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"Proponents say that it's more than just a matter of probability. The laws of physics don't seem that different from code in a program, according to some, and it's likely that with enough time, a sufficiently advanced civilization could crunch the numbers and produce a simulation that mimics the existence and behavior of every particle in our universe."

"Neural networks can find telltale patterns in a person's gait that can be used to recognize and identify them with almost perfect accuracy, according to new research published in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. The new system, called SfootBD, is nearly 380 times more accurate than previous methods, and it doesn't require a person to go barefoot in order to work. It's less invasive than other behavioral biometric verification systems, such as retinal scanners or fingerprinting, but its passive nature could make it a bigger privacy concern, since it could be used covertly."

"The new policy is a major shift in Twitter's efforts to balance its ideological commitment to free expression with user demands for improved enforcement of rules against harassment, hate speech and other toxic behavior."

""I don't really care about data privacy because I think it's all an illusion anyway." It's interesting to see how this encounter also reflects the general behavior of a majority of people when it comes to privacy. Although user data has long been a gold mine for companies, would it be more acceptable if they started paying their users in exchange for it?"

"A natural alternative to symbolic AI came to prominence: Instead of modeling high-level reasoning processes, why not instead model the brain? After all, brains are the only things that we know for certain can produce intelligent behavior. Why not start with them?"

"In these cases, we call the SDKs "trackers" or "tracker SDKs." We follow the lead of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, and other digital rights organizations and use the term broadly: "Trackers" encompasses traditional advertisement surveillance, behavioral, and location monitoring. Legitimate uses may include user feedback mechanisms, telemetry, and crash reporters. App developers have decided to include tracker SDKs in apps for a variety of reasons, and we do not categorize all usage of trackers as malicious or condemn the app authors. Additionally, given the complexity and pace of software development, some developers may not be aware that trackers are in their app or may not know the full implications of bundling such code before publishing."

"But BERT, which is now being deployed in services like Google's internet search engine, has a problem: It could be picking up on biases in the way a child mimics the bad behavior of his parents. BERT is one of a number of A.I. systems that learn from lots and lots of digitized information, as varied as old books, Wikipedia entries and news articles."

"Goodreads stagnates even as its near-monopoly persists, a wedding of the worst excesses of online commenting, fiction fandom and tech-biz social engineering. The lies, the insecure hatereaders, the impassive tolerance of toxic behavior-all are brought to bear, without mercy, on authors at the precarious margins of career security. And after all that, it's all but useless as a discovery service. At The New Stateman, Sarah Manavis hopes that its "reign of terror" will soon come to an end."

"This all presents big questions for which we don't yet have answers. "At what point should kids know better?" asked David Dockterman, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "When should a person's 'permanent digital record' start recording, if ever? To what extent should social media be a space for trial-and-error exploration around identity and social behavior?" "These are fantastically difficult moral dilemmas for teenagers who act impulsively, using tools that are not fully under their control, leading to consequences that perhaps none of us can anticipate," said Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "This is the first time we've had a society in which almost by default, everything is recorded and shared and aggregated in ways that create a lifelong profile. Children should have the right to make mistakes.""

"Prisma Labs has already gotten into trouble for accidentally generating nude and cartoonishly sexualised images - including those of children - despite a "no nudes" and "adults only" policy. Prisma Lab's CEO and co-founder Andrey Usoltsev told TechCrunch this behaviour only happened if the AI was intentionally provoked to create this type of content - which represents a breach of terms against its use. "If an individual is determined to engage in harmful behavior, any tool would have the potential to become a weapon," he said."

"Our reliance on their information is now a matter of life and death. Misinformation online has real-world consequences. In the developing world, a hoax claimed India had banned coronavirus social posts, and in the US, 13 percent of people thought coronavirus was a hoax during the critical weeks where earlier notification to shelter-in-place would have saved thousands of lives. Tech platforms have an ability through their persuasive techniques and microtargeting to influence the behavior of society in ways traditional media can't. "

"KataGo's world-class AI learned Go by playing millions of games against itself. But that still isn't enough experience to cover every possible scenario, which leaves room for vulnerabilities from unexpected behavior. "KataGo generalizes well to many novel strategies, but it does get weaker the further away it gets from the games it saw during training," says Gleave. "Our adversary has discovered one such 'off-distribution' strategy that KataGo is particularly vulnerable to, but there are likely many others.""

"His immediate concern is that the internet will be flooded with false photos, videos and text, and the average person will "not be able to know what is true anymore." He is also worried that AI technologies will in time upend the job market. Today, chatbots such as ChatGPT tend to complement human workers, but they could replace paralegals, personal assistants, translators and others who handle rote tasks. "It takes away the drudge work," he said. "It might take away more than that." Down the road, he is worried that future versions of the technology pose a threat to humanity because they often learn unexpected behavior from the vast amounts of data they analyze. This becomes an issue, he said, as individuals and companies allow AI systems not only to generate their own computer code but actually to run that code on their own. And he fears a day when truly autonomous weapons - those killer robots - become reality."

" 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?"

""Think about what information is going to be collected," she said. "And how comfortable you are with that information potentially flowing to just anybody … [Companies] are certainly sharing [user data] and they don't really have to tell you who they're sharing it with or why." Such items might include "smart devices" that track our behavior, such as sleep and fitness trackers, as well as popular self-discovery tools such as DNA testing kits. With the help of experts, we broke down the privacy implications of some of this season's latest offerings - so you can give the gift of privacy."

"And Israeli company Optimove is helping. It normally gathers customer data to create targeted online ads, but as a service to gambling companies it has trained its AI to flag the online players who are most at risk.  It analyzes the behavior patterns characteristic of gambling addicts, which include the hours of the day and night when they place bets, the time they spend on the betting site, and how much they keep on playing to 'chase their losses'."

"Our findings show that both model and user behaviors can influence social and emotional outcomes. Effects of AI vary based on how people choose to use the model and their personal circumstances. This research provides a starting point for further studies that can increase transparency, and encourage responsible usage and development of AI platforms across the industry."

"AI models will inevitably have to make value judgments. If we want those judgments to be congruent with our own values (which is, after all, the central goal of AI alignment research) then we need to have ways of testing which values a model expresses in the real world. Our method provides a new, data-focused method of doing this, and of seeing where we might've succeeded-or indeed failed-at aligning our models' behavior."

"Schools in the UK have experimented with fingerprinting pupils then using that data for tasks including library books and lunch payments. However, the European Commission has questioned the practice, including whether schools can make it compulsory and whether parents can challenge it in court."