I always liked Anthropic’s stance of doing the right thing and setting standards with regards to security and ethics in LLMs. Unfortunately, they budged and will now only define ‘goals that we will openly grade our progress towards’. These goals will be non-binding, and future LLMs from Anthropic will blaze ahead even if they get (…)
I found this article interesting because it highlights the tension between protecting children online — not just on social media, but also on shopping, gambling and adult sites — and preserving privacy. The challenge of enforcing age laws without collecting sensitive data remains, regardless of whether the burden is placed on users or platforms. eID (…)
C4DT is organising a special edition of our bi-annual open-source software services meet-up with an external guest speaker, David Monniaux from Université Grenoble Alpes.
Other speakers from EPFL are Khadidja Malleck, RCP’s operational director, Prof. Mathias Payer, leader of the HexHive lab, and Rafael Corvalán, director of the DSI.
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Let us celebrate a milestone in digital safety. The European Commission has found TikTok in breach of the EU Digital Services Act for its algorithms designed to hook users. This follows another recent win, with Australia’s social media ban on minors under the age of 16. While the wheels of governance move achingly slow in (…)
OpenClaw is just the latest in a series of AI-powered tools that turn out to be an absolute security nightmare. It is easy (and up to a certain point justified) to blame individual developers for lowering their guard and abandoning good security practices. On the other hand, there is an enormous pressure on developers nowadays (…)
Est-ce la faute aux utilisateurs qui n’ont pas bien respecté les règles ou au choix controversé, par les autorités, de l’infrastructure où la moindre erreur peut s’avérer grave et vraisemblablement répétitive? Tant que la réponse n’est pas claire, il n’y a pas de responsabilisation, et le problème risque de persister.
This article highlights a crucial reality: basic connectivity must exist before any digital transformation can take place. With only 38% of the population online, Africa’s digital divide represents both a massive challenge and an opportunity. It is fascinating to observe the competition between space-based solutions (Starlink, Amazon Leo) and submarine cables (Meta’s 2Africa, Google’s Equiano). (…)
Researchers at KU Leuven disclosed flaws in Google’s Fast Pair Bluetooth protocol that let attackers within Bluetooth range silently pair with seventeen different models of headphones or speakers made by ten different vendors, including Sony, Xiaomi, and even Google itself. This set of vulnerabilities enables cheap, practical hijacking, eavesdropping, and tracking of millions of earbuds (…)
AI agents are moving from prototypes to production as autonomous coders, analysts, designers, and decision tools. This track, organized by C4DT, unites experts in economics, cybersecurity, and law to examine productivity gains, new attack surfaces, and accountability. We’ll probe impacts on labor, competition, security-by-design, and how regulation and governance must evolve when agents cause harm.
This publication summarizes key insights shared by the speakers during the conference “Anticipating the agentic era: Assessing the disruptions by AI agents” organized by the C4DT on November 19th, 2025.
This article is interesting because it links digital trust to systemic AI dangers—not just small tech glitches. It predicts how in 2026 AI might spread lies, spy on people, or disrupt jobs and markets faster than today’s content‑moderation and governance mechanisms can manage. This leaves us to question who should control key AI technology.
I find this article interesting because it puts a spotlight on how the technical limits and product decisions of LLMs can shape, and sometimes distort, people’s perception of real-world events. It’s striking to see the same news prompt produce authoritative, up-to-date answers from some models and a blunt, incorrect denial from others, simply because of (…)
This technical talk points out several vulnerabilities in PGP implementations that are not caused by errors in the underlying cryptographic algorithms. It serves as a great reminder that software engineering is not just ‘writing code.’ To actually implement the entire stack correctly from algorithm to user interface, it is a craft that requires an understanding (…)
How does trust translate to social media use by children? Does it mean a ban on their access? Australia decided that children under the age of 16 are not allowed on social media. Companies are complying and installing age verification mechanisms to avoid fines. I’m looking forward to seeing how this large-scale experiment turns out.
📣 New Publication Alert! 📣
📽️ The recordings of the November 19th Conference on “Anticipating the Agentic Era: Assessing the Disruptions by AI Agents” are now accessible here
This white paper examines the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in Swiss public administration and provides recommendations for its responsible, trustworthy and effective use. Drawing on original research as well as Swiss and international studies, it outlines motivations and potential use cases and examines applications in sensitive domains such as welfare, taxation, and automated decision-making, assessing risks and safeguards. It then maps current AI practice across federal and cantonal levels, identifies the principal barriers to effective adoption, and proposes measures to overcome them, including strategic prioritization, regulatory and governance reforms, and organizational actions.
Voici un bon exemple de comment créer de la confiance grâce aux nouveaux outils comme les LLMs. Au CHUV, prof. Marie-Ann Hartley de l’EPFL, dirige un projet pour soutenir les médecins dans la prise en charge des patients aux urgences. J’aime l’approche très élaborée de ce projet qui implique des médecins dans toutes les étapes. (…)
This case highlights the conflict between platform profitability and user safety, as TikTok’s algorithm prioritises engagement over the welfare of its teenage users. Notably, the Chinese version of the app shows that technical solutions exist — stricter moderation is feasible when providers choose to implement it. This divergence reveals that while China enforces protective measures, (…)
Bubble or no bubble? In this interview, the president of Signal shares her analysis: dominant AI is not just a neutral technological advance, but the result of an economic model of platforms that concentrate data and computing power among a few giants, creating monopolies, geopolitical and security risks—and requiring strict regulation (e.g., enforcement of the (…)
Switzerland’s military faces a critical dilemma: 90% of its data seems to be too sensitive for Microsoft’s US cloud, highlighting the tension between the efficiency of a cloud solution and digital sovereignty. This raises questions about whether open-source alternatives can match proprietary solutions, how to balance interoperability with protection from foreign legal jurisdiction (e.g. the (…)
Modern infrastructure management increasingly relies on infrastructure-as-code (IaC), which is the paradigm of automatically managing computing infrastructure using programming languages such as Ansible. Furthermore, there is an increasing interest to leverage Large Language Models (LLMs) to 1) automatically generate the specification code that provisions the desired infrastructure, and 2) to periodically check if the infrastructure (…)