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"Hacking into software and then demanding a ransom to release it - what's known as ransomware - is not new. Finnish security expert Mikko Hypponen fully expects it to become a reality as self-driving or "autonomous" cars start to become more commonplace."

"The first known death caused by a self-driving car was disclosed by Tesla Motors on Thursday evening, a development that is sure to cause consumers to second-guess the trust they put in the booming autonomous vehicle industry. "

"This stuff is far more complicated than calibrating safe following distances or even braking for a loose soccer ball. Goodall writes: "There is no obvious way to effectively encode complex human morals in software.""

"While a full move to driverless cars would be Uber's dream scenario, letting it cut the cost of a ride to little more than fuel plus wear and tear, it could very well be a nightmare for car manufacturers. Self-driving cars could prove the death-knell for private car ownership, with services like Uber offering a cheap substitution while avoiding the wastefulness of leaving an asset worth thousands of pounds sit unused on the side of the road."

"Ingram, a 60-year-old Uber driver in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had just learned that Uber would be deploying autonomous cars to accept fares in her city within weeks. The announcement on Thursday morning sent shockwaves through the community of about 4,000 drivers that serve Pennsylvania's second largest city. "

"Such powerful software is still several years away from being fully developed, if at all, and raises all sorts of ethical questions. But the potential applications-such as masterfully translating foreign languages, identifying objects in photos and directing self-driving cars through busy intersections-are so compelling that technology giants like Facebook and Google Inc. are investing heavily in artificial intelligence"

"As soon as 20 years from now, 45 percent of American jobs may be performed by computers, as many as 10 million self-driving cars will be on the roads, and robots-computerized machines-will infiltrate almost every arena of our daily lives, from healthcare to energy production."

"The ship will be equipped with a GPS and various types of sensors, including lidar, radar, and cameras-much like self-driving cars. The ship will be able to steer itself through the sea, avoid other ships, and independently dock itself."

"The Open AI researchers were intrigued by a claim that self-driving cars would be intrinsically hard to fool (tricking them into sudden braking maneuvers, say), because "they capture images from multiple scales, angles, perspectives, and the like.""

"But maybe I'm wrong. Because, if we believe tech gurus at least, the Trolley Problem is about to become of huge real-world importance. Human beings might not find themselves in all that many Trolley Problem-style scenarios over the course of their lives, but soon we're going to start seeing self-driving cars on our streets, and they're going to have to make these judgments all the time."

"The ships would use the internet of things - connecting a range of devices over the internet - to gather data, such as weather conditions and shipping information, and plot the shortest, most efficient and safest routes. By removing the potential for human error, the companies believe the technology could dramatically cut the number of accidents at sea."

"This can make the technology easier to use for seniors who aren't comfortable with other forms of electronic payment, since they wouldn't have to lift a finger. As for the rest of us, this also means an end to standing in line to get off the bus while someone - often me - fumbles around for exact change."

"Elon Musk wants Tesla to be seen as "much more than an electric car company." On Thursday's Tesla AI Day, the CEO described Tesla as a company with "deep AI activity in hardware on the inference level and on the training level" that can be used down the line for applications beyond self-driving cars, including a humanoid robot that Tesla is apparently building."

"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

"Japan, the world's fastest-aging economy, is turning to technologies like AI, avatars, and robots to address labor shortages. Industrial robots have been deployed to automate the assembly of reinforcement bars (rebar), one of the most labor-intensive processes in the construction industry. The trucking industry is turning to self-driving trucks for deliveries, and robots for moving cargo."

"publicly announced that the company had "overestimated the arrival of autonomous vehicles" and that the vehicles, when they did arrive, their "applications will be narrow, what we call geo-fenced, because the problem is so complex.""

"All of Mercedes-Benz's future Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous cars will prioritize saving the people they carry, according to Christoph von Hugo, the automaker's manager of driver assistance systems and active safety. "If you know you can save at least one person, at least save that one. Save the one in the car," Hugo said in an interview at the Paris auto show. "If all you know for sure is that one death can be prevented, then that's your first priority.""

"WILL HACKERS LAUNCH NUCLEAR WEAPONS?"