Author: Ian Vielma

KeyBanc Capital Markets lowered its revenue estimates for many cybersecurity firms. They believe that IT budgets are going to be decreasing as a result of AI. Their 2Q24 IT VAR survey states, “42% said they believe gen-AI initiatives are crowding out IT budgets, affecting spending on back office, public cloud and security.”  Full Story

The evolution of AI is said to be shaping cloud computing and data management. The latest technology has brought us AI chips, which are faster than CPUs and overall more efficient. Companies such as Netflix, Google, and Amazon are among the tech firms using cloud computing and AI chips for programs. Full Story

Last month, Google announced that its AI tool Gemini would be used to enhance its Workspace for Education apps like Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Gmail, along with a chatbot feature. The tools are meant to assist educators in personalizing learning through AI, focusing on efficiency and student progress. Google acknowledges that human involvement in education is essential, which AI cannot achieve. Full Story

The Mall of America has recently integrated facial recognition technology from Corsight to enhance security by identifying people of interest, such as those prohibited or in danger, with a stated 99.3% accuracy rate. There are worries about privacy, potential misuse, data breaches, and lack of clear policies on data handling and storage. There is a need to balance security needs with privacy rights and ensure proper checks and balances. Read More

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has rapidly transformed various areas, such as healthcare and finance. However, some may find that there are environmental impacts as a result of these AI practices. It is essential to stay informed and aware of ways to combat them. Energy Consumption & Carbon Emissions The demands of training AI models result in substantial energy consumption and associated carbon emissions. Training large AI models like GPT-3 can consume significant amounts of electricity, leading to large carbon footprints. Studies have shown that the energy required for training AI models can be immense, contributing substantially to global emissions. Researchers estimated…

The lawsuit Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc. where over 8,000 authors filed a lawsuit against Google for copyright infringement. Google was found to have scanned physical books to create a digital database search program. In the case, Google argued that their method is fair use as only a few books are shown. Ultimately, the court decided in favor of Google. Full Story

Google, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, and OpenAI, are working with Ireland’s Data Protection Commission to ensure compliance with EU data protection rules regarding their AI products. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission have powers that have not yet been thoroughly tested on AI. Still, they could potentially force changes to business models to safeguard data privacy in the future. Regulators are grappling with issues such as the legality of using public data to train AI models, ensuring individuals’ data rights are protected. Full Story

For several hours on June 4, 2024, a significant outage prevented millions of people from accessing ChatGPT, OpenAI’s chatbot based on large language models. At around 2:30 am ET, people started experiencing troubles when utilizing ChatGPT on the web, mobile apps, and desktop clients. An outage website received 2,300 outage reports from just the US alone. At 5:00 am ET, OpenAI announced the issues on its status page, classifying it as a “partial outage” initially, then raising the status to a “major outage” approximately an hour later. After over five hours of downtime, OpenAI announced around 7:30am ET that “a…

The application of the GDPR to OpenAI’s ChatGPT remains undecided, and the lawfulness and fairness of data processing leaves OpenAI at risk without guidance on compliance. Complaints against ChatGPT under GDPR, including inaccurate data and refusal to correct errors, have been filed. Read the full story below. Full Story

A data breach at the BBC affected over 25,000 current and former employees, compromising names, birthdates, genders, home addresses, and insurance numbers. The incident did not involve the exposure of phone numbers, email addresses, user credentials, or sensitive health information. The BBC Pension Trust Chair Catherine Claydon assured that immediate steps were taken to contain the incident, and the source of the breach has been secured. Full Story