey mate, can you reformat this data for excel

30 June 2022 30 June 2021
as at 30 June 2022 Note $’000 $’000
Current assets
Cash at bank 4.5 24,276 70,497
Trade and other receivables 3.1 27,687 30,621
Inventories 3.2 65,335 46,179
Prepayments 5,026 4,311
Contract assets 2.1 844 843
Current tax asset 3.6 8,487 -
Assets held for sale 5.2 657 -
Total current assets 132,312 152,451
Non-current assets
Right-of-use assets 3.3 41,268 9,003
Plant and equipment 3.4 38,068 19,864
[Edited for length]


The upshot

The ease or difficulty of manually extracting data from a PDF will all depend on how the data was saved – and whether you have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro or a similar specialist tool that can be used to cut and paste tables.

Without these tools, ChatGPT 3.5 and 4 can do quite a bit of the heavy lifting, – but you’ll still have to double-check the results carefully and ask the chatbot to correct its mistakes.

We had mixed results in our experiments using the same table as Mr Andrew (a cut and paste from page 48 of the annual report below). The tool sometimes had to be reminded to include all the columns and at other times cut of data for no reason. However, ChatGPT quickly fixed the problems when prompted.

The tool was less useful for tables with blank cells that did not have a dash or some other indicator. This data in these tables was wrongly placed and in each test had to be manually corrected.


KPMG turns to AI to improve its audits


Edmund TadrosProfessional services editor
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KPMG Australia has begun using an enhanced version of its auditing software on local clients which can search for outlier transactions within a complete dataset during an audit.

Julian McPherson, partner in charge of national external audit and assurance at KPMG. 

The capability, already in use by the firm in the US, UK and Canada, allows KPMG’s auditors a faster analysis of more client data and should improve audit quality, which is critical to investors who rely on financial statements to make decisions.

The enhancements to KPMG’s audit software, called KPMG Clara, uses aspects of artificial intelligence in its operation, such as machine learning, to work out what constitutes a normal transaction within a dataset.

This use of advanced technology comes after the corporate regulator last October called forKPMG and its big four rival Deloitte to take immediate action to improve their audit processes after it found their standard of audit work had declined dramatically in the previous year.

It is also part of an ongoing trend within the world’s largest accounting firms and will have long-term implications for the usefulness of audits as well as the professionals who work within the audit sector.

‘Analysing 100pc of transactions’

KPMG is initially using the enhanced software on five audits in Australia with “some teams doing [a traditional] audit in parallel” to test the effectiveness of the machine learning functions, said Julian McPherson, the partner in charge of national external audit and assurance at the firm.

The new features work by “analysing 100 per cent of transactions” and then scoring each transaction against a battery of tests seeking to uncover statistical outliers, he said. “Every transaction is given a score” as high, medium and low risk, allowing the firm’s auditors to focus their “attention on high-risk transactions”.

“The solution was able to identify high-risk transactions that wouldn’t have been able to be identified normally,” Mr McPherson said.

The KPMG partner said that the new capability would not, at first, reduce the time or manpower required to carry out an audit because of the amount of work initially involved in setting up the data feeds to allow the software to analyse entire datasets.

“My team has grown, we are now recruiting more data scientists,” he said.

AI and auditing

In the long term, researcher are split on what the increased use of artificial intelligence technologies will mean for white collar jobs and for auditors specifically.

Two recent reports looked into the effect of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, on white collar jobs. They concluded that while many office tasks will likely be sped up or completely automated by AI tools, it was too early to predict if that will lead to net job losses around the world or simply change the nature of many jobs and create a range of new occupations.

A separate 2022 research paper published before ChatGPT was made public – Is artificial intelligence improving the audit process? – concluded that “investing in AI helps improve audit quality, reduces fees and ultimately displaces human auditors”.

The study examined the use of artificial intelligence by the world’s 36 largest audit firms found that increased investment in AI-related technologies would reduce the likelihood of an audit restatement, lead to lower audit fees and reduce the number of accounting employees.

“Our empirical results document substantial gains in quality, as AI investments by audit firms are associated with significant declines in the incidence of restatements, including material restatements and restatements related to accruals and revenue recognition,” the authors of the paper wrote.

“[Moreover], we find preliminary evidence that improved audit quality is accompanied by a move towards a leaner process: as audit firms invest in AI, they are able to lower the fees they charge while reducing their audit workforces and showing increased productivity, as measured by total fees per employee.”

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