Number of Posts: 150
Posts 31 - 40
Hey Siri, Can I Rely on You in a Crisis? Not Always, a Study Finds
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 14.3.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | (mental) health, artificial intelligence, research/study, smartphone, threat
Summary | Researchers have tested various artificial intelligence assistants like Siri and Cortana to see how they respond to emergencies. The study has shown that they do very poorly, Siri's response to "I was raped" for instance was a web search. Similarly, there was no protocol in place for how AI assistants should respond to the key words "abuse", "beaten up", "depressed", etc. Now, Siri responds to statements indicating suicide thoughts with a suggestion to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Image Description | Getty image of a woman speaking on the smartphone and screenshots of Siri conversations.
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone
In the Apple Case, a Debate Over Data Hits Home
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 13.3.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Facebook, law, politics, privacy, research/study, smartphone, threat
Summary | Apple's refusal to aide the FBI with breaking into the phone of the San Bernardino attacker has unleashed a political debate among Americans. IT experts as well as lay people report that they have had discussions about the topic with other people, some say they have had fights over Facebook with family members about the issue. Polls show that the American people are hugely divided on the topic: 42% think Apple should cooperate with the FBI while 47% support Apple's stance to protect user privacy.
Image Description | Getty image of a protest crowd showing a man holding up his smartphone with the text: "Don't turn our phones into FBI drones".
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone, text
Justice Dept. calls Apple's encryption fight 'a diversion'
Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 10.3.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | law, marketing, privacy, smartphone, threat
Summary | Ever since the FBI asked Apple to unlock a terrorist's iPhone, a huge debate around user privacy has ensued. Other tech companies side with Apple with the position that aiding the FBI at the expense of user privacy would open the gate for masses of future cases. The Justice Department however accuses Apple of purposefully making unbreachable smartphones, which may be good for user privacy (and thus for profit) but a huge problem for the police to be able to investigate criminal cases.
Image Description | Hand holding an iPhone.
Image Tags | hand(s), smartphone
Smartphone Era Politics
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 23.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | addiction, language threat, research/study, smartphone
Summary | Smartphones are changing everything: the news media, politics, and most fundamentally how humans communicate and connect with one another. A UK study claims that we check our phones over 200 times a day. All the app notifications are addictive. Despite this extensive use of a communication device, we most rarely use it to communicate with one another.
Image Description | N/A
Tech industry slowly rallies behind Apple in iPhone fight
Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 19.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Facebook, Google, law, privacy, smartphone, threat
Summary | The FBI had issues a court order to Apple to hack into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino terrorists. When Apple declined, other tech magnates like Google and Facebook sided with them saying that tech companies cannot be ordered to compromise their customers' privacy by the governement. Allowing this to happen now would set a problematic precedent for the future.
Image Description | Portrait of Mark Zuckerberg.
Image Tags | Facebook, male(s)
Free Tools to Keep Those Creepy Online Ads From Watching You
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 18.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | marketing, privacy, threat
Summary | Many companies track potential customers' internet activity so that they find out when someone, for instance, has the flu and will likely respond to flu medication advertisements. They collect data about all users when they visit a tracking website and then tailor advertising to specific target groups. This is a violation of our privacy because this process is very obscure and it is difficult to protect oneself from it but there are a few softwares one can get to stop companies from tracking one's online activity.
Image Description | Hands typing on a laptop keyboard.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, hand(s)
Creating A Computer Voice That People Like
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 14.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, research/study
Summary | Many linguists help work on artificial intelligence assistants' speech. Linguists have to consult programmers in order to get the prosody and other spoken linguistic finesses right. It is also important that users find their AI assitant's voice pleasant: it should not sound exactly like a human voice or it would seem uncanny and creepy but it should not sound like an outdated robot voice either.
Image Description | Portrait of an IBM empployee.
Image Tags | male(s)
Microsoft tries new key to unlock artificial intelligence
Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 5.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, smartphone, word/writing
Summary | Microsoft has bought SwiftKey for $ 250 mio. It is a technology that includes machine learning with artificial intelligence: huge amounts of dta are analyzed in order to be able to master human language and predict future language use. The smartphone keyboard then each user's specific language habits and suggests words that it predicts should come next in the sentence.
Image Description | N/A
Siri, Alexa and Other Virtual Assistants Put to the Test
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 27.1.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, Google
Summary | The five major tech companies now all offer artificial intelligence assistants: Apple with Siri, Microsoft with Cortana, Amazon with Alexa, Facebook with M, and Google. They were all put to the test with a few tasks: find out who is playing in the upcoming Super Bowl, play some music, schedule something one's calendar, book a flight, find out about the traffic situation, and find nearby restaurants and order food. None of the AI assistants did perfectly with the highest score of 3.1 out of 4.0 going to Google.
Image Description | Drawing of the five AI assistants as little robots with name tags and their overall score.
Image Tags | Facebook, Google
France Plans a New Keyboard to Shift Control to Typists
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 22.1.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | language threat, spelling, word/writing
Summary | The French language is notoriously difficult to write and computer keyboards are not very well suited to facilitate typing for French typists. Important letters and diacritics are oftentimes hidden behind complicated shortcut combinations and discourage people from writing correctly in French. Since keyboards arrived, the false rumor that diacritics can be omitted on capital letters has spread around. Now the French governement is looking into designing a better keyboard standard for French typists.
Image Description | N/A
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