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"DeepCoder uses a technique called program synthesis: creating new programs by piecing together lines of code taken from existing software - just like a programmer might. Given a list of inputs and outputs for each code fragment, DeepCoder learned which pieces of code were needed to achieve the desired result overall. "It could allow non-coders to simply describe an idea for a program and let the system build it""

"Writing about Artificial Intelligence is a challenge. By and large, there are two directions to take when discussing the subject: focus on the truly remarkable achievements of the technology or dwell on the dangers of what could happen if machines reach a level of Sentient AI, in which self-aware machines reach human level intelligence). "

"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.""

"Kristoffer Koch invested 150 kroner ($26.60) in 5,000 bitcoins in 2009, after discovering them during the course of writing a thesis on encryption. He promptly forgot about them until widespread media coverage of the anonymous, decentralised, peer-to-peer digital currency in April 2013 jogged his memory. Bitcoins are stored in encrypted wallets secured with a private key, something Koch had forgotten."

"Software is writing news stories with increasing frequency. In a recent example, an LA Times writer-bot wrote and posted a snippet about an earthquake three minutes after the event. The LA Times claims they were first to publish anything on the quake, and outside the USGS, they probably were."

"But the bigger problem with things like public tweets is that no-one knows what information can be derived from them, either now or in the future. I write as a data analyst who's done a fair bit of work with this kind of material. What follows are a few techniques that aren't at all obvious to the average Twitter user. They go far beyond reading the surface text (or metadata) of an individual tweet. And these are just some of the techniques currently used to mine this data, ethically or unethically, legally or illegally."

"Major Wall Street institutions were cracked wide open by a phishing scam from FIN4, a hacker group that, unlike its competition, can write convincingly and employs some basic smarts about why people open attachments."

""All passwords are Diceware generated and contain six words," Mira says on her website. "I write the passwords by hand and do not keep a copy of what I have sent to you. The passwords are sent by U.S. Postal Mail, which cannot be opened by the government without a search warrant." She also recommends you alter the pass phrase slightly after she sends it to you."

""The email has good spelling and grammar and my exact home address...when I say exact I mean, not the way my address is written by those autofill sections on web pages, but the way I write my address. "My tummy did a bit of a somersault when I read that, because I wondered who on earth I could owe £800 to and what was about to land on my doormat." She quickly realised it was a scam and did not click on the link."

"His software is not labeled anything as grand as artificial intelligence. It's machine learning, facilitating and extending his own words, his own imagination. At one level, it merely helps him do what fledgling writers have always done - immerse themselves in the works of those they want to emulate. Hunter Thompson, for instance, strived to write in the style of F. Scott Fitzgerald, so he retyped "The Great Gatsby" several times as a shortcut to that objective."

"Eck said machine learning, a powerful form of AI, will be integrated into how humans communicate with each other. He raised the idea of "assistive writing" in the future with Google Docs, the company's online word processing software. This may be based on Google's upcoming Smart Compose technology that suggests words and phrases based on what's being typed. Teachers used to worry about whether students used Wikipedia for their homework. Now they may wonder what part of the work the students wrote themselves, Eck said."

"The algorithm behind what3words took six months to write. Sheldrick worked on it with two friends he had grown up with. Mohan Ganesalingham, a maths fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Jack Waley-Cohen, a full-time quiz obsessive and question-setter for Only Connect. After the initial mapping was complete, they incorporated an error-correction algorithm, which places similar-sounding combinations a very long way apart."

"These exploits are based on chip engineering flaws, not on software flaws. Apple, Google, Abode, Microsoft, and other software companies didn't write poor software or bad Operating Systems to cause these problems to occur. Rather, the chip manufacturers - Intel, AMD and ARM - designed and then engineered computer chips with flaws built into them. Once discovered, those flaws allow the Meltdown and Spectre exploits to be run. Worse, these chips have been sold with consumer computers, servers and mobile devices since 1995. so the impact is, potentially, both personal and global in scope."

"In September last year, researchers at New York University and Harvard Business School published their analysis of the emails and online meetings of 3.1 million remote workers in such cities as Chicago, New York, London, Tel Aviv and Brussels, in the very early phases of their countries' first lockdowns. They found that the length of the average working day had increased by 8.2%, or nearly 50 minutes, "largely due to writing emails and attending meetings beyond office hours"."

"But even cleverest AI can be fooled with the simplest of hacks. If you write out the word "iPod" on a sticky label and paste it over the apple, Clip does something odd: it decides, with near certainty, that it is looking at a mid-00s piece of consumer electronics. In another test, pasting dollar signs over a picture of a dog caused it to be recognised as a piggy bank."

"It is the first time scientists have created sentences from brain activity linked to handwriting and paves the way for more sophisticated devices to help paralysed people communicate faster and more clearly. The man, known as T5, who is in his 60s and lost practically all movement below his neck after a spinal cord injury in 2007, was able to write 18 words a minute when connected to the system. On individual letters, his "mindwriting" was more than 94% accurate."

"The paper, co-authored by researchers inside and outside Google, contended that technology companies could do more to ensure AI systems aimed at mimicking human writing and speech do not exacerbate historical gender biases and use of offensive language, according to a draft copy seen by Reuters."

"The researchers found that "increasing machine and AI readership … motivates firms to prepare filings that are more friendly to machine parsing and processing". So far, so predictable. But there's more: "firms with high expected machine downloads manage textual sentiment and audio emotion in ways catered to machine and AI readers""

"But it isn't. As I write, I have a Fairphone 3+ on the desk beside me. It's a very capable, nicely designed, dual-sim Android phone. In just seconds, I snap off the back of the case with a fingernail and remove the battery. Other modules of the phone, including the camera, can be removed and replaced without elaborate tools or expertise. And once it's done you snap the case shut and press the power button. And you can buy it online for £399. Over in the US, the Framework laptop has just come on to the market. It's a thin, lightweight, high-performance 13.5in notebook that can be upgraded, customised and repaired in ways that no other notebook can. It's even available as a kit of modules that users can change and assemble themselves, installing only the modules they want as plug-in units. Think of it as Lego for geeks."