Category Archives: Law

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Economy, Law, Media, Science, Technology

IBM didn’t inform people when it used their Flickr photos for facial recognition training – The Verge

Leave a comment

The problem is more widespread then highlighted in the article.  It’s not just these high profile companies using “public domain” images to annotate with facial recognition notes and training machine learning (ML) models.  Anyone can scan the Internet for images of people, and build a vast library of faces.  These faces can then be used to train ML models.  In fact, using public domain images from “the Internet” will cut across multiple data sources, not just Flickr, which increases the sample size, and may improve the model.

The rules around the uses of “Public Domain” image licensing may need to be updated, and possibly a simple solution, add a watermark to any images that do not have permission to be used for facial recognition model training.  All image processors may be required to include a preprocessor to detect the watermark in the image, and if found, skip the image from being included in the training of models.

Source: IBM didn’t inform people when it used their Flickr photos for facial recognition training – The Verge

Law, Legal

AI Whispering Digital Co-Counsel for Any Litigation

Leave a comment

Are you adequately prepared for your next litigation?  Going into court with an army of Co-Counsel making you feel more confident, more prepared?  Make sure you bring along the AI Whispering Digital Co-Counsel.  Co-Counsel that doesn’t break a sweat, get nervous, and is always prepared.  He even takes the opportunity to learn while on the job, machine learning.

The whispering digital agent for advising litigators “just-in-time” rebuttal citing historical precedence, for example.  Digital Co-Counsel analyzes the dialog within the courtroom to identify ‘goals’, the intent of the conversation(s).  The Digital Co-Counsel identifies the current workflow, which may be identified as Cross or Direct examination, Opening Statement, and Closing Argument.

Realtime observation of a court case and advice based on:
  • Observed dialog interactions between all parties involved in the case, such as opposing counsel,  witnesses, subject matter experts, may trigger “guidance” from the Digital Co-Counsel based on a compound of utterances, and identified workflow.
  • Court case evidence submitted may be digitized, and analyzed based on a [predetermined]combination of identified attributes of submitted evidence.  This evidence, in turn, may be rebutted, by counter arguments, alternate ‘perspectives’ or present “evidence” to rebut
  • The introduction of ‘bias’ toward the opposing council.**

Implementation of the Digital Co-Council may be through a Smartphone application, and use a bluetooth throughout the case.

My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily reflect my employer’s viewpoint.

Business, Economy, Entertainment, Fun, Internal Information, Law, Media, Sports, Technology

2016 Olympics Rating are Down? Don’t Blame Streaming!

Leave a comment

The 2016 Olympic opening ceremonies had just started, and I thought briefly about events I wanted to see.  I’m not a huge fan of the Olympics mostly because of the time commitment.  However, if I happen to be in front of the TV when the events are on, depending upon the event, I’m happy to watch, and can get drawn in easily.

As the Olympics unfolded, I caught a few minutes of an event here and there, just by happening to be in front of a TV.  Searching for any particular event never crossed my mind, even with the ease and power behind several powerful search engines like Bing and Google. The widgets built into search engine’s results showing Olympic standings in line with other search results was a great time saver.

However, why oh why didn’t the broadcasting network NBC create a calendar of Olympic 2016  events that can easily be imported into either Google Calendar, or Microsoft Outlook?  Even Star Trek fans are able to add a calendar to their Google Calendar for Star Dates.

Olympic ratings are hurting?  Any one of these organizations could have created a shared calendar for all or a subset of Olympic  events. Maybe you just want a calendar that shows all the aquatic events?

Olympic Team Sponsors from soda to fast food, why oh why did you paint your consumer goods with pictures of Javelin throwers and Swimmers, but didn’t put a QR code on the side of your containers that directs consumers to your sponsored team’s calendar schedule “importable” into Google Calendar, or Microsoft Outlook?

If sponsors, or the broadcasting network, NBC, would have created these shareable calendars, you now would had entered the personal calendars of the consumer.  A calendar entry pop-up may not only display what current competition is being fought, the body of the event may also contain [URL] links to stream the event live.  The body of the event may also contain links to each team player’s stats, and other interesting facts relating to the event.

Also, if a Team Sponsor is the one creating the custom calendar for the Olympic Events, like USA Swimming’s sponsor Marriott , the streaming live video events may now be controlled by the Sponsor, yes, all advertising during the streaming session would be controlled by the the Sponsor.  All Marriott!  The links in the team sponsor calendar entries may not only have their own streaming links to the live events, but include any feature rich, relevant related content.

There is the small matter of broadcast licensing Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS)  and broadcaster exclusivity, but hey, everything is negotiable.  Not sure traditional broadcasting rules should apply in a world of video streaming.

All the millions sponsors spend, for an IT Project that could cost a fraction of their advertising budget, and add significant ROI, it boggles the mind why every sponsor isn’t out there doing this or something similar right now.  The tech is relatively inexpensive, and readily available, so why not now?  If you know of any implementations, please drop me a note.

One noted exception, the “Google app” [for the iPhone] leverages alerts for all types of things such as a warning on traffic conditions for your ride home to … the start of the Women’s beam Gymnastics Olympic event.   Select the alert, and opens up a ‘micro’ portal with people competing in the event, a detailed list of athlete profiles, including picture, country of origin, and metals won.  There is also a tab showing the event future schedule.

Business, Economy, Education, Entertainment, Fashion, Finance, Law, Legal, Media, Music, Technology, Work

Applying Gmail Labels Across All Google Assets: Docs, Photos, Contacts + Dashboard, Portal View

Leave a comment

Google applications contain [types of] assets,  either created within the application, or imported into the application.    In Gmail, you have objects, emails, and Gmail enables users to add metadata to the email in the form of tags or “Labels”.  Labeling emails is a very easy way to organize these assets, emails.   If you’re a bit more organized, you may even devise a logical taxonomy to classify your emails.

An email can also be put into a folder and this is completely different than what we are talking about with labels.  An email may be placed into a folder, and have a parent child folder hierarchy.  Only the name of the folder, and it’s correlations to positions in the hierarchy provide this relational metadata.

For personal use, or for small to medium size businesses, users may want to categorize  all of the Google “objects” from each Google App,  so why Isn’t there the capability to apply labels across all Google App assets?  If you work at a law firm, for example, and have documents in Google Docs, and use Google for email, it would be ideal to leverage a company wide taxonomy, and upon any internal search discover all objects logically grouped in a container by labels.

For each Google object asset, such as email in Gmail, users may apply N number of labels to each Google Object asset.

A [Google] dashboard, or portal view may be used to display and access Google assets across Google applications, grouped by Labels .  A Google Apps “Portal Search” may consist of queries that contain asset labels.  A  relational, Google object repository containing assets across all object types (e.g. Google Docs), may be leveraged to store metadata about each Google asset and their relationships.

A [Google] dashboard, or portal view may be organized around individuals (e.g. personal), teams, or an organization.  So, in a law firm, for example, a case number label could be applied to Google Docs,  Google Photos (i.e. Photos and Videos),  and of course, Gmail.

A relatively simple feature to be implemented with a lot of value for Google’s clients, us?  So, why isn’t it implemented?

One better, when we have facial recognition code implemented in Photos (and Videos), applying Google labels to media assets may allow for correlation of Emails to Photos with a rule based engine.

The Google Search has expanded into the mobile Google app.

Leveraging Google “Cards“, developers may create “Cards” for a single or group of Google assets.   Grouping of Google assets may be applied using “Labels”.   As Google assets go through a business or personal user workflow, additional metadata may be added to the asset, such as additional “Labels”.

Expanding upon this solution,  scripts may be created to “push” assets through a workflow, perhaps using Google Cloud Functions.  Google “Cards” may be leveraged as “the bit” that informs users when they have new items to process in a workflow.

Metadata, or Labels, may be used such as “Document Ready for Legal Review” or “Legal Document Review Completed”.

Business, Development, Economy, Entertainment, Finance, Law, Media, Mobility, Technology, Work

Time Lock Access: Seal Files in Cloud Storage

1 Comment

Is there value in providing users the ability to apply “Time Lock Access” to files in cloud storage?  Files are securely uploaded by their Owner.  After upload no one, including the Owner, may access / open the file(s).   Only after the date and time provided for the time lock passes, files will be available for access, and action may be taken, e.g.  Automatically email a link to the files.  More complex actions may be attached to the time lock release such as script execution using a simple set of rules as defined by the file Owner.

Solution already exists?  Please send me a link to the cloud integration product / plug in.

Business, Economy, Finance, Law, Mobility, Technology

Financial Technology – Categories of FinTech Solutions

Leave a comment

FinTech refers to new solutions which demonstrate an incremental or radical / disruptive innovation development of applications, processes, products or business models in the financial services industry. These solutions can be differentiated in at least five areas.

  1. First, the banking or insurance sector are distinguished as potential business sectors. Solutions for the insurance industry are often more specifically named “InsurTech”.
  2. Second, the solutions differ with regard to their supported business processes such as financial information, payments, investments, financing, advisory and cross-process support.[4] An example is mobile payment solutions.
  3. Third, the targeted customer segment distinguishes between retail, private and corporate banking as well as life and non-life insurance. An example are telematics-based insurances that calculate the fees based on customer behaviour in the area of non-life insurances.
  4. Fourth, the interaction form can either be business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C) or consumer-to-consumer (C2C). An example are social trading solutions for C2C.
  5. Fifth, the solutions vary with regard to their market position. Some for example provide complementary services such as personal finance management systems, others focus on competitive solutions such as e.g. peer-to-peer lending.

Global investment in financial technology increased more than twelvefold from $930 million in 2008 to more than $12 billion in 2014

Source: Financial technology – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Advertising, Business, Development, Economy, Education, Entertainment, Fashion, Finance, Fun, Law, Retail, Science, Technology

The Race Is On to Control Artificial Intelligence, and Tech’s Future

Leave a comment

Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft are using high salaries and games pitting humans against computers to try to claim the standard on which all companies will build their A.I. technology.

In this fight — no doubt in its early stages — the big tech companies are engaged in tit-for-tat publicity stunts, circling the same start-ups that could provide the technology pieces they are missing and, perhaps most important, trying to hire the same brains.

For years, tech companies have used man-versus-machine competitions to show they are making progress on A.I. In 1997, an IBM computer beat the chess champion Garry Kasparov. Five years ago, IBM went even further when its Watson system won a three-day match on the television trivia show “Jeopardy!” Today, Watson is the centerpiece of IBM’s A.I. efforts.

Today, only about 1 percent of all software apps have A.I. features, IDC estimates. By 2018, IDC predicts, at least 50 percent of developers will include A.I. features in what they create.

Source: The Race Is On to Control Artificial Intelligence, and Tech’s Future – The New York Times

The next “tit-for-tat” publicity stunt should most definitely be a battle with robots, exactly like BattleBots, except…

  1. Use A.I. to consume vast amounts of video footage from previous bot battles, while identifying key elements of bot design that gave a bot the ‘upper hand’.  From a human cognition perspective, this exercise may be subjective. The BattleBot scoring process can play a factor in 1) conceiving designs, and 2) defining ‘rules’ of engagement.
  2. Use A.I. to produce BattleBot designs for humans to assemble.
  3. Autonomous battles, bot on bot, based on Artificial Intelligence battle ‘rules’ acquired from the input and analysis of video footage.
Business, Economy, Finance, Law, Legal, Technology, Work

G.E. Plans Big Entry into IoT, Providing Analytics and Predictive Rules

Leave a comment

G.E. Plans App Store for Gears of Industry

The investment of $500 million annually signals the importance of the so-called Internet of Things to the future of manufacturing.

G.E. expects revenue of $6 billion from software in 2015, a 50 percent increase in one year. Much of this is from a pattern-finding system called Predix.  G.E. calls its new service the Predix Cloud, and hopes it will be used by both customers and competitors, along with independent software developers. “We can take sensor data from anybody, though it’s optimized for our own products,” Mr. Ruh said.

[Competitive solutions from IBM, Microsoft, and Google] raises the stakes for G.E. “It’s a whole new competition for them,” said Yefim Natis, a senior analyst with Gartner. “To run businesses in a modern way you have to be analytic and predictive.”

G.E. is running the Predix Cloud on a combination of G.E. computers, the vast computing resources of Amazon Web Services, and a few [local] providers, like China Telecom.

China, along with countries like Germany, [are] sensitive about moving its data offshore, or even holding information on computers in the United States.  
The practice of “Ring fencing”  data exists in dozens of jurisdictions globally.  Ring fencing of data may be a legal and/or regulatory issue, that may inhibit the global growth of cloud services moving forward.

Source: G.E. Plans App Store for Gears of Industry