Trending Stories from technologyreview.com
SpaceX’s Starlink satellites could make US Army navigation hard to jam – New research shows Elon Musk’s broadband network could work as an alternative to GPS
Deepfake Putin is here to warn Americans about their self-inflicted doom. AI-generated synthetic media is being used in a political ad campaign—not to disrupt the election, but to save it.
CIA announces CIA Labs, a skunkworks operation that will let its officers profit from their inventions in fields like AI, data analytics, and quantum computing
A patient died after ransomware attackers hit a German hospital
The long, complicated history of “people analytics” – Silicon Valley’s belief that it can optimize society goes back a long way, as Jill Lepore argues in her new book “If Then.”
Analysis of 63 statements released by tech firms amid BLM protests finds their language repeatedly placed responsibility for racial injustice on Black people
Q&A with AI Now Institute's Amba Kak on the organization's new report detailing eight case studies of how biometric ID systems are regulated around the world
Explainer: What do political databases know about you? – If you live in the US, you’re almost certainly being tracked by political organizations. They know a lot about you—but some data is just guesswork.
MIT Technology Review: Elon Musk’s Neuralink is neuroscience theater
Online creators are creating deepfake memes as the technology grows more accessible, and publishing YouTube instructions so others can learn how
IBM has built a new drug-making lab entirely in the cloud
Human rights advocates filed a court petition against Israeli phone hacking firm Cellebrite to stop exports to Hong Kong, says tools are used against dissidents
OpenAI's GPT-3 language generator has no idea what it’s talking about
GPT-3 generated blog post reach #1 on Hacker News
The EU is launching a market for personal data. Here’s what that means for privacy.: In a radical shift for the EU’s data governance strategy, the Trusts Project promotes data sharing as a civic duty.
The hack that could make face recognition think someone else is you
The quest for quantum-proof encryption just made a leap forward
It’s too late to stop QAnon with fact checks and account bans
In a white paper about its plans for AI, WeChat-owner Tencent lists the societal benefits of deepfake technology and urges regulators to be lenient
Critics contend that predictive policing algorithms need to be dismantled due to biased training data, even as advocates say that algorithms can be made fair
Unsealed court documents reveal identity of Fxmsp, a Kazakh hacker responsible for information theft from 300+ companies and governments in 44 countries
Is venture capital producing the kinds of inventions society needs?
Trump’s data-hungry, invasive app is a voter surveillance tool of extraordinary power | Both presidential campaigns use apps to capture data—but Trump’s scoops up your identity, your location, and even your phone’s Bluetooth functions.
A look at Toronto's growth as a tech hub, selling itself as a gentler, kinder version of Silicon Valley
A US government study confirms most face recognition systems are racist
The UK government's efforts to build a centralized contract tracing app from scratch were plagued by poor technical execution and chaotic personnel management
Rumors, death, and a tech overhaul: Inside Amazon’s race to hire 175,000 workers during a pandemic
Reddit · 4 months ago
Norway halts coronavirus app over privacy concerns
The two-year fight to stop Amazon from selling face recognition to the police
Reddit · 4 months ago
Why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it: After years of police body cams and bystander cellphone video, it’s clear that evidentiary images on their own don’t bring about change. What’s missing is power.
As many Chinese manufacturers face low overseas demand due to the coronavirus, companies like Pinduoduo and JD have helped many launch their own domestic brands
Why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it
Google Docs is a key tool for organizing protests, as activists anonymously edit public lists of funds, charities, books on racism, and letter-writing templates
Interview with Hamid Khan, founder of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, on racism in police surveillance, and his view that algorithms have no place in policing
The Dream of a Lifetime (2005)
Self-driving car companies, whose test fleets are grounded due to the pandemic, are finding new uses for old data through detailed data labeling and 3D mapping
Software that swaps out words can now fool the AI behind Alexa and Siri
As pandemic-related budget cuts come to call centers, organizations turn to chatbots like IBM's Watson to filter calls, reducing the need for human operators
Our weird behavior during the pandemic is screwing with AI models
Reddit · 5 months ago