Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 180
Posts 71 - 80

Tech industry slowly rallies behind Apple in iPhone fight

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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)

Creating A Computer Voice That People Like

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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it should not sound exactly like a human voice or it would seem uncanny and creepy but it should not sound like an outdated robot voice either.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)

Obama Shifting Online Strategy on ISIS

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 8.1.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, law, politics, privacy, threat
Summary | President Obama wants to use surveillance techniques of new media to find IS terrorists. Tech companies, however, increasingly offer their users encrypted messaging services and refuse to hand over the keys to the government. Companies are protecting their users' privacy but also giving terrorists safe channels of communication.
Image Description | Portrait of Apple’s chief executive.
Image Tags | male(s)

At C.D.C., a Debate Behind Recommendations on Cellphone Risk

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 1.1.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | (mental) health, brain, childhood, research/study, smartphone, threat
Summary | A controversy has sparked over the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's health recommendation regarding cell phones. They had reviewed research on brain tumor risk connected with cell phone use and decided that the data were not convincing enough. Their recommendation was that cell phone users need not be more cautious with cell phones than other daily lifestyle choices. However, the research is also not extensive enough to disprove an increased risk of brain tumor with high rates of cell phone use, especially for children. In response to the backlash to this recommendation, their stance was revised a few times so that it now states that the C.D.C. does not recommend caution but other organizations do.
Image Description | Reuters image of a crowd and one man speaking on the smartphone.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone

Facebook Groups Act as Weapons Bazaars for Militias

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 6.4.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Facebook, law, marketing, threat
Summary | Since Facebook has enabled the transmission of payments via the site, it has seen an increase of commerce on the platform. Most worryingly, many Middle Eastern Facebook group pages advertise and apparently sell fire arms (everything from pistols over machine guns to missiles) via Facebook. Facebook has forbidden the sale of fire arms on their platform but they have to rely on users to report such cases.
Image Description | Images of the weapons on sale on Facebook, ISIS fighters, and refugee boats.
Image Tags | Facebook, male(s)

Taking poetic license with AI personalities

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 7.4.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, emojis, gender, research/study
Summary | Artificial intelligence assistants are now being creatively enganced by educated and professional writers and poets so as to make their conversation appear more human-like (f.i. by using emojis) and their personalities more authentic. Polls have shown that users prefer female voices for AI assistants and most companies have acted accordingly. Microsoft has however pre-empted reinforcing stereotypes about female assistants by limiting the number of apologies and self-deprecating comments for their AI assistant Cortana.
Image Description | Image of a meeting of professional writers working in AI at Microsoft.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, female(s), male(s)

'Chatbots' are coming

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Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 7.4.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, research/study, WhatsApp
Summary | The future is artificially intelligent. All major digital companies seem to see the most potential in messenger-based, artificially intelligent chatbots. Studies have shown that people value messaging services most highly on their smartphones so any innovation needs to be accessible through a messaging service. WhatsApp is a very significant one, it has 900 mio users.
Image Description | Getty image of Mark Zuckerberg in front of the Facebook Messenger logo and a screenshot of an Uber chatbot conversation.
Image Tags | Facebook, logo, male(s)

Warum wir nie wieder Smalltalk machen müssen

(Why we never have to do smalltalk again)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 4.10.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Google, threat
Summary | Chatbots operated with artificial intelligence like Google's Allo will soon obliterate our need to engage in smalltalk. It can suggest appropriate or social expected responses to generic messages and other content. It can for example recognize an image of food and suggest to respond "yummy!". This can be convenient but it can also result in chatbots essential talking to other chatbots in the name of their human users.
Image Description | Getty image illustration showing a man and a microchip.
Image Tags | male(s)

So kämpfen Fraktionslose um Aufmerksamkeit

(This is how independent politicians vie for attention)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 31.10.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | Facebook, politics
Summary | Politicians who are not affiliated with any established party have a hard time being heard by potential voters. They have now discovered Facebook. Publishing their candidacy and their political view on policies on Facebook gets them a lot of attention. Some even pay money for Facebook to advertise their accounts.
Image Description | Image of the parliament chamber of Hamburg and portraits of the mentioned politicians.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Die Integration von Syrern funktioniert - über Facebook

(The integration of Syrians works - on Facebook)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 12.10.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | digitized education, diversity, Facebook, law
Summary | The Syrian community in Germany is excellently connected on Facebook. Hundreds of thousands of people are joined in Facebook groups and share their knowledge about asylum-seeking procedures, how to get cheap train tickets, and short video classes about complicated grammatical constructions. The Syrians are pooling their knowledge of all aspects of German culture and are succeding with the integration into the society. Even video comedians explain cultural differences humoristically so that they are getting more and more German viewers. Lately, they have even helped the German police find a terrorist posing as a refugee by sharing his image in their Facebook groups.
Image Description | Screenshots of the Facebook groups.
Image Tags | Facebook, male(s)

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