How to Spot a Deepfake Video | AllBusiness.com

November 19, 2025 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Videos have always been considered powerful pieces of evidence—“seeing is believing,” as the saying goes. But that old truth is now under attack. In recent years, a new type of video called a deepfake has emerged, which uses artificial intelligence to mimic the appearance and sound of an actual video or audio recording, even when the events depicted never happened. These convincing fakes can show public figures making false statements, place someone’s face into another person’s body, or even replicate a person’s voice to deliver messages they never spoke.

While some deepfakes are created for harmless entertainment, others are far more dangerous. They have been used to spread political lies, manipulate financial markets, and even give fake medical advice that could put people’s lives at risk. For example, AI-generated “doctors” have appeared on TikTok dispensing dangerous health guidance, complete with a fabricated backstory and digitally generated faces.

Responsible AI Implementation Is Possible—Start With This AI Compliance Checklist – AllBusiness.com

February 5, 2025February 4, 2025 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing industries by improving efficiency, reducing costs, and enabling smarter decision-making. However, integrating AI into business operations brings challenges, especially concerning legal and ethical compliance.

Small business owners, in particular, must navigate these complexities to ensure their AI systems align with current laws and uphold public trust. Developing a comprehensive AI compliance checklist is a critical first step toward responsible AI use.

Explore this detailed framework for ensuring responsible AI implementations that adhere to existing legal and ethical standards, including in key areas such as data protection, algorithmic transparency, fairness, and regulatory updates.

AWS brings easy AI app development to companies | Digital Trends

August 15, 2023August 14, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The future of artificial intelligence is quickly being made into an out-of-box experience that companies can customize based on their specific needs. Optimized chat experiences that are functional far beyond question-and-answer and tools to create AI applications without months of coding development could be the next step outside of introducing new plugins and extensions.

More commonplace tools, such as ChatGPT for information and Midjourney for images rely on public data and consistent developer coding to create an end product. Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is committed to making generative AI that is not only more productive and easier to navigate but also data unique and data secure to the companies that deploy its tools.

AWS Launches $100M Generative AI Innovation Center | Small Biz Trends

June 28, 2023June 27, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), the cloud computing subsidiary of Amazon, has announced its significant investment in the development of generative artificial intelligence (AI). With a $100 million commitment, the new AWS Generative AI Innovation Center aims to support customers and partners globally in their quest to harness the potential of generative AI. This move, with its direct engagement approach, could open up fresh opportunities for small business owners to innovate and leverage AI technology.

Generative AI, a type of machine learning (ML) that can create new data instances like images, sound, and text, can prove transformative across industries. The AWS Generative AI Innovation Center seeks to leverage this capability, assisting businesses in envisioning, designing, and launching new generative AI products, services, and processes. This initiative builds on AWS’s longstanding commitment to AI technology development, and its goal to bring this technology to customers and partners worldwide.

The Census Is Broken. Can AI Fix It? | WIRED

April 13, 2022April 12, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

GETTING A CENSUS count wrong can cost communities big. A March 10 report from the US Census Bureau showed an overcount of white and Asian people and an undercount of people who identify as Black, Hispanic or Latino, or multiracial in 2020, a failure that has led to renewed calls to modernize the census.

Progress reaching historically undercounted groups has been slow, and the stakes are high. The once-a-decade endeavor informs the distribution of federal tax dollars and apportions members of the House of Representatives for each state, potentially redrawing the political map. According to emails obtained through a records request, Trump administration officials interfered in the population count to produce outcomes beneficial to Republicans, but problems with the census go back much further.

Artificial Intelligence Confronts a ‘Reproducibility’ Crisis | WIRED

September 16, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A few years ago, Joelle Pineau, a computer science professor at McGill, was helping her students design a new algorithm when they fell into a rut. Her lab studies reinforcement learning, a type of artificial intelligence that’s used, among other things, to help virtual characters (“half cheetah” and “ant” are popular) teach themselves how to move about in virtual worlds. It’s a prerequisite to building autonomous robots and cars. Pineau’s students hoped to improve on another lab’s system. But first they had to rebuild it, and their design, for reasons unknown, was falling short of its promised results. Until, that is, the students tried some “creative manipulations” that didn’t appear in the other lab’s paper.

Instagram is trying to neutralize bullies before they post | Fast Company

July 9, 2019July 8, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Facebook’s Instagram said today it is launching new tools designed to combat bullying on its platform, especially among teens.

One tool, which Instagram has already begun rolling out to users, is focused on would-be bullies. It uses artificial intelligence to notify users when a comment they’ve just composed might be considered offensive. “This intervention gives people a chance to reflect and undo their comment and prevents the recipient from receiving the harmful comment notification,” says Instagram head Adam Mosseri in a blog post Monday. “From early tests of this feature, we have found that it encourages some people to undo their comment and share something less hurtful once they have had a chance to reflect,” he writes.

Is your product’s AI annoying people? | TechCrunch

June 18, 2019June 17, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Artificial intelligence is allowing us all to consider surprising new ways to simplify the lives of our customers. As a product developer, your central focus is always on the customer. But new problems can arise when the specific solution under development helps one customer while alienating others.

We tend to think of AI as an incredible dream assistant to our lives and business operations, when that’s not always the case. Designers of new AI services should consider in what ways and for whom might these services be annoying, burdensome or problematic, and whether it involves the direct customer or others who are intertwined with the customer. When we apply AI services to make tasks easier for our customers that end up making things more difficult for others, that outcome can ultimately cause real harm to our brand perception.

Will Artificial Intelligence Enhance or Hack Humanity? | WIRED

April 29, 2019April 28, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

THIS WEEK, I interviewed Yuval Noah Harari, the author of three best-selling books about the history and future of our species, and Fei-Fei Li, one of the pioneers in the field of artificial intelligence. The event was hosted by the Stanford Center for Ethics and Society, the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and the Stanford Humanities Center. A transcript of the event follows, and a video is posted below.

Bain survey finds HR departments at large companies are embracing AI | Business Insider

October 12, 2018October 11, 2018 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Many corporate human resources departments are such technological backwaters that they still rely on Excel spreadsheets or even paper documents for many of their tasks or services.

But the vast majority of HR departments expect to make a quantum leap in their IT systems in just the next two years, with many of them embracing artificial intelligence to help with their functions, according to a new study from consulting firm Bain.

“HR departments are rapidly adopting new technologies,” Michael Heric, a partner with Bain’s Performance Improvement practice, said in the report.