Machine Learning Era, No Chance for Error
Education Cybersecurity Weekly is a curated weekly news overview for those who are concerned about the Education industry and Education data breach. It provides brief summaries and links to articles and news across a spectrum of EdTech. Learn about machine learning era.
Among students, depression is associated with a mirthless monster, running into the classroom, grabbing student’s hand and dragging him away to watch sad TV series. However, scientists have found a way to deal with it. Pearson, one of the world’s largest publishers, became a target for cybercriminals. The data breach affected nearly 13,000 school and university accounts.Tsunami of cybercrimes destroying education sector
Security experts never stop assuming that cybercrimes won’t end in the education sphere and we’ve found one more prove.
Pearson, one of the world’s largest publishers, became a target for cybercriminals. The data breach affected nearly 13,000 school and university accounts. According to Scott Overland, Pearson’s director of media relations, “the exposed data was isolated to first name, last name, and in some instances may include the date of birth and/or email address.”
The upward trend of ransomware attacks took over a school district in northeastern Oklahoma. Now admins of Broken Arrow Public Schools are working with cybersecurity experts to eliminate the consequences of network interruption. What is noteworthy, the number of ransomware attacks since 2013 has already reached 200 incidents.
Finally, Higher Ed institutions are still vulnerable to cyber threats. As stated by The Telegraph, leading British universities including Oxford and Cambridge have not turned on DMARC authentication for their domains that helps to protect users against phishing emails.
Students’ depression to be measured: machine learning opportunities
Among students, depression is associated with a mirthless monster, running into the classroom, grabbing student’s hand and dragging him away to watch sad TV series. However, scientists have found a way to deal with it.
Machine learning, as an AI application, provides system the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience. MIT researchers have invented a neural-network model that is able to analyze raw text and audio data to reveal speech patterns that may signal depression.
Moreover, this model can be developed as a smartphone application, so that user’s data will be monitored for emotional and mental decline and in case of distress system will inform someone appropriate.
Weather forecast by ML: thunderstorms become more predictable
Researchers of the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the Aalto University have joined together to implement machine learning tools in weather forecasting. The result of scientific work is especially beneficial for electricity companies: now, basing on ML algorithms, they are able to predict the severity of storms and which of them may cause blackouts.
Storms are made up of many elements that can indicate how damaging they can be: surface area, wind speed, temperature and pressure, to name a few. By grouping 16 different features of each storm, we were able to train the computer to recognize when storms will be damaging.
Roope Tervo, a software architect at the Finnish Meteorological Institute
Chinese AI experiment can reshape the way the world learns
If in the last centuries Chinese were one step ahead and invented such common things as paper, the magnetic compass, printing, silk and gunpowder, today this list can be expanded with a grand experiment in AI education.
Last year, China invested over $1 billion in AI education. While millions of students now use some form of AI to learn, both tech giants and startups have jumped in. Indeed, experts have emphasized three things that led to the AI boom:
- AI ventures, aiming to improve learning effectiveness and other aspects of the education process, are provided with tax breaks and other incentives. This also makes them attractive for VCs.
- Chinese academic competition and the “gaokao”, a college entrance exam, motivate students to take charge of their learning and make parents pay for every opportunity that may help their children get ahead.
- The final reason is economic – Chinese entrepreneurs are interested in refining their algorithms and have large masses of data to do it, despite an ethical aspect of data privacy.