Author: The Conversation

“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” HAL’s cold, if polite, refusal to open the pod bay doors in 2001 A Space Odyssey has become a defining warning about putting too much trust in artificial intelligence, particularly if you work in space. In the movies, when a machine decides to be the boss – or humans let it – things go wrong. Yet despite myriad dystopian warnings, control by machines is fast becoming our reality. Algorithms – sets of instructions to solve a problem or complete a task – now drive everything from browser search results to better medical care. They…

We know Instagram is the most influential app when it comes to lifestyle and beauty trends. But recent research shows increasing numbers of people are also going to Instagram for their news. A report by the Reuters Institute found the use of Instagram for news has doubled across all age groups since 2018. It is now set to overtake Twitter as a news source in the coming year, with younger people in particular embracing Instagram for their news. What is ‘Insta’? Instagram is a social media platform where users post photos with captions, with an estimated one billion active users around the world. The Reuters report found Instagram reaches…

Individualistic western societies are built on the idea that no one knows our thoughts, desires or joys better than we do. And so we put ourselves, rather than the government, in charge of our lives. We tend to agree with the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s claim that no one has the right to force their idea of the good life on us. Artificial intelligence (AI) will change this. It will know us better than we know ourselves. A government armed with AI could claim to know what its people truly want and what will really make them happy. At best it will use…

The video-sharing app TikTok is a hot political potato amid concerns over who has access to users’ personal data. The United States has moved to ban the app. Other countries, including Australia, have expressed concern. But does this mean your children who use this app are at risk? If you’re a parent, let me explain the issues and give you a few tips to make sure your kids stay safe. A record-breaker Never has an app for young people been so popular. By April this year the TikTok app had been downloaded more than 2 billion times worldwide. The app recently broke all records for the most downloaded app in…

The difficulty many people have getting tested for SARS-CoV-2 and delays in receiving test results make early warning of possible COVID-19 infections all the more important, and data from wearable health and fitness devices shows promise for identifying who might have COVID-19. Today’s wearable device gather data about physical activity, heart rate, body temperature and quality of sleep. This data is typically used to help people track general well-being. Smartwatches are the most common type of wearable. There are also smart wrist bands, finger rings and earbuds. Smart clothing, shoes and eyeglasses can also be considered “wearables.” Popular brands include Fitbits, Apple…

COVID-19 has altered nearly every aspect of American life, including the workplace. For millions of Americans, the kitchen or the living room now doubles as the office and conference room. This workspace shift, likely to last long past the pandemic, offers some conveniences, of course, but it also teems with potential pitfalls. Traditional tactics for achieving credibility in presentations – audience interaction and engaging body language, for example – are not accessible when you appear on a laptop or smartphone screen. Suddenly, what you say carries more weight than ever. As an English language studies professor, I wanted to understand how presenters build credibility, so I analyzed…

In a synthetic chemistry lab, we have worked out how to convert the red pigment in common bricks into a plastic that conducts electricity, and this process enabled us to turn bricks into electricity storage devices. These brick supercapacitors could be connected to solar panels to store rechargeable energy. Supercapacitors store electric charge, in contrast to batteries, which store chemical energy. Brick’s porous structure is ideal for storing energy because pores give brick more surface area than solid materials have, and the greater the surface area the more electricity a supercapacitor material can hold. Bricks are red because the clay they’re…

In response to COVID-19, almost every university has scrambled to move its teaching online. To do this, academics have been choosing between two approaches: live videoconferencing using tools such as Zoom, or pre-recording videos and posting to platforms such as YouTube. Previous reviews have shown videoconferences are an okay substitute for classes, but what about videos? What do students say? Previous reviews have looked at student preferences for online learning as opposed to face-to-face lectures and they do not find any differences. Even when teachers make monumental efforts to create flipped classrooms, where they provide online videos before interactive workshops, there are no…

The Trump administration has turned up the heat on Chinese tech companies TikTok and WeChat with an executive order that US companies have 45 days to stop transacting with them. The administration has also recommended that Chinese firms listed on US exchanges be removed unless they provide US regulators access to their audited accounts. It comes only days after the US president gave the go-ahead for Microsoft (or rival US bidders) to buy TikTok if the purchase can be completed by September 15. Failing that, Trump says he will shut down the video-sharing app in the US. Zhang Yiming, the chief executive of ByteDance, which owns TikTok,…

Elon Musk thinks his company Tesla will have fully autonomous cars ready by the end of 2020. “There are no fundamental challenges remaining,” he said recently. “There are many small problems. And then there’s the challenge of solving all those small problems and putting the whole system together.” While the technology to enable a car to complete a journey without human input (what the industry calls “level 5 autonomy”) might be advancing rapidly, producing a vehicle that can do so safely and legally is another matter. There are indeed still fundamental challenges to the safe introduction of fully autonomous cars, and…