2 years ago
162
What’s happening: The EU is creating caller rules to marque it easier to writer AI companies for harm. A measure unveiled past week, which is apt to go instrumentality successful a mates of years, is portion of Europe’s propulsion to forestall AI developers from releasing unsafe systems.
The details: The extremity of the measure is to clasp AI companies accountable for imaginable harm and favoritism caused by their systems by making it easier for consumers to motorboat EU-wide people actions. The caller bill, called the AI Liability Directive, volition adhd teeth to the EU’s AI Act, which is acceptable to go EU instrumentality astir the aforesaid time, and would necessitate other checks for “high risk” uses of AI that person the astir imaginable to harm people, including systems for policing, recruitment, oregon wellness care.
The response: While tech companies kick it could person a chilling effect connected innovation, user activists accidental it doesn’t spell acold enough. Whether oregon not it succeeds, the authorities volition person a ripple effect connected however AI is regulated astir the world. Read the afloat story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 How Iranians are circumventing the country’s net blackout
Overseas integer rights groups person scrambled to help. (NBC)
+ Iranians surviving overseas person been watching the police’s brutal crackdown successful horror. (The Guardian)
+ Security forces person clamped down connected pupil protestors. (BBC)
2 Celsius Network’s laminitis withdrew millions earlier it went bankrupt
The crypto lender is 1 of the industry’s biggest casualties to date. (FT $)
+ Bitcoin’s fair-weather investors are obscurity to beryllium seen. (Bloomberg $)
+ Indian speech WazirX has laid disconnected 40% of its workforce. (CoinDesk)
3 Big Tech bankrolled a radical that paved the mode for the extremity of Roe
The Independent Women’s Forum has agelong lobbied for a conservative-led Supreme Court. (Intercept)
+ The cognitive dissonance of watching the extremity of Roe unfold online. (MIT Technology Review)
4 What we tin larn from tracking suicidal ideation done smartphones
A caller probe task is harnessing algorithms to make an effectual involution system. (NYT $)
5 Meet the internet’s Father Time
Engineer David Mills created the bundle that keeps the internet’s clocks successful sync, but it’s unclear who his successor volition be. (New Yorker $)
6 Invasive taxon person a atrocious reputation
A caller question of researchers wants to rehabilitate their image—but not everyone agrees. (The Atlantic $)
7 China’s same-sex couples are getting joined implicit Zoom
By mode of Utah. (Rest of World)
+ Google Translate has been unopen down successful China. (CNBC)
8 Dating app Hinge is overrun with fake men
While immoderate are evident bots, others aren’t truthful casual to spot. (Wired $)
+ How to archer if you’re talking to a bot. (MIT Technology Review)
9 White sound is notching up millions of streams
But who’s making it, exactly? (The Guardian)
10 Elon Musk’s robot is ace underwhelming 🤖
To the astonishment of precisely nary one. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ Musk is readying to marque millions of them, regardless. (Reuters)
Quote of the day
“I would ne'er bash it if we weren’t successful a clip wherever societal media is king.”
—Alice Hirsch, a lensman based successful Toronto, explains however they’ve learnt to make contented that appeases Instagram’s video-biased algorithm to the New York Times.
The large story
A spread successful the crushed could beryllium the aboriginal of fusion power
February 2022
On an overcast time successful aboriginal December, a yellowish world mover scooped ungraded from the borderline of a heavy pit successful Devens, Massachusetts, connected the tract of an aged Army basal immoderate 50 miles extracurricular of Boston.
This is the aboriginal location of SPARC, a prototype fusion reactor that, if each goes arsenic hoped, volition execute a extremity that’s eluded physicists for astir a century. It volition nutrient much vigor from fusing unneurotic atoms, the aforesaid improvement that powers the sun, than it takes to execute and prolong those reactions.
Facilities that tin harness atomic fusion should supply a inexpensive root of carbon-free vigor from abundant substance sources. Crucially, fusion would make a constant, dependable watercourse of electricity, filling successful the gaps during the hours, days, oregon adjacent weeks erstwhile star and upwind sources flag.
But the sheer method complexity and monolithic outgo of achieving fusion person repeatedly dashed the hopes of scientists and hardened the stance of skeptics. What accidental does SPARC have? Read the afloat story.
English (US) ·