When it comes to election manipulation, left-leaning American technology companies make the Russians look like rank amateurs. No matter which weak candidate the Democrats ultimately nominate, and even with Russia’s help, President Donald Trump can’t win the 2020 election. For that matter, in races nationwide in which the projected winning margins are small—say, under 5 […]
OPINION: Why Republicans Can’t Win in 2020 by Robert Epstein…
Amazon Employees Hired and Fired by Robots…
Software and algorithms are used to screen, hire, assign and now terminate workers at Amazon. For lower-paid employees, the Robot Overlords Have Arrived. “Millions of low-paid workers’ lives are increasingly governed by software and algorithms. This was starkly illustrated by a report last week that Amazon.com tracks the productivity of its employees and regularly fires […]
Developing Industry Standards Won’t Give Artificial Intelligence a Conscience…
From the algorithms used by social media platforms to the machine-learning that powers home automation, artificial intelligence has quietly embedded itself into our lives. But as the technology involved grows more advanced and its reach widens, the question of how to regulate has become increasingly urgent. The pitfalls of AI are well-documented. Race and gender […]
Google Manipulates Search Results on ‘Controversial’ Topics, Report Says…
Google tweaks search results on topics the company deems “controversial,” two Google sources revealed to Breitbart. Sometimes, the company even changes the results manually—something its chief executive, Sundar Pichai, denied in sworn testimony. Among the singled out topics were abortion, gun-control activist David Hogg, the February 2018 An-148 Russian plane crash, the December 2018 Strasbourg […]
Facial Recognition Gives Police a Powerful New Tracking Tool. It’s Also Raising Alarms…
Picture a crowded street. Police are searching for a man believed to have committed a violent crime. To find him, they feed a photograph into a video surveillance network powered by artificial intelligence. A camera, one of thousands, scans the street, instantly analyzing the faces of everyone it sees. Then, an alert: The algorithms found […]
The Politics of Machine-Learning Algorithms by Mark MacCarthy…
As machine-learning algorithms come to dominate decision-making in business, politics, and society, the pressure to make more personal data available will steadily increase, and privacy protections will be eroded. If we do not take the reins of these new technologies, they could lead us toward a political system we did not choose…
Do Facebook and Google Have Control of Their Algorithms Anymore? A Sobering Assessment and a Warning…
If you searched Google immediately after the recent mass shooting in Texas for information on the gunman, you would have seen what Justin Hendrix, the head of the NYC Media Lab, called a “misinformation gutter.” A spokesperson for Google later gave a statement to Gizmodo that placed blame squarely on an algorithm…
How Facebook Made Money Dividing the U.S. Into Adversarial Political Subgroups…
Earlier this month Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos threw a twittertantrum over accusations that Facebook’s algorithms promoted fake news in its users’ feeds: “I am seeing a ton of coverage of our recent issues driven by stereotypes of our employees and attacks against fantasy, strawman tech cos,” he wrote. “Nobody of substance…
What Is An Algorithm?…
In the modern world, algorithms do much of the digital heavy lifting. Algorithms control the inner-workings of everything from particle accelerators to stock markets. They determine the news you see, what search results you get, how computers learn, and what gets recommended to you on Netflix or Amazon. In short, as Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley […]