The Download: spying keyboard software, and why boring AI is best

How ubiquitous keyboard bundle puts hundreds of millions of Chinese users astatine risk

For millions of Chinese people, the archetypal bundle they download onto devices is ever the same: a keyboard app. Yet fewer of them are alert that it whitethorn marque everything they benignant vulnerable to spying eyes. 

QWERTY keyboards are inefficient arsenic galore Chinese characters stock the aforesaid latinized spelling. As a result, galore power to smart, localized keyboard apps to prevention clip and frustration. Today, implicit 800 cardinal Chinese radical usage third-party keyboard apps connected their PCs, laptops, and mobile phones. 

But a caller study by the Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto–affiliated probe group, revealed that Sogou, 1 of the astir fashionable Chinese keyboard apps, had a monolithic information loophole. Read the afloat story. 

—Zeyi Yang

Why we should each beryllium rooting for boring AI

Earlier this month, the US Department of Defense announced it is mounting up a Generative AI Task Force, aimed astatine “analyzing and integrating” AI tools specified arsenic ample connection models crossed the department. It hopes they could amended quality and operational planning. 

But those mightiness not beryllium the close usage cases, writes our elder AI newsman Melissa Heikkila. Generative AI tools, specified arsenic connection models, are glitchy and unpredictable, and they marque things up. They besides person monolithic information vulnerabilities, privateness problems, and profoundly ingrained biases. 

Applying these technologies successful high-stakes settings could pb to deadly accidents wherever it’s unclear who oregon what should beryllium held responsible, oregon adjacent wherefore the occupation occurred. The DoD’s champion stake is to use generative AI to much mundane things similar Excel, email, oregon connection processing. Read the afloat story. 

This communicative is from The Algorithm, Melissa’s play newsletter giving you the wrong way connected each things AI. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Monday.

The crystal cores that volition fto america look 1.5 cardinal years into the past

To amended recognize the relation atmospheric c dioxide plays successful Earth’s clime cycles, scientists person agelong turned to crystal cores drilled successful Antarctica, wherever snowfall layers accumulate and compact implicit hundreds of thousands of years, trapping samples of past aerial successful a lattice of bubbles that service arsenic tiny clip capsules. 

By analyzing those cores, scientists tin link greenhouse-gas concentrations with temperatures going backmost 800,000 years. Now, a caller European-led inaugural hopes to yet retrieve the oldest halfway yet, dating backmost 1.5 cardinal years. But that awesome feat is inactive lone the archetypal step. Once they’ve done that, they’ll person to fig retired however they’re going to extract the aerial from the ice. Read the afloat story.

—Christian Elliott

This communicative is from the latest variation of our people magazine, acceptable to spell unrecorded tomorrow. Subscribe contiguous for arsenic debased arsenic $8/month to guarantee you person afloat entree to the caller Ethics contented and in-depth stories connected experimental drugs, AI assisted warfare, microfinance, and more.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.

1 How AI got dragged into the civilization wars
Fears astir ‘woke’ AI fundamentally misunderstand however it works. Yet they’re gaining traction. (The Guardian) 
+ Why it’s intolerable to physique an unbiased AI connection model. (MIT Technology Review)
 
2 Researchers are racing to recognize a caller coronavirus variant 
It’s improbable to beryllium origin for concern, but it shows this microorganism inactive has plentifulness of tricks up its sleeve. (Nature)
+ Covid hasn’t wholly gone away—here’s wherever we stand. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Why we can’t spend to halt monitoring it. (Ars Technica)
 
3 How Hilary became specified a monster storm
Much of it is down to unusually blistery oversea aboveground temperatures. (Wired $)
+ The epoch of simultaneous clime disasters is present to stay. (Axios)
+ People are donning cooling vests truthful they tin enactment done the heat. (Wired $)
 
4 Brain privateness is acceptable to go important 🧠
Scientists are getting amended astatine decoding our encephalon data. It’s surely lone a substance of clip earlier others privation a peek. (The Atlantic $)
+ How your encephalon information could beryllium utilized against you. (MIT Technology Review)
 
5 How Nvidia built specified a large competitory vantage successful AI chips
Today it accounts for 70% of each AI spot sales—and an adjacent greater stock for grooming generative models. (NYT $)
+ The chips it’s selling to China are little effectual owed to US export controls. (Ars Technica)
+ These elemental plan rules could crook the spot manufacture connected its head. (MIT Technology Review)
 
6 Inside the analyzable satellite of dissociative individuality upset connected TikTok 
Reducing stigma is great, but doctors fearfulness radical are self-diagnosing oregon adjacent imitating the disorder. (The Verge)
 
7 What TikTok mightiness person to springiness up to support operating successful the US
This shows conscionable however hollow the authorities’ purported data-collection concerns truly are. (Forbes)
 
8 Soldiers successful Ukraine are playing World of Tanks connected their phones
It’s eerily akin to the warfare they are themselves fighting, but they accidental it helps them to dissociate from the horror. (NYT $)
 
9 Conspiracy theorists are sharing huffy ideas connected what causes wildfires
But it’s each conscionable a convoluted mode to effort to debar having to tackle clime change. (Slate $)
 
10 Christie’s accidentally leaked the determination of tons of invaluable art 🖼️📍
Seemingly acknowledgment to the metadata that often automatically attaches to smartphone photos. (WP $)

Quote of the day

“Is it going to instrumentality radical dying for thing to determination forward?”

—An anonymous aerial postulation controller warns that staffing shortages successful their industry, positive different factors, are starting to endanger rider safety, the New York Times reports.

The large story

Inside effectual altruism, wherever the acold aboriginal counts a batch much than the present

VICTOR KERLOW

October 2022

Since its commencement successful the precocious 2000s, effectual altruism has aimed to reply the question “How tin those with means person the astir interaction connected the satellite successful a quantifiable way?”—and supplied methods for calculating the answer.

It’s nary astonishment that effectual altruisms' ideas person agelong faced disapproval for reflecting achromatic Western saviorism, alongside an avoidance of structural problems successful favour of abstract math. And arsenic believers determination adjacent greater amounts of wealth into the movement’s progressively sci-fi ideals, specified charges are lone intensifying. Read the afloat story.

—Rebecca Ackermann

We tin inactive person bully things

A spot for comfort, amusive and distraction successful these weird times. (Got immoderate ideas? Drop maine a line oregon tweet 'em astatine me.)

+ Watch Andrew Scott’s electrifying reading of the 1965 commencement code ‘Choose One of Five’ by Edith Sampson.
+ Here’s however Metallica makes definite its unrecorded performances ROCK. ($)
+ Cannot woody with this utterly ludicrous wooden vehicle. 
+ Learn astir a weird and fantastic caller instrumentality called a harpejji.