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      White House challenges hackers to break top AI models at DEF CON 31

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 8 May, 2023 - 16:42 · 1 minute

    An AI-generated image of the White House in front of a cybernetic background.

    Enlarge / An AI-generated image of the White House in front of a cybernetic background. (credit: Midjourney)

    On Thursday, the White House announced a surprising collaboration between top AI developers, including OpenAI, Google, Antrhopic, Hugging Face, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Stability AI, to participate in a public evaluation of their generative AI systems at DEF CON 31 , a hacker convention taking place in Las Vegas in August. The event will be hosted by AI Village , a community of AI hackers.

    Since last year, large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have become a popular way to accelerate writing and communications tasks, but officials recognize that they also come with inherent risks. Issues such as confabulations , jailbreaks, and biases pose challenges for security professionals and the public. That's why the White House Office of Science, Technology, and Policy endorses pushing these new generative AI models to their limits.

    "This independent exercise will provide critical information to researchers and the public about the impacts of these models and will enable AI companies and developers to take steps to fix issues found in those models," says a statement from the White House, which says the event aligns with the Biden administration's AI Bill of Rights and the National Institute of Standards and Technology's AI Risk Management Framework .

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      Attempt to “red team” climate research comes to a pathetic and confused end

      John Timmer · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 12 January, 2021 - 20:10 · 1 minute

    A three panel image featuring clouds, power plant exhaust, and ice.

    Enlarge (credit: NASA )

    The reality of climate change has frequently put the Trump administration in an awkward position. Determined to set policies that ignored climate change and staffed by political appointees that refused to accept it, the administration nonetheless found itself responsible for scientists who kept publishing reports filled with awkward facts.

    The administration's response has been erratic. At several points, administration officials considered forming a "red team" of known contrarians to dispute the science, and they even put a prominent climate denialist on the National Security Council . Although these efforts fizzled out for various reasons, that didn't stop the administration for seemingly trying again with the appointment of David Legates , another noted climate contrarian, to NOAA in September. Legates' exact role was unclear, but speculation focused on two possibilities: another attempt at red-teaming the climate, or an attempt to dilute the science of the next National Climate Assessment.

    But any big plans Legates may have had got short-circuited by the results of the election in November, which meant he only had a few months to get anything done. Now, with time running ever shorter, Legates has dumped his handiwork on the public: an attempt to red-team climate science done by a usual-suspects list of climate contrarians. In addition to emphasizing just how feeble the contrarians' case is scientifically, the way the documents were released is at best bewildering and may have actually violated federal law.

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      Expansive White House COVID outbreak sidelines 10% of Secret Service

      Beth Mole · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 13 November, 2020 - 17:23

    A member of the United States Secret Service wearing a face mask stands guard as President Donald J. Trump speaks to supporters from the Blue Room balcony during an event at the White House on Saturday, Oct 10, 2020 in Washington, DC.

    Enlarge / A member of the United States Secret Service wearing a face mask stands guard as President Donald J. Trump speaks to supporters from the Blue Room balcony during an event at the White House on Saturday, Oct 10, 2020 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | The Washington Post )

    The latest coronavirus outbreak at the White House continues to expand and has now sidelined roughly 10 percent of the Secret Service’s core security team, according to a report by the Washington Post .

    More than 130 Secret Service officers who guard the White House and the president are now infected or in quarantine after close contact with infected co-workers. A former senior Secret Service supervisor told the Post that missing over 130 of the agency’s 1,300 officers in the Uniformed Division “does not bode well for White House security.”

    People familiar with the matter have linked the spread of the coronavirus among Secret Service agents in part to the president’s whirlwind travel and crowded campaign rallies in the run-up to the election. The agency is also looking into possible exposures at the White House.

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      Report: White House pressuring CISA to stop debunking election nonsense

      Timothy B. Lee · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 12 November, 2020 - 23:03

    A somewhat irritated-looking man in a suit listens from behind a microphone.

    Enlarge / Christopher Krebs, director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. (credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call )

    As Donald Trump and his allies have touted unproven claims of election fraud over the last week, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and its leader, Chris Krebs, have swatted them down . CISA has set up a "Rumor Control" page that debunks common claims about the election.

    Now Reuters is reporting that the agency has come under pressure from the White House to knock it off:

    White House officials have asked for content to be edited or removed which pushed back against numerous false claims about the election, including that Democrats are behind a mass election fraud scheme. CISA officials have chosen not to delete accurate information.

    Krebs expects the White House to fire him, according to three sources who talked to Reuters.

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      White House informally endorses letting pandemic spread unchecked

      John Timmer · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 14 October, 2020 - 18:46

    Image of the White House.

    Enlarge / Nobody from the White House went on record as supporting herd immunity. (credit: Congressional Budget Offic )

    On Monday, the White House hosted a pandemic-focused call for the press "on background"—intended to provide a window into the administration's thinking, but not to provide quotes that could be attributed to any government official. During the call, the unspecified White House officials touted a document supporting the idea of herd immunity as a plan to control the pandemic, saying it reflected the administration's thinking.

    The document, called the Great Barrington Declaration, was prepared by a libertarian think tank with the assistance of a handful of scientists who have been pushing the idea that COVID-19 isn't much of a threat. And it has attracted enough attention that the World Health Organization decided to address it. The result severely undercut whatever the White House intended to accomplish.

    "Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic," the WHO's Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. "It's scientifically and ethically problematic."

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      Trump likely overstepped authority with TikTok ban, judge rules

      Kate Cox · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 28 September, 2020 - 19:15

    TikTok logo next to inverted US flag.

    Enlarge / TikTok's US fate is up in the air, but at least you can still download and patch it. (credit: SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images )

    President Donald Trump's attempt to ban TikTok from operating inside the United States probably exceeds the authority the president has to do such things, a federal judge has ruled.

    TikTok narrowly avoided being removed from app stores last night when Judge Carl Nichols of the US District Court for DC issued an injunction late yesterday requiring the government to pause on its ban. TikTok got its reprieve, but the terms of the order ( PDF ) were sealed until midday today.

    To meet the standard for an injunction, Nichols explained, TikTok basically needed to prove four things to his satisfaction. The first factor, however, is the most important: TikTok needed to prove its case is "likely to succeed on the merits." In plain English, that means: is it going to win its lawsuit against the administration? And the answer, Nichols determined, is probably yes, because the actions the administration took "likely exceed the lawful bounds" of the law under which those actions were taken.

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      Judge will rule by midnight tonight if TikTok can stay in app stores

      Kate Cox · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Sunday, 27 September, 2020 - 15:46

    Judge will rule by midnight tonight if TikTok can stay in app stores

    Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

    TikTok will be gone from app stores tomorrow morning unless a federal judge acts to block the Trump administration's ban on the app before midnight tonight.

    Judge Carl Nichols of the US District Court for DC said today that he will determine whether to grant or reject TikTok's request for an injunction on the ban before the deadline hits at the stroke of 12.

    In a hearing on Thursday, Nichols gave the administration until Friday afternoon either to delay or defend the ban. The administration chose to file a response defending the ban but did so under seal, so the filings are not available to the public.

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      Judge gives Trump admin. Friday deadline to delay or defend TikTok ban

      Kate Cox · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 24 September, 2020 - 20:19

    A stand of TikTok (Douyin) at The First International Artificial Products Expo Hangzhou on October 18, 2019, in Hangzhou, China.

    Enlarge / A stand of TikTok (Douyin) at The First International Artificial Products Expo Hangzhou on October 18, 2019, in Hangzhou, China. (credit: Long Wei | VCG | Getty Images )

    A federal judge today gave the Trump administration until Friday to either defend its planned ban of short-form-video app TikTok in court or hold off on it, adding one more wrinkle to the seemingly endless on-again, off-again saga.

    If the government doesn't voluntarily postpone the planned TikTok ban by 2:30pm (EDT) on Friday, then it will have to show up for a hearing on Sunday morning, where he will rule on TikTok's request for an injunction on the ban, Judge Carl Nichols of the US District Court for DC said today.

    Nichols said that the ban, if it takes effect, could prevent potentially hundreds of thousands of new users per day from signing up for TikTok. "I don't think [a ban] merely preserves the status quo," he said, according to The Wall Street Journal .

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      Oracle’s TikTok non-acquisition seeks Treasury, White House approval

      Kate Cox · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 15 September, 2020 - 19:03 · 1 minute

    A smartphone against a colorful, out-of-focus background.

    Enlarge / The TikTok logo displayed on a smartphone, with logo of parent company ByteDance in the background. (credit: Sheldon Coope | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images )

    President Donald Trump spent several months pushing to have TikTok banned or sold to a US firm. He seems to have gotten his way, as Oracle confirmed it struck a deal with ByteDance over TikTok. That transaction, however, does not necessarily assuage the White House's stated concerns with the popular video app—and the deal has a long way to go, in a short period of time, before it's done.

    The specific terms of the agreement have still not been made public. The arrangement is not the full sale that Trump was pushing for as recently as last Friday . China's export ban on machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms prevented that kind of direct acquisition.

    Oracle has said very little about the transaction, which first leaked late on Sunday. Monday morning, the company confirmed it submitted a proposal to become ByteDance's "trusted technology provider" to the Treasury Department for review over the weekend of September 12-13. Tuesday morning, it repeated the statement as part of a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

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