Category: News

We have a news ecosystem in Canada in which most of the journalists could soon have at least half of their pay depend on the government, Google and any other offshore money that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) might come up with, deplored journalist and former CRTC regulator Peter Menzies during a Canadian Heritage committee session yesterday.

“Given that the two most powerful entities in our society are governments and large data-vacuuming tech companies,” he said, “this is not where we want to be.”

The outcome, he continued, would be that the public’s faith and trust in journalism will continue to wither as news coverage will inevitably be influenced and compromised.

Last week, Google announced that it has finally struck a deal with the government which will see the goliath contribute C$100 million in financial support annually for a wide range of news businesses across the country.

The government said that Google will allocate the C$100 million contribution based on the number of full-time journalists that each news office employs. This means, one committee member noted, public broadcaster CBC, which employs 1/3 of all the journalists in the country, would stand to gain C$33 million.

CBC was “very pleased”, and welcomed the agreement between the Government of Canada and Google.

The public broadcaster already receives C$1.4 billion in taxpayer money, and has access to another $400 million through advertising revenue, Menzies said.

“That money is intended to allow the CBC to achieve its public mandate. And no doubt much of it does,” said Menzies. “But it also allows the CBC to out-resource companies like the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Postmedia, Le Devoir, and dozens of smaller outlets.”

Plus, newsrooms are shrinking, said Julie Kotsis, media representative, national executive board of private sector trade union Unifor. 

In 2009, Unifor memberships at the Toronto Star totaled 610. It was down to 178 in 2022, she noted.

Torstar, which publishes the Toronto Star, referred to the government’s deal with Google as a “disappointment.”

Torstar owner and publisher Jordan Bitove said, “For three years, we have been engaged in a public process to ensure that C-18 would level the financial playing field between American tech giants and Canadian publishers. Yesterday’s announcement from the federal government about their proposed Google deal is disappointing.”

The Heritage Committee also questioned whether it is reasonable for the government to heavily subsidize Meta through things like advertisements at a time when the company has been accused of fostering online hate, and has refused to comply with Canadian law.

Courtney Radsch, director at the Center for Journalism and Liberty, Open Markets Institute, said that she is shocked that the government subsidizes Meta, a company, she said, “that has proven to be so detrimental to our public health, to the health of our democracies, to mental health, to adolescents’ health, and which has accumulated so much power through its vertical and horizontal monopolies that it can bypass democratic oversight.”

The Open Markets Institute also recently released a paper, Radsch said, that revealed that Unifor media workers get harassed, primarily through messages on Facebook and X/Twitter, by members of the public who are told repeatedly that legislation will kill the free and open internet.

Mark Hollin, national representative, Unifor, stressed that media workers who are victims of harassment should be given support, but preventing the harassment from happening in the first place is critical.

“Falling back on the principle of platform accountability is the number one way to make sure that the tech giants aren’t able just to sit back and say, ‘hey, it’s not us. We’re just this friendly, passive entity. We’re just a friendly neighborhood bulletin board.’ We just know that that’s not true. It’s just factually untrue.”

The post Government and big tech funding newsrooms in Canada raises concerns first appeared on IT World Canada.

Advanced artificial intelligence systems with the equivalent power of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could be only two years away, an expert has told MPs, which is why Canada’s proposed legislation to regulate AI should ban systems that introduce “extreme risks.”

The proposed legislation, called the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA), should forbid the development of AI systems that need more than a set level of computing power, Jérémie Harris, Ottawa-based co-founder of Gladstone AI, an artificial intelligence safety consulting firm, told the House of Commons Industry committee on Tuesday.

Jeremie Harris, Gladstone AI

Only until AI developers can prove a model exceeding that level won’t have certain dangerous capabilities should it be allowed to go forward, he said.

The idea isn’t new, he said: It’s included in U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent Executive Order to government departments wanting to buy or develop AI systems. It requires developers of AI systems using a set amount of computational power involving bio-weapon design capability, chemical synthesis capability, and self awareness capability to report the results of their safety audits.

Second, Harris said, AIDA must address open source development of dangerous AI models.

“In its current form, AIDA would allow me to train an AI model that can automatically design and execute crippling malware attacks, and publish it for anyone to freely download. If it’s illegal to publish instructions on how to make bio-weapons or nuclear bombs, it should be illegal to publish AI models that can be downloaded and used by anyone to generate those same instructions for a few hundred bucks.”

And third, AIDA should explicitly address the research and development phase of the AI lifecycle. “From the moment the development process begins, powerful AI models become tempting targets for theft by nation-states and other actors,” Harris explained. As models gain more capabilities and context-awareness during the development process, loss of control and accidents become a greater risk as well. “Developers should bear responsibility for ensuring the safe and secure development of powerful models.”

The current version of AIDA ” is significantly better than nothing,” Harris said, but it needs amendments.

RELATED CONTENT: AIDA is ‘fundamentally flawed’

Another witness who urged Parliament not to delay passing AIDA was Jennifer Quaid, associate law professor and vice dean of civil law research at the University of Ottawa.

Some issues need to be clarified, she said, like making the proposed AI commissioner for enforcing AIDA responsible to Parliament and not the Innovation Minister, and ensuring the legislation forces the identification of different roles in AI development like application developers and operators so responsible people can be held accountable. But, she added, “time is of the essence … Delay is not an option.”

On the other hand, reporter and podcaster Erica Ifill complained AIDA won’t prevent the development of AI systems that discriminate against minorities.

AIDA is part of Bill C-27, a package of legislation including the proposed Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA), a replacement for the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) that regulates many businesses.

Harris pulled no punches in warning of the coming capabilities of advanced AI systems. His testimony left Conservative MP Bernard Genereux wondering if the third world war is coming, and Liberal Turnbull describing Harris’ opening statement as “quite scary.”

“We work with researchers at the world’s top AI labs on problems in advanced AI safety,” Harris said, “and it’s no exaggeration to say the water-cooler conversations in the frontier AI safety community frames near-future AI as a weapon of mass destruction or WMD-like enabling technology. Publicly and privately, frontier AI labs are telling us to expect AI systems to be capable of carrying out catastrophic malware attacks and supporting bioweapon design, among many other alarming capabilities, in the next few years. Our own research suggests this is a reasonable assessment.

“Beyond weaponization, evidence suggests that as advanced AI approaches superhuman general capabilities, it may become uncontrollable, and display what are known as “power-seeking” behaviours. These include AIs preventing themselves from being shut off, establishing control over their environment, and self-improving. Today’s most advanced AI systems may already be displaying early signs of this behaviour.”

Most of the safety researchers Harris deals with at frontier labs, he said, consider power-seeking by advanced AI “to be a significant source of global catastrophic risk.”

“If we anchor legislation on the risk profile of current AI systems, we will very likely fail what may be the single greatest test of technology governance we have ever faced. The challenge AIDA must take on is to mitigate risk in a world where, if current trends simply continue, the average Canadian will have access to WMD-like tools – and in which the very development of AI systems may introduce catastrophic risks.”

At one point, he said governments should encourage the private sector to make fundamental advances in the science of AI, to create a scientific theory for predicting the emergence of dangerous AI capabilities.

The post AI systems with WMD power will be here soon, expert tells Canadian MPs first appeared on IT World Canada.

Warnings about Russian-based cyber attacks, and more.

Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Wednesday, December 6th, 2023. I’m Howard Solomon, contributing reporter on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com and TechNewsday.com in the U.S.

Two reports this week warned of the continuing cyber threat from what is believed to be a Russian military intelligence hacking group. It’s going after organizations that use Microsoft Outlook. The group has been dubbed various names by security researchers including TA422, APT28, Forest Blizzard, Fancy Bear and Strontium. According to researchers at Proofpoint, this gang is leveraging a particular unpatched Outlook vulnerability through email attachments. More recently it has also been trying to do the same through a vulnerability in the WinRAR compression utility. Some of the gang’s phishing messages pretend to be links to a Windows update.

Separately, Microsoft and Poland’s Cyber Command gave a similar warning this week about the Outlook exploit, which was patched in March.

More on Russia: Researchers at the Insikt Group issued a report on the latest online misinformation and disinformation tactics used by a Russia-linked group dubbed Doppelganger. Its continuing campaign is aimed at the U.S., Ukraine and Germany. It probably uses generative artificial intelligence applications to create deceptive news articles, the report says. The goal in each country? To erode public trust in government and increase polarization among the public.

The AlphV/BlackCat ransomware gang says it has hacked an accounts payable supplier called Tipalti. Not only is it seeking money from the company, it is also contacting Tipalti customers and threatening to leak their stolen data as an extra way off squeezing money. The crooks say they have been in the Tipalti system since September 8th.

Threat actors are still trying to exploit a critical vulnerability in Adobe ColdFusion web application servers. That’s the word from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). A patch for this vulnerability was issued in March. However, the CISA says recently unidentified attackers successfully compromised two U.S. government servers over the summer. The warning is to U.S. government IT administrators, but it also applies to any organization using ColdFusion.

I’ve reported before on bad Java, Python and other code being plunked into open source repositories like GitHub, NPM, PyPI and others. Often it’s done by taking over the accounts of developers and abusing their abandonded repositories. It’s a technique called repojacking. Now comes a report that thousands of good modules written in the Go language are vulnerable to being taken over. Researchers at VulnCheck discovered more than 15,000 Go repositories of code are vulnerable because if a Go module creator decides to change their username the abandoned name is open to anyone to pickup — including a threat actor. They can then take over the username and any associated modules for malicious use. GitHub offers some, but not enough, protection against this, says the report. Go developers wanting to use other peoples’ modules in their work have to be careful of the modules they download.

Finally, the iPhone’s Lockdown Mode offers users protection to those who have serious security concerns against the smartphone being hacked. However, researchers at Jamf Threat Labs have discovered a way the protection can be bypassed in an already compromised iPhone. Essentially, malware that was installed before the user turns on Lockdown Mode can make the phone owner think the mode has been enabled and they are protected. First, Lockdown Mode shouldn’t be turned on unless you are a potential target, like a reporter, a government official or a corporate executive. No one has been seen yet using this tactic. But remember, turning on Lockdown Mode may not give the automatic protection hoped for. One defence: Make sure your iPhone always installs the latest security patches.

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The post Cyber Security Today, Dec. 6, 2023 – Warnings about Russian-based cyber attacks, and more first appeared on IT World Canada.

Mass produced humanoid robots are coming, the U.S. government is warning NVIDIA not to ship AI chips to China. HP’s printer lock-in strategy is unpopular but profitable and is it time to rethink the Turing test?

These and more top tech stories on Hashtag Trending

I’m your host Jim Love, CIO of IT World Canada and Tech News Day in the US.

Agility Robotics is set to open a factory in Salem, Oregon, with the ambitious goal of mass-producing 10,000 bipedal robots annually. 

This facility, named RoboFab, will be the first to mass-produce humanoid robots, potentially revolutionizing industries like Amazon that require heavy lifting and moving tasks. The robots, named Digit, are designed to be nimbler and more versatile than traditional industrial robots.

Digit, a human-shaped robot optimized for warehouse work, has already garnered a growing backlog of orders. Agility Robotics plans to initially produce hundreds of these robots, eventually ramping up to their full capacity. Companies participating in Agility’s Partner Program will receive their robots in 2024, with broader delivery expected in 2025.

Building bipedal robots that can walk without falling and work safely alongside humans is a significant engineering challenge. Competitors in this space include Tesla with Optimus, Boston Dynamics with Atlas, and several others.

Amazon has shown particular interest in Digit, testing the robot at a lab near Seattle for tasks like tote recycling. Amazon’s chief roboticist, Tye Brady, highlights the robot’s potential for navigating uneven surfaces and tight corners, which could be advantageous in human-designed spaces.

This development predicts a growing demand for humanoid robots. We have one question. Will the workers in these factories be robots? 

Sources include: Axios 

NVIDIA has received a warning from U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo regarding its efforts to redesign chips for the Chinese market. This warning comes in response to NVIDIA’s attempts to reportedly circumvent the recent U.S. export restrictions on advanced chips. 

NVIDIA is reportedly preparing a new series of HPC (High-Performance Computing) and gaming GPUs to overcome regulatory challenges. 

However, Raimondo cautioned that any new product representing a redesign of a previously prohibited processor would immediately become subject to additional restrictions. She emphasized that if a chip is redesigned to enable AI capabilities, it will be controlled by the U.S. government.

This situation highlights the ongoing tension between U.S. export controls and technology companies’ efforts to adapt to a rapidly changing global market.

Sources include: VideoCardz

And here’s another story of struggles with foreign standards. You remember that Apple has been forced to go to USB-C for its new models in Europe as the government has demanded a “single charger rule” for phones.

India has gone one step further and demands that Apple update prior models as well. This is significant because a great deal of Apple’s sales are from older models of the iPhone. 

India’s rules affect all electronic devices sold in the country, including those not originally designed with USB-C.

During a closed-door meeting with India’s IT ministry on November 28, Apple requested exemptions for some older iPhone models. The company expressed concerns that incorporating USB-C into older models would hinder its ability to meet the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) targets set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s major project, which offers financial incentives for investments and incremental annual phone sales.

Apple proposed a compliance timeline of June 2025 if existing models are exempted, but it would need an additional 18 months beyond 2024 without an exemption.

Sources include: AppleInsider

Speaking at the UBS Global Technology conference, HP’s chief financial officer, Marie Myers highlighted that moving customers from a transactional model to a subscription model like Instant Ink, which includes paper, increases the value of a customer by about 20 per cent. This model essentially “locks in” customers into a longer-term relationship.

Instant Ink operates by sending ink or toner cartridges to customers as needed, with plans ranging from 99 cents to $25.99 per month. Despite its high-end pricing, the service had over 11 million subscribers as of May last year. HP has faced criticism for its approach to printer hardware and ink cartridges. In 2019, the company increased the price of printer hardware and shifted focus to Smart Tank and Neverstop printers, pre-loaded with an estimated two years’ worth of ink or toner.

HP has been criticized for blocking third-party ink cartridges in its printers, citing its dynamic security policy introduced in 2016. This policy aims to protect HP’s intellectual property and ensure customer experience quality by only allowing the use of cartridges with new or reused HP chips or electronic circuitry.

Despite the backlash, these controversial policies have proven financially beneficial for HP, with its printing division margin increasing from 14.8 per cent in fiscal 2020 to 18.9 per cent in fiscal 2023.

Sources include: TechSpot

In 2023, the most popular topic on Wikipedia’s English-language site was the article describing ChatGPT, the AI system developed by OpenAI. 

Wikimedia Foundation, annually releases a list of the most-viewed articles on the platform. The “ChatGPT” article received the highest number of page views, totaling 49.5 million. Throughout the first half of the year, the article consistently attracted attention, with daily page views ranging between 100,000 and 400,000.

The top 10 list of most-viewed articles on Wikipedia reflects diverse interests, including four articles on cricket and two on Bollywood movies, highlighting the significant English-speaking population in India. For the first time, cricket made the list, with 38 million views, a 304 per cent increase from the previous year. The Indian Premier League also featured prominently with 32 million views.

Taylor Swift emerged as the most popular celebrity on Wikipedia in 2023, with her page receiving about 19.5 million views. Other notable figures with high page views included the late Matthew Perry, Lisa Marie Presley, and Elon Musk.

Sources include: Axios

In a recent Turing test study titled “Does GPT-4 Pass the Turing Test?”, researchers from UC San Diego explored the ability of various AI models, including OpenAI’s GPT-4, GPT-3.5, and the 1960s program ELIZA, to convince participants they were human. 

Surprisingly, the study found that human participants correctly identified other humans as human in only 63 per cent of the interactions. Even more intriguing, ELIZA outperformed GPT-3.5 in this test.

The Turing test, conceived by Alan Turing in 1950, is a benchmark for determining a machine’s ability to imitate human conversation. In this study, human judges interacted with either another human or a chatbot without knowing which was which. The success rate of the chatbot in convincing the judge of its humanity determines if it has passed the test.

The study involved 652 participants who completed 1,810 sessions. ELIZA achieved a 27 per cent success rate, while GPT-3.5 scored 14 per cent.  

GPT-4 achieved 41 per cent, second only to actual humans. 

GPT-3.5’s poor performance is partly attributed to its conditioning by OpenAI not to present itself as human.

The study’s findings raise questions about the effectiveness of the Turing test as a measure of AI model performance and the strategies used by humans to detect AI. 

Sources include: Ars Technica

And that’s what’s trending today.

Hashtag Trending goes to air 5 days a week with a special weekend interview show we call “the Weekend Edition.”

You can get us anywhere you get audio podcasts and there is a copy of the show notes at itworldcanada.com/podcasts 

I’m your host Jim Love.  Have a wild and wonderful Wednesday.

The post Hashtag Trending Dec. 6- Mass produced humanoid robots coming soon; U.S. government warns NVIDIA not to ship AI chips to China, Time to rethink the Turing test? first appeared on IT World Canada.

It is called Project Kuiper and last week at AWS re:Invent 2023, it was hailed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) chief executive officer (CEO) Adam Selipsky as a technology breakthrough that  will “provide coverage in places that have had never had coverage before.”

Selipsky made the statement during the conclusion of a more than two-hour long opening day keynote address in which he delved into a litany of announcements revolving around generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), cloud, and hardware advances the company is focusing on.

Project Kuiper is Amazon’s new low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband network that Selipsky said will soon be able to service two distinct groups –  those individuals in locations that have virtually no reliable internet connections, thus helping to close the “digital divide,” as well as private organizations and government agencies.

“Now, the possibilities for consumers is enormous, but so too are the benefits to businesses and governments,” he said. “And there are all sorts of use cases like renewable energy providers who want to analyze data in real time from offshore wind farms. Or first responders who need fast, reliable connections during natural disasters, or organizations that are looking for connectivity backup in case of an unplanned outage.

“Kuiper is going to help to make all of this possible. And AWS customers are already planning for the opportunities that this opens up to connect to their facilities, their sensors, their data, their networks.”

For those customers who prefer or demand that their data not be transmitted over the public internet, at re:Invent AWS announced an enterprise-ready private connectivity service that will allow enterprise and public sector organizations to “move data privately from a remote location directly into AWS, without ever touching the public internet.”

A blog released on the day of his keynote stated that there are “three main pieces of the Kuiper system that move data throughout the network: ground infrastructure, satellites and customer terminals. The ground infrastructure includes gateway antennas that securely send and receive data to and from satellites.”

At re:Invent, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), NTT DOCOMO, Inc., NTT  Communications Corporation (NTT Com), and SKY Perfect JSAT Corp. announced that they have formed a strategic collaboration with Amazon around Project Kuiper. The companies said they expect to use its satellite connectivity services to enhance communications availability and resiliency for Japanese customers.

There was an abundance of other announcements made last week and they included:

Montreal-based Syntax Systems announced the launch of Syntax CxLink Backup for Oracle databases at re:Invent. According to the company, the offering addresses a critical need for enterprise customers running Oracle databases: Enterprise teams managing multiple clouds and stores of data each with their own routine for proper storage now have access to a tool that simplifies backup and recovery processes as well as disaster recovery strategies, the company said.
SAS signed a collaboration agreement with AWS with plans to help organizations extract “maximum value and performance from their data in the cloud.” SAS now offers SAS Customer Intelligence 360, a customer experience offering, in AWS Marketplace. According to a SAS release, “The addition to AWS Marketplace is an initial customer benefit of the agreement that spans a broad range of initiatives focusing on key industries like financial services, public sector, retail and life sciences, with the goal of helping customers accelerate their digital transformation journeys.”
IBM is working with AWS on the general availability of Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Db2, a cloud offering designed to make it easier for database customers to manage data for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads across hybrid cloud environments. “Digital transformation is a strategic imperative for nearly every one of our clients,” said Dinesh Nirmal, senior vice president of products, IBM Software. “By working with AWS to bring Db2 to Amazon RDS, we are helping companies prepare for the next generation of applications, analytics and AI workloads that will power the modern economy.”
Salesforce and AWS expanded their partnership that the two said will “allow customers to more easily build trusted AI apps, deliver seamless CRM experiences” and bring Salesforce products to AWS Marketplace. “As part of this partnership, Salesforce will expand its use of AWS, including compute, storage, data, and AI technologies through Hyperforce to further enhance popular services like Salesforce Data Cloud,” a release stated. “AWS will also expand its use of Salesforce products such as Salesforce Data Cloud. Data Cloud will allow AWS to create a single unified customer profile allowing them to deliver more personalized experiences to customers.”
Cisco delivered enhanced integration between its ThousandEyes offering and Amazon CloudWatch Internet Monitor (CWIM), a new internet monitoring service from AWS.
The post Amazon’s Project Kuiper: Using LEOs to eliminate the digital divide first appeared on IT World Canada.

At the IBM Quantum Summit Monday in New York, IBM launched IBM Quantum Heron, a 133-qubit processor that it said offers up to a five-fold improvement in error reduction over its predecessor.

The new processor powers IBM Quantum System Two, which was also unveiled at the event. The company’s first modular quantum computer, IBM said it is the cornerstone of IBM’s quantum-centric supercomputing architecture. The first unit, powered by three IBM Heron processors, is in operation at IBM’s Yorktown Heights, N.Y. facility.

“We are firmly within the era in which quantum computers are being used as a tool to explore new frontiers of science,” said Dario Gil, IBM senior vice president and director of research, in a release. “As we continue to advance how quantum systems can scale and deliver value through modular architectures, we will further increase the quality of a utility-scale quantum technology stack – and put it into the hands of our users and partners who will push the boundaries of more complex problems.”

Along with the system announcement, IBM revealed its quantum development roadmap, now extended to 2033, which includes new targets to improve the quality of gate operations and thus increase the size of quantum circuits.

Hardware isn’t much good without software, so along with the hardware, IBM announced that Qiskit 1.0, the first stable release of its quantum software development kit, will arrive in February 2024, and introduced Qiskit Patterns, which it described as “a programming template outlining the structure of quantum programs and a logical framework for building quantum algorithms and applications at scale.

“Taking advantage of the composability, containerization, and abstraction provided by Qiskit Patterns, users can seamlessly create quantum algorithms and applications from a collection of foundational building blocks and execute those Patterns using heterogeneous computing infrastructure such as Quantum Serverless.”

IBM is also fine-tuning its foundation model to allow generative AI, via watsonx, to help automate the development of quantum code for Qiskit.

The post IBM launches Quantum System Two, powered by new Heron processor first appeared on IT World Canada.

Coffee Briefings are timely deliveries of the latest ITWC headlines, interviews, and podcasts. Today’s Coffee Briefing is delivered by IT World Canada’s editorial team! 

Missed last week’s Coffee Briefing? We’ve got you covered.

New data finds companies around the world are hiring Canadians 

Data from online HR company Deel has found a recent influx of workers being hired in Canada by companies in countries around the world.

Deel’s data reveals that in the last year, there’s been a 14 per cent increase in workers being hired remotely in Canada by companies in the United States.  

Half of Canadian workers hired by U.S. companies are based in Ontario, with 23 per cent in British Columbia, 11 per cent in Quebec nine per cent in Alberta, and the rest in other areas. 

And Canadian employees are continuing in those jobs. According to the data, since January 2023, termination of Canadian workers by U.S. companies is down by 41 per cent.

Globally, since January of this year, Deel reveals they’ve seen the largest increase in Canadian workers being hired by companies in Australia (224 per cent), Sweden (109 per cent) and Singapore (80 per cent).

OpenText reaches agreement to divest Application Modernization and Connectivity (AMC) business to Rocket Software 

Open Text Corporation has announced that it reached a definitive agreement to divest its AMC business, which was part of its Micro Focus acquisition, to Rocket Software, Inc., a Bain Capital portfolio company, for US$2.275 billion in cash. 

OpenText’s AMC business offers mainframe modernization and connectivity software to customers. This allows them to run mission-critical business applications in hybrid cloud environments. 

Benefits of this agreement include reinforcement and expansion of OpenText’s focus on cloud and AI as well as better results in more predictable growth, the company said in a release. In addition, this agreement allows for an increased focus on cloud growth opportunities. 

The announcement also shared that the combination of AMC and Rocket Software’s product portfolio will create “one of the world’s largest IT and mainframe modernization and connectivity software companies.”

Under the agreements terms, the release said, the software, associated services, and approximately 750 employees of AMC will be integrated into Rocket Software.

Until closing, it said, OpenText and Rocket Software will continue to constructively collaborate to protect customer investments and expand offerings for joint customers.

Apple releases short film for International Day of Persons with Disabilities, featuring its Personal Voice tool 

Source: Apple

To promote its new Personal Voice feature, Apple has launched a short film, The Lost Voice, created for International Day of Persons with Disabilities, which fell on Dec. 3, with New Zealander and disability advocate Dr. Tristram Ingham, who narrates from his iPhone using Personal Voice .  

Personal Voice, now available on iOS, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma, lets users at risk of speech loss create a voice that sounds just like them. All they need to do is follow a series of text prompts to record 15 minutes of audio.

With the Personal Voice feature, Apple is able to train neural networks entirely on-device to advance speech accessibility while also protecting users’ privacy.

Ingham, a physician and associate professor of epidemiology who has facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD), a syndrome causing progressive muscle degeneration starting in the face, shoulders, and arms, that can ultimately lead to an inability to speak. In the film, he uses Personal Voice to preserve and continue to use his own voice.

Bell Canada and ServiceNow partner to transfer telecommunications service experience for Canadian businesses

Source: Bell

Bell Canada and ServiceNow are collaborating to help transform the telecommunications service experience for Canadian businesses. 

Bell will integrate with ServiceNow using FX Innovation, which supports companies in their digital transformation, to deliver value and service to Bell’s business clients. In response to customer demand for simplification, the announcement said, the platform will offer Bell’s customers streamlined service provisioning, improved operational efficiencies, and a more intuitive user experience.

ServiceNow’s Service Bridge application will enable Bell and Bell’s ServiceNow customers to connect processes and facilitate interactions throughout the customer lifecycle.

Benefit from this latest collaboration, the companies said, include: 

Purpose-built telecom solutions that align with unique business needs, delivered at a faster, more effective pace.

Automation capabilities that allow Bell to offer faster, more reliable services. 

And lastly, this partnerships will offer AI-driven insights that will be used to develop solutions to elevate customer service and predictive maintenance.

“The collaboration with ServiceNow is a cornerstone in Bell Canada’s transformation from a traditional telco to a tech services and digital media leader. We are investing strongly in elevating our business client experience,” said John Watson, group president, business markets, customer experience and AI at Bell Canada. “The collaboration with ServiceNow will make the end-to-end experience – from ordering, to provisioning, to service assurance – easier and more effective, and serve the unique needs of each client.”

Digital Governance Standards Institute publishes cyber resiliency standard for healthcare

Source: Getty

This week, the Digital Governance Standards Institute and HealthCareCAN announced the official publication of Canadian national standard CAN/DGSI 118: Cyber Resiliency in Healthcare.

The standard will provide healthcare organizations with a robust framework to bolster their cyber resiliency measures, while ensuring the security and protection of sensitive patient data in an increasingly digital landscape, the announcement noted.

“CAN/DGSI 118 offers a flexible yet comprehensive approach that takes into consideration the diverse range of healthcare organizations, technologies, and regulatory environments across Canada. By adopting this standard, healthcare organizations can establish a solid foundation for preventing, detecting, responding to, and recovering from cyber-attacks, ultimately ensuring the safety and confidentiality of patient data,” said Darryl Kingston, executive director of Digital Governance Standards Institute. “We are happy to have worked with HealthCareCAN and Public Safety Canada on leading the development of a robust cybersecurity standard for delivery of healthcare services in Canada.”

More to explore

Canadian group gets $2.2 million to research AI threat detection for wireless networks

A group consisting of Canadian university researchers and Ericsson Canada is the latest to have won government funding under the National Cybersecurity Coalition for advanced investigations into meeting cyber threats.

5G spectrum auction concludes; Bell, Rogers and Telus bag the most licenses

Twenty-two Canadian carriers collectively paid over C$2.1 billion for a record 4,099 licenses in the 3800 MHz spectrum auction. 

Holiday Gift Guide 2023: From trackballs to watch buds

Tis the season for jolly thoughts, and great pounding of heads against walls as we fuss about what on earth to get for those difficult-to-buy-for folks.

With that in mind, we have gathered a few ideas to help, across many price ranges, in hopes of easing your stress. 

RoboGarden and University of Northern British Columbia Continuing Studies to launch new machine learning & AI bootcamp

RoboGarden and University of Northern British Columbia Continuing Studies (UNBC CS) have announced a new collaboration, with RoboGarden offering its Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bootcamp experience to the UNBC CS students. 

AI expert says report findings proof onset of ‘Terminal AI’ has begun

A new report highlighting an escalating rise in phishing incidents since the launch of ChatGPT is the start of a cascade of events that a Silicon Valley cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) expert predicts could result in a catastrophic “threat to mankind.”

Five Canadian companies share experiences and use cases for generative AI at AWS re:Invent 2023

What are Canadian companies actually doing in terms of projects with cloud and generative AI? How are they navigating the uncertainty of a relatively new technology? Those were the questions that were addressed by a customer panel during a briefing with Canadian media at AWS re:Invent 2023.

Compel social media apps to toughen their privacy, trust practices, Parliament told

Social media platforms should be forced by the Canadian government to toughen their privacy practices, an expert told a parliamentary committee looking into illicit data harvesting by apps like China-based TikTok for foreign governments on Monday.

Broadcom update: Layoff notices issued for some VMware employees

There is a distinct good news-bad news scenario quickly developing now that Broadcom’s US$69 billion acquisition of VMware has been formally approved.

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Cyber Security Today, Dec. 4, 2023 – A warning to water treatment utilities, a boot vulnerability could affect millions of PCs, and more

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The post Coffee Briefing Dec. 5 – OpenText to divest AMC to Rocket Software; Global companies hiring Canadians; Bell and ServiceNow partner; and more first appeared on IT World Canada.

The Competition Bureau is investigating whether the marketing claims made by Rogers that its Infinite wireless phone plans have unlimited data are deceptive.

The Federal Court of Canada has, therefore, granted the Competition Bureau a court order requiring Rogers to produce records and information pertaining to that investigation.

Rogers launched Infinite in 2019,  introducing a number of “unlimited data plans with no overage charges,” aimed at “putting the customer first, helping them get the most out of their wireless services,” said the company’s president at the time, Joe Natale.

The Bureau alleges that there are, instead, significant reductions in data speed, known as throttling, after a subscriber reaches a certain data cap.

However, the competition watchdog maintains that there is no conclusion of wrongdoing at this time.

In 2016, the Competition Bureau eyed Comwave’s marketing practices, which misrepresented its internet and home phone services as “unlimited”, when in fact there were monthly caps on usage. The Toronto-based telecommunications company was, consequently, ordered to cough up a penalty of C$300,000.

A year later, the Bureau published guidance for advertisers in the telecommunications industry, warning against enticing consumers with claims that promise unlimited services, only to impose additional mandatory fees or caps.

Rogers’ spokeswoman Sarah Schmidt told the CBC that its Infinite wireless plans are “truthful and clear”. She also said that such plans are quite common across Canada, and that Rogers finds the timing of the investigation and the focus on Rogers “quite concerning.”

The Competition Bureau last sparred with Rogers when it challenged its $26 billion merger with Shaw, failed and, as a result, was ordered by the Federal Court to pay $13 million to Rogers for the lengthy court battle.

The post Competition Bureau to investigate Rogers’ marketing claims about its ‘Infinite’ unlimited data plans first appeared on IT World Canada.

Canada must quickly pass legislation to oversee social media platforms, says an expert in cybersecurity law, including appointing an independent regulator who can levy “hefty” financial penalties.

“It is time to act now,” Emily Laidlaw, Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity Law at the University of Calgary, told a Parliamentary committee on Monday.

“Platforms have tremendous power,” Laidlaw told the House of Commons ethics and privacy committee by videoconference. “Canada is currently a laggard in regulating platforms. Much of what this committee has discussed would be solved with Online Harms Laws legislation. They have it in Europe, the U.K, Australia.”

An online harms bill has been long promised by the Liberal government. As recently as last Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that “we are serious about moving forward in protecting from online harms.”

The European Union Digital Services and Digital Markets Acts came into effect in August, initially covering very large online platforms and very large online search engines. Other online entities have to comply starting Feb. 17, 2024.

Briefly, the law lays down special obligations for online marketplaces to combat the online sale of illegal products and services; introduces measures to counter illegal content online and obligations for platforms to react quickly, while respecting fundamental rights; and protects minors online by prohibiting platforms from using targeted advertising based on the use of minors’ personal data as defined in EU law.

Australia has had an eSafety Commissioner to fight illegal online content and cyberbullying since 2015. In 2021 a new Online Safety Act was passed that makes online service providers more accountable for the online safety of users. It requires the industry to develop new codes to regulate illegal and restricted content.

Asked if Canada is too late, Laidlaw replied, “We’re not too late now, but we will be soon if we don’t introduce laws.”

In this country, the ethics committee has been holding hearings since October on the data harvesting practices of social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, X/Twitter, and WeChat, and how that data is shared with or accessed by foreign governments. It also covers misinformation and disinformation. The work started in January after the U.S. government banned federal employees from using China-based TikTok on government-owned devices. The Trudeau government followed with a similar ban in February.

Online harm is not a privacy issue, Laidlaw maintained but “a safety design problem,” so legislation has to encourage the private sector to design their platforms and restrict their ability to boost toxic content based on the emotional reaction users give to posts. “This fuels the spread of misinformation,” she said.

While social media platforms can be important collaborators and innovators in solving problems, Laidlaw said, and they are expected “to go above and beyond the law, addressing hateful content, disinformation, violence or extremism,” that doesn’t mean regulatory power isn’t needed — or that platforms should set industry standards by themselves.

At the very least, under a Canadian online harms bill, Laidlaw said, “platforms should have a duty to manage the risks of harm of their products, a duty to protect fundamental rights, transparency obligations matched with a way to vet transparency through audits and access to [platform] data by vetted researchers, creation of a regulator to investigate companies and educate the public, and access to recourse for victims.”

The committee also heard from Matt Malone, assistant law professor at B.C.’s Thompson Rivers University, who was critical of the government’s ban on federal employees using TikTok on government-owned devices. The app does deserve sanction for privacy violations, and data harvesting, but the ban is “selective,” he argued, noting there are no bans on apps from Russia. And Ottawa still advertises on all social media apps, he said, including TikTok.

In fact, he argued, Ottawa should ban federal employees from using any social media apps because of data collection worries, unless there is a business reason, and stop advertising on them.

It’s “crazy” that federal employees can still use these apps, he said.

The “real culprit is Canadian law,” he added, which allows organizations to collect personal data of Canadians and move it to other countries instead of forcing firms to hold and process it here.

The post Canadian law regulating social media platforms is needed fast, Parliament told first appeared on IT World Canada.

AI is now making laws, fusion power gets closer to reality and you’ll never guess what the word of the year is. 

These and more top tech stories on Hashtag Trending

I’m your host Jim Love, CIO of IT World Canada and Tech News Day in the US.

We covered the story about the lawyer who used ChatGPT and got fined because it made up some case law that he was trying to present. 

But now we’ve got the first time that ChatGPT has been used to actually make up laws.

The council of Porto Alegre, a city in southern Brazil, has just approved legislation that was drafted by ChatGPT. 

It’s a simple piece, aimed at preventing the city from charging taxpayers for replacing stolen water meters, as it was unanimously passed by the council’s 36 members in late November. 

But at the time, most council members were unaware that the proposal’s text was generated by the AI chatbot – that is, until councilman Ramiro Rosário revealed he had used ChatGPT to write it. 

Rosário said that he kept this information hidden initially, fearing the proposal wouldn’t have been considered otherwise.

This is the first known instance of AI-written legislation being passed by lawmakers. And while they were initially skeptical, the city’s council president acknowledged that using AI in this manner could become a trend. 

The use of AI for legal documents is controversial, especially given the tendency of systems like ChatGPT to fabricate information. 

But despite these concerns, Rosário believes that AI technology can be used effectively and responsibly and after all, there’s no law against it.

Sources include: The Register

Japan and the European Union have marked a significant milestone in nuclear fusion research with the world’s largest and most advanced tokamak. A tokamak uses huge powerful magnetic coils to accelerate plasma, which is then heated to up to 300 million degrees Celsius. 

In its inaugural run the reactor created around 140 cubic meters of plasma the reactor generated one mega ampere. This is the largest ever created by humans. 

The high temperatures inside the reactor mimic the Sun’s process, where hydrogen particles fuse to create helium, releasing energy as light and heat. This clean energy source, unlike nuclear fission, produces no radioactive waste and is considered an important technology for achieving net-zero emissions.

Sources include: The Register 

It may be a little early for reflections on the year that was, but when I ran across this list it astonished me. 

2023 has seen some really big companies fall victim to cyber attacks. If you follow our sister podcast CyberSecurity Today, you’ve probably heard these stories in real time. But when I saw them listed, it was something. See how many you remember.

X (Twitter): In January, a database containing the email addresses of about 200 million users was sold on the dark web for just $2. This breach was due to a flaw in X’s API, allowing attackers to exploit the system and obtain email addresses linked to X accounts.
Reddit:  In February, Reddit was hit by a phishing attack, leading to a breach that exposed internal documents, source code, employee data, and limited advertiser information.
ChatGPT: In March, a glitch in ChatGPT’s open-source library inadvertently exposed customer data, including partial credit card details and chat titles.
MSI: In April, MSI fell victim to a ransomware attack, resulting in the theft of 1.5TB of data, including sensitive information like source code and private keys.
T-Mobile: Is our May victim, with a breach affecting 800 customers, caused by unauthorized access to PIN-protected accounts.
MOVEit: In June 2023, the MOVEit file transfer tool experienced a breach affecting 200 organizations globally, exposing personal information of up to 17.5 million individuals.
ROBLOX: In July 2023, a breach revealed personal information of nearly 4,000 Roblox developers, obtained from developer conference attendees between 2017 and 2020.
Duolingo: In August about 2.6 million Duolingo users had their personal information exposed on the dark web’s breach forums.
SONY: In September 2023, Sony was attacked by a ransomware group, resulting in the theft of over 6,000 files, including build logs and Java files.

And that’s just to September…. 

Sources include: Analytics India Magazine

The Oxford University Press (OUP) has chosen “Rizz” as its word of the year for 2023.  Rizz, which is really a clipped form of the word “charisma” charmed more than  32,000 voters. 

“Rizz” is defined as style, charm, or attractiveness, particularly in the context of attracting a romantic or sexual partner. The term can also be used as a verb, with “to rizz up” meaning to attract, seduce, or chat up someone.

The popularity of “Rizz” surged in June 2023 following a BuzzFeed interview with actor Tom Holland, who humorously claimed to have “no rizz” despite his relationship with co-star Zendaya. 

This linguistic pattern of clipping, where “Rizz” is derived from the middle of another word, is similar to how “fridge” comes from “refrigerator” and “flu” from “influenza.”

Oxford’s other finalists for the 2023 word of the year included “prompt,” “situationship,” and “swiftie.” In contrast, Merriam-Webster selected “authentic” as its word of the year, reflecting a “crisis of authenticity” in the age of artificial intelligence, with “Rizz” also being a runner-up choice for them.

Sources include: Axios

And that’s what’s trending today.

Hashtag Trending goes to air 5 days a week with a special weekend interview show we call “the Weekend Edition.”

You can get us anywhere you get audio podcasts and there is a copy of the show notes at itworldcanada.com/podcasts 

I’m your host Jim Love.  Get out there and Rizz up a terrific Tuesday! 

The post Hashtag Trending Dec.5- AI making laws; Fusion power closer to reality; The biggest companies that fell victim to cyberattacks in 2023 first appeared on IT World Canada.