A New Brain Implant Turns Thoughts Into Text With 90 Percent Accuracy
When asked to copy a given sentence, T5 was able to “mindtext” at about 90
characters per minute (roughly 45 words by one estimate), “the highest typing
rate that has yet been reported for any type of BCI,” the team wrote, and a
twofold improvement over previous setups. His freestyle typing—answering
questions—overall matched in performance, and met the average speed of thumb
texting of his age group. “Willett and co-workers’ study begins to deliver on
the promise of BCI technologies,” said Rajeswaran and Orsborn, not just for
mind-texting, but also what comes next. The idea of tapping into machine
learning algorithms is smart, yes, because the field is rapidly improving—and
illustrating another solid link between neuroscience and AI. But perhaps more
importantly, an algorithm’s performance relies on good data. Here, the team
found that the time difference between writing letters, something rather
complex, is what made the algorithm perform so well. In other words, for future
BCIs, “it might be advantageous to decode complex behaviors rather than simple
ones, particularly for classification tasks.”
The question of QR code security
These codes can invoke various actions on a smartphone device. Here lies the
threat. While a QR code may appear as though it is designed to help us sign in
to a Wi-Fi network or be part of an innocent marketing campaign, the intent of
it may be entirely different, with threat actors architecting and deploying
malicious codes in a variety of ways. They can be used to direct the user to a
malicious URL for the purpose of phishing; force a call, thereby exposing the
end user’s phone number to a scammer or a potentially expensive call centre;
send a payment within seconds; obtain a user’s location; or draft an email or
text and populate the recipient and subject lines. Additionally, they may
introduce a compromised network on a device’s preferred network list and include
a credential that enables the device to automatically connect to that network.
Once connected, an attacker could launch further ‘Man-in-the-Middle’ attacks.
Given the variety and seriousness of these potential threats, some key
statistics released by MobileIron in September 2020 provide cause for alarm. ...
At the same time, however, 71% of respondents said they could not “distinguish
between a legitimate and malicious QR code”.
Security doesn’t always require immediacy
Understanding the importance of long-term security investment is one thing.
Putting this into practice presents a new challenge entirely. Organizations can
look to assign this task internally, but ultimately, IT personnel need to focus
on business goals. At the same time, it is not always reasonable to expect an IT
department to keep up with developments on topics ranging from software security
to cryptography to hardware architecture. By relying on vendors for security
agility, organizations can outsource the technologies required for long-term
protection. Enterprise service management (ESM) is one such option that looks to
ensure organizations are protected for a matter of years. As digital
transformation accelerates, new technologies that enable the business tend to go
out of date entirely too soon after deploying. Investing and enhancing the IT
department to tackle the challenge can be one way forward, but ultimately
businesses need their employees to focus on their own expertise. ESM enables the
adoption of new technologies whilst allowing for organizations to move at their
own pace.
Allyship: Stepping up for a more inclusive IT
Work that involves self-reflection is challenging, and when it comes to
addressing diversity issues and one’s position within them, some IT leaders
may be unsure about how to effectively approach these sensitive topics. But
being an ally can set an example for the entire company. Allies in leadership
positions can demonstrate to employees that conversations about diversity,
equity, and inclusion (DEI) are encouraged, and that employees from
traditionally marginalized groups have a safe environment to bring up concerns
they may have about their own experiences in the workplace. “I think it’s
about setting an example from the top, being willing to engage in those
uncomfortable conversations. A really effective ally is willing to put some
skin in the game, to put some of their privilege on the line, on behalf of
someone who doesn’t have that privilege,” says Malcom Glenn, director of
public affairs at Better.com and former head of global policy for
accessibility and underserved communities at Uber. Conversations around
racism, sexism, and bigotry, both within and outside of the workplace, can be
very difficult.
Ransomware attacks are not a matter of if, but when
As the CISO role evolves and more data is stored in clouds, DeFiore said her
priorities right now are moving "back to basics" and knowing where the
airline's data is, applying patches and working from a stance of least
privilege. Also important is reducing the attack surface, she said, and
"making sure we're only publishing things to the internet that need to be
there and segmenting and making sure there's no opportunities for lateral
movement" inside the network. Twitter's mission is to protect public
conversations, and Sethi said that requires being able to recover quickly. She
also said she thinks there will be an increase in the number of security
vendors suffering breaches, "which is why I say think about who you partner
with." Salem said he was impressed with "how well CISOs responded during the
pandemic," and moved from a world in which they had a lot of control to very
little--almost overnight. The lesson the security community has learned from
that experience is to be agile, he said. Looking ahead, the CISO needs to
continue becoming integrated into the day-to-day operations of the business so
they can be better prepared, he said.
Data Science Focus Areas for the Future
Forecasting based on historic trends has long been an essential part of
conducting business. Whether using seasonal averages or industry knowledge,
predicting the future was always a use-case with numerous applications. Data
Scientists have a good mix of talents that line them up with the request to
fit forecasting models, but they have not always had the educational
background to effectively communicate their results in terms of economics and
finance. ... As more fitted models start making their way to production, a
knowledge gap in deploying and maintaining models emerges. A 100% accurate
model that only lives on your machine is close to 0% useful. The ETL (extract,
transform and load) and packaging of ML capabilities with requirements is a
grey area for many current data scientists, and not always covered in training
programs. Auto-ML capabilities are increasing the frequency that a useful
model, designed to be consumed, will be thought of for production. In my
opinion, this is an area of focus that will become the most lucrative in terms
of jobs and compensation.
Cloud banking: More than just a CIO conversation
Data security concerns are top of mind for bank leaders. An important part of
understanding the cloud is considering how an enterprise’s current
infrastructure and capabilities may be limiting its ability to detect and
address new risks and vulnerabilities—and how cloud technology can help.
Security is different in the cloud because of the tools that are native to
each cloud provider’s environment and the fact that cloud providers typically
take responsibility for the security of the lower-level infrastructure layers.
The shared security responsibility between cloud providers and the clients
they host changes how organizations should anticipate and prepare for security
risks. ... Cloud computing can help banks and financial services firms meet
ever-evolving regulatory reporting requirements (e.g., Comprehensive Capital
Analysis and Review, Solvency II) in multiple operating jurisdictions—a
critically important capability in an industry where cross-border transactions
are the norm. Cloud solutions can also help banks conduct intraday liquidity
and risk calculations, and mine trade surveillance data to detect anti-money
laundering and other fraud issues.
5G smartphones have arrived. But for many, the reason to upgrade is still missing
Globally, across all the markets surveyed by Ericsson where 5G commercial
networks are available, an average 4% of consumers own a 5G smartphone and
have a 5G subscription. In the UK, an overwhelming 97% of respondents are yet
to embrace next-generation connectivity. This is partly due to the lack of
clarity in the marketing of 5G, which has confused customers as to what the
technology is and what it can offer. Heavy tech jargon and misinformation
campaigns have in some cases even put users off entirely from planning to
upgrade. In the UK, for example, the number of consumers intending to upgrade
to 5G next year stands at 25% – down from 27% in 2019. For the few who have
switched to 5G networks, however, the experience overall seems positive, with
better levels of satisfaction recorded compared to users connected with 4G
LTE. Perhaps as a reflection of 5G's capabilities, Wi-Fi usage among those who
have upgraded is reducing. A quarter of respondents, said Ericsson, have
either decreased or stopped using Wi-Fi after switching to 5G.
Turning an uncertain 2021 into a year of opportunity
IT leaders putting new cloud and technology strategies in place to help
improve their resiliency and availability must ensure that, once implemented,
they don’t just sit back and hope that it works. Organisations need to know
that the improvements to their business continuity plans (BCPs) will stand the
test of disruption when further unexpected, and even significant planned-for,
events occur further down the line. Stress-testing exercises are the best way
of identifying gaps and faults in your BCP, before it is too late and
remediating any problems becomes reactive rather than proactive. Organisations
can do this by identifying which threats pose the biggest risk to the business
– this is a vital step as every company and industry is different. Once these
have been identified, each scenario can be placed in order of priority, by
gauging exactly how much impact they could have on the business and how
complex the plan needs to be to respond. When conducting these exercises, each
team member should also be assigned a clear role. This might be as an active
player in the BCP test, or it may be as an external party, for example an
evaluator or observer, who can help spot any flaws and play a vital role in
measuring its success.
NVIDIA Announces AI Training Dataset Generator DatasetGAN
A generative adversarial network (GAN) is a system that is composed of two
deep-learning models: a generator which learns to create realistic data and a
discriminator which learns to distinguish between real data and the
generator's output. After training, often the generator is used alone, to
simply produce data. NVIDIA has used GANs for several applications, including
its Maxine platform for reducing video-conference bandwidth. In 2019, NVIDIA
developed a GAN called StyleGAN that can produce photorealistic images of
human faces and is used in the popular website This Person Does Not Exist.
Last year, NVIDIA developed a variation of StyleGAN that can take as input the
desired camera, texture, background, and other data, to produce customizable
renderings of an image. Although GANs can produce an infinite number of unique
high-quality images, most CV training algorithms also require that images be
annotated with information about the objects in the image. ImageNet, one of
the most popular CV datasets, famously employed tens of thousands of workers
to label images using Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
Quote for the day:
"A leader is one who sees more than
others see and who sees farther than others see and who sees before others
see." -- Leroy Eimes
