artificial intelligence

The Intercept reported on Wednesday that Google is planning to launch a censorship-friendly search engine for the Chinese market, tailored to the demands of China’s authoritarian communist government. That’s quite a contrast with Google’s reluctance to work for the U.S. military. Just a few months ago, an employee revolt at the tech giant nearly killed a vital artificial-intelligence contract with the Pentagon.

Wired Magazine published a column last week that condemns the lack of women in the artificial intelligence field.

Reuters offered a look on Tuesday at how high-tech surveillance techniques developed to monitor the Muslims of Xinjiang province are spreading across the rest of China, all the way to the capital city of Beijing. The account provides a textbook case of surveillance state mission creep, as techniques devised for what the Chinese government described as a unique emergency situation become part of everyday life.

U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. VeraLinn “Dash” Jamieson, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance for the Air Staff at the Pentagon, warned last week that China is pulling ahead of the United States in artificial intelligence research. Perhaps more ominously, she said China has more concrete plans than any other adversary for actually using A.I. to control its population, enhance its military power, and conduct espionage against other nations.

Former Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work slammed Google employees at a recent defense conference, saying their refusal to work with the Pentagon but still work with China is creating an “enormous moral hazard to themselves.”

China’s Global Times was pleased to announce on Wednesday that cell phones and TV sets have become eyes and ears for the largest mass surveillance network in the world, monitoring citizens in even rural communities and feeding the results into artificially intelligent computer systems.

Facebook can now use artificial intelligence to alter user selfies to fix common issues such as blinking during a photo.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology fed some of the internet’s seedier bits to an A.I. and came out with something more than a little creepy.

Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) introduced legislation on Wednesday to create a National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.

Self-driving shuttles powered by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) are coming to the streets of one booming Texas city this summer.

In an op-ed published by the Washington Post last week, law professor Feng Xiang of Tsinghua University predicted that artificial intelligence technology will usher in the final triumph of socialism and the “end of capitalism.” The essay offers valuable insights into the ideological war China will wage against the United States in the coming decades, arguing that its system of authoritarian central planning is economically, socially, and morally superior to free-market capitalism.

In his annual Founders’ Letter, the Alphabet president stress the need for “thoughtfulness and responsibility” in the way we approach new technology.

Robotics manufacturers and their affiliates are campaigning for a limited “electronic personality” to be granted to their high-tech automatons, but experts around the world are pushing back.

An op-ed in Chinese state media has blamed artificial intelligence for the rise of “obscene” content from the internet.

The U.S. Air Force is looking for ways to use artificial intelligence (A.I.) to ease its ability to access and analyze the barrage of data acquired by its aircraft, weapons, and satellites as China rapidly closes the gap with America in the race to weaponize computer systems.

In a documentary by American filmmaker Chris Paine, billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk warned that artificial intelligence “doesn’t have to be evil to destroy humanity.”

A letter signed by thousands of Google employees and addressed to Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai proclaims that Google should abstain from “the business of war.”

Over 50 AI researchers from 30 countries have agreed to boycott the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology over concerns with its weapons research.

Google Deep Learning researcher François Chollet took to Twitter recently to outline Facebook’s use of “digital information consumption” as a “psychological control vector,” while also describing the company’s interest in A.I., adding “Personally, it really scares me.”

An editorial in China’s state-run Global Times this week called for a national strategy to displace the United States as the world leader in artificial intelligence technology.

Most Americans think A.I. will destroy more jobs than it creates, however less than a quarter are afraid of being replaced themselves, according to a report.

A fascinating New York Times article on “deepfake” technology published on Sunday made it clear that artificial intelligence is already raising concerns about propaganda, identity theft, and national security not easily addressed. Even in its infancy, A.I. already has the power to ruin lives and perhaps destabilize nations.

Former Google Chairman Eric Schmidt claimed Terminator-style A.I. “death scenarios” are “one to two decades away,” during the Munich Security Conference last month.

A new report from Cambridge University warns that rogue states, criminal gangs, and terrorist organizations could use artificial intelligence technology to wreak untold havoc in the very near future.

Google is creating an artificial intelligence-based automatic reply system, which will give users personalized, but automated answers to respond to messages with just one click.

Facebook’s A.I. research team (FAIR) has revealed their AI neural network, which can map skins onto people in videos during real-time.

Pornhub has banned AI-generated fake celebrity porn videos, which swap the faces of porn stars with realistic celebrity faces.

Artificial intelligence has discovered the language of the 600-year-old coded Voynich manuscript, a famously mysterious book which has yet to be deciphered since its discovery over a hundred years ago.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned of the dangers of allowing companies such as China and Russia to outpace western countries in the development of artificial intelligence.

Stanford researchers have developed an artificial intelligence device that predicts when a hospital patient will die.

Microsoft President Brad Smith and EVP of A.I. Harry Shum have written a book which claims that within 20 years, human “alter egos” will exist in artificial intelligence.

Volkswagen is creating an all-electric, Nvidia AI-powered version of their retro camper van that includes facial recognition.

Japanese AI assistant Gatebox acts like a partner, displaying an anime girl companion and sending you suggestive texts throughout the day.

Artificial intelligence will take over from British police in the scanning of child abuse images to save officers from “trauma,” according to a report.

Google’s artificial intelligence unit is using games to test whether AI can teach itself to cheat in hopes of heading off a robot apocalypse.