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 […]
Amazon Launches Surveillance System, Calls it “A Hands-Free Camera and Style Assistant”…
Hey all you dumbshits who expose SMB to the Internet on unpatched Windows boxes: Your new, “hands-free camera and style assistant” is here. *wink* *wink*…
MIT: The Dark Secret at the Heart of Artificial Intelligence by Will Knight…
Last year, a strange self-driving car was released onto the quiet roads of Monmouth County, New Jersey. The experimental vehicle, developed by researchers at the chip maker Nvidia, didn’t look different from other autonomous cars, but it was unlike anything demonstrated by Google, Tesla, or General Motors, and it showed the rising power of artificial […]
“We’re At The Mercy Of The Algos”; More News Sites Say Facebook’s ‘Fake News’ Filter Is Killing Traffic…
Yesterday we highlighted an article written by the Chicago Tribune’s Deputy Editor for Digital News, Kurt Gessler, which provided a fairly compelling set of facts to suggest that Facebook’s ‘fake news’ filter was suppressing the distribution of articles from media sources which undoubtedly consider themselves “legitimate new outlets” (with the definition of ‘legitimate’ left solely […]
They Have, Right Now, Another You…
A few months ago The Washington Post reported that Facebook collects ninety-eight data points on each of its nearly two billion users. Among this ninety-eight are ethnicity, income, net worth, home value, if you are a mom, if you are a soccer mom, if you are married, the number of lines of credit you have, […]
Google Removes Anti-Semitic Autocompletes from its Search Engines…
Google has responded to claims of anti-Semitism in its search engines by altering autocomplete suggestions. Suggestions for the phrase “are Jews…” by a Google search engine are usually followed by “evil”. People searching “are women…” had autocomplete suggest “evil” and for “are Muslims…”, “bad” was the suggestion…