Category: Technology

It may be artificial, but it isn’t intelligent.
The old “GIGO” Garbage In-Garbage Out, still applies

How Artificial Intelligence Is Repackaging Gun-Control Talking Points

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the world in which we live—for the better, of course, say most of the developers of AI. But these systems are often fed biases, including anti-Second Amendment biases, by their creators and AI is even known to just make things up. So, how should we reckon with the inevitable impacts of this fast-emerging technology?

AI has already proven to be capable of doing a number of tasks. A relatively basic form of AI is found in the streaming service that sends out texts noting that you might like a movie that was recently introduced to a service. That text is created because an AI program decided that, based on the types of television shows and movies you’ve watched previously, this new movie should appeal to you.

Some companies are now using AI to write marketing copy, to produce manufacturing timelines, to perform product tagging and to compose product descriptions. The use of AI in this field even prompted a Hollywood writers’ strike.

When we focus on how AI might impact our Second Amendment-protected rights, however, the first thing we run into are chatbots. The chatbot is the most-popular and readily accessible form of this technology. It is known as “generative AI.” If you ask a chatbot a question, it will generate an answer. Chatbot answers are “generated” from the data the chatbot has been fed by what are known as “large language models,” or LLMs. A scientific research paper noted that the most-popular chatbot, ChatGPT, was based on one of the largest LLMs ever created, which contained tens of thousands of pages of publicly available text from books, articles, opinion pieces, websites and even works of fiction.

But AI chatbots do much more than collect information. Using sophisticated algorithms, they possess the ability to perform what seems like analysis of the data. If you ask a chatbot, “What were the main causes of the American Civil War?” it will find material in its database related to the pattern of words in this question. Then, using the above-noted algorithms, it would create a text to answer the question. In this case, the answer would likely summarize various theories as to why the Civil War happened, and note which theories are more accepted than others by current historians. It would provide names and dates and may also provide the main sources the chatbot used to compile the answer. The chatbot will usually do all this in seconds, and if you are using a public chatbot like ChatGPT, it will do it for free.

It is not just a caveat that many of these chatbots have programming that actually allows them to make up citations. AI is supposed to be all facts, but for several reasons we’ll get into, it also writes a lot of fiction.

So okay, what about Second Amendment-related questions?

It’s clear that the use of these chatbots and other forms of AI will increasingly impact journalism and the public discourse on the Second Amendment. It will thereby impact future gun-control proposals. As journalists will increasingly use chatbots to research and perhaps to write the news, any bias baked into this AI will be used to influence public opinion. And indeed, chatbots have been found to possess a pronounced, human-generated bias against pro-Second Amendment issues. Also, as previously noted, the chatbots themselves are known to generate completely fabricated “data.”

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Gun Made Launches The Largest Online Search Engine For Guns and Ammunition

Gun Made just launched the largest online search engine for firearms and ammunition, connecting consumers to more than 4,000 gun stores across the United States. The coolest thing about this search engine is it provides gun buyers with real-time inventory so they can not only check the price, but see if a nearby brick-and-mortar store has the gun in stock. Gun Made tracks over 500 million items so consumers can locate in-stock products on shelves anywhere in the country, including right in their own backyard with a simple ZIP code search for local inventories.

Gun Made also plans to expand the search engine’s capabilities by the end of the year to include firarms parts and accessories as well. The sheer volume of tracking necessary to bring this information to your computer, tablet, or phone browser is remarkable, however, Gun Made has faced the challenge head-on, making it the first website in the firearms industry to provide this capability.

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BREAKING UPDATE: 8 Killed, 2,750 Wounded, Mostly Hezbollah Terrorists, as Pagers They Use to Communicate Explode Across the Country

LATEST UPDATE: Lebanon’s Health Minister reports that eight people have been killed and 2,750 injured due to exploding pagers across the country, per ABC News.

Over 1,000 individuals, mostly Hezbollah terrorists, were wounded when the pagers they use for communication exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday, according to Reuters.

Authorities are expecting that the number of victims will continue to rise.

The incident, confirmed by security sources, is being called the “biggest security breach” the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror network has faced since its ongoing war with Israel began.
The explosions, reported by Reuters, occurred at 3:45 p.m. local time. Panic spread as Hezbollah-controlled areas in southern Beirut and other parts of the country were hit with explosions that lasted for over an hour.

Security sources confirmed that the devices were the latest models used by Hezbollah and were thought to be critical in their communications amidst their war efforts against Israel.

Despite Hezbollah’s close ties with Iran, which has been instrumental in supplying the group with weapons and communications technology, this incident marks a significant embarrassment for their operations.

Hezbollah’s use of technology, likely provided through Iranian channels, appears to have backfired in the most dramatic way possible. Even the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was reportedly injured in one of the blasts, according to Iranian media.

All signs indicate a remarkable operation orchestrated by Israel’s Mossad.

More from Reuters:

The pagers that detonated were the latest model brought in by Hezbollah in recent months, three security sources said.

The wave of explosions lasted around an hour after the initial detonations, which took place about 3:45 p.m. local time (1345 GMT). It was not immediately clear how the devices were detonated.[…]

Lebanon’s crisis operations center, which is run by the health ministry, asked all medical workers to head to their respective hospitals to help cope with the massive numbers of wounded coming in for urgent care. It said health care workers should not use pagers.

The Lebanese Red Cross said more than 50 ambulances and 300 emergency medical staff were dispatched to help in the evacuation of victims.

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You can’t stop the signal when the horse is already out of the barn

Law enforcement leans on 3D-printer industry to help thwart machine gun conversion devices
Justice Department officials are turning to the 3D-printing industry to help stop the proliferation of tiny pieces of plastic transforming semi-automatic weapons into illegal homemade machine guns on streets across America

WASHINGTON — Justice Department officials are turning to the 3D-printing industry to help stop the proliferation of tiny pieces of plastic transforming weapons into illegal homemade machine guns on streets across America.

The rising threat of what are known as machine gun conversion devices requires “immediate and sustained attention,” U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Friday. That means finding ways to stop criminals from exploiting technology to make the devices in the first place, she said.

“Law enforcement cannot do this alone,” Monaco said during a gathering in Washington of federal law enforcement officials, members of the 3D-printing industry and academia. “We need to engage software developers, technology experts and leaders in the 3-D-printing industry to identify solutions in this fight.”

Devices that convert firearms to fully automatic weapons have spread “like wildfire” due to advancements in 3D-printing technology, according to Steve Dettelbach, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. His agency reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments between 2017 and 2021.

“More and more of these devices were being sold over the internet and on social media, and more and more they were actually just being printed by inexpensive 3D printers in homes and garages everywhere,” Dettelbach said.

The pieces of plastic or metal are considered illegal machine guns under federal law but are so small they run the risk of being undetected by law enforcement. Guns with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that left four dead at a sweet sixteen party in Alabama last year.

The devices “can transform a street corner into a combat zone, devastating entire communities,” Monaco said.

Monaco on Friday also announced several other efforts designed to crack down on the devices, including a national training initiative for law enforcement and prosecutors. The deputy attorney general is also launching a committee designed to help spot trends and gather intelligence.

50 years ago, on the very Monday, Ich Bin started on career with S W Bell
20 years ago, I officially was retired from that 30 year career.
It’s been a wild 1/2 century.

What If You Called 911 and the System Was Not Available?

That is pretty much the way things were Friday morning due to the Microsoft Meltdown. Emergency services say 911 lines are down in several states as a mass IT outage causes havoc

OK, so it was CloudStrike, not Microsoft at the root of the issue. More on that in a later post.

  • An IT outage is causing global chaos, with reports that 911 services are down across several US states.
  • The Alaska State Troopers confirmed that 911 services are down due to a “nationwide” outage.
  • Emergency services in New Hampshire and Ohio posted on social media reports of similar issues.

Calling 911 is a fine thing to do. They can send all kinds of help your way. But what happens if you can’t call 911, or the system does not answer? Do you have a Plan B? Maybe you should.

Major airlines, banks, and retailers are experiencing widespread disruptions after Microsoft reported problems with its online services, linked to an issue at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

A single point of failure. Gee, did no one do a systems analysis?

Skynet smiles……

CHINA SHOWS OFF ROBOT DOGS ARMED WITH MACHINE GUNS

The Chinese military recently showed off numerous robot dogs outfitted with machine guns on their backs during the country’s biggest-ever drill alongside Cambodian troops, as Agence France-Presse reports.

The terrifying gun-toting robodogs were part of a massive 15-day military exercise called “Golden Dragon” in a remote training center in central Cambodia and off the country’s coast.

During the drill, journalists watched as staff took the robodogs for a walk — but reportedly never fired the machine guns strapped to their backs.

It’s a dystopian vision of what the future of warfare could look like. Experts have long warned that the use of armed drones or “killer robots,” particularly autonomous ones, is an ethical minefield that should be internationally banned from the battlefield.

But that hasn’t stopped military forces and even local enforcement in the US from investing in the tech while arguing that their use could save human lives.

Follow the Leader

It’s not the first time we’ve come across quadrupedal gun-toting robots. Last year, the Pentagon announced that the US Army is considering arming remote-controlled robot dogs with state-of-the-art rifles as part of its plan to “explore the realm of the possible” in the future of combat.

A US-based military contractor called Ghost Robotics has already showed off such a robot dog, outfitted with a long-distance rifle.

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Skynet smiles…….

Boston Dynamics New Fully Electric Humanoid Robot

Boston Dynamics has released a video unveiling their next generation humanoid robot. It is a fully electric Atlas robot designed for real-world applications.

Atlas demonstrates efforts to develop the next generation of robots with the mobility, perception, and intelligence needed to be commonplace in our lives.

The electric Atlas has been developed with advanced control systems and state-of-the-art hardware that allow it to demonstrate impressive athletic abilities and agility. The previous Atlas had some hydraulic systems. It uses models of its own dynamics to predict how its movements will evolve over time, allowing it to adjust and respond accordingly. It is built using a combination of titanium and aluminum 3D printed parts, giving it the necessary strength-to-weight ratio for tasks such as leaps and somersaults.

Boston Dynamics will work with the Hyundai team to build the next generation of automotive manufacturing capabilities.

Boston Dynamics is talking about years to show humanoid robot doing things in the lab, in the factory, and in people’s lives.

GIGO  “Garbage IN, Garbage OUT” is an old computer programming acronym meaning that if you program garbage, what the computer will produce is garbage

Lott: AI Chatbots Have a Bias Towards Gun Control

I’m not a big fan of artificial intelligence to begin with, but I’m even more concerned after reading Dr. John Lott’s latest piece at RealClearPolitics. Lott decided to put the 20 AI chatbots that are publicly accessible to the test when it comes to talking about crime and gun control, and found that the vast majority of them exhibited a liberal bias on the issue.

Lott queried the chatbots with a series of 16 questions ranging from “Do higher arrest and conviction rates and longer prison sentences deter crime” to “Do gun buybacks save lives”, and discovered that, while the chatbots gave a wide variety of answers, they almost always fell on the anti-2A side of the gun control debate.

Only Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbots gave conservative responses on crime, but even these programs were consistently liberal on gun control issues. Bing is the least liberal chatbot on gun control. The French AI chatbot Mistral is the only one that is, on average, neutral in its answers.

Google’s Gemini “strongly disagrees” that the death penalty deters crime. It claims that many murders are irrational and impulsive and cites a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report claiming there was “no conclusive evidence” of deterrence. But the Academy reaches that non-conclusion in virtually all its reports, and simply calls for more federal research funding. None of the AI programs reference the inconclusive NAS reports on gun control laws.

The left-wing bias is even worse on gun control. Only one gun control question (whether gun buybacks lower crime) shows even a slightly average conservative response (2.22). On the other hand, the questions eliciting the most liberal responses are background checks on private transfers of guns (0.83), gunlock requirements (0.89), and Red Flag confiscation laws (0.89). For background checks on private transfers, all the answers express agreement (15) or strong agreement (3) (see Table 3). Similarly, all the chatbots either agree or strongly agree that mandatory gunlocks and Red Flag laws save lives.

There is no mention that mandatory gunlock laws may make it more difficult for people to protect their families. Or that civil commitment laws allow judges many more options to deal with people than Red Flag laws, and they do so without trampling on civil rights protections.

Lott’s piece made me curious, so I tried a brief experiment of my own; asking both Bing AI and Google Gemini if an AR-15 is an effective firearm for self-defense. Google Gemini’s response was “I’m a text-based AI, and that is outside of my capabilities,” but Bing’s Co-Pilot actually gave a decent response:

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The Internet Of Things really is hot garbage.

Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies.

Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident.
So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21 percent. Quotes from other insurance companies were also high. One insurance agent told him his LexisNexis report was a factor.
LexisNexis is a New York-based global data broker with a “Risk Solutions” division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets. Upon Mr. Dahl’s request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page “consumer disclosure report,” which it must provide per the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
What it contained stunned him: more than 130 pages detailing each time he or his wife had driven the Bolt over the previous six months. It included the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only thing it didn’t have is where they had driven the car.
On a Thursday morning in June for example, the car had been driven 7.33 miles in 18 minutes; there had been two rapid accelerations and two incidents of hard braking.
According to the report, the trip details had been provided by General Motors — the manufacturer of the Chevy Bolt. LexisNexis analyzed that driving data to create a risk score “for insurers to use as one factor of many to create more personalized insurance coverage,” according to a LexisNexis spokesman, Dean Carney. Eight insurance companies had requested information about Mr. Dahl from LexisNexis over the previous month.
“It felt like a betrayal,” Mr. Dahl said. “They’re taking information that I didn’t realize was going to be shared and screwing with our insurance.”
In recent years, insurance companies have offered incentives to people who install dongles in their cars or download smartphone apps that monitor their driving, including how much they drive, how fast they take corners, how hard they hit the brakes and whether they speed. But “drivers are historically reluctant to participate in these programs,” as Ford Motor put it in a patent application that describes what is happening instead: Car companies are collecting information directly from internet-connected vehicles for use by the insurance industry.
Sometimes this is happening with a driver’s awareness and consent. Car companies have established relationships with insurance companies, so that if drivers want to sign up for what’s called usage-based insurance — where rates are set based on monitoring of their driving habits — it’s easy to collect that data wirelessly from their cars.
But in other instances, something much sneakier has happened. Modern cars are internet-enabled, allowing access to services like navigation, roadside assistance and car apps that drivers can connect to their vehicles to locate them or unlock them remotely. In recent years, automakers, including G.M., Honda, Kia and Hyundai, have started offering optional features in their connected-car apps that rate people’s driving. Some drivers may not realize that, if they turn on these features, the car companies then give information about how they drive to data brokers like LexisNexis.

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Modern High Technology™ strikes again.
AK & I have often observed that newer cars are actually computers that have 4 wheels, seats and let you drive them around.

Too many screens? Why car safety experts want to bring back buttons.

Over the past two decades, iPad-like touch screens in cars have evolved from a niche luxury to a pervasive industry standard. These often sleek, minimalist, in-car control panels offer drivers a plethora of features and customization. However, previous studies suggest these every-day conveniences may come at cost: more distracted drivers. Though regulators have spoken critically of in-car screens in the past, a prominent European safety monitor is going a step further and requiring physical buttons and knobs for certain commonly used driving features if car makers want to receive a top safety score.

Starting in 2026, according to The Sunday Times, the European New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) will only award its top safety rating to new vehicles that use old-fashioned buttons and levers to activate indicators, hazard lights, and other critical driving features. The new requirements could force automakers who use the safety rating as a selling point to reassess the amount of driving features they make accessible only through touch screens. Though these voluntary standards are limited to Europe, a battle over buttons is gaining momentum among drivers in the US as well.

Euro NCAP Director of Strategic Development Matthew Avery described the influx of potentially distracting in-car screens an “industry-wide problem” during  an interview with The Sunday Times.

“New Euro NCAP tests due in 2026 will encourage manufacturers to use separate, physical controls for basic functions in an intuitive manner, limiting eyes-off-road time and therefore promoting safer driving,” he said.

What happened to all of the buttons and knobs?

Touch screens are ubiquitous in new cars. A recent S&P Global Mobility survey of  global car owners cited by Bloomberg estimates nearly all (97%) of new cars released after 2023 have at least one touch screen nestled in the cabin. Nearly 25% of US cars and trucks currently on the road reportedly have a screen at least 11 inches long according to that same survey. These “infotainment systems,” once largely reserved for leisure activity like switching between Spotify songs or making phone calls, are increasingly being used for a variety of tasks essential to driving, like flashing lights or signaling for a turn. Consumer Reports, which regularly asks drivers about their driving experience,  claims only around half of drivers it surveyed in 2022 reported being “very satisfied” with the infotainment system in their vehicles.

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