W.H.T.D #Edition 6

Are you with me?

Google is building an AI Life Coach

Growing up, I always fancied the idea of having a life coach - for three reasons:

1. Life was too difficult to navigate

2. The uncertainties were never-ending

3. The first two reasons literally quadrupled with every passing day

And hey, for those who had these life coaches, their long-term results were a little too positive to dispute the insignificance of not having one. After all, what a child sees standing, an adult sees kneeling with his eyes closed.

So with all this … tell me why Google Deep Mind is currently training an AI Life Coach with a company called Scale AI and over 100 experts with doctorate degrees from a plethora of fields. At this point, I am not surprised by the rapid AI advancements but in mental health. AI Therapist or Life Coach?

Clearly, we are not the only ones worried (wait, we are on the same page right?) because Google’s AI safety specialists are worried that human over-reliance on AI could even further diminish user well-being - and oh, the questions on personal data and potential biases? I would leave you to think deeply about this because our tea just began steeping

AI will take the jobs of most women

Can we talk about this problem of AI and the threats it somewhat imposes on people’s jobs? I mean, our favorite human life coaches are an example. Did you know about Kundli GPT AI? That is AI for astrological readings. And how about AI writers, AI video generators, AI music generators, and AI software developers -

Well, the International Labor Organization's (ILO) recent report titled "Generative AI and Jobs: A global analysis of potential effects on job quantity and Quality." answers this question. Here are some note-worthy notes to take”

1. There are two sides to a coin

• Side 1 - AI has a high chance of complementing your current job than substituting it.
• Side 2 - If AI substitutes your job, it means automation in jobs like Clerical work.

Here is a much more interesting fact - According to IBM, about 1.4 billion people are going to be affected because of AI advancements and ILO included in their report that women are going to be more affected than men because they are overrepresented in such roles that need automation like clerical and administrative work.

What are your thoughts on this?

14 arrested in Africa for Cybersecurity attacks

To be able to have access to the internet is like owning a home in a virtual space. To own a home means that you can do what you want to do with it (online presence) - you could be an influencer, a gardener, a coach, build a community you name it. But how would you feel when someone dubiously steals your virtual home keys and does whatever they want to do like planting snakes or selling the keys to someone else?? Well, that is what exactly has been happening since the onset of the internet, and cybersecurity attacks have been on a rampant surge - especially in Africa.

So guess what? The InterPol Africa Cybercrime Operations Desk and AfriPol’s Support Programme collaborated to conduct an operation called Cyber Africa Surge II in April 2023. The aim really was to find these people that were stealing people’s home keys in the virtual space and it was successful! They found 20,654 suspicious cyber networks across 25 African countries linked to whooping losses of more than 40 million dollars.

How did they do it? By using the “follow the money” approach - just like how our parents readily identified that we stole that big meat from that okro soup pot by following the trails. 14 people have been arrested and here are some notable highlights in some of these African countries.

• Cameroon: Three suspects have been arrested in connection with an online scam involving fraudulent art sales worth USD 850,000.
• Nigeria: A suspect has been apprehended and accused of defrauding a Gambian victim.
• Mauritius: Two money mules arrested linked to messaging platform-initiated scams.
• Gambia: Took down 185 malicious Internet Protocols (IPs) through proactive measures and strong partnerships.
• Kenya: Successfully dismantled 615 malware hosters

The home key thieves are real and to avoid them from getting yours - don’t open your virtual doors to strangers by opening links or attachments from people you don’t know, downloading apps from unknown sources, and or not using an antivirus software.

Look for more details found under this operation:

• 3,786 malicious command and control servers
• 14,134 victim IPs linked to data stealer cases
• 1,415 phishing links and domains
• 939 scam IPs
• Over 400 other malicious URLs, IPs, and botnets.

These numbers are crazy! So stay safe

OpenAI might get sued by The New York Times

OpenAI is in some sort of trouble again - for its natural nature

If you didn’t know, Openai is a large language model or a big library of books that rely on existing books in its facility to generate responses in a way that is informative. But this happens in seconds because of a web crawler - but for this analogy, let’s call it a library crawler. How? By automatically visiting all the library catalogs to find a matching answer to your inquiry as fast as possible while leveraging accuracy. Smart huh?

The trouble for OpenAI comes in when this web crawler got blocked by The New York Times recently! They are so mad that OpenAI is adding their articles to their large library of books without their permission and there are suing threat bells from NYT for OpenAI’s violation of their intellectual property rights.

Tesla Data breach was an insider job

There has been a data breach at Tesla! Shhhh …

And it affected 75,000 people. speaking in low tones

This is probably not some big news to you since this happened months ago … but do you know the even bigger news? It was an insider job - two former employees!!

But first, let me take you through how it actually happened. This German media outlet called Handelsbatt was cruising in its normal daily activities when it received 100GB company sensitive data about Tesla. It contained 23,000 internal files from 2015 to 2022 concerning Tesla allegedly receiving 3,900 reports of self-acceleration and brake-function issues. It also included crash reports and thousands of incidents of drivers expressing safety concerns over Tesla's driver assistance system.

Fortunately and unfortunately (depending on how you see it), this data would never see the light of day as Handelsbatt has no intentions of publishing the comprised information

Microsoft recommended Ottawa Food Bank as a tourist destination

Do you know the Ottawa Food Bank?

It is a non-profit organization that collects food from individuals, businesses, and organizations. It then sorts and distributes the food to member agencies, which provide it to people in need.It was founded in 1985 and has since distributed over 100 million pounds of food to over 100,000 people each year.

So please, tell me why Microsoft’s Travel Guide for Ottawa Canada recommended the Ottawa Food Bank as a tourist destination making it to the third recommendation spot on the list. Do you smell some AI-generated tourist attraction idea article situation by Microsoft?

Well, almost everyone else did. And Microsoft’s explanation?

They said that the article was written “with a combination of algorithmic techniques with human review” but the human review process oversaw the error. The way I see it, them go explain tire.

The Ottawa Food Bank also got mad with disappointment because of the misrepresentation of what they do and the Senior Director at Microsoft has made it clear that they are taking steps to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again.

Fingers crossed!

Comment what shocked you in today's article … I hope you loved today’s tea!