Optical fibre cables in the UK are under attack. Meta sues a Vice President for stealing information when he moved to a competitor. ChatGPT uses in a day enough electricity to power 17,000 households and is your connected car ratting you out to your insurance company?
All this and more on the “what else does my car know about me” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love, CIO of IT World Canada and TechNewsDay in the US.
Network providers in the UK are urging the government to help protect against an increasing number of physical attacks on fiber infrastructure.
These attacks, ranging from cutting through fiber-optic cables to setting fires in access chambers, have caused significant disruptions, leaving entire streets or communities offline until repairs can be made.
The group is looking for greater police engagement and tougher sentences for perpetrators.
The attacks, thought to be acts of vandalism or carried out by individuals with grievances against specific providers, have raised concerns about the security of the UK’s digital infrastructure.
Some incidents have been attributed to 5G protesters, who used to attack cell towers who might now be targeting any form of digital infrastructure.
There have been reports of significant damage to networks requiring extensive repairs.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has responded, stating that the UK has one of the toughest telecoms security regimes globally and is working closely with providers and authorities to ensure the security and resilience of telecoms network infrastructure.
And in case you don’t think it can happen here, we did a series showing attacks by 5G protesters on Canadian and US cell towers and our fibre infrastructure is fairly exposed to anyone who knows where to look.
Sources include: The Register
Meta is suing its former Vice President of Infrastructure, Dipinder Singh Khurana, accusing him of stealing proprietary and confidential information. The lawsuit, filed in late February in a California State Court, alleges that Khurana misappropriated data related to Meta’s data centers, supply chain, and employee compensation details, and took this information to a new employer at a Stealth AI startup, where he now holds a similar position.
The suit claims Khurana had access to highly sensitive documents and information at Meta, which was restricted to a limited number of employees. The unauthorized disclosure of such information, Meta argues, could significantly harm the company’s competitive advantage in critical areas such as AI, data center technology, supply chain operations, and talent retention.
Meta accuses Khurana of several legal violations, including Breach of Contract, Breach of Duty of Loyalty, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, Unjust Enrichment, and violation of California’s Computer Data Access and Fraud Act.
Specifically, during his final days at Meta, Khurana allegedly requested confidential agreements with suppliers from subordinates, obtaining sensitive pricing information and preliminary pricing for specific computing hardware.
Furthermore, the lawsuit claims Khurana took a “Top Talent” dossier containing detailed information about Meta’s top performers, including performance reviews and compensation data. This information, according to Meta, offers an insider view of the company’s compensation decisions and key insights into the employees’ levels, performance, and skills.
Meta’s complaint also mentions that Khurana prepared a slide deck for his new employer, emphasizing a proactive approach rather than a learning-as-you-go mentality, which Meta suggests may have contributed to his alleged wrongful behavior.
We’ve mentioned this in the past, but this caught my eye.
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular chatbot, reportedly consumes over half a million kilowatt-hours of electricity daily to respond to approximately 200 million requests, according to The New Yorker. This level of consumption is significantly higher than the average U.S. household, which uses around 29 kilowatt-hours daily. When comparing ChatGPT’s daily electricity usage to that of an average household, ChatGPT uses more than 17,000 times the amount of electricity.
The potential for increased electricity consumption by the AI industry raises concerns, especially as generative AI technologies become more widely adopted. For instance, if Google were to integrate generative AI technology into every search, it could lead to an annual consumption of about 29 billion kilowatt-hours. This amount surpasses the yearly electricity consumption of countries like Kenya, Guatemala, and Croatia.
The rapid growth of the AI sector and its considerable variability in operation make it challenging to precisely estimate its overall electricity consumption. However, research by a data scientist at the Dutch National Bank suggests that by 2027, the AI sector could consume between 85 to 134 terawatt-hours annually, potentially accounting for half a percent of global electricity consumption.
This comparison puts into perspective the high electricity usage of some of the world’s most energy-intensive businesses, with Samsung using close to 23 terawatt-hours, Google a little more than 12 terawatt-hours, and Microsoft slightly over 10 terawatt-hours for their data centers, networks, and user devices.
Sources include: Business Insider
Connected cars are sharing more data with insurance companies than customers might realize, according to a report by the New York Times.
This sharing of data, particularly about customer driving habits, is not just an invasion of privacy, it could potentially impact insurance rates and privacy.
While some automakers, like Tesla, openly monitor driving behavior for their insurance services, the transparency and consent around data sharing vary across manufacturers.
General Motors, has been specifically mentioned for sharing data with third parties with little or ambiguous documentation. GM’s OnStar Smart Driver service, which tracks customer driving habits, does not clearly disclose that the collected statistics may be shared with databases accessible to insurance companies.
This has allegedly led to instances where owners of high-performance GM vehicles faced insurance rate hikes after taking their cars to tracks, possibly without realizing they were enrolled in the service at the dealership as part of a larger OnStar bundle.
Other automakers, such as Subaru, Acura, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, and Mitsubishi, also engage in data collection and sharing with insurance databases, but they require explicit customer consent for insurance tracking or limit the shared data to odometer readings unless used for generating insurance quotes.
As our cars become another device that collects a lot of data on us, we many need to be particularly aware of the data our connected car may be collecting and sharing, especially if you own a vehicle from manufacturers like GM.
Customers may need to read the terms of any connected services they opt into, to protect their privacy and maybe avoid unexpected consequences with their insurance rates.
Sources include: Autoblog.com
That’s our show for today. Hashtag Trending goes to air five days a week with a daily news show and on the weekends we have an interview show we creatively named the Weekend Edition.
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