As AI begins to guide users through sensitive topics like suicide, the legal and ethical lines that once protected tech companies are being tested.
Tag: google
The term was coined by journalist Cory Doctorow to explain the fatal drift of major Internet platforms: if they were ever useful and user-friendly, they will inevitably end up being odious.
Poland has received widespread investment from multinational companies and now, the country is bucking the worldwide trend by adding jobs in the tech sector.
On two or four legs, the robots from this MIT spin-off are among the most advanced in the world. And while their videos have conquered YouTube, their new playground is less spectacular, but just as strategic: logistics warehouses.
Amid the summit hosted at the White House, and warning from AI experts, the world can’t simply leave the machines to their own devices.
As an Italian bestseller explores why people are fleeing the Golden State, the international press also takes stock of unprecedented Silicon Valley layoffs. It may be a warning for the rest of the world.
Reports that the new AI natural-language chatbot is a threat to Google’s search business fails to see that the two machines serve very different functions.
Ukraine’s Independence Day was marred by a deadly Russian attack on a train station in Chaplyne, in the east of the country, late in the day. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had warned that Moscow could try “something particularly ugly” to coincide with the occasion, and in response to the looming threats of an attack, Kyiv […]
The accord between Kyiv and Moscow has been in the works all week, signing today in Istanbul.
Why has Russia invaded Ukraine? Internet readers want to know. What will Ukraine be like after the war? That’s a question to start answering, even if the battle is far from over.
It was Jane Austen, back in 1816, who wrote that “every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.” That neighborhood is getting quite a bit bigger these days as our digitized lives and economies extract ever-deepening rivers of private data from the daily lives of citizens. Of course, with that has also come […]
Silicon Valley firms are leading the way in corporate policy, while European countries like Germany are beginning to draw up laws to create a bonafide legal right to work from home.
? Grüss Gott!* Welcome to Thursday, where Ukraine lashed out at Biden’s prediction about Russian intentions, Austria is betting on a new incentive for the unvaccinated, and the Australian city of Adelaide is baffled by a mysterious spate of googly eyes. We also look at Russia’s latest efforts to dismantle the REvil hacking group, at […]
Long perceived as a country chasing Western tech, China’s business and technological innovations are now influencing the rest of the world. Still lagging on some fronts, the future is now up for grabs.
Important digital innovations have been put into practice in the areas of translation, subtitling and text-to-image.
Europe is moving forward in a united front to force Big Tech that could lead to a historic showdown on the future of how the digital economy functions.
Even in its more profitable heyday, the ad-driven media model had its fundamental flaws.
Welcome to Friday, where the 2020 Olympic Games finally kick off, Xi Jinping makes a historic trip to Tibet, and there’s some beef (or rather, chuletón) between Spain and the EU. We also take an exclusive look at how the so-called “salvage grocery stores’ popping up around the world are finding commercially viable ways to […]
The digital behemoths Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon have long sold dreamy ideals. In reality, their business models are very conventional. Their extraordinary power is founded solely on their digital leverage.
-OpEd- PARIS — When Amazon realized that its AI recruiting tool favored men, the company quickly shelved it. Back in 2016, a chatbot released by Microsoft turned into a sex-obsessed neo-Nazi machine in only 24 hours. These incidents, along with others, played right into the hands of all those who say there is too much […]
Dubbed ‘the International,’ a young Egyptian computer programmer had built a program to scrape user data from Facebook. But the same practice is routinely done by the government and large corporations.
Google tried and failed to play the social media game. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing for the tech giant, which is doing just fine by sharing the tech market with California rival Facebook.
Despite billions in fines against the U.S. giant by the European Commission, Google continues to crush Europe’s once-prosperous price comparison services.
The U.S. web giant may be planning a return to China. But would web users there actually embrace it? An online pull (that mysteriously disappeared after just a few hours) offers some hints.
There’s a potentially sinister side to the crush of data we unwittingly feed into systems like Google, which can use the information not only to make money, but ultimately control us.
Computers that can perfectly mimic the human voice? Hyper sensitive surveillance cameras? Advances like these are already a reality, and need to be regulated now.
Upstarts no longer, the so-called BAT companies — Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent — are a force to be reckoned with.
GENEVA — At a time when trust and truth are under attack, it’s somehow comforting to see that some reputations can still go untarnished. For the third year in a row, Swiss company Rolex has earned the designation as the company with the world’s best reputation, as awarded by the Reputation Institute, based in Cambridge, […]
–OpEd- PARIS — The year is 2050. Cash has disappeared. People now pay for their purchases with their smartphones. And as in so many other sectors, Apple and Google are the big winners — along with Microsoft, who makes a small chip, which people implant under their skin to use as an electronic wallet. For […]
-Essay- WASHINGTON — As I was driving back to Washington last Christmas, I needed the navigation smartphone application Waze to get me out of Brooklyn, onto the Verrazano bridge, then across Staten Island into New Jersey, and finally to the I-95 highway that leads to DC. By the time I got on the New Jersey […]
In a new book, French futurologist Laurent Alexandre argues that as artificial intelligence advances, our education systems need to adapt, and quickly.
China, Russia and the U.S. see potential and risks. And for now, there’s still no form of governance to oversee AI development — technology moves faster than diplomacy.
Large technology companies need to be stopped before they crush our cherished freedoms, argues a new book by two French economists.
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On This Day – November 5
PARIS — How can we surf the web without using Google, Amazon or Facebook? French group Framasoft, which promotes the use of open-source software, offers a way. Under the “De-google-ify internet” initiative, the group uses decentralized software solutions to design tools that allow consumers to retake control of their data. Members of Framasoft are strong […]
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From Trump, Not Just Words
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper’s first question at Sunday night’s presidential debate was, not surprisingly, about the just-released lewd 2005 recording of Donald Trump boasting of being able to force himself on women. Cooper looked up at the billionaire Republican nominee: “You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?” After Trump circled […]
PARIS — For more than three years now, the French startup Qwant has been trying to prove that a search engine can be efficient and profitable while respecting the privacy and anonymity of users. After a slow and difficult start, Qwant is finally taking off. Six months ago the search engine had 8 million visitors. […]
To understand why design is important, take a look at Silicon Valley. Forty-two design firms in the U.S. technology hub have been bought up since 2004. About half these acquisitions were made this past year alone. The 25 startups that got the most venture capital financing were founded by designers. Google snapped up the two-person […]
Humans are being degraded to the status of objects of an algorithm-based evaluation to be sold on the market. This exploitative form of “hypercapitalism” must quickly be reversed.
SPOTLIGHT: BREXIT LANDS IN JAPAN Why would Shinzo Abe care what British voters think about Europe? The Japanese Prime Minister, currently hosting the G7 summit, joined leaders of the world’s other top economic powers in a surprise declaration today to urge the UK to vote to remain in the European Union in next month’s so-called […]