All posts tagged "Software"

San Francisco (AFP) - The rise of artificial general intelligence -- now seen as inevitable in Silicon Valley -- will bring change that is "orders of magnitude" greater than anything the world has yet seen, observers say. But are we ready? AGI -- defined as artificial intelligence with human cognitive abilities, as opposed to more narrow artificial intelligence, such as the headline-grabbing ChatGPT -- could free people from menial tasks and usher in a new era of creativity. But such a historic paradigm shift could also threaten jobs and raise insurmountable social issues, experts warn.  Previ......

San Francisco (AFP) - Twitter owner Elon Musk on Friday put out word that he will make public the long-secret algorithm for recommending tweets. The code used for recommending the posts suggested to users will become "open source" at the end of March, Musk said in a tweet of his own. "People will discover many silly things, but we'll patch issues as soon as they're found!" Musk tweeted. "Providing code transparency will be incredibly embarrassing at first, but it should lead to rapid improvement in recommendation quality." Musk contended that the recommendation algorithm used at Twitter is ove......

San Francisco (AFP) - Whistleblower Frances Haugen -- a former Facebook engineer who leaked documents suggesting the firm put profits before safety -- on Thursday launched an organization devoted to fighting harm caused by social media. The new Beyond the Screen nonprofit said that its first project will be to document ways big tech is failing in its "legal and ethical obligations to society" and help come up with ways to solve those problems. "We can have social media that brings out the best in us, and that's what Beyond the Screen is working toward," Haugen said in a statement. "Beyond the ......

San Francisco (AFP) - A US judge has ruled that artificial intelligence can't get a patent for its creations, ruling that such a privilege is reserved for people. District court judge Leonie Brinkema backed a decision by the US patent office to turn away applications made on behalf of a "creativity machine" named DABUS. Brinkema issued a ruling on Thursday saying that "the clear answer is 'no'" to the question of whether an AI machine qualifies as an inventor under patent law. "As technology evolves, there may come a time when artificial intelligence reaches a level of sophistication that migh......

The digital contact tracing effort in Virginia is 2 million phones strong. Roughly a quarter of the adult population has downloaded the state’s COVIDWISE app or opted in on their iPhones to receive exposure notifications. Almost 26,000 times, a notification has been sent to let someone know they were likely exposed to a person with COVID-19. But that’s the bulk of the information the state health department can glean. The system doesn’t track user locations, so officials don’t know where exposures happened, according to Jeff Stover, an executive adviser to the commissioner of Virginia’s Depart......

As investigations continued into the massive data breach linked to Austin-based software company SolarWinds, experts say the attack could lead to long-term changes in cybersecurity policies and procedures for government entities and private companies alike. News of the cyberattack broke on Dec. 13, with Reuters news service reporting that a sophisticated hacking group backed by a foreign government might have stolen information from U.S. government agencies, including email traffic. The breach appears to have affected nearly every level of government, as well as potentially hundreds of private......