Dozens of Chinese firms have built software that uses artificial intelligence to sort data collected on residents, amid high demand from authorities seeking to upgrade their surveillance tools, a Reuters review of government documents shows.
A group of academics has designed a new system known as “Privid” that enables video analytics in a privacy-preserving manner.
Developments in artificial intelligence and human enhancement technologies have the potential to remake American society in the coming decades. A new Pew Research Center survey finds that Americans see promise in the ways these technologies could improve daily life and human abilities. Yet public views are also defined by the context of how these technologies would be used, what constraints would be in place and who would stand to benefit – or lose – if these advances become widespread.
Fundamentally, caution runs through public views of artificial intelligence (AI) and human enhancement applications, often centered around concerns about autonomy, unintended consequences and the amount of change these developments might mean for humans and society. People think economic disparities might worsen as some advances emerge and that technologies, like facial recognition software, could lead to more surveillance of Black or Hispanic Americans.
This survey looks at a broad arc of scientific and technological developments – some in use now, some still emerging. It concentrates on public views about six developments that are widely discussed among futurists, ethicists and policy advocates. Three are part of the burgeoning array of AI applications: the use of facial recognition technology by police, the use of algorithms by social media companies to find false information on their sites and the development of driverless passenger vehicles.
BOW ISLAND, AB — Patrick Fabian is quickly picking up a new skill. The seed farmer plans to start using drones…
BOW ISLAND, AB – Patrick Fabian is quickly picking up a new skill.
The seed farmer plans to start using drones to monitor his 1,250 irrigated acres.
Continue reading “Technology in agriculture is reaching new heights” »
To monitor and navigate real-world environments, machines and robots should be able to gather images and measurements under different background lighting conditions. In recent years, engineers worldwide have thus been trying to develop increasingly advanced sensors, which could be integrated within robots, surveillance systems, or other technologies that can benefit from sensing their surroundings.
Researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Peking University, Yonsei University and Fudan University have recently created a new sensor that can collect data in various illumination conditions, employing a mechanism that artificially replicates the functioning of the retina in the human eye. This bio-inspired sensor, presented in a paper published in Nature Electronics, was fabricated using phototransistors made of molybdenum disulfide.
“Our research team started the research on optoelectronic memory five years ago,” Yang Chai, one of the researchers who developed the sensor, told TechXplore. “This emerging device can output light-dependent and history-dependent signals, which enables image integration, weak signal accumulation, spectrum analysis and other complicated image processing functions, integrating the multifunction of sensing, data storage and data processing in a single device.”
Researchers supported by France’s Defense Ministry are working to develop a more effective surveillance drone that’s also less prone to detection by its imitation of birds or insects.
In this case, that involved learning how winged creatures of nature might allow data-collecting UAVs to do their work without being seen, or be identified if they are.
The U.S. Army has awarded a $20 million a year contract to a California-based drone manufacturer, named Skydio, as part of its efforts to move away from foreign-made and commercially available off-the-shelf drones. Skydio revealed in a press release that it would supply its X2D drones for the U.S. Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance (SSR) Program.
With an aim to equip its soldiers with rapidly deployable aerial solutions that can conduct reconnaissance and surveillance activities over short ranges, the Army’s SSR program has been considering small drones for some time now. More than 30 vendors submitted their proposals to the Army, and five finalists were shortlisted for rigorous testing.
Continue reading “The US Army throws $20 million into AI-equipped, foldable quadcopters” »
Yanis Varoufakis also discussed “pay-to-earn” and the blockchain’s long-term consequences.
Former Greek Finance Minister and one-time in-house economist at Valve, Yanis Varoufakis, gave a long and freewheeling interview to the website, the Crypto Syllabus, focusing on the blockchain, its potential and disappointments, and where it sits in the larger context of politics, surveillance, and economics.
Of particular note to PC Gamer readers is his description of his time with Valve. Varoufakis had access to Valve’s data on Steam’s nascent player-to-player marketplace in the early 2010s, which he used to advise the company and his own economics research. Describing Valve’s initial pitch to him, Varoufakis said:
For the past decade, AI has been quietly seeping into daily life, from facial recognition to digital assistants like Siri or Alexa. These largely unregulated uses of AI are highly lucrative for those who control them but are already causing real-world harms to those who are subjected to them: false arrests; health care discrimination; and a rise in pervasive surveillance that, in the case of policing, can disproportionately affect Black people and disadvantaged socioeconomic groups.
Gebru is a leading figure in a constellation of scholars, activists, regulators, and technologists collaborating to reshape ideas about what AI is and what it should be. Some of her fellow travelers remain in Big Tech, mobilizing those insights to push companies toward AI that is more ethical. Others, making policy on both sides of the Atlantic, are preparing new rules to set clearer limits on the companies benefiting most from automated abuses of power. Gebru herself is seeking to push the AI world beyond the binary of asking whether systems are biased and to instead focus on power: who’s building AI, who benefits from it, and who gets to decide what its future looks like.
Full Story:
Continue reading “Why Timnit Gebru Isn’t Waiting for Big Tech to Fix AI’s Problems” »
Athletes headed to the Beijing Olympic Winter Games are making final travel preparations, including keeping in line with China’s health measures on the “My 2022″ smartphone app. However, inadequate encryption measures within the app can leave Olympians, journalists and sports officials vulnerable to hackers, privacy breaches, and surveillance, according to a cybersecurity report by the Citizen Lab obtained exclusively by DW. Additionally, the IT forensic specialists found that the app includes a censorship keyword list. The findings come as international concern over digital safety at the Games mounts. Germany, Australia, UK and US have urged their athletes and National Olympic Committees to leave their personal phones and laptops behind and to travel with special devices over fears of digital espionage. The Dutch Olympic Committee outright banned its athletes from bringing personal phones and laptops due to surveillance concerns.
In the Olympic Playbook for athletes and team officials, the International Olympic Committee states that the “My 2022″ app is “in accordance with international standards and Chinese law.” But based on its findings, Citizen Lab concludes that the insecure transmission of personal information “may constitute a direct violation of China’s privacy laws.” This is because China’s data protection laws require that a person’s health and medical records held digitally be transmitted and stored in an encrypted manner. Citizen Lab’s findings also raise questions concerning two Western tech giants that carry the “My 2022″ app: Apple and Google. “Both Apple’s and Google’s policies forbid apps to transmit sensitive data without proper encryption, so Apple and Google will need to determine whether the app’s unresolved vulnerabilities warrant delisting,” Citizen Lab’s Knockel told DW. The Beijing Organizing Committee has stood by its app, however, saying it “passed the examination” of international mobile application markets such as Google, Apple and Samsung.“We have taken measures such as personal information encryption in the app to ensure privacy security,” the committee said Monday to Xinhua News Agency.
Continue reading “Hacking backdoor? Security flaws in China’s mandatory Olympics app | DW News” »
