Showing 1 - 10 of 10
Travel scheme farce
Oped, Editorial, Published on 07/07/2025
» The rollout of the "Tiew Thai Khon La Krung" campaign, or Thailand Travel Co-pay scheme, last week has proved to be unmitigated disaster, with no resolution in sight. This embarrassing episode reflects not only gross incompetence, but entrenched political pettiness among policy-makers.
The rise of AI in political warfare
News, Parmy Olson, Published on 07/05/2024
» This year promises to be a whopper for elective government, with billions of people -- or more than 40% of the world's population -- able to vote in an election. But nearly five months into 2024, some government officials are quietly wondering why the looming risk of AI hasn't, apparently, played out. Even as voters in Indonesia and Pakistan have gone to the polls, they are seeing little evidence of viral deepfakes skewing an electoral outcome, according to a recent article in Politico, which cited "national security officials, tech company executives and outside watchdog groups". AI, they said, wasn't having the "mass impact" that they expected. That is a painfully shortsighted view. The reason? AI may be disrupting elections right now, and we just don't know it.
Profiting on faith
Oped, Postbag, Published on 27/08/2022
» Re: “Keeping the faith”, (Business, Aug 22). Absent any supporting statistics, let us take it on faith as reported that “Large numbers of Thais are turning to superstition to help make sense of an increasingly fraught and unstable world”. But is that really an excuse for business to cash in by pandering to wild claims of dubious merit?
Does govt fear 'fake news', or the truth?
Oped, Wasant Techawongtham, Published on 12/06/2021
» Fake news is the virus of the internet. It grabs your attention and you tend to share it among your circle of friends, and some of your friends will do the same. Before long, it goes viral.
Endless Thai cycle
Oped, Postbag, Published on 31/10/2020
» Six years ago, with violence on the streets, [the kind that is] normally stopped by police in other countries, the military decided not only to stop the aggression but to take over the government.
The need for big data to prevent a second wave
Oped, Anchalee Kongrut, Published on 16/07/2020
» The recent detection of Covid-19 infecting a member of an Egyptian military group who visited the kingdom and a diplomat's daughter in the kingdom has heightened fears that a second wave of the disease will occur.
Three new maxims for surviving the next era of tech
News, Farhad Manjoo, Published on 30/11/2018
» Nearly five years ago, in my very first "State of the Art" column, I offered a straightforward plan for how to survive what was shaping up to be a turbulent time in the tech world.
For election hackers, a new, more dangerous tool
News, Michael Chertoff & Eileen Donahoe, Published on 15/11/2018
» The election interference tactics originally deployed by Russia against the United States and Europe are now global. Hackers across the democratic world have exploited weaknesses in campaign email servers; probed electronic voting machines for vulnerabilities; set up troll farms to spread highly-partisan narratives; and employed armies of bots to distort the truth online. Tech experts in countries such as Iran and Venezuela have borrowed these tactics and joined efforts toward the same goals: to erode confidence in electoral processes and in democratic governance itself.
Cybercrime a real threat
News, Published on 04/08/2018
» As the government pushes to transform Thailand into a "cashless society", a series of security breaches of banks' computer systems over the past few years have made many reluctant to fully embrace online and mobile banking services. Last week's hacking of two major banks should be seen as a warning sign to bankers, regulators and lawmakers that they are lagging in the fight to counter cyber attacks and protect consumers.
Social media needs bigger clean-up
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 31/07/2018
» The plunge of Facebook and Twitter shares last week shows that both companies are hostages to investors' unrealistic perceptions of how quickly they should grow even as they purge bots and trolls. Moving to eliminate all fake and malicious accounts, as well as making new ones very hard to register, would be scary given these inflated expectations.