A parliamentary committee voted unanimously on Wednesday to investigate allegations that the government has used what some call “spyware” against federal employees.

The House of Commons ethics and privacy committee voted to hear the heads of several federal departments and Treasury Board head Anita Anand next month on the use of digital data recovery and investigative tools, as well as whether departments followed rules for doing a privacy impact review before implementing them.

Treasury Board is responsible for setting policies and procedures all government departments and employees have to follow.

The allegations stem from a November 30th report by Radio-Canada that “spyware normally associated with the intelligence world is being used by 13 federal departments and agencies.”

None of the departments did application privacy impact assessments on the tools as required by government policy, the news story says.

MP Mona Fortier, former Treasury Board president, who sits on the committee, said the government “is not here to spy on people and departments.”

“I know there are protocols and what I find concerning is that departments didn’t follow protocols” for doing application privacy assessments. Another Liberal MP denied the government uses “spyware.” But it does have digital tools for investigating allegations against government employees for fraud and other wrongdoing, she said.

Radio-Canada said the tools come from Cellebrite, an Israeli maker of tools for getting into mobile devices, and Waterloo, Ont.-based Magnet Forensics, which makes digital investigation solutions for governments and law enforcement agencies.

While several federal departments obtained some of the tools, Radio-Canada says it was told they are no longer used.

Speaking at the committee meeting in support of a study, Calgary Conservative MP Stephanie Kusie said she found the allegation the government could have captured texts, internet search histories, photos and more of federal public servants “very concerning.”

It amounts to a “normalization of surveillance,” she said. “It is terrifying.”

Kusie said she received no response when she asked Anand in writing to confirm the departments haven’t done privacy impact statements on the applications.

Liberals on the committee agreed to call witnesses on the allegations. But Hamilton MP Lisa Hepfner, parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth, denied the government uses “spyware” and urged opposition members to watch their “rhetoric.”

She described the applications as “specialized software for digital forensics” used for cyber incident response, and in internal investigations of civil servants when, for example, there is suspicion of fraud or workplace harassment.

“And it’s always done in accordance with internal protocols that govern the collection and storage of personal information to ensure its protection,” she said.

“I agree it’s concerning departments are not following the [policy for doing] privacy impact assessments. It’s a really important process and departments should be following that. Maybe the directive needs to be strengthened.”

But, she added, “spyware is not something that the Government of Canada uses. Spyware is illegal.” Nor, she said, does the government use malware or malicious code against employees.

The study will start Jan. 29, 2024. Also to be called as witnesses are Jennifer Carr, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, which represents more than 70,000 federal employees, and Chris Alyward, national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, which represents 230,000 federal staff.

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Generative AI systems are increasingly being used by threat actors to influence elections around the world, including in Canada, says the latest report by Canada’s electronic spy agency on threats to this country’s democratic process.

“We assess that AI synthetic content generation related to national elections will almost certainly increase in the next two years, as this technology becomes more widely available.” says the biannual report of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE).

“As synthetic content generation increases and becomes more widespread, it will almost certainly become more difficult to detect, making it harder for Canadians to trust online information about politicians or elections.”

Cyber threat activity targeting democratic processes are likely viewed by adversaries as “an obscure and risk-averse way of impacting Canada’s policy outcomes,” the report says.

The report comes just over a month before the start of a national public inquiry into foreign interference in Canadian elections and democratic institutions. The Foreign Interference Commission’s website is here.

Related content: Federal budget includes millions for fighting foreign interference

Since the 2021 version of the report, the CSE says there has been an increase in the amount of synthetic content — such as deepfake images, videos and news — relating to elections.

This is almost certainly because of the increased accessibility of technologies to create synthetic content.

“On the other hand, the use of synthetic content for disinformation about elections remains relatively low,” the report adds.

Disinformation about the next Canadian federal election will almost certainly be found online, the report says, and foreign adversaries will likely use generative AI to target Canada’s federal election in the next two years.

“Cyber incidents are also more likely to happen in Canada’s next federal election than they have been in the past,” the report adds.

Related content: Parliamentary hearing continues into foreign use of social media

The CSE, part of the Defence Department, has the responsibility for protecting federal IT networks, including intercepting and breaking foreign codes and creating secure codes for government employees.

About 85 per cent of cyber threat activity targeting national elections last year couldn’t be attributed to a state-sponsored cyber threat actor, the report says, a tribute to the techniques they use — either because the attackers obfuscate their origins, or because they outsource attacks to third parties. Sometimes these third parties are commercial public relations or marketing firms.

Of the 15 per cent of activity that can be identified, most is linked to Russia and China.

This includes attempted distributed denial of service attacks, attacks against election authority websites, accessing voter personal information or information relating to the election, and vulnerability scanning of online election systems. In Canadian federal elections, the report notes, residents only vote by paper ballots.

However, some municipalities here have allowed online voting.  Almost half of Ontario’s 444 municipalities, and 42 of Nova Scotia’s 49 municipalities (86 per cent) used online voting in at least one of their past elections, the report notes.

Generally, threat actors targeting elections favour manipulating the information environment over attempts to directly impact the voting process, the report adds.

Russia and China will continue to be responsible for most of the attributed cyber threat activity targeting foreign elections, the report says, and will focus on targeting countries of strategic significance to them.

It notes that upcoming European elections in 2023 and 2024 “could be a significant target for Russia due to the military and economic importance of Europe’s support to Ukraine.”

The CSE’s outward-facing department, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, has published a Cyber Security Guide for Campaign Teams and Cyber Security Advice for Political Candidates.

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IBM and Meta have partnered to form a new group, the AI Alliance, bringing together more than 50 organizations to promote open source development and innovation in artificial intelligence (AI).

But many of the world’s biggest AI players, including Microsoft, Microsoft-backed OpenAI, Google, and Amazon Web Services (AWS ), all long-standing defenders of closed source AI models and the proprietary, licensed approach, are absent from the alliance.

Intriguingly, however, Partnership on AI (PAI), a nonprofit coalition announced in 2016 by founding members Amazon, Facebook, Google, DeepMind, and Microsoft, has also joined the alliance.

The coalition, which is committed to the responsible use of AI, said it will continue to work with its 90+ partners and the alliance members to ensure that “open science and innovation contribute to safe and responsible AI.”

While open source AI has been riding the wave of growth, Microsoft has only sluggishly embraced the movement, partnering, for instance, with Meta’s Llama 2 and Databricks to bring open-source AI models to its Azure cloud platform. Google, AWS and OpenAI have moved slowly with their open source AI projects.

On the other hand, Meta’s entry in the AI arms race, largely dominated by heavy hitters like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, was marked by its commitment to market open source models, notably with the release of Llama 2, one of the most used foundation models.

IBM also recently released an open source foundation AI model, in collaboration with NASA, also a member of the alliance, designed to help scientists analyze satellite imagery.

“We believe it’s better when AI is developed openly – more people can access the benefits, build innovative products and work on safety,” said Nick Clegg, president, global affairs, Meta. “The AI Alliance brings together researchers, developers and companies to share tools and knowledge that can help us all make progress whether models are shared openly or not.”

IBM and Meta bring different capabilities to their partnership headlining the alliance, said Brian Jackson, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group.

Jackson noted that IBM brings its credibility in professional services and experience in taking open source software – most notably with its 2019 Red Hat acquisition – and translating it into a solutions and services business model. Meta, in contrast, brings its AI talent and leading researchers to the alliance.

This focus on open source through the alliance, however, will likely be more advantageous to Meta than to IBM, he said.

“For Meta, its open-source models are already available on Microsoft’s Azure platform. Its models will find enterprise users so long as there are professionals willing to support them. That takes some wind out of the sails of IBM, who can’t claim any sort of competitive advantage by hosting Meta’s models. At best, it can claim that it has more support services built up around them.”

Chief product officer (CPO) of information management giant OpenText, Muhi Majzoub, acknowledged that IBM and Meta coming together to form the AI Alliance leaves a lot of question marks for the enterprise.

“Any CIO will tell you, ‘I’m not putting my data in a publicly trained, open source LLM’. Business leaders are looking for AI solutions where their company’s data is secure and protected.”

But while AI researchers worry that cybercriminals will download and use these open-source models to further illicit business models, that’s not necessarily a risk for organizations using open source models from the AI alliance today, contended Jackson.

He added, “But in the future, if governments apply more restrictions to the release of LLMs, then it could become an issue.”

Notable presences in the newly formed Alliance are Hugging Face, Oracle, ServiceNow, Dell, Linux Foundation, Stability AI, Red Hat, and several startups, leading universities, governments and more.

Interestingly, the Alliance also includes chip giants including AMD, Intel, and Cerebras, who, since the AI boom, have been steamrolled by competitor Nvidia, currently occupying a near monopoly in AI-enabled GPUs and selling to the biggest cloud providers like AWS, Azure and Google.

AMD’s chief executive Lisa Su said, “The history of our industry highlights how open, standards-based development leveraging the capabilities of the entire industry both accelerate innovation and ensure technology advances have the largest positive impact.”

What will the Alliance do?

IBM said that the AI alliance will begin with the following projects:

Develop and deploy benchmarks and evaluation resources that enable the responsible development and use of AI systems
Responsibly advance the ecosystem of open foundation models with diverse modalities to address society-wide challenges
Foster a vibrant AI hardware accelerator ecosystem
Engage the academic community to support global AI skills building and exploratory research 
Develop educational resources to inform the public discourse and policymakers on AI regulation
Host events to explore AI use cases and showcase how Alliance members are using open technology in AI responsibly.

The AI alliance, IBM said, will begin its work with the formation of member-driven working groups across the areas listed above. It will also establish a governing board and technical oversight committee tasked to advance the key project areas and establish project standards and guidelines.

Further, the alliance plans to partner with existing AI initiatives from governments, non-profit and civil society organizations.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

Follow Cyber Security Today on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or add us to your Flash Briefing on your smart speaker.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Listen to the latest episode of Hashtag Trending

Hashtag Trending Dec.5- AI making laws; Fusion power closer to reality; The biggest companies that fell victim to cyberattacks in 2023

Listen to the latest episode of Cybersecurity Today

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

Listen to the latest episode of Hashtag Tendances

If you live in Québec, or prefer to consume the latest technology news in French, our sister publication Direction Informatique has you covered. Follow them on Twitter as well.

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.