Though we recently touched on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruling that only natural beings, which do not include artificial intelligence, can be an inventor under the U.S. Patents Act, the decision merits additional discussion. Defining artificial intelligence (AI) can be a challenging task due to…
AI technology dominates the news cycle with news of DeepMind’s groundbreaking discovery of almost all structures of known proteins, an ethical dilemma prompted by a chess-playing robot that broke its young opponent’s finger, the artistic possibilities that DALL-E’s text-to-picture art tool may deliver, and more. The DOJ announces the extradition…
It’s no secret that every move you make on the internet can be tracked. Even when you are not actively searching, scrolling through a social media feed, or using your phone to navigate to a new local restaurant, your digital behavior can be tracked, analyzed, stored, marketed, and sold. But…
Who are you, really? Identity can be hard to define. In the real world, we don different (often overlapping) masks depending on the situation—family, work, public service or private play. Online, the distance between the “real you” and these masks is often more pronounced. We adopt pseudonyms, handles, avatars and…
On May 4, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order N-9-22 to create a coordinated state regulatory approach for cryptocurrency and blockchain, with the further aim of harmonizing the state’s laws with those (potentially) enacted at a federal level. Another goal of the Order is to determine the usage…
In this week’s News of Note, ransomware continues to ravage institutions—including a 157-year-old college and the government of Costa Rica—AI learns to accurately predict a patient’s race based on their medical images, cryptocurrency crashes, and more. Threat intelligence research firm AdvIntel claims that the Conti ransomware organization has splintered into…
We’ve written extensively on the still somewhat recent arrival of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as both a potential revenue stream, caveat-filled investment destination and pop culture marker of the moment. Back in 2018, we wrote about the Los Angeles Dodgers giving away digital bobbleheads to fans, who could redeem a private…
In today’s News of Note, we explore ransomware-as-a-service profits, the continued untangling of IP issues with NFTs, the prospect of scented virtual reality experiences, the development of a humanoid robot, and much more. Hackers use source code revealed in Conti ransomware leak to target Russian organizations. (Lawrence Abrams, Bleeping Computer)…
Every year professional sports franchises introduce new marketing tactics and sponsorship models to increase their revenue streams—new gear, new placements for logos in stadiums/arenas and on jerseys, not to mention an array of online engagement opportunities. As the concept of the Metaverse becomes more established in the minds of fans,…
Modern cloud computing only came into existence about 20 years ago, but now virtually all enterprises (99%) are using cloud services. Cloud adoption accelerated further in the last two years because of the COVID pandemic as a result of an increase in remote work, the evolution of online business strategies…