AI, NSA and Facebook

The last few weeks have been "all Trump, all the time." In an effort to return to normalcy, herewith some Bits and Bytes from today.

Will AI kill accountancy? "It’s not easy being a Certified Public Accountant. Trust me, I know. The rules are always changing. Clients are demanding. Busy season seem[s] to go on forever. The competition is tough. Oh, and now it’s about to get much tougher. It’s bad enough that we have to worry about other CPAs and big tax preparation firms. Now we’ve got to worry about IBM’s Watson."

NSA Contractor Steals the TAO. "Federal prosecutors in Baltimore are expected to seek an indictment as early as this week against a former National Security Agency contractor who is accused of carrying out the biggest theft of classified information in U.S. history. The indictment against Harold T. Martin III is expected to contain charges of violating the Espionage Act by 'willfully' retaining information that relates to the national defense, including classified data such as NSA hacking tools and operational plans against “a known enemy” of the United States, according to individuals familiar with the case."

Fighting ISIS with Facebook. "Sometime today, a teenager in Tunis will check his smartphone for the latest violent video from the Islamic State. But the images that pop up first will be of a different genre: young Muslims questioning the morality of terrorists who slaughter innocents and enslave girls for sex. 'Don’t you kill our own Muslim brothers?' a mop-haired youth asks a terrorist recruiter in one animated video showing up on Arabic Facebook accounts in North Africa. 'So much of this, it doesn’t seem right.'”