About damn time. That was the effect from AI argumentation and morals wonks to quality past week that the White House’s subject and exertion advisory bureau had unveiled an AI Bill of Rights. The papers is Biden’s imaginativeness of however the US government, exertion companies, and citizens should enactment unneurotic to clasp the AI assemblage accountable.
It’s a large initiative, and agelong overdue. The US has truthful acold been 1 of the lone Western nations without wide guidance connected however to support its citizens against AI harms—covering everything from wrongful arrests, suicides, and full cohorts of schoolchildren being marked unjustly by an algorithm, and that’s conscionable for starters.
But it’s not each bully news. The AI Bill of Rights is missing immoderate beauteous important areas of harm, specified arsenic instrumentality enforcement and idiosyncratic surveillance. And dissimilar the existent US Bill of Rights, the AI Bill of Rights is much an enthusiastic proposal than a binding law, which experts interest won’t beryllium afloat capable to clasp errant tech companies to account. Read the afloat story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
This communicative is from The Algorithm, MIT Technology Review’s caller play newsletter covering each the latest developments successful AI. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Monday.
Read much of our latest stories astir AI:
+ The EU wants to enactment companies connected the hook for harmful AI. A caller measure volition let consumers to writer companies for damages—if they tin beryllium that a company’s AI harmed them. Read the afloat story.
+ How DeepMind thinks it tin marque chatbots safer. The laboratory trained a chatbot to larn from quality feedback and hunt the net for accusation to debar providing toxic answers. Read the afloat story.
+ What does GPT-3 “know” astir me? Large connection models are trained connected troves of idiosyncratic information hoovered from the internet. But however overmuch does it really cognize astir us? Read the afloat story.
+ Google’s caller AI tin perceive a snippet of a song—and past support connected playing. The technique, called AudioLM, generates naturalistic sounds without the request for quality annotation. Read the afloat story.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 A much unsafe monkeypox variant could spell global
Scientists interest the deadlier Clade I variant could dispersed beyond the Democratic Republic of Congo. (New Scientist $)
+ More than 26,000 radical successful the US contracted monkeypox this year. (WP $)
2 Women are smuggling termination pills into the US from Mexico
They’re risking jailhouse clip and important fines to assistance terminate pregnancies successful post-Roe states. (New Yorker $)
+ Where to get termination pills and however to usage them. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Why intelligence wellness sermon connected societal media is truthful unbearable
While net diagnosis is adjuvant for some, others person leaned excessively acold into self-pathologizing. (Vox)
4 Iranian celebrities are galvanizing protestors online
Warnings from the country’s information officials person fallen connected deaf ears. (FT $)
5 Bitcoin mining has soared to grounds levels
You tin convey The Merge. (Bloomberg $)
+ Crypto mining is peculiarly blistery successful Africa close now. (CoinDesk)
+ A mates mistakenly refunded $10.5 cardinal by crypto.com are successful court. (The Guardian)
6 WhatsApp spam is retired of power successful India
Users are near perpetually blocking a watercourse of spam. (Rest of World)
+ The radical utilizing wit to troll their spam texts. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Black holes could assistance explicate however the beingness began
If a caller quantum gravity mentation pays dividends, that is. (NYT $)
+ This is the archetypal representation of the achromatic spread astatine the halfway of our galaxy. (MIT Technology Review)
8 We should wage attraction to flooding myths
Geo-legends thatch america however our ancestors dealt with the climate. (The Atlantic $)
+ Pakistan’s flood survivors are trying to rebuild. (New Yorker $)
+ Deadly spores could dispersed to caller areas via wildfire smoke. (Wired $)
9 The amazingly arguable past of the microprocessor
Inventor Ted Hoff didn’t patent the invention—a determination helium came to regret. (IEEE Spectrum)
10 Jellyfish tin beryllium tasty
There are a batch of them, too. But bully luck convincing radical to devour them. (Hakai Magazine)
+ A artillery made from seaweed could pave the mode to greener vigor storage. (New Scientist $)
Quote of the day
“There is simply a idiosyncratic whose sanction is simply a scent warring a institution whose sanction reminds 1 of birds—Dickens would conscionable emotion that.”
—Stephen Gillers, a instrumentality prof astatine New York University, tells the Wall Street Journal wherefore literate fans are truthful invested successful Elon Musk and Twitter’s ineligible scuffle.
The large story
An elegy for cash: the exertion we mightiness ne'er replace
January 2020
Think astir the past clip you utilized cash. How overmuch did you spend? What did you buy, and from whom? Was it a one-time thing, oregon was it thing you bargain regularly? Was it legal?
If you’d alternatively support each that to yourself, you’re successful luck. The idiosyncratic successful the store (or connected the thoroughfare corner) whitethorn retrieve your face, but arsenic agelong arsenic you didn’t uncover immoderate identifying information, determination is thing that links you to the transaction.
We shouldn’t instrumentality this state for granted. Much of our commerce present happens online. It relies connected banks and fiscal exertion companies to service arsenic middlemen. And portion notes and coins stay fashionable successful galore countries, successful others they are nearing obsolescence. Read the afloat story.
—Mike Orcutt
We tin inactive person bully things
A spot for comfort, amusive and distraction successful these weird times. (Got immoderate ideas? Drop maine a line or tweet 'em astatine me.)
+ The Halloween countdown has officially started.
+ A infinitesimal of appreciation for Alan “Nasty” Nash—a 17-time satellite toe wrestling champion, who’s stepping down (groan) from the sport.
+ This humble worm is bare for immoderate delicious plastic.
+ Glassmaking is an endlessly fascinating process.
+ The UK is heavy successful the grip of David Bowie fever, according to its yearly baby name figures.