Technology
For this Amazon van driver, AI surveillance was the final straw
by Avi Asher-Schapiro | @AASchapiro | Thomson Reuters Foundation Friday, 19 March 2021 12:02 GMT (https://news.trust.org/item/20210319120214-n93hk/?fbclid=IwAR19hxiueSRjFazxoiYfdDU1afKo1o1odNJ7YQJnUocTqHDPT-SIXen8JWo) For Vic, an Amazon driver since 2019, the company’s decision to install a four-lens, AI-powered camera in his van was the final indignity. This month, he quit *Amazon is rolling out AI-powered cameras in its branded delivery vans *Some workers say the cameras violate their privacy and worry who gets their data *Five U.S. Senators have written to Amazon seeking an explanation By Avi Asher-Schapiro March 19 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – When Vic started delivering packages for Amazon in 2019, he enjoyed it – the work was physical, he liked the autonomy, and ...
Arianna Rosenbluth Dies at 93; Pioneering Figure in Data Science
Dr. Arianna Wright Rosenbluth in 2013. She helped create what has become one of the most important algorithms of all time. Credit…via Rosenbluth family By Katie Hafner Feb. 9, 2021 –The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/science/arianna-wright-dead.html) Dr. Rosenbluth, who received her physics Ph.D. at 21, helped create an algorithm that has became a foundation of understanding huge quantities of data. She died of complications of the coronavirus. The Metropolis algorithm, a technique for generating random samplings, started out as a way to understand a fundamental problem: how atoms rearrange themselves as solids melt. Over the decades, the Metropolis algorithm and its subsequent variations have been put to a vast number of uses and now serve as an underpinni...
Facebook vs. Apple: Here’s what you need to know about their privacy feud
Facebook and Apple are sparring over privacy. James Martin/CNET Queenie Wong Feb. 10, 2021 5:07 a.m. PT Cnet (https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-vs-apple-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-their-privacy-feud/) A privacy change coming to the software that powers Apple’s popular iPhone has prompted a war of words in Silicon Valley. The iPhone maker will in the coming months roll out an update to its iOS 14 operating system that prompts you to give apps permission to track their activity across other apps and the web. That change may seem small. Lots of apps already track our web activity through default settings we accept when we install them. By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Facebook,...
Microsoft sacks journalists to replace them with robots
From July, the MSN homepage will no longer feature news stories produced by journalists at PA Media, formerly the Press Association. Photograph: Alamy Dozens of journalists have been sacked after Microsoft decided to replace them with artificial intelligence software. Staff who maintain the news homepages on Microsoft’s MSN website and its Edge browser – used by millions of Britons every day – have been told that they will be no longer be required because robots can now do their jobs. Around 27 individuals employed by PA Media – formerly the Press Association – were told on Thursday that they would lose their jobs in a month’s time after Microsoft decided to stop employing humans to select, edit and curate news articles on its homepages. Employees were told Microsoft’s decision to end the ...
SpaceX to launch billionaire Jared Isaacman into space with a mission of 3 private astronauts on the Crew Dragon
Jared Isaacman at SpaceX in Hawthorne, California. SpaceX/Business Wire via AP Photo Businessinsider post -(https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-inspiration4-first-ever-private-astronaut-mission-in-late-2021-2021-2?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sf-bi-cars) Morgan McFall-Johnsen Feb 1, 2021, 8:42 PM SpaceX is planning a first-of-its-kind spaceflight for the end of this year: launching a crew of people who aren’t professional astronauts into Earth’s orbit. The mission is called Inspiration4. SpaceX announced on Monday that it’s targeting the fourth quarter of 2021 for launch, after 37-year-old billionaire Jared Isaacman bought a four-person flight aboard the company’s Crew Dragon spaceship. Isaacman founded the payment processing com...
Apple issues new warning: Keep your iPhone six inches away from your pacemaker
Apple is warning customers that its smartphones could interfere with medical devices, including pacemakers. (Naoki Nishimura/AFLO/Shutterstock/CNN) CTV NEWS – Published Monday, January 25, 2021 2:16PM EST (https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/apple-issues-new-warning-keep-your-iphone-six-inches-away-from-your-pacemaker-1.5281278) An important heads-up for iPhone owners: Apple is warning customers that its smartphones could interfere with medical devices, including pacemakers. In a notice published on Apple’s support page Saturday, the company expanded upon previously issued safety information, warning users that iPhones contain magnets and radios that emit electromagnetic fields, both of which “may interfere” with medical devices such as implanted pacemakers and defibril...
An automated Telegram bot is selling Facebook account phone numbers-Yahoo Finance
Access to a database reportedly containing 500 million users’ private information is being sold on a cybercrime forum. Motherboard reports that the database, which hosts data pulled from Facebook more than two years ago, contains people’s phone numbers. It added that would-be stalkers can then use an automated bot for (messaging app) Telegram which enables hackers to look up those numbers to tie them to an identity. Access is being sold on a per-search basis, with a single lookup costing $20, although you can bulk buy up to 10,000 search credits at a time. The report says that it tested the bot for itself and found it could identify the number of a user who opted to keep their phone number private. Facebook is said to have confirmed that the data breach is real, and that it concerns a secu...
Artificial Intelligence Apocalypse | More Myth Than Reality – newworldai
Artificial Intelligence, Steven Pinker Steven Pinker believes there’s some interesting gender psychology at play when it comes to the robopocalypse. Could artificial intelligence become evil or are alpha male scientists just projecting? “I think that the arguments that once we have super-intelligent computers and robots they will inevitably want to take over and do away with us comes from Prometheus and Pandora myths. It’s based on confusing the idea of high intelligence with megalomaniacal goals. Now, I think it’s a projection of alpha male’s psychology onto the very concept of intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to solve problems, to achieve goals under uncertainty. It doesn’t tell you what are those goals are. And there’s no reason to think that just the concentrated analytic abil...
Would you MARRY a Robot? – newworldai
Artificial intelligence will allow people to find lasting love with machines, expert claims..Robots could soon become intimate companions for humans and some people may even seek to marry them as they become more human-like. While there are fears robots may rise up to take over the world if artificial intelligence progresses too quickly, some of us may find ourselves simply marrying machines in the future. A leading computer scientist has predicted that as robots become more human-like, people may start turning to them for companionship. His predictions mirror the plot of the hit TV series Humans, where people formed emotional attachments to robots brought in to help out around the home. Unlike other technology, such as mobile phones and computers, robots will have the ability to in...
Google threatens to withdraw search engine from Australia-BBC
Google has threatened to remove its search engine from Australia over the nation’s attempt to make the tech giant share royalties with news publishers. Australia is introducing a world-first law to make Google, Facebook and potentially other tech companies pay media outlets for their news content. But the US firms have fought back, warning the law would make them withdraw some of their services. Australian PM Scott Morrison said lawmakers would not yield to “threats”. Australia is far from Google’s largest market, but the proposed news code is seen as a possible global test case for how governments could seek to regulate big tech firms. Tech firms have faced increasing pressure to pay for news content in other countries, including France, where Google struck a landm...
Futuristic Mercedes doesn’t have a steering wheel-businessinsider
Daniel Gessner The Vision AVTR is a futuristic concept car from Mercedes-Benz The vehicle features no steering wheel, and instead is controlled by an interactive joystick. It was inspired by the alien creatures and vehicles found in James Cameron’s film “Avatar.” Following is a transcript of the video. Narrator: This here is the Vision AVTR, Mercedes’ futuristic concept car inspired by the movie “Avatar.” The car replaces multiple basic controls in the pursuit to be more connected to the driver, like switching out the steering wheel and pedals for an interactive joystick-like controller on the center console. Here’s what it’s like inside the symbiotic concept. Inside the AVTR, the car comes to life when the driver puts their hand on the ce...
Japan is developing wooden satellites to send into orbit by 2023 in an effort to cut down on space junk – businessinsider
Space junk is becoming an increasing concern. Getty Isobel Asher Hamilton Kyoto University is teaming up with Japanese forestry company Sumitomo Forestry to develop a wooden satellite to send into orbit. The idea is that a device made of wood could safely burn upon re-entry and would create less space junk. Space junk is becoming a growing concern amongst experts, who say it poses an environmental hazard. Kyoto University is teaming up with a Japanese forestry company to develop wooden satellites to shoot into orbit by 2023 in an effort to cut down on space junk, the BBC reports. Kyoto University professor and Japanese astronaut Takao Doi told the BBC the advantage of a wooden satellite is that if it falls out of orbit and burns up on re-entry, it wouldn’t release as many harmful par...
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