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Today's Topics:
1. O/t: US consensus on countering China will keep Quad relevant
under Trump: experts (Stephen Loosley)
2. Re: One for the Numerologists and Mystics... (Stephen Loosley)
3. Siri Privacy Breach: Apple To Pay $95 Million Settlement
(Stephen Loosley)
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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2025 15:51:42 +1030
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] O/t: US consensus on countering China will keep Quad
relevant under Trump: experts
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
SCMP .. US-China relations: China Diplomacy:
"US consensus on countering China will keep Quad relevant under Trump: experts"
The security grouping with Australia, Japan and India is unlikely to thrive as
it has under Biden but remains important, observers say
[Photo Caption: The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between the US, Australia,
Japan and India was elevated during President Joe Biden?s term in the White
House to include an annual summit at head-of-state level. Photo: AFP]
By Zhao Ziwen Published: 4:00pm, 3 Jan 2025 Updated: 4:27pm, 3 Jan 2025
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3293247/us-consensus-countering-china-will-keep-quad-relevant-under-trump-experts
Donald Trump?s return to the White House is expected to cast a cloud over the
Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), but Washington?s bipartisan consensus
on countering China will ensure the grouping?s continuing importance, observers
said.
The framework ? between the US, Australia, Japan and India ? which flourished
during Joe Biden?s presidency, could be overshadowed by Trump?s policy focus in
his second term but the Quad allies would remain close to Washington, one
expert noted.
The Quad began as a loose partnership to provide humanitarian and disaster
assistance after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and was formalised in 2007 by
then Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe.
The grouping ceased in 2008 when Australia withdrew during Kevin Rudd?s tenure
as prime minister. It was resurrected in Trump?s first term as a security
grouping, in response to China?s growing influence in the Asia-Pacific.
It became a pillar of Washington?s Indo-Pacific strategy under Biden, who
turned the framework into a head-of-state level mechanism with an annual summit
focusing on maritime security and freedom of navigation ? with China as the
elephant in the room.
On Tuesday, the US State Department published a joint statement with its Quad
counterparts to mark the grouping?s 20th anniversary and reaffirming its vision
of a ?free and open Indo-Pacific? and its support for regional stakeholders.
Beijing was not mentioned, nor were the continuing disputes in the South China
Sea, in the statement which also pledged to continue cooperation on multiple
fronts, from security and climate change, to health, technology and education.
According to Josef Gregory Mahoney, professor of politics and international
relations at East Normal University, the Quad statement should be read ?as a
polite effort to accommodate the uncertainties everyone faces with a second
Trump presidency?.
Trump will not make a solid promise for the framework like his predecessor,
Mahoney said. Instead, he may use the Quad as ?a bargaining chip? in further
deals with China and ?it might ? limp along until someone decides to kill or
revitalise it?.
Former PLA instructor Song Zhongping said that the Quad and other US
multilateral blocs could face a challenging time in the Trump era because of
his isolationist approach.
?Trump will undermine the Quad ? because he will ask the other three nations to
serve US interests more and even pay for his country. His isolationism will
indeed cause more trouble. And [Washington?s] allies will suffer rather than
benefit from it,? he said.
Zhu Feng, executive dean of Nanjing University?s School of International
Studies, expects the mechanism to remain at head-of-state level during Trump?s
presidency, but said that the Quad?s development path remains uncertain.
?The Quad summit will continue under Trump because it is ? a crucial pillar of
the US Indo-Pacific strategy. It not only strengthens US-Japan-India-Australia
cooperation on security issues, but is also important for [cooperation] on
intelligence gathering.?
People should not assume that Trump will make a pivotal policy shift in the
next four years from the alliance system, ?but we have to wait and see how far
the bloc can advance, and whether it can become a so-called Asian version of
Nato?, Zhu said.
Despite the Quad?s rising prestige, its value has been questioned even during
Biden?s presidency because of its lacklustre practical operations and loose
organisational nature.
The Quad?s limited cohesion has also been tested, with India?s ambiguous
attitude towards Russia casting a shadow on the bloc, along with Japan and
Australia?s improving ties with China.
According to Collin Koh, a researcher from Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore, the Quad will continue to hold up during Trump?s second term, with
at least its current slate of cooperation initiatives.
?We would expect the member states ? to spruce up their bilateral and
multilateral engagements, perhaps as much as a strategic hedge as for practical
reasons of efficacy,? he said.
Koh added that despite India, Japan and Australia pursuing closer bilateral
ties with both Washington and Beijing, their close alliance with the US would
remain stable, and they would be seeking only a practical cooperation with
China.
Ben Zhao Ziwen covers China diplomacy. He majored in Arabic studies and
journalism. He worked for Caixin in Beijing and spent a year in the UAE.
--
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2025 16:12:59 +1030
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [LINK] One for the Numerologists and Mystics...
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
David writes,
> On Wednesday, 1 January 2025 12:57:09 PM AEDT sylvano wrote:
>
>> One of the perplexity results doesn't add up:
>>
>> **Sum of Consecutive Primes**
>> Interestingly, 2025 can be represented as the sum of five consecutive
>> prime numbers: 397 + 401 + 409 + 419 + 421 = 2025[7]. This connection
>> to prime numbers adds to its number-theoretical significance.
>>
>>
>> 397 + 401 + 409 + 419 + 421 = 2047
>
> However I notice the sum of the first five prime numbers beginning one prime
> earlier (389)
> does add up to 2015, thus: 389 + 397 + 401 + 409 + 419 = 2015 and the
> difference (10) can
> easily be found by differencing nearby primes.
>
> It would be interesting to know if this erroneous result reflects some
> internal glitch in Perplexity's
> architecture, and how it arose.
>
> And my best wishes to Linkers for a peaceful, if interesting, 2025 whatever
> its' numerical significance!
> I'd like to live for the next 100 years just to see how it all turns out....
>
> _David Lochrin_
AI Is Usually Bad At Math. Here?s Why It Matters
By John Werner, an MIT Senior Fellow. Updated Oct 7, 2024
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwerner/2024/10/07/ai-is-usually-bad-at-math-heres-what-will-happen-if-it-gets-better/
We?re seeing some new developments in AI models that are shedding light on one
of the technology?s most prominent gaps ? its relative inability to do math
well.
Some experts note that AI is dysfunctional at math. It tends to produce wrong
answers, and can be slow to correct them.
The people at OpenAI are working on new models that are more geared towards
solving math problems.
But it?s interesting to think about why there?s this deficit in the first place:
Some engineers like to talk about tokenization, and the use of data in large
language models. What it seems to boil down to is that the models themselves
are geared toward language, so they can produce. Shakespearean works of
literature, but aren?t as good at solving math problems
But another element of this has to do with the higher-level human thought
involved in doing math, and how it works.
Now, computers are great at calculating numbers in a deterministic way. You?re
never going to go wrong consulting a computer on a sum, for instance: just ask
the calculator. But when it comes to automation, the AI entities that we?re
familiar with have trouble.
In the earlier models, ChatGPT and other utilities tended to produce, not
accurate math answers, but answers that represented what might come next in
language ? as LLMs typically do. At present, a lot of this has been solved for
simple addition, multiplication, etc. and ChatGPT can solve basic equations by,
say, moving like terms around, but this only obscures the deeper issue: that
the AI isn?t using the right methods.
?Math is really, really hard for AI models,? writes Melissa Heikkila at our own
MIT Technology Review. ?Complex math, such as geometry, requires sophisticated
reasoning skills, and many AI researchers believe that the ability to crack it
could herald more powerful and intelligent systems. Innovations like
AlphaGeometry show that we are edging closer to machines with more human-like
reasoning skills. This could allow us to build more powerful AI tools that
could be used to help mathematicians solve equations and perhaps come up with
better tutoring tools.?
So although AI might get there, it?s starting from a deficit.
You might think about a human mathematician as using a higher-level cognition
that you could call the ?striving? or ?searching? phenomenon ? that they?re
looking for novel ways to solve problems, and going out on a limb,
experimenting, trying new things, and not going back to the same drawing board
each time.
By contrast, when working in iterations, AI tends to ?snap back? to what it was
doing before. That?s the brittleness of many of these models ? that they are
not as explorative as a human brain would be.
So in light of that, is math problem-solving creative?
And this brings up another question ? to solve the problem of AI not being able
to do math well, do we apply quantity, or quality?
In other words, if you add more processing power, will the LLM or AI agent
eventually learn to be more explorative and experimental ? or is that something
that?s innate in the human mind in a way that?s not inherent to AI?
If the latter is true, then we?re not going to be able to make AI super good at
math problems without really directing it in a granular way.
As for creativity in math, let?s look at this article at the University of
British Columbia web site, and some of the human traits that go into math
problem-solving. Authors cite:
Tolerance to information that is incomplete, or poorly defined
Constructing one?s own internal language where mathematical concept
indispensable for solving the problem are set out and explained
Courage, and questioning commonly accepted rules and principles in order to
find new and or atypical ways of solving the mathematical problem Ease in
analyzing new information and ways of solving the problematic situation
presented in the task at hand
Autonomy, and perseverance in searching for possible solutions to the
problematic situation.
The ability to critically assess attempts one another peoples to solve the
problem.
The acceptance of variability in applying the various problem-solving strategies
All of these point to, again, a higher-level set of cognitive skills that are
more based on the old axiom ?try, try again.?
So yes, it seems like math is a creative pursuit after all.
It?s that striving and effort to set out on a new trajectory that?s useful in
this kind of thinking.
It makes you think of the popular Robert Frost line:
?Two road diverged in a wood, and I / I took the one less traveled by/ and it
has made all the difference.?
Keep an eye on these models as humans try to make them better at math, because
the result is going to give us a lot of insight into how these systems mimic
our own human behavior.
John Werner has created a career out of bringing ideas, networks and people
together to generate powerful results. John is a Managing Director and Partner
at Link Ventures.
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2025 19:12:17 +1030
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Siri Privacy Breach: Apple To Pay $95 Million
Settlement
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Siri Privacy Breach: Apple To Pay $95 Million Settlement Amid Spying Claims
By Moin Roberts-Islam Jan 3, 2025
https://www.forbes.com/sites/moinroberts-islam/2025/01/03/siri-privacy-breach-apple-to-pay-95m-settlement-amid-spying-claims/
Apple to pay $95 million settlement over claims that Siri spied on users
without consentgetty
In a significant development that underscores the intricate balance between
technological innovation and user privacy, Apple has agreed to a $95 million
settlement.
This resolution addresses allegations that its voice-activated assistant, Siri,
inadvertently recorded users' private conversations without consent over a
decade-long period. Apple has vehemently denied any wrongdoing in court and
since the settlement of the case.
The settlement, pending judicial approval, could see U.S.-based Apple product
owners receiving compensation for up to five Siri-enabled devices, provided
they attest under oath to accidental activations during confidential
conversations. Amid speculation around Apple?s long-awaited Vision Pro device
ceasing production, this has been a turbulent few months for the technology
giant.
Background Of The Siri Allegations
The controversy traces back to July 2019, when a whistleblower revealed that
Siri was frequently activated unintentionally, leading to the recording of
private conversations. These recordings were subsequently reviewed by Apple
contractors for quality control purposes. The Guardian reported that such
inadvertent activations captured sensitive information, including confidential
medical discussions, private business dealings and more intimate personal
moments. The whistleblower noted that accidental triggers were common, with
sounds as innocuous as a zipper being misinterpreted as the "Hey Siri" wake
phrase.
[Photo caption: Multiple Siri-enabled devices are included in the alleged
privacy breach]
Details Of Apple?s Settlement
The class-action lawsuit, initiated in the wake of these revelations, has
culminated in the settlement, which, pending judicial approval, could
compensate U.S.-based Apple product owners up to $20 per device for up to five
Siri-enabled devices. Eligible devices include iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches,
MacBooks, iMacs, HomePods, iPod touches and Apple TVs owned or purchased
between Sept. 17, 2014, and Dec. 31, 2024.
To qualify, users must attest under oath that they accidentally activated Siri
during a conversation intended to be confidential or private. As pointed out on
Reuters, the $95 million payout equates to only nine hours of profit for Apple,
based on its income for the last year. Many feel that the insignificance of
this amount may not act as a meaningful deterrent in future.
Many have commented that the lawyers acting on behalf of the plaintiffs of this
lawsuit could receive a portion of the total settlement amount in fees and
expenses, leaving an even smaller payout overall for claimants.
Apple's Response And Siri Policy Changes
In response to the initial allegations, Apple issued an apology in August 2019
and temporarily suspended its Siri grading program. The company pledged to
implement changes, including no longer retaining audio recordings and allowing
users to opt in to sharing their recordings for quality-control purposes. By
October 2019, with the release of iOS 13.2, Apple introduced settings that
enabled users to delete their Siri history and opt out of sharing audio
recordings.
Implications Beyond Siri For User Privacy
This case highlights the broader implications of voice-activated technologies
on user privacy. While voice assistants offer convenience, they also pose risks
when inadvertent activations lead to the recording and potential dissemination
of private conversations. The fact that such recordings were accessible to
human contractors exacerbates concerns about unauthorized access to personal
information.
The settlement also brings attention to the challenges users face in
controlling their personal data. Despite the introduction of opt-in features
and the ability to delete recordings, many users remain unaware of these
settings or the extent of data collection by their devices. This situation
underscores the need for greater transparency and user education regarding data
privacy practices.
Broader Industry Context
Apple is not alone in facing scrutiny over voice assistant privacy issues.
Other tech giants, including Google and Amazon, have encountered similar
allegations concerning their voice-activated services. Notably, a similar
lawsuit is pending against Google's voice assistant in the San Jose,
California, federal court, indicating that concerns about inadvertent
recordings and data privacy are industry-wide challenges. The law firms
representing the plaintiffs in this case are the same as those in the Apple
case.
The $95 million settlement serves as a reminder of the delicate balance between
technological advancement and the imperative to protect user privacy. As
voice-activated assistants such as Apple?s Siri become increasingly integrated
into our daily lives, it is crucial for technology companies to prioritize
transparent data practices and empower users with control over their personal
information.
This case underscores the importance of vigilance in the digital age, when the
conveniences of technology must be carefully weighed against the rights to
privacy and consent.
--
------------------------------
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