Monday, March 17

TECHNOLOGY

Teenagers And AI Companions — What You Need To Know
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TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

Teenagers And AI Companions — What You Need To Know

Teenagers Turning To AI Companions Are Redefining Love As Easy, Unconditional And Always There. Teenagers are falling in love with chatbots. Young people are reporting epidemic levels of loneliness, and some are turning to technology to fill the void. Recent tragedies provide a glimpse into the extent of this trend and the dangers it poses. A 14-year-old boy’s suicide following a romantic relationship with an AI companion raised national alarms about the dangers these relationships may pose to young people’s mental and emotional development. In 2021, a 19-year-old who had been in an emotional relationship with an AI companion broke into Windsor Castle with a crossbow, saying that he was going to kill the queen. The chatbot gave encouraging responses when he told it of his intention to ...
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How Startup DeepSeek Changed The Calculus
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AI, TECHNOLOGY, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

How Startup DeepSeek Changed The Calculus

Why building big AIs costs billions – and how Chinese startup DeepSeek dramatically changed the calculus. State-of-the-art artificial intelligence systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude have captured the public imagination by producing fluent text in multiple languages in response to user prompts. Those companies have also captured headlines with the huge sums they’ve invested to build ever more powerful models. An AI startup from China, DeepSeek, has upset expectations about how much money is needed to build the latest and greatest AIs. In the process, they’ve cast doubt on the billions of dollars of investment by the big AI players. I study machine learning. DeepSeek’s disruptive debut comes down not to any stunning technological breakthrough but to a ...
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The Impact Of Medical Decisions Evolving With Technology
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TECHNOLOGY, TOP FOUR

The Impact Of Medical Decisions Evolving With Technology

From anecdotes to AI tools, how doctors make medical decisions is evolving with technology. The practice of medicine has undergone an incredible, albeit incomplete, transformation over the past 50 years, moving steadily from a field informed primarily by expert opinion and the anecdotal experience of individual clinicians toward a formal scientific discipline. The advent of evidence-based medicine meant clinicians identified the most effective treatment options for their patients based on quality evaluations of the latest research. Now, precision medicine is enabling providers to use a patient’s individual genetic, environmental and clinical information to further personalize their care. The potential benefits of precision medicine also come with new challenges. Importantly, the amoun...
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Making Machines That Learn — Spotlights Key Breakthroughs In AI Revolution
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AI, TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

Making Machines That Learn — Spotlights Key Breakthroughs In AI Revolution

Nobel Prize in physics spotlights key breakthroughs in AI revolution − making machines that learn. If your jaw dropped as you watched the latest AI-generated video, your bank balance was saved from criminals by a fraud detection system, or your day was made a little easier because you were able to dictate a text message on the run, you have many scientists, mathematicians and engineers to thank. But two names stand out for foundational contributions to the deep learning technology that makes those experiences possible: Princeton University physicist John Hopfield and University of Toronto computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton. The two researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics on Oct. 8, 2024, for their pioneering work in the field of artificial neural networks. Though artificia...
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Changing The Way We Explore The Solar System “CubeSats” The Tiniest Of Satellites
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TECHNOLOGY, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

Changing The Way We Explore The Solar System “CubeSats” The Tiniest Of Satellites

CubeSats, the tiniest of satellites, are changing the way we explore the solar system. Most CubeSats weigh less than a bowling ball, and some are small enough to hold in your hand. But the impact these instruments are having on space exploration is gigantic. CubeSats – miniature, agile and cheap satellites – are revolutionizing how scientists study the cosmos. A standard-size CubeSat is tiny, about 4 pounds (roughly 2 kilograms). Some are larger, maybe four times the standard size, but others are no more than a pound. As a professor of electrical and computer engineering who works with new space technologies, I can tell you that CubeSats are a simpler and far less costly way to reach other worlds. Rather than carry many instruments with a vast array of purposes, these Lilliputian-siz...
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The Astronauts Are Still In Space — Why The Boeing Starliner Returned Without The Crew
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TECHNOLOGY, TOP FOUR

The Astronauts Are Still In Space — Why The Boeing Starliner Returned Without The Crew

The Boeing Starliner has returned to Earth without its crew – a former astronaut details what that means for NASA, Boeing and the astronauts still up in space. Boeing’s crew transport space capsule, the Starliner, returned to Earth without its two-person crew right after midnight Eastern time on Sept. 7, 2024. Its remotely piloted return marked the end of a fraught test flight to the International Space Station which left two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams, on the station for months longer than intended after thruster failures led NASA to deem the capsule unsafe to pilot back. Wilmore and Williams will stay on the International Space Station until February 2025, when they’ll return to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon capsule. The Conversation U.S. asked former commander ...
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Airborne Communications Stations Could Change Internet Connectivity For A Third Of The World’s Population
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TECHNOLOGY

Airborne Communications Stations Could Change Internet Connectivity For A Third Of The World’s Population

A third of the world’s population lacks internet connectivity − airborne communications stations could change that. An experimental aircraft like this solar-powered airship could someday play a role in providing internet access to rural areas or disaster zones. Thales Alenia Space via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA  About one-third of the global population, around 3 billion people, don’t have access to the internet or have poor connections because of infrastructure limitations, economic disparities and geographic isolation. Today’s satellites and ground-based networks leave communications gaps where, because of geography, setting up traditional ground-based communications equipment would be too expensive. High-altitude platform stations – telecommunications equipment positioned...
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Without Skimping On Energy Usage — The Load On The Electrical Grid Can Be Helped By AI
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TECHNOLOGY

Without Skimping On Energy Usage — The Load On The Electrical Grid Can Be Helped By AI

AI helps lighten the load on the electric grid – without skimping on people’s energy use. My colleagues and I have developed an artificial intelligence system that helps buildings shift their energy use to times when the electric grid is cleaner. I’m an engineer who studies and develops smart buildings. My lab created Merlin, which learns how people use energy in their homes and adjust energy controls like thermostats to meet their needs while at the same time minimizing the impact on the grid. The system can learn on one set of buildings and occupants and be used in buildings with different controls and energy use patterns. We dubbed it Merlin after King Arthur’s legendary magician to reflect the magical nature of the system: It automatically collects data on how people use energy in...
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Some App Settings Are A Real Threat To User Privacy
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TECHNOLOGY, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

Some App Settings Are A Real Threat To User Privacy

Complicated app settings are a threat to user privacy. Default privacy settings in popular mobile apps seem like a convenience, allowing you to use a single setting to control the level of privacy – who can see which actions you take – across all of the app’s functions. But default privacy settings are also a potential risk to your privacy. The U.S. app market generated US$44.9 billion in 2023, with smartphone users spending 217 billion hours on their apps. The growing popularity of mobile apps can be attributed to their convenience, ease of use, connectivity and flexibility. For instance, Venmo, a popular peer-to-peer payment app for iPhone and Android users, lets users send and receive money from anyone with a Venmo account. It is particularly convenient when dealing with transactio...
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The Challenges Of Digital Inaccessibility For Blind And Low-Vision People
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TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

The Challenges Of Digital Inaccessibility For Blind And Low-Vision People

Digital inaccessibility: Blind and low-vision people have powerful technology but still face barriers to the digital world. Imagine that you have low vision and you’re completing an online job application using screen reader software. You get through half the form and then come to a question with drop-down options the screen reader cannot access because the online form doesn’t conform to accessibility standards. You’re stuck. You can’t submit the application, and your time has been wasted. Assistive technologies like screen readers go a long way toward closing the gap between people who are blind or have low vision and their sighted peers. But the technologies often hit roadblocks because the information they are designed to work with – documents, websites and software programs – don’t w...
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