Group items tagged

"A report by investigators from the Digital Forensic Lab, a global network of digital forensic researchers run by US-based thinktank the Atlantic Council, reveals how pro-Russian Facebook pages in Mali coordinated support for anti-democracy protests and the Wagner group, a controversial Russian private military contractor that was invited into the unstable country last year after the overthrow of President Bah N'daw by the military."

"Smartphones should be banned from schools to tackle classroom disruption, improve learning and help protect children from cyberbullying, a UN report has recommended. Unesco, the UN's education, science and culture agency, said there was evidence that excessive mobile phone use was linked to reduced educational performance and that high levels of screen time had a negative effect on children's emotional stability."

"Recent advances in AI are likely to spell the end of the traditional school classroom, one of the world's leading experts on AI has predicted. Prof Stuart Russell, a British computer scientist based at the University of California, Berkeley, said that personalised ChatGPT-style tutors have the potential to hugely enrich education and widen global access by delivering personalised tuition to every household with a smartphone. The technology could feasibly deliver "most material through to the end of high school", he said."

"How do you maximize food production and prevent waste in your supply chain at a time when climate change and a growing global population are placing an increasing strain on resources?  According to Israeli startup Blue Circle, you do it in the same way you protect your technology from hackers: with artificial intelligence, machine learning and huge amounts of data. "

"The app, called Historical Figures, has begun to take off in the two weeks since it was released as a way to have conversations with any of 20,000 notable people from history. But this week, it sparked viral controversy online over its inclusion of Hitler, his Nazi lieutenants and other dictators from the past. "Are neo-Nazis going to be attracted to this site so they can go and have a dialogue with Adolf Hitler?" asked Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the director of global social action for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization. "

"Senior executives at Uber ordered the use of a "kill switch" to prevent police and regulators from accessing sensitive data during raids on its offices in at least six countries, leaked files reveal. The instructions to block authorities from accessing its IT systems were part of a sophisticated global operation by the Silicon Valley company to thwart law enforcement."

"Hu Xijin, a former editor of the ruling Communist Party's Global Times newspaper, warned that the use of the health code for purposes other than epidemic control "damages the authority" of the monitoring system and would chip away at the public's support for it. His post on Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform, on Monday became a hashtag that was among the most-searched earlier this week, drawing 280 million views."

"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

"They said that a number of schools were reporting for the first time that pupils were using AI-generating technology to create images of children that legally constituted child sexual abuse material. Emma Hardy, UK Safer Internet Centre (UKSIC) director, said the pictures were "terrifyingly" realistic. "The quality of the images that we're seeing is comparable to professional photos taken annually of children in schools up and down the country," said Hardy, who is also the Internet Watch Foundation communications director."

""We submitted another two examples of real-life Amharic-language hate speech to them a week later," said Global Witness. "Both ads were, again, accepted by Facebook for publication within a matter of hours.""

"A record number of countries switched off access to internet services in response to political upheaval last year, causing "incalculable and persistent damage to people's lives", according to a new report. The research by internet rights group Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition documents 187 shutdowns in 2022. These were introduced by governments in 35 countries - the highest number in a single year since the groups began documenting internet blackouts in 2016."

"Google, which recently laid off thousands of employees globally, is now laying off the robots that cleaned cafeterias at its headquarters. A report by Wired recently said that Alphabet's "Everyday Robots" project - a unit under Google's experimental X laboratories - has been shut down by Google's chief executive officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai."

Data visibility is an important aspect to achieve the highest potential of the healthcare system for all. Right now most countries are still stuck with a decentralised set of data or no digitalisation at all. This leads to harder distribution and stocking of resources, using supply-chains and making decisions, this also includes every form of system with a high population and research. There are 4 factors in achieving data visibility. Stakeholder commitment, road map to digitalisation, data capability and interoperability.

"The model is AI-generated, a digital rendering of a human being that will start appearing on Levi's e-commerce website later this year. The brand teamed with LaLaLand.ai, a digital studio that makes customized AI models for companies like Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, to dream up this avatar. Amy Gershkoff Bolles, Levi's global head of digital and emerging technology strategy, announced the model's debut at a Business of Fashion event in March. AI models will not completely replace the humans, she said, but will serve as a "supplement" intended to aid in the brand's representation of various sizes, skin tones and ages."

"What is in doubt is who will benefit from the boost to productivity. What if all the gains are seized by a handful of tech giants? What if history fails to repeat itself, and AI destroys more jobs than it creates? What if AI does lead to a net increase in employment, but the new jobs are less well-paid than the old ones? Put simply, what if it is different this time? That may well be the case. Much of the debate around the impact of AI is based on conjecture. There have been studies galore that have sought to estimate the number of jobs that will be affected - potentially running into the hundreds of millions globally - but nobody knows for sure. That said, certain conclusions can be drawn with a reasonable degree of confidence."

"A leading psychologist who advises Meta on suicide prevention and self-harm has quit her role, accusing the tech giant of "turning a blind eye" to harmful content on Instagram, repeatedly ignoring expert advice and prioritising profit over lives. Lotte Rubæk, who has been on Meta's global expert group for more than three years, told the Observer that the tech giant's ongoing failure to remove images of self-harm from its platforms is "triggering" vulnerable young women and girls to further harm themselves and contributing to rising suicide figures."

"Claims that artificial intelligence will help solve the climate crisis are misguided, with the technology instead likely cause rising energy use and turbocharge the spread of climate disinformation, a coalition of environmental groups has warned. Advances in AI have been touted by big tech companies and the United Nations as a way to help ameliorate global heating, via tools that help track deforestation, identify pollution leaks and track extreme weather events. AI is already being used to predict droughts in Africa and to measure changes to melting icebergs."

"Frank McCourt, Founder of Project Liberty and Executive Chairman of McCourt Global, announces that Project Liberty is building a consortium to purchase TikTok and rearchitect the platform to put people in control of their digital identities and data Leading technologists and academics, including Jonathan Haidt, David Clark, and Sir Tim Berners-Lee express support for Project Liberty's vision for a more open, inclusive and responsible internet"

"In 2021, Mr Kono had "declared war" on floppy disks. On Wednesday, almost three years later, he announced: "We have won the war on floppy disks!" Mr Kono has made it his goal to eliminate old technology since he was appointed to the job. He had earlier also said he would "get rid of the fax machine". Once seen as a tech powerhouse, Japan has in recent years lagged in the global wave of digital transformation because of a deep resistance to change. For instance, workplaces have continued to favour fax machines over emails - earlier plans to remove these machines from government offices were scrapped because of pushback."

" Meta apologises over flood of gore, violence and dead bodies on Instagram Users of Reels report feeds dominated by violent and graphic footage after apparent algorithm malfunction Dan Milmo Global technology editor Fri 28 Feb 2025 15.01 GMT Share Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has apologised after Instagram users were subjected to a flood of violence, gore, animal abuse and dead bodies on their Reels feeds. Users reported the footage after an apparent malfunction in Instagram's algorithm, which curates what people see on the app. Reels is a feature on the social media platform that allows users to share short videos, similar to TikTok."