As the cyber landscape evolves, a holistic approach to cybersecurity will be essential for organizations to effectively navigate risks and align their cyber strategies with overarching business objectives. By integrating cybersecurity into the core of corporate governance, organizations can transform security from a reactive measure into a strategic asset -- enhancing resilience, fostering innovation, and maintaining competitive advantage.In today's business landscape, incorporating cybersecurity into enterprise risk management is a critical imperative for organizations. As cyber threats evolve, organizations must move beyond viewing cybersecurity as a technical concern and recognize its profound impacts on financial stability, reputation, compliance, and resilience.This new model requires a fundamental shift in how the C-suite and board of directors approach cybersecurity. Change comes from understanding the criticality of moving away from a focus on technical issues towards more comprehensive, business-aligned strategies that encompass risk for the entire organization.To effect this shift, leadership should cultivate broader digital competencies and foster a deeper understanding of cybersecurity as part of their overall risk management strategy. Chief information security officers (CISOs) will play a pivotal role in this transformation, aligning efforts more closely with overarching business objectives.Related:Cybersecurity as a Core Business FunctionCybersecurity conversations should extend far beyond the security team, engaging a broader set of stakeholders including board members, and risk management executives. Nearly 40% of leaders surveyed by the World Economic Forum believe that cyber-attacks represent a paramount global risk. However, most organizations remain mired in Gen 1.0 cyber thinking: that cybersecurity is an IT problem or, worse, that cyber wont strike.Change will only come from understanding how threats specifically impact an organization's business, operations, sustainability, and financial condition. Whether a hospital, bank, insurer, or manufacturing giant, the implications of an incident vary dramatically.Board Engagement and CompetencyBoards are becoming involved in cybersecurity, but many may fear that they lack the necessary digital competencies or may expose themselves to risk. There's a growing need for boards to include cyber experts who can translate technical risks into business terms and create risk committees to ensure informed decision-making and oversight.Related:The challenge lies in shifting perspectives from viewing cybersecurity as a costly problem best solved by technical solutions alone, to understanding the cyber domain as an enterprise risk with shared roles and responsibilities. To facilitate this transition, it's crucial to provide plain business language assessments along with analytics that align investment decisions and help mitigate known risks.Organizations also need to understand what an optimal insurance or risk transfer structure looks like for their specific entity. This involves stress-testing existing policies across a range of potential cyber incidents.Finally, directors want cybersecurity exposures presented in terms that resonate with their expertise in business, operations, governance, legal matters, and finance. They also want to know what to do when things go wrong, and how to involve law enforcement.Addressing Cybersecurity FatigueDigital transformation, with all its efficiencies, is juxtaposed against the seemingly unending battle against cybercrime, leaving many boards questioning how to effectively address the dynamic. To overcome fatigue and pessimism, transparent and effective communication is essential.Premortems and table top exercises (TTXs) are both valuable, low-cost security exercises for boards and leaders. The key is to present concrete scenarios that illustrate the potential impact of cyber events on the business. For instance, demonstrating how a two-week ransomware outage could result in a $200 million write-down can help the board and CFO understand the stakes involved.Related:With budgets always top of mind, it is crucial to allocate cybersecurity capital wisely. Shifting away from conceiving cybersecurity as a cost center to viewing it as part of the long-term capital budget is a worthwhile conversation for organizations to consider.Ultimately, the business must decide on its risk tolerance, ideally elevating this decision to the board level. Presenting the facts, including potential losses, mitigation strategies, and costs, allows boards to make informed decisions about acceptable risks and ROI.CISO Evolution and Future of Cyber Risk GovernanceAs the role of a CISO expands beyond technical expertise, there's a growing need for a new breed of digital risk leaders who can bridge the gap between cybersecurity and wider business objectives. Organizations are exploring innovative governance structures, such as creating a chief digital risk officer role to oversee a broader portfolio of digital exposures.Looking ahead, integrating cybersecurity into enterprise risk management will entail a multi-faceted approach. This includes developing risk committees to address complementary domains like supply chain and technology risks, while leveraging changing frameworks like NIST CSF 2.0 the SECs cyber rules, and regulations like the EUs AIAct, NIS2, and DORA.A Framework for Board EngagementEffective cybersecurity governance at the board level rests on three pillars: substance, frequency, and structure. The information presented must align cyber risks with tangible business exposures, moving beyond technical jargon. The frequency of discussions should be calibrated to ensure timely oversight without overwhelming the boards agenda. Finally, determining the appropriate committee structure is crucial for fostering in-depth and relevant discussions.As the cyber landscape evolves, a holistic approach to cybersecurity will be essential for organizations to effectively navigate risks and align their cyber strategies with overarching business objectives. By integrating cybersecurity into the core of corporate governance, organizations can transform security from a reactive measure into a strategic asset -- enhancing resilience, fostering innovation, and maintaining competitive advantage.

Were loving theStar Warsmysteries and great characters on the new Disney+ seriesSkeleton Crew. In Episode 4, titled Can't Say I Remember No At Attin, we note how this series is borrowing imagery and stories from some of our favorite science-fiction films and shows from outside the Star Warsgalaxy, includingTerminator 2: Judgment DayandBattlestar Galactica.But thats not all. In our latest Skeleton Crewvideo, well break down all the cool Easter eggs,franchisereferences, and little details you might have missed in Episode 4 ofSkeleton Crew.Well tell you about Operation Cinder, point out the stuff that comes from (of all things!) theStar Wars Holiday Special, point out how this episode is similar to an awesome Star Wars comic book written by Jason Aaron,and explain why we think the planet the Skeleton Crew, uh, crew is from is likely run by droids.Watch our full breakdown ofSkeleton CrewEpisode 4 below:If you liked that video about all of the Star Wars Easter eggs in Episode 4 of Skeleton Crew, check out more of our videos below, including one on all of the Star Wars Easter eggs in Episode 3 of Skeleton Crew, two on the Easter eggs in the Skeleton Crew premiere, and one about the one sentence that ruined Star Wars. Plus, theres tons more over at ScreenCrushs YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe to catch all our future episodes.The new Star Wars TV show, Skeleton Crew premieresnew episodes weeklyon Disney+.Sign up for Disney+ here.10 TV Show Flops That Turned Out to Be Huge HitsUniversally beloved TV shows aren't always universally beloved from episode one.Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky

Pour one out for these drinks because it appears theyre all gone for good.Every year, the drinks cooler at your local gas station or grocery store loses some options.Some are expected (Did we really need Pepsi with mango?). While others come as more of a surprise.Coca-Cola Spiced, for example, was highly touted by the company upon its release early in 2024. The Associated Press noted that Coke marked the flavor as a permanent addition to its line before pulling the plug seven months later.READ MORE: Pour One Out: All The Drinks That Left Us in 2023While replacement options, like those recently revealed for discontinued Monster Energy flavors, will be available in some cases, there will always be those drinks that we will miss.Here is a look back at 18 drinks we lost in 2024.18 Drinks That Were Sadly Discontinued In 2024Some are leaving for good while others are being rebranded. Here are 18 drinks that will reportedly be discontinued after 2024.Gallery Credit: Rob CarrollREAD MORE: Once-Beloved Fast Food Items That No Longer ExistGet our free mobile appThe 12 Best New TV Shows of 2024Here's everything to binge-watch over the holidays.Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky

Looking over my Letterboxd account,someone recently remarked to me You have extremely dad taste in movies.At first I was insulted. I lovenearly wordless satiresabout life in Paris in the late 1960s! I love broad comedies about womenon vacation in Vista Del Mar! I love thinly veiled biopics about powerful businessmenwho hate themselves andadore sleds! I love movies about elite mens gymnasts who become secret agents for the CIA in order to win bizarre athletic competitions in made-up Eastern Europe countries so the United States government can then launch a satellite into orbit to spy on the Soviet Union.I contain multitudes!Then I thought about it some more. I am a dad. That much is undeniable. And looking over things I recently logged on Letterboxd ... I could not deny that there were a fair number of titles that would seem to have a certain dadly appeal.Which got me thinking: Whatisextremely dad taste in movies? There is dad music and dad jokes and dad bods. What defines a dad movie? Could I create a canon of dad movies?I could certainly try. Below, I selected 25 films acrossthe history of cinema I believe are guaranteed to please every dad out there. They run the gamut from war films to sports movies to silly comedies and even a couple of devastating weepies. They are all dad tested and dad approved. (At least by one dad who contains multitudes.)Does father really know best? I guess were about to find out once and for all...The Dad Movie Canon: 25 Films All Dads LoveNo dad can resist these 25 movie classics.READ MORE: Every Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie, Ranked From Worst to BestGet our free mobile app25 Movies With Surprising Letterboxd ScoresSometimes consensus about a work of art is not what you expect it to be, especially on a site like Letterboxd, which aggregates the movie ratings and reviews of thousands of users.Categories: Galleries, Lists, Longform, Movie News

- Does automating your way to profit thrill you?- Is learning new things like crack to you?- Do you thrive in a high-stress environment filled with political infighting, bureaucracy, and corporate nonsense?If so, then we are the place for you, except you might hate how nice of a company we have - filled with happy, generally competent people that dont put up with jerks. Frankly, it makes me sick how nice everyone is.We are remote full time, have very flexible hours, people are judged by their output, not by how much they suck up to the boss, and turnover is super low because the company believes that happy employees=happy customers=happy bank account. Simply disgusting, if you ask me.--Is this a real job ad?--Yup! Amazingly enough, we actually paid money to post this on a bunch of different job sites. And its not even a pyramid scheme! Plus, get this: the owner just started paying our 60ish employees with money instead of Pizza Hut coupons - were big time, people.Our careers page is actually worth checking out to learn more about how insane we are (sidenote: it won a web design award in 1993 - were a pretty big deal):http://www.jlstradingco.com/careers/And check out our reviews on Google, Glassdoor, or Indeed to see that its not just the founders mother who says were cool.--What do you guys do?--We do a lot of different things these days including selling awesome consumer products (these are just a small sampling):- Bad Parking Cards (https://amz.run/5Eya)- Beverage Barricades (https://amz.run/6kip)- Child Chucker (https://amz.run/9EUz)Running this Amazon Pay-Per-Click agency: PPCFarm.com (were really, really good at PPC)And we will soon be launching a SaaS product for inventory management.We are doing our best to grow rapidly every year, and its our intention to continue that for as long as possible, which means we need good people to help us keep up with the growth.--What is your company like?--1. You Can Be Yourself. You dont have to put on a fake, professional face. You can just be yourself. You can talk smack to the CEO (highly encouraged), and no one will think anything of it. You don't have to dress up, or use formal language, or pretend to be something you're not - you can just be you.2. Major Opportunities for Career Growth. We are not trying to just be a small business. We plan to be doing $100 million annually in the next few years. We promote quickly once we identify talent. It doesnt matter what your credentials are it matters what you get done.3. Full Time Remote/Flexible Hours. You will be working from home in your pajamas, on your schedule. And we dont care if you work 10 hour days 4 days a week or 6 hours a day and catch up over the weekend. So long as you get a lot of work done, were happy campers.4. Complete Work/Life Balance. If youre routinely working more than 45ish hours, youre gonna get a friendly talking-to. We want you to be operating at 100% capacity, which means that you need to rest.5. Strongly Anti-BS. Anybody in the company can (and is expected to) tell the CEO when he is wrong. There are no bureaucratic or BS rules getting in the way of getting work done.6. No Micro-Management. Once youre trained and have demonstrated you know your stuff, we are pretty hands-off. In fact, if you need external management to stay on-task and motivated, we probably arent the place for you.7. No Toxic/Incompetent People Allowed. We try very hard to screen out mean or stupid people before they get in, but in case they slip through, we fire them quickly. You will never have to interact with someone who is an obvious idiot or straight up malicious. No toxic or incompetent people at work - could it really be? [Yes]8. Supportive Environment. We dont operate via intense stress or unreasonable top-down deadlines. Everyone wants you to be successful internal politics are at a minimum here.9. Lots of Raises. We do our absolute best to get ahead of things and give raises preemptively, so you don't have to ask for one. It's not unusual at all for someone to receive 2+ raises per year.10. Well Invest in Your Training. We want you and everyone to get better constantly. Youll be learning new things all the time, and are strongly encouraged to invest time every day to learn new things, improve your system/work process, and just generally try to make your life easier.11. 4-6+ Weeks Vacation. We 100% want you to recharge, so having plenty of time off is absolutely worth it.12. Paid Maternity/Paternity Leave. Weve even started letting people skip meetings during labor!13. Self-Funded So We Can Do Whats Right for Us. We dont have to answer to anyone but ourselves, so we can make the right decision for the long-term health of the company vs trying to get big too fast or cut corners to appease some selfish investor.--What are your companys values?--See here: http://www.jlstradingco.com/careers/Yes, those are legitimately our values. The careers page is definitely worth checking out - its not just normal corporate BS. We promise youll learn a lot about us.--OK, so Ive read like 45 dang pages about you guys. Will you tell me what the actual job is?--No.--Wait... What?--OK fine.Super short version:Making us more money by growing our Search Engine Optimization operation (which is just managed on auto-pilot at the moment).We have reasonable on-page SEO on one of our sites and a reasonable content production system, but we have no backlink strategy, the above items could definitely be improved, and we arent doing any SEO for any of our other sites.Basically, there is A LOT of opportunity to improve traffic via SEOHere is a bulleted list of responsibilities:- Learn everything we have to teach you about SEO- Learn way more by exploring things online (well pay for courses/coaching)- Deploy what you learn- Figure out how to systematize and automate much of your actions so we can roll out strategies across all of our branded sitesLike everyone else in the company, you will also need to innovate regularly - which means figuring out ways to improve quality and production speed.It is challenging, but fun work thats going to require a lot of time and task management, problem-solving, and a reasonable amount of people skills.--Do I need experience?--We expect you to have a minimum of 70 years of experience (120+ preferred).Oh, you haven't lived two lifetimes eating and breathing business 24/7/365? Who TF do you think you are, reading this job description? You absolute buffoon.Oh, you haven't been directly involved in at least two (preferably three) World Wars? You're not even qualified to operate our coffee machine, you sentient potato.Oh, you didn't observe the Big Bang as it happened? Get out of here, you pirated copy of Windows 95.I might literally throw up from your insolence. The hubris to think that you, you absolute fool, could apply for an apprentice position - absolutely sickening.Also, no you don't need any experience.We want special people, and dont give AF what their background is. Most of our best people did nothing remotely related to their current roles, so if you've never done anything like this before, don't sweat it. We hire 100x more for potential than existing knowledge.The Big Bang requirement still stands though.--What if I have SEO experience?--That is definitely cool, and wed love to have you. Its definitely not a necessity, but if youre already a baller, wed love to deploy your knowledge!--I have never done SEO before. Is this the job for me?--Well teach you everything we know, then well pay for you to learn more.Its a heavily technical job - youre gonna be messing around with the backend of websites, dealing with AI automations, but also doing backlink outreach, which means trying to find opportunities for us to acquire links from other sites.There is a ton of opportunity for creative problem solving in this role. If you need to be around people all the time to be happy, this probably isnt the right kind of role, but if youre a nerd who likes technical stuff and finding creative ways to drive more traffic, then this might be a great role for you.--Do I need a college degree?--You just need to be awesome.--Are there any geographic restrictions?--As long as you are in a country that doesnt have active sanctions from the US government, we are interested. Our founder isnt known for respecting the government much, but they have all the guns, so--Do you do anything black hat?--No, and we wont want to in all likelihood.--This sounds pretty good, though Im still skeptical that this isnt a pyramid scheme.--You sound just like the tax authorities!--That doesnt resolve any of my fears, but what do I need to do to apply?--Please submit your information on the following page to apply.W e promise to respond within 5-10 business days even if our answer is No.There will be multiple steps in this process, FYI, including a long written application, interviews with potentially a few different people, and paid work test(s). Hiring the right people is really hard and very expensive if we do it poorly, so we have to front-load the process. I'm sorry about that and thank you for sticking with us.Once youre in our pipeline though, I would anticipate giving you a final answer within a few weeks, depending on how it goes. We definitely dont want to string you along, and as long as you do what we ask, we promise to tell you yes or no, and to not just ghost you (like everybody I match with on Tinder).Thank you for your time and interest, and I hope we can work together soon! Related Jobs See more Sales and Marketing jobs

Time zones: EST (UTC -5), MST (UTC -7), ART (UTC -3), UTC -4, UTC -4:30, UTC -3, UTC -2, SBT (UTC +11), GMT (UTC +0), CET (UTC +1), EET (UTC +2), MSK (UTC +3), AST (UTC -4), FKST (UTC -3), CVT (UTC -1), WAT (UTC +1), SAST (UTC +2), EAT (UTC +3)Starfish is on the lookout for a seasoned Android Developer joining our team as Freelancer (full-time, 3-6 months, 100 % remote, located in Europe) to develop Android applications according to mocks.Your star qualities & daily business:You have several years of experience in native Android app developmentYou have worked with Jetpack ComposeAt best you are also familiar with Android Automotive OS (AAOS)Clean code and test coverage are as important to you as a good user experienceA strong understanding of app architectures and interest in continuously improving code quality are key to your performanceYou have a structured working method, excellent problem-solving skills, attention to detail and write clear documentationYou're a team player with a proactive attitude, excellent communication skills, and proficiency in EnglishWhy embark on a Starfish adventure?Our Values: We champion personal responsibility, flexibility, and trust.Our Team: We're global, diverse, and foster flat hierarchies.Our Projects: They're inspiring, innovative, and growth-oriented.100% Remote: Work from wherever you're most productive and satisfied.Interested? We can't wait to hear from you. Send your CV to [emailprotected]. Related Jobs See more Front-End Programming jobs

Time zones: EST (UTC -5), CST (UTC -6), MST (UTC -7), PST (UTC -8), AKST (UTC -9), HST (UTC -10), SBT (UTC +11), GMT (UTC +0), CET (UTC +1), EET (UTC +2), MSK (UTC +3), AST (UTC -4), FKST (UTC -3), NST (UTC -3:30), LINT (UTC +14), TOT (UTC +13), CHAST (UTC +12:45), LHST (UTC +10:30), AEST (UTC +10), ACST (UTC +9:30), ACWST (UTC +8:45), MART (UTC -9:30), NUT (UTC -11)READY FOR A CHANGE! We empower individuals and organizations to become forces for good. We offer award-winning personal and leadership development programs through engaging online courses, live events, and tailored coaching. To help drive our mission forward were looking for a highly motivatedSALES DIRECTOR - RemoteYOUR ROLE As a vital member of our dynamic team, you will play a crucial role in expanding our local and international presence. If you're a driven self-starter looking to advance your career, this is your opportunity!With a passion for personal development, you'll support others on their path to success while promoting transformative educational products with commission-based sales and optionally grow your own team and mentor new partners . Your innovative ideas and diverse skill set will enhance our tools and resources, maximizing our impact and transforming lives and business outcomes.YOUR QUALIFICATIONS We seek candidates with an entrepreneurial mindset and a proactive approach to growth and innovation. You should have at least 5 years of business experience, demonstrating your success in dynamic environments. Good communication skills are essential for conveying ideas clearly and persuasively. A strong proficiency in Englishboth written and spokenis necessary to effectively engage with a global audience.YOUR OPPORTUNITY Benefit from comprehensive onboarding, training, and ongoing coaching designed to enhance your skills and business acumen. Enjoy flexible working hours and the option to work remotely, supported by digital solutions that promote a healthy work-life balance, along with an attractive compensation and business model that rewards your efforts generously. Our business is global and there are no territory restrictions.If you're ready to embrace a new challenge, running your own business with full control and responsibility on time and budgets, apply today and start your exciting journey with us!Key details:This role is not suitable for students!We only accept applications from the regions mentioned.This is an independent self-employed opportunity, not salaried position.Compensation is 100% commission-based.No prior experience is necessary; we provide all training and tools to help you succeed.

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. AI is changing how we study bird migration In a warming world, migratory birds face many existential threats. Scientists rely on a combination of methods to track the timing and location of their migrations, but each has shortcomings. And theres another problem: Most birds migrate at night, when its more difficult to identify them visually and while most birders are in bed. For over a century, acoustic monitoring has hovered tantalizingly out of reach as a method that would solve ornithologists woes. Now, finally, machine-learning tools are unlocking a treasure trove of acoustic data for ecologists. Read the full story.Christian Elliot This story is from the forthcoming magazine edition of MIT Technology Review, set to go live on January 6its all about the exciting breakthroughs happening in the world right now. If you dont already, subscribe to receive a copy. A woman in the US is the third person to receive a gene-edited pig kidney Towana Looney, a 53-year-old woman from Alabama, has become the third living person to receive a kidney transplant from a gene-edited pig. Looney, who donated one of her kidneys to her mother back in 1999, developed kidney failure several years later following a pregnancy complication that caused high blood pressure. She started dialysis treatment in December of 2016 and was put on a waiting list for a kidney transplant soon after. But it was difficult to find a match. So Looneys doctors recommended the experimental pig organ as an alternative. After eight years on the waiting list, Looney was authorized to receive the kidney. Read the full story. Jessica Hamzelou Roundtables: The Worst Technology Failures of 2024 Each year, MIT Technology Review publishes a list of the worst technologies of the past 12 months. Antonio Regalado, our senior editor for biomedicine, sat down to discuss 2024s worst failures with our executive editor Niall Firth in a subscriber-exclusive online Roundtable event yesterday. Watch their conversation about what made the cut here, and to make sure you dont miss out in the future, subscribe!MIT Technology Review Narrated: Meet the radio-obsessed civilian shaping Ukraines drone defense Despite it being over 100 years old, radio technology is still critical in almost all aspects of modern warfareincluding in the drones that have come to dominate the Russia-Ukraine war. Serhii Flash Beskrestnov, who has been obsessed with radios since childhood, has become an unlikely hero of the conflict, sharing advice and intel. His work may determine the future of Ukraine, and wars far beyond it. This is our latest story to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which were publishing each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as its released.The must-reads Ive combed the internet to find you todays most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Conspiracy theories are still circulating about those mysterious drones What are they? And where have they come from? (NY Mag $)+ Authorities are attempting to quell public hysteria, but theories abound. (WP $)+ Realistically, theyre probably just standard drones out for a night-time flight. (AP News)2 AI poses a major threat to the power grid Thats according to the US industry watchdog, which is feeling the pressure. (FT $)+ AIs emissions are about to skyrocket even further. (MIT Technology Review)3 SpaceX and Elon Musk are under investigation US federal agencies are probing their repeated failures to comply with reporting rules. (NYT $)4 Nvidia has unveiled a tiny, affordable AI supercomputer Which is handy for roboticists looking to bypass connecting to remote data centers. (Gizmodo)+ While its not the companys most powerful device, its pretty speedy. (WSJ $)+ Microsoft is gobbling up more of Nvidias chips than anyone else. (FT $)+ Blacklisted Chinese AI chip firms gained access to cutting-edge UK tech. (The Guardian) 5 Bitcoins value is rocketing even higherThe industry continues to boom in the wake of Trumps election victory. (Bloomberg $) + So much so, luxury brands are weighing up accepting crypto payments. (Reuters)6 Hepatitis B is an extremely treatable diseaseSo why are so many people still dying from it? (New Yorker $) + Were starting to understand the mysterious surge of hepatitis in children. (MIT Technology Review)7 Earthbrieflyhad an extra second moon And scientists believe it originated from the actual moon we know and love. (New Scientist $) 8 The future of deep-sea miningA set of rules governing how we should do it is highly contentiousand up for debate.(Hakai Magazine) + These deep-sea potatoes could be the future of mining for renewable energy. (MIT Technology Review)9 Resist the temptation to outsource your Christmas shopping to a bot You never know what youll end up with. (Insider $)+ Its probably quicker to browse the web yourself. (WP $)10 Our snacks could soon be designed by AI Confectionary giant Mondelez is using the tech to tweak recipes and test new ones. (WSJ $)+ Forget cookiesthis creamy vegan cheese was made with AI. (MIT Technology Review) Quote of the day It takes a lot for an uber-wealthy, creative-type CEO, many of whom lean left, to suck it up and deal with Trump. But what choice do they have? A Washington lobbyist explains to the Financial Times why the steady stream of tech executives paying their respects to US President-elect Donald Trump shows no sign of slowing. The big story What does GPT-3 know about me? August 2022 One of the biggest stories in tech is the rise of large language models that produce text that reads like a human might have written it. These models power comes from being trained on troves of publicly available human-created text hoovered up from the internet. If youve posted anything even remotely personal in English on the internet, chances are your data might be part of some of the worlds most popular LLMs. Melissa Heikkil, MIT Technology Reviews AI reporter, wondered what data these models might have on herand how it could be misused. So she put OpenAIs GPT-3 to the test. Read about what she found.We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.) + 2024 was a seriously weird year, as evidenced by this completely bonkers list.+ Who knew Seal was such a grunge head?+ These Charli xcx Christmas mashups will haunt my dreams forever, and not in a good way.+ Next summer I feel the need to level up my sandcastle game.

AI is all about data. Reams and reams of data are needed to train algorithms to do what we want, and what goes into the AI models determines what comes out. But heres the problem: AI developers and researchers dont really know much about the sources of the data they are using. AIs data collection practices are immature compared with the sophistication of AI model development. Massive data sets often lack clear information about what is in them and where it came from. The Data Provenance Initiative, a group of over 50 researchers from both academia and industry, wanted to fix that. They wanted to know, very simply: Where does the data to build AI come from? They audited nearly 4,000 public data sets spanning over 600 languages, 67 countries, and three decades. The data came from 800 unique sources and nearly 700 organizations. Their findings, shared exclusively with MIT Technology Review, show a worrying trend: AI's data practices risk concentrating power overwhelmingly in the hands of a few dominant technology companies. In the early 2010s, data sets came from a variety of sources, says Shayne Longpre, a researcher at MIT who is part of the project. It came not just from encyclopedias and the web, but also from sources such as parliamentary transcripts, earning calls, and weather reports. Back then, AI data sets were specifically curated and collected from different sources to suit individual tasks, Longpre says. Then transformers, the architecture underpinning language models, were invented in 2017, and the AI sector started seeing performance get better the bigger the models and data sets were. Today, most AI data sets are built by indiscriminately hoovering material from the internet. Since 2018, the web has been the dominant source for data sets used in all media, such as audio, images, and video, and a gap between scraped data and more curated data sets has emerged and widened. In foundation model development, nothing seems to matter more for the capabilities than the scale and heterogeneity of the data and the web, says Longpre. The need for scale has also boosted the use of synthetic data massively. The past few years have also seen the rise of multimodal generative AI models, which can generate videos and images. Like large language models, they need as much data as possible, and the best source for that has become YouTube. For video models, as you can see in this chart, over 70% of data for both speech and image data sets comes from one source. This could be a boon for Alphabet, Googles parent company, which owns YouTube. Whereas text is distributed across the web and controlled by many different websites and platforms, video data is extremely concentrated in one platform. It gives a huge concentration of power over a lot of the most important data on the web to one company, says Longpre. And because Google is also developing its own AI models, its massive advantage also raises questions about how the company will make this data available for competitors, says Sarah Myers West, the coexecutive director at the AI Now Institute. Its important to think about data not as though its sort of this naturally occurring resource, but its something that is created through particular processes, says Myers West. If the data sets on which most of the AI that were interacting with reflect the intentions and the design of big, profit-motivated corporationsthats reshaping the infrastructures of our world in ways that reflect the interests of those big corporations, she says. This monoculture also raises questions about how accurately the human experience is portrayed in the data set and what kinds of models we are building, says Sara Hooker, the vice president of research at the technology company Cohere, who is also part of the Data Provenance Initiative. People upload videos to YouTube with a particular audience in mind, and the way people act in those videos is often intended for very specific effect. Does [the data] capture all the nuances of humanity and all the ways that we exist? says Hooker. Hidden restrictions AI companies dont usually share what data they used to train their models. One reason is that they want to protect their competitive edge. The other is that because of the complicated and opaque way data sets are bundled, packaged, and distributed, they likely dont even know where all the data came from. They also probably dont have complete information about any constraints on how that data is supposed to be used or shared. The researchers at the Data Provenance Initiative found that data sets often have restrictive licenses or terms attached to them, which should limit their use for commercial purposes, for example. This lack of consistency across the data lineage makes it very hard for developers to make the right choice about what data to use, says Hooker. It also makes it almost impossible to be completely certain you havent trained your model on copyrighted data, adds Longpre. More recently, companies such as OpenAI and Google have struck exclusive data-sharing deals with publishers, major forums such as Reddit, and social media platforms on the web. But this becomes another way for them to concentrate their power. These exclusive contracts can partition the internet into various zones of who can get access to it and who cant, says Longpre. The trend benefits the biggest AI players, who can afford such deals, at the expense of researchers, nonprofits, and smaller companies, who will struggle to get access. The largest companies also have the best resources for crawling data sets. This is a new wave of asymmetric access that we havent seen to this extent on the open web, Longpre says. The West vs. the rest The data that is used to train AI models is also heavily skewed to the Western world. Over 90% of the data sets that the researchers analyzed came from Europe and North America, and fewer than 4% came from Africa. "These data sets are reflecting one part of our world and our culture, but completely omitting others," says Hooker. The dominance of the English language in training data is partly explained by the fact that the internet is still over 90% in English, and there are still a lot of places on Earth where theres really poor internet connection or none at all, says Giada Pistilli, principal ethicist at Hugging Face, who was not part of the research team. But another reason is convenience, she adds: Putting together data sets in other languages and taking other cultures into account requires conscious intention and a lot of work. The Western focus of these data sets becomes particularly clear with multimodal models. When an AI model is prompted for the sights and sounds of a wedding, for example, it might only be able to represent Western weddings, because thats all that it has been trained on, Hooker says. This reinforces biases and could lead to AI models that push a certain US-centric worldview, erasing other languages and cultures. We are using these models all over the world, and theres a massive discrepancy between the world were seeing and whats invisible to these models, Hooker says.

A small songbird soars above Ithaca, New York, on a September night. He is one of 4 billion birds, a great annual river of feathered migration across North America. Midair, he lets out what ornithologists call a nocturnal flight call to communicate with his flock. Its the briefest of signals, barely 50 milliseconds long, emitted in the woods in the middle of the night. But humans have caught it nevertheless, with a microphone topped by a focusing funnel. Moments later, software called BirdVoxDetect, the result of a collaboration between New York University, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and cole Centrale de Nantes, identifies the bird and classifies it to the species level. Biologists like Cornells Andrew Farnsworth had long dreamed of snooping on birds this way. In a warming world increasingly full of human infrastructure that can be deadly to them, like glass skyscrapers and power lines, migratory birds are facing many existential threats. Scientists rely on a combination of methods to track the timing and location of their migrations, but each has shortcomings. Doppler radar, with the weather filtered out, can detect the total biomass of birds in the air, but it cant break that total down by species. GPS tags on individual birds and careful observations by citizen-scientist birders help fill in that gap, but tagging birds at scale is an expensive and invasive proposition. And theres another key problem: Most birds migrate at night, when its more difficult to identify them visually and while most birders are in bed. For over a century, acoustic monitoring has hovered tantalizingly out of reach as a method that would solve ornithologists woes. In the late 1800s, scientists realized that migratory birds made species-specific nocturnal flight callsacoustic fingerprints. When microphones became commercially available in the 1950s, scientists began recording birds at night. Farnsworth led some of this acoustic ecology research in the 1990s. But even then it was challenging to spot the short calls, some of which are at the edge of the frequency range humans can hear. Scientists ended up with thousands of tapes they had to scour in real time while looking at spectrograms that visualize audio. Though digital technology made recording easier, the perpetual problem, Farnsworth says, was that it became increasingly easy to collect an enormous amount of audio data, but increasingly difficult to analyze even some of it. Then Farnsworth met Juan Pablo Bello, director of NYUs Music and Audio Research Lab. Fresh off a project using machine learning to identify sources of urban noise pollution in New York City, Bello agreed to take on the problem of nocturnal flight calls. He put together a team including the French machine-listening expert Vincent Lostanlen, and in 2015, the BirdVox project was born to automate the process. Everyone was like, Eventually, when this nut is cracked, this is going to be a super-rich source of information, Farnsworth says. But in the beginning, Lostanlen recalls, there was not even a hint that this was doable. It seemed unimaginable that machine learning could approach the listening abilities of experts like Farnsworth. Andrew is our hero, says Bello. The whole thing that we want to imitate with computers is Andrew. They started by training BirdVoxDetect, a neural network, to ignore faults like low buzzes caused by rainwater damage to microphones. Then they trained the system to detect flight calls, which differ between (and even within) species and can easily be confused with the chirp of a car alarm or a spring peeper. The challenge, Lostanlen says, was similar to the one a smart speaker faces when listening for its unique wake word, except in this case the distance from the target noise to the microphone is far greater (which means much more background noise to compensate for). And, of course, the scientists couldnt choose a unique sound like Alexa or Hey Google for their trigger. For birds, we dont really make that choice. Charles Darwin made that choice for us, he jokes. Luckily, they had a lot of training data to work withFarnsworths team had hand-annotated thousands of hours of recordings collected by the microphones in Ithaca. With BirdVoxDetect trained to detect flight calls, another difficult task lay ahead: teaching it to classify the detected calls by species, which few expert birders can do by ear. To deal with uncertainty, and because there is not training data for every species, they decided on a hierarchical system. For example, for a given call, BirdVoxDetect might be able to identify the birds order and family, even if its not sure about the speciesjust as a birder might at least identify a call as that of a warbler, whether yellow-rumped or chestnut-sided. In training, the neural network was penalized less when it mixed up birds that were closer on the taxonomical tree. Last August, capping off eight years of research, the team published a paper detailing BirdVoxDetects machine-learning algorithms. They also released the software as a free, open-source product for ornithologists to use and adapt. In a test on a full season of migration recordings totaling 6,671 hours, the neural network detected 233,124 flight calls. In a 2022 study in the Journal of Applied Ecology, the team that tested BirdVoxDetect found acoustic data as effective as radar for estimating total biomass. BirdVoxDetect works on a subset of North American migratory songbirds. But through few-shot learning, it can be trained to detect other, similar birds with just a few training examples. Its like learning a language similar to one you already speak, Bello says. With cheap microphones, the system could be expanded to places around the world without birders or Doppler radar, even in vastly different recording conditions. If you go to a bioacoustics conference and you talk to a number of people, they all have different use cases, says Lostanlen. The next step for bioacoustics, he says, is to create a foundation model, like the ones scientists are working on for natural-language processing and image and video analysis, that would be reconfigurable for any specieseven beyond birds. That way, scientists wont have to build a new BirdVoxDetect for every animal they want to study. The BirdVox project is now complete, but scientists are already building on its algorithms and approach. Benjamin Van Doren, a migration biologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who worked on BirdVox, is using Nighthawk, a new user-friendly neural network based on both BirdVoxDetect and the popular birdsong ID app Merlin, to study birds migrating over Chicago and elsewhere in North and South America. And Dan Mennill, who runs a bioacoustics lab at the University of Windsor, says hes excited to try Nighthawk on flight calls his team currently hand-annotates after theyre recorded by microphones on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes. One weakness of acoustic monitoring is that unlike radar, a single microphone cant detect the altitude of a bird overhead or the direction in which it is moving. Mennills lab is experimenting with an array of eight microphones that can triangulate to solve that problem. Sifting through recordings has been slow. But with Nighthawk, the analysis will speed dramatically. With birds and other migratory animals under threat, Mennill says, BirdVoxDetect came at just the right time. Knowing exactly which birds are flying over in real time can help scientists keep tabs on how species are doing and where theyre going. That can inform practical conservation efforts like Lights Out initiatives that encourage skyscrapers to go dark at night to prevent bird collisions. Bioacoustics is the future of migration research, and were really just getting to the stage where we have the right tools, he says. This ushers us into a new era. Christian Elliott is a science and environmental reporter based in Illinois.