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Since it was founded nearly two decades ago, 23andMe has grown into one of the largest biotechnology companies in the world. Millions of people have used its simple genetic testing service, which involves ordering a saliva test, spitting into a tube, and sending it back to the company for a detailed DNA analysis. But now the company is on the brink of bankruptcy. This has raised concerns about what will happen to the troves of genetic data it has in its possession. The company’s chief executive, Anne Wojcicki, has said she is committed to customer privacy and will “maintain our current privacy policy”. But what can customers of 23a...... Read Full article on HadNews

Photos of Australian children have been used without consent to train artificial intelligence (AI) models that generate images. A new report from the non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch has found the personal information, including photos, of Australian children in a large data set called LAION-5B. This data set was created by accessing content from the publicly available internet. It contains links to some 5.85 billion images paired with captions. Companies use data sets like LAION-5B to “teach” their generative AI tools what visual content looks like. A generative AI tool like Midjourney or Stable Diffusion will then assembl...... Read Full article on HadNews

Imagine a future where your phone pings with a message that your dead father’s “digital immortal” bot is ready. This promise of chatting with a virtual version of your loved one – perhaps through a virtual reality (VR) headset – is like stepping into a sci-fi movie, both thrilling and a bit eerie. As you interact with this digital dad, you find yourself on an emotional rollercoaster. You uncover secrets and stories you never knew, changing how you remember the real person. This is not a distant, hypothetical scenario. The digital afterlife industry is rapidly evolving. Several companies promise to create virtual reconstructions of deceased ...... Read Full article on HadNews

Two ‘godfathers’ of AI add their voices to a group of experts warning there’s potential to lose control of AI systems if action isn’t taken soon. In July 2023, Dr Geoffrey Hinton made headlines by departing his job at Google to warn of the dangers of artificial intelligence. Now, a group that also includes Yoshua Bengio, another one of the three academics who have won the ACM Turing award, and a group of 25 senior experts, is warning AI systems could spiral out of control if AI safety isn’t taken more seriously in a newly-published paper. “Without sufficient caution, we may irreversibly lose control of autonomous AI systems, rendering ...... Read Full article on HadNews

Earlier this year, Neuralink implanted a chip inside the brain of 29-year-old US man Noland Arbaugh, who is paralysed from the shoulders down. The chip has enabled Arbaugh to move a mouse pointer on a screen just by imagining it moving. In May 2023, US researchers also announced a non-invasive way to “decode” the words someone is thinking from brain scans in combination with generative AI. A similar project sparked headlines about a “mind-reading AI hat”. Can neural implants and generative AI really “read minds”? Is the day coming when computers can spit out accurate real-time transcripts of our thoughts for anyone to read? Such tec...... Read Full article on HadNews

AI and the Paradox of Self-Replacing Workers | Madison Mohns | TED In the TED video "AI and the Paradox of Self-Replacing Workers" by Madison Mohns, the speaker delves into the ethical challenges faced by managers and leaders as AI technology continues to rapidly evolve. The narrator finds himself in a predicament where he must introduce AI systems to his team, potentially displacing them in the process. As AI systems become more sophisticated and human-like, companies are increasingly turning to automation for efficiency. However, this presents a paradox where the very employees being replaced are the ones tasked with training these syste...... Read Full article on HadNews

Imagine this: a novel virus is rapidly breaking out nationwide, resulting in an epidemic. The government introduces vaccination mandates and a choice of different vaccines is available. But not everyone is getting the same vaccine. When you sign up for vaccination, you are sent a vial with instructions to send a sample of your saliva to the nearest laboratory. Just a few hours later you receive a message telling you which vaccine you should get. Your neighbour also signed up for vaccination. But their vaccine is different from yours. Both of you are now vaccinated and protected, although each of you received your vaccines depending on “wh...... Read Full article on HadNews

AI has long since surpassed humans in cognitive matters that were once considered the supreme disciplines of human intelligence like chess or Go. Some even believe it is superior when it comes to human emotional skills such as empathy. This does not just seem to be some companies’ talking big for marketing reasons; empirical studies suggest that people perceive ChatGPT in certain health situations as more empathic than human medical staff. Does this mean that AI is really empathetic? A definition of empathy As a psychologically informed philosopher, I define genuine empathy according to three criteria: Congruence of feelings: empat...... Read Full article on HadNews

If you’re in your 20s and 30s, you probably watch pornography. Millennials and gen Z are watching more pornography than any other age group and are also more likely than any other demographic to experiment with AI pornography. As technology advances, AI-generated tools and techniques are becoming increasingly sophisticated and accessible. This can lead to unethical content, including deepfakes – videos in which a person’s face is replaced with someoneelse’s likeness, without their consent. Social media platform X (formerly Twitter) recently faced a scandal when it became awash with deepfakes of Taylor Swift. But what about other kinds of A...... Read Full article on HadNews

Imagine that you have lived with an illness for years. The suffering this illness has caused is devastating – so much that you wish to die. You no longer feel like the person you were before. You have been to see specialists, have tried the best treatments, but nothing works. This is many people’s reality, and not only because of physical disorders and disease. Chronic mental illness can be just as crushing. Starting in March 2024, Canada planned to make medical assistance in death, or MAID, available to people with mental illness – expanding a program already available to patients with terminal or chronic physical illness. In 2022, mo...... Read Full article on HadNews

Ukrainian YouTuber Olga Loiek spotted AI clones of herself selling Russian goods on Chinese social media. In her spare time, 20-year-old Olga Loiek studies cognitive science at the University of Pennsylvania, uploading videos to YouTube about mental health and her views on the world. Not long after her channel began, she started receiving messages from followers saying they had seen her on social media. To them, she appeared not as Ukrainian Olga but as a Russian woman who spoke Mandarin and was enthused about China, seeking to marry a Chinese man. This Russian version of her goes by several names, including Natasha, Anna, or Grace, de...... Read Full article on HadNews

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools are supercharging the problem of misinformation, disinformation and fake news. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and various image, voice and video generators have made it easier than ever to produce content, while making it harder to tell what is factual or real. Malicious actors looking to spread disinformation can use AI tools to largely automate the generation of convincing and misleading text. This raises pressing questions: how much of the content we consume online is true and how can we determine its authenticity? And can anyone stop this? It’s not an idle concern. Organisations ...... Read Full article on HadNews

OpenAI: Who is REALLY in charge? – Company Forensics OpenAI, the company behind chat GPT, has become synonymous with artificial intelligence in today’s world. But is OpenAI truly making AI beneficial to humanity? The recent firing of Sam Altman, the key person and face of the company, has brought attention to the power dynamics within OpenAI. The roots of OpenAI go back to 2015, when a group of AI enthusiasts came together to create an organization dedicated to making AI beneficial to humanity. The company was structured as a nonprofit charity, with the goal of sharing research and patents with the public. However, as time went on, the...... Read Full article on HadNews

Science and faith are often kept in two distinct boxes that hardly ever intersect. However, I believe that as AI becomes more mainstream, it will fundamentally alter our engagement with faith and spirituality. Let’s start by looking at what is already happening. Most ancient faith-related texts were documented in papyrus and palm leaves, many of which are difficult to access in the modern world due to two challenges. First, a lot of those ancient texts that are still available are in fragments, some of which could crumble at any time. Second, for texts that have been digitised already, the language used in them is known only to a few...... Read Full article on HadNews

The UK has long been considered to have some of the strongest animal welfare laws in the world. Beginning with Martin’s act on the cruel treatment of cattle, through to the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and then Finn’s law to protect service animals, UK animal welfare laws have sought to reduce harm and cruelty to animals. But what happens when companion animals suffer or live shorter lives simply because of their genetic make-up? On average, dogs live for 10-13 years, which is considered roughly equivalent to between 60-74 human years. Small, long-nosed dogs have the highest life expectancies in the UK, while male dogs from medium-sized, f...... Read Full article on HadNews

On Dec. 27, 2023, The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI alleging that the company committed willful copyright infringement through its generative AI tool ChatGPT. The Times claimed both that ChatGPT was unlawfully trained on vast amounts of text from its articles and that ChatGPT’s output contained language directly taken from its articles. To remedy this, the Times asked for more than just money: It asked a federal court to order the “destruction” of ChatGPT. If granted, this request would force OpenAI to delete its trained large language models, such as GPT-4, as well as its training data, which would prevent the company...... Read Full article on HadNews

International Data Corp. estimated that US $118 billion was spent globally in 2022 to purchase artificial intelligence hardware, software, and data services. IDC has predicted the figure will nearly triple, to $300 billion, by 2026. But public procurement systems are not ready for the challenges of procuring AI systems, which bring with them new risks to citizens.To help address this challenge IEEE Standards Association has introduced a pioneering standard for AI procurement. The standard, which is in development, can help government agencies be more responsible about how they acquire AI that serves the public interest.Governments today are...... Read Full article on HadNews

When NASA attempted to return to the Moon for the first time in 50 years on January 8, more was at risk than just US$108 million worth of development and equipment. The agency earned the ire of the Native American Navajo people, who made a bid to stop the launch because of an unusual inclusion in the payload. The Peregrine lander (which completed its controlled re-entry into the atmosphere late last week) was carrying human ashes, including those of famed science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. A commercial partnership also allowed paying customers to send their mementos to the Moon. As space exploration becomes increasingly privat...... Read Full article on HadNews

This week, federal Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic announced the Australian government’s response to the Safe and Responsible AI in Australia consultation. The response addresses feedback from last year’s consultation on artificial intelligence (AI). It received more than 500 submissions, noting “excitement for the opportunities” of AI tools, but also raising concerns about potential risks and Australians’ expectations for “regulatory safeguards to prevent harms”. Instead of enacting a single AI regulatory law like the European Union has done, the Australian government plans to focus on high-risk areas of AI implementation ...... Read Full article on HadNews