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Many Americans distrust emerging technology, new study finds
Change is hard and new things are scary, according to the survey's respondents.
Democratic lawmakers take another stab at AI bias legislation
Sen. Ron Wyden and other Democrats want to hold companies accountable for discriminatory algorithms in banking, housing, and other sectors.
Amazon is reportedly using algorithms to fire Flex delivery drivers
Amazon's contract Flex delivery driver fleet already has to deal with various indignities, and you can now add the fact that they can be hired — and fired — by algorithms.
Twitter will study ‘unintentional harms’ caused by its algorithms
Twitter announced a new plan to study the fairness of its algorithms with the "Responsible Machine learning Initiative."
Recommended Reading: The MCU after 'WandaVision'
Recommended Reading highlights the week's best long-form writing on technology and more.
Facebook is reportedly testing a ‘virality circuit breaker’ to stop misinformation
Facebook is reportedly piloting a new way to check viral posts for misinformation before they spread too far.
Google algorithm lets robots teach themselves to walk
There's no question that robots will play an increasingly central role in our lives in the future, but to get to a stage where they can be genuinely useful there are still a number of challenges to be overcome -- including navigation without human intervention. Yes, we're at a stage where algorithms will allow a robot to learn how to move around, but the process is convoluted and requires a lot of human input, either in picking up the robot when it falls over, or moving it back into its training space if it wanders off. But new research from Google could make this learning process a lot more straightforward.
NYC creates a high-level position to oversee ethics in AI
New York City wants to avoid bias in AI and other algorithms, and it's creating a role primarily to ensure that equal treatment. Mayor Bill de Blasio has issued an executive order creating a position for an Algorithms Management and Policy Officer. Whoever holds the position will work within the Mayor's Office of Operations and serve as both an architect for algorithm guidelines and a go-to resource for algorithm policy. This person will make sure that city algorithms live up to principle of "equity, fairness and accountability," the Mayor's office said.
Google News dives deeper into stories with 'Beyond the Headlines'
Google has been tweaking its News site a lot over the last year in an effort to highlight major publishers and be more transparent on how it ranks news. Now, Google News has unveiled a "Beyond the Headlines" tab that lets you take a deeper dive on specific topics. That includes highlighting editorials, reportage, features, explainers and other types of longer-form stories.
Algorithms help an artist tease portraits out of thread
Our brains are great at forming images out of mishmashes and blotches of color, as a pointillist will tell you. Artist Ani Abakumova has taken that idea and applied it to simple colored threads to create incredible woven art. Creating thread art isn't as simple as painting dots, however, so her husband Andrey Abakumova developed an algorithm that lets her weave the threads to form lifelike representations of artworks like the Mona Lisa and Girl with the Pearl Earring.
An independent report on Facebook’s alleged liberal bias tells us nothing
Conservatives have long lamented that Facebook has a liberal, or anti-conservative, bias. Since the 2016 election, the company has been grilled on the issue by the White House more than once. In an attempt to clear the air, Facebook enlisted an independent third-party to decide once and for all if it does indeed have an anti-conservative bias. Last year, it asked former Republican Senator Jon Kyl and his team at Covington & Burling LLP to conduct a review of the company's policies. The results are in, and for the most part, they tell us nothing.
New DoS attack exploits algorithms to knock sites offline
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have caused their share of online chaos in the past, from being used to target messaging service Telegram during the Hong Kong unrest to crippling emergency communication systems in the US. Now, researchers have described a new vulnerability which could affect sites all over the internet.
'Flying saucer' drone can fly twice as long as regular models
The biggest problem with drones is their lack of endurance, but Swiss researchers have developed a new model that helps reduce that problem. Eschewing the regular four blade design, EPFL startup Flybotix's drone has just two propellers, letting it fly twice as long as regular models. It's just as easy to pilot as a standard UAV, but the increased longevity and small size makes it ideal for inspecting dangerous areas or doing search and rescue in a collapsed building, for instance.
Axon won’t use facial recognition tech in its police body cameras
Axon, a major supplier of police body cameras and software, announced today that it will not include face-matching technology in its body cameras -- at least not yet. The decision follows a report from Axon's independent AI ethics board, which concluded that face recognition technology is not reliable enough to justify its use in body cameras. According to the report, there is "evidence of unequal and unreliable performance across races, ethnicities, genders and other identity groups."
Twitter's chronological timeline button is here to stay
Nearly two months ago, Twitter began testing a feature that made it easier for users to see the latest tweets on their feed first, rather than the ones pushed by the company's algorithm. It's a toggle dressed as a sparkle icon that lives above the home timeline, which keeps you from having to go deep into your Twitter settings to get that purely chronological view. Certain iOS users have had access to this since October, but today Twitter is making the change permanent and rolling it out to everyone on Apple's platform. Twitter's Android app as well as its website are getting the new magic button, too, but that won't be coming until after the holidays.
AI-generated painting sells for $432,000 at auction
A painting created by artificial intelligence sold for $432,000 at the Christie's Prints and Multiples art auction in New York. The piece, called "Portrait of Edmond Belamy," is the first artwork made entirely by AI to go up for sale at a major art auction. It was expected to fetch between $7,000 and $10,000, making the $432,000 haul quite the shocker.
Twitter wants to ‘increase the health of public conversation’
Twitter doesn't only want to be more transparent about the toxic content on its site, it also wants to be more proactive about removing it altogether. Speaking to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce today, as part of a hearing titled "Twitter: Transparency and Accountability," CEO Jack Dorsey said that his company's singular objective is to "increase the health of public conversation." But he said this isn't just about spotting and removing abusive content like harassment, or blocking suspicious accounts. It's also about doing so in a timely, more proactive manner. As it stands, Dorsey said, Twitter relies heavily on users reporting others' bad behavior and that simply needs to change.
Watch tomorrow's Jack Dorsey congressional hearings right here
Another round of social media congressional hearings is upon us. This time, it's Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's turn, who will be testifying alongside Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg before the Senate Intelligence Committee on September 5th. But that hearing, which will focus on foreign election interference, won't be the only one of the day for Dorsey. He's also set to testify alone in a hearing from the House Energy and Commerce Committee entitled "Twitter: Transparency and Accountability." There, he'll be asked questions about how the company's algorithms work to filter out abuse, as well as its decision-making process when it blocks certain content (and accounts) from appearing on its site.
Twitter uses smart cropping to make image previews more interesting
Twitter's recent character limit extension means we're spending more time reading tweets, but now the site now wants us to spend less time looking at pictures. Or more specifically, less time looking for the important bit of a picture. Thanks to Twitter's use of neural networks, picture previews will now be automatically cropped to their most interesting part.
Logan Paul forced YouTube to admit humans are better than algorithms
YouTube is no stranger to controversy. Many of its top stars have been in hot water recently: From PewDiePie making racists remarks, to a "family" channel with abusive kid pranks, the company's been under fire for not keeping a closer eye on the type of content that makes it onto the site. Most recently, Logan Paul, a popular YouTuber with more than 15 million subscribers, faced backlash after posting a video that showed a corpse he came across in Japan's so-called "Suicide Forest." That clip, which was eventually taken down by Paul himself, forced YouTube to cut almost all ties with him and to figure out ways to prevent another situation like this.