Thursday, February 26. 2015Researchers produce Global Risks report, AI and other technologies included in itVia betanews -----
Let's face it, we're always at risk, and I speak for human kind, not just the personal risks we take each time we leave our homes. Some of these potential terrors are unavoidable -- we can't control the asteroid we find hurtling towards us or the next super volcano that may erupt as the Siberian Traps once did. Some risks however, are well within our control, yet we continue down paths that are both exciting and potentially dangerous. In his book Demon Haunted World, the great astronomer, teacher and TV personality Carl Sagan wrote "Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves". Now researchers have published a list of the risks we face and several of them are self-created. Perhaps the most prominent is artificial intelligence, or AI as it generally referred to. The technology has been fairly prominent in the news recently as both Elon Musk and Bill Gates have warned of its dangers. Musk went as far as to invest in some of the companies so that he could keep an eye on things. The new report states "extreme intelligences could not easily be controlled (either by the groups creating them, or by some international regulatory regime), and would probably act to boost their own intelligence and acquire maximal resources for almost all initial AI motivations". Stephen Hawking, perhaps the world's most famous scientist, told the BBC "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race". That's three obviously intelligent men telling us it's a bad idea, but of course that will not deter those who wish to develop it and if it is controlled correctly then it may not be the huge danger we worry about. What else is on the list of doom and gloom? Several more man-made problems, including nuclear war, global system collapse, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology. There is also the usual array of asteroids, super volcanoes and global pandemics. For good measure, the scientists even added in bad global governance. If you would like to read the report for yourself it can be found at the Global Challenges Foundation website. It may keep you awake at night -- even better than a good horror movie could. Tuesday, February 24. 2015If software looks like a brain and acts like a brain—will we treat it like one?Via ars technica ----- Long the domain of science fiction, researchers are now working to create software that perfectly models human and animal brains. With an approach known as whole brain emulation (WBE), the idea is that if we can perfectly copy the functional structure of the brain, we will create software perfectly analogous to one. The upshot here is simple yet mind-boggling. Scientists hope to create software that could theoretically experience everything we experience: emotion, addiction, ambition, consciousness, and suffering. “Right now in computer science, we make computer simulations of neural networks to figure out how the brain works," Anders Sandberg, a computational neuroscientist and research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, told Ars. "It seems possible that in a few decades we will take entire brains, scan them, turn them into computer code, and make simulations of everything going on in our brain.” Everything. Of course, a perfect copy does not necessarily mean equivalent. Software is so… different. It's a tool that performs because we tell it to perform. It's difficult to imagine that we could imbue it with those same abilities that we believe make us human. To imagine our computers loving, hungering, and suffering probably feels a bit ridiculous. And some scientists would agree. But there are others—scientists, futurists, the director of engineering at Google—who are working very seriously to make this happen. For now, let’s set aside all the questions of if or when. Pretend that our understanding of the brain has expanded so much and our technology has become so great that this is our new reality: we, humans, have created conscious software. The question then becomes how to deal with it. And while success in this endeavor of fantasy turning fact is by no means guaranteed, there has been quite a bit of debate among those who think about these things whether WBEs will mean immortality for humans or the end of us. There is far less discussion about how, exactly, we should react to this kind of artificial intelligence should it appear. Will we show a WBE human kindness or human cruelty—and does that even matter? The ethics of pulling the plug on an AIIn a recent article in the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, Sandberg dives into some of the ethical questions that would (or at least should) arise from successful whole brain emulation. The focus of his paper, he explained, is “What are we allowed to do to these simulated brains?” If we create a WBE that perfectly models a brain, can it suffer? Should we care? Again, discounting if and when, it's likely that an early successful software brain will mirror an animal’s. Animal brains are simply much smaller, less complex, and more available. So would a computer program that perfectly models an animal receive the same consideration an actual animal would? In practice, this might not be an issue. If a software animal brain emulates a worm or insect, for instance, there will be little worry about the software’s legal and moral status. After all, even the strictest laboratory standards today place few restrictions on what researchers do with invertebrates. When wrapping our minds around the ethics of how to treat an AI, the real question is what happens when we program a mammal? “If you imagine that I am in a lab, I reach into a cage and pinch the tail of a little lab rat, the rat is going to squeal, it is going to run off in pain, and it’s not going to be a very happy rat. And actually, the regulations for animal research take a very stern view of that kind of behavior," Sandberg says. "Then what if I go into the computer lab, put on virtual reality gloves, and reach into my simulated cage where I have a little rat simulation and pinch its tail? Is this as bad as doing this to a real rat?” As Sandberg alluded to, there are ethical codes for the treatment of mammals, and animals are protected by laws designed to reduce suffering. Would digital lab animals be protected under the same rules? Well, according to Sandberg, one of the purposes of developing this software is to avoid the many ethical problems with using carbon-based animals. To get at these issues, Sandberg’s article takes the reader on a tour of how philosophers define animal morality and our relationships with animals as sentient beings. These are not easy ideas to summarize. “Philosophers have been bickering about these issues for decades," Sandberg says. "I think they will continue to bicker until we upload a philosopher into a computer and ask him how he feels.” While many people might choose to respond, “Oh, it's just software,” this seems much too simplistic for Sandberg. “We have no experience with not being flesh and blood, so the fact that we have no experience of software suffering, that might just be that we haven’t had a chance to experience it. Maybe there is something like suffering, or something even worse than suffering software could experience,” he says. Ultimately, Sandberg argues that it's better to be safe than sorry. He concludes a cautious approach would be best, that WBEs "should be treated as the corresponding animal system absent countervailing evidence.” When asked what this evidence would look like—that is, software designed to model an animal brain without the consciousness of one—he considered that, too. “A simple case would be when the internal electrical activity did not look like what happens in the real animal. That would suggest the simulation is not close at all. If there is the counterpart of an epileptic seizure, then we might also conclude there is likely no consciousness, but now we are getting closer to something that might be worrisome,” he says. So the evidence that the software animal’s brain is not conscious looks…exactly like evidence that a biological animal’s brain is not conscious. Virtual painDespite his pleas for caution, Sandberg doesn’t advocate eliminating emulation experimentation entirely. He thinks that if we stop and think about it, compassion for digital test animals could arise relatively easy. After all, if we know enough to create a digital brain capable of suffering, we should know enough to bypass its pain centers. “It might be possible to run virtual painkillers which are way better than real painkillers," he says. "You literally leave out the signals that would correspond to pain. And while I’m not worried about any simulation right now… in a few years I think that is going to change.” This, of course, assumes that animals' only source of suffering is pain. In that regard, to worry whether a software animal may suffer in the future probably seems pointless when we accept so much suffering in biological animals today. If you find a rat in your house, you are free to dispose of it how you see fit. We kill animals for food and fashion. Why worry about a software rat? One answer—beyond basic compassion—is that we'll need the practice. If we can successfully emulate the brains of other mammals, then emulating a human is inevitable. And the ethics of hosting human-like consciousness becomes much more complicated. Beyond pain and suffering, Sandberg considers a long list of possible ethical issues in this scenario: a blindingly monotonous environment, damaged or disabled emulations, perpetual hibernation, the tricky subject of copies, communications between beings who think at vastly different speeds (software brains could easily run a million times faster than ours), privacy, and matters of self-ownership and intellectual property. All of these may be sticky issues, Sandberg predicts, but if we can resolve them, human brain emulations could achieve some remarkable feats. They are ideally suited for extreme tasks like space exploration, where we could potentially beam them through the cosmos. And if it came down to it, the digital versions of ourselves might be the only survivors in a biological die-off.
Monday, February 23. 2015Android to Become 'Workhorse' of CybercrimeVia EE Times ----- PARIS — As of the end of 2014, 16 million mobile devices worldwide have been infected by malicious software, estimated Alcatel-Lucent’s security arm, Motive Security Labs, in its latest security report released Thursday (Feb. 12). Such malware is used by “cybercriminals for corporate and personal espionage, information theft, denial of service attacks on business and governments and banking and advertising scams,” the report warned. Some of the key facts revealed in the report -- released two weeks in advance of the Mobile World Congress 2015 -- could dampen the mobile industry’s renewed enthusiasm for mobile payment systems such as Google Wallet and Apple Pay. At risk is also the matter of privacy. How safe is your mobile device? Consumers have gotten used to trusting their smartphones, expecting their devices to know them well enough to accommodate their habits and preferences. So the last thing consumers expect them to do is to channel spyware into their lives, letting others monitor calls and track web browsing. Cyber attacks Declaring that 2014 “will be remembered as the year of cyber-attacks,” Kevin McNamee, director, Alcatel-Lucent Motive Security Labs, noted in his latest blog other cases of hackers stealing millions of credit and debit card account numbers at retail points of sale. They include the security breach at Target in 2013 and similar breaches repeated in 2014 at Staples, Home Depot Sally Beauty Supply, Neiman Marcus, United Parcel Service, Michaels Stores and Albertsons, as well as the food chains Dairy Queen and P. F. Chang. “But the combined number of these attacks pales in comparison to the malware attacks on mobile and residential devices,” McNamee insists. In his blog, he wrote, “Stealing personal information and data minutes from individual device users doesn’t tend to make the news, but it’s happening with increased frequency. And the consequences of losing one’s financial information, privacy, and personal identity to cyber criminals are no less important when it’s you.” 'Workhorse of cybercrime' According to the report, in the mobile networks, “Android devices have now caught up to Windows laptops as the primary workhorse of cybercrime.” The infection rates between Android and Windows devices now split 50/50 in 2014, said the report. This may be hardly a surprise to those familiar with Android security. There are three issues. First, the volume of Android devices shipped in 2014 is so huge that it makes a juicy target for cyber criminals. Second, Android is based on an open platform. Third, Android allows users to download apps from third-party stores where apps are not consistently verified and controlled. In contrast, the report said that less than 1% of infections come from iPhone and Blackberry smartphones. The report, however, quickly added that this data doesn’t prove that iPhones are immune to malware. The Motive Security Labs report cited findings by Palo Alto Networks in early November. The Networks discussed the discovery of WireLurker vulnerability that allows an infected Mac OS-X computer to install applications on any iPhone that connects to it via a USB connection. User permission is not required and the iPhone need not be jail-broken. News stories reported the source of the infected Mac OS-X apps as an app store in China that apparently affected some 350,000 users through apps disguised as popular games. These infected the Mac computer, which in turn infected the iPhone. Once infected, the iPhone contacted a remote C&C server. According to the Motive Security Labs report, a couple of weeks later, FireEye revealed Masque Attack vulnerability, which allows third-party apps to be replaced with a malicious app that can access all the data of the original app. In a demo, FireEye replaced the Gmail app on an iPhone, allowing the attacker complete access to the victim’s email and text messages. Spyware on the rise Impact on mobile payment The rise of mobile malware threats isn’t unexpected. But as Google Wallet, Apple Pay and others rush to bring us mobile payment systems, security has to be a top focus. And malware concerns become even more acute in the workplace where more than 90% of workers admit to using their personal smartphones for work purposes. Fixed broadband networks Why is this all happening? Noting that a recent Motive Security Labs survey found that 65 percent of subscribers expect their service provider to protect both their mobile and home devices, the report seems to suggest that the onus is on operators. “They are expected to take a proactive approach to this problem by providing services that alert subscribers to malware on their devices along with self-help instructions for removing it,” said Patrick Tan, General Manager of Network Intelligence at Alcatel-Lucent, in a statement. Due to the large market share it holds within communication networks, Alcatel-Lucent says that it’s in a unique position to measure the impact of mobile and home device traffic moving over those networks to identify malicious and cyber-security threats. Motive Security Labs is an analytics arm of Motive Customer Experience Management. According to Alcatel-Lucent, Motive Security Labs (formerly Kindsight Security Labs), processes more than 120,000 new malware samples per day and maintains a library of 30 million active samples. In the following pages, we will share the hilights of data collected by Motive Security Labs.
Mobile infection rate since December 2012
Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Security Labs found 0.68% of mobile devices are infected with malware. Using the ITU’s figure of 2.3 billion mobile broadband subscriptions, Motive Security Labs estimated that 16 million mobile devices had some sort of malware infection in December 2014. The report called this global estimate “likely to be on the conservative side.” Motive Security Labs’ sensors do not have complete coverage in areas such as China and Russia, where mobile infection rates are known to be higher. Mobile malware samples since June 2012
Motive Security Labs used the increase in the number of samples in its malware database to show Android malware growth. The chart above shows numbers since June 2012. The number of samples grew by 161% in 2014. In addition to the increase in raw numbers, the sophistication of Android malware also got better, according to Motive Security Labs. Researchers in 2014 started to see malware applications that had originally been developed for the Windows/PC platform migrate to the mobile space, bringing with them more sophisticated command and control and rootkit technologies. Infected device types in 2013 and 2014
The chart shows the breakdown of infected device types that have been observed in 2013 and 2014. Shown in red is Android and shown in blue is Windows. While the involvement of such a high proportion of Windows/PC devices may be a surprise to some, these Windows/PCs are connected to the mobile network via dongles and mobile Wi-Fi devices or simply tethered through smartphones. They’re responsible for about 50% of the malware infections observed. The report said, “This is because these devices are still the favorite of hardcore professional cybercriminals who have a huge investment in the Windows malware ecosystem. As the mobile network becomes the access network of choice for many Windows PCs, the malware moves with them.” Android phones and tablets are responsible for about 50% of the malware infections observed. Currently most mobile malware is distributed as “Trojanized” apps. Android offers the easiest target for this because of its open app environment, noted the report.
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