News in the Category "Articles"
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Leading Public-Interest Technologist Sees National Research Resource as a Potential Foundation for an “AI Public Option”
As a chorus of transatlantic public interest groups calls for governments to build their own bedrock artificial intelligence systems, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Bruce Schneier says the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource backed by key U.S. policymakers could lay the necessary groundwork.
"It’s a start, and [could] serve as a foundation for an AI Public Option," Schneier told Inside AI Policy referring to the NAIRR, a pilot for which is included in the Oct. 30 executive order on artificial intelligence.
The NAIRR has also been highlighted in a series of closed-door AI "insight forums" hosted by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) who has said there was agreement with top Republicans to spend …
Bruce Schneier’s Plan to Reinvent Democracy
I have a confession to make: I am a complete Bruce Schneier fanboy. I have been following the cryptographer, Harvard lecturer and privacy specialist for many years, and was delighted to meet him face-to-face at last week’s RSA Conference in San Francisco, where he gave a keynote (registration required) on how to reinvent democracy using cybersecurity concepts. His oeuvre spans decades with numerous books along with his own blog that publishes interesting links to security-related events, strategies and failures that you should follow.
Schneier began his talk by saying that “the political systems that were invented in the 18…
Hacking Procedure
A long time ago I joined Bruce Schneier on a panel on cyber security. I spoke on legal issues, developing a theme on self-defense which I later turned into a paper which won a little prize. Schneier was the real expert though, knowledgeable not just on technical details, the state of the art, but also the human factor and organizational causes of insecure computer systems. He’s since come out with a series of books on computer security, privacy, and related issues, and publishes a fairly regular “Crypto-Gram” newsletter.
Hacker’s Mind
Schneier’s latest book is “A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend them Back.” This plays off the old notion of the hacker—the one I grew up with—as one who delights in understanding and manipulating systems to generate unexpected results- or at least results unintended by the system’s developer. A hacker is not a crook, but an exploder of limits. “Hacks follow the rules of a system but subvert their intent,” Schneier writes in his March 15, 2023 Crypto-Gram. Hacks aren’t necessarily illegal, although some are. Some are normalized and eventually accepted as a feature of the system. Banks that play fast and loose with reserve requirements might lead Congress to make the practice illegal (or the opposite: Congress might bail out the banks and allow bankers to keep their bonuses). Tax loopholes which plainly subvert the public intent of the tax system are often subsumed as an acceptable practice…
Bruce Schneier Wants to Recreate Democracy
Arguing that American democracy has been hacked, the computer security expert doesn’t want to just fiddle on the margins when it comes to re-envisioning what a new 21st-century American democracy should look like.
Like many people cooped up at home during COVID-19, Bruce Schneier had a pandemic project. In this case, it was a new book called A Hacker’s Mind, which encourages readers to apply the hacker mentality to our various social, political, economic, and legal systems. Schneier’s work on the book sparked deeper thinking about the suitability of our centuries-old democratic processes and institutions and whether they were still up to the task in our ever-increasing polarized and fractured political climate.
“Democracy has been hacked, mostly for the worse,” Schneier, a computer security specialist and privacy expert who is a faculty affiliate at the Ash Center, is quick to note. “Our democracy in the United States is really just not suited to the task anymore.” But if American democracy is no longer up to snuff in Schneier’s mind, the question quickly arises: What should a new American democracy look like?…
Hacking to Harm and Heal Democracy
In a new book, Bruce Schneier details how tricks, exploitations, and loopholes are benefiting those in power — and how a ‘hacking’ mindset can help us set things right.
From tax codes to the NFL rulebook, the world is made up of procedures, systems, and settings—all of which can be hacked.
In his newest book “A Hacker’s Mind: How the Rich and Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend Them Back,” cybersecurity expert and HKS faculty affiliate Bruce Schneier asks readers to expand their simple definition of hacking beyond just computer and IT systems but to consider how nearly everything around us can be hacked—for better or worse. With chapters covering everything from airline frequent flier miles to elections and redistricting, Schneier pushes us to examine how people use and abuse system vulnerabilities to get ahead—and how by adopting a hacking mindset, we can find and fix these weaknesses…
Why AIs Will Become Hackers
At a 2022 RSA Conference keynote, technologist Bruce Schneier asserted that artificial intelligence agents will start to hack human systems—and what that will mean for us.
“Nice to see you all again,” Bruce Schneier told the audience at his keynote for the in-person return of RSA Conference, taking off his trademark cap. “It’s kinda neat. Kinda a little scary.” Schneier is a security technologist, researcher, and lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School. He has a long list of publications, including books from as early as 1993 and as recent as 2019’s We Have Root, with a new one launching in January 2023. But he’s best known for his long-running newsletter Crypto-Gram and blog Schneier on Security. And his upcoming book is about hacking…
When AI Becomes the Hacker
Bruce Schneier explores the potential dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) systems gone rogue in society.
For the past couple of years, renowned technologist and researcher Bruce Schneier has been researching how societal systems can be hacked, specifically the rules of financial markets, laws, and the tax code. That led him to his latest examination of the potential unintended consequences of artificial intelligence on society: how AI systems themselves, which he refers to as “AIs,” could evolve such that they automatically – and inadvertently – actually abuse societal systems.
“It’s AIs as the hacker,” he says, rather than hackers hacking AI systems…
Bruce Schneier Wants You to Make Software Better
Producing effective code means understanding more than just programming
Security technologist Bruce Schneier has a warning: “What you code affects the world now. Gone are the days when programmers could ignore the social context of what they code, when we could say, ‘The users will just figure it all out.’ Today, programs, apps, and algorithms affect society. Facebook’s choices influence democracy. How driverless cars will choose to avoid accidents will affect human lives.”
Schneier should know, because synthesizing and explaining the impact of technology is what he does. “I work at the intersection of security, technology, and people, mostly thinking about security and privacy policy . I don’t have a single job,” says Schneier. “Instead, I do a portfolio of related things.”…
#ISC2Congress: Modern Security Pros Are Much More than Technologists, Says Bruce Schneier
Speaking in the opening keynote of the virtual (ISC)2 Security Congress, renowned security technologist and best-selling author Bruce Schneier discussed the public-interest aspects of technology.
In particular, he explored the ethics of data privacy and security, whilst also outlining how today’s cybersecurity professionals are more than technologists; the work they do affects society as a whole.
“In cybersecurity, government access to encrypted communications has been the subject of a 25-year long debate. On the one side, there are police claiming they are going dark and need access to encrypted data in order to solve crimes. On the other side, security experts say it is impossible to provide that access without making systems insecure.”…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.