Forget about Artificial General Intelligence, AI agents are going to rock your world in the coming weeks and months, if fewer companies are paying ransoms, why has the total amount paid almost doubled over last year, a testing device called Flipper is banned in Canada and a viral story about toothbrushes being compromised by malware
Forget about Artificial General Intelligence, AI agents are going to rock your world in the coming weeks and months, if fewer companies are paying ransoms, why has the total amount paid almost doubled over last year, a testing device called Flipper is banned in Canada and a viral story about toothbrushes being compromised by malware is revealed to be an error in translation.
All this and more on this slip of the tongue edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host Jim Love, CIO of IT World Canada and TechNewsDay in the US.
OpenAI has hinted that they are on the brink of releasing AI agents, that will transform the way we handle complex tasks on our devices.
These agents, still under wraps regarding their launch timeline, promise to automate tasks that have traditionally required human intervention, could be the thing that reshapes the job landscapes in certain sectors.
Imagine an AI capable of transferring data from documents to spreadsheets, filling out and processing expense reports, or managing entries into accounting software.
That level of automation and more already exists. It allows the AI to perform tasks just like a human – mouse clicks, cursor movements, and text input across various applications.
Up until this point, communication between AI and other applications has been by programmatically developed functions and structured Application Program Interfaces (APIs).
This new breed of agents wouldn’t need that. It can simply learn and navigate through the web, autonomously devising and executing strategies to achieve result for the end user.
This is going to raise all kinds of issues. How to get and secure permission for the AI to take control of devices. As these devices store huge amounts of private data, the issues of privacy and data security, where the files are stored, and how much of this private interaction can be used to train future AI models.
While the world awaits what OpenAI will do, this is not theoretical. There are actual working applications using agents already in the marketplace, one of which is the Rabbit R1 unveiled at CES this year.
I’ll be doing a special piece on this in ITWorldCanada.com as part of my Best of YouTube series. Watch for it in the next day or two.
Sources include: Android Authority
In 2023, ransomware attacks not only intensified but also demonstrated a strategic shift towards high-profile targets, including critical infrastructure sectors such as healthcare, education, and government. All this according to a new report from a firm called Chainanalysis.
The year saw a notable surge in ransomware activity, with attackers exploiting vulnerabilities in widely used software like MOVEit, affecting organizations from the BBC to British Airways.
