Daily Tech Digest - November 03, 2019

Can a Smart Light Bulb Steal Your Personal Data?


Jadliwala believes that smart bulbs may be poised to become an even more attractive target for data privacy exploitation, even though they are embedded with very simple chips. Smart bulbs connected to a home network rather than a smart home hub — a centralized hardware or software device where other loT products communicate with each other — are especially easy to target. If these bulbs are infrared-enabled, hackers can send commands via the invisible infrared light emitted by the bulbs. These commands can be used to hack into other IoT devices on the home network to steal data. Moreover, the victim would likely not notice such hacking because the commands would be transmitted within the owner’s home Wi-Fi network, where they might not be detected by Internet-based security systems. Jadliwala says smart bulbs connected to dedicated home hubs are currently safer alternatives because they do not access any Wi-Fi networks, but he also believes smart bulb manufacturers will have to ramp up their security measures to limit the level of access such bulbs might have to other smart home appliances within a home system.



How Artificial Intelligence Will Take the Industrial Internet of Things to New Heights


The ideology is simple in the industrial sector as well: making industrial machines smarter than humans at analyzing data in real-time and forming the basis of faster and better logical decisions. A connected machinery system of this capability ensures that management can pick up errors or inefficiencies in the system, formulate better solutions and implement them faster. Making industrial processes smarter with IIoT also brings great environmental benefits to the table: better quality control, eco-friendliness, sustainability and better industrial waste management. IIoT also helps in supply chain management, the entire process of raw material conversion into a product and it’s upkeeping from the point of origin to the point of consumption. In the Industrial sector, predictive maintenance and analytics aren’t possible without proper IIoT infrastructure, as well as enhanced asset tracking and energy management for better power utilization. IIoT manages and controls all these processes with an integrated system of smart and intelligent devices ensuring perfect maintenance and management with less dependence on human action.



4 Ways to Ensure a Successful Analytics Tool Integration


Data is the foundation of analytics and decision-making, and analytics is about making sense of the available data. A stable CRM platform is necessary before deploying advanced analytics. If the quality of the data inside the systems isn’t good, the results will be unpredictable. Data used in analytics tools have to be current, usable, and actionable. The CRM system data may be sales-focused, but it might not be collecting the data needed by other departments. Striving for quick results may overshadow the need for higher data quality, accuracy, and reliability. Quality management and ethical data sourcing, entry, and retrieval should be combined with continual quality testing and improvement, which ultimately leads to increased value. Consider the appointment of chief data officers and chief analytics officers. Also, don’t overlook the demand for security, as privacy threats and public concern increase. While data analytics tools are helpful, but they are nothing without a strong team and a big data management team with data scientists from different teams.


Overcoming The Barriers To Conversational AI

smart speaker
Conversational AI is an incredibly hard problem to solve. The advances made so far, however, have been nothing short of staggering. One of the first voice recognition devices was Shoebox, an IBM device introduced at the 1962 Seattle World Fair that could recognise 16 spoken words. Currently, all major platforms are reporting recognition error rates below 5 per cent, which is more than enough to call voice recognition a viable technology. Of course, conversational AI is much more than just converting speech to words. In many ways, the real challenge comes after that. The device needs to understand the context of the conversation both at a global level (the user’s ultimate goal) and within different stages of the conversation (the tasks to be achieved in each step of a process). This is where the current challenges lie. Advances have been rapid and impressive but people are still reporting their frustration with chatbots and intelligent voice assistants because they are “just stupid” or they “don’t understand what I am asking”.


AI May Not Kill Your Job—Just Change It


Fleming is optimistic about what AI tools can do for work and for workers. Just as automation made factories more efficient, AI can help white-collar workers be more productive. The more productive they are, the more value they add to their companies. And the better those companies do, the higher wages get. “There will be some jobs lost,” he says. “But on balance, more jobs will be created both in the US and worldwide.” While some middle-wage jobs are disappearing, others are popping up in industries like logistics and health care, he says. As AI starts to take over more tasks, and the middle-wage jobs start to change, the skills we associate with those middle-class jobs have to change too. “I think that it’s rational to be optimistic,” says Richard Reeves, director of the Future of the Middle Class Initiative at the Brookings Institution. “But I don’t think that we should be complacent. It won’t just automatically be OK.” The report says these changes are happening relatively slowly, giving workers time to adjust. But Reeves points out that while these changes may seem incremental now, they are happening faster than they used to.


Why The EU Is About To Seize The Global Lead On Cybersecurity

US EU G8
The European Commission has made cybersecurity a “high priority” and proposed that the cybersecurity budget for 2021-27 include €2 billion to fund “safeguarding the EU's digital economy, society and democracies through polling expertise, boosting EU's cybersecurity industry, financing state-of-the-art cybersecurity equipment and infrastructure.” Additional funding will come from Horizon Europe, a €100 billion research and innovation program. The EU’s commitment is not just about the security of critical infrastructure and combating cybercrime. The EU has seen how America’s IT sector has driven the U.S. economy, and it wants part of the action. This desire is clearly at play throughout the EU Cybersecurity Act. The first sentence of the Act states, “Network and information systems and electronic communications networks and services play a vital role in society and have become the backbone of economic growth.” The EU is committed to becoming “a leader in the next-generation cybersecurity and digital technologies.”


IBM: AI will change every job and increase demand for creative skills


“As new technologies continue to scale within businesses and across industries, it is our responsibility as innovators to understand not only the business process implications, but also the societal impact,” said Martin Fleming, vice president and chief economist of IBM, in a statement. “To that end, this empirical research from the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab sheds new light on how tasks are reorganizing between people and machines as a result of AI and new technologies.” With the rise of AI and automation, there has been growing debate and anxiety about how these trends will disrupt current job markets. While some have argued AI and automation will be job killers, others have said the emerging technology will be a net creator of new jobs. The IBM-MIT study offers a bit of nuance to that discussion. The researchers used machine learning to analyze 170 million U.S. job postings between 2010 and 2017. They found that out of 18,500 possible tasks employees might be asked to do on average, the number had fallen by 3.7 over seven years. A drop, though hardly radical.


3 ways business intelligence can hurt your projects


The information gathered, analyzed, and reported is only useful if the individuals collecting it understand what they are looking for, why this information is relevant, where and how to search, and how to interpret the BI in a meaningful way. It is also essential to know who should have access to the information and how to deliver it in a timely manner. ... When planning for marketing-related projects, some companies, especially smaller ones, may only see financial and team-based performance data as valuable. Large numbers of customers or potential customers now interact online through social media, website content, and online advertising, which can play a significant role in trends, future activities, and spending habits.. ... Over-restricting business intelligence can result in IT department resource overload, decreased cross-functional productivity, reduced employee satisfaction, a decreased sense of trust, and low morale. While it is vital to restrict access based on a user's role, it is equally important to ensure that teams have the power to access and report on information without being hindered by bureaucracy.


AI and Health Care Are Made for Each Other


AI could also reduce physician burnout and extend the reach of doctors in underserved areas. For example, AI scribes could assist physicians with clinical note-taking, and bots could help teams of medical experts come together and discuss challenging cases. Computer vision could be used to assist radiologists with tumor detection or help dermatologists identify skin lesions, and be applied to routine screenings like eye exams. All of this is already possible with technology available today or in development. But AI alone can’t effect these changes. To support the technical transformation, we must have a social transformation including trusted, responsible, and inclusive policy and governance around AI and data; effective collaboration across industries; and comprehensive training for the public, professionals and officials. These concerns are particularly relevant for health care, which is innately complex and where missteps can have ramifications as grave as loss of life.


Android bug lets hackers plant malware via NFC beaming

Android NFC
Google patched last month an Android bug that can let hackers spread malware to a nearby phone via a little-known Android OS feature called NFC beaming. NFC beaming works via an internal Android OS service known as Android Beam. This service allows an Android device to send data such as images, files, videos, or even apps, to another nearby device using NFC (Near-Field Communication) radio waves, as an alternative to WiFi or Bluetooth. Typically, apps (APK files) sent via NFC beaming are stored on disk and a notification is shown on screen. The notification asks the device owner if he wants to allow the NFC service to install an app from an unknown source. But, in January this year, a security researcher named Y. Shafranovich discovered that apps sent via NFC beaming on Android 8 (Oreo) or later versions would not show this prompt. Instead, the notification would allow the user to install the app with one tap, without any security warning. While the lack of one prompt sounds unimportant, this is a major issue in Android's security model.



Quote for the day:


"Your greatest area of leadership often comes out of your greatest area of pain and weakness." -- Wayde Goodall


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