App Taps Unwitting Users Abroad to Gather Open-Source Intelligence
By: Wall Street Journal June 24, 2021 WASHINGTON—A network of gig workers world-wide is unwittingly providing basic intelligence to the U.S. military using only a consumer app on their smartphones. San Francisco-based Premise Data Corp. pays users, many of them in the developing world, to complete basic tasks for small payments. Typical assignments […]
How Twitter hired tech’s biggest critics to build ethical AI
By: Protocol June 23, 2021 Machine learning engineer Ari Font was worried about the future of Twitter’s algorithms. It was mid-2020, and the leader of the team researching ethics and accountability for the company’s ML had just left Twitter. For Font, the future of the ethics research was unclear. Font was the manager […]
Blaston Reverses Facebook’s VR Ad Testing After Backlash
By: VR Focus June 22, 2021 There was quite a bit of furore in the virtual reality (VR) community at the end of last week when Facebook announced it was going to begin early testing of VR ads, starting with Resolution Games’ PvP shooter Blaston. Well, as you’d expect this didn’t go down well and sparked an […]
Amazon Faces MPs’ Scrutiny After Destroying Laptops, Tablets and Books
By: Guardian June 22, 2021 Amazon is facing fresh political scrutiny after an undercover investigation showed thousands of unsold products, including laptops, TVs, headphones and books – in some cases still in their packaging – being destroyed by the company. The furore caused by the ITV News report led three Labour MPs, including the […]
NATO Launches €1bn Fund to Invest in War Startups
By: Sifted June 23, 2021 NATO is planning to harness the knowhow of startups to develop its next generation of war machines. The transatlantic defence alliance has announced that it is to launch a startup accelerator programme and a €1bn investment fund focused on deeptech startups. The disruptive technologies that NATO is interested […]
Robots May Soon Be Able to Reproduce – Will This Change How We Think About Evolution?
By: Guardian June 21, 2021 From the bottom of the oceans to the skies above us, natural evolution has filled our planet with a vast and diverse array of lifeforms, with approximately 8 million species adapted to their surroundings in a myriad of ways. Yet 100 years after Karel Čapek coined the term robot, the functional […]
Making Digital Ethics a Priority for Organizations
By: CXOtoday.com June 18, 2021 Disruptive technologies offer tremendous opportunity for businesses to become smarter, more flexible, and more responsive. But people often fail to understand the ramifications of their usage, running into bigger risks to businesses. It is then that the question of digital ethics comes into the picture. Let’s say, a […]
Intelligence Squared Debate: We Must Stop Big Data’s Pandemic Power Grab
By: Intelligence Squared Podcast June 17, 2021 In this week’s podcast Nani Jansen Reventlow goes up against Rowena Luk to debate whether bringing big tech closer into our lives during the pandemic has been a welcome innovation or a dangerous power grab. The debate was staged by Intelligence Squared Germany in partnership with the European […]
Lina Khan: How America’s Answer to Margrethe Vestager Plans to Take on Big Tech
By: City AM June 16, 2021 Since taking over as European Commissioner for Competition in 2014, Margrethe Vestager has made her mission clear: to crack down on the ballooning power of Big Tech. The ruthless competition czar has undoubtedly delivered on those ambitions, handing down high-profile fines running into the tens of billions […]