Group items tagged

"95% of the US population, 93% of Europeans and 92% of Asians can't do "level three" tasks like "You want to know what percentage of the emails sent by John Smith last month were about sustainability" -- tasks where "use of tools (e.g. a sort function) is required to make progress towards the solution. The task may involve multiple steps and operators. The goal of the problem may have to be defined by the respondent, and the criteria to be met may or may not be explicit.""

"Are Jews evil? How do you want that question answered? This is our internet. Not Google's. Not Facebook's. Not rightwing propagandists. And we're the only ones who can reclaim it."

"Facebook will rely on users to report fake news despite evidence that suggests users have a difficult time assessing or identifying fake news. Teens seem to be especially vulnerable to fake news. A recent study by researchers at Stanford found that middle and high school students have a difficult time detecting fake news from real news, or detecting bias in tweets and Facebook statuses."

"The possibility of digitally interacting with someone from beyond the grave is no longer the stuff of science fiction. The technology to create convincing digital surrogates of the dead is here, and it's rapidly evolving, with researchers predicting its mainstream viability within a decade. But what about the ethics of bereavement-and the privacy of the deceased? Speaking with a loved one evokes a powerful emotional response. The ability to do so in the wake of their death will inevitably affect the human process of grieving in ways we're only beginning to explore."

"The US military's nuclear arsenal is controlled by computers built in the 1970s that still use 8in floppy disks. A report into the state of the US government, released by congressional investigators, has revealed that the country is spending around $60bn (£40.8bn) to maintain museum-ready computers, which many do not even know how to operate any more, as their creators retire."

"A robot that can decide whether or not to inflict pain has been built by roboticist and artist Alexander Reben from the University of Berkeley, California. The basic machine is capable of pricking a finger but is programmed not to do so every time it can."

"With all the personal data it collects, your wrist-mounted wearable computer is almost definitely going to betray you at some point, whether that's a reminder to get up and do another 5,000 steps this afternoon or accidentally giving away your ATM PIN. According to a new paper, ominously titled "Friend or Foe?: Your Wearable Devices Reveal Your Personal PIN" it is surprisingly simple to determine your PIN or password by reverse-engineering motion sensor data from a smartwatch or fitness tracker."

""The human can provide the robot with intuition, expertise and cognitive abilities. The robot can do things in areas too dangerous for a human, while the human is still there," he told Stanford News last week."

"in the post-Snowden era, we can no longer address the "digital divide" just by providing access -- we also have to teach people how their online usage is spied on, how that will harm them, and what to do about it. "

"Anyone who has driven a car through an unfamiliar place can attest to how easy it is to let GPS do all the work. That GPS can have a transformative effect on a society is undeniable. We have come to depend on a technology that, in theory, makes it impossible to get lost. But not only are we still getting lost, we may actually be losing a part of ourselves."

"Scott is interested in conserving the stuff we have forgotten has value. Increasingly, our culture plays itself out on the internet, yet even now we have a tendency to view what we do on there as trivial. Or we make the mistake of assuming that digital means for ever."

"Security researcher Troy Hunt reports that the snuggly spies, from Spiral Toys, Security researcher Troy Hunt reports that the snuggly spies, from Spiral Toys, "represents the nexus" of the problem with internet-connected appliances and toys: children being recorded, data being leaked, and the technical possibility of surreptitious access to children through networked toys. "The best way to understand what these guys do is to simply watch the video [advertisement for the toy].""

"If humans want to continue to add value to the economy, they must augment their capabilities through a "merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence". If we fail to do this, we'll risk becoming "house cats" to artificial intelligence."

"This wasn't the first time a person of authority told the video game creator to quit doing what he cared about. Luckily, "I had grit and I didn't let them discourage me," said Hawkins."

"A cautionary tale: Back in 2009, government contractor Jeffrey Kantor was browsing online, seeking to make a radio-controlled airplane for his son. He began to type his search into Google: "How do I build a radio-controlled"-[enter autocomplete]-"bomb." That's right, before Kantor knew it, he had accidentally asked Google how to make an explosive device. And his life would never be the same."

"Now that we have finalized our systems for the acquisition and processing of Americans' location data (using data from cell phone and license plate readers as well as other sources), I wanted to give you a quick taste of our new system's capabilities in the domestic policing context."

"high-frequency trading that you hear a lot is that it destabilizes markets, because all the computers trading with each other don't have the common sense famously possessed by stock exchange floor traders, and so they sometimes do dumb stuff like sell stock for a penny or buy it for $99,999.99, and then later when you yell at them they just point to their algorithms and shrug. "

"But what will robot cars be programmed to do when there's lots of them on the roads, and they're networked with one another? We know what we as individuals would like. My car should take as its Prime Directive: "Prevent my passengers from coming to harm." But when the cars are networked, their Prime Directive well might be: "Minimize the amount of harm to humans overall." "

"The survey found that more than half of Americans say they do not want to lose control over their information but also believe this loss of control has already happened. Turow argues that marketers misrepresent Americans' behaviors by categorizing their acceptance of company discounts in exchange for personal data as rational acceptance of "tradeoffs."