Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
Speaker 1: the week ending on February ninth, twenty twenty four So.
Speaker 1: The Guardian reports that a Chinese backed hacker group going
Speaker 1: by the name volt Typhoon has spent the last five
Speaker 1: years at the very least, infiltrating various critical computer systems
Speaker 1: here in the United States in our infrastructure, and they
Speaker 1: have compromised systems connected to transportation, shipping, and utilities like
Speaker 1: water and sewage. The US National Security Agency says that
Speaker 1: this hacker group has created footholds within these systems, so
Speaker 1: they didn't just infiltrate and spy on stuff and get out.
Speaker 1: They made sort of a cozy little nest for themselves
Speaker 1: that they could easily return to. Now to me, this
Speaker 1: sounds awfully familiar to stories that I've been hearing for
Speaker 1: many years now. In fact, I even did a quick
Speaker 1: search on Google and I just picked the year twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen at random. It was actually my first choice. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's ten years ago. I thought, let's see if there's
Speaker 1: been any stories in twenty fourteen about Chinese hackers compromising
Speaker 1: critical systems within US infrastructure, And sure enough, the top
Speaker 1: result was from CNN, and there was an article that
Speaker 1: had the headline, the US government thinks China could take
Speaker 1: down the power grid because, just as we're hearing now,
Speaker 1: Chinese hackers had managed to infiltrate these various computer systems
Speaker 1: and to kind of leave for themselves the capacity to
Speaker 1: return to it, so that maybe in the future, in
Speaker 1: an act of cyber warfare, they could sabotage the system. So,
Speaker 1: on one hand, this news story is alarming, but it's
Speaker 1: not actually new, right because we've had issues with Chinese
Speaker 1: backed hackers compromising systems here in the United States for ages.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, it's still a very alarming
Speaker 1: story to read about. I would argue it might be
Speaker 1: more alarming to me that we freaking knew about this
Speaker 1: problem a decade ago and seem to have learned nothing
Speaker 1: since then. That to me is really alarming. It's not
Speaker 1: just that Chinese hackers did this, it's that we saw
Speaker 1: essentially the same story play out a decade ago, and
Speaker 1: yet haven't done the proper steps to protect ourselves against
Speaker 1: future attacks. So the Guardian points out that the big
Speaker 1: concerning element here, besides the fact that Chinese hackers have
Speaker 1: infiltrated all these different computer systems, is that it does
Speaker 1: not look like it's an act of espionage at all.
Speaker 1: This isn't a case where Chinese hackers are trying to
Speaker 1: get secrets and then use those back in China. This
Speaker 1: appears to be a preparation for sabotage and cyber warfare.
Speaker 1: So really this is preparations for an attack, should that
Speaker 1: ever come to pass. Now, it may be that an
Speaker 1: attack never would come to pass, but it's more like
Speaker 1: the Chinese hackers were setting things up in the event
Speaker 1: that there was a cyber attack to be conducted by
Speaker 1: China against the United States, they would have already laid
Speaker 1: the groundwork. So yeah, it's one thing to steal secrets,
Speaker 1: but it's another thing to shut stuff off on a
Speaker 1: massive scale. I mean, you can think of how disruptive
Speaker 1: that would be. So presumably the affected targets are going
Speaker 1: to seek ways to expel the hackers and harden security
Speaker 1: against future intrusions. But then you would have figured that
Speaker 1: would have been the case a decade ago, and yet
Speaker 1: it's still happening. I guess you can argue that no
Speaker 1: security system is perfect, and that there are always going
Speaker 1: to be vulnerabilities, whether that's in the code or more
Speaker 1: likely due to someone failing to practice could security measures,
Speaker 1: and that you'll never have a perfect system. So you
Speaker 1: could argue that, but at the same time, when you
Speaker 1: find out that it's this apparently widespread, it raises some
Speaker 1: very serious questions. Anyway, now let's move on to our
Speaker 1: traditional glut of AI related news. So first up, the
Speaker 1: Verge reports that Google has dropped the names Barred and
Speaker 1: Duet from its various AI products. So the new AI
Speaker 1: Google strategy is called Gemini, or if you're an astronaut
Speaker 1: from the nineteen sixties, maybe Geminy. But Google is streamlining
Speaker 1: its approach. So previously, it's aipowered chatbot had the name Barred,
Speaker 1: which was a nod to William Shakespeare, a nod that
Speaker 1: I appreciated, and it had some AI enhanced components in
Speaker 1: the Google Workspace product that had the name Duet. But
Speaker 1: now all of that is under the name Gemini. So
Speaker 1: on top of that, Google is going to release a
Speaker 1: new and larger than ever large language model to the
Speaker 1: public soon, the Gemini language model. Android users will get
Speaker 1: a chance to test out Gemini and all its glory.
Speaker 1: It looks like a lot of different apps are going
Speaker 1: to get a Gemini upgrade. iOS will be a little
Speaker 1: bit different, but if you're an Android owner, you'll have
Speaker 1: access to this pretty soon. And it looks like Gemini
Speaker 1: may quietly take the place of the humble Google Assistant
Speaker 1: over time. It might be a long, phasing kind of process,
Speaker 1: but that's what looks like. So will Jim and I
Speaker 1: be able to challenge open a eyes domination with chat,
Speaker 1: GPT and the GPT language model. Will I even notice
Speaker 1: that it's happened, or by that time will I be
Speaker 1: hiding out in an off the grid shack in the woods.
Speaker 1: Find out next week at the same BAT time, same
Speaker 1: BAT channel. Al Jazeera reports that Sam Altman, the CEO
Speaker 1: of open Ai, is looking for cash, like a whole
Speaker 1: buttload of it. So how how over much you're thinking?
Speaker 1: It's more than that? So, according to the news site,
Speaker 1: Altman's goal is to raise quote trillions of dollars from investors,
Speaker 1: including the United Arab Emirates government to boost the world's
Speaker 1: capacity to produce advanced chips and power artificial intelligence end quote.
Speaker 1: And further in the article they specify that they're talking
Speaker 1: around seven trillion dollars good gravy. That's a lot of
Speaker 1: money that goes beyond a princely sum. Princess don't have
Speaker 1: access to seven trillion dollars. Now, we know that AI
Speaker 1: requires a lot of computational power to work, and open
Speaker 1: AI's business is completely dependent upon customers demanding more AI capabilities.
Speaker 1: So in order to deliver those capabilities, you've got to
Speaker 1: have the hardware that can run the AI software on
Speaker 1: top of it. So it makes sense that open ai
Speaker 1: needs all these these investments to go into making the
Speaker 1: hardware that powers everything. So this money would ultimately go
Speaker 1: toward building more fabrication facilities, and those facilities would be
Speaker 1: run by established semiconductor fabrication companies, not open Ai. So
Speaker 1: it's not that open ai would get into the semiconductor business.
Speaker 1: They're saying, we need this money raised so that we
Speaker 1: can build these sorts of fabrication plants all around the
Speaker 1: world and have these established companies handle them so that
Speaker 1: we have the equipment we need in order to deliver
Speaker 1: the AI experiences that we want to, so the argument
Speaker 1: is that we're not funneling the money to open AI itself.
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly surprised by all this news, but it
Speaker 1: does make me wonder if we're going to actually see
Speaker 1: AI replace cryptocurrency mining as a computational application that just
Speaker 1: demands an insane amount of power. Right? Is it possible
Speaker 1: that in a year or two we'll be talking about
Speaker 1: how AI as an industry requires more power than most
Speaker 1: countries do for a full year the same way we
Speaker 1: talk about cryptocurrency. We'll actually circle back to talk about
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency and power demands a little bit later in this episode.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I just wonder about that. This week, Clint Watts,
Speaker 1: the general manager of Microsoft's Threat Analysis Center, published a
Speaker 1: blog post that made me take notice. He was focusing
Speaker 1: on how Iran's strategy regarding Israel is leaning more and
Speaker 1: more on cyber operations, and one of those cyber ops
Speaker 1: apparently involved using an AI generated news anchor to deliver
Speaker 1: fake news to audiences in different parts of the world.
Speaker 1: So apparently this happened late last year in December, and
Speaker 1: an Iran aligned hacker group called Cotton Sandstorm interrupted some
Speaker 1: streaming TV services in different countries and inserted this AI
Speaker 1: generated news program with an AI generated news anchor and
Speaker 1: that quote. The disruption reached audiences in the UAE, UK
Speaker 1: and Canada end quote. The Guardian further reported that the
Speaker 1: AI anchor presented quote unfit verified images that claim to
Speaker 1: show Palestinians injured and killed from Israeli military operations in Gaza.
Speaker 1: Uote Watts express concern about how this instance is an
Speaker 1: indicator of what we should expect moving forward, particularly in
Speaker 1: really eventful years like an election year, which hey, here
Speaker 1: in the United States we happen to be in an
Speaker 1: election year. So keep an eye out for those robots
Speaker 1: on your screens and on your phones and really everywhere.
Speaker 1: Why that's shack in the middle of the woods is
Speaker 1: looking better and better. All right, you know what, We're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break to thank our sponsors.
Speaker 1: I'm going to gather myself and try to get rid
Speaker 1: of this sort of luddite tendency that's overtaking me, and
Speaker 1: we'll be back right after this. We're back. So, the
Speaker 1: US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent out a
Speaker 1: memo to all insurers that offer Medicare Advantage with a
Speaker 1: very clear message those insurers are not allowed to use
Speaker 1: AI to determine if someone on a Medicare advantage plan
Speaker 1: merits coverage or should be denied coverage. This is really
Speaker 1: good news because we've already seen some insurance companies do
Speaker 1: that very thing, use AI to determine if they should
Speaker 1: grant or deny coverage to a patient. In fact, right now,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of massive lawsuits against Humana and
Speaker 1: United Health about that very thing. Patients claim that these
Speaker 1: companies used an AI tool to decide whether or not
Speaker 1: those patients should receive coverage for various medical processes, procedures,
Speaker 1: and prescriptions, typically things like whether or not they should
Speaker 1: be allowed to stay in a medical facility or if
Speaker 1: they should be told to leave, even if it's before
Speaker 1: the doctors said that they should leave because otherwise insurance
Speaker 1: was going to cut off the support and they'd have
Speaker 1: to cover everything out of pocket. So, according to the claim,
Speaker 1: many of those decisions that were made for these patients
Speaker 1: via AI were wrong. The AI reportedly had a dismal
Speaker 1: accuracy rating, but the insurance companies were still depending upon it,
Speaker 1: and the argument is that the companies were following an
Speaker 1: incentive to use this AI tool because by denying claims,
Speaker 1: they didn't have to pay out to the insured. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the tool's broken. But the tool also says I get
Speaker 1: to keep more of my money if I listen to it,
Speaker 1: So I'm listening to the tool. In other words, Anyway, now,
Speaker 1: the CMS is telling insurers that while they can use
Speaker 1: AI assisted tools to do something like predictive person's length
Speaker 1: of stay in a medical facility, any decisions on actual
Speaker 1: coverage have to be done solely by taking that individual
Speaker 1: patient's circumstances into account, which means you can't just use
Speaker 1: aggregated data from a larger population and then make a
Speaker 1: determination for that patient, which is good news for people
Speaker 1: who are part of these programs. To learn more about this,
Speaker 1: I recommend Beth Mole's article in Ours Technica. It's titled
Speaker 1: AI cannot be used to deny health coverage FEDS clarify
Speaker 1: to insurers. It's a good read. So a bit earlier,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that AI is placing an increasingly large demand
Speaker 1: on resources, similar to what we're seeing in crypto mining. Well,
Speaker 1: according to Tom's Hardware, which is a great website by
Speaker 1: the way, the US Energy Information Administration released an analysis
Speaker 1: that says one hundred and thirty seven crypto mining operations
Speaker 1: in the US demand two point three percent of the
Speaker 1: US's power demands overall, which is astounding, Right, You're talking
Speaker 1: about fewer than one hundred and fifty organizations that require
Speaker 1: that much of the nation's power that we generate. We've
Speaker 1: heard in the past about how crypto mining, specifically proof
Speaker 1: of work systems like Bitcoin, have created this sort of
Speaker 1: runaway demand on power, but boy howdy, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is just a lot anyway. The implication here is that
Speaker 1: the US government is starting to get a little concerned
Speaker 1: about how much power these organizations demand, and that maybe
Speaker 1: we should expect US agencies to take a bit of
Speaker 1: a closer look at crypto mining, perhaps with regard to
Speaker 1: stuff like I don't know, environmental impact, and this in
Speaker 1: turn could eventually have a big effect on the crypto space,
Speaker 1: at least here in the United States. Like it's possible
Speaker 1: that we could see some regulations and restrictions that really
Speaker 1: hamper crypto mining efforts in the US, which would just
Speaker 1: open them up in other nations. Obviously. The article in
Speaker 1: Tom's Hardware includes a map that shows where the administration
Speaker 1: says these organizations are located. I was surprised to see
Speaker 1: that a whole bunch of them are in my home
Speaker 1: state of Georgia. Fun times. Microsoft and Activision Blizzard completed
Speaker 1: their acquisition deal last year where the two companies merged,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean the US Federal Trade Commission is
Speaker 1: real happy about it. You know. If you might remember,
Speaker 1: the FTC opposed that merger, and their concerns were largely
Speaker 1: dismissed in various courts. But the FTC is still interested
Speaker 1: in perhaps reversing that deal, and Microsoft is not actually
Speaker 1: making it easy on themselves to avoid that because one
Speaker 1: thing Microsoft agreed to when it was trying to convince
Speaker 1: the US government that it should be allowed to acquire
Speaker 1: Activision Blizzard was that the company wasn't going to hold
Speaker 1: massive layoffs in the wake of these two companies coming together,
Speaker 1: because the intention was Activision Blizzard would still operate kind
Speaker 1: of as an independent entity, it would not be fully
Speaker 1: integrated into Microsoft. But after the merger happened, Microsoft laid
Speaker 1: off nearly two thousand employees I think oney nine hundred
Speaker 1: or so, and we don't know exactly how many of
Speaker 1: those were Activision Blizzard employees, but it could have been
Speaker 1: as many as half of them, and the FTC says
Speaker 1: that this could be a violation of the agreement Microsoft
Speaker 1: presented when they were first trying to acquire Activision Blizzard. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: Phil Spencer, the CEO of the Gaming division at Microsoft,
Speaker 1: said that the companies have quote set priorities, identified areas
Speaker 1: of overlap, and ensured that we're all aligned on the
Speaker 1: best opportunities for growth end quote. But then the FTC says, well,
Speaker 1: why are you worried about overlap? Because again, you had
Speaker 1: said that the intention was Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming
Speaker 1: would more or less operate independently, that they would be
Speaker 1: their own things. So overlap shouldn't be an issue because
Speaker 1: you didn't. You said you weren't going to combine these two,
Speaker 1: and yet now it sounds like you are combining them
Speaker 1: and creating a more integrated division between the two. In fact,
Speaker 1: you had said that you were going to keep them
Speaker 1: separate so that you could potentially divest some or all
Speaker 1: of Activision Blizzard if you wanted to. But now it
Speaker 1: sounds like it's all getting mixed up together. So what's
Speaker 1: the deal here? So the FTC is now asking courts
Speaker 1: to force Microsoft and an activision Blizzard to temporarily pause
Speaker 1: the merger process, like put a pause on any more
Speaker 1: restructuring or anything like that, so that the FTC can
Speaker 1: actually litigate the merger with the potential ultimate goal of
Speaker 1: undoing the deal. So could we see one of the
Speaker 1: biggest mergers in gaming hit the rewind button. It's possible.
Speaker 1: It is not likely, but it is possible. Sony has
Speaker 1: decided to sunset the anime streaming service Fundimation, merging it
Speaker 1: with crunchy Roll, which Sony acquired in twenty twenty one. However,
Speaker 1: this also means that some properties aren't necessarily going to
Speaker 1: make the jump, So Sony's going to wipe those films
Speaker 1: in series off the digital libraries. But worse than that,
Speaker 1: which it's already bad, but worse than that. Fundamation offered
Speaker 1: customers the chance to buy physical media versions of some
Speaker 1: of the anime properties, and they would include a digital
Speaker 1: code so that the customer could access a streaming version
Speaker 1: of that through their Fundamation account. So they had the
Speaker 1: physical media, but they also had a code for digital
Speaker 1: streaming version. But this part of their service is not
Speaker 1: going to make the transition to crunchy role. So those
Speaker 1: digital codes aren't going to work anymore for folks who
Speaker 1: purchased the physical media but who subsequently lost access to
Speaker 1: that physical media for whatever reason, Like maybe they bought
Speaker 1: it but then they realized they didn't have the space
Speaker 1: to hold this kind of stuff, so maybe they traded
Speaker 1: in the physical versions, but they kept the digital code. Well,
Speaker 1: now their digital copy is going to be inaccessible, and
Speaker 1: this stings quite a bit. Fundamation at one point claimed
Speaker 1: that customers would have access to these digital streaming versions
Speaker 1: quote unquote forever. So I guess forever ain't what it
Speaker 1: used to be. But it turns out that the terms
Speaker 1: of service indicated that customers never actually owned the digital
Speaker 1: streaming copy. This is pretty typical for streaming services. You
Speaker 1: don't own something. Even if you buy the title, like
Speaker 1: on Amazon Prime or something, you don't actually own that copy.
Speaker 1: You actually own access to that copy, and that access
Speaker 1: at some time can be revoked. It could go bye bye.
Speaker 1: This is one of the many reasons I have found
Speaker 1: myself going back to buying physical media for some shows
Speaker 1: and films, because at least then I will still have
Speaker 1: access to that media, assuming I still have a machine
Speaker 1: that can play whatever the format is. Finally, the last
Speaker 1: story I want to cover is one that has gone
Speaker 1: back and forth and up and down, kind of like
Speaker 1: brushing your teeth. And hey, it involves electric toothbrushes, all right,
Speaker 1: so this story has some weird elements to it. A
Speaker 1: Swiss German newspaper called argaler Zeitung and I know I
Speaker 1: butchered the pronunciation. It published an article that apparently claimed
Speaker 1: that hackers had managed to compromise around three million smart toothbrushes.
Speaker 1: And you might be thinking, what the heck do you
Speaker 1: do with a compromise smart toothbrush? Make it brush someone's
Speaker 1: teeth badly? But no, you can use those compromised toothbrushes
Speaker 1: as a kind of botnet to send a distributed denial
Speaker 1: of service attack to a target. So each of those
Speaker 1: toothbrushes can start pinging a target server in an effort
Speaker 1: to overwhelm it and shut it down. And because the
Speaker 1: security on these Internet connected toothbrushes was really poor, it
Speaker 1: was not hard to accumulate a big old army of them.
Speaker 1: This is one of the major concerns about the Internet
Speaker 1: of things. You know, sometimes those Internet connected sensors can
Speaker 1: really be a threat if the company that makes them
Speaker 1: doesn't implement good security measures. Anyway, some outlets reported on this,
Speaker 1: and then the American branch of the cybersecurity company called
Speaker 1: Fordinet ended up saying, oh, the original article was quoting
Speaker 1: a Swiss branch of Fordinet, but there was a problem
Speaker 1: with translation, and that in actuality, what the Swiss cybersecurity
Speaker 1: experts were saying was this is a hypothetical example, not
Speaker 1: something that actually happened, so you should really correct the article.
Speaker 1: So then several outlets reported, oh, wasn't it funny This
Speaker 1: mistranslation made people think that these electric toothbrushes were being
Speaker 1: used in attacks. But then the newspaper our Gower Zitong
Speaker 1: said no, no, no, no, no, this really did happen
Speaker 1: because we asked about it. The Fortnet branch in Switzerland
Speaker 1: indicated this was an actual case, not just a hypothetical example,
Speaker 1: and when we submitted our article to them for their review,
Speaker 1: they approved it. So clearly this isn't just a mistranslation.
Speaker 1: So our toothbrush is out to get you, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but you should still brush your teeth in any case,
Speaker 1: just you know, maybe go with a toothbrush that doesn't
Speaker 1: connect to your home network, just to be on the
Speaker 1: safe side. All right, that's it for the news for
Speaker 1: the week inning on February ninth, twenty twenty four. I
Speaker 1: hope you are all well and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Text is an iHeartRadio production. For more
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