Category: regulation
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State of the (AI) “art”
My experience with so-called “artificial intelligence” (AI) goes back to the late 1980s and my research into the application of neural networks in music. This included the design of a system able to learn a musical style and then generate a live accompaniment in the same style—all of which led to my 1996 MPhil thesis,…
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UK to crack down on financial scams
The UK government has announced a ban on all cold calls selling financial products: … last summer, 41 million people were targeted by suspicious calls and texts, according to media regulator Ofcom. UK to ban all cold calls selling financial products. BBC News, 3 May 2023. 41m people targeted in just one summer? Ouch. And…
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The week in review
Highlights of a few random articles that caught my eye this week … Apple and ID As expected, Apple’s letting users store their driving licences and state IDs in Apple Wallet. It’s a significant improvement over current paper and plastic documents, providing users with more choice and control over what information they release. For example,…
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Social media, free speech and abuse
Social media is back in the news for all the usual negative reasons: hateful, racist, sexist, fraudulent and otherwise abusive users. None of which is surprising or new. For well over a decade, ideas about how best to tackle online abuse have been repeatedly explored, and then generally left to rot on the shelf. As…
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Community networks: Reloaded
Amazon is in the news, yet again (when isn’t it?). This time it’s for ‘Amazon Sidewalk‘: it aims to connect together every Echo speaker and Ring security camera in the US into a shared wireless network. I first saw these plans for Sidewalk mentioned in The Register last year. It’s now receiving more widespread media…
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Maggots, rats and a fork in the road
So what’s it going to be then, hey? Will the outcome of the Brexit negotiations see the UK forced to adhere to the EU’s “level playing field” rules, or free to set its own standards? The mood music is ominous, hinting that the UK could adopt lower standards in some Mad Max “race to the…
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The elusive pursuit of outsourced digital identity
Remember when UK banks were innovative, leading the world and always at the top of the polls for brilliant customer service? No, me neither. Actually, that’s not entirely fair. There have been brief flashes of innovation. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the UK government hoped that banks would become trusted providers of digital…
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Digital government and asymmetric justice
Governments are acquiring and sharing more of our data on the basis that it will improve efficiency, personalise services, and reduce fraud, error and debt. Data acquired for one purpose is often used for another, whether the citizen agreed for this to happen or not – perhaps most notoriously our health records or children’s data.…
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Too little, too late?
More fines for the tech monopolies? Meh, the usual displacement activity—let’s also use technology to help tame the tech giants There’s increasing talk of fining or even breaking up the big global technology companies because of anti-trust concerns. If you’re experiencing a sense of déjà vu, you’re not alone. It’s become a familiar pattern: Amazon,…
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Better than reality? Synthetic environments for real world people
Can policymakers learn from games? I think so – or, to be more formal, they can certainly learn from synthetic environments. Programmes like Sim City seem more grounded in the real world at times than actual urban and rural decision-making. At least in Sim City you can’t build new housing without investing first in other necessary infrastructure…
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What future for biometrics? (And our DNA)?
The Personal Genome Project (PGP) raises some interesting issues that could impact our thinking around other identity issues – including the ongoing debate in the UK about identity cards, the role of biometrics and so on. I’ve been wondering for some time how biometrics – which, like our DNA, are not exactly a secret (we leak them…
new tech observations from the UK (ntouk) 