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"That is why we must demand transparency here, especially in the case of technology that uses human-like interfaces such as language. For any automated system, we need to know what it was trained to do, what training data was used, who chose that data and for what purpose. In the words of AI researchers Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, mimicking human behaviour is a "bright line" - a clear boundary not to be crossed - in computer software development. We treat interactions with things we perceive as human or human-like differently. With systems such as LaMDA we see their potential perils and the urgent need to design systems in ways that don't abuse our empathy or trust."

"From another perspective, the idea that people seem comfortable offloading their troubles not on to a sympathetic human, but a sympathetic-sounding computer program, might present an opportunity. Even before the pandemic, there were not enough mental health professionals to meet demand. In the UK, there are 7.6 psychiatrists per 100,000 people; in some low-income countries, the average is 0.1 per 100,000."

The perfect "People and Machines" Issue maybe ...

"But, for a growing number of users - and mental health experts - the very positivity of Instagram is precisely the problem. The site encourages its users to present an upbeat, attractive image that others may find at best misleading and at worse harmful. If Facebook demonstrates that everyone is boring and Twitter proves that everyone is awful, Instagram makes you worry that everyone is perfect - except you."

""Urban legends are projections of society's anxieties, hopes, fears, and worries," says Blank. "In today's society we have societal anxiety about what our kids are doing on the internet, the amount of control and information that's available to kids nowadays, societal fears about cyberbullying and how people are managing their mental health online, especially for kids." "The Momo story reflects that anxiety of what is it our kids are doing online," continued Blank."

"What might happen next? First the investigators would find out the culprits' names, telephone numbers, and where they lived. Then the authorities would be alerted. Shortly afterwards, accounts would be closed down. And, in the worst cases, the police would prosecute. Finally, as people began to realise that actions online had actual consequences, many would start modifying their behaviour. The tsunami of online hate might eventually become a sea swell."

"Robots have been slow to appear because each one requires a rare confluence of market, task, technology, and innovation. (And luck. I only described some of the things that nearly killed Roomba.) But as technology advances and costs decline, the toolbox for robot designers constantly expands. Thus, more types of robots will cross the threshold of economic viability. Still, we can expect one constant. Each new, successful robot will represent a minimum-the simplest, lowest-cost solution to a problem people want solved. The growing set of tools that let us attack ever more interesting problems make this an exciting time to practice robotics."

"100 Things We've Lost to the Internet. Its form seems to fit an era of short attention spans, breaking up its author's writing into short essays with headings such as "Solitude", "Ignoring people", "Leaving a message" and "A parent's undivided attention". At its best, the book reads like it mixes journalism with sociology and anthropology. To its credit, it also manages the rare feat of exploring what technology has done to us without succumbing to doom and panic."

"The streaming video company's recommendation algorithm can sometimes send you on an hours-long video binge so captivating that you never notice the time passing. But according to a study from software nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, trusting the algorithm means you're actually more likely to see videos featuring sexualized content and false claims than personalized interests."

"Now, as more people use AI to produce and publish content, an obvious question arises: What happens as AI-generated content proliferates around the internet, and AI models begin to train on it, instead of on primarily human-generated content? A group of researchers from the UK and Canada have looked into this very problem and recently published a paper on their work in the open access journal arXiv. What they found is worrisome for current generative AI technology and its future: "We find that use of model-generated content in training causes irreversible defects in the resulting models.""

" This is wholly unacceptable behavior. Our books are copyrighted material, not free fodder for wealthy companies to use as they see fit, without permission or compensation. Many, many hours of serious research, creative angst and plain old hard work go into writing and publishing a book, and few writers are compensated like professional athletes, Hollywood actors or Wall Street investment bankers. Stealing our intellectual property hurts. Well, sure, Mr Cohan, but I have to point out: there are humans out there reading your books and getting ideas from them. Or at least, one sure hopes there are, because otherwise all those many hours of serious research etc have really gone to waste. As writers, if we don't influence what people think, what's the point? Furthermore, if we get a chance to influence what robots write, shouldn't we leap at it?"

"He's right to be annoyed - these tracks are a violation of an artist's creativity and personhood - and the fakes are noticeably more sophisticated than those from a few years ago, when Jay-Z was made to rap Shakespeare (this is the kind of humour beloved of AI dorks). The tech will continue to improve to the point where the differences become indistinguishable. Perhaps lazy artists will soon use AI to generate their latest album, not so much phoning it in as texting it. AI composes its music by regurgitating things it's been trained to listen to in vast song databases, and that's not so different than the way human-composed pop music is recombined from prior influences. Producers, engineers, lyricists and all the other people who work behind a star could be usurped or at least have their value driven down by cheap AI tools."

"Chess has enjoyed a huge boom in internet play this year as in-person events have moved online and people stuck at home have sought new hobbies. But with that has come a significant new problem: a rise in the use of powerful chess calculators to cheat on a scale reminiscent of the scandals that have dogged cycling and athletics. One leading 'chess detective' said that the pandemic was "without doubt creating a crisis"."

"The Auschwitz museum has called a new trend, where users of video-sharing app TikTok role-play as Holocaust victims, "hurtful and offensive," but added that it did not want to shame young people involved. The museum at the site of the former Nazi death camp was responding to the point of view videos."

"he outlines three sources of dysfunction - 'deliberate, malicious intent, such as state-sponsored hacking and attacks, criminal behaviour, and online harassment'; 'system design' which has created 'perverse incentives where user value is sacrificed, such as ad-based revenue models that commercially reward clickbait'; and the 'viral spread of misinformation'. he also calls attention to the 'unintended negative consequences' of the web, which he said had led to 'the outraged and polarised tone and quality of online discourse'."

"Stress is the common factor in many behaviours widely understood to be bad for our health - drinking too much booze, smoking cigarettes, even eating unhealthy food. (There is some evidence to suggest that cortisol - the hormone released when we feel stress - makes us crave high fat and sugary foods.) And, these days, many of life's stressors are communicated via the mobile phone. I cannot stop these stressors, but by turning off notifications, I can at least stop them ambushing me. It's an action that helps me regain some sense of control. For example, when I open up a news app, I am ready to find out what is happening in the world. It is different from being in the supermarket cheese aisle and getting an alert, where - as part of a whole barrage of communications - I may feel blindsided."

"Can you guess how long AlphaZero spent learning chess from scratch, preparing for the match against Stockfish 8, and developing its genius instincts? Four hours. For centuries, chess was considered one of the crowning glories of human intelligence. AlphaZero went from utter ignorance to creative mastery in four hours, without the help of any human guide."

"Then came the algorithm, which used automatic speech recognition to detect specific features and patterns in each of the 48 recordings. It was clear from examining the waveforms of the cries that each category had a specific pattern."

"Researchers fed these algorithms (which function like autocomplete, but for images) pictures of a man cropped below his neck: 43% of the time the image was autocompleted with the man wearing a suit. When you fed the same algorithm a similarly cropped photo of a woman, it auto-completed her wearing a low-cut top or bikini a massive 53% of the time. For some reason, the researchers gave the algorithm a picture of the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and found that it also automatically generated an image of her in a bikini. (After ethical concerns were raised on Twitter, the researchers had the computer-generated image of AOC in a swimsuit removed from the research paper.)"

"Generational differences in learning techniques are apparent in how people of different ages approach technology. It has been said that we, the Net Generation, are closer to our grandparents-the Greatest Generation-in our work ethic and optimism about the future than to our parents' generation. But how we approach problems is totally different."