Recent advances in deep generative models have greatly expanded the potential to create realistic synthetic health datasets. These synthetic datasets aim to preserve the characteristics, patterns, and overall scientific conclusions derived from sensitive health datasets without disclosing patient identity or sensitive information. Thus, synthetic data can facilitate safe data sharing that supports a range of initiatives including the development of new predictive models, advanced health IT platforms, and general project ideation and hypothesis development. However, many questions and challenges remain, including how to consistently evaluate a synthetic dataset's similarity and predictive utility in comparison to the original real dataset and risk to privacy when shared. Additional regulatory and governance issues have not been widely addressed. In this primer, we map the state of synthetic health data, including generation and evaluation methods and tools, existing examples of deployment, the regulatory and ethical landscape, access and governance options, and opportunities for further development.

Over the past years, Machine Learning-as-a-Service (MLaaS) has received a surging demand for supporting Machine Learning-driven services to offer revolutionized user experience across diverse application areas. MLaaS provides inference service with low inference latency based on an ML model trained using a dataset collected from numerous individual data owners. Recently, for the sake of data owners' privacy and to comply with the "right to be forgotten (RTBF)" as enacted by data protection legislation, many machine unlearning methods have been proposed to remove data owners' data from trained models upon their unlearning requests. However, despite their promising efficiency, almost all existing machine unlearning methods handle unlearning requests independently from inference requests, which unfortunately introduces a new security issue of inference service obsolescence and a privacy vulnerability of undesirable exposure for machine unlearning in MLaaS. In this paper, we propose the ERASER framework for machinE unleaRning in MLaAS via an inferencE seRving-aware approach. ERASER strategically choose appropriate unlearning execution timing to address the inference service obsolescence issue. A novel inference consistency certification mechanism is proposed to avoid the violation of RTBF principle caused by postponed unlearning executions, thereby mitigating the undesirable exposure vulnerability. ERASER offers three groups of design choices to allow for tailor-made variants that best suit the specific environments and preferences of various MLaaS systems. Extensive empirical evaluations across various settings confirm ERASER's effectiveness, e.g., it can effectively save up to 99% of inference latency and 31% of computation overhead over the inference-oblivion baseline.

Machine unlearning (MU) is gaining increasing attention due to the need to remove or modify predictions made by machine learning (ML) models. While training models have become more efficient and accurate, the importance of unlearning previously learned information has become increasingly significant in fields such as privacy, security, and fairness. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of MU, covering current state-of-the-art techniques and approaches, including data deletion, perturbation, and model updates. In addition, commonly used metrics and datasets are also presented. The paper also highlights the challenges that need to be addressed, including attack sophistication, standardization, transferability, interpretability, training data, and resource constraints. The contributions of this paper include discussions about the potential benefits of MU and its future directions. Additionally, the paper emphasizes the need for researchers and practitioners to continue exploring and refining unlearning techniques to ensure that ML models can adapt to changing circumstances while maintaining user trust. The importance of unlearning is further highlighted in making Artificial Intelligence (AI) more trustworthy and transparent, especially with the increasing importance of AI in various domains that involve large amounts of personal user data.

A Microsoft manager claims OpenAI's DALL-E 3 has security vulnerabilities that could allow users to generate violent or explicit images (similar to those that recently targeted Taylor Swift). GeekWire reported Tuesday the company's legal team blocked Microsoft engineering leader Shane Jones' attempts to alert the public about the exploit. The self-described whistleblower is now taking his message to Capitol Hill. "I reached the conclusion that DALL·E 3 posed a public safety risk and should be removed from public use until OpenAI could address the risks associated with this model," Jones wrote to US Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA 9th District), and Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D). GeekWire published Jones' full letter. Jones claims he discovered an exploit allowing him to bypass DALL-E 3's security guardrails in early December.

An Iran-backed militia group in Iraq says it is suspending attacks on U.S. troops after a drone attack killed three soldiers early Sunday, but the Department of Defense is casting doubt on those claims. The Iraq-based Kataeb Hezbollah said Tuesday it was suspending "military and security operations against the occupying forces to avoid any embarrassment for the Iraqi government." Gen. Ryder speaks during a press briefing at the Pentagon on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024 in Washington. The group is one of multiple Iranian proxies in the region that are believed responsible for carrying out attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq, Syria, and, most recently, Jordan over the past several months. The groups say the attacks are in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel in its ongoing offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza and the mounting death toll of Palestinian civilians.

A group of scientists from across the U.S. claim to have created the first artificial intelligence capable of generating AI without human supervision. North Korea has been developing artificial intelligence across various sectors, including in military technology and programs that safeguard nuclear reactors, which could create international threats, according to a new report. The authoritarian regime has used AI to develop wargame simulations and has collaborated with Chinese tech researchers, according to a report by 38 North, a publication for policy and technical analysis of North Korean affairs. The AI advancements and foreign collaboration could lead to sanction violations and leaked information, the report stated. North Korea has been rapidly developing artificial intelligence for a myriad of civilian and military uses, according to a new report.

On Sunday, January 28, The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group that includes the militias Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba among others, claimed responsibility for a drone attack that killed three US military personnel and injured 34 others in a base in northeastern Jordan, near the Syria border. In the media coverage of the attack, it was repeatedly mentioned that these militias have launched 165 attacks on US troops – 66 in Iraq and 98 in Syria – since October 2023. While it helps put the attack in context, this is a misleading figure. This conflict began much earlier than last October, and thus the total number of attacks the US has faced from these militias is actually much higher. Indeed, Sunday's drone attack was just the latest episode in an undeclared war between the United States and Iran-affiliated Iraqi Shia militias that has been raging across the region for more than five years. More than six years ago, in October 2017, in an article published on this very page, I predicted that US President Donald Trump's controversial decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the "Iran nuclear deal", would result in attacks by Iran-backed Iraqi militias on US forces in Iraq and across the region.

Hulu ran an anti-Hamas ad that appears to be made using artificial intelligence to show an idealized version of Gaza--claiming this paradise destination could exist if not for Hamas. The 30-second spot, opening like a tourism ad, shows palm trees and coastlines. There are five-star hotels and children playing. People dance, eat, and laugh, while a voiceover encourages visitors to "experience a culture rich in tradition." But it suddenly shifts, turning the face of a smiling man into a grimacing one.

Former ISS commander Terry Virts joined'Fox & Friends' to discuss the significance of the mission as the American rocket heads to the moon for the first time in 50 years. NASA's retired Space Shuttle Endeavour was carefully hoisted late Monday to be mated to a huge external fuel tank and its two solid rocket boosters at a Los Angeles museum where it will be uniquely displayed as if it is about to blast off. A massive crane delicately began lifting the orbiter, which is 122 feet long and has a 78-foot wingspan, into the partially built Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center at the California Science Center in Exposition Park. The building will be completed around Endeavour before the display opens to the public. The 20-story-tall display stands atop an 1,800-ton concrete slab supported by six so-called base isolators to protect Endeavour from earthquakes.

Oneida and Shawn Sanders remember their daughter, 24-year-old Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, as a goal-oriented and competitive person who loved serving her country. The parents of one of the U.S. soldiers killed in a drone strike in Jordan spoke out Tuesday morning about the loss of their daughter, as they await a phone call from President Biden. Kennedy's parents, Oneida and Shawn Sanders joined "Fox & Friends" to discuss the unexpected loss and how they want America to respond to the deadly attack that took their daughter's life. "As a grieving parent, I would not want to see any other parent go through what we're going through right now, but given the circumstances, our child and the others who lost their lives are considered heroes in this situation," Oneida said.