luna-mea

[jcmarchi]

AI for health & networking: Christie Mealo's tech impact

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/ai-for-health-networking-christie-mealos-tech-impact/

AI for health & networking: Christie Mealo's tech impact

My name is Christie Mealo, and I’m a Senior AI Engineering Manager at CVS Health, where I focus on AI-driven health products, primarily in the area of diabetes management. 

In addition to my work at CVS, I’m the founder of Orbit, an AI-powered contact book and networking app designed for value-based networking. 

I also lead the Philly Data & AI Meetup group, help guide the Philly Tech Committee, and serve as a chair on Philly iConnect. 

Through these roles, I’m deeply involved in organizing communities and events across Philadelphia and the larger East Coast, helping to foster collaboration and innovation in the tech space.

It’s been a crazy year for those in tech—what’s excited you most about recent developments?

It’s been an incredible year in tech, and what excites me most is how generative AI has significantly lowered barriers to entry and creativity for so many people. This technology is empowering individuals with new and novel ideas, allowing them to bring their visions to life in ways that were previously out of reach. 

I believe this will shake up the economy in a positive way, leading to the development of a lot of innovative products and introducing new competitors into the market. While we’re undoubtedly in the midst of a hype cycle—or perhaps only at the beginning—it’s thrilling to see where this will take us in the coming years.

What role do you see generative AI playing across industries over the next 6-12 months, and where do you think it will have the biggest impact?

Generative AI is poised to significantly impact various industries over the next 6-12 months. While it’s clear that it will continue to transform fields like copywriting, advertising, and creative content, its influence is much broader.

On one hand, generative AI is incredibly exciting because it lowers barriers to entry for innovation and creativity. Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and GitHub Copilot are not only enabling individuals and smaller companies to bring novel ideas to market more quickly but are also optimizing workflows. Personally, these tools have streamlined my day-to-day work, saving me approximately 10 hours each week by automating routine tasks and enhancing productivity.

However, there are valid concerns about the impact of generative AI, particularly regarding its effect on the internet and the truth. As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, there is a real risk of misinformation and the proliferation of fake information online. This not only threatens the integrity of the internet but also raises ethical questions that need urgent attention.

Interestingly, these challenges are creating new opportunities for AI ethics as a field. We’re likely to see significant job growth in areas focused on developing frameworks and tools to manage these risks, ensuring that AI is used responsibly and that the internet remains a trusted source of information.

While we are only getting started, the balance of benefits and challenges will ultimately shape the economic and social impact of generative AI. It’s an exciting time, but also one that demands careful consideration of the ethical implications.

How can companies effectively navigate the ethical considerations that come with the rapid advancements in AI technology? 

As an ex-McKinsey person myself, I feel compelled to steal some good advice and guidelines they have provided for this one:

Establish clear ethical guidelines: Companies should start by defining ethical principles that align with their values and business goals. These should cover critical areas such as bias and fairness, explainability, transparency, human oversight, data privacy, and security. For instance, ensuring that AI models do not inadvertently discriminate based on race, gender, or other protected characteristics is essential.

Implement human oversight and accountability: It’s important to have a “human in the loop” to oversee AI decisions, particularly in high-stakes scenarios like financial services or healthcare. This ensures that there is always a human judgment applied to AI outputs, which can help mitigate risks associated with AI decision-making.

Continuous monitoring and adaptation: Ethical AI isn’t a one-time effort. Companies should establish ongoing monitoring systems to track the performance and impact of AI models over time. This includes regular audits to check for biases or inaccuracies that might emerge as the AI system interacts with new data.

Educate and empower employees: Building a culture that supports ethical AI requires educating employees across the organization about the importance of these issues. Providing training on ethical AI practices and ensuring that teams are equipped with the necessary tools to implement these principles is crucial for long-term success.

Generative AI is a whole new ballgame, and we still have a lot to learn, but these pillars provide a good start.

What are you excited about at Generative AI Summit Toronto, and why is it important to get together with other leaders like this?

I’m really excited about the opportunity to connect with a diverse group of AI professionals and thought leaders at the Generative AI Summit in Toronto. 

The event will feature cutting-edge discussions on the latest advancements in generative AI, and I’m particularly looking forward to the workshops and panels that provide opportunities to interact directly with experts. It’s important to gather with other leaders in the field to share insights, foster collaboration, and drive innovation in this rapidly evolving space.

Christie will be moderating at AI Accelerator Institute’s Generative AI Summit Toronto.

Join us on Novevember 20, 2024.

Get your tickets below.

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[usaii]

Devin AI: The Newest AI Software Engineer on the Block | USAII®

A perfect companion for software engineers is here. Devin AI rules the AI coding world while complementing efficiently skilled AI engineers with top AI tools and GenAI.

Read more: https://shorturl.at/klhZ1

DEVIN AI, AI engineering, AI Software Engineer, AI programmers, conversational AI, AI tools, Software Developer, AI engineer, Generative AI

[techdriveplay]

The Impact of AI on Everyday Life: A New Normal

The impact of AI on everyday life has become a focal point for discussions among tech enthusiasts, policymakers, and the general public alike. This transformative force is reshaping the way we live, work, and interact with the world around us, making its influence felt across various domains of our daily existence. Revolutionizing Workplaces One of the most significant arenas where the impact…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How I got scammed

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

I wuz robbed.

More specifically, I was tricked by a phone-phisher pretending to be from my bank, and he convinced me to hand over my credit-card number, then did $8,000+ worth of fraud with it before I figured out what happened. And then he tried to do it again, a week later!

Here's what happened. Over the Christmas holiday, I traveled to New Orleans. The day we landed, I hit a Chase ATM in the French Quarter for some cash, but the machine declined the transaction. Later in the day, we passed a little credit-union's ATM and I used that one instead (I bank with a one-branch credit union and generally there's no fee to use another CU's ATM).

A couple days later, I got a call from my credit union. It was a weekend, during the holiday, and the guy who called was obviously working for my little CU's after-hours fraud contractor. I'd dealt with these folks before – they service a ton of little credit unions, and generally the call quality isn't great and the staff will often make mistakes like mispronouncing my credit union's name.

That's what happened here – the guy was on a terrible VOIP line and I had to ask him to readjust his mic before I could even understand him. He mispronounced my bank's name and then asked if I'd attempted to spend $1,000 at an Apple Store in NYC that day. No, I said, and groaned inwardly. What a pain in the ass. Obviously, I'd had my ATM card skimmed – either at the Chase ATM (maybe that was why the transaction failed), or at the other credit union's ATM (it had been a very cheap looking system).

I told the guy to block my card and we started going through the tedious business of running through recent transactions, verifying my identity, and so on. It dragged on and on. These were my last hours in New Orleans, and I'd left my family at home and gone out to see some of the pre-Mardi Gras krewe celebrations and get a muffalata, and I could tell that I was going to run out of time before I finished talking to this guy.

"Look," I said, "you've got all my details, you've frozen the card. I gotta go home and meet my family and head to the airport. I'll call you back on the after-hours number once I'm through security, all right?"

He was frustrated, but that was his problem. I hung up, got my sandwich, went to the airport, and we checked in. It was total chaos: an Alaska Air 737 Max had just lost its door-plug in mid-air and every Max in every airline's fleet had been grounded, so the check in was crammed with people trying to rebook. We got through to the gate and I sat down to call the CU's after-hours line. The person on the other end told me that she could only handle lost and stolen cards, not fraud, and given that I'd already frozen the card, I should just drop by the branch on Monday to get a new card.

We flew home, and later the next day, I logged into my account and made a list of all the fraudulent transactions and printed them out, and on Monday morning, I drove to the bank to deal with all the paperwork. The folks at the CU were even more pissed than I was. The fraud that run up to more than $8,000, and if Visa refused to take it out of the merchants where the card had been used, my little credit union would have to eat the loss.

I agreed and commiserated. I also pointed out that their outsource, after-hours fraud center bore some blame here: I'd canceled the card on Saturday but most of the fraud had taken place on Sunday. Something had gone wrong.

One cool thing about banking at a tiny credit-union is that you end up talking to people who have actual authority, responsibility and agency. It turned out the the woman who was processing my fraud paperwork was a VP, and she decided to look into it. A few minutes later she came back and told me that the fraud center had no record of having called me on Saturday.

"That was the fraudster," she said.

Oh, shit. I frantically rewound my conversation, trying to figure out if this could possibly be true. I hadn't given him anything apart from some very anodyne info, like what city I live in (which is in my Wikipedia entry), my date of birth (ditto), and the last four digits of my card.

Wait a sec.

He hadn't asked for the last four digits. He'd asked for the last seven digits. At the time, I'd found that very frustrating, but now – "The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue, right?" I asked the VP.

I'd given him my entire card number.

Goddammit.

The thing is, I know a lot about fraud. I'm writing an entire series of novels about this kind of scam:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

And most summers, I go to Defcon, and I always go to the "social engineering" competitions where an audience listens as a hacker in a soundproof booth cold-calls merchants (with the owner's permission) and tries to con whoever answers the phone into giving up important information.

But I'd been conned.

Now look, I knew I could be conned. I'd been conned before, 13 years ago, by a Twitter worm that successfully phished out of my password via DM:

https://locusmag.com/2010/05/cory-doctorow-persistence-pays-parasites/

That scam had required a miracle of timing. It started the day before, when I'd reset my phone to factory defaults and reinstalled all my apps. That same day, I'd published two big online features that a lot of people were talking about. The next morning, we were late getting out of the house, so by the time my wife and I dropped the kid at daycare and went to the coffee shop, it had a long line. Rather than wait in line with me, my wife sat down to read a newspaper, and so I pulled out my phone and found a Twitter DM from a friend asking "is this you?" with a URL.

Assuming this was something to do with those articles I'd published the day before, I clicked the link and got prompted for my Twitter login again. This had been happening all day because I'd done that mobile reinstall the day before and all my stored passwords had been wiped. I entered it but the page timed out. By that time, the coffees were ready. We sat and chatted for a bit, then went our own ways.

I was on my way to the office when I checked my phone again. I had a whole string of DMs from other friends. Each one read "is this you?" and had a URL.

Oh, shit, I'd been phished.

If I hadn't reinstalled my mobile OS the day before. If I hadn't published a pair of big articles the day before. If we hadn't been late getting out the door. If we had been a little more late getting out the door (so that I'd have seen the multiple DMs, which would have tipped me off).

There's a name for this in security circles: "Swiss-cheese security." Imagine multiple slices of Swiss cheese all stacked up, the holes in one slice blocked by the slice below it. All the slices move around and every now and again, a hole opens up that goes all the way through the stack. Zap!

The fraudster who tricked me out of my credit card number had Swiss cheese security on his side. Yes, he spoofed my bank's caller ID, but that wouldn't have been enough to fool me if I hadn't been on vacation, having just used a pair of dodgy ATMs, in a hurry and distracted. If the 737 Max disaster hadn't happened that day and I'd had more time at the gate, I'd have called my bank back. If my bank didn't use a slightly crappy outsource/out-of-hours fraud center that I'd already had sub-par experiences with. If, if, if.

The next Friday night, at 5:30PM, the fraudster called me back, pretending to be the bank's after-hours center. He told me my card had been compromised again. But: I hadn't removed my card from my wallet since I'd had it replaced. Also, it was half an hour after the bank closed for the long weekend, a very fraud-friendly time. And when I told him I'd call him back and asked for the after-hours fraud number, he got very threatening and warned me that because I'd now been notified about the fraud that any losses the bank suffered after I hung up the phone without completing the fraud protocol would be billed to me. I hung up on him. He called me back immediately. I hung up on him again and put my phone into do-not-disturb.

The following Tuesday, I called my bank and spoke to their head of risk-management. I went through everything I'd figured out about the fraudsters, and she told me that credit unions across America were being hit by this scam, by fraudsters who somehow knew CU customers' phone numbers and names, and which CU they banked at. This was key: my phone number is a reasonably well-kept secret. You can get it by spending money with Equifax or another nonconsensual doxing giant, but you can't just google it or get it at any of the free services. The fact that the fraudsters knew where I banked, knew my name, and had my phone number had really caused me to let down my guard.

The risk management person and I talked about how the credit union could mitigate this attack: for example, by better-training the after-hours card-loss staff to be on the alert for calls from people who had been contacted about supposed card fraud. We also went through the confusing phone-menu that had funneled me to the wrong department when I called in, and worked through alternate wording for the menu system that would be clearer (this is the best part about banking with a small CU – you can talk directly to the responsible person and have a productive discussion!). I even convinced her to buy a ticket to next summer's Defcon to attend the social engineering competitions.

There's a leak somewhere in the CU systems' supply chain. Maybe it's Zelle, or the small number of corresponding banks that CUs rely on for SWIFT transaction forwarding. Maybe it's even those after-hours fraud/card-loss centers. But all across the USA, CU customers are getting calls with spoofed caller IDs from fraudsters who know their registered phone numbers and where they bank.

I've been mulling this over for most of a month now, and one thing has really been eating at me: the way that AI is going to make this kind of problem much worse.

Not because AI is going to commit fraud, though.

One of the truest things I know about AI is: "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

I trusted this fraudster specifically because I knew that the outsource, out-of-hours contractors my bank uses have crummy headsets, don't know how to pronounce my bank's name, and have long-ass, tedious, and pointless standardized questionnaires they run through when taking fraud reports. All of this created cover for the fraudster, whose plausibility was enhanced by the rough edges in his pitch - they didn't raise red flags.

As this kind of fraud reporting and fraud contacting is increasingly outsourced to AI, bank customers will be conditioned to dealing with semi-automated systems that make stupid mistakes, force you to repeat yourself, ask you questions they should already know the answers to, and so on. In other words, AI will groom bank customers to be phishing victims.

This is a mistake the finance sector keeps making. 15 years ago, Ben Laurie excoriated the UK banks for their "Verified By Visa" system, which validated credit card transactions by taking users to a third party site and requiring them to re-enter parts of their password there:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090331094020/http://www.links.org/?p=591

This is exactly how a phishing attack works. As Laurie pointed out, this was the banks training their customers to be phished.

I came close to getting phished again today, as it happens. I got back from Berlin on Friday and my suitcase was damaged in transit. I've been dealing with the airline, which means I've really been dealing with their third-party, outsource luggage-damage service. They have a terrible website, their emails are incoherent, and they officiously demand the same information over and over again.

This morning, I got a scam email asking me for more information to complete my damaged luggage claim. It was a terrible email, from a noreply@ email address, and it was vague, officious, and dishearteningly bureaucratic. For just a moment, my finger hovered over the phishing link, and then I looked a little closer.

On any other day, it wouldn't have had a chance. Today – right after I had my luggage wrecked, while I'm still jetlagged, and after days of dealing with my airline's terrible outsource partner – it almost worked.

So much fraud is a Swiss-cheese attack, and while companies can't close all the holes, they can stop creating new ones.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to post about it whenever I get scammed. I find the inner workings of scams to be fascinating, and it's also important to remind people that everyone is vulnerable sometimes, and scammers are willing to try endless variations until an attack lands at just the right place, at just the right time, in just the right way. If you think you can't get scammed, that makes you especially vulnerable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[anandinternational]

The demand for qualified experts in AI is increasing as technology continues to grow at an unparalleled rate. Suppose you’re an engineering student from the best private engineering college for computer science in Jaipur interested in cutting-edge technologies like machine learning and AI. In that case, you’ve come to the perfect spot.

[stefanmike92]

Which emerging AI trends are shaping the future of business ?

From AI-driven automation to Blockchain revolution, join us on a mind-bending journey as we explore the cutting-edge trends defining the future of business. Watch our latest video to discover how businesses are leveraging augmented reality, data analytics, and the power of sustainability to thrive in the digital age. Don't miss out on these EXCLUSIVE key insights from our expert! Speaker Catherine Brinkman Vice President of Client Experience at Dale Carnegie Host Arshiya Chandel Blockchain Council Visit: Certified Artificial Intelligence (AI) Expert

[probablyasocialecologist]

Google is now the only search engine that can surface results from Reddit, making one of the web’s most valuable repositories of user generated content exclusive to the internet’s already dominant search engine. If you use Bing, DuckDuckGo, Mojeek, Qwant or any other alternative search engine that doesn’t rely on Google’s indexing and search Reddit by using “site:reddit.com,” you will not see any results from the last week. DuckDuckGo is currently turning up seven links when searching Reddit, but provides no data on where the links go or why, instead only saying that “We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us.” Older results will still show up, but these search engines are no longer able to “crawl” Reddit, meaning that Google is the only search engine that will turn up results from Reddit going forward. Searching for Reddit still works on Kagi, an independent, paid search engine that buys part of its search index from Google. The news shows how Google’s near monopoly on search is now actively hindering other companies’ ability to compete at a time when Google is facing increasing criticism over the quality of its search results. And while neither Reddit or Google responded to a request for comment, it appears that the exclusion of other search engines is the result of a multi-million dollar deal that gives Google the right to scrape Reddit for data to train its AI products.

July 24 2024

[dianapocalypse]

generative AI is the future

[cafecubano]

this is my favorite response I've ever gotten on character ai

[jcmarchi]

Primate Labs launches Geekbench AI benchmarking tool

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/primate-labs-launches-geekbench-ai-benchmarking-tool/

Primate Labs launches Geekbench AI benchmarking tool

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Primate Labs has officially launched Geekbench AI, a benchmarking tool designed specifically for machine learning and AI-centric workloads.

The release of Geekbench AI 1.0 marks the culmination of years of development and collaboration with customers, partners, and the AI engineering community. The benchmark, previously known as Geekbench ML during its preview phase, has been rebranded to align with industry terminology and ensure clarity about its purpose.

Geekbench AI is now available for Windows, macOS, and Linux through the Primate Labs website, as well as on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store for mobile devices.

Primate Labs’ latest benchmarking tool aims to provide a standardised method for measuring and comparing AI capabilities across different platforms and architectures. The benchmark offers a unique approach by providing three overall scores, reflecting the complexity and heterogeneity of AI workloads.

“Measuring performance is, put simply, really hard,” explained Primate Labs. “That’s not because it’s hard to run an arbitrary test, but because it’s hard to determine which tests are the most important for the performance you want to measure – especially across different platforms, and particularly when everyone is doing things in subtly different ways.”

The three-score system accounts for the varied precision levels and hardware optimisations found in modern AI implementations. This multi-dimensional approach allows developers, hardware vendors, and enthusiasts to gain deeper insights into a device’s AI performance across different scenarios.

A notable addition to Geekbench AI is the inclusion of accuracy measurements for each test. This feature acknowledges that AI performance isn’t solely about speed but also about the quality of results. By combining speed and accuracy metrics, Geekbench AI provides a more holistic view of AI capabilities, helping users understand the trade-offs between performance and precision.

Geekbench AI 1.0 introduces support for a wide range of AI frameworks, including OpenVINO on Linux and Windows, and vendor-specific TensorFlow Lite delegates like Samsung ENN, ArmNN, and Qualcomm QNN on Android. This broad framework support ensures that the benchmark reflects the latest tools and methodologies used by AI developers.

The benchmark also utilises more extensive and diverse datasets, which not only enhance the accuracy evaluations but also better represent real-world AI use cases. All workloads in Geekbench AI 1.0 run for a minimum of one second, allowing devices to reach their maximum performance levels during testing while still reflecting the bursty nature of real-world applications.

Primate Labs has published detailed technical descriptions of the workloads and models used in Geekbench AI 1.0, emphasising their commitment to transparency and industry-standard testing methodologies. The benchmark is integrated with the Geekbench Browser, facilitating easy cross-platform comparisons and result sharing.

The company anticipates regular updates to Geekbench AI to keep pace with market changes and emerging AI features. However, Primate Labs believes that Geekbench AI has already reached a level of reliability that makes it suitable for integration into professional workflows, with major tech companies like Samsung and Nvidia already utilising the benchmark.

(Image Credit: Primate Labs)

See also: xAI unveils Grok-2 to challenge the AI hierarchy

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, benchmark, geekbench, geekbench ai, machine learning, primate labs, tools

[nixcraft]

I asked Google "who ruined Google" and they replied honestly using their AI, which is now forced on all of us. It's too funny not to share!

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Citroën 2CV Safari, 2024. Renders for a proposal by EB Design to create a restomod 2CV desert racer taking inspiration from the twin-engine 2CV Sahara.

[heilos]

I have come to the annoying conclusion that many search engines are becoming super useless in trying to track down historical research without bending over backwards for answers. The amount of garbage that shows up in the results is so incredibly aggravating and has nothing to do with my search terms or questions. I cannot in fact "just use X search engines" apparently.

[the-real-google]

JESUS CHRIST, GOOGLE. WHAT. IS. WRONG. WITH. YOUR. AI.

When I programmed it I thought AI stood for artificial idiocy and no one corrected me until now

[stiffyck]

He’s setting the course to Disneyland

Drew this half asleep. Enjoy the stupid S.C.A.R au

[amber-jinx]

We finally have something close to a Rachel Amber DLC 🔥🥹

Y'all have to check this out. The details are amazing!

No but if i see a blue haired girl with a beenie and a blond in plaid shirt driving by in a truck like the end there I'll prolly chase after them 😂

This is the development needed

Chap 2 Chap 3 here!