IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

When You Gain Something, You Can Lose Something - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

There is a Ben's kosher restaurant on Northern Boulevard at the corner of Glen Cove Road where we have now and then stopped for lunch. It's decor was for many years based on a pseudo-old-time New York City theme. One part of that was this pair of chandeliers that looked like upside-down Chrysler Buildings:

Part of the left chandelier fell off some time ago but I can remember things looking like this for many years. The other day we stopped in and discovered that as part of a larger renovation, those two Chrysler Building light fixtures were gone:

I guess achieving an updated look was the goal and I further guess that the goal has been achieved, but this doesn't look anymore like a reminder of the city where I spent a lot of time growing up.

(Sigh)

Absolute Zero - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Those involved in the sciences have long known and have long informed the general public that there is no such thing in the physical universe as "absolute zero", but I must beg to differ. My level of confidence in the security of on-line financial services is absolute zero.

Please consider the following self explanatory URLs:

https://abc7chicago.com/online-banking-zelle-app-protect-from-ransomware-bank/11748085/

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/18/former-amazon-employee-convicted-in-capital-one-hack.html

https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/webster-bank-warns-of-text-message-scam/1972398/

There are many URLs where one can find articles about security risks and security breaches at well known and well respected financial institutions where supposedly, the most up to date security measures are, or at least are supposed to be, in place.

Even if some "Super-Duper Financial Services Corporation" can offer the most advanced, gold plated, utterly impervious anti-hacking resources at its own organization, I myself am using just a lowly PC into which something (WinZip, ESet, Norton or whatever) has been installed. Maybe the company computer systems are impervious, but my own PC most definitely is not.

For full disclosure, I have made occasional purchases on line when there was absolutely no other option and in all but one incident, things came out okay. That one incident is a story in its own right, but as few times as I have done so, perhaps a half-dozen times in the last ten or twenty years, I am admittedly paranoid enough to do so again as least often as possible.

Additionally, I keep two credit card accounts, both of them decades old, one of which is on file at my medical prescriptions service. That account will NEVER be used for any on-line transaction because if a security problem were to arise, medicine availabilities could be put at risk.

Despite alternative available measures for acquiring vital medications on an emergency basis, such a scenario still has the potential to be life threatening.

I am not open to argument or refutation on the matter. As many reassurances as have been advanced to me by various persons, I simply leave the decisions of others, along with any consequences of those decisions, to those others who make them.

AI in the Bathtub - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Well, it sure looked that way!

When our older son was very small, we kept lots of toys at hand for bath time. Among them was a wind up toy seal, sort of along the lines of these two:

Our toy seal had a wind up key serving a spring loaded motor that would cause the two flippers on either side of the torso to spin around and around which would propel the toy seal through the water. It was an impressive toy! Each wind up would yield two or three minutes of flipper action.

When the toy seal reached the edge of the bath water, it would dither and bounce around as if it were intelligently looking for the best place to go next along the boundary between the water and the tub. It was very easy to think of that toy as being sentient and making decisions for itself which of course, it was NOT doing. It only looked that way.

We are today seeing all kinds of news releases about AI or "Artificial Intelligence". Some authors seem to ascribe decision making sentience to ChatGPT and to the other AI named "Sydney". The very phrase "Artificial Intelligence" tends to provoke that kind of observer response.

However impressive the AI outputted materials may seem to be, however close to passing the Turing Test they might be appearing to approach, there is no more reason to ascribe living awareness to AI than there was to ascribe living awareness to the toy seal.

We only need to keep ourselves aware of what our devices are capable of doing, either for us or to us.