Employees at Google are protesting the company's work on a censored search engine for China, the New York Times reports, signing a letter that calls for more transparency and questions the move's ethics. Reports of the search engine surfaced earlier...
Google employees push back on censored China search engine
Employees at Google are protesting the company's work on a censored search engine for China, the New York Times reports, signing a letter that calls for more transparency and questions the move's ethics. Reports of the search engine surfaced earlier...
Today during the Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, the Future of Life Institute announced that more than 2,400 individuals and 160 companies and organizations have signed a pledge, declaring that they will "neither participate in nor suppo...
Add Microsoft to the list of companies whose government deals are provoking outrage both inside and outside their offices. The Redmond firm sparked a wave of criticism on social networks after users discovered a January blog post noting that the comp...
For better or worse, Google Assistant can do it all. From mundane tasks like turning on your lights and setting reminders to convincingly mimicking human speech patterns, the AI helper is so capable it's scary. Its latest (unofficial) ability, though...
Google's Pentagon contract and its involvement with the military's Project Maven has stirred controversy both outside of and within the company. Its plan to provide AI technology that can help flag drone images for human review has led to an internal...
One day in late April or early May, Google removed the phrase "don't be evil" from its code of conduct. After 18 years as the company's motto, those three words and chunks of their accompanying corporate clauses were unceremoniously deleted from the...
I laughed along with most of the audience at I/O 2018 when, in response to a restaurant rep asking it to hold on, Google Assistant said "Mmhmm". But beneath our mirth lay a sense of wonder. The demo of Google Duplex, "an AI system for accomplishing r...
After an impressive Google I/O demo where its Duplex AI system called a restaurant and salon to set up appointments, one of the big questions concerned the ethics of the technology. The Google Assistant voice took steps to pretend to be human, insert...
Axon (formerly Taser) is keenly aware of the potential for Orwellian abuses of facial recognition, and it's taking an unusual step to avoid creating that drama with its body cameras and other image recognition systems. The police- and military-focus...
Cobalt is an essential component in lithium ion batteries, making it a crucial material in the production of smart devices and electric vehicles. But, as battery-hungry cars go mainstream, there's a risk that the world's supply will be eaten up by ca...