Group items tagged

"Data centers are mushrooming worldwide to meet AI demand, but particularly in Latin America, seen as strategically located by Big Tech. One of the largest data center hubs is in Querétaro, a Mexican state with high risk of intensifying climate change-induced drought. Farmers are already protesting their risk of losing water access."

"Kafaar was inspired to turn the tables on telephone fraudsters after he played a "dad's joke" on a scam caller in front of his two kids while they enjoyed a picnic in the sun. With inane chatter, he kept the scammer on the line. "The kids had a very good laugh," he says. "And I was thinking the purpose was to deceive the scammer, to waste their time so they don't talk to others. "Scamming the scammers, if you like." The next day he called his team from the university's Cyber Security Hub in. There must be a better way than his "dad joke" method, he thought. And there had to be something smarter than a popular existing piece of technology - the Lennybot. Before Malcolm and Ibrahim, there was Lenny. Lenny is a doddery, old Australian man, keen for a rambling chat. He's achatbot, designed to troll telemarketers. With a thready voice, tinged with a slight whistle, Lenny repeats various phrases on loop. Each phrase kicks in after 1.5 seconds of silence, to mimic the rhythm of a conversation."

"Sounds lovely. But a few (mostly worried) thoughts come instantly to mind. First, our fingerprints are unique whether or not they're attached to our hand. That sounds like a dangerous incentive to chop off a few fingers, no?"

"As smart as they are, doctors can't compete with the volume of knowledge that a robot can retain. In an effort to join the best of both worlds - human experience with robotic data - a number of companies are developing telemedicine robots that not only allow doctors to reach out to patients miles or continents away, but can offer immediate information and advice that draws from volumes of medical research and case studies. In January the FDA approved the telepresence platform RP-Vita, developed by iRobot and InTouch Health. Now seven hospitals across North America have enlisted the services of RP-Vita, bringing us one step closer to robotics-augmented healthcare."

"We're tempted to file this one under "the more things change, the more they stay the same." A wristband, called Nymi, that taps the user's heartbeat as a biometric marker, will also double as a bitcoin wallet."

""With the ability to learn from emerging patterns and discover new correlations, Watson's cognitive capabilities hold enormous potential in Africa - helping it to achieve in the next two decades what today's developed markets have achieved over two centuries," Kamal Bhattacharya, the director of IBM's Research - Africa, said in a news release."

"In terms of safety, a 2013 Navigant Research report noted "the potential for greatly reduced accident rates." Such potential rests on the basic logic of driving: Good driving relies on physics calculations; bad driving happens thanks to human physical limitations like intoxication and sleepiness."

"But which parts of an individual's anatomy are truly unchangeable, even as he or she ages and potentially undergoes plastic surgery?"

"For now, the cost and difficulty of stealing fingerprints or maps of palm veins in any usable format keep most fraudsters away. But as biometrics serve as a guardhouse for more money and other valuables, the systems will become more appealing targets. That means that research into anti-spoofing safeguards will be a critically important factor in the mainstream adoption of biometric systems, according to Ross."

""The Internet was a way to connect computers, and now it can be a way to connect brains," said researcher Andrea Stocco, assistant professor in psychology at the University of Washington."

"Meet GIST, a gesture-controlled wearable device that helps the visually impaired navigate the world around them. University of Nevada computer scientists Vinitha Khambadkar and Eelke Folmer recently debuted GIST at a technology conference."

"Sequencing cancer to find the breaks has become easy and cheap. But information on which drugs might or might not work on particular mutations remains buried in PDF files and scattered across medical journals."

"The benefits of mobile technology in a healthcare setting have not, it's safe to say, gone unnoticed. A throng of companies are trying to turn the smartphone into an assortment of medical devices, from blood pressure cuffs to otoscopes. Such devices offer patients a chance to keep up with chronic conditions and send data to their doctors on occasion."

""We have absolutely nothing against bricklayers," Pivac says. "The problem is the average age of bricklayers is going up and it's difficult to attract new young people to the trade." There's a debate on about the future of automation-what it means that machines may be able to match humans at virtually any task. For now, robots are nowhere near that advanced."

"Now, by my estimates, the half-life of a career is about 10 years. I expect that it will decrease, within a decade, to five years. Advancing technologies will cause so much disruption to almost every industry that entire professions will disappear. And then, in about 15-20 years from now, we will be facing a jobless future, in which most jobs are done by machines and the cost of basic necessities such as food, energy and health care is negligible - just as the costs of cellphone communications and information are today. "