“There’s a rising chorus of concern about how quickly robots are taking away human jobs. Jobs are vanishing much faster than anyone ever imagined.”
Read: A warning from Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking
“Google’s Jigsaw unit, as part of a larger effort to battle online trolling, said earlier today that it was releasing a new tool called Perspective, software that uses machine learning to detect harassment and abuse online.”
Read: Google just made its troll-detecting software available to developers
“Amazon has filed a motion to dismiss a search warrant for recordings from an Echo owned by a suspected murderer. Amazon argues that both its users’ requests to Alexa and the response the company produces are protected under the First Amendment.”
Read: Amazon says Alexa’s speech is protected by the First Amendment
“The technology isn’t the moral game-changer that some make it out to be. There is considerable enthusiasm for technologies that allow people to simulate an engagement with a physical world.”
Read: It’s Ridiculous to Use Virtual Reality to Empathize With Refugees
“An unseen force is rising – helping to determine who is hired, granted a loan, or even how long someone spends in prison. This force is called the coded gaze.”
“Before coming to the Media Lab, Buolamwini earned a BS in computer science as a Stamps President’s Scholar at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a master’s in learning and technology as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, England.”
Read: Media Lab student wins national award for fighting bias in machine learning – MIT Media Lab
“Imagine you’re at a border crossing, and the guard asks you to hand over all of your electronics for screening. The guard then asks that you unlock your device, provide passwords and decryption keys.”
“Psychologist Michal Kosinski developed a method to analyze people in minute detail based on their Facebook activity.”
“Today begins week three of the poker tournament between Libratus, an AI system built by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, and four of the world’s top pros. While the humans plan to soldier on, a gallows humor has taken hold.”
Read: The poker-playing AI is getting smarter and the humans are getting tired
“Facial recognition technology is known to struggle to recognize black faces. The underlying reason for this shortcoming runs deeper than you might expect, according to researchers at MIT.”
Read: Most engineers are white — and so are the faces they use to train software