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Over 130 years ago, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company pulled off a major victory for the private market in its lawsuit against Santa Clara, California. Essentially, the case established that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applied to corporations just as much as people, setting the stage for a legal concept known as “corporate personhood.”The United States — and indeed, the world — is still ruled by this archaic principle, which empowers powerful tech corporations to flaunt basic government regulations citing the same protections enjoyed by private citizens. This manifests in the way companies mine private consumer data,…
Advocates for the use of AI in the classroom have long argued that the tech could supercharge learning, giving the current generation of students a major leg up as they get ready to enter a nearly unrecognizable work force.But reality has long struggled to keep up with those lofty visions. Educators have watched in horror as students in the AI era struggle to read long documents, complete their homework without the use of a chatbot, or pass in-person exams. Meanwhile, early claims that tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT could have positive impact on learning performance are being retracted wholesale. In an…
When robotaxis start taking over, what happens to Uber and Lyft drivers?According to a new Business Insider piece, some of them start working for the robotaxi companies that’re outmoding them.The autonomous cars may be self-driving, but they aren’t self-sufficient. Someone needs to clean and service them on the daily, making sure everything runs smoothly. Waymo, the leading robotaxi firm, maintains depots across the country where this type of work is performed, and many of their employees used to drive for rideshare apps themselves.The ones that BI spoke to who work at Waymo’s Nashville depot, which is run by Lyft, seemed…
There are a litany of reasons to take the output of generative AI with a heavy dose of salt. Its answers are known to sound authoritative, convincing, and elaborate — while simultaneously being completely and utterly wrong.It’s a lesson astrophysicist and science communicator Paul Sutter learned the hard way, and was brave enough to share with the world. In a article for the publication Nautilus earlier this month, Sutter retold a truly harrowing story that feels like something yanked straight out of a stress-induced nightmare.In February, he gave a presentation in front of a room full of “collaborators,” revealing a…
Mom Who Travels For Work Builds AI Clone of Herself to Keep Her Teenage Son Company
Scientists have detected an unusual “thermal asymmetry” buried deep beneath the surface of Mars’ southern hemisphere — and they’re only beginning to postulate potential explanations for its existence.As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature, the team found that the interior of the Red Planet’s southern half is roughly 400 to 750 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than its northern half. The unexpected discrepancy could give scientists important clues about the period during which the planet was warm enough to host life billions of years ago.The surfaces of the planet’s two halves are dramatically different. The south is densely…
Chinese engineers are zeroing in on one of the loftiest goals in applied robotics: fully automated cooking.At the buzzy World Robotics Conference in Beijing, the company Oak Deer Robotics revealed three kitchen aids designed to advance the state of kitchen automation, China Daily shared. A mix of standalone appliances and humanoid robots, the new products include a “multimodal cooking AI model” called CookingMuse, a new AI-integrated cooking robot apparatus, as well as a fully-automated food cart with a little humanoid chef called RobotCook.According to CD, the basic cooking robot went through two live cooking demonstrations, stir-frying tofu as well as…
If there’s one thing that smart TVs have proven, it’s that some tech is better off staying dumb. Sure, it’s nice being able to have your streaming apps in one place, but the tradeoff is hellish: these TVs, by default, come stuffed with ads and track an alarming amount of personal data. Some are even shipping with AI integration, with remotes featuring a dedicated AI button — because of course they are.Now, computer monitors may be going the same way.Last month, LG launched a storm of controversy after its monitors were caught sneakily installing pop-up ads onto customers’ computers. This was…
At this point, Flock automatic license plate readers are basically a 90-10 issue in the US. In fact, so many Americans hate these surveillance towers that hacking one down has become the quickest way to achieve national folk-hero status.In one incident reported by the Verge, a sheriff in Lumpkin County, Georgia announced a $1,000 reward for information resulting in the arrest of the vandal responsible for destroying a Flock camera installed in a community park.“I hope you’re happy with this. It was to keep our kids safe,” the sheriff said in a Reel uploaded to Facebook.Since uploading the video on…
In his genre-defining 1984 sci-fi novel “Neuromancer,” William Gibson envisioned a future filled with “joeboys,” or “nearly identical young men,” whose arms and shoulders were “bulging with grafted muscle.”In the cyberpunk trilogy’s universe, the grafts were a prominent type of biological body modification among corporate bodyguards to increase strength and appear more intimidating.While the intention isn’t to get swole without ever hitting the gym, scientists in China say they’ve effectively turned the concept into a reality. As the South China Morning Post reports, the researchers developed a “self-exercising” muscle graft designed to be injected under the skin. They say it…