Welcome to the January 10, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• AI Trained to Predict Gene Activity
• 'Refrigerator' Gives Quantum Computers Auto-error Correction
• ‘Worst in Show’ CES Products Risk Data, Cause Waste
• Medical Misinformation Easily Injected into LLMs
• 41% of Companies Plan to Reduce Workforces by 2030 Due to AI
• Drone Reveals Secrets of 3,000-Year-Old 'Mega Fortress' in Caucasus
• EU Court Fines EU for Breaching Data Protection Law
• OpenAI's New o3 Model Freaks Out CS Majors
• NATO Sends Fleet to Guard Baltic Sea Cables
• Taiwan Faced an Average 2.4 Million Cyberattacks per Day in 2024
• Self-Driving Cars Don’t Do Snow. The Solution May Be Smarter Tires
• Smart Ring Lets Users Control Home Devices
• FCC Launches 'Cyber Trust Mark' for IoT Devices

AI Trained to Predict Gene Activity

Scientists led by a team at Columbia University trained an AI algorithm to predict how the genes inside a cell will drive its behavior. The General Expression Transformer (GET) algorithm was trained using an approach similar to how ChatGPT was taught the grammar of language, learning along the way the underlying rules governing genes.
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'Refrigerator' Gives Quantum Computers Auto-error Correction

A quantum “refrigerator” developed by Simone Gasparinetti at Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology and colleagues ensures that a quantum computer’s calculations start off error-free, without requiring intervention or additional hardware. The researchers designed two qubits and one qutrit from tiny superconducting circuits. Interactions between the three components were engineered so that when the target qubit had too much energy, which caused errors, heat automatically flowed out of it and into the two other elements.
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‘Worst in Show’ CES Products Risk Data, Cause Waste

e-commerce site iFixit released its fourth annual 'Worst in Show' awards for products showcased at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. Ultrahuman's Rare Luxury Smart Ring was named “least repairable”; it costs $2,200 and has a battery that cannot be replaced without destroying the device. Bosch’s Revol crib was panned for collecting "excessive" data about babies. “We’re seeing more and more of these things that have basically surveillance technology built into them," said iFixit's Liz Chamberlain.
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Medical Misinformation Easily Injected into LLMs

Large language models (LLMs) are compromised once misinformation accounts for 0.001% of training data, New York University researchers found. The team used GPT 3.5 to produce "high quality" medical misinformation that was then inserted into The Pile, a commonly used database for LLM training. The resulting LLMs not only produced misinformation on their targeted topics, but also on other medical topics.
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41% of Companies Plan to Reduce Workforces by 2030 Due to AI

About 41% of employers worldwide intend to downsize their workforce by the end of this decade as AI automates certain tasks, according to a World Economic Forum survey of hundreds of large companies. About three-quarters of respondents said they plan to reskill/upskill their workers between 2025 and 2030 to better work alongside AI.
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Drone Reveals Secrets of 3,000-Year-Old 'Mega Fortress' in Caucasus

Researchers at the U.K.'s Cranfield University used drones to assess Dmanisis Gora, a 3,000-year-old fortress in the Caucasus mountains, which was found to be nearly 40 times bigger than previously thought. Cranfield's Nathaniel Erb-Satullo said the drone took nearly 11,000 pictures, which advanced software converted to high-resolution digital elevation models and composite pictures that show every point as if you were looking straight down at it.
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EU Court Fines EU for Breaching Data Protection Law

The EU General Court has ruled against the European Commission, determining that it transferred the personal data of a German citizen to the U.S. without appropriate safeguards, in violation of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). When registering for a conference, the individual used the "Sign in with Facebook" option on the EU login webpage. The subsequent transfer of the user's IP address to Meta Platforms in the U.S. is not permitted under the GDPR.
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OpenAI's New o3 Model Freaks Out CS Majors

Some computer science (CS) majors have expressed concerns that AI will leave them without a job, pointing to OpenAI's new o3 reasoning model. One user on X said, "CS grads might honestly be cooked," while another user said they "might need to pivot." Georgia Institute of Technology AI Hub's Pascal Van Hentenryck said AI will not replace the need for computer scientists, but rather alleviate the need for them to work on "easy and tedious tasks."
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NATO Sends Fleet to Guard Baltic Sea Cables

NATO is deploying 10 ships to the Baltic Sea to protect underwater infrastructure, particularly energy and data cables, from sabotage attempts. This follows several recent disruptions in the region, including four broken telecommunications cables. As part of the effort, the U.K.-led Joint Expeditionary Force said it will use AI to enhance ship traffic monitoring.
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Taiwan Faced an Average 2.4 Million Cyberattacks per Day in 2024

A report from Taiwan's National Security Bureau revealed that the island's Government Service Network faced an average of 2.4 million cyberattacks per day in 2024, up from 2023's daily average of 1.2 million. Taiwan's telecommunications, transportation, and defense agencies were among those most targeted. The report indicated China's cyber forces were responsible for the majority of the attacks, some of which coincided with Chinese military drills around Taiwan.
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Self-Driving Cars Don’t Do Snow. The Solution May Be Smarter Tires

Icy road conditions are a barrier to wider roll-outs of self-driving cars. Chris Helsel, chief technology officer at Goodyear Tire & Rubber, said the automated emergency braking systems in today's models are the primary issue. At CES 2025, Goodyear unveiled a prototype smart tire technology, developed in partnership with the Dutch Organization for Applied Scientific Research, that uses information about the vehicle’s tires along with weather information pulled off vehicle cameras to improve calculations of how long it would take to brake in certain conditions.
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Smart Ring Lets Users Control Home Devices

A smart ring developed by researchers at the University of Washington can control smart devices, providing an alternative to voice commands. The IRIS ring features a small camera that users can aim at a smart device, then click the built-in button, which sends an image of the device via Bluetooth to the user's phone, which controls the device. The ring may be used to make device adjustments, or to operate gradient controls.
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FCC Launches 'Cyber Trust Mark' for IoT Devices

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched a cybersecurity safety label for Internet of Things (IoT) consumer devices. The U.S. Cyber Trust Mark includes a logo and a QR code that directs consumers to security information about the product, including the support period, whether automatic software patches and security updates are provided, and information about changing default passwords and ensuring secure device configuration.
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