SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

14Nov

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

New Ransomware Threat On The Horizon

Cybersecurity researchers spotlight a new ransomware threat – be careful where you upload files. You probably know better than to click on links that download unknown files onto your computer. It turns out that uploading files can get you into trouble, too. Today’s web browsers are much more powerful than earlier generations of browsers. They’re able to manipulate data within both the browser and the computer’s local file system. Users can send and receive email, listen to music or watch a movie within a browser with the click of a button. Unfortunately, these capabilities also mean that hackers can find clever ways to abuse the browsers to trick you into letting ransomware lock up your files when you think that you’re simply doing your usual tasks online. I’m a computer scientist ...

The Impact Of AI-Enabled Bots On Election Disinformation

21Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

AI, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

The Impact Of AI-Enabled Bots On Election Disinformation

Election disinformation: how AI-powered bots work and how you can protect yourself from their influence. Social media platforms have become more than mere tools for communication. They’ve evolved into bustling arenas where truth and falsehood collide. Among these platforms, X stands out as a prominent battleground. It’s a place where disinformation campaigns thrive, perpetuated by armies of AI-powered bots programmed to sway public opinion and manipulate narratives. AI-powered bots are automated accounts that are designed to mimic human behaviour. Bots on social media, chat platforms and conversational AI are integral to modern life. They are needed to make AI applications run effectively, for example. But some bots are crafted with malicious intent. Shockingly, bots constitute a si...

The Benefits Of Deepfake Detection: Algorithms That Are More Demographic Diversity Aware

20Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

The Benefits Of Deepfake Detection: Algorithms That Are More Demographic Diversity Aware

Deepfake detection improves when using algorithms that are more aware of demographic diversity. Deepfakes – essentially putting words in someone else’s mouth in a very believable way – are becoming more sophisticated by the day and increasingly hard to spot. Recent examples of deepfakes include Taylor Swift nude images, an audio recording of President Joe Biden telling New Hampshire residents not to vote, and a video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calling on his troops to lay down their arms. Although companies have created detectors to help spot deepfakes, studies have found that biases in the data used to train these tools can lead to certain demographic groups being unfairly targeted. My team and I discovered new methods that improve both the fairness and the accura...

Chatbots Refuse To Produce Controversial Content: What You Need To Know

20Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

AI, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

Chatbots Refuse To Produce Controversial Content: What You Need To Know

AI chatbots refuse to produce ‘controversial’ output − why that’s a free speech problem. Google recently made headlines globally because its chatbot Gemini generated images of people of color instead of white people in historical settings that featured white people. Adobe Firefly’s image creation tool saw similar issues. This led some commentators to complain that AI had gone “woke.” Others suggested these issues resulted from faulty efforts to fight AI bias and better serve a global audience. The discussions over AI’s political leanings and efforts to fight bias are important. Still, the conversation on AI ignores another crucial issue: What is the AI industry’s approach to free speech, and does it embrace international free speech standards? We are policy researchers who study fre...

Tomorrow’s Engineers And The Ethical Challenges Posed By AI

20Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

AI, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Tomorrow’s Engineers And The Ethical Challenges Posed By AI

Are tomorrow’s engineers ready to face AI’s ethical challenges? A chatbot turns hostile. A test version of a Roomba vacuum collects images of users in private situations. A Black woman is falsely identified as a suspect on the basis of facial recognition software, which tends to be less accurate at identifying women and people of color. These incidents are not just glitches, but examples of more fundamental problems. As artificial intelligence and machine learning tools become more integrated into daily life, ethical considerations are growing, from privacy issues and race and gender biases in coding to the spread of misinformation. The general public depends on software engineers and computer scientists to ensure these technologies are created in a safe and ethical manner. As a soc...

7Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

Batteries So Many Sizes And Shapes

Why batteries come in so many sizes and shapes. If you’ve looked in your utility drawer lately, you may have noticed the various shapes, sizes and types of batteries that power your electronic devices. First, there are the round, non-rechargeable button cells for your watches and small items. There’s also the popular AA and AAA cylindrical batteries for calculators, clocks and remotes. Then you have the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries in your laptops and phones. And don’t forget about the lead-acid battery in your car. Maybe you have a drawer in your house that looks like this? Peter Fiskerstrand/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA I’m a professor who studies batteries and electrochemistry. To understand why batteries come in many different sizes and shapes – and serve many purposes – look to th...

Could April’s Eclipse Interrupt Solar Power Straining Electrical Grids

14Nov

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

Could April’s Eclipse Interrupt Solar Power Straining Electrical Grids

April’s eclipse will mean interruptions in solar power generation, which could strain electrical grids. During the most recent total solar eclipse visible in the U.S., on Aug. 21, 2017, the skies darkened as the Moon crossed in front of the Sun. It blocked out all sunlight – except for that from a golden ring visible around the Moon’s shape, called the corona. Not surprisingly, solar power generation across North America plummeted for several hours, from the first moment the Moon began to obscure the Sun to when the Sun’s disk was clear again. On April 8, 2024, another total solar eclipse will track across the U.S., causing perhaps an even greater loss of solar power generation. Although this will be the second total solar eclipse visible in the U.S. in under seven years, these events are...

Electric Vehicles Long Road To Relevance

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Electric Vehicles Long Road To Relevance

Electric vehicles are suddenly hot − but the industry has traveled a long road to relevance. In 2023, more than 7% of cars sold in the United States were electric vehicles. In some parts of the world, such as Norway, EVs make up a whopping 20% of cars on the road. In California, where I live, almost 60% of people looking for a car in 2021 said they would at least consider getting an EV. This upswing in demand comes after years of flagging sales. As recently as 2010, fewer than 100,000 cars on U.S. roads were EVs. That number crossed the 1 million mark in 2018, up more than 80% over the prior year. What explains this seemingly unexpected surge over the past few years? The key word here is “seemingly.” And the answer reveals an interesting history that most people are completely unaware o...

AI Can Now Track Your Emotions — But Should It?

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

AI, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

AI Can Now Track Your Emotions — But Should It?

Emotion-tracking AI on the job: Workers fear being watched – and misunderstood. Emotion artificial intelligence uses biological signals such as vocal tone, facial expressions and data from wearable devices as well as text and how people use their computers, promising to detect and predict how someone is feeling. It is used in contexts both mundane, like entertainment, and high stakes, like the workplace, hiring and health care. A wide range of industries already use emotion AI, including call centers, finance, banking, nursing and caregiving. Over 50% of large employers in the U.S. use emotion AI aiming to infer employees’ internal states, a practice that grew during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, call centers monitor what their operators say and their tone of voice. Scholars hav...

AI Promised Humanlike Machines – In 1958

17Jul

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

AI, IN OTHER NEWS, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

AI Promised Humanlike Machines – In 1958

We’ve been here before: AI promised humanlike machines – in 1958. A roomsize computer equipped with a new type of circuitry, the Perceptron, was introduced to the world in 1958 in a brief news story buried deep in The New York Times. The story cited the U.S. Navy as saying that the Perceptron would lead to machines that “will be able to walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself and be conscious of its existence.” More than six decades later, similar claims are being made about current artificial intelligence. So, what’s changed in the intervening years? In some ways, not much. Frank Rosenblatt with the Mark I Perceptron, the first artificial neural network computer, unveiled in 1958. National Museum of the U.S. Navy/Flickr The field of artificial intelligence has been running through a boo...