Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are becoming more like us. You can ask Google Home to switch off your bedroom lights, much as you might ask your human partner.
When you text inquiries to Amazon online it’s sometimes unclear whether you’re being answered by a human or the company’s chatbot technology.
It’s a parent’s responsibility to protect their children from harm, no matter where that threat of harm comes from. But what if the threat is a hoax?
We’ve seen recently a rollercoaster of panic from parents trying to protect their kids from a supposed online threat known as the Momo challenge, that has for months been debunked as a hoax.
Once a piece of ransomware has got hold of your valuable information, there is very little you can do to get it back other than accede to the attacker’s demands. Ransomware, a type of malware that holds a computer to ransom, has become particularly prevalent in the past few years and virtually unbreakable encryption has made it an even more powerful force.
Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s latest promise is that his social media conglomerate will become a “privacy-focused” one. By turns lauded and lambasted, this move does not quite address users’ primary problems with the company.
There is now widespread concern about the amount of time children spend staring at screens – with many people worried about the negative impacts mobile devices might have on health and well-being.
Concerns have also been raised about the influence of technological change on relationships and face-to-face interactions. Sherry Turkle, a professor of the social studies of science, came up with the famous term “alone together” – which is also the name of her book. “Alone together” captures this idea of spending time on devices to the neglect of interacting with those who are physically nearby.
Zuckerberg aims to make private messages private and ephemeral – meaning Facebook can’t read our messages, and the data doesn’t stick around on the company’s servers for longer than necessary. His vision involves merging Facebook and the company’s other digital platforms – Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger – into a super app, similar to China’s WeChat.
Some people suggest these tasks should be automated, as machines do not get bored, tired or distracted over time. However, computer vision algorithms tasked to recognize faces could also make mistakes. As my research has found, together, machines and humans could do much better.
Instead of being central to the system of decisions that affects us, we are cast out in to its environment. We have progressively restricted our own decision-making capacity and allowed algorithms to take over. We have become artificial humans, or human artefacts, that are created, shaped and used by the technology.
Lonely Planet, and others, have become excited by tourism powered by virtual reality(VR) – both on this planet and, thanks to NASA, on others.
VR films are also being developed by travel companies, such as Thomas Cook. And Tourism Australia has partnered with Google to understand the marketing potential of VR (well, 360 degree panoramic videos).
Drones are useful, and are helping in the recovery after the deadly Alabama tornadoes, but most require individual pilots, who fly the unmanned aircraft by remote control. That limits how quickly rescuers can view an entire affected area, and can delay actual aid from reaching victims.
