Fake.ai til you make it. The AI boom is raising questions of exaggerated tech savvy, the Wall Street Journal's Newley Purnell and Parmy Olson. With money flowing into the sector—$31 billion in venture funding last year—many startups can say they use AI as a way to lure investments. But because AI is complex and loosely defined, nonexperts can find it hard to tell when it is being deployed.
Consider Engineer.ai. The London and Los Angeles-based Engineer.ai raised $29.5 million last year from investors. The company has claimed its “human-assisted AI” allows anyone to create a mobile app by clicking through a menu on its website. Yet a WSJ investigation indicated that the company relies on human engineers in India and elsewhere to do most of that work.
What your voice reveals about you. Technology that detects nuances in sound inaudible to humans is capturing clues about people’s likely locations, medical conditions and even physical features, the Wall Street Journal's Sarah Krouse reports.
Banks are big customers. Some financial firms match audio recordings with other biometric and behavioral information they have about their customers to prevent fraud. In one type of fraud, scammers, armed with stolen Social Security numbers and other personal data, call banks pretending to be wealthy customers.
What your voice reveals about you. Skull structure, gender, age, height, weight, health, linguistic background and physical surroundings. Also whether the caller is using a mobile phone or a landline, or calling from overseas.
1.5 quintillion calculations? That's so cray. The U.S. Department of Energy has selected supercomputer maker Cray to develop a $600 million system to assess the country's nuclear weapons capability. The new system will be able to conduct 1.5 quintillion calculations per second. (Geekwire)
Facebook transcribed user conversations. Facebook Inc. has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services. The company says it has paused human review of conversations. (Bloomberg)
Fear of being watched? Amazon.com Inc. said Monday that its facial recognition technology can now detect fear. (CNBC)
MacBooks banned. The Federal Aviation Administration is banning certain models of Apple Inc. MacBook Pro laptops from flights owing to faulty batteries that pose fire risks. The ban covers units sold between September 2015 and February 2017. (Reuters)
'Catch Me If You Can' guy: Crime is so easy today. And we have digital tools and general cyber safety ignorance to thank, says former con artist, current FBI instructor Frank Abagnale. (Tech Republic)
If you thought resumes were already bad. Job applicants are now adding bitmojis. (WSJ)
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