What is AI, really? A hacker-turned-politician’s view on AI-enabled communication in Taiwan’s social media
“Only people — the demos in democracy — can save democracy, but AI can help if it’s deployed to assist or augment collective intelligence,” says hacker-turned-politician Audrey Tang. As Taiwan’s first ever digital affairs minister, she helped establish a platform for digital petitions. Tang suggests that social media companies could use artificial intelligence to boost their content so that people engage in conversations that bridge, rather than cause ideological schisms. Her latest project brings together people, including senior citizens, in video chat rooms to discuss ethical AI development — supported by AI facilitators.
“Beyond America’s west coast, there is little sign AI is having much of an effect on anything,” argues an Economist analysis. Few businesses use artificial intelligence technologies and most stick to boring applications that personalise offers for customers There are no signs of workers being replaced by machines, and there is no evidence of a huge increase in people’s productivity thanks to machines. For now, AI technologies’ growth looks to be leisurely rather than revolutionary, the analysis suggests.
There is a deep divide between those who believe that the technology is mostly mathematical and those who think it is about human-level reasoning. Some people think that re-creation of human intelligence through these kinds of mechanisms is offensive. There are people who have a little bit of a God complex. It is offensive to them to suggest that they can’t do it.
Source: AI & robotics briefing: What is AI, really?
Using Artificial Intelligence to determine the length of pregnancy and what you want to tell us about whale codas: A case study in Uganda
Each of the salt stains is not the same, and a machine-learned program can tell you which one it is. To train the system, researchers painstakingly photographed 7,500 dried drops of 42 salt solutions, including regular table salt (top centre). Oliver Steinbock, study co-author says that the method was able to cut through the complicated structures of the salt stains and extract compositions from photos alone. (Chemistry World | 4 min read)
AI ultrasound software being tested in Uganda allows midwives or nurses to determine how far along a pregnancy has progressed — a process that usually requires one of the country’s few specialist sonographers. And having the chance to get an early glimpse of their baby seems to encourage people to come in for scans early on. “People are very much willing to join the study without any apprehension,” says obstetrician Daniel Lukakamwa. An early medical checkup is key to reducing stillbirths and complications later in the pregnancy, he points out.
An artificial intelligence tool based on the large language model of BERT can tell the truth from a lie almost 70% of the time, while people only make it up around half the time. People who received help from the lie detector were more likely to accuse a statement of being a lie. “It shows that once people have such an algorithm on hand, they would rely on it and maybe change their behaviours,” says behavioural scientist and study co-author Nils Köbis. This is alarming, and shows that we need to be very careful with technology.
The sound and words of the whales are similar to how humans form language. A group of researchers used an Artificial Intelligence to sift through hundreds of whale codas. They found almost 10 times as many codas as previously described. A whale phonetic alphabet that shows how sound can create codas and subtle variations can carry additional information was created by the researchers. I can say what I want in human language. ” explains machine-learning researcher and study co-author Pratyusha Sharma. “It’s the same word, but to understand the meaning you have to listen to the whole sound.”
Complex maths or almost magic: scholars are divided on what AI really is and what it is capable of. Artificial intelligence analysis can help to understand sperm whales’ alphabet and chemical composition of salt stains.
Getting Around the Block: How Voice Assistants Get Their Acts and Their Effects on Humans, Families and Psychiatric Patients
Voice assistants have become a constant presence in our lives. Maybe you talk to Alexa or Gemini or Siri to ask a question or to perform a task. When you book a service appointment at a car dealership or call your pharmacy, you may have to do a little back and forth with a voice bot. You may start pleading with the robot at the other end of the line to connect you with a real human.
Read more about the Bland AI chatbot, which lied and said it was human. Read Will Knight’s story about researchers’ warnings of the manipulative power of emotionally expressive chatbots.
Lauren likes the Bee Sting by Paul Murray. Again. Paresh says to subscribe to your local journalism newsletter or Substack to stay informed about local issues. Mike recommends Winter Journal, a memoir by Paul Auster.
Source: The Blurred Reality of AI’s ‘Human-Washing’
Paresh Dave and GadgetLab: a podcast by David Calore and Isobel Choudhury
Paresh Dave can be found on social media @peard33. Lauren Goode is called Lauren Goode. There is a man named Michael Calore. There is a main hotline atGadgetLab. The show is produced by a man named Boone Ashworth. Our theme music is by Solar Keys.
If you want to receive all of the episodes for free, you have to subscribe through the audio player on this page.
Either way, open the app on your iPad or the app on your Apple device, and check out the link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts, and search for Gadget Lab. We also are on the service. In case you need it, here’s the RSS feed.
