AI Hilarity

Midwest Chick (you do read her every day, don't you?  Thought so.) posts about how a Professor was smarter than most of his students, catching most of them using AI to cheat on an assignment:

A very clever professor in Mississippi decided to test and see if his students were cheating using AI. So he put some code in his exam instructions using white font that couldn’t be seen by the students, but could be seen by an AI if a copy/paste was used. 

Click through for the details (which are hilarious) but even more so for the comments her readers left.  My favorite was one from Carl Bussjaeger:

Oh, yes. I should probably mention DuckDuckGo’s AI. When called out on all of its hallucinations, it informed that if I don’t want it to make s–t up when asking strictly factual questions, I have to specifically TELL it not to make s–t up. 

 Sure you can trust AI.  Just tell it not to make s**t up ...

AI failures in healthcare

Oh my word:

On Saturday, an Associated Press investigation revealed that OpenAI's Whisper transcription tool creates fabricated text in medical and business settings despite warnings against such use. The AP interviewed more than 12 software engineers, developers, and researchers who found the model regularly invents text that speakers never said, a phenomenon often called a "confabulation" or "hallucination" in the AI field.

Upon its release in 2022, OpenAI claimed that Whisper approached "human level robustness" in audio transcription accuracy. However, a University of Michigan researcher told the AP that Whisper created false text in 80 percent of public meeting transcripts examined. Another developer, unnamed in the AP report, claimed to have found invented content in almost all of his 26,000 test transcriptions.

Of course, they use it because it's cheaper than paying a human transcriber.  So riddle me this, Healthcare Administrator: what do you call yet another AI that lies all the time?  A day that ends in "-day".

And people have started noticing:

While the vast majority of people over 50 look for health information on the internet, a new poll shows 74% would have very little or no trust in such information if it were generated by artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, 20% of older adults have little or no confidence that they could spot misinformation about a health topic if they came across it.

That percentage was even higher among older adults who say their mental health, physical health or memory is fair or poor, and among those who report having a disability that limits their activities. In other words, those who might need trustworthy health information the most were more likely to say they had little or no confidence they could spot false information.

People are smart enough to catch a whiff of marketing Bravo Sierra.

From now on I will start asking all of my healthcare providers if they do transcription, and if so whether they use AI for the transcription.  If they do I will demand to review the transcript.  If they won't, I'll get a different provider.

What is this, 1990?

SolarWinds issues security patch to eliminate hard coded password:

SolarWinds left hardcoded credentials in its Web Help Desk product that can be used by remote, unauthenticated attackers to log into vulnerable instances, access internal functionality, and modify sensitive data

The software maker has now issued an update to address that critical oversight; its users are encouraged to install the fix, which presumably removes the baked-in creds.

[blink] [blink]

What makes this even more double-plus ungood is that SolarWinds is a security company.  They know that hard coded passwords are not just A Very Bad Thing Indeed, but considered harmful*.

I guess the only other possibility is that they don't know this, but I just don't believe that.  Heads should roll over this.

* Old computing graybeards will remember the ACM paper "GoTo Considered Harmful" which created such a furor that "considered harmful" is now considered harmful when used descriptively.

Except here, where it is 100% justified.

The buzz from Black Hat this year

Every year in the heat of the Las Vegas desert is the Black Hat Briefings, the premier computer security conference.  There's always interesting news from the briefings (and from the much less buttoned down conference, DEFCON, which runs immediately afterwards).

So what's the buzz from Black Hat this year?  It seems that Palo Alto Networks had Booth Bunnies at their display booth:

[blink] [blink]

Now I did my share of manning the booths (yes, I was a Booth Bunny, thank you for asking) back in the '90s and the '00s.  But even in the '90s we were considerably more buttoned down than this, and for good marketing reasons.  Sure, some of the attendees might like the scenery, but some will not - and some of them will very much not like the scenery.  This has been known to be bad conference marketing juju for literally decades.

Of course, the Palo Alto Networks' Chief Marketing Officer had to go full frontal groveling* in his apology:

PAN's chief marketing officer Unnikrishnan KP, or Unni as he's often called, issued his apology earlier this week calling it "tone deaf."

"Last week at Black Hat in Las Vegas, an unfortunate decision was made at a Palo Alto Networks event to have hostesses wear branded lampshades on their heads," he said. "It was tone-deaf, in poor taste, and not aligned with our company values or brand campaign. 

"I take full responsibility for this misjudgment and have addressed it with my team and am taking steps to prevent such misguided actions in the future.

"Please accept my heartfelt apologies for this regrettable incident."

Nikesh Arora, PAN's chairman and CEO, doubled down on the apologies on Tuesday, echoing the points made by Unni, adding that what happened was "unacceptable."

I expect the headcount at Palo Alto Networks' marketing department has gotten a spin.  We apologize again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

* See what I did there?  I crack myself up.

Rest in Pease, Dick Butkis

I sure did enjoy your Miller Lite commercials, back in the day.

Screw it - let's ride

This is an awesome advert from Taiwan.  It isn't selling motorcycles, and it's not really about motorcycling.  It's entirely awesome.

Hat tip: American Digest.

Why The Queen Of The World and I will not watch the Superbowl

NFL rejects "Stand for the Flag" advert:



NFL allows Michael Bloomberg's gun control ad.

Remember when the NFL banned a pro-second amendment ad a few years back?

Screw you guys.  Just when it seems like saner heads might prevail and let the whole festering pustule stop swelling and oozing, the jackwagons running the NFL clown show shoot themselves in the foot.  Again.

Sideways with a chainsaw.  I don't need to watch your dumb game to see the funny ads anymore because they're all online.  This one is really funny, and has a cameo who will be recognizable to Red Sox fans:



UPDATE 2 February 2020 20:25:  I have to say that The Queen Of The World and I are enjoying the Puppy Bowl way more than I expected.  Wolfgang isn't paying any attention, but TQOTW tells stories about her old Golden Retriever, Skipper.  He would watch with doggie fascination.

And speaking of Golden Retrievers, the Suburu adverts are simply brilliant:

Harley will build motorcycles in China

This seems like brand damage:

Harley-Davidson has found a new partner in China as it ramps up efforts to sell more motorcycles abroad.

The company said Wednesday that it’s teaming up with Qianjiang Motorcycle Company to make a small motorcycle that will go on sale in the country next year. Qianjiang is a subsidiary of Geely, which owns Volvo and has a joint venture to assemble cars in China with Mercedes Benz parent company Daimler.

The tariff war with the EU is hurting them, so I can see how they might look for a non-US manufacturing facility.  I can also see how they would want a lower cost, smaller bike than the typical hog (which generally starts at nearly 1000 cc's and goes up to almost double that.  This makes their bikes expensive, and so they are crowded out of the emerging markets.

But so much of their brand is caught up in the idea of Milwaukee Iron that I hope they introduce a different brand for these motorcycles.  East is East, and West is West, and all that.

Marketing doesn't change the Truth

It just makes it "better":

The advertising industry's self-regulatory division has urged Verizon to stop claiming that it has America's first 5G network, but Verizon claims that its "first to 5G" commercials are not misleading and is appealing the decision. 

The National Advertising Division (NAD), an investigative unit managed by the Council of Better Business Bureaus, announced its recommendation to Verizon last week. The NAD investigated after a challenge lodged by AT&T, which has been misleading customers itself by renaming large portions of its 4G network to "5G E." But AT&T's challenge of Verizon's 5G ads was "the first case involving advertising for 5G" to come before the self-regulatory body, the NAD said.

You're going to see a boatload of these adverts over the next couple of years.  Take them with a big grain of salt.

Kind of like Tesla's "autopilot".  Maybe a bit more important, there.  After all, crappy "5G" won't kill you.

Dilbert is brutal today

(Original is here)

Congratulations to the Gillette marketing team for making it to Dilbert.  I'd like to have a dollar for every copy of this that goes up on the wall somewhere at Gillette HQ.

Now that's marketing

This is awesome.

Thoughts on the Superbowl

The NFL clearly laid down the law on taking a knee.  None of the players I saw did.  The NFL knows that this is ratings poison and didn't let it happen.

Despite what the haters will want to say, this should pretty much end the debate on who is the greatest NFL quarterback of all time.

It probably should (but won't) end the debate on what the greatest NFL franchise of all time is.

The Halftime show was idiotic music, but there wasn't anything politically controversial.  The Queen of the World recognized him but I didn't have a clue until they played that song that was covered by the Axis Of Awesome.

A lot of the commercials were hilarious.  Michael Bubble and T-Mobile had us laughing out loud.  The Verizon commercial with the guy meeting the EMTs who saved his life was touching.

All in all, we did not expect a Superbowl with basically no political bull***t.

You can't Voxsplain away Gillette's advertisement

I've spent a lot of my career working with Marketing and PR types, and have generally found it to be fun and rewarding (as one Marketing VP once told me, "Marketing doesn't change the truth, it just makes it better!").  But along the way some basic concepts have sunk in.  The first rule of PR, for example, is "if you have to explain it, you've failed".  This has actually been a really good challenge in making the message you want to send very crisp and sharp.

Gillette failed at this in a big, big way.  They failed so big that their advert needs to be Voxsplained.  It won't do any good, of course - you can't explain to someone who's been offended that they haven't, you know, been offended.  But good luck with that.

It's actually worse than this, of course.  You need to be extremely careful with your marketing so that you maintain your credibility.  You can come across as a fast talking snake oil salesman, of course, but you shouldn't expect that to build trust in your brand.  Even if what you say is true, if you come across in a negative manner you destroy brand value:

Successful advertising rarely succeeds through argument or calls to action. Instead, it creates positive memories and feelings that influence our behavior over time to encourage us to buy something at a later date. No one likes to think that they are easily influenced. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that we respond negatively to naked attempts at persuasion.

This is why Voxsplaining won't help Gillette, even though the entire media is hard at work trying to do just that.  Not only did Gillette offend a lot of people (both male and female), but they did it in a ludicrously, transparently obvious manner.  You could see the puppeteer behind the curtain pulling all the strings.

As Napoleon is said to have once remarked about one of his more blood-soaked decisions, it was worse than a tragedy.  It was a blunder.

Gillette blundered twice with this ad.  If you follow the link above you will find a set of excellent advertisements from the past.  They avoid Gillette's blunders, and create positive memories that have been associated with the brand over time.  And if you view the advert that co-blogger ASM826 posted, you will find another excellent one that creates positive memories that will stick with them over time.  Whenever I see the Egard Watch logo in the future, I'll think of this ad.

Gillette's problem is that every time I see their logo, I'll remember their advert.  No matter how much Voxsplaining people try to do.

I guess it's time to stop buying Gillette

This is a pretty big marketing fail.

Lower sales at Dick's Sporting Goods

It seems that their anti-gun policies are at the heart of the revenue drop:

Sales at Dick's Sporting Goods dropped in the past three months amid backlash against tighter gun-sale restrictions following a mass killing early this year at a Florida high school.

Revenue dipped 4.5 percent to $1.86 billion amid challenges in the company's hunting business during the quarter through Nov. 3. Sales at stores open at least 12 months – a key metric for the retail industry – fell 6.1 percent compared to the prior year.

So Dick's management thought that appealing to Social Justice Warriors instead of hunters would juice their sales.  Seriously:

While Chief Executive Officer Edward Stack previously said the firearms policy brought in new customers and sales were reported as flat in August, Dick's has now warned that "negative reaction" could affect future results.

Idiots.

Seen on reddit

r/The_Donald delivers!

Nike: Believe in something

Seen on Gab.  People say that there's no such thing as bad publicity; it looks like Nike is fixin' to find out whether that's true or not.

Now that's a marketing guy who gets results for his company

Too bad his company didn't ask what kind of results he would get them.  Oof.

Lousy Security finally costs a company some sales

A year ago I wrote about the incredible lack of security in CloudPet toys, a set of holes so wide that someone could turn the "smart" toys into recording devices to spy on your kids.  A year later, no security fixes have been released, and retailers are pulling the toys from their catalogs:

Amazon on Tuesday stopped selling CloudPets, a network-connected family of toys, in response to security and privacy concerns sounded by browser maker and internet community advocate Mozilla. 

The move follows similar actions taken by Walmart and Target last week. And other sellers of the toy are said to be considering similar action. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment but CloudPets have vanished from its website.

Let's see: Amazon, Wallmart, and Target - that reduces your addressable market a bit now, don't it?  And this is hilarious (if entirely expected):

Spiral Toys, the maker of CloudPets, did not immediately respond to inquiries.

Not sure how big a hit this is to their bottom line, but their combination of incompetence and lack of diligence in fixing this deserves a big hit.

Do you understand enough about the Internet Of Things to use it?

This is interesting:

Every time a major Internet-connected-product is released, we keep coming back to the debate over security vs. convenience. The progression of arguments goes something like this:

• One group expresses outrage/skepticism/ridicule of how this product doesn't need to be connected to the Internet;
• Another group argues how the benefits outweigh the risks and/or how the risks are overblown;
• There will be news stories on both sides of the issue, and the debate soon dies down as people move on to the next thing; and
• Most users are left wondering what to believe.

If you've been reading here, you aren't wondering.

As a security researcher, I often wonder whether the conveniences offered by these Internet-connected-devices are worth the potential security risks. To meaningfully understand the nuances of this ecosystem, I consciously made these devices a part of my daily life over the past year. One thing immediately stood out to me: there seems to be no proper mechanism to help users understand the ramifications of the risk/reward tradeoffs around these commonly used “personal” Internet-connected-devices, which makes it difficult for users to have any sort of effective understanding of their risks. I pointed out the same in a recent CNN Tech article about Amazon Key, where I also said:

A simple rule of thumb here could be to visualize the best case, average case, and worst case scenarios, see how each of those affect you, and take a call on whether you are equipped to deal with the fall out, and whether the tradeoffs are worth the convenience.

This is  a really good idea.  The article is long but very thought provoking.  The one thing that I would add is that there isn't a snowball's chance in the Mojave Desert that this will happen.  The reason is that security is the last thing on the IoT designer's minds.  IoT engineering funding comes from one of a very few places:

1. The existing appliance sales are flat, so quick add Internet connectivity to the refrigerator/stove/etc.  The goal is to raise the price point by adding cool and flash.
2. Adding Internet connectivity to the device is "Insanely Great" and will let you sell to people who want to "Think Different".  Hey, it worked for Apple, didn't it?
3. Someone wants to spy on you, and so makes your Barbie doll or whatever "Interactive".

In none of these cases do any of the marketing folks want you to actually be able to understand the risks you are introducing into your home.  Heck, I've been doing this for over 30 years and I can't understand the risks.

And so my approach is to say "not just 'no' but 'HELL no'" to any IoT devices.  Sorry, I don't want a cool refrigerator, I want one that keeps my food cold (at a low cost).  Sorry, I don't care if you think I should "think different".  And as to spying - yeah, that's typically my starting assumption for all of these devices.

That's probably unfair, to the devices and to the people who designed them.  But without the slightest possibility of figuring out just what is being done to me, that's actually my best option.  It very well may be your best option, too.  At least until Silicon Valley marketroids earn some of our trust back.