Entrepreneurs and physicists are pursuing a new kind of computer—one based on the physics of the subatomic particles—that promises to revolutionize various fields. Presumably, such a quantum computer should offer some advantage over the classical computers we already use, right? The trouble is, it’s unclear what tasks…
For years, a team at Amazon reportedly worked on software that vetted the resumes of job applicants in an effort to surface the most likely hires. It gradually became clear that no matter how hard engineers tried to fix it, the recruitment engine found a way to discriminate against women, Reuters reports.
Researchers with the University of California, Berkeley’s SETI Research Center Breakthrough Listen team have deployed new neural net technology to help analyze the reams of data they’ve collection—and they quickly discovered a set of mysterious, as-of-yet unexplained fast radio bursts from a distant galaxy, per…
We’ve seen lots of machine learning systems create strange new phrases and dreamlike images after being trained on large amounts of data. But a new website lets you do the generating, and the results are just as bizarre as you’d expect:
Facebook, fresh off a number of embarrassing incidents that algorithms and automated systems couldn’t stop, is turning to a team of former intelligence officers and researchers to identify the next potential crisis the platform might face.
Virginia Eubanks made the same mistake most would. In her job working with low-income women struggling to afford housing, she assumed they also struggled with access to vital technology, like the internet. But this technology isn’t just accessible, it’s permeates access to basic resources people in poverty need to…
Last week, conservatives cried foul over Google’s latest attempt to provide past examples of fact-checking for news outlets. Right-wing pundits at The Daily Caller insisted that Google was targeting conservative outlets and giving left-leaning publications a pass. The answer is, expectedly, a bit more complicated than…
Fabrications, hoaxes and other lies about the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas this week which killed at least 59 people and wounded well over 500 others have been spreading rampant on YouTube, and it’s unclear if the video giant has any plans to do anything about it.
This is getting absolutely nuts. Just a week after Facebook got busted for allowing advertisers to target topics like “Jew haters” and “How to burn Jews,” a reporter found that the company used an image that said “I will rape you” to invite her friends to Instagram. There was a death threat in there, too.
Mark Zuckerberg disingenuously poses as a friendly critic of algorithms. That’s how he implicitly contrasts Facebook with his rivals across the way at Google. Over in Larry Page’s shop, the algorithm is king, a cold, pulseless ruler. There’s not a trace of life force in its recommendations and very little apparent…
Researchers at MIT have developed deep-learning algorithm that can compile a list of ingredients and even recommend recipes after looking at photos of food. The artificially intelligent system still needs some fine tuning, but this tool could eventually help us learn to cook, count calories, and track our eating…
After four and a half years of not speaking to my mom I’ve learned to stay away from social media on Mother’s Day.
Like an athlete trying to push their body to its extreme limits, artist Damien Henry was curious what would happen if you asked a predictive algorithm to calculate the next frame of video in a sequence, again and again and again, over 100,000 times.
Harassment on Twitter is a very real problem, not just celebrities, but for regular users too. In order to help curb abuse on the platform (a fact that has reportedly kept the company from being sold), Twitter introduced a new feature last week that would put abusers in “time out” if they tweet offensive content at…
Revision wars on Wikipedia amongst human editors is an all-too-common occurrence, but new research from the UK shows that similar online battles are being waged between the site’s software robots.
The British pound suffered a “flash crash” earlier this morning in which it plummeted six percent against the US dollar within a matter of minutes. All signs point to high frequency stock trading as the culprit—and possibly a single algorithm.
Social media can already give others insight into your personal life and mental state (even if you don’t want them to), but according to a recent study, even something as small as your Instagram filter choices can be enlightening.
I’m a writer, so I’ll always have a place in my heart for the handwritten page (partially because I believe in romantic ideas about writing, but also because there is no way I’m using my phone to type out anything beyond a few words).
Online harassment is a serious, but tough problem to try and solve. There is a need for a new system that can ease the burden on moderators who have to comb through those reports. As someone who was once responsible for doing that for a local news station (a much smaller venue than, say, Twitter), I can sympathize…
Artist Petros Vrellis works comfortably in that strange medium where technology meets classical art. In 2012, he created an interactive van Gogh painting that we wish was an app (he made it an app a month later). For his latest piece, Vrellis uses a computer algorithm and a circular loom to create stunning El…
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