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"There are three big challenges in the Internet space that all countries must face in the near future. China's approach to the challenges will impact not only Chinese Internet users, but potentially all Internet users. What interface follows the smart hone, whether it be AR-enabled glasses, foldable screens, or wearable projectors, will not only be influenced by China's substantial Internet-using population, but also by their manufacturing. Privacy, as it relates to online information collecting and sale, has consequences for broader community standards, and there is no one-size fits all approach to this issue. China must engage their own ethicists, community, government and technologists to develop a solution that works for China. Finally, globalization. Most of China's internet success has been within China, but as China begins to consider how it might attract users from outside its borders, it will need to consider dialing back the protections that have held foreign Internet companies at bay."

"Now, work posted online shows how artificial intelligence (AI) can easily produce accurate emulators that can accelerate simulations across all of science by billions of times."

""Somehow the little brats worked out that if enough users gave the app a one-star review it would get booted off the App Store. Tens of thousands of reviews flooded in, and DingTalk's rating plummeted overnight from 4.9 to 1.4. The app has had to beg for mercy on social media: 'I'm only five years old myself, please don't kill me.'""

"Apart from biases in the training databases, it's hard to know how well face-recognition systems actually perform in the real world, in spite of recent gains. Anil Jain, a professor of computer science at Michigan State University who has worked on face recognition for more than thirty years, told me, "Most of the testing on the private venders' products is done in a laboratory environment under controlled settings. In real practice, you're walking around in the streets of New York. It's a cold winter day, you have a scarf around your face, a cap, maybe your coat is pulled up so your chin is partially hidden, the illumination may not be the most favorable, and the camera isn't capturing a frontal view.""

"The computers are connected into a kind of hive mind via a downloadable software, allowing the system to run calculations with greater speed and efficiency than any individual device. This is necessary to do the complex work of simulating how the proteins that make up the novel coronavirus behave and where there could be potential binding sites for drugs to latch on to."

"Since Moonshot was founded, there has been a radical shift in the perception of technology's role when it comes to extremist terrorism. "Five years ago, there were still people inside the government who thought tech was for the kids," Frenett says. "There was a sense that it was almost amusing that terrorists were on the internet. You don't get that any more. Likewise, five years ago there were some great organisations doing great work on the violent far-right, but again it was almost seen as niche. That's no longer the case.""

""It literally is at a point now we've created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. That is literally where we are. I would encourage all of you how to internalize this is - if you feed the beast, the beast will destroy you.""

"A hacker has stolen millions of user account details from popular education platform Edmodo, and the data is apparently for sale on the so-called dark web. Teachers, students and parents use Edmodo to work on lesson plans, assign homework, and more. The organization claims to have over 78 million members."

"That's the crux of the problem. While you can legislate to only give state agencies access to terrorists' communications, and with proper oversight and authorisation, you cannot actually build encryption that works like that. If you put a backdoor in, it's there not just for security services to exploit, but for cyber-criminals, oppressive regimes and anyone else."

"The other day I noticed that the little green light next to the camera built into my computer screen was on. It's perfectly possible that I had recently used some app that required the camera, and forgotten about it; but I couldn't find a way to turn it off. It's unlikely anyone was really watching me pretend to work, but my computer definitely was."

"Indeed, this scam is far subtler. It works like this: fraudsters are able to register domains with characters plucked from various alphabets other than the default Latin script. When displayed, it's all but impossible to tell apart a Greek "O" from a Cyrillic "O" from a Latin "O," for instance."

"In October, American teachers prevailed in a lawsuit with their school district over a computer program that assessed their performance. The system rated teachers in Houston by comparing their students' test scores against state averages. Those with high ratings won praise and even bonuses. Those who fared poorly faced the sack. The program did not please everyone. Some teachers felt that the system marked them down without good reason. But they had no way of checking if the program was fair or faulty: the company that built the software, the SAS Institute, regards its algorithm a trade secret and would not disclose its workings."

"Facebook has detailed the steps it's taking to get help for people who need it. Which involves using artificial intelligence to "detect posts or live videos where someone might be expressing thoughts of suicide," identifying appropriate first responders, and then employing more people to "review reports of suicide or self harm". The social network has been testing this system in the U.S. for the last month, and "worked with first responders on over 100 wellness checks based on reports we received via our proactive detection efforts." In some cases the local authorities were notified in order to help."

"On paper, making human beings behave like simple machines might deliver greater efficiency. But modern-day Taylorism threatens something that those kinds of market analyses fail to capture: the value of being human."

"Chamath Palihapitiya, who was vice-president for user growth at Facebook before he left the company in 2011, said: "The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.""

"Machines, it would seem, are about to get an awful lot chattier. And we've got our work cut out for us to make sure the conversation's meaningful."

"Referred to in the Indian press variously as the "toolkit case", the "Greta toolkit", and the "toolkit conspiracy", the police's ongoing investigation of Ravi, along with fellow activists Nikita Jacob and Shantanu Muluk, centres on the contents of a social media guide that Thunberg tweeted to her nearly 5 million followers in early February. When Ravi was arrested, the Delhi police declared that she "is an editor of the Toolkit Google Doc & key conspirator in document's formulation & dissemination. She started WhatsApp Group & collaborated to make the Toolkit doc. She worked closely with them to draft the Doc.""

"In a statement, the company said: "Colonial Pipeline is taking steps to understand and resolve this issue. At this time, our primary focus is the safe and efficient restoration of our service and our efforts to return to normal operation. This process is already under way, and we are working diligently to address this matter and to minimize disruption to our customers and those who rely on Colonial Pipeline."

"Explained by "Anna", a desk-sitting avatar complete with an artificial voice, the video introduces TP Observer as "a risk-mitigation tool that monitors and tracks real time employee behaviour, and detects any violations to pre-set business rules". Anna explains that this means home workers will have an AI-enabled webcam added to their computers that recognises their face, tags their location and scans for "breaches" of rules at random points during a shift."

"West Midlands Trains emailed about 2,500 employees with a message saying its managing director, Julian Edwards, wanted to thank them for their hard work over the past year under Covid-19. The email said they would get a one-off payment as a thank you after "huge strain was placed upon a large number of our workforce". However, those who clicked through on the link to read Edwards' thank you were instead emailed back with a message telling them it was a company-designed "phishing simulation test" and there was to be no bonus. It warned: "This was a test designed by our IT team to entice you to click the link and used both the promise of thanks and financial reward.""