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"But it also raises uncomfortable questions: is AI technology helping marginalized people overcome bias, or just perpetuating the biases that make their lives hard in the first place?"

"How Ukraine turns cheap tablets into lethal weapons Army SOS, an activist-led NGO, converts Android-based tablets into smart units with automated precision guidance."

"Internet shutdowns are not just used by governments facing civil unrest. Every year millions of internet users from Sudan to Syria, Jordan to India also lose internet access during exam season as governments pull the plug in a bid to avoid hi-tech cheating."

"What distinguishes Fog Reveal from other cellphone location technologies used by police is that it follows the devices through their advertising IDs, unique numbers assigned to each device. These numbers do not contain the name of the phone's user, but can be traced to homes and workplaces to help police establish pattern-of-life analyses."

"Fluent in Digital Culture - Not Academic Tools"

"Spyware apps were foisted on students at the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns. Today, long after most students have returned to in-person learning, those apps are still proliferating, and enabling an ever-expanding range of human rights abuses. In a recent Center for Democracy and Technology report, 81 percent of teachers said their schools use some form of this "student monitoring" spyware. Yet many of the spyware companies supplying these apps seem neither prepared nor concerned about the harms they are inflicting on students. "

"In cases where Chrome Enhanced Spellcheck or Edge's Microsoft Editor (spellchecker) were enabled, "basically anything" entered in form fields of these browsers was transmitted to Google and Microsoft. "Furthermore, if you click on 'show password,' the enhanced spellcheck even sends your password, essentially Spell-Jacking your data," explains otto-js in a blog post."

"A controversial reform of the federal nature conservation act, pushed through by Olaf Scholz's coalition government earlier this summer, slashes red tape around building windfarms near nesting sites, but banks on AI-driven "anti-collision systems" as one way to minimise such accidents."

"The campaign is spearheaded by the privacy advocate Big Brother Watch and is also backed by 31 groups including Liberty, Amnesty International and the Race Equality Foundation. Police have deployed live facial recognition at large-scale public events, including King Charles's coronation. The statement said: "We hold differing views about live facial recognition surveillance, ranging from serious concerns about its incompatibility with human rights, to the potential for discriminatory impact, the lack of safeguards, the lack of an evidence base, an unproven case of necessity or proportionality, the lack of a sufficient legal basis, the lack of parliamentary consideration, and the lack of a democratic mandate. "We call on UK police and private companies to immediately stop using live facial recognition for public surveillance.""

"Let's start with the dementia socks. An intriguing idea, born out of a personal tragedy. Zeke Steer watched his own great-grandmother decline into dementia, and wanted to help. Spin forward a few years, and the research scientist has developed socks which detect early physical signs of the onset of diseases like Alzheimer's. "Sensors in our socks are detecting early signs of distress, and alerting a carer that they may need help," he says."

"Exclusive: OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic"

"Generative artificial-intelligence tools are unproven and expensive to operate, requiring muscular servers with expensive chips that consume lots of power. Microsoft MSFT -0.43%decrease; red down pointing triangle , Google, Adobe and other tech companies investing in AI are experimenting with an array of tactics to make, market and charge for it. Microsoft has lost money on one of its first generative AI products, said a person with knowledge of the figures. It and Google are now launching AI-backed upgrades to their software with higher price tags. Zoom Video Communications ZM 1.79%increase; green up pointing triangle has tried to mitigate costs by sometimes using a simpler AI it developed in-house. Adobe and others are putting caps on monthly usage and charging based on consumption. "A lot of the customers I've talked to are unhappy about the cost that they are seeing for running some of these models," said Adam Selipsky, the chief executive of Amazon.com's cloud division, Amazon Web Services, speaking of the industry broadly. "

"A promotional poster for the second season of Loki on Disney Plus has sparked controversy amongst professional designers following claims that it was at least partially created using generative AI. Illustrator Katria Raden flagged the image on X (formerly Twitter) last week, claiming that the image of the spiraling clock in the background "is giving all the AI telltale signs, like things randomly turning into meaningless squiggles" - a reference to the artifacts sometimes left behind by AI-image generators. The creative community is concerned that AI image generators are being trained on their work without consent and could be used to replace human artists. Disney previously received backlash regarding its use of generative AI in another Marvel series, Secret Invasion, despite the studio insisting that using AI tools didn't reduce roles for real designers on the project."

"It forecast 14 earthquakes within a 200-mile area of the estimated epicenter and also made a very accurate forecast regarding their intensity, a report on the university's website said. It failed to warn of just one earthquake and gave eight false predictions. The research team trained the AI to detect statistical bumps in real-time seismic data that the research team had paired with previous earthquakes, the report explained. Once trained, the AI monitored for signs of approaching earthquakes. "Predicting earthquakes is the holy grail," said Sergey Fomel, a professor at UT's Bureau of Economic Geology and a member of the research team, adding: "What we achieved tells us that what we thought was an impossible problem is solvable in principle.""

"A school shooter who went viral on TikTok for talking publicly about his actions is facing backlash from many who believe he should not be on the platform at all. In 2020, Jon Romano was released from prison after serving 17 years out of a 20-year prison sentence for bringing a shotgun to Columbia High School in upstate New York back in 2004. Romano, who was 16 years old at the time, shot a teacher in the leg after the assistant principal attempted to wrestle the gun away from him."

"We submitted the grant on time. The next day, while speaking to a friend, I told him, "This week, I wrote my first ChatGPT grant." He replied that he had been doing it for months and that many other scientists are doing the same. A 2023 Nature survey of 1,600 researchers found that more than 25% use AI to help them write manuscripts and that more than 15% use the technology to help them write grant proposals. Some people might see the use of ChatGPT in writing grant proposals as cheating, but it actually highlights a much bigger problem: what is the point of asking scientists to write documents that can be easily created with AI? What value are we adding? Perhaps it is time for funding bodies to rethink their application processes."

"Racists on the notorious troll site 4chan are using a powerful new and free AI-powered image generator service offered by Microsoft to create antisemitic propaganda, according to posts reviewed by Bellingcat. Users of 4chan, which has frequently hosted hate speech and played home to posts by mass shooters, tasked Bing Image Creator to create photo-realistic antisemitic caricatures of Jews and, in recent days, shared images created by the platform depicting Orthodox men preparing to eat a baby, carrying migrants across the US border (the latter a nod to the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory), and committing the 9/11 attacks."

"The artificial intelligence (AI) industry could consume as much energy as a country the size of the Netherlands by 2027, a new study warns. Big tech firms have scrambled to add AI-powered services since ChatGPT burst onto the scene last year. They use far more power than conventional applications, making going online much more energy-intensive. However, the study also said AI's environmental impact could be less than feared if its current growth slowed. Many experts, including the report author, say such research is speculative as tech firms do not disclose enough data for an accurate prediction to be made."

"The coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict on social media platforms has come under scrutiny from the UK government and Brussels, as tech firms including X and Meta were urged to deal with a surge in violent and misleading content on their sites. In the UK, the technology secretary summoned social media executives on Wednesday to demand the removal from their platforms of violent content related to the Hamas attacks on Israel."

"Some experts see platforms like Appen as a new form of data colonialism, says Saiph Savage, director of the Civic AI lab at Northeastern University. "Workers in Latin America are labeling images, and those labeled images are going to feed into AI that will be used in the Global North," she says. "While it might be creating new types of jobs, it's not completely clear how fulfilling these types of jobs are for the workers in the region." Due to the ever moving goal posts of AI, workers are in a constant race against the technology, says Schmidt. "One workforce is trained to three-dimensionally place bounding boxes around cars very precisely, and suddenly it's about figuring out if a large language model has given an appropriate answer," he says, regarding the industry's shift from self-driving cars to chatbots. Thus, niche labeling skills have a "very short half-life." "From the clients' perspective, the invisibility of the workers in microtasking is not a bug but a feature," says Schmidt. Economically, because the tasks are so small, it's more feasible to deal with contractors as a crowd instead of individuals. This creates an industry of irregular labor with no face-to-face resolution for disputes if, say, a client deems their answers inaccurate or wages are withheld. The workers WIRED spoke to say it's not low fees but the way platforms pay them that's the key issue. "I don't like the uncertainty of not knowing when an assignment will come out, as it forces us to be near the computer all day long," says Fuentes, who would like to see additional compensation for time spent waiting in front of her screen. Mutmain, 18, from Pakistan, who asked not to use his surname, echoes this. He says he joined Appen at 15, using a family member's ID, and works from 8 am to 6 pm, and another shift from 2 am to 6 am. "I need to stick to these platforms at all times, so that I don't lose work," he says, but he struggles to earn more than $50