ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

OpenAIs Latest Breakthrough Is Astonishingly Powerful, But Still Fighting Its FlawsJames Vincent | The VergeWhat makes GPT-3 amazing, they say, is not that it can tell you that the capital of Paraguay is Asuncin (it is) or that 466 times 23.5 is 10,987 (its not), but that its capable of answering both questions and many more beside simply because it was trained on more data for longer than other programs. If theres one thing we know that the world is creating more and more of, its data and computing power, which means GPT-3s descendants are only going to get more clever.

I Tried to Live Without the Tech Giants. It Was Impossible.Kashmir Hill | The New York TimesCritics of the big tech companies are often told, If you dont like the company, dont use its products. My takeaway from the experiment was that its not possible to do that. Its not just the products and services branded with the big tech giants name. Its that these companies control a thicket of more obscure products and services that are hard to untangle from tools we rely on for everything we do, from work to getting from point A to point B.

Meet the Engineer Who Let a Robot Barber Shave Him With a Straight RazorLuke Dormehl | Digital TrendsNo, its not some kind of lockdown-induced barber startup or aJackass-style stunt. Instead, Whitney, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern University School of Engineering, was interested in straight-razor shaving as a microcosm for some of the big challenges that robots have faced in the past (such as their jerky, robotic movement) and how they can now be solved.

Can Trees Live Forever? New Kindling in an Immortal DebateCara Giaimo | The New York TimesEven if a scientist dedicated her whole career to very old trees, she would be able to follow her research subjects for only a small percentage of their lives. And a long enough multigenerational study might see its own methods go obsolete. For these reasons, Dr. Munn-Bosch thinks we will never prove whether long-lived trees experience senescence

Theres No Such Thing as Family Secrets in the Age of 23andMeCaitlin Harrington | Wiredtechnology has a way of creating new consequences for old decisions. Today, some 30 million people have taken consumer DNA tests, a threshold experts have called a tipping point. People conceived through donor insemination are matching with half-siblings, tracking down their donors, forming networks and advocacy organizations.

The Problems AI Has Today Go Back CenturiesKaren Hao | MIT Techology ReviewIn 2018, just as the AI field was beginning to reckon with problems like algorithmic discrimination, [Shakir Mohamed, a South African AI researcher at DeepMind], penned a blog post with his initial thoughts. In it he called on researchers to decolonise artificial intelligenceto reorient the fields work away from Western hubs like Silicon Valley and engage new voices, cultures, and ideas for guiding the technologys development.

AI-Generated Text Is the Scariest Deepfake of AllRenee DiResta | WiredIn the future, deepfake videos and audiofakes may well be used to create distinct, sensational moments that commandeer a press cycle, or to distract from some other, more organic scandal. But undetectable textfakesmasked as regular chatter on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and the likehave the potential to be far more subtle, far more prevalent, and far more sinister.

Image credit: Adrien Olichon /Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 1) - Singularity Hub