Packed with more and more digitally-powered features, today’s vehicles are more advanced than ever, and more prone to failure. As recalls surge, experts warn that the race for innovation may be pushing quality control to the limit.
Tag: software
A small but worrying development could be making artificial intelligence less reliable. It’s all down to an internal mechanism that could eventually make it less effective and less dependable.
As staff shortages grow, a Munich startup is testing and training childlike AI companions designed to talk, remember and emotionally connect with the elderly — without ever losing patience.
The inner workings of Artificial Intelligence are impenetrable, unexplainable and unpredictable. That build in some fundamental limits to its capacity and utility.
The remarkable power of ChatGPT on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence took Beijing by surprise. As China rolls out its own version, it remains to be seen how the country will balance the need for control with technological development and innovation
Across the region, entrepreneurs have been hailed for taking innovative ideas inspired elsewhere and applying them nationally or regionally. But the business and ethical dynamics involved are not so simple.
PARIS — It’s been a tumultuous few months for so-called “surveillance tech.” Most recently, following pushback from Black Lives Matter activists, Amazon has suspended police use of its facial recognition software for one year. IBM followed suit, announcing it will stop offering its similar software for “mass surveillance or racial profiling.” The moves from the […]
New tech may soon be able to predict future political problems and independently develop solutions before issues even arise. But what does that mean for democracy?
PARIS — The so-called millennium bug, or Y2K, was the first time many began to understand the full potential of malfunctioning software to do harm. Of course, the predicted December 31, 1999 disruption of the internet, electricity, banking systems, and transportation didn’t come to pass in the end. Still, the threat of bugs (and not […]
CORK — On a December morning, as my plane pierces the ceiling of clouds and begins its descent toward the airport of Cork, my eyes are drawn to the flocks of sheep spread across the green fields below. It’s hard to imagine but this seemingly rural backdrop in southern Ireland houses the European headquarters of […]
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 […]
Robots have always fascinated us. In fiction or in real life, they crossed our path, for better or for worse. But where do they really come from?
NEW YORK — James Knight recently made an unorthodox career move for a 27-year-old coder: quitting a well-paid job writing software for Google to go freelance. No more catered lunches, gold-plated benefits or million-dollar views from the search giant’s Manhattan office. Knight is willing to sacrifice those perks because, he says, as an independent he’s pulling down about twice as much as he did at Google — and with more freedom. In March, Knight and his wife plan to hopscotch across Europe while writing code for a dating app and a self-portrait app, among others. “I’d rather control my own […]
This small Eastern European country is the Wild West (good guys and bad guys) of the fight for Internet security.
This 53-year-old German encryption coder helped the U.S. whistleblower stay one step ahead of the NSA. Now, he’s getting financial support from some big players to expand his work.
MEDELLIN — Crimes being committed by some of Colombia’s 38,000 convicts on prison leave have become an almost “daily headache,” with some returning to a life of lawlessness despite wearing electronic tags or bracelets. The need to keep closer tabs on prisoners who have been granted leave has led two prison authority (INPEC) employees and […]
Thanks to crunching masses of employee data, the field of HR and corporate personnel management will never be the same.
Not prone to emotional effusiveness, the Finnish have developed a particular taste for euphemisms: “Naturally, this is a day of big change for Finnish industry,” Premier Jyrki Katainen affirmed modestly last Tuesday, when the country’s best-known company, Nokia, sold its mobile phone outfit to Microsoft for $7.2 billion. That is about 15 times less than […]
MUNICH – It’s all so simple in the 1998 Disney movie Mulan. The heroine disguised as a boy joins the Chinese military to fight the enemy – armies of shadowy, faceless Huns that darken the horizon. Classic good versus evil. Martin Münch says he knows who the bad guys are, and that he’s one of […]
PARIS – Kevin Kelly is a stimulating iconoclast. How many books are bought but not read? Probably many more than we think. Hence the idea of paying readers who read a book from the beginning to the end. Kevin Kelly thought about patenting his idea, but, since ideas don’t necessarily make a project, he decided […]
Behind codes of encryption, the so-called “Deep Web” hosts a vast network of people trading in illegal sales of all sorts, most notably any drug imaginable.
THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW, AAP, THE AUSTRALIAN (Australia) Worldcrunch Turn right, then after 200 meters, you have reached your destination. NOT. A glitch in Apple’s new iPhone mapping system is putting lives at risk by sending motorists into isolated parkland, the Australian news agency AAP reports. Over the past month, police officers in Mildura, a […]