TECHNOLOGY

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...

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...