Policing minister Chris Philp suggests target of more than 200,000 searches over next six months
Police are being encouraged to double their use of retrospective facial recognition software to track down offenders over the next six months.
Policing minister Chris Philp has written to force leaders suggesting the target of exceeding 200,000 searches of still images against the police national database by May using facial recognition technology.
Continue reading...Bankman-Fried says his biggest mistake was not implementing a dedicated risk management team for crypto trading platform FTX
Sam Bankman-Fried admitted to making management mistakes while at the helm of FTX, his former multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency empire, during testimony in his defense at trial.
“I made a number of small mistakes and a number of large mistakes,” Bankman-Fried, 31, said in sharing his version of the rise and fall of crypto trading platform FTX. The biggest mistake, he said, was not implementing a dedicated risk management team.
Continue reading...Fellow tech company Intel ‘reviewing regulations’ as timing of move brought forward
The chip designer Nvidia has said the US has told it to immediately halt the export of some of its high-end artificial intelligence chips to China as regulators advanced the deadline.
The restrictions were supposed to come into effect 30 days after 17 October, when the Biden administration announced measures to stop countries, including China, Iran and Russia, from receiving advanced AI chips designed by Nvidia and others.
Continue reading...A 17-year-old with a passion for robotics has produced a cheaper utensil that uses sensors to cancel out hand tremors
The motivation for his invention came to Aarrav Anil last year when he saw his uncle Arjun, who has Parkinson’s disease, struggle to eat. Some food spilled out of his mouth, the rest splattered on his clothes. Arjun attempted to keep his dignity but the frustration forced the retired civil servant, who is in his 70s, to give up and call his helper to feed him.
The sight of his uncle’s tremors shaking the spoon so violently inspired Aarrav, 17, from Bengaluru, south India, to turn to robotics. He locked himself in his room with microcontrollers, sensors, motors, and a 3D printer. What emerged was a prototype of a smart spoon that is now undergoing trials at the RV College of Physiotherapy in Bengaluru.
Continue reading...Complaint filed in California accuses company of knowingly inducing children and teenagers into addictive social media use
The attorneys general of dozens of US states are suing Instagram and its parent company Meta over their impact on young users, accusing them of contributing to a youth mental health crisis through the addictive nature of their social media platforms.
Filed in federal court in Oakland, California, on Tuesday, the lawsuit claims Meta, which also operates Facebook, has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers of its platforms and knowingly induced young children and teenagers into addictive and compulsive social media use.
Continue reading...Exclusive: The AFP told Senate estimates it is now aware the PimEyes and FaceCheck.ID platforms may have been tested for operational purposes on around 10 occasions
The Australian federal police have tested a controversial facial recognition search engine, possibly for operational use.
Documents obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws show hundreds of connections between AFP devices and the website PimEyes between 1 January and 4 August this year.
Continue reading...Tax audits and land use inquiries follow company founder announcing run for Taiwan presidency
China’s tax authorities have launched multiple investigations into the company that makes the iPhone, months after its billionaire founder announced he would run in Taiwan’s presidential elections.
Foxconn faces tax audits of its operations in China, as well as investigations into land use in two Chinese provinces, according to reports by local media.
Continue reading...Big tech firms attempting to ‘capture’ meeting of heads of government, says Connor Leahy
One of the executives invited to Rishi Sunak’s international AI safety summit next month has warned that the conference risks achieving very little, accusing powerful tech companies of attempting to “capture” the landmark meeting.
Connor Leahy, the chief executive of the AI safety research company Conjecture, said he believed heads of government were poised to agree a style of regulation that would allow companies to continue developing “god-like” AI almost unchecked.
Continue reading...Parent company Meta says bug caused ‘inappropriate’ auto-translations and was now fixed while employee says it pushed ‘a lot of people over the edge’
Meta has apologised after inserting the word “terrorist” into the profile bios of some Palestinian Instagram users, in what the company says was a bug in auto-translation.
The issue, which was first reported by 404media, affected users with the word “Palestinian” written in English on their profile, the Palestinian flag emoji and the word “alhamdulillah” written in Arabic. When auto-translated to English the phrase read: “Praise be to god, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.”
Continue reading...Finnish telecoms group aims to cut costs as demand for mobile network equipment slumps
Nokia has announced plans to cut up to 14,000 jobs over the next three years as it slashes costs after a worse-than-expected slump in demand for its mobile network equipment.
The Finnish technology company said the plans to cut 16% of its 86,000-strong global workforce were part of efforts to cut costs by €1.2bn by the end of 2026. The cuts were announced as the company revealed a 70% drop in third-quarter profits, which fell to €133m (£116m) compared with €428m a year earlier.
Continue reading...Digit will begin its time on the floor by shifting empty tote boxes amid concerns humans will be shifted out of jobs
Amazon is experimenting with a humanoid robot as the technology company increasingly seeks to automate its warehouses.
It has started testing Digit, a two-legged robot that can grasp and lift items, at facilities this week. The device is first being used to shift empty tote boxes.
Continue reading...Streaming company announces plans to increase prices as profits rise, even as Hollywood strikes threaten to affect programming
Netflix announced its global crackdown on password sharing was working and unveiled plans to increase prices as it announced its latest quarterly results on Wednesday.
The streaming media company added 8.8 million new subscribers over the last three months, far better than expected and up from 2.4 million in the same quarter last year. The increase came even as a strike by Hollywood actors and writers threatened to affect the rollout of new shows.
Continue reading...Official at Finnish intelligence service says espionage attempts have increased since Ukraine invasion
Finland has had increased online espionage attempts from Russia since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, security services have said.
Supo, the Finnish security and intelligence service, said the country faced various threats from Russia, including cyberattacks and disinformation.
Continue reading...Platform owned by Elon Musk says subscription trial is aimed at combating bots on the service
X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has begun rolling out a US$1 annual charge to new users in New Zealand and the Philippines in a move the service owned by Elon Musk says is aimed at combating bots.
Fortune first reported the subscription plan, which costs US$1 a year for access to key functions including tweeting, replying, retweeting and liking. After Fortune’s report, X revealed the details.
Continue reading...Tie-up is a ‘terrible deal for Britain’ that also poses risks for national security, Unite claims
Mobile phone bills could rise by as much as £300 a year as a result of the merger of the UK operations of Vodafone and the owner of Three, a trade union has said.
Unite has been a vocal critic of the proposed deal, which would create the UK’s largest mobile operator, and said that it is a “terrible” deal that also poses risks for national security.
Continue reading...Nishad Singh testifies at Sam Bankman-Fried trial about millions spent by failed crypto exchange on celebrity partnerships
The jury at Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud trial on Monday saw a photograph of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder with the singer Katy Perry and the actor Orlando Bloom at the 2022 NFL Super Bowl, as prosecutors sought to bolster their case that the failed crypto mogul squandered customer money on efforts to boost his stature.
Prosecutors displayed the image as Nishad Singh, FTX’s former director of engineering, testified about how the company spent hundreds of millions of dollars on celebrity partnerships and marketing in early 2022, months before the exchange declared bankruptcy amid a wave of customer withdrawals.
Continue reading...Facebook parent company and two subcontractors face court hearing over unfair dismissal allegations
Settlement talks have collapsed between Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and Kenyan content moderators over a lawsuit alleging unfair dismissal, a tech rights group working with the plaintiffs has said.
The 184 moderators sued Meta and two subcontractors earlier this year after they allegedly lost their jobs with one of the subcontractors, Sama, for organising a union. They say they were then blacklisted from applying for the same roles at a second firm, Majorel, after Facebook changed contractors.
Continue reading...The 2018 Australian of the year was recognised for her work on super-fast technology in the field of atomic electronics
The quantum physicist and 2018 Australian of the year, Prof Michelle Simmons, has been awarded the top honour at the prime minister’s prizes for science.
Simmons, of the University of New South Wales, was recognised on Monday night for her work in creating the field of atomic electronics.
Continue reading...In an exclusive interview, Akinwumi Adesina, head of the African Development Bank, says the outlook is good for a continent with the workers of the future and the best investment opportunities
Africa holds the future workforce for the ageing economies of the west, according to one of the continent’s leading financial figures, who also said it was time to ditch the myths around corruption and risk.
In an exclusive interview before this weekend’s World Bank meetings in Morocco, Akinwumi Adesina said there was a resurgence of belief in Africa’s economic prospects and attacked negative stereotyping, adding that there was “every reason to be optimistic”.
Continue reading...University of Kentucky challenged computer scientists to reveal contents of carbonised papyrus, a ‘potential treasure trove for historians’
When the blast from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius reached Herculaneum in AD79, it burned hundreds of ancient scrolls to a crisp in the library of a luxury villa and buried the Roman town in ash and pumice.
The disaster appeared to have destroyed the scrolls for good, but nearly 2,000 years later researchers have extracted the first word from one of the texts, using artificial intelligence to peer deep inside the delicate, charred remains.
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