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A Google AI engineer recently stunned the world by announcing that one of the company’s chatbots had become sentient. He was subsequently placed on paid administrative leave for his outburst. His name is Blake Lemoine and he sure seems like the right person to talk about machines with souls. Not only is he a professional AI developer at Google, but he’s also a Christian priest. He’s like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of science and religion. The only problem is that the whole concept is ridiculous and dangerous. There are thousands of AI experts debating “sentience” right now, and they…This story continues at The Next Web
A number of high-profile whistleblowers in the technology industry have stepped into the spotlight in the past few years. For the most part, they have been revealing corporate practices that thwart the public interest: Frances Haugen exposed personal data exploitation at Meta, Timnit Gebru and Rebecca Rivers challenged Google on ethics and AI issues, and Janneke Parrish raised concerns about a discriminatory work culture at Apple, among others. Many of these whistleblowers are women – far more, it appears, than the proportion of women working in the tech industry. This raises the question of whether women are more likely to…This story continues at The Next Web
A Google AI engineer recently stunned the world by announcing that one of the company’s chatbots had become sentient. He was subsequently placed on paid administrative leave for his outburst. His name is Blake Lemoine and he sure seems like the right person to talk about machines with souls. Not only is he a professional AI developer at Google, but he’s also a Christian priest. He’s like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of science and religion. The only problem is that the whole concept is ridiculous and dangerous. There are thousands of AI experts debating “sentience” right now, and they…This story continues at The Next Web
Edward Snowden’s faith in cryptocurrencies hasn’t faded during the current market crash. Quite the opposite, in fact. Snowden believes crypto winters separate the scams from the legitimate uses. “The only people that remain are the people that are either using these networks functionally… or the people who are there for the long term,” the whistleblower said at TNW Conference 2022. When the ground has been cleared, things will grow again. Snowden has unique experience of crypto’s practical benefits. The servers that he used to leak documents about government surveillance were paid for with Bitcoin. The former NSA and CIA contractor…This story continues at The Next Web
After 27 years, Microsoft has finally bid farewell to the web browser Internet Explorer, and will redirect Explorer users to the latest version of its Edge browser. As of June 15, Microsoft ended support for Explorer on several versions of Windows 10 – meaning no more productivity, reliability, or security updates. Explorer will remain a working browser, but won’t be protected as new threats emerge. Twenty-seven years is a long time in computing. Many would say this move was long overdue. Explorer has been long outperformed by its competitors, and years of poor user experiences have made it the butt…This story continues at The Next Web
By: Todd Feathers, Simon Fondrie-Teitler, Angie Waller, and Surya Mattu A tracking tool installed on many hospitals’ websites has been collecting patients’ sensitive health information—including details about their medical conditions, prescriptions, and doctor’s appointments—and sending it to Facebook. The Markup tested the websites of Newsweek’s top 100 hospitals in America. On 33 of them we found the tracker, called the Meta Pixel, sending Facebook a packet of data whenever a person clicked a button to schedule a doctor’s appointment. The data is connected to an IP address—an identifier that’s like a computer’s mailing address and can generally be linked to…This story continues at The Next WebOr just read more coverage about: Facebook
A number of high-profile whistleblowers in the technology industry have stepped into the spotlight in the past few years. For the most part, they have been revealing corporate practices that thwart the public interest: Frances Haugen exposed personal data exploitation at Meta, Timnit Gebru and Rebecca Rivers challenged Google on ethics and AI issues, and Janneke Parrish raised concerns about a discriminatory work culture at Apple, among others. Many of these whistleblowers are women – far more, it appears, than the proportion of women working in the tech industry. This raises the question of whether women are more likely to…This story continues at The Next Web
