Five Minute Blockchain – No. 50
24.02.2023
Estimated reading time: 6 min 23 seconds
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“Everybody says, ‘We don’t want to talk with the banks, we don’t want to know what they’re doing, etc.’ But they’ve actually been around for 300 or 400 years. They have a lot of experience on how to do things actually, or how not to do things.”
Cointelegraph reporting from European Blockchain Convention in Barcelona
TRUST
Top search results could lead to online scammers; FBI recommends ad blockers when using search
Cory Doctorow, a well-known journalist, author and activist, recently published a screenshot of a search via Twitter where the top search result for a restaurant led to a fake website designed to scam users. The actual restaurant was also showing up in the search but ranked lower.
This new approach by scams is hard to detect by Google. As one result, the FBI recommends using an ad blocker to shelter against such falsified and malicious links.
“…cyber criminals are using search engine advertisement services to impersonate brands and direct users to malicious sites that host ransomware and steal login credentials and other financial information.”
Cory Doctorow on Twitter
Malware Bytes Lab
AI-generated voice used to break into a bank account
Many banks offer the option to enter an account using a voice command. A reporter for VICE managed to trick a bank system using a free choice to cheat the system. Experts suggest that banks re-consider and switch to different methods of identity verification.
VICE
Signal warns it might stop services for the UK should “Online Safety Bil” undermine message encrypt.ion
The Online Safety Bill is currently passing through the UK parliament. Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, introduced it. The government and child protection have argued that encrypted messages make it difficult to fight child abuse.
The UK Home Office said in a statement: “It is important that technology companies make every effort to ensure that their platforms do not become a breeding ground for paedophiles. The Online Safety Bill does not represent a ban on end-to-end encryption but makes clear that technological changes should not be implemented in a way that diminishes public safety – especially the safety of children online”.
Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, told the BBC it was “magical thinking” if government agencies in the UK want to provide privacy, but “only for the good guys. Encryption is either protecting everyone or it is broken for every. one.”
Apple had previously suggested a system where content where photos on phones or tablets could scan for child abuse but had abandoned the plans after much criticism.
BBC
Mozilla study: Developer privacy claims on Google Play can not be trusted
A study by Mozilla calls the labels used in the Google Play Store “a joke” and “useless”:
“The study looked at the privacy information that app developers are supposed to fill out in the Google’s Play Store and compared those details to the apps’ privacy policies. The privacy labels are supposed to give you information about an app’s data practices so you can make informed choices, but the study found the labels are close to useless. Just six apps of the 40 apps in the study got a passing grade.”
Gizmodo
Wired
Using new AI platforms, the next generation of “deepfakes” could leada to a whole new level of damage
The people in the videos look r, and they speak compellingly. But they are not real, and their words might be a believable lie. This is the scenario experts say could be the next level of “deepfakes”.
The combination of several AI platforms “…can also be used to more quickly and cheaply build an army of people who don’t exist, fake actors capable of fluently delivering messages in multiple languages. That makes them useful, says Gregory, for the “firehose” strategy of disinformation preferred by Russia, along with everything from “deceptive commercial personalization to the ‘lolz’ strategies of shitposting at scale.”
Fast Company
It is tempting to use generative AI for legal documents. What could go wrong?
Without the help of technology, lawyers spent hours over hours in legal research and the gradual writing of contracts and other legal documents. Now, generative AI has arrived. And it is quite tempting to use the technology to generate legal texts. On one side, experts consider legal documents to be a good use case for generative AI.
There is already a dedicated an AI platform for this use case called Harvey. Law experts created the company behind Harvey using ChatGPT and received $5 million in funding from OpenAI in November 2022 (TechCrunch). The platform describes itself as a “copilot for lawyers”.
Wired has a story with statements from several prominent law firms. Most are optimistic about the use cases for generative AI, for example, for standard documents or early-stage research. But at the same time, there are worries about current platforms making things up and tending to “hallucinate” about topics poorly defined in the learning material. The significant risk is that some law providers signed not to be more cautious and deploy AI to mass-produce certain legal documents – only to find out later that it was a big mistake.
https://www.harvey.ai (Waitlist)
TechCrunch
Wired ($)
CONTENT
European Union starts consultation on whether some companies should pay more for using internet traffic
The EU considers demanding a contribution from the largest tech companies. The money would then be deployed for upgrades for phone lines both at home and mobile. Currently, a document aims to collect opinions in a survey as public consultation. The EU internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, will discuss the plans at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress (MWC). The critical argument that big traffic generators should pay more has been part of lobbying by larger telecommunication companies for some years. Now the EU seems to agree with this view. Opponents are highly critical of such different pricing. They say that the move might open a box of pandora because telcos will be free to draw the line for heavy traffic and enable them to charge all kinds of companies.
EU Commission: Exploratory Consultation – The future of the electronic communications sector and its infrastructure
Thierry Breton on Twitter
TechCrunch
NFT platform Dapper labs to loff off 20% of its staff
Dapper Labs laid off 134 people, or 22% of its staff, in November 2022. Now the company has announced a second round of layoffs. The reduction comes despite a strong financial position. Dapper Labs had received $600 million from venture capital. The company had an early success with NBA Top Shot, where fans could purchase short professional basketball clips.
The Block
YouTube rolls out multi-language audio tracks
“The multi-language audio feature lets creators add dubbing to new and existing videos, helping them expand their global reach and reach new audiences for their channels, according to YouTube.”
Variety
BLOCKCHAIN
International Monetary Fund: Blockchain can speed up payments and settlements, but crypto still is a “disappointment.”
The IMF sees three areas of application: Tokenization, Encryption and programmability. But the advisers argue that private issuers of (crypto) money can not be trusted to protect investors and users.
Blockworks
Research: State of Blockchain Report 2022
Global venture funding provided $26.8B for blockchain companies in crypto finance, web3 and blockchain infrastructure. While prospects looked positive in early 2022, the entire industry came under macroeconomic pressures, specifically in the 4th quarter of the year. CB Insights has a free (after registration) market overview with 162 pages of charts and data to make sense of it all.
CB Insights
SHORT LINKS
- Why the 15-minute city is fueling a ludicrous conspiracy theory (Fast Company)
- Pakistan’s three-day Wikipedia ban sends a “dangerous” message (Rest of World)
- ConsenSys Acquires Easy-to-Use Blockchain Notification Tool ‘Hal’ to Strengthen Web3 Development (Coindesk)
- Tencent to offer “metaverse-in-a-box” development services in Asian markets (Bitcoin.com)
- Google Cloud becomes a validator for Tezos blockchain (Ledger Insights)
Thank you for reading. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact us via info@trublo.eu.
Photo by Vardan Papikyan on Unsplash
Five Minute Blockchain – Nr. 48
10.02.2023
Estimated reading time:
QUOTE(S) OF THE WEEK
“We are grounded in the fact that Google dominates this [search] space. A new race is starting with a completely new platform technology.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella – Interview with “Wall Street Journal” (free)
“If you’ve ever written a blog post or product review or commented on an article online, there’s a good chance this information was consumed by ChatGPT.”
The Conversation
TRUST
How are Microsoft and Google approaching the inclusion of new AI Chatbots in search?
If you want a good overview of how Microsoft and Google approach the race to integrate AI in search: The linked video below compares the presentations from last week by both companies and has further analysis and excerpts from an interview with the Microsoft CEO.
ColdFusion TV: “Google embarrass themselves (AI war is heating up)
So far, Google, the market leader, seems to need more preparation and has not yet recovered from the surprise advance of Open AI and Microsoft’s swift implementation of ChatGPT.
In a promotional video published by Google, users spotted an inaccurate answer. This and a public event which failed to “dazzle” (Reuters) led to a slide of Google stock of 9 % this week; the company lost an equivalent of $100 billion in book value.
Coldfusion TV
Reuters
Hope for the next-gen internet, with new risks and dangers
How AI is integrated into search and other online services is a big question for the coming years. Precisely, what concepts will be followed?
The outcome could be positive: Better search results and better information. Many knowledge jobs could become more productive because the struggle of searching for information could go away. The internet could become a productivity machine, helping us find answers to complex problems.
But there are considerable risks, too. It starts at the foundation: Which material was used for training the new generation of AI platforms? Which pictures, words, insights, concepts, codes and numbers? Who owned those before? How are these info bits used now in AI?
From “The Conversation”:
“ChatGPT is underpinned by a large language model that requires massive amounts of data to function and improve. The more data the model is trained on, the better it gets at detecting patterns, anticipating what will come next and generating plausible text.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, fed the tool some 300 billion words systematically scraped from the internet: books, articles, websites and posts – including personal information obtained without consent.
If you’ve ever written a blog post or product review, or commented on an article online, there’s a good chance this information was consumed by ChatGPT.”
The Conversation
CONTENT
AI applied to Deep Fakes makes detection much harder
The New York Times has a story about artificial presenters used in videos, which are hard to distinguish from natural persons. According to The Times, an AI software named Synthesia has already been used for Chinese propaganda. The AI-supported software is meant to be used for sales videos. Expect the quality to improve in the coming years.
New York Times (free article)
Quality journalism can be good business
The New York Times published financial results for the 4th quarter of 2022 and some figures for the past year. In short: While traditional advertising is declining, The Times is one news organisation that no longer depends on this type of income. The number of subscribers has grown to 9.3 million, a more significant number than the print circulation even at the height of print publishing.
The New York Times (Free to read)
In addition to hardware sales, Apple’s service business is gigantic
Its service revenue of Apple has reached $78.1B for 2022. That is double the revenue of Netflix ($31.6B) and above the combined revenues of McDonalds and Nike ($72.3B).
FinBold
Macro raises $9.3m for intelligence on top of digital documents
Could standard documents like PDFs become more usable? A company called Macro just got funding for their ideas to do just that.
“Jacob Beckerman, a former investment logic engineer at Bridgewater Associates, grew frustrated using standard document apps like Acrobat and Microsoft Office to print out and mark up documents. He wondered why there wasn’t a way to read and write on a PC that felt as fluid as paper, which led him to experiment with PDF processing software.
By 2020, those experiments had grown into a fully fledged, custom PDF editor that Beckerman helped to build from scratch. Using AI, the editor — called Macro — pulls out key terms, sections and equations to make documents interactive and hyperlinked.”
Link
BLOCKCHAIN
Bank of England published papers on the digital pound
The Bank of England has published two papers discussing a digital pound’s benefits and potential set-up. The current approach favours a central database and does not use smart contracts or blockchain.
In a separate technical paper, blockchain technologies were described that “might have advantages in guaranteeing consistency and resilience”, combined with “privacy, scalability and security challenges. Centrally governed, distributed database technologies might achieve the ledger requirements without limitations. Therefore, these technologies might be appropriate for the core ledger design.”
Coindesk
The Bank of England: Consultation for Digital Pound
The Bank of England: The digital pound. Technology Working Paper
Blockchain Regulation Round-up
- Blockchain privacy at risk in the EU
- Argentina considers “proof of solvency” as a requirement (Bitcoin.com)
- Central Bank of Brazil tests security and transaction privacy levels of Digital Real (Bitcoin.com)
- Coinbase CEO hearing rumours that staking could be banned in the US (Coinmarketcap)
- What public companies are saying about crypto and blockchain on earnings calls (Blockdata)
SHORT LINKS
Thank you for reading. If you have questions or suggestions, please get in touch with us via info@trublo.eu.
Photo by Ales Nesetril via Unsplash
Five Minute Blockchain – No. 46
27.01.2023
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Reasonable AI Policy:
“I expect you to use AI (ChatGPT and image generation tools, at a minimum) in this class. In fact, some assignments will require it. Learning to use AI is to skill, and I provide think tutorials in Canvas about how to use them. I am happy to meet and help with these tools during office hours or after class.
Be aware of the limits of ChatGPT:
- If you provide minimum effort prompts, you will get low-quality results. You will need to refine your prompts in order to get good outcomes. This needs work.
- Don’t trust anything it says. If it gives a number or fact, assume it is wrong unless you either know the answer or can check in with another source. You will be responsible for any errors or omissions provided by the tool. It works best for topics you understand.
- AI is a tool, but one that you need to acknowledge using. Please include a paragraph at the end of any assignment that uses AI explaining what you used the AI for and what prompts you used to get the results. Failure is a violation of academic honesty policies.
- Be thoughtful about when this tool is useful. Don’t use it if it isn’t appropriate for the case or circumstance.
Credited to: Sarah Dillard, Wharton University
Tweet
TRUST
LastPass breach is an ongoing nightmare
If there is one thing which should not happen to a password manager is that it has a breach, and this is what happened at LastPass on November 30, 2022. One thing making the mess even messier is the attackers, step by step, gained even more control, e.g. by stealing the customer back-ups and then getting the encryption keys.
TechCrunch
Bad Reputation
There is a notable difference between physical and biological systems; different rules and effects drive them. In the physical domain, the control over outcomes is high. You can make the production of even very complex products perfect over time.
In the biological domain, you have less control – one effect or input in the system can have none or multiple products. Populations, ecological systems, and human communication have structure but can only partially be controlled.
To demonstrate the difference, look no further than Elon Musk. His actions on Twitter are affecting his reputation. According to Bloomberg, the negative perception of Musk has adverse effects on Tesla, the buyers and the stock.
Bloomberg
TechCrunch
Phantom climate credits
Finding from an investigation by a German newspaper and a nonprofit:
“The research into Verra, the world’s leading carbon standard for the rapidly growing $2bn (£1.6bn) voluntary offsets market, has found that, based on analysis of a significant percentage of the projects, more than 90% of their rainforest offset credits – among the most commonly used by companies – are likely to be “phantom credits” and do not represent genuine carbon reductions.”
The Guardian
Note: Several early-stage projects funded by TruBlo are working on data capturing for carbon, agriculture and other data where trust in the entries is a crucial challenge: CERES, Crowd-Field Companion, CO2Path, FarmerConnect, LoRa Trust.
Enforcing GDPR takes too long in Europe.
Europe has established far-reaching privacy laws. But enforcing them is a laborious process, and it might take years until a violation is fined.
“…many of the rights have been nearly impossible to exercise because legal challenges based on the law have often languished at the Irish Data Protection Commission, which handles most GDPR complaints against Big Tech.
According to the agency’s own statistics, the Irish Data Protection Commission had a backlog of more than 300 outstanding GDPR complaints as of the end of 2021, many dating back to 2018.”
The Markup
China is the Worlds biggest face-recognition dealer
A study by the Brookings Institute says China is now the world’s biggest exporter of face recognition.
“The report finds that Chinese companies lead the world in exporting face recognition, accounting for 201 export deals involving the technology, followed by US firms with 128 deals. China also has a lead in AI generally, with 250 out of a total of 1,636 export deals involving some form of AI to 136 importing countries. The second biggest exporter was the US, with 215 AI deals.”
While the technology has many practical use cases, it can and is used for surveillance. With powerful AI image processing, the technology can be used by repressive, authoritarian states. The study warns that some countries starting to use such technology could shift away from democracy and freedom because the technology allows them to enforce repressive policies.
Wired
Brookings: Exporting the surveillance state via trade in AI
CONTENT
Multiple billions, multiple years
Microsoft will invest billions over “multiple years” into Open AI, which makes ChatGPT and DALL-E. Microsoft had already invested one billion earlier.
Crunchbase
Related:
OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic (Time Magazine)
If you can’t beat them, join them.
Stock photo and visuals platform Shutterstock signed a deal with Open AI.
“Customers of Shutterstock’s Creative Flow online design platform will now be able to create images based on text prompts, powered by OpenAI and Dall-E 2. Key to the feature — which does not appear to have a brand name as such — is that Shutterstock says the images are “ready for licensing” right after they’re made.”
Competitor Getty images are currently in a lawsuit against Open AI competitor Stability AI.
TechCrunch
Stay positive
Slay is a new social media app created by a team in Germany. The goal is to be a “positive social media network for teenagers”. Essentially the platform allows making compliments to others. It seems to be a hit. In just four days, it became No. 1 on the iOS App Store in Germany and is now gaining traction in the UK.
TechCrunch
Too big, too dominant
Google is in serious legal trouble. In the US, the company is facing an antitrust investigation. The basis is that Google is considered a monopolist in the digital ad business. Platformer has an in-depth look at the case and why it is a treat to Google.
Platformer
BLOCKCHAIN
Inevitable CBDCs
Bank of America has published a report claiming that digital currencies (Central Bank Digital Currencies) are “inevitable” because they could simplify regional or global money flows.
“We view distributed ledgers and digital currencies, such as CBDCs and stablecoins, as a natural evolution of today’s monetary and payment systems.”
In addition, a research report by Blockdata (available for free) lists 15 enterprise use cases for blockchain technology. Expected areas of blockchain use are simplifications for capital markets and digital identity management.
Blockdata: The state of CBDCs in 2022 (published December 7, 2022)
Blockdata: Blockchain’s Evolution and Enterprise Use Cases, and the Hunt for the Killer App (January 11, 2023)
Potential for a common currency in Latin America
Lula da Silva, president of Brazil:
“Why not create a common currency with the Mercosur countries, with the BRICS countries? I think that is what is going to happen. You can establish a currency for trade that the central bank sets.”
Bitcoin.com
Crypto must be covered
European banks might have to cover any crypto holdings with certain capital levels. This is the goal of a draft text, which might become law in the future.
Coindesk
SHORT LINKS
- Prediction: Bitcoin not to pass price of $30K in 2023, 56 experts say (Coinmarketcap)
- Why is crypto bouncing back (January 26 @bitcoin at 23K) (Coindesk)
- Venture Investments into blockchain continue to free-fall (Cointelegraph)
- Coinbase’s Chief Product Engineer will leave with a $105 million paycheck (DL News)
- First nuclear-powered bitcoin mine to open in 2023 (CNET)
- Crypto Regulation Worldwide, comparison (Coinbase)
Thank you for reading. If you have questions or suggestions, please get in touch with us via info@trublo.eu.
Five Minute Blockchain – No. 45
19.01.2023
Estimated reading time: 4 min 45 seconds
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“We know from years of research that people will always use technologies in ways that their creators did not intend. In other sectors and industries, governments and governance bodies create rules, laws, and regulations to constrain and limit malicious or dangerous uses of potentially harmful products. But advances in artificial intelligence and algorithmic, data-centric technologies have slipped the leash and operate largely outside of those kinds of assessments and controls.”
– Janet Haven, Predictions for Journalism 2023 (Nieman Lab)
TRUST
Predictions for Journalism
The above quote is from a series of articles published by Nieman Lab. Each year Nieman asks journalists about their predictions for the year. Below are links to some additional quotes and predictions relevant to the cross-section of trust/content/blockchain.
Prediction:
“The activist, scholar, and poet Maya Angelou famously said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more (Jennifer Brandel, Hearken)
Prediction:
“For a fact-checking effort to gain trust, the arbiters of truth cannot also be its distributors.”
Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale (Kavya Sukumar, Lightrock India)
Prediction:
“This new type of app isn’t a platform itself but instead pulls together various platform and content streams to offer a single, seamless networked experience.”
Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter (Andrew Losowky, Vox Media)
All predictions –> Nieman Lab
CONTENT
Interview: Open AI founder Sam Altman talks about future products, risks for society, possible video platform
Sam Altman, the founder and CEO of Open AI, said that the current license with Microsoft is not exclusive. Last week Microsoft announced the intention to use ChatGPT, a text-generating platform released by Open AI, to create better answers on Bing in the future. Microsoft is a significant shareholder after $1 billion in the AI company last year.
The interview included questions about safety and whether new AI tools will disrupt societies – such as in education or office work. Altman said: “There are societal changes that ChatGPT is going to cause or is causing. A big one going on now is about its impact on education and academic integrity, all of that.”
In addition, Altman said that reactions are negative and positive, sometimes from the same group of people: “We hear from teachers who are understandably very nervous about the impact of this on homework. We also hear a lot from teachers like, ‘Wow, this is an unbelievable personal tutor for each kid'”.
TechCrunch
Getty Images announces lawsuit against Stability AI over copyright infringement
Getty Images, a global provider of licensed photos, announced a lawsuit against the company behind the popular generative AI tool Stable Diffusion. The stock image company argues that the AI company processed millions of images without training the AI software without a license. The suit has been filed in London, meaning that the verdict will be made outside of the US, potentially influencing future regulation of visual and text AI tools.
Getty Images
Learn how to use Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)
The myriad of published texts, photos and videos available online opens the door for a new form of intelligence: OSINT stands for “Open Source Intelligence”.
It is an umbrella term for various techniques to find evidence on digital platforms. The methods are used by intelligence units as well as investigative journalists.
A typical application is to geo-locate a picture or a video. Or use small segments of such material to collect evidence of what happened in the Ukraine war in a specific town. One well-known group using OSINT is “Bellingcat“, located in the UK. The techniques can be learned. The link below leads to a four-hour, free training for the basics of OSINT.
YouTube
BLOCKCHAIN
UNHCR uses a blockchain payment platform to help Ukraine war refugees
What would be a modern way to efficiently and with accountability distribute financial aid to people displaced through war? The UNHCR uses a blockchain payment platform for this. Launched in December 2022, the solution is currently used in Ukraine.
From an article published by UNHCR: “The pilot phase of the project is designed specifically for Ukraine but can be adapted worldwide.”
The current solution uses the Stellar blockchain and distributes funds as a stablecoin equal to one US Dollar. Recipients can receive funds after installing an app on their smartphone. Cash conversion is possible in 4,500 MoneyGram locations in Ukraine or elsewhere in Europe. The statement did not say what commissions would be charged for such transactions.
UNHCR
Non-Crypto Applications of Blockchain discussed in Davos
Experts, politicians and top managers are talking about blockchain as a technology at this year’s gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Despite the crypto crash, there are some positive views where blockchain technology is performing well.
Quote: “Despite the crypto crash, “the underlying tech has performed perfectly,” Schulman said. “The promise of a distributed ledger is that it can be faster and cheaper to settle transactions simultaneously with no middlemen. That’s an important thing.”
Coindesk
Others are far more critical and do not believe in any value from the blockchain for crypto or other use cases. One example is economist Nouriel Roubini, who has voiced his concerns over a blockchain. In Davos 2023, he said blockchain is a “fad” and “no more than a glorified database”. Roubini does not believe that blockchain entries can create trust without an institution verifying that the information is correct – for example, in food logistics.
Yahoo Finance
SHORT LINKS
- Founders Fund sold off most of its crypto venture portfolio in March 2022, well before the crash, generating a $1.8 billion return. Financial Times
- Musk’s Twitter Saw Revenue Drop 35% in Q4, Sharply Below Projections (The Information)
Thank you for reading. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact us via info@trublo.eu.
Photo by Evangeline Shaw on Unsplash
Five Minute Blockchain – No. 44
13.01.2023
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes 33 seconds
TRUST
Medium starts a dedicated Mastodon instance
“Online publishing platform Medium, originally created by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, announcedtoday that it’s embracing the open source Mastodon platform by creating its own instance to support its authors and their publications. The company said it’s launching me.dm, a Mastodon community that will offer reliable infrastructure, moderation and a short domain name to make it easier for authors to share their usernames, among other things.”
TechCrunch
Who is speaking?
Microsoft recently announced a new AI service called VALL-E, which is focused on creating synthetic voices. Using the system, even a short recording of an original voice is sufficient to create an artificial voice which sounds almost like the original.
“… it maintains tone, timbre, a semblance of accent and even the ‘acoustic environment’, (for instance, a voice compressed into a cell phone call).”
The human ear is not easy to deceive. But with the newest services, we might see a surge in deceiving phone calls or audio recordings, opening a new field of work for dis- and misinformation investigations.
TechCrunch
CONTENT
Don’t ban Chat GPT in schools – teach with it
Chat GPT poses a problem for schools: What if pupils write a prompt, get a decent answer and hand in the result as their work? Would it be cheating? Kevin Roose (@kevinroose), writing for the New York Times, suggest this:
“Instead, I believe schools should thoughtfully embrace ChatGPT as a teaching aid — one that could unlock student creativity, offer personalized tutoring, and better prepare students to work alongside A.I. systems as adults. Here’s why: The first reason not to ban ChatGPT in schools is that to be blunt, it’s not going to work. Sure, a school can block the ChatGPT website on school networks and school-owned devices. But students have phones, laptops and any number of other ways of accessing it outside of class. (Just for kicks, I asked ChatGPT how a student who was intent on using the app might evade a schoolwide ban. It came up with five answers, all totally plausible, including using a VPN to disguise the student’s web traffic.)”
The New York Times ($)
ChatGPT Tutorial and Crash Course
Would you like to learn what ChatGPT is or get some advice on how to use the (currently free) platform? Here is a link to an excellent video to get started.
YouTube Link: ChatGPT Tutorial
How to use AI art and ChatGPT to create an entire website
People are already going further. Here is a quick way to create a complete website using the tool.
YouTube Link: Create a website using ChatGPT
How to use ChatGPT to make YouTube videos
The use cases are almost without limits. This one does not create videos directly but uses ChatGPT to write scripts for videos very quickly, including a demonstration of extending initial answers through additions towards facts, etc. There is some product placement here (for a video maker), but the case is interesting.
YouTube Link: How to make a YouTube video using ChatGPT
BLOCKCHAIN
Gemini vs Genesis: It’s complicated
One legal fight between crypto companies draws a lot of attention right now, specifically as it became more complicated today.
It is the one between Gemini and Genesis.
Summary: The two companies started a project called “Gemini Earn”. Users of Gemini could hold their crypto assets on Genesis and receive interest. Such lending projects worked as long as crypto was on the way up. But since last year, they have come under pressure when the value of crypto holdings fell. In the case of Genesis, the company started blocking any funds withdrawals in November last year. This resulted in angry demands from Gemini to give back the assets.
This week the case became much more complicated: The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged both companies with offering an unregistered financial service. As Genesis is now busing sued along with Gemini, this will block any payback of the crypto assets to the original owners for a long time.
The Block
SHORT LINKS
- Gizmodo found that CNET has been quietly publishing articles based on ChatGPT for months, not indicating that a machine wrote the articles. LINK
- CNET explains why it uses AI writing tools like ChatGPT and promises to mark future articles written by such technologies. LINK
Thank you for reading. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact us via info@trublo.eu.
Photo: Rock’n Roll Monkey on Unsplash
Five Minute Blockchain – No. 43
05.01.2023
Estimated reading time: 4 min 38 secs
Welcome. All the best to you for 2023 from the TruBlo consortium and the funded projects.
TruBlo aims to find new and innovative applications for “trustable content on future blockchains”. Given last year’s turmoil, “future blockchains” (a term we used from the beginning) seems the correct perspective now. There are many aspects that need to be sorted out so that the expectations and hopes towards blockchain technology can help all of us towards the next level of high quality, and now, and now, and information technology.
2023 will be the third and final year of TruBlo. We have concluded the three open calls. Now the goal is to analyse, connect and learn from the experience and findings of our 45 funded projects. Step by step, we will publish results from individual projects and the entire ecosystem of teams and ideas.
What do you expect of 2023 about trustable content and the broader use of blockchain technology? What are the key trends? Will blockchain technology make a jump forward, or will development slow down?
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The administration believes that the digital asset space is unregulated and thinks they can get away with anything. They are eager to plant a flag and send a message.”
– Renato Mariott, a former federal prosecutor for the Department of Justice Securities and Commodities Fraud Unit Renato Mariott, on CoinDesk TV’s “First Mover“
TRUST
The debate over the TikTok ban in the US
There is considerable debate about whether TikTok, the social media app with short videos, should be banned in the US. There are two main reasons: Young users seem to be glued to their smartphones consuming entertaining, never-ending content – this observation leads to concern among parents and officials. Another factor is a deep distrust of whether TikTok, which a Chinese company has developed, uses the platform to collect data about their global, often western, audience. Because US and Chinese relations deteriorated last year, the debate about banning TikTok entirely is simmering.
Currently, Brendan Carr, commissioner for the powerful FCC (Federal Communications Commission) in the US, points to India as an example. TikTok was banned almost two years ago in India, and Carr is quoted saying that India set a “significant precedent”.
A recent step in the US was that TikTok was banned from the smartphones of people working for the House of Representatives. A reason for this step was concern over potential surveillance and data collection.
TechCrunch: “India set a significant precedent by banning TikTok, FCC commissioner says.”
CONTENT
Microsoft plans to use ChatGPT for better answers on Bing, resulting in a challenge to Google
Chat GPT from OpenAI, released by the end of November 2022, has created a lot of excitement regarding the capabilities of artificial intelligence. Have you already tried to let ChatGPT write a text for you? The software, currently free to use, performs various writing tasks based on user prompts, and the results are impressive.
Now ChatGPT will be used as a tool to compete with Google. According to “The Information”, Microsoft plans to release a version of its search engine Bing, which uses ChatGPT to answer user searches. The goal is to have better answers because the user’s intent might be better understood and answered this way.
Microsoft has invested one billion US-Dollars in OpenAI. Another small but interesting fact: Bing might only be the second choice in the search engine market. But it is a serious business. Microsoft generates a yearly revenue of $9 billion US Dollars in advertising. Furthermore, the market share of desktop searches for Bing has risen from around 4% to now almost 9% since 2019.
Reuters: Microsoft aims for AI-powered version of Bing
Background: ZD Net: What is ChatGPT, and why does it matter?
Apple unveils books narrated by artificial voices
The Guardian:
“Apple has quietly launched a catalogue of books narrated by artificial intelligence in a move that may mark the beginning of the end for human narrators. The strategy marks an attempt to upend the lucrative and fast-growing audiobook market – but it also promises to intensify scrutiny over allegations of Apple’s anti-competitive behaviour.”
The Guardian
How generative AI might turn the open web into a Dark Forrest
How do you prove you are a human in a system where robots generate more interactions? Here is a link to a thought-provoking essay discussing the perspective of a future internet turned into a so-called “dark forest”. The “dark forest theory” describes an increasingly life-like but life-less online state. Don’t miss the great graphic that stacks the different layers of the web (open web, “cosy web” with tight spaces, dark web).
Web3 music ecosystem in 2023 – 140 companies and platforms
One big hope for creators is that blockchain technology could enable a direct channel to fans without an intermediary. Right now, this does not seem very realistic. But the technology, in theory, would allow for direct sales of NFTs – be it photos, videos or music.
How does the Web3 music landscape look right now? Click on the link to see a comprehensive overview created by Musciben & published on Twitter.
BLOCKCHAIN
TON Network launches decentralised file-sharing platform
The Telegram Open Network (TON) was started by Telegram in 2019. Now a new offering called TON storage wants to overcome limitations in long-term storage. The core idea of TON storage is to offer financial incentives to node operators.
Quote:
“Anyone can become a node operator on the TON network and receive payments from other users for hosting files — even if operating just one node”.
The Block
Additional links: TON.org
The state of blockchain consortiums in 2022
“Consortia in the blockchain domain comprise enterprises collaborating to expand their work on shared ideas and objectives. Blockchain consortia bring competitors under a common roof to solve shared problems using decentralized network solutions.”
Question: How did these collaborations evolve in the face of recent market troubles?
Blockdata
SHORT LINKS
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