List of All Articles with Tag 'tec'

Amazon.com Inc.’s Ring unit agreed to pay $5.8 million to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations Wednesday its doorbell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Amazon.com's doorbell camera unit Ring has reached a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission regarding privacy, according

A group of corporate Amazon workers upset about the company’s environmental impact, recent layoffs and a return-to-office mandate is planning a walkout at the company’s Seattle headquarters

The probability of a “Terminator scenario” caused by artificial intelligence is “close to zero”, a University of Oxford professor has said. Sandra Wachter, professor of technology and regulation, called a letter released by the San Francisco-based Centre for AI Safety – which warned that the technology could wipe out humanity – a “publicity stunt”. The letter, which warns that the risks should be treated with the same urgency as pandemics or nuclear war, was signed by dozens of experts including artificial intelligence (AI) pioneers. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak retweeted the Centre for AI Safety’s statement on Wednesday, saying the Government is “looking very carefully” at it. Professor Wachter said the risk raised in letter is “science fiction fantasy” and she compared it to the film The Terminator. She added: “There are risks, there are serious risks, but it’s not the risks that are getting all of the attention at the moment. “What we see with this new open letter is a science fiction fantasy that distracts from the issue right here right now. The issues around bias, discrimination and the environmental impact. “The whole discourse is being put on something that may or may not happen in a couple of hundred years. You can’t do something meaningful about it as it’s so far in the future. “But bias and discrimination I can measure, I can measure the environmental impact. It takes 360 gallons of water daily to cool a middle-sized data centre, that’s the price that we have to pay. “It’s a publicity stunt. It will attract funding. It's a publicity stunt. It will attract funding. Professor Sandra Wachter “Let’s focus on people’s jobs being replaced. These things are being completely sidelined by the Terminator scenario. “What we know about technology now, the probability [of human extinction due to AI] is close to zero. People should worry about other things.” AI apps have gone viral online, with users posting fake images of celebrities and politicians, and students using ChatGPT and other “language learning models” to generate university-grade essays. But AI can also perform life-saving tasks, such as algorithms analysing medical images like X-rays, scans and ultrasounds, helping doctors to identify and diagnose diseases such as cancer and heart conditions more accurately and quickly. The statement was organised by the Centre for AI Safety, a non-profit which aims “to reduce societal-scale risks from AI”. It says: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” Senior bosses at companies such as Google DeepMind and Anthropic signed the letter along with a pioneer of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, who resigned from his job at Google earlier this month, saying that in the wrong hands, AI could be used to to harm people and spell the end of humanity. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live ‘I feel lost’ – AI pioneer speaks out as experts warn it could wipe out humanity Cabinet approves Irish involvement in cyber-threat network Trust and ethics considerations ‘have come too late’ on AI technology

Apple says that its App Store has helped generate more than a trillion dollars for the first time, just days ahead of its major developer event. The App Store ecosystem facilitated $1.1 trillion in developer billings and sales last year, according to an independent study from The Analysis Group and commissioned by Apple. That is the result of rapid growth over recent years: that number rose 29 per cent on last year, and by 27 per cent in each of the two years before that. Those increases were partly a result of an increase in the apps that people use as the world opens up, such as taxi services, the report said. Apple’s announcement came just days ahead of its Worldwide Developers Conference, which begins on Monday. That is likely to see a whole new platform for developers to build apps for, with the launch of its new augmented reality headset. The report also comes amid increasing criticism over Apple’s power over the App Store, which is the only way to get apps onto the iPad and iPhone. Critics have argued that control means that Apple is able to make unfair demands on developers, including taking a cut from some sales made within apps and deciding what apps are available. Apple has commissioned a number of such reports in recent years, aimed at highlighting the economic impact of the App Store and the positive effects that can have for developers. The new report focused not on the money made by Apple, or through the store. Instead, it aimed to quantify how much money is made through the ecosystem built around the App Store, which includes billings and sales that are made through apps but without Apple’s involvement. More than 90 per cent of the billings and sales went specifically to the developers, with Apple not taking a cut, the report said. While Apple takes a cut from the sale of apps and digital goods and services within those apps, companies selling physical goods and other services are able to keep the full amount. Of the $1.1 trillion made last year, App Store developers generated $910 billion in total billings and sales from the sale of physical goods and services, $109 billion from in-app advertising, and $104 billion for digital goods and services, Apple said. Last year, that came particularly from travel apps and ride-hailing. Travel sales on iOS were up 84 per cent last year, the report said. It was not possible to say how much of that gain was the result of the world opening back up after lockdowns and other issues, compared with the specific work of Apple and those App Store developers, economists from Analysis Group said. The report also comes on the 15th anniversary of the App Store, which was launched in 2008. Apple said that iOS developers have earned more than $320 billion on App Store in those 15 years. “We’ve never been more hopeful about — or more inspired by — the incredible community of developers around the world,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “As this report shows, the App Store is a vibrant, innovative marketplace where opportunity thrives, and we’re as committed as ever to investing in developers’ success and the app economy’s future.” Read More Major leak reveals details of Apple’s VR headset days before unveiling Apple is going to reveal something else alongside its headset, rumours suggest Trust and ethics considerations ‘have come too late’ on AI technology New iPhone update ‘completely changes how the lock screen works’ Apple lays bare danger of losing your health data Apple is making a ‘mixed reality’ headset. Here’s what that future might look like

The United States and Europe are drawing up a voluntary code of conduct for artificial intelligence, with a draft expected in weeks

A Fidelity fund has slashed its estimate of Twitter's value amid ongoing chaos at the company, implying the social media platform may be worth only a third of its value compared to when Elon Musk acquired it in October.

Scientists have discovered a way to store the Sun’s energy in rocks and convert the heat into electricity. Using an approach called concentrated solar power, a team of researchers from Tanzania found that certain granite and soapstones could store solar heat at a sufficiently high density to serve as a primitive form of battery. Thermal energy storage has been touted as a low-cost way of storing and harvesting energy from the Sun, even when it’s no longer shining. Last year, scientists from Sweden and China came up with a way to store solar energy for nearly two decades using an ultra-thin chip, which serves as a thermoelectric generator. The innovative system could technically be integrated into electronics, however it remains too costly to implement at scale. By contrast, the granite and soapstone samples offer a low cost and readily available method of storing solar energy, the researchers said. “Using rocks as a storage medium offers the potential of affordability due to the abundance and low cost of rocks,” the researchers noted in a paper outlining their findings. “An air-rock bed has low investment cost, high reliability and efficiency, is environmentally friendly, and does not require the use of heat exchangers.” The rock bed captures and collects solar thermal energy up to 600 °C, which is then used to boil liquid into steam that powers a generator turbine to produce electricity. The results were detailed in a study, titled ‘Experimental Investigation of Soapstone and Granite Rocks as Energy-Storage Materials for Concentrated Solar Power Generation and Solar Drying Technology’, published by the American Chemical Society. Other thermal energy storage systems have focussed on salt and water, with researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology unveiling a heat battery last year that they claim could work at scale. Rather than capturing heat from the Sun, the system instead collects industrial residual heat. “While the potential is great, we have also seen many great potential technologies that have not made it,” the scientists said at the time. “So we’re going to keep our feet on the ground and take this one step at a time.” Read More Scientists break world record for solar power window material Scientists smash world record for solar power window material Nasa holds urgent meeting about sightings of UFOs Opinion: The real reason companies are warning that AI is as bad as nuclear war

Nasa has convened a public meeting to discuss sightings of unexplained phenomena in the sky. The space agency has convened a panel to examine sightings of what it calls UAPs, or unidentified aerial phenomena, which many refer to as UFOs. Now the group has given its first public discussion, ahead of a report due to be published later this year. The space agency said the work was aimed at making it easier for people to report those UAPs, as well as to examine what exactly they might be. But representatives said that the panel involved in the work had received sustained abuse that had got in the way of that work. “Harassment only leads to further stigmatisation of the UAP field, significantly hindering the scientific progress and discouraging others to study this important subject matter,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate/ Nonetheless, Nasa said that it would be working to examine those reports of UAPs. “The presence of UAPs raises concerns about the safety of our skies, and it’s this nation’s obligation to determine if these phenomena pose any potential risks to airspace safety,” said Daniel Evans, Nasa’s assistant deputy associate administrator for research. The work is about safety but also the space agency’s “responsibility to be honest and forthright and to follow the science”, he said. But the data on UAPs has so far been “fragmented”, according to the panel’s chair, David Spergel, with problems of imprecision and having information spread across different agencies. Those issues meant that it was difficult to provide conclusions on every reported UAP event. He called for better data and joined other panelists in arguing that it should become less stigmatised for people to come forward about their sightings. Numerous panelists said that there was a “stigma” about reporting such phenomena that made it difficult to fully examine what might be going on. The 16-member panel includes experts in everything from physics to astrobiology, and began its work last June. Wednesday’s session is the first public hearings by the group – which itself represents the first such inquiry into unidentified aerial phenomena by Nasa. The NASA study is separate from a newly formalized Pentagon-based investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, documented in recent years by military aviators and analyzed by U.S. defense and intelligence officials. The parallel NASA and Pentagon efforts - both undertaken with some semblance of public scrutiny - highlight a turning point for the government after decades spent deflecting, debunking and discrediting sightings of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, dating back to the 1940s. The term UFOs, long associated with notions of flying saucers and aliens, has been replaced in government parlance by “UAP.” While NASA‘s science mission was seen by some as promising a more open-minded approach to a topic long treated as taboo by the defense establishment, the U.S. space agency made it known from the start that it was hardly leaping to any conclusions. “There is no evidence UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin,” NASA said in announcing the panel’s formation last June. In its more recent statements, the agency presented a new potential wrinkle to the UAP acronym itself, referring to it as an abbreviation for “unidentified anomalous phenomena.” This suggested that sightings other than those that appeared airborne may be included. Still, NASA in announcing Wednesday’s meeting, said the space agency defines UAPs “as observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena from a scientific perspective.” U.S. defense officials have said the Pentagon’s recent push to investigate such sightings has led to hundreds of new reports that are under examination, though most remain categorized as unexplained. The head of the Pentagon’s newly formed All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has said the existence of intelligent alien life has not been ruled out but that no sighting had produced evidence of extraterrestrial origins. Additional reporting by agencies Read More Nasa says Jeff Bezos will build moon lander to take astronauts to the Moon Opinion: The real reason companies are warning that AI is as bad as nuclear war Electric car drives for 100 hours non-stop on futuristic road Opinion: The real reason companies are warning that AI is as bad as nuclear war Electric car drives for 100 hours non-stop on futuristic road US and China ‘intertwined like conjoined twins,’ says Musk

Nearly 2,000 corporate workers at Amazon have pledged to walk off the job on Wednesday to signal a "lack of trust" in the company's leadership, in what could be the most visible sign of dissent among the e-commerce giant's office workers in recent memory.

American officials are negotiating a deal to help Turkmenistan curb its vast methane emissions, potentially sealing a major

Roller coasters are synonymous with a fun and exhilarating time at a theme park - but one artist has designed an "Euthanasia Coaster" that is specifically intended to kill its passengers. Julijonas Urbonasis is the man behind the 2010 project which has been described as a thought experiment or conceptual art. The "hypothetic death machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being," according to his website. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter How it works is that the sheer speed of the roller coaster along with number of loops would result in "oxygen deficiency in the brain," which would ultimately kill those who are on board the ride. So it appears, there's no chance of surviving the ride if you're on it. @criminologyandcoffee Would you ride the Euthanasia Coaster? #euthanasiacoaster #julijonasurbonas #rollercoaster However, there may be a way, according to Urbonas - with the Lithuanian artist explaining that it requires sporting some anti-gravity gear. "A possible usage is the 'hacked' thrill ride, which was suggested to me by an aeronautic engineer who happened to visit the coaster's scale model during an exhibition," he told LadBible back in 2021. "She said, 'Your machine could be hacked, you know.' "After my confusion, she explained, 'Using anti-g trousers that prevent pilots from blackout and fainting, I believe I would survive the ride and turn it into the most extreme thrill ride.'" While a scale model of the ride was built, according to Snopes but building the roller coaster in real life is not the aim for Urbonas - instead, the purpose of the design is "to convince the public that it can be built." "I have quite the list of people who would like to be scientific objects if the project would advance towards realisation. Most of them are elderly from the US. But I don’t want to go this far," Urbonas said in a 2018 interview with Arterritory Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.