An Amazon user in Germany was just able to gain access to an estimated 1,700 voice recordings of an Alexa user — because, get this, of a glitch at the Amazon company. That’s some glitch. It came by way of a “human error,” Amazon reported. But here’s the bigger glitch. In the end, these erroneously...
Pew Research Center asked 979 technology experts, business and policy leaders, scientists and science-minded activists and the like just how they thought artificial intelligence would impact humans by the year 2030 — and while 63 percent waxed positive, another 37 percent warned of the negatives. And one of their biggest concerns? That machines would eventually...
The U.S. Secret Service is testing a new facial recognition program at the White House, supposedly simply to identify their own volunteer agents in the public areas in the vicinity of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. But come on. There’s not a person alive who believes the Secret Service won’t take peaks at passersby. And this program...
Walmart just announced 360 janitor robots with data-collecting capabilities will make their debuts at select stores before the end of January. Let’s hope these ‘bots do better than the ones sent to help astronauts at the International Space Station. Or, the ones already at work in retail shops around the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRJV1SPYpIE “Store Hires Robot...
Google, fresh off the farm of defending last month’s leak of 500,000 or so users’ sensitive information, has just been hit by another Internet hijacking — the “worst ever,” according to the company that caught the hack. And what’s most eye-opening is the hack is the likely work of Russian and Chinese sources. Come on...
Google seems to be taking a little skip down Big Brother lane with some George Orwell-like patent applications that give rise to images of the telescreens described in the popular “1984” novel of dystopian society — you know, the ones where thought police watch all, hear all and take note of all for Big Government....
Thousands of Swedes have been busily inserting microchips beneath the skin on their hands — for convenience’s sake, for goodness sake. That’s fine and dandy. For Sweden. But what’s alarming is that the trend has been making a beeline for America’s shores, as well. “For The First Time, a US Company Is Implanting Microchips in...
Cosmologist Stephen Hawking made headlines from beyond the grave this October when, seven months after his death, his presumed last book was published bearing these words: “There is no God.” And with that, the already wide gap separating science and religion, physical from spiritual, got a bit wider. What a shame. What a missed opportunity...
China has just employed new “gait recognition” technology that can identify individuals by the way they walk. This is police surveillance taken to a whole new level of frightening. Whispers are that America’s airports might make a decent testing ground to bring the artificial intelligence here. That would open quite the can of worms now,...
Oxford University researchers have devised what they say is a new artificial intelligence program that will help predict and possibly prevent religious violence around the world. It’s based on psychological programming that starts with the premise that all people are naturally peaceful. And that’s where the software goes wrong. That’s where it’s doomed to fail....
