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Black Hat Talk About ‘Time AI’ Causes Uproar, Is Deleted by Conference

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Re: Black Hat Talk About ‘Time AI’ Causes Uproar, Is Deleted by Conference

#62

Giving a sponsored talk at a conference that attracts a lot of experts in the field is an interesting attempt at hacking, had they gotten away with it they would have had that much more bragging rights while trying to land investor money. Outright scams are pretty rare but I've come across them a couple of times in the last decade, it always amazes me that investors would even begin to consider them.

In an era of kickstarter scams I'm not sure that there's that much of a difference between this and "getting away with it". I get that vetting sponsored talks is hard from a BH perspective but... just looking at how the presenter downplays this in their twitter responses, I'm pretty sure they'll use it for bragging rights anyway. Just like they apparently claim to have published something with an arxiv paper.

It is pretty doubtful that anybody will remember this incident in a month when they pitch it to a non-technical crowd, worst case for them is using a slightly different name to avoid superficial search engine due diligence.

Re: Black Hat Talk About ‘Time AI’ Causes Uproar, Is Deleted by Conference

#63
post #6

This site is absolute cancer on mobile. Their domain should be blacklisted from HN.

Vice? Looks great on mine.

On desktop/chrome, it almost gave me a seizure, as the Twitter video element is "shaking" ever so slightly, and when scrolled more down, the rest of the page elements where shaking/vibrating too. Definitely altered my psyche, which is interesting.

Re: Black Hat Talk About ‘Time AI’ Causes Uproar, Is Deleted by Conference

#64

The company has issued a "statement regarding recent allegations made at Black Hat 2019 [0]. For anyone interested, the statement links to the guy's paper [1] "where he identified the first Infinite Prime Number prediction pattern". > Utilizing multi-dimensional encryption technology, including time, music’s infinite variability, artificial intelligence, and most notably mathematical constancies to generate entangled…

How much does your bullshit detector hit with their promo video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd_2HwAmge8

It's pretty amazing, it feels far fetched even for a sc-fi... They claim to have discovered something that simultaneously renders all prime number based encryption algorithms obsolete and dangerous, opened a door to a new unified theorem in physics life and everything, has something vaguely to do with music and time and a new class of prime numbers, and for the dystopian icing on the cake: only they with their new proprietary algorithm can they protect all your important information... oh also AI of course, because AI.

Re: Black Hat Talk About ‘Time AI’ Causes Uproar, Is Deleted by Conference

#65
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does your bullshit detector hit with their promo video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd_2HwAmge8

I mean - this is a pretty impressive video. Bullshit, but impressive. How much does something like this cost to get made? This isn't exactly "I know a guy who has After Effects" level production.

The video effects are beautiful. This could easily be the intro of a successful Netflix series. I watched it completely (4:40 min) because the graphics and all the mumbo-jumbo mesmerized me.

Re: Black Hat Talk About ‘Time AI’ Causes Uproar, Is Deleted by Conference

#66
post #9

I also suspect the guy (Robert Grant) is a conman, but whatever scheme he is running is quite elaborate: https://strathspeycrown.com/team Does anyone have an insight as to what their endgame is, and where their funding is coming from?

Having a team page like that is your first red flag. https://strathspeycrown.com/subsidiary-companies-investments... > "Strathspey Crown is a visionary portfolio of transformational businesses, focused on the most complex sectors of healthcare, energy, and technology." This seems to be the parent company, check out some of the goofy things they claim to been involved in. Quotes like "changing the paradigm", "the inte…

I think it’s funny that the portfolio page has a quite by Daniel Pink. Pink is like a pop culture, Malcolm Gladwell type. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it also doesn’t really provide ethos from an established authority.

Picking quotes is interesting, I think, as it gives a sense of the author and what the author values.

Re: Black Hat Talk About ‘Time AI’ Causes Uproar, Is Deleted by Conference

#67
post #61

I don't get why we give this so much attention. The authors are clearly kidding, mentally ill, or have a purpose beyond my understanding (this can't be the easiest way to launder money).

The purpose is to make money selling snake oil, not anything more complicated than that.

Re: Black Hat Talk About ‘Time AI’ Causes Uproar, Is Deleted by Conference

#68

The company has issued a "statement regarding recent allegations made at Black Hat 2019 [0]. For anyone interested, the statement links to the guy's paper [1] "where he identified the first Infinite Prime Number prediction pattern". > Utilizing multi-dimensional encryption technology, including time, music’s infinite variability, artificial intelligence, and most notably mathematical constancies to generate entangled…

My bullshit detector was already super high at "Time AI". Might as well have gone all in and call it "Time Blockchain AI".

Re: Black Hat Talk About ‘Time AI’ Causes Uproar, Is Deleted by Conference

#69
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean - this is a pretty impressive video. Bullshit, but impressive. How much does something like this cost to get made? This isn't exactly "I know a guy who has After Effects" level production.

The video effects are beautiful. This could easily be the intro of a successful Netflix series. I watched it completely (4:40 min) because the graphics and all the mumbo-jumbo mesmerized me.

one key from the past and one key from the _future_

Re: Black Hat Talk About ‘Time AI’ Causes Uproar, Is Deleted by Conference

#70
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does your bullshit detector hit with their promo video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd_2HwAmge8

It's pretty amazing, it feels far fetched even for a sc-fi... They claim to have discovered something that simultaneously renders all prime number based encryption algorithms obsolete and dangerous, opened a door to a new unified theorem in physics life and everything, has something vaguely to do with music and time and a new class of prime numbers, and for the dystopian icing on the cake: only they with their new pr…

As far as I can tell/guess, if there is actually any product to what they claim, they are just taking standard encryption techniques and making them worse by applying buzzwords. Relating to my non-expert laymans understanding of cryptography, the process is:

- Generate primes. Practically, I understand that it's usually generating a number that's extremely likely to be prime. It sounds like they are using "not a multiple of 24" for this part (which is both obvious and obviously bad, for obvious reasons)

- Multiplex data with a sequence off of the original factorization, which is only as secure as the prime but slows down brute-force attacks. It sounds like they are using sampled waveforms of this-maybe-prime to AI-generated music (topical!) as the multiplexing sequence.

It basically sounds like cargo-cult mathematics - all the best mathematics are beautiful and use symmetry _ergo_ creating something with symmetry and beauty must be good mathematics.

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