Tag Archives: AI

How the Ukraine-Russia war is reshaping the tech sector in Eastern Europe

LMT’s Pollaks says he has visited Ukraine often since the war began. Though he declines to give more details, he euphemistically describes Ukraine’s wartime bureaucracy as “nonstandardized.” If you want to blow something up in front of an audience in the EU, he says, you have to go through a whole lot of approvals, and […]

Roundtables: What’s Next for Mixed Reality: Glasses, Goggles, and More

Recorded on November 19, 2024 What’s Next for Mixed Reality: Glasses, Goggles, and More. Speakers: Mat Honan, Editor in Chief, and James O’Donnell, AI hardware reporter. We are barreling toward the next big consumer device category: smart glasses. After years of trying, augmented-reality specs are at last a thing. Facebook recently showed off its Orion […]

Kids are learning how to make their own little language models

“What does it mean to have children see themselves as being builders of AI technologies and not just users?” says Shruti. The program starts out by using a pair of dice to demonstrate probabilistic thinking, a system of decision-making that accounts for uncertainty. Probabilistic thinking underlies the LLMs of today, which predict the most likely […]

What to know about this new Chinese text-to-video AI model

What to know about this new Chinese text-to-video AI model

The short-video platform, which has over 600 million active users, announced the new tool on June 6. It’s called Kling. Like OpenAI’s Sora model, Kling is able to generate videos “up to two minutes long with a frame rate of 30fps and video resolution up to 1080p,” the company says on its website. But unlike […]

Propagandists are using AI too

Propagandists are using AI too

OpenAI’s adversarial threat report should be a prelude to more robust data sharing moving forward. Where AI is concerned, independent researchers have begun to assemble databases of misuse—like the AI Incident Database and the Political Deepfakes Incident Database—to allow researchers to compare different types of misuse and track how misuse changes over time. But it […]

This AI-powered “black-box” could make surgery safer

This AI-powered “black-box” could make surgery safer

While most algorithms operate near perfectly on their own, Peter Grantcharov explains that the OR black box is still not fully autonomous. For example, it’s difficult to capture audio through ceiling mikes and thus get a reliable transcript to document whether every element of the surgical safety checklist was completed; he estimates that this algorithm […]

Astronomers using AI to prepare for ton of data from new telescopes

Astronomers using AI to prepare for ton of data from new telescopes

It’s a problem that will be repeated in other places over the coming decade. As astronomers construct giant cameras to image the entire sky and launch infrared telescopes to hunt for distant planets, they will collect data on unprecedented scales.  “We really are not ready for that, and we should all be freaking out,” says […]

An AI startup made a hyperrealistic deepfake of me that’s so good it’s scary

An AI startup made a hyperrealistic deepfake of me that’s so good it’s scary

The more data points the AI system has on facial movements, microexpressions, head tilts, blinks, shrugs, and hand waves, the more realistic the avatar will be. DAVID VINTINER He then asks me to read a script for a fictitious YouTuber in different tones, directing me on the spectrum of emotions I should convey. First I’m […]

Why the Chinese government is sparing AI from harsh regulations—for now

Why the Chinese government is sparing AI from harsh regulations—for now

Take Alibaba and Tencent as examples. Since the 2000s, the two tech giants have made hundreds of mergers and investments, as a result of which their business empires expanded to include almost every aspect of digital life in China. This insatiable expansion came at the expense of users, who faced higher prices and less choice, […]

Why shiny, high-tech solutions won’t solve one of Africa’s worst crises

Why shiny, high-tech solutions won’t solve one of Africa’s worst crises

Hainikoye hits Accept and a young woman greets him in Hausa, a gravelly language spoken across West Africa’s Sahel region. She has three new cows, and wants to know: Does he have advice on getting them through the lean season? Hainikoye—a twentysomething agronomist who has “followed animals,” as Sahelians refer to herding, since he first […]