Tech & Society
AI Goes Rogue
Could humanity be destroyed by its own creation? If binary code running on a computer awakens into sentience, it will be able to think better than humans. It may even be able to improve its own software and hardware.
Analytics DeepLearning.AI
Tech & Society
Deepfakes Wreak Havoc
Will AI fakery erode public trust in the key social institutions? Generative models will flood media outlets with convincing but false photos, videos, ads, and news stories. The ensuing crisis of authority will lead to widespread distrust in everything from the financial system to democracy itself.
Tech & Society
No Escape From Surveillance
What does freedom mean when computers know your face and track your movements? Artificial intelligence will boost the power of surveillance, effectively making privacy obsolete and opening the door to a wide range of abuses.
Tech & Society
Biased Data Trains Oppressive AI
Will biases in training data unwittingly turn AI into a tool for persecution? Bias encoded in software used by nominally objective institutions like, say, the justice or education systems will become impossible to root out.
Tech & Society
Machines Take Everyone’s Job
From blue collar laborers to lab coated professionals, is any job safe from AI? AI will exceed human performance at a wide range of activities. Huge populations will become jobless.
Tech & Society
AI Winter Sets In
Could the flood of hype for artificial intelligence lead to a catastrophic collapse in funding? AI will fail to deliver on promises inflated by businesses and researchers. Investors will migrate to greener pastures, and AI Winter will descend.
The Batch Newsletter
The Batch: Daemon Spawn, AGI Takeover, Deepfake Deluge, Bias Crisis - How Scared Should You Be?
Welcome to the Halloween edition of The Batch! I promised last week to share some common reasons for AI project failures. But first, let’s start with some of the least common reasons.
Letters
Why AI Projects Fail, Part 2: Uncommon Pitfalls
Welcome to the Halloween edition of The Batch! I promised last week to share some common reasons for AI project failures. But first, let’s start with some of the least common reasons.
Tech & Society
Cube Controversy
OpenAI trained a five-fingered robotic hand to unscramble the Rubik’s Cube puzzle, bringing both acclaim and criticism. The AI research lab OpenAI trained a mechanical hand to balance, twist, and turn the cube.
Tech & Society
Public Access, Private Faces
One of the largest open datasets for training face recognition systems has its roots in a popular photo-sharing service. Companies that have used this data could find themselves liable for millions in legal recompense.
Machine Learning Research
Cracking Open Doctors’ Notes
Weak supervision is the practice of assigning likely labels to unlabeled data using a variety of simple labeling functions. Then supervised methods can be used on top of the now-labeled data.
Tech & Society
Robot Tanks on the March
A new generation of battlebots is gaining momentum.What’s new: The Army is at least two years ahead of schedule in its plan to deploy self-driving (and self-aiming) transports, jeeps, and tanks.