AI is growing very fast, a recent global AI survey indicated that 34% of businesses across the U.S., Europe and China have adopted AI. Members of the business community are concerned about workforce readiness when AI comes into the economy. However, companies with diverse and inclusive workforces will thrive in the age of AI. This is because AI, can adapt itself to the need of users and their skills, aka what there contributing job to the company itself is.

AI can leave its users behind in the curve of the worldwide demographic and societal trends. Technologies such as this are trained for the global population of the worlds markets and will help propel it to new heights. AI is opening the aperture to finding a broader range of talent for businesses. Such as reducing bias in both hiring and end-to-end talent process. It will become a very competitive workforce for businesses now with AI coming into the economy.

AI will be a essential tool in for the economy. Businesses are and will continue to embrace AI. The opportunities with AI are endless, specifically how AI will advance companies and revenue in the economy. AI is coming it is time to embrace it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ibm/2020/03/09/building-an-inclusive-workforce-in-the-age-of-ai/#526bf9483a8c

Internet restrictions are a hot topic in the media. With our large advancements with technology, there needs to be rules and accountability with what content social media platforms allow for their users to see and say.

Facebook has decided not to fact-check political ads, which, is interesting because the spread of false media does not help the political tensions that arise from election years.

Twitter has straight up banned political ads on their website. I have a feeling we are going to have to revisit the first amendment because, who gets to create the boundaries for what classifies as “right” or “wrong” on the Internet? What will be the rubric for how a company classifies hate speech? What is “freedom of expression”?

In this article, Harvard scholars and other important folks give their opinions on the latest stance Facebook + Twitter have decided to take against politics.

Ghosh believes Twitter has taken the right approach. However, Evelyn Douek,believes neither company is correct. This is a major issue and one we have never really had to tackle because it was not pushed until companies started getting flack for what they allow users to see.

It is a tough road, but hopefully, we can come to a conclusion that benefits us all.

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/political-ads-twitter-facebook.php

The office of the Australian Information Commissioner informed Facebook had infringed he privacy of more than 300,00 Australians. They left data exposed to be sold and used for political profiling. It harvested facebook data of 87 million people being used for advertising during elections. 87 million. That is crazy. Facebook has been in the news in the latest years due to privacy issue and maybe now it’s when they’re gonna realize that they definitely need to do something about their privacy problems. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51799738

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/body/a31257444/lizzo-calls-out-tiktok-swimsuit-video/

Surprise, surprise! TikTok is facing some heat once again! TikTok, the popular video sharing app, faced some criticism last week for censoring posts. Lizzo, the Grammy award winning singer and body positivity advocate, spoke out about TikTok removing videos of her on her account showing her wearing bathing suits. Lizzo claims that it is obvious that TikTok is trying to censor her videos because she is a plus size woman. This criticism comes along with many other criticisms of TikTok’s censorship algorithm which has also been found to censor the posts of many LGBTQ+ users and users with disabilities. Since Lizzo opened up publicly about her criticism of the app, TikTok has since restored at least one of Lizzo’s many videos showing her wearing a swimsuit. It is unclear whether or not TikTok plans on restoring all of the singer’s videos.

As a dedicated user of TikTok, I continue to find it more and more shocking that so many people are reporting instances where TikTok has been censoring their videos. This article claimed that a spokesperson from TikTok said that the TikTok censorship algorithm automatically deleted Lizzo’s videos because they were initially believed to be violating community guidelines. After reviewing the videos, TikTok decided to restore at least one of the videos once they realized that Lizzo was wearing a swimsuit and not underwear (flashing your underwear violates TikTok’s community guidelines). I continue to believe that the overarching issue with TikTok is their overly sensitive censorship algorithm. I do not believe it is doing TikTok any good to rely on an algorithm to decipher underwear from a swimsuit, and make decisions about what is censored and what isn’t, if it continues to cause TikTok to face so much backlash.

With the rapid development of AI technology, companies are working to implement it in their businesses to assist with tasks that it can do many times faster than a human could. But AI can’t do everything a human can do, much like how a human can’t do everything an AI can do. So, what is AI’s place in business? The types of tasks that AI excels at are primarily small and repetitive decisions, as well as detecting patterns or outliers within any set of data. The biggest barrier between machine learning and human intelligence is the ability to contextualize information, as well as form hypotheses and test ideas. Humans are great at contextualizing ideas, in business or elsewhere, so the ideal integration of AI in the workplace is an AI-assisted worker, with the AI performing analysis or pattern detection, and the human making sense of what it means for the business. Mitigating those menial tasks to technology rather than humans means the humans can spend their time on tasks better suited for them, leaving the analysis to technology.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2020/03/09/the-power-of-artificial-intelligence-vs-the-power-of-human-intelligence/#2150d12346cc

Many U.S. officials are fearful of foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. elections, to avoid a repeat of the 2016 election. It is now proven that Russia has interfered with the 2016 Presidential election through misinformation on social media, hacking emails, and probing voter registration systems, but in 2020, the tactics used to influence the election might be more complicated.

The Internet of Things is becoming the foundation of our lives, as it is beginning to control nearly everything from security cameras to thermostats. Unsecured devices are vulnerable to hacking, and many Internet of Things companies prioritize sales over properly securing their devices. In 2016, a botnet utilized unsecure Internet of Things devices and launched a distributed denial of service attack that target popular sites such as Twitter and Reddit, making them unavailable for some time.

Officials fear the same could happen to policial websites in the coming months, with Internet of Things devices being hacked and used to shut down campaign websites, social media, and sites that provide policial information, an arguably much more devious means of interference than 2016, using U.S. citizens own devices to launch these attacks.

Officials also fear that these hackers could plot more complicated attacks such as using Internet of Things devices to generate false weather reports or traffic reports to persuade people not to vote, attack power systems, or creating local emergencies so that voting cannot take place.

In order to preserve democracy, officials are urging citizens to take actions, secure their devices, and be wary of phishing, the spreading of misinformation, and other malicious online attacks.

https://theconversation.com/internet-of-things-could-be-an-unseen-threat-to-elections-132142

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are becoming popular ways of monitoring a user’s environment and improving their lives. Devices such as the Ring security system, utilize cameras to help users protect their homes and offices. These devices have a history of favoring sales over security, however, lacking basic encryption and security protocols such as two-factor authentication. This has allowed hackers to get into devices and control the digital infrastructure of users.

Many of these IoT devices that monitor users are assembled in China, using Chinese parts, so it is likely that there might be an issue with security, as the Chinese government is no stranger to spying on foreign countries through means such as this. In fact, the U.S. Department of interior instituted a ban on Chinese-made drones back in January over fears that they might be sending information back to the Chinese government.

While some view this as paranoia, U.S. security officials feel they are simply protecting their citizens. Ron Gula, former National Security Administration hacker has said ” Let’s say there are some companies that have perfect security on their devices, but they are still based in China. All of that data they collect, the Chinese government can ask for access to it. Or it might even have implied access, and they don’t have to tell us about it.”

https://www.digitaltrends.com/news/china-spying-iot-devices/

As populations in urban environments continue to grow, cities are having a hard time keeping up with its citizens and ensuring their wellbeing. New innovations in the Internet of Things is changing that, and helping cities keep up with growing demands.

It is estimated that by 2022, $158 billion will be spent on smart city development, on innovations such as Vehicle to everything connectivity, which helps cars communicate with other cars, pedestrians, and traffic systems, to smart trash collections, which alert waste collectors when trash needs to be picked up and allows waste to be tracked.

These innovations also can allow for improvement in areas such as safety, as crime can be mapped, to help police officers and other law enforcement. Health can also benefit, as cities are spending more on disease prevention through these new technologies, to prevent potential outbreaks. These new innovations in technology can also benefit the environment by monitoring emissions and finding ways to cut back and reduce consumption.

Overall, it is only a matter of time before these innovations become the new norm, as it is estimated that there will be roughly 53 million active Internet of Things connections by 2025.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/iot-building-smarter-cities/

Hackers based out of China have been working exploit a vulnerability within the Microsoft Exchange email servers. This vulnerability, which Microsoft though they fixed, was thought to be patched back in February. The issue? A remote code execution vulnerability exists in Microsoft Exchange Server when the server fails to properly create unique keys at install time. Knowledge of the validation key allows an authenticated user with a mailbox to pass arbitrary objects to be deserialized by the web application, which runs as SYSTEM.

Microsoft is now planning to implement multi-factor authentication for protecting enterprise systems, and to safeguard the user credentials. The problem is that despite deploying multi-factor authentication, it is still possible to compromise the system using any basic credentials. This means, even if the vulnerability has been fixed, the server isn’t yet secure unless you have patched it.

Check out the article at:

Hackers are exploiting critical vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange server

In 2017, many insurance executives believed that artificial intelligence would have a major impact on the industry in the coming years. Today, quite a few companies have implemented the use of AI, but there are also a lot of companies that are still using the old and traditional ways. The companies that did make the change have experienced a faster claims process, improved customer service ratings, and have saved money due to the accuracy and speed of AI processes. The industry has not transformed on the scale some thought it would, but it is changing. https://thenextweb.com/growth-quarters/2020/02/24/3-ways-ai-is-transforming-the-insurance-industry/