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Submission + - AI chatbots unable to accurately summarise news, BBC finds (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by esm88
esm88 writes: Four major artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are inaccurately summarising news stories, according to research carried out by the BBC.

The BBC gave OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Copilot, Google's Gemini and Perplexity AI content from the BBC website then asked them questions about the news.

It said the resulting answers contained "significant inaccuracies" and distortions.

In a blog, Deborah Turness, the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, said AI brought "endless opportunities" but the companies developing the tools were "playing with fire".

"We live in troubled times, and how long will it be before an AI-distorted headline causes significant real world harm?", she asked.

The tech companies which own the chatbots have been approached for comment.

Submission + - Disney says Disney+ TOS means man can't sue for wife's fatal allegic reaction 1

Submitted by beamdriver
beamdriver writes: As is being reported in Newsday , Disney has asked a Florida court to dismiss a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the husband of a Carle Place physician who suffered a fatal allergic reaction after eating at a Disney Springs restaurant.

The company cited legal language agreed to years earlier when Jeffrey Piccolo, widower of Kanokporn Tangsuan, 42, of Plainview, signed up for a one-month trial of the Disney+ streaming service that requires users to arbitrate all disputes with the company, records show.

Kanokporn Tangsuan, died in October after dining with her husband, Jeffrey Piccolo, at a restaurant in a section of the Walt Disney World Resort. Despite informing the waitstaff several times of her severe peanut and dairy allergies and receiving assurances that her meal would be allergen-free, she began having severe difficulty breathing shortly after dinner. She self-administered an epi-pen and was transported to a hospital, where she later died.

A medical examiner attributed her death to anaphylaxis due to elevated levels of dairy and nuts in her system, according to the suit.

Comment Where are the details? (Score 1) 78

I cannot find the students original article/presentation. Techcrunch states that they "disclosed their research in a presentation at their university cybersecurity club earlier in May" and has a link to https://slugsec.ucsc.edu/posts. But there's nothing on that page at all regarding the hack, nor can I seem to find it anywhere else. Has it been taken down?

Submission + - Did weak wi-fi password lead the police to our door? (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by esm88
esm88 writes: After a year of lockdowns, home schooling and a bout of Covid, Kate and Matthew (not their real names) were hoping for better times as 2021 dawned.

Instead, one January morning, there came a knock on the door from the police who were investigating a very serious crime, involving images of child abuse being posted online.

The couple insisted they had nothing to do with it.

But the next few months were "utter hell" as they attempted to clear their names.

And it was only when the case was dropped in March, with no further action, that they realised the most likely explanation for the false accusation was their wi-fi router — and its factory-set password.

Back in January, there was confusion and shock when three police officers and three detectives banged on the door of their London flat with a search warrant.

"They took everything: our desktop computer, both our laptops, our mobile phones, a laptop I had borrowed, even old mobile phones that were lying around in drawers," said Kate.

Submission + - Russian Hackers Targeted California, Indiana Democratic Parties (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The group of Russian hackers accused of meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election earlier this year targeted the email accounts of Democratic state parties in California and Indiana, and influential think tanks in Washington and New York, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The attempted intrusions, many of which were internally flagged by Microsoft Corp over the summer, were carried out by a group often nicknamed “Fancy Bear.” The hackers’ activity provides insight into how Russian intelligence is targeting the United States in the run-up to the Nov. 3 election. The targets identified by Reuters, which include the Center for American Progress, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said they had not seen any evidence of successful hacking attempts.

Fancy Bear is controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency and was responsible for hacking the email accounts of Hillary Clinton’s staff in the run-up to the 2016 election, according to a Department of Justice indictment filed in 2018. News of the Russian hacking activity follows last month's announcement here by Microsoft that Fancy Bear had attempted to hack more than 200 organizations, many of which the software company said were tied to the 2020 election. Microsoft was able to link this year's cyber espionage campaign to the Russian hackers through an apparent programming error that allowed the company to identify a pattern of attack unique to Fancy Bear, according to a Microsoft assessment reviewed by Reuters. The thrust of espionage operations could not be determined by Reuters. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in August here that Russian operations were attempting to undermine the campaign of presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Submission + - Waymo Pulls Back the Curtain On 6.1 Million Miles of Self-Driving Car Data (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In its first report on its autonomous vehicle operations in Phoenix, Arizona, Waymo said that it was involved in 18 crashes and 29 near-miss collisions during 2019 and the first nine months of 2020. These crashes included rear-enders, vehicle swipes, and even one incident when a Waymo vehicle was T-boned at an intersection by another car at nearly 40 mph. The company said that no one was seriously injured and “nearly all” of the collisions were the fault of the other driver. The report is the deepest dive yet into the real-life operations of the world’s leading autonomous vehicle company, which recently began offering rides in its fully driverless vehicles to the general public. Autonomous vehicle (AV) companies can be a black box, with most firms keeping a tight lid on measurable metrics and only demonstrating their technology to the public under the most controlled settings. Indeed, Waymo, which was spun out of Google in 2016, mostly communicates about its self-driving program through glossy press releases or blog posts that reveal scant data about the actual nuts and bolts of autonomous driving. But in this paper, and another also published today, the company is showing its work. Waymo says its intention is to build public trust in automated vehicle technology, but these papers also serve as a challenge to other AV competitors.

The two papers take different approaches. The first outlines a multilayered approach that maps out Waymo’s approach to safety. It includes three layers: Hardware, including the vehicle itself, the sensor suite, the steering and braking system, and the computing platform; The automated driving system behavioral layer, such as avoiding collisions with other cars, successfully completing fully autonomous rides, and adhering to the rules of the road; Operations, like fleet operations, risk management, and a field safety program to resolve potential safety issues.

The second paper is meatier, with detailed information on the company’s self-driving operations in Phoenix, including the number of miles driven and the number of “contact events” Waymo’s vehicles have had with other road users. This is the first time that Waymo has ever publicly disclosed mileage and crash data from its autonomous vehicle testing operation in Phoenix. Between January and December 2019, Waymo’s vehicles with trained safety drivers drove 6.1 million miles. In addition, from January 2019 through September 2020, its fully driverless vehicles drove 65,000 miles. Taken together, the company says this represents “over 500 years of driving for the average licensed US driver,” citing a 2017 survey of travel trends by the Federal Highway Administration.

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