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"North America, Central America, and Caribbean In the U.S., a 2016 study showed that already half of American adults were captured in some kind of facial recognition network. More recently, the Department of Homeland Security unveiled its "Biometric Exit" plan, which aims to use facial recognition technology on nearly all air travel passengers by 2023, to identify compliance with visa status."

"He quit the same way he'd been given the job: through a WhatsApp message. He had neither a contract nor any documents regulating his employment. For Felipe, the plan to make a little quick money became a hellish experience. With TikTok's short-form video format, much of the audio that needed transcription was only a few seconds long. The payment, made in U.S. dollars, was supposed to be $14 for every hour of audio transcribed. Amassing the secondslong clips into an hour of transcribed audio took Felipe about 20 hours. That worked out to only about 70 cents per hour - or 3.85 Brazilian reals, about three-quarters of Brazil's minimum wage."

"Google should know better, given that it already had a "hallucination problem" with its featured snippets(Opens in a new tab) at the top of search results back in 2017. The snippets algorithm seemed to particularly enjoy telling lies about U.S. presidents. Again, what could go wrong?"

"During the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of Americans will be forced to work, play, and learn from home for the foreseeable future. Such a massive shift will lean not only on shaky and expensive U.S. broadband networks, but popular teleconferencing programs that often don't quite work as advertised. Zoom in particular has seen a flood of new users, and the company's stock has jumped roughly 20 percent since the COVID-19 outbreak began. But as new users flock to the platform for work, they should be aware of a few things: namely, the company's data collection, its shaky privacy policy, and the fact your boss knows when you're not giving them your undivided attention."

"Japan isn't the only nation that has struggled to phase out the outdated technology - the U.S. Defense Department only announced in 2019 that it has ended the use of floppy disks, which were first developed in the 1960s, in a control system for its nuclear arsenal. Sony Group Corp. stopped making the disks in 2011 and many young people would struggle to describe how to use one or even identify one in the modern workplace."

""Essentially what this is doing is flattening descriptions of, say, 'an Indian person' or 'a Nigerian house' into particular stereotypes which could be viewed in a negative light," Amba Kak, executive director of the AI Now Institute, a U.S.-based policy research organization, told Rest of World. Even stereotypes that are not inherently negative, she said, are still stereotypes: They reflect a particular value judgment, and a winnowing of diversity. Midjourney did not respond to multiple requests for an interview or comment for this story."

"Cybersecurity researchers say the My2022 mobile app - the official app of the Beijing Winter Olympics - has serious security vulnerabilities and that "all Olympian audio is being collected, analyzed and saved on Chinese servers." Why This Matters: The Chinese government is mandating all Olympic athletes, coaches, and attendees use the My2022 app and, as of Thursday morning, the app is still available in the Apple and Android U.S. app stores where Americans can download it too."

"Exposure to false and inflammatory content is remarkably low, with just 1% of Twitter users accounting for 80% of exposure to dubious websites during the 2016 U.S. election. This is heavily concentrated among a small fringe of users actively seeking it out. Examples: 6.3% of YouTube users were responsible for 79.8% of exposure to extremist channels from July to December 2020, 85% of vaccine-sceptical content was consumed by less than 1% of US citizens in the 2016-2019 period. Conventional wisdom blames platform algorithms for spreading misinformation. However, evidence suggests user preferences play an outsized role. For instance, a mere 0.04% of YouTube's algorithmic recommendations directed users to extremist content. It's tempting to draw a straight line between social media usage and societal ills. But studies rigorously designed to untangle cause and effect often come up short. "

"It may be coincidence that Trump's threat in August to shut down TikTok in the U.S. unless a sale was tendered with an American company drove the app into the arms of one of his allies."

"or its latest update, which it released Wednesday, the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub combined nine different mathematical models from different research groups to get an outlook for the pandemic for the next six months. "Any of us who have been following this closely, given what happened with delta, are going to be really cautious about too much optimism," says Justin Lessler at the University of North Carolina, who helps run the hub. "But I do think that the trajectory is towards improvement for most of the country," he says. The modelers developed four potential scenarios, taking into account whether or not childhood vaccinations take off and whether a more infectious new variant should emerge. "

"TikTok has already come under fire for its data collection, and this is just another step in yet another app collecting information on its users and doing whatever it pleases with it. It seems being online in 2022 is becoming more and more difficult to do while maintaining some semblance of privacy and data autonomy."