Last month, researchers at OpenAI in San Francisco revealed an algorithm capable of learning, through trial and error, how to manipulate the pieces of a Rubik's Cube using a robotic hand. It was a remarkable research feat, but it required more than 1,000 desktop computers plus a dozen machines running specialized graphics chips crunching intensive calculations for several months. The effort may have consumed about 2. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Jan 30, 2020•9 min
This story is part of a series on parenting—from surveilling our teens to helping our kids navigate fake news and misinformation. What does it mean for a kid to be media literate? It sounds generally positive and important, like a good dental checkup or a flawless report card. The field is broad and definitions vary, but the main thrust of literacy education is to prepare our children to be adept at accessing, creating, and thinking critically about all types of media. Learn about your ad choice...
Jan 29, 2020•15 min
A new United Nations-sponsored report offers one of the most comprehensive overviews of the challenges to global electoral integrity posed by the onslaught of misinformation, online extremism, and social media manipulation campaigns, and calls for a series of reforms from platforms, politicians, and international governing bodies. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jan 28, 2020•5 min
David Barnett, a former philosophy professor and the founder and CEO of PopSockets, says his interactions with Amazon have often amounted to “bullying with a smile.” Like many companies, PopSockets, which makes a popular plastic grip that can be attached to smartphones, discovered several years ago counterfeit versions of its products available for sale on Amazon. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jan 27, 2020•7 min
Two Microsoft employees sat opposite one another in a Washington State Senate hearing room last Wednesday. Ryan Harkins, the company’s senior director of public policy, spoke in support of a proposed law that would regulate government use of facial recognition. “We would applaud the committee and all of the bill sponsors for all of their work to tackle this important issue,” he said. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Jan 24, 2020•9 min
To anyone with eyes in their kneecaps, the notice outside gadget retailer B8ta’s glossy store next to San Francisco’s new NBA arena is obvious. “We care about your privacy,” the small plaque proclaims, offering a web address and QR code. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jan 23, 2020•9 min
Alexa, are you eavesdropping on me? I passive-aggressively ask my Amazon Echo this question every so often. Because as useful as AI has become, it's also very creepy. It's usually cloud-based, so it's often sending snippets of audio—or pictures from devices like “smart” doorbells—out to the internet. And this, of course, produces privacy nightmares, as when Amazon or Google subcontractors sit around listening to our audio snippets or hackers remotely spy on our kids. Learn about your ad choices:...
Jan 22, 2020•7 min
You walk into the office and greet a digital avatar that replaced the company receptionist a few years ago. After sliding your badge into a reader, you smile and nod, even though you know “Amy” is not a real person. You sit down at your cubicle and start browsing the web. Then the trouble starts. You receive an email requesting a meeting. “Bob” wants to chat about your job performance. You fire up a Zoom chat and another digital avatar appears on the screen. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail...
Jan 21, 2020•7 min
A bipartisan group of senators Tuesday introduced a bill designed to give Chinese telecom giant Huawei more competition in the market for 5G equipment by pumping more than $1 billion into 5G-related research and development. While the funds could be a boon for smaller companies, it’s paltry compared with what the telecommunications and wireless industries already spend on R&D. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jan 20, 20200
Last September, as California legislators considered Assembly Bill 5, a measure designed to limit which workers can be classified as independent contractors, companies like Uber and Lyft bemoaned a potential blow to their bottom lines—bottom lines that were, for the record, already suffering. But one gig economy CEO cheered the bill from the sidelines. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jan 17, 2020•8 min
Two days ago, I finally gave up Windows 7. I don't dislike Windows 10, but there's just always been something special about Windows 7. It was svelte. It actually ran faster and took up less hard drive space than its predecessor, the much-maligned Windows Vista. It looked great. We Windows users could finally hold our heads a little higher around Mac users. And, well, I didn't know how well Windows 10 would work on that old Windows 7 laptop, or how much time it would take to make the transition. ...
Jan 16, 2020•7 min
When former Beverly Hills 90210 heartthrob Luke Perry died last year, his body was encased in a hideous black and white bodysuit. This shroud, made entirely of mushrooms and other small organisms, was designed to slowly turn him into compost. Wired UK This story originally appeared on WIRED UK. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jan 15, 2020•9 min
For some time, American companies including Microsoft, Google, and IBM have established research labs in China to tap into local AI talent and to keep track of technological trends. Now, as tensions and restrictions continue to ramp up, some observers wonder if the days of those outposts may be numbered. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jan 14, 2020•7 min
For years, Helene Mickey Wilson—Dr. Mickey to those who know her—has had two main sources of income. Wilson, a licensed marriage and family therapist in California’s Orange County, owns a small private practice. She’s also contracted with a company to oversee and train therapists working toward final certification, for which they need 3,000 hours of supervised professional experience. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Jan 13, 2020•7 min
Ivanka Trump took the stage at CES Tuesday to muted reception. Forty minutes later, she left to robust applause. No surprise, maybe, given the uncontroversial theme: The US needs to prepare workers for the future. At a technology-focused show, that’s not exactly a hard sell. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jan 10, 2020•7 min
The idea that PCs are dying never held much weight; if anything, despite inroads by the iPad Pro, they’ve solidified their position as the device you turn to when you need to get things done. But where do they go from here? And with Moore’s Law in the rearview how will they continue to improve? At this year’s CES, Intel is laying out a vision for what PCs might look like, and how they’ll act, going forward. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Jan 09, 2020•7 min
In December 2018, Canada and France announced plans for a new international body to study and steer the effects of artificial intelligence on the world’s people and economies. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said the International Panel on Artificial Intelligence would be established by the Group of Seven leading western economies and play a role in “addressing some of the ethical concerns we will face in this area. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Jan 08, 2020•5 min
Even as carriers around the world race to build 5G networks, some government officials are reaching for the throttle, citing fears that the new generation of wireless technology could pose health risks. Earlier this year the Portland, Oregon, city council passed a resolution asking the Federal Communications Commission to update its research into potential health risks of 5G. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jan 07, 2020•9 min
After San Francisco in May placed new controls, including a ban on facial recognition, on municipal surveillance, city employees began taking stock of what technology agencies already owned. They quickly learned that the city owned a lot of facial recognition technology—much of it in workers’ pockets. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jan 06, 2020•6 min
It was 2010 and techno-optimism was surging. A whopping 75 percent of American adults were online—a big jump from the 46 percent that were logging on a decade prior—cruising through the information age largely from the comfort of their own homes for the first time en masse. Social media was relatively new and gaining traction—especially among young people—as the world’s attention appeared to shift to apps from the browser-based web. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Jan 03, 2020•12 min
If you could press a button to merge your mind with an artificial intelligence computer—expanding your brain power, your memory, and your creative capacity—would you take the leap? “I would press it in a microsecond,” says Sebastian Thrun, who previously led Stanford University’s AI Lab. Turning yourself into a cyborg might sound like pure sci-fi, but recent progress in AI, neural implants, and wearable gadgets make it seem increasingly imaginable. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/a...
Jan 02, 2020•5 min
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced they were giving up their “day to day” duties at Alphabet early this month—leaving the heavy lifting to Google CEO Sundar Pichai—an era ended in more ways than one. As much as the news made history for the Mountain View search giant, it was also a fitting end to a cult of founderhood that peaked and crashed during the past 10 years. At the beginning of this decade, "the Google Guys” were still the flag-bearers of that cult. Learn about your ad choices: d...
Jan 01, 2020•6 min
It was 1998 and internet mania was in full swing. Fueled by the fear of missing out on the next big e-thing, freewheeling venture capitalists and speculators poured money into companies that appeared only tangentially internet-related. Entrepreneurs responded in kind, many going so far as to add “.com” or some techy sounding prefix like “e-“ or “net-“ to their company’s name in the hopes of attracting attention from internet-obsessed investors. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-ch...
Dec 31, 2019•8 min
At first, you didn’t even need a pickax. The earliest prospectors of the California gold rush ventured into the Sierra foothills as solo travelers, sloshing through streams in search of nuggets dislodged by the current. That, at least, is the prevailing image: The individual renegade who headed west to strike it rich by his own initiative. But soon there were too many prospectors and too little easy gold. The task became more resource-intensive, requiring water to blast away the hills. Learn abo...
Dec 30, 2019•6 min
Computers have gotten pretty good at making certain decisions for themselves. Automatic spam filters block most unwanted email. Some US clinics use artificial-intelligence-powered cameras to flag diabetes patients at risk of blindness. But can a machine ever be trusted to decide whether to kill a human being? It’s a question taken up by the eighth episode of the Sleepwalkers podcast, which examines the AI revolution. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Dec 27, 2019•4 min
When MIT professor Regina Barzilay received her breast cancer diagnosis, she turned it into a science project. Learning that the disease could have been detected earlier if doctors had recognized the signs on previous mammograms, Barzilay, an expert in artificial intelligence, used a collection of 90,000 breast x-rays to create software for predicting a patient’s cancer risk. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Dec 26, 2019•3 min
Computers have learned to see the world more clearly in recent years, thanks to some impressive leaps in artificial intelligence. But you might be surprised—and upset—to know what these AI algorithms really think of you. As a recent experiment demonstrated, the best AI vision system might see a picture of your face and spit out a racial slur, a gender stereotype, or a term that impugns your good character. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Dec 25, 2019•6 min
“We’re going to be hauling some grass and some alfalfa bales today,” Cole Sonne cheerfully tells the camera as he drives a tractor over the bumps of his family’s farm in South Dakota. And for the next 12 minutes, the video will show Sonne and his dad do just that, carefully moving hundreds of the bundles, each as tall as a person, across their property. The sun shines down on the farm’s lush grass, peaceful music plays in the background—the effect is soothing. Learn about your ad choices: doveta...
Dec 24, 2019•10 min
Nearly every day, in war zones around the world, American military forces request fire support. By radioing coordinates to a howitzer miles away, infantrymen can deliver the awful ruin of a 155 mm artillery shell on opposing forces. If defense officials in Washington have their way, artificial intelligence is about to make that process a whole lot faster. The effort to speed up fire support is one of a handful initiatives that Lt. Gen. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Dec 23, 2019•11 min
Wally Kankowski owns a pool repair business in Florida and likes 12 creams in his McDonald’s coffee each morning. What he doesn’t like is the way the company is pushing him to place his order via a touchscreen kiosk instead of talking with counter staff, some of whom he has known for years. “The thing is knocking someone out of a job,” he says. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Dec 20, 2019•3 min
