With high hopes of finding some hidden gems in our home cities and $100 (£77) each burning a hole in our pockets, we—Natasha Bernal in London and Amanda Hoover in New York—asked AI to plan out the perfect day. We decided to use Littlefoot, an AI-powered local discovery chatbot that …
Read More »Air So Polluted It Can Kill Isn’t Being Taken Seriously Enough
In 2010, three months before her seventh birthday, Ella Roberta suddenly developed a chest infection and a severe cough. Her mother, Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, took her to the local hospital in Lewisham, South East London, where she was initially diagnosed with asthma. In the following months, she got worse and began …
Read More »China Miéville Writes a Secret Novel With the Internet’s Boyfriend (It’s Keanu Reeves)
On a recent Friday afternoon, I found myself interviewing the Internet’s Boyfriend. His name is Keanu Reeves. I introduce him this way because it may be the only time the actor has been treated as a side character in a story. Reeves’ kindness given that arrangement surprised me—boyfriend material indeed—as …
Read More »London Underground Is Testing Real-Time AI Surveillance Tools to Spot Crime
Thousands of people using the London Underground had their movements, behavior, and body language watched by AI surveillance software designed to see if they were committing crimes or were in unsafe situations, new documents obtained by WIRED reveal. The machine-learning software was combined with live CCTV footage to try to …
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