We’ve all been astonished at how chatbots seem to understand the world. But what if they were truly connect to the real world? What if the dataset behind the chat interface was physical reality itself, captured in real time by interpreting the input of billions of sensors sprinkled around the …
Read More »The NSA Warns That US Adversaries Free to Mine Private Data May Have an AI Edge
Electrical engineer Gilbert Herrera was appointed research director of the US National Security Agency in late 2021, just as an AI revolution was brewing inside the US tech industry. The NSA, sometimes jokingly said to stand for No Such Agency, has long hired top math and computer science talent. Its …
Read More »Reddit’s Sale of User Data for AI Training Draws FTC Inquiry
Reddit said ahead of its IPO next week that licensing user posts to Google and others for AI projects could bring in $203 million of revenue over the next few years. The community-driven platform was forced to disclose Friday that US regulators already have questions about that new line of …
Read More »How to Be More Anonymous Online
On the internet, everyone wants to know who you are. Websites are constantly asking for your email address or trying to place tracking cookies on your devices. A murky slurry of advertisers and tech firms track which websites you visit, predicting what your interests are and what you may want …
Read More »What Happens When Facebook Heats Your Home
Søren Freiesleben has lived in Odense his entire life. He likes the historic Danish city for its size. It’s not too big—just 200,000 people live there—and he never feels like he’s drowning in crowds. So far so normal. But there is something unusual about Odense: Its homes are heated by …
Read More »Want to Store a Message in DNA? That’ll Be $1,000
You probably keep a backup of important personal files, photos, and videos on a flash drive or external hard drive. In the not-too-distant future, you might store that data in DNA instead. French company Biomemory wants to bring personal DNA-based data storage to the public. Today, the company announced the …
Read More »Dr. Dara Norman Wants to Bring More People Into Science
What does access mean to you? What about scientific merit? What are the things you take for granted that you aren’t even aware of because of your privilege? For Dr. Dara Norman, who is deputy director of the Community Science and Data Center at NOIRLab and the incoming president-elect of …
Read More »DeepMind Wants to Use AI to Solve the Climate Crisis
It’s a perennial question at WIRED: Tech got us into this mess, can it get us out? That’s particularly true when it comes to climate change. As the weather becomes more extreme and unpredictable, there are hopes that artificial intelligence—that other existential threat—might be part of the solution. DeepMind, the …
Read More »Millions of Workers Are Training AI Models for Pennies
In 2016, Oskarina Fuentes got a tip from a friend that seemed too good to be true. Her life in Venezuela had become a struggle: Inflation had hit 800 percent under President Nicolás Maduro, and the 26-year-old Fuentes had no stable job and was balancing multiple side hustles to survive. …
Read More »AI Hurricane Predictions Are Storming the World of Weather Forecasting
Hurricane Lee wasn’t bothering anyone in early September, churning far out at sea somewhere between Africa and North America. A wall of high pressure stood in its westward path, poised to deflect the storm away from Florida and in a grand arc northeast. Heading where, exactly? It was 10 days …
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