In July, China’s government issued a sweeping new strategy with a striking aim: draw level with the US in artificial intelligence technology within three years, and become the world leader by 2030. A call for research projects from China’s Ministry of Science and Technology posted online last month fills in some detail on the government’s plans. And it puts Silicon Valley chipmaker Nvidia, the leading supplier of silicon for machine-learning projects, in the cross hairs. Learn about your ad choi...
Nov 21, 2017•9 min
Wednesday morning, Todd Schulte stood before a podium, dressed in a grey suit and orange tie, to talk about the urgent need for legislation that protects undocumented people who came to the United States as children, also known as Dreamers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Nov 20, 2017•9 min
With a few exceptions, it's against federal regulations for your local television station to buy your local newspaper. Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on a proposal to change those rules. Since 1975, the commission has generally barred organizations from owning both a newspaper and a full-power radio or television station in the same market to protect what it calls "viewpoint diversity. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 17, 2017•7 min
Next month in San Francisco, Uber will stand trial in federal court for allegedly cheating in the race to commercialize self-driving cars. Google parent Alphabet accuses Uber of stealing designs for sensors called lidars that give a vehicle a 3-D view of its surroundings, an “unjust enrichment” it says will take $1.8 billion to heal. Meanwhile in Toronto, Uber has a growing artificial-intelligence lab led by a woman who’s spent years trying to make lidar technology less important. Learn about yo...
Nov 16, 2017•7 min
Inventor and author Ray Kurzweil, who currently runs a group at Google writing automatic responses to your emails in cooperation with the Gmail team, recently talked with WIRED Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Thompson at the Council on Foreign Relations. Here’s an edited transcript of that conversation. Nicholas Thompson: Let’s begin with you explaining the law of accelerating returns, which is one of the fundamental ideas underpinning your writing and your work. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.p...
Nov 15, 2017•25 min
As Democratic wins started piling up on election night in Virginia, you probably saw the names of a few key winners circulating in social media and the press. But while the victories of Virginia governor-elect Ralph Northam, and Danica Roem, the first transgender person to ever be elected to a state legislature, rightly resonated, one key to understanding Tuesday's significance could come from a Democrat who lost: Veronica Coleman. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 14, 2017•7 min
“Never in my life have I seen so many frightened people, huddled together, in such a small space,” my friend posted on Facebook in October. A resident at a local hospital, she is working unpaid hours at Ukhia, responding to the arrival of over half a million persecuted Rohingya Muslims in Bangladesh since late August. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Nov 13, 2017•11 min
Bart Stephens has found himself in high demand lately. After four years of investing in cryptocurrency and preaching its gospel, his venture-capital peers are finally listening. During a recent briefing at a storied Silicon Valley venture-capital firm, the young analysts in the room nodded along to his words in excitement, Stephens says. But not everyone was sold. In the middle of his presentation, a gray-haired senior partner stood up, yelled “PONZI SCHEME!” and stormed out. Learn about your ad...
Nov 10, 2017•14 min
Catherine Vaughan doesn't let herself get excited on election night anymore. She learned that lesson the hard way a year ago, over too many glasses of whiskey at a Cleveland bar, where she and the rest of Hillary Clinton's Ohio field team were supposed to be celebrating. Instead, they were mourning. Now, as CEO of the progressive startup Flippable, which she co-founded to raise funding for Democratic state house races, Vaughan faces yet another test of a year's worth of work. Learn about your ad...
Nov 09, 2017•9 min
The “gig economy” is hardly new, but there’s still a yawning gap between the attention it receives and our understanding of how it is---or isn’t---altering the nature of work in America. It may be a Bay Area joke that everyone is either working in the valley or for Task Rabbit, and Uber may be the world’s most valuable startup, but there may be dozens of Apple executives who are personally worth more than Ikea paid to acquire TaskRabbit. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 08, 2017•9 min
It only took one click. And then, for 11 startling minutes---or blissful ones, depending on your politics---the constant drumbeat that is the @realdonaldtrump Twitter handle was muted, taken offline Thursday evening by a Twitter customer-service worker on his or her last day. The President, for one, seems to have taken the bold move as a compliment. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/926401530013642765But for Twitter, the worker’s final act couldn’t come at a worse time. Learn about your...
Nov 07, 2017•8 min
Among the spending choices for governments of poorer nations, kick-starting the technological revolution may at first seem like a low priority. Compared with critical infrastructure, healthcare, or schools, improved digital access and less waiting times for birth certificates feel like luxuries that should come further down the road, or perhaps be left to private enterprise. But there is reason to rethink this. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 06, 2017•8 min
On their second day in Capitol Hill, lawyers from Facebook, Twitter, and Google took a bipartisan beating as they faced tough questions about the role their platforms played in Russian attempts to divide the American electorate. Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee grilled the tech executives about their responses to Russian interference in the 2016 election, arguing that the companies are not taking seriously what Congress considers a kind of cyberwarfare. Learn about your ad choices: d...
Nov 03, 2017•14 min
As special counsel Robert Mueller issues the first indictments in his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, executives of three technology titans will face questioning by Congress this week about Russian use of their platforms. Representatives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google are set to testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday, then the Senate and House intelligence committees on Wednesday. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 02, 2017•13 min
One of the biggest cases for the US Supreme Court’s current term could mark a watershed moment for the Fourth Amendment. InCarpenter v. United States, the court will consider whether police need probable cause to get a search warrant to access cell site location information (CSLI), data that's automatically generated whenever a mobile phone connects to a cell tower. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Nov 01, 2017•9 min
The moment I first realized that everything had changed for Facebook was right after the 2016 US presidential election with one of the first of many Zuckerbergian mea culpas. Not that first post-election post, his horribly disingenuous dodge that improbably asserted that Facebook could not have influenced the election. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Oct 31, 2017•9 min
News that Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix approached Wikileaks founder Julian Assange last year to exploit Hillary Clinton’s private emails has amplified questions about Cambridge's role in President Trump's 2016 campaign. Shortly after The Daily Beast reported Nix’s contact with Assange Wednesday, the Trump campaign’s executive director sought to downplay Cambridge's role. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Oct 30, 2017•11 min
In 2010, Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai believed that his company, and several other social-media upstarts---Twitter, Tumblr, Path---could carve out successful niches against Facebook. But Facebook had other plans. That year the company introduced a feature that allowed users to “check in” at any location, a copy of the main feature of Foursquare’s app. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Oct 27, 2017•9 min
The financial industry today looks stable and boring, with a few megabanks ever-more entrenched and markets that may not offer the same risks and rewards as before the 2008-2009 financial crisis but which remain highly profitable for incumbents. That stasis, however, masks looming challenges to the sclerotic incumbents. Two such challenges were much in evidence this past week: Bitcoin and China. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Oct 26, 2017•9 min
Caloua Lowe bounds up the rickety, worn staircase of a three-story, red brick building in Camden, New Jersey on a sunny September morning, the wooden steps creaking under the pressure of her red-sandaled feet. The walls display framed, Photoshopped images: a mockup of Vogue, album covers featuring young men standing shoulder to shoulder with rap legends like Jay-Z. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Oct 25, 2017•8 min
Silicon Valley oligarchs have plenty of reason to lose sleep these days, but the looming prospect of Nov. 1 has to be high on the list. That’s the day that executives from Google, Facebook, and Twitter are scheduled to testify in back-to-back hearings before Senate and House committees investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Oct 24, 2017•15 min
A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill Thursday that would require online political advertisers to provide additional disclosures about who’s paying for their ads, but the measure may prove a half-step toward preventing foreign adversaries from influencing US elections online. During a press conference Thursday, Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Amy Klobuchar introduced the much-anticipated Honest Ads Act, co-sponsored by Republican Sen. John McCain. Learn about your ad choices: dovetai...
Oct 23, 2017•12 min
Tony Fadell is at the Grove, a spectacularly beautiful country estate outside of London. The event is Founders Forum: the ultra exclusive invite-only tech conference. Prince William is in the house. The guest list is lousy with knights and lesser officers of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Marissa Mayer, the now ex-CEO of Yahoo, and Biz Stone, recently returned to Twitter, are mingling with the other hundred or so invitees. But this is really Fadell’s moment. Learn about your ad...
Oct 20, 2017•41 min
When Twitter could take credit for revolutionary political movements like the Arab Spring, it was easy for the company's executives to joke about their liberal stance on free speech. (Twitter, they said, was "the free speech wing of the free speech party.") But things are a bit more complicated now, as Twitter increasingly plays host to bullies, harassers, Nazis, propaganda-spreading bots, ISIS recruiters, and threats of nuclear war. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Oct 19, 2017•4 min
Wikipedia, one of the last remaining pillars of the open and decentralized web, is in existential crisis. This has nothing to do with money. A couple of years ago, the site launched a panicky fundraising campaign, but ironically thanks to Donald Trump, Wikipedia has never been as wealthy or well-organized. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Oct 18, 2017•9 min
LONGMONT, Colo. — In one back room at Skyline High School, you can learn all you need to know about St. Vrain Valley School District. It’s there that bins of materials sit next to past projects, exposing the district’s DNA. Boxes holding glue, Popsicle sticks, tape, pipe cleaners, compasses, zip ties and rulers lie nestled inside a 6-foot-high, student-constructed rack. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Oct 17, 2017•13 min
White-collar automation has become a common buzzword in debates about the growing power of computers, as software shows potential to take over some work of accountants and lawyers. Artificial-intelligence researchers at Google are trying to automate the tasks of highly paid workers more likely to wear a hoodie than a coat and tie—themselves. In a project called AutoML, Google’s researchers have taught machine-learning software to build machine-learning software. Learn about your ad choices: dove...
Oct 16, 2017•7 min
Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Maria tore through the Caribbean, Puerto Rico is still mostly an island deleted from the present and pushed back a century or so—with little clean water, little electric power, and almost no telecommunications. For telecom, the biggest problem is the lack of power, because most of the island’s transmission lines were knocked out. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Oct 13, 2017•6 min
In the distant Koprulu Sector of the Milky Way, Facebook’s Zerglings lingered in a restless swarm outside the enemy’s base. After the commander ill-advisedly opened the gate, the social network’s alien horde stormed in and slaughtered forces stationed inside, in a battle fought on the frontiers of artificial-intelligence research. The bloody incident was part of an annual competition of the videogame StarCraft for AI software bots that wrapped up Sunday. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx...
Oct 12, 2017•8 min
Imagine you want to collect donations for a food bank. You could place an empty box on the street, walk away, and hope there’s food inside when you return. The likely result? Your box will be filled with trash. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Andrew Losowsky (@losowsky) is project lead ofMozilla’sCoral Project. The Coral Project builds open-source tools and guides to community practice to bring journalists closer to the communities they serve. Alternatively, you could think strategically. Learn about your a...
Oct 11, 2017•8 min
