Science and Technology -

A US Agency Rejected Face Recognition—and Landed in Big Trouble

Science and Technology / March 22, 2023 March 22, 2023

[colabot7] In January that year, an Internal Revenue Service contract for online account verification with startup ID.me, which uses selfies and face recognition to verify new accounts, triggered public backlash over discrimination and privacy concerns. A WIRED story on the NIST standard driving use of the technology referred to Login.gov documentation that said it sometimes …

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The bearable mediocrity of Baidu’s ChatGPT competitor Ernie Bot

Science and Technology / March 22, 2023 March 22, 2023

[colabot7] 3. President Xi Jinping traveled to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin this week. The economic relationship between the two countries has weakened in recent years. (Wall Street Journal$) 4. A year after the China Eastern Airlines crash that killed 132 people, the Chinese government still doesn’t have a conclusion about what went wrong. …

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4 People Tweeting’ Changed the Face of Nigerian Politics

Science and Technology / March 22, 2023 March 22, 2023

[colabot7] A lot of the young online support gravitated toward Obi, 61, a businessman and former member of the PDP who campaigned on a platform of reforming Nigeria’s state institutions, which have often been tainted by corruption. He also said that he would officially apologize to victims of police brutality, a promise that spoke directly …

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Will Humans Ever Go Extinct?

Science and Technology / March 22, 2023 March 22, 2023

[colabot7] The species Homo sapiens evolved some 300,000 years ago and has come to dominate Earth unlike any species that came before. But how long can humans last? Eventually humans will go extinct. At the most wildly optimistic estimate, our species will last perhaps another billion years but end when the expanding envelope of the …

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Scientists Just Warned We Need to Cut Emissions by 60 Percent, but the U.S. Is Years Away

Science and Technology / March 22, 2023 March 22, 2023

[colabot7] CLIMATEWIRE | The United Nations’ latest climate assessment has upped the ante for energy policy in the United States, making it clear that rich nations need to cut their emissions more deeply than some of the most ambitious targets. The report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change introduced a new deadline that …

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Deadly Fungi Are the Newest Emerging Microbe Threat All Over the World

Science and Technology / March 22, 2023 March 22, 2023

[colabot7] Editor’s Note (3/21/23): The dangerous fungus Candida auris is spreading rapidly in hospitals and other health care facilities, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Monday. Our June 2021 feature story, republished here, explains why C. auris can be so lethal and who is most at risk. It also describes why this …

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How You Can Tell the AI Images of Trump’s Arrest Are Deepfakes

Science and Technology / March 21, 2023 March 21, 2023

[colabot7] The viral AI-generated images of Donald Trump’s arrest you may be seeing on social media are definitely fake. But some of these photorealistic creations are pretty convincing. Others look more like stills from a video game or a lucid dream. AT Twitter thread by Eliot Higgins, a founder of Bellingcatthat shows Trump getting swarmed …

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China’s Answer to ChatGPT Flubs Its First Lines

Science and Technology / March 21, 2023 March 21, 2023

[colabot7] China’s censorship regime requires Baidu and other internet companies to block access to certain websites and avoid politically sensitive subjects. The words or phrases that should be blocked can be updated rapidly in response to protests or during special events. Aim Jeffrey Ding, an assistant professor at Georgetown University who studies China’s tech industry, …

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How AI experts are using GPT-4

Science and Technology / March 21, 2023 March 21, 2023

[colabot7] Reid Hoffman, cofounder and executive chairman of LinkedIn and an early investor in OpenAI, says he used GPT-4 to help write a book called Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity through AI. Hoffman acknowledges it’s the first book co-written by GPT-4. (Its predecessor ChatGPT has been used to create tons of books.) Hoffman got access to …

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How we can limit global warming, and GPT-4’s early adopters

Science and Technology / March 21, 2023 March 21, 2023

[colabot7] Time is running short to limit global warming to 1.5°C (2.7 °F) above preindustrial levels, but there are feasible and effective solutions on the table, according to a new UN climate report. Despite decades of warnings from scientists, global greenhouse-gas emissions are still climbing, hitting a record high in 2022. If humanity wants to …

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