“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England cannot enter – all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!”
The shorthand for this principle is the maxim “each man’s home is his castle,” which has become a foundational idea supporting freedom of thought and expression. These words would later inspire the structure of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the due process clause of the Fifth.
A person’s right to privacy is more important than ever, and people deserve to have the companies that handle their personal identifiable information protect and safeguard their data.Entefy’s enFacts are illuminating nuggets of information about the intersection of communications, artificial intelligence, security and cyber privacy, and the Internet of Things. Have an idea for an enFact? We would love to hear from you.
This true story about a bird is pretty out of the ordinary. A carrier pigeon by the name of Cher Ami was awarded one of France’s highest military honors, the Croix de Guerre.
Cher Ami relayed a message for American troops caught behind enemy lines in a battle that took place during World War I. The brave bird was able to deliver a life-saving note that was shorter than a tweet. Because of his efforts, 194 soldiers were saved. Cher Ami is nothing short of a war hero. No matter how hard it might be for most people to properly pronounce “Croix de Guerre.”
Entefy’s enFacts are illuminating nuggets of information about the intersection of communications, artificial intelligence, security and cyber privacy, and the Internet of Things. Have an idea for an enFact? We would love to hear from you.
The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote in the novel Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It’s an idea that comes to mind when analyzing the significant and rapid impact that artificial intelligence is having at companies and within industries. Because while the specifics of these changes are unique to the dynamics of the individual industry, AI’s impact is happening everywhere all at once. The question of whether an industry is a happy or unhappy family depends on your perspective.
“Artificial intelligence” utilizes a cluster of technologies like machine learning, neural networks, computer vision, and natural language processing. What each area has in common with the others is the core building blocks of AI itself, algorithms that power systems with the capability to learn.
The programs most of us are most familiar with—email applications, spreadsheets, word processors, and so on—are engineered to link every input (for instance, a click on the interface in a specific location) to an output (like creating a new blank document). Each possible input is laboriously documented in a line of code and all of these lines of code together define everything a user can do with the program. By way of illustration, the Microsoft Office suite of applications has ballooned to more than 40 million lines of code.
Artificial intelligence works differently. AI systems are powered by algorithms engineered to find a solution to a problem without the programmer specifying all the steps to follow to solve the problem. So, for example, an algorithm can be pointed at the problem of how best to navigate through city streets without requiring specific lines of code that describe how to handle every possible path through those streets.
But much of the excitement about AI emerges from its ability to get better at solving problems over time. To learn. Unlike a traditional computer program, which only improves with more or better lines of code, a well-crafted AI algorithm can learn over time to get better at solving problems. So in an area like business intelligence (BI), an AI-powered BI system can provide insights about a company’s operations out of the box and then get better and better at delivering those insights as it analyzes the company’s performance data over time.
We’ve written quite a lot about how AI algorithms are transforming industries large and small. Here are some highlights of our findings:
Insurance. What’s distinctive about the insurance industry’s adoption of AI is how these companies intend to collect their data. Insurers are turning to sensors to collect data directly from individuals, including technologies like in-home monitors and wearables. And whenever data collection intersects with a real person, privacy questions emerge. See AI and insurance: How much privacy would you trade for a cheaper policy?
Education. Since the advent of the personal computer, digital technologies have long been heralded as the next big thing in education. But artificial intelligence is unlike any digital technology the education system has encountered. What will it mean for parents if their children can learn just as well, if not better, from the comfort of their homes instead of traditional classrooms? See Artificial intelligence may transform education, but are parents ready? and Old school no more: AI disrupts the classroom.
Professional sports. Proponents of automated officiating in professional sports say that AI could reduce corruption and improve the accuracy of referees’ decisions. And it seems likely that the technology will play an increasingly prominent role in athletics. But the transition won’t occur overnight. See What would the Super Bowl look like with AI referees and other smart technologies?
Health care. The World Health Organization has estimated that there is a global shortfall of approximately 4.3 million doctors and nurses, with poorer countries disproportionally impacted. Around the globe, researchers are studying how AI might become a new tool in the caregiver tool kit, from diagnosis to personalized medical advice to insights into genetics. See Patients are about to see a new doctor: artificial intelligence.
Law. While AI judges aren’t likely to be sitting on benches anytime soon, the adoption of artificial intelligence solutions in the legal system is happening and happening rapidly. AI’s impact on the practice of law looks like it will begin inside firms. Where it goes from there and how much it will impact people involved in lawsuits remains to be seen. See Will AI-powered robot lawyers still use cheesy billboard ads?
Online dating.That time- and labor-intensive process we call “dating” is characterized by a notoriously high failure rate. Developments in the use of AI in online dating systems raise the question of whether machines are better matchmakers than we are. We look at some of the ways advanced artificial intelligence is being developed to take automated matchmaking to a new, hands-off level. See Game, set, match. Is there room for AI in the game of love?
Be sure to follow us on your favorite social platform to stay in the loop on emerging developments in artificial intelligence, communication, data privacy, and cyber security.
There are many ways a parent can teach and mentor a child. One of the most common takes place at home, with a parent reading to a child or helping them solve a particularly difficult math problem. But teaching moments can take place at work, too. An idea that Entefy supports by providing team members the flexibility to bring their children to work.
Around here, we believe in the sort of work-life fulfillment that grows out of a healthy integration of work and everything else. For parents—especially families with two working professional parents—this sort of integration can be a challenging tight-rope walk. Balancing the many responsibilities of work with the many obligations of family life. So to support our team members and their families, we encourage Entefyers to bring their children to work when doing so can help out at home—think teacher work days and summer vacations. The company has found that by supporting our team members this way, everyone wins: team members get extra support and the company benefits from happier, less stressed, more productive employees.
We thought we’d share the story of Entefyer Daryoush and his daughter Donya. Daryoush is Entefy’s UI/UX developer and one of the company’s earliest hires. He has been bringing his 11-year-old daughter Donya to the office from time to time since he started working here four years ago. During her recent Spring Break, Donya spent two days as an honorary Entefyer, helping around the office when she wasn’t working on her school assignments. Inspired by watching Daryoush and Donya interact, we asked them both about their experiences being together in the office.
Daryoush explained how bringing Donya to the office during a school break has many benefits:
“As a father, I always feel the stress of not having enough quality time to spend with my daughter. Being able to bring Donya to work has not only created this precious time, it has also lowered my overall stress. If I wasn’t able to bring Donya to work, I would only see her in the mornings and on some evenings before she goes to bed. Weekends get so busy, too, that there’s not always enough one-on-one time. By spending time with Donya in the office, I’m more attuned to how she’s feeling throughout the day. This has helped me understand her better and be a better parent.”
There is another important benefit to families. Joining a parent at the office exposes the child to real-world work environments. Daryoush explained:
“There are so many things kids learn when they go to work with their parents. It’s real-world experience that they won’t learn in school. It gets their minds thinking about what they might want to do in the future. When Donya is at Entefy, my role is to lead by example and help her see that work can be both fun and meaningful.”
This can have unexpected benefits:
“She gets inspired by everyone being productive around her and I get really excited when I see Donya getting involved around the office. The other day, she asked to learn how to paint in Photoshop, and I had the opportunity to teach her. When it was time to leave for the night, she didn’t want to go home! She enjoys being a part of the team and that makes me really happy.”
Luckily since Donya was in the office, we got the chance to ask her about her own experience:
“When I have a day off, I ask to come to Entefy because I get to spend more time with my dad. I love to learn about what he is doing and I like helping him with his work. One time we made a picture of a face out of a bunch of triangles. It was really fun!
I watch him at work and always think about how cool design is. My dad does a lot of things and I especially love photography. I want to be a photographer! I’m now more excited to grow up and have a job. I don’t feel work is boring when you have a lot of people who are cheerful all the time.”
Happy team members, happy kids, and…happy companies? Yes, indeed. There is convincing evidence that mingling work and family delivers tangible benefits to companies. In fact, happy employees experience a 12% boost to their productivity by getting more done without any measurable loss in quality. As we see with Daryoush and Donya, that’s been our experience too.
In the words of one technology analyst, the legal profession hasn’t really changed since the time of Charles Dickens. And like the never-ending Jarndyce and Jarndyce lawsuit in Dickens’ Bleak House, today’s courtrooms are overburdened and justice often frustratingly slow. Advances in artificial intelligence are changing these long-entrenched realities, and changing them fast. But just what does this mean for lawyers, judges, and the many individuals involved in court cases and other legal proceedings each year?
The jury trial is just one aspect of the U.S. judicial system (the courts) and the legal industry in general (the firms). And while AI judges aren’t likely to be sitting on benches anytime soon, the adoption of artificial intelligence solutions in the legal system is happening rapidly. AI’s impact to the practice of law looks like it will begin inside firms. Where it goes from there and how much it will impact people involved in lawsuits remains to be seen.
Teaching lawyers new tricks
It’s worth noting just how large the U.S. legal services market is. Data from Thomson Reuters, which consolidates law firm revenue and corporate spending on internal legal departments, pegged the market at $437 billion. Nearly half a trillion dollars are spent annually on everything from contracts to intellectual property to litigation.
At risk is the revenue model common to many large law firms. These firms assign recent law school graduates to extremely labor-intensive projects like reviewing documents related to litigation. These lawyers review and analyze massive volumes of documents to identify, for example, particular emails that are relevant to a claim in a case. The law firm, which bills its clients on a per-lawyer, per-hour basis, leverages that work into a highly profitable revenue stream.
So when headlines like “Artificial intelligence disrupting the business of law” appear, a lot of people take notice. “One question lurking in all this is whether someone can come in and do to law what Amazon did to bookselling,” mused technology consultant Richard Susskind.
One global law firm, Allen & Overy, launched an AI-powered system to automatically draft contracts used by investment managers and traders in derivative markets. The firm estimates that its system, called MarginMatrix, can dramatically outpace a human lawyer: “Where one document would normally take three lawyer hours to complete manually, MarginMatrix can deliver this in three minutes. Using the system, the time taken to manually handle the 10,000 contracts on average that any major bank holds can be reduced from over 15 years in lawyer hours to just 12 weeks.”
The ultimate impact of AI in the legal industry may be quite positive. And it’s a story we see in other industries as well. By automating labor-intensive, low-value tasks, artificial intelligence systems free up lawyers and other legal professionals to concentrate on complex, high-value projects. But when between 13% to 23% of the average lawyer’s time could be automated, the financial impact to the industry is an open question.
The case for AI in the courtroom
The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees “the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.” It cannot, however, guarantee a perfectly fair trial, an effective jury, or an infallible judge.
Humans make mistakes, and the courtroom is no exception: Juries make the wrong decision approximately 1 in 8 times. Put in human terms, that means more than 12 out of 100 defendants are wrongly convicted or acquitted. It’s not the sort of error rate we would accept in say, manufacturer defects. If 12 out of 100 new cars broke down a mile from the lot, consumers would be outraged and companies would lose money.
This error rate becomes even more difficult to accept when we turn to death penalty convictions. Here, data suggests that 1 in every 25 people sentenced to death in the United States are innocent of the crime they were found guilty of committing.
In broad terms, a trial involves the evaluation of a set of facts, the comparison of those facts to a set of rules, and a decision on whether a violation has occurred. Which sounds like a system that an intelligent machine could manage. A properly designed artificial intelligence system could in theory speed up trials and increase consistency in court decisions, which in turn could lead to improved accuracy and fairness.
This is not entirely speculative. The legal AI system called ROSS is an artificially intelligent attorney hired by one of the largest law firms in the U.S. In the UK, researchers are working on an AI that can replace the need for a judge by examining evidence and deciding right and wrong to predict the outcome of trials. “The AI ‘judge’ has reached the same verdicts as judges at the European court of human rights in almost four in five cases.”
Another AI system, a chatbot called DoNotPay, provides legal advice on issues like parking tickets, reimbursement for travel delays, and housing evictions. The system not only provides legal advice, but is able to generate documents that assist users in their legal disputes. While its interface and capabilities are limited, it is nonetheless a working example of machine-automated lawyering.
A solution to gridlocked courts
A defendant’s right to a speedy trial by a jury of his or her peers is a cornerstone of American jurisprudence. Yet courts are clogged with pending cases and humans are fallible, often swayed by emotion. Artificial intelligence agents could conceivably provide accuracy and impartially, but the jury is still out on whether they can become capable of moral and ethical reasoning.
Taken as a whole, the impact of artificial intelligence on the legal system appears likely to be pervasive. From the individual involved in a legal dispute, to the attorneys and judges handling the suit, and on up to the world’s largest global law firms, AI is poised to play a major role in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the legal system.
And that efficiency impact may be the key to the country’s overburdened courts. In 2015, there were an estimated 30,000 Federal civil suits that had been pending for three or more years; and that was the fifth year out of ten for which that was true. Overall, an estimated 330,000 civil suits were pending that same year, up 20% from 2004. Lengthy trials and an overall shortage of judges form a bottleneck that delays legal resolutions and compromises the right to a speedy trial. AI stands ready as the tool to alleviate the gridlock of justice.
Entefy was excited to host 30 future entrepreneurs from Howest, University College of West Flanders in Belgium. These computer science, business, and sports students visited Entefy during their tour of Silicon Valley technology companies. In between site visits, the group explored Golden Gate Park, Yosemite National Park, and hit the beach at Santa Cruz.
Entefyers welcomed the visitors with warm conversation before everyone settled in for the discussion. Entefy’s Co-Founder Brienne talked about establishing the company and its early development. Alston, Entefy’s CEO and Co-Founder, spoke next, taking the students on a tour of Entefy’s approach to user data, machine learning, natural language processing, and context awareness and how it’s differentiated in the market.
Following a lengthy Q&A, Entefyers and guests mingled and posed for a group photo. We wish these rising stars safe travels on their return to Belgium.
Visits like these are another way we support the mission of STEM education and digital technology innovation.
From 2013 to 2020, the digital universe—the sum of all the websites, videos, documents, photos, messages, and data of all sorts—will grow by a factor of 10x.
What does this explosion of bits and bytes look like in physical terms? In this video enFact, we cover the amazing growth in the world’s data and express its mind-boggling size in a real-world terms.
Entefy’s enFacts are illuminating nuggets of information about the intersection of communications, artificial intelligence, security and cyber privacy, and the Internet of Things. Have an idea for an enFact? We would love to hear from you.
Is there room for the humble pen and paper in the digital world? After all, imagine how much knowledge would be lost if humans hadn’t invented writing. From clay tablets to quill and ink to QWERTY, the externalization of information—recording what’s in our heads via writing—and the ability to reproduce it en masse have been essential to humanity’s technological, scientific, and cultural advancement.
So as the sun sets on the era of longhand, it’s worth asking whether we are leaving anything important behind. And in fact recent research suggests that the answer is a resounding “yes.” For all of its advantages in speed and efficiency, typing on a keyboard is disadvantaged in one critically important area: comprehension. The answer to the question “keyboard or notebook?” comes down to how deeply you want to learn the information recorded. In this era of lifelong learning, where knowledge acquisition plays an active part in our lives long after we’ve ceased being students, the reasons behind longhand’s everlasting importance are highly relevant. Don’t recycle that notebook just yet.
A little way-way-back story
Long before hunting and pecking, the philosopher Socrates expressed doubts about the value of handwriting (as in, putting pen to paper to memorialize thoughts and ideas). In conversations with Phaedrus, Socrates claimed that writing cannot possibly express thoughts with the same clarity as speaking can, and should therefore not be relied upon. He says to Phaedrus, “he who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful…will not, when in earnest, write them in ink, sowing them through a pen with words, which cannot defend themselves by argument and cannot teach the truth effectually.” In other words, to really own a concept you need conversation to state the idea, argue in its favor, and respond to criticism. The written word lacks that dynamism, and so in his view shouldn’t be relied upon. But Socrates’ query is not so much about longhand versus speech, as it is about whether writing primes your mind to acquire and utilize information. Which is certainly a relevant consideration in our digital world.
So now consider that handwriting has long been in decline. Does that mean humanity is doomed to lose the entirety of our accumulated knowledge? No, of course not. Handwriting is simply being replaced by its digital cousins, keyboards and touch screens. While typing on a laptop keyboard or tapping a thumb over a screen are how we prefer to record information today, good old-fashioned handwriting holds advantages over its digital counterparts. What might we be giving up when we abandon pen and paper? To answer that, we’ll start in the classroom.
The clickety clack of distraction
Look inside a university classroom today and you’ll see about 2 out of 3 students taking notes using laptops. One study of the effects of laptop use in the classroom found that 64% of students used their laptop during at least one class. Another analysis of laptop use in higher education found that 72% students surveyed felt that laptops were “helpful or very helpful” in supporting classroom learning. If the problem you’re trying to solve is taking more notes faster, laptops are the ideal solution.
The laptop is a tool, and with any tool, how well you use it determines what you can produce with it. One study on the effects of laptop multi-tasking found laptop-using students spent 42% of their time in class doing things unrelated to the class. Frequent multi-tasking using apps unrelated to the class had a statistically significant negative impact on academic performance. 90% of students in another study of law student laptop use during class engaged in unrelated activities for at least 5 minutes, with 62% of them strongly distracted.
Even putting distraction aside, the challenge with notetaking by keyboard is that it reduces the need to think about the information you’re recording, which impacts learning and comprehension.
Writing sticks around
Research into the advantages of longhand versus computerized notetaking found that written note-takers remembered more and had a better understanding of concepts. The researchers hypothesized that, thanks to the slower nature of writing, these students were forced to perform real-time prioritization and summarization of the material they were recording. In comparison, students who type process information in a shallow way, without deeper thought regarding what it means or what’s most important.
There is also research into “digital amnesia” suggesting that when we find and store facts and notes digitally, the lasting imprint on our memory is where to find that information, not what the information is. This effect has a positive side in that we can concern ourselves less with the details and concentrate more on the larger concepts the facts pertain to. Which would be great if we never had to, say, argue in favor of something or convince someone of an idea. Both activities require a working knowledge of the supporting facts as well as the core concepts. Yet the trend towards externalizing knowledge is clear: digital devices are fast becoming our chosen gatekeepers to facts.
The slow word movement
Is there a way to reap the benefits of both worlds? The speed of digital notetaking and the memory boost of longhand? Surely we want to remember more of the information we consume, to store more of the facts we need to support our theories and ideas. Yet we also likely want to rely upon our devices not only as a means to back up what we know but to efficiently organize the wealth of information we end up collecting.
Typing is a fast method for recording information and one that requires less mental effort, which certainly makes it appropriate in circumstances when time is in short supply and a comprehensive account is needed. However, writing would seem the better option if we want to start our relationship with any new information on the right foot. While writing may be slower, its very slowness is what forces you to focus on what’s most important and to summarize what you want to remember into its most basic form. It is the exquisite slowness of longhand that etches knowledge—and understanding—into your memory most effectively.
One of the questions that drove our research in Entefy’s Digital Interaction & Modern Communication report was straightforward: Just how many different digital devices do professionals use to communicate and collaborate? The answer was interesting because of what it tells us about how professionals are finding their edge these days. The survey queried a representative sample of 1,500 U.S. professionals evenly distributed in age from 18 to 65 and geographically distributed across the country in small and large cities alike. Survey respondents were from dynamic professional environments like the Healthcare, Technology, Financial Services, and Legal industries where technology use can lead to personal and organizational advantages.
The survey results were indeed telling. On average, respondents make use of 3.4 different devices (computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc.) with 62% of those who completed the survey using between 3 and 4 technology devices. Just 2.7% of respondents get by with only 1 device.
The data suggests that digital technology is in many ways stuck in an awkward middle school stage—so much potential, yet so much more development still to go. Our research uncovered evidence that professionals are using many different devices in their work, suggesting that the tools we’re all using (hardware and software both) aren’t quite “there” yet. After all, professionals create and manage highly individualized digital ecosystems of devices, apps, and services to meet the demands of their work. Necessity is, apparently, the mother of device use.
You can read more about Entefy’s survey on modern communication in the complete research report.
Privacy and data security are becoming more and more personal. Quite literally. Because safeguarding your private digital data is increasingly your own responsibility.
The challenge is that recent data suggests people are taking fewer precautions, not more, to protect their digital identities—a trend called “security fatigue.” And this is a trend that we all need to resist. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published an informative cyber privacy study late last year. Interestingly, its findings around “security fatigue” were accidental, not an intended goal of the original study.
Here’s what happened: NIST is the U.S. government’s measurement standards laboratory, responsible for setting standards in areas like quality control benchmarking, information technology guidelines, and even time itself through its atomic clock. NIST researchers wanted to investigate computer security behaviors, so they conducted a qualitative study focused on understanding a broad range of views on cyber security and online privacy. The study’s 40 test subjects ranged in age from their 20’s to 60’s and represented multiple professions and geographies. Questions covered topics like e-commerce, online banking, and familiarity with cyber security terms.
While analyzing the interview data, a surprising pattern emerged: “We weren’t looking for fatigue in our interviews, but we got this overwhelming feeling of weariness throughout all of the data,” said one of the study’s co-authors. That weariness is what the researchers called “security fatigue,” describing it as:
“…weariness [with online security] leads to feelings of resignation and loss of control. These reactions can lead to avoiding decisions, choosing the easiest option among alternatives, making decisions influenced by immediate motivations, behaving impulsively, and failing to follow security rules.”
You may be tempted to ask: If major corporations can’t protect themselves from hackers, how can I? It’s a reasonable question. Especially when we read again and again about trackers collecting your sensitive private data without permission and countless other assaults on your privacy. But it’s the wrong question to ask. After all, doing nothing about your data security can jeopardize your personal finances, health data, and social shares—the many areas of your life that create digital data.
To help you combat feelings of hopelessness and recklessness when it comes to online privacy, we’ve collected a roundup of guides that describe practical steps to protect the digital you. Here it goes:
2. The consumer privacy nonprofit Fight for the Future created an interactive guide to protecting smartphones, laptops, and desktops. This resource is designed to be accessible to computer users of any knowledge level.
3. Following the revelations about C.I.A. hacking, the New York Times produced a guide to protecting iPhone and Android smartphones as well as smart TVs, routers, and personal computers.
And, because a little levity is a good thing, here’s an article about how the founder of Cards Against Humanity intends to buy and publish Congress’ browser history.
Reading through these guides and articles, 3 suggestions appear again and again:
Use a unique, strong password for every account. Because that becomes difficult fast, help yourself by using password management software and two-step verification, where available.
Update software frequently. Be vigilant about updating and patching the operating system software on all of your devices as well as all of your apps. Turn on auto-update options wherever possible.
Evaluate whether cloud services protect your data sufficiently. Not all cloud services are created equal. Evaluate the security of the cloud services you use on a one-by-one basis, in terms of policies and technical capabilities. Understand the risks of storing important personal data in the cloud, and consider local, encrypted storage options as alternatives to cloud services.
Given all that’s happening with online privacy these days, now is not the time for anyone to be nodding off in their digital security blanket.
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