The company’s new approach to political content acknowledges that engagement isn’t always the best way to measure what users value. Back in February, Facebook announced a little experiment. It would reduce the amount of political content shown to a subset of users in a few countries, including the US, and then ask them about the
Month: August 2021
ASML’s next-generation extreme ultraviolet lithography machines achieve previously unattainable levels of precision, which means chips can keep shrinking for years to come. Inside a large clean room in rural Connecticut, engineers have begun constructing a critical component for a machine that promises to keep the tech industry as we know it on track for at
New figures from Google show a tenfold increase in the requests from law enforcement, which target anyone who happened to be in a given location at a specified time. Police around the country have drastically increased their use of geofence warrants, a widely criticized investigative technique that collects data from any user’s device that was
The automaker is recalling the electric vehicle after investigating two manufacturing defects linked to car fires. GM has announced that it is recalling every Chevrolet Bolt made to date, including new electric utility vehicle models, over concerns that a manufacturing defect in the cars’ LG-made batteries could cause a fire. Ars Technica This story originally
Cerebras says its technology can run a neural network with 120 trillion connections—a hundred times what’s achievable today. When it comes to the neural networks that power today’s artificial intelligence, sometimes the bigger they are, the smarter they are too. Recent leaps in machine understanding of language, for example, have hinged on building some of
How the tech world’s unique brand of politics is shaping the fight over who governs California. Silicon Valley is a famously left-leaning place. Technologists have been known to spend their riches advancing gender equality or eradicating homelessness, occasionally even proposing higher taxes on the very wealthy—that is, themselves. These generous allowances appeared most recently in
Pindrop, which makes software to identify synthetic audio, found three clips totaling 50 seconds in the nearly 2-hour movie. When Roadrunner, a documentary about late TV chef and traveler Anthony Bourdain, opened in theaters last month, its director, Morgan Neville, spiced up promotional interviews with an unconventional disclosure for a documentarian. Some words viewers hear
Startups in Germany, China, Israel, and elsewhere are following the path blazed by GPT-3—with local twists. In recent years machines have learned to generate passable snippets of English, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence. Now they are moving on to other languages. Aleph Alpha, a startup in Heidelberg, Germany, has built one of the world’s
The highlight of an event aimed at AI whizzes was a human simulating a robot that might someday replace a human. The Tesla recruitment presentation ended Thursday night when a person in a tight white suit, their head encased in black, robot-walked onto the dark stage. Techno music blared, and the person began to Charleston.
Flexible WFH policies, signing bonuses, fancy cookies—employers are turning on the charm to attract engineers and developers to their firms. Two months ago, Jacob Eiting closed the Series B for his startup RevenueCat, which makes a platform for managing in-app subscriptions. The $40 million investment was meant to grow the company and, crucially, to hire
With a beefed-up complaint, the Federal Trade Commission explains precisely why it thinks the social media giant is an illegal monopoly. When federal judge James Boasberg dismissed the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against Facebook in June, he gave the agency pretty specific instructions on how to salvage it. The problem, he wrote in his
Privacy concerns about AI systems are growing. So researchers are testing whether they can remove sensitive data without retraining the system from scratch. Companies of all kinds use machine learning to analyze people’s desires, dislikes, or faces. Some researchers are now asking a different question: How can we make machines forget? A nascent area of
The social media giant’s new transparency report mostly succeeds in showing the extent of its spam problem. The Green Bay Packers play in one of the tiniest media markets in the NFL, with a small but famously loyal fan base. It’s a key part of their charm. It’s also why it was so bewildering to
An activist coalition is pressuring firms to stop promoting fossil fuel companies—some of which have advertised oil and gas as “climate friendly.” Here is a completely true statement: Between 2015 and 2019, oil and gas firms doubled the share of their capital spending going to renewables and carbon-capture technologies. Here’s the chaser: That accounted for
An article in the infrastructure bill led cryptocurrency to acquire a great marker of prestige: a lobby. But can it keep a united front? Big Crypto has arrived. On August 10, following days of wrangling and furious tweeting, cryptocurrency enthusiasts, advocates, and entrepreneurs watched in horror as the US Senate approved a $1 trillion infrastructure
The probe will look at 11 accidents, each of which involved a parked emergency vehicle. US government regulators are opening an investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot system after cars using the feature crashed into stopped emergency vehicles. Ars Technica This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews,
The video technology, initially associated with porn, is gaining a foothold in the corporate world. New workplace technologies often start life as both status symbols and productivity aids. The first car phones and PowerPoint presentations closed deals and also signalled their users’ clout. Some partners at EY, the accounting giant formerly known as Ernst &
The Open App Markets Act would loosen the tech giants’ grip on the app economy. But a PR campaign against it is already underway. Apple and Google seem to be worried about legislation that would force iOS and Android to be more open to third-party app stores and sideloaded apps. Ars Technica This story originally
The company’s latest earnings report showed an upsurge in business, but it also hedges expectations for the fall. Few tech companies were rocked harder by the pandemic than Airbnb. In the spring of 2020, a crush of trip cancellations caused the company’s revenue to drop by 67 percent. By May, it had laid off a
Synopsys, which sells software for designing semiconductors to dozens of companies, is adding artificial intelligence to its arsenal. Samsung is using artificial intelligence to automate the insanely complex and subtle process of designing cutting-edge computer chips. The South Korean giant is one of the first chipmakers to use AI to create its chips. Samsung is
Called the Exo-Abs, the robotic device uses artificial intelligence to gauge how much pressure to put on a person’s midsection. In his early twenties, Lee Nam-hyun was an avid swimmer. But in 2004 he broke his neck in a pool, which left him paralyzed from the shoulders down. Recovery from his injuries required years of
The president called for 40 percent of new cars to be electric by 2030. But motorists still fret about running out of juice—even if it rarely happens. Last week, President Biden gathered executives of the three biggest US automakers—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (which makes Fiat-Chrysler vehicles)—at the White House. Biden got to gleefully drive
Documents reveal that police bought facial-recognition software, vans equipped with x-ray machines, and “stingray” cell site simulators—with no public oversight. New York City police bought a range of surveillance tools—including facial-recognition software, predictive policing software, vans equipped with x-ray machines to detect weapons, and “stingray” cell site simulators—with no public oversight, according to documents released
The findings emerged from an unusual contest to identify unfairness in algorithms, similar to hunts for security bugs. In May, Twitter said that it would stop using an artificial intelligence algorithm found to favor white and female faces when auto-cropping images. Now, an unusual contest to scrutinize an AI program for misbehavior has found that
New research tracking people’s behavior on the platform found that most don’t go down those ever-deepening rabbit holes. We’ve all seen it happen: Watch one video on YouTube and your recommendations shift, as if Google’s algorithms think the video’s subject is your life’s passion. Suddenly, all the recommended videos—and probably many ads—you’re presented with are
The farm-equipment giant is buying Bear Flag Robotics, which makes autonomous tractors, marking its second big tech buy in four years. There’s much talk about bringing more Silicon Valley-style innovation to America’s heartland. But when the heartland needs tech, it still comes to Silicon Valley. John Deere Thursday said it would acquire Bear Flag Robotics, a
It’s the first significant GDPR ruling against Big Tech. But secrecy around the decision exposes the regulation’s flaws. We were promised huge fines, and GDPR has finally delivered. Last week Amazon’s financial records revealed that officials in Luxembourg are fining the retailer €746 million ($883 million) for breaching the European regulation. WIRED UK This story
A study raises new concerns that AI will exacerbate disparities in health care. One issue? The study’s authors aren’t sure what cues are used by the algorithms. Millions of dollars are being spent to develop artificial intelligence software that reads x-rays and other medical scans in hopes it can spot things doctors look for but
The company says privacy concerns forced it to block access for a team of academics. Whose privacy, exactly? When Facebook said Tuesday that it was suspending the accounts of a team of NYU researchers, it made it seem like the company’s hands were tied. The team had been crowdsourcing data on political ad targeting via
Startups are like relationships—at least that’s what some Silicon Valley therapists are pitching. Before they were cofounders, Kris Chaisanguanthum and Ryan Damm were friends. Then in 2016 they started Visby, a holographic imaging company. “You talk about getting into business with somebody that you get along with, but there’s nothing that you do with your