Cambridge Analytica’s Major Players: Where Are They Now?

May 2, 2018, 11:19 am

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Cambridge Analytica and affiliated companies are shutting down, though some of the key players are now linked to a new firm called Emerdata.

Cambridge Analytica and various affiliated companies in the US and UK have announced they’re shutting down amid controversy over their role in Donald Trump’s campaign, acquisition of data from Facebook and suggesting on tape the company could perform dirty tricks for clients. The companies will begin bankruptcy proceedings in the US and similar proceedings in the UK, saying it’s impossible for them to continue operations after the scandals drove away customers and suppliers. Parent company SCL Group will also shut down, the Wall Street Journal reports.

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Google Ups Ante In Voice Assistant Wars With Startup Investment Plan

May 3, 2018, 7:30 am

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As tech companies bet on AI assistant technology, Google announces an investment program for voice-powered startups.

Google is putting its money where its mouth is with a plan to plow capital into startups that use its proprietary voice assistant technology, including ones building new skillsets for its Google Assistant platform and new hardware to host the digital assistants.

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How U.S. Election Officials Are Trying To Head Off The Hackers

May 5, 2018, 2:00 am

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Experts warn hackers could target voter rolls or election-night reporting systems to undermine legitimacy without casting a single fraudulent vote.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials now say it’s likely that in 2016, Russian hackers at least attempted to break into election systems in all 50 states.

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Why Scientists Think AI Systems Should Debate Each Other

May 8, 2018, 7:00 am

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Researchers at Musk-backed OpenAI propose a new way to tell if an AI is making the right decisions, and they released an online game to demonstrate the theory.

Modern AI systems can recognize faces, drive cars and understand human speech, but experts often say it can sometimes be difficult to understand how they’re actually making decisions.

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Warrantless border searches of electronics may be illegal, court rules

May 10, 2018, 9:15 am

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A federal judge pointed to heightened privacy concerns around digital data in declining the Trump administration’s bid to dismiss the case.

A Massachusetts federal court declined Thursday to throw out a suit  challenging the U.S. government’s practice of conducting warrantless digital device searches at borders and airports.

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How the DNC Is Trying To Prevent A Repeat Of 2016’s Hack

May 12, 2018, 2:00 am

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The committee, along with organizations on both sides of the aisle, is focusing on the basics of cybersecurity as they prepare for the midterms and 2020.

It’s been almost three years since Russian intelligence operatives reportedly first hacked the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) servers on July 27, 2015—setting off a chain of events involving the DNC’s own sloppy security measures and lax response, and Wikileaks’ disclosure of embarrassing Hillary Clinton campaign emails, helping propel Donald Trump to victory. This time, the DNC is hoping that the lessons it’s learned from that history will help it avoid a repeat. And the Republican National Committee (RNC), which was fortunate during the 2016 campaign that hackers failed to infiltrate its own semi-secure servers, is praying that it’s not their turn this time.

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Meet the Georgia Tech robot that is learning how to help people get dressed

May 15, 2018, 9:40 am

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The robot learned to safely guide a human’s arm into a hospital gown by running more than 11,000 simulations.

Researchers at Georgia Tech unveiled a robot that has taught itself how to help people put on a hospital gown.

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DeepMind AI taught itself to navigate a maze like a mammal

May 15, 2018, 11:30 am

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Trained to scurry through mazes like rats, the AI’s artificial neural networks grew navigational structures like those in mammalian brains.

An artificial intelligence system trained to track its own location evolved structures that are strikingly similar to mammalian brains, researchers say.

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Why a $120 million fine can’t stop the “insane” growth of phone spam

May 16, 2018, 2:45 am

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The phone industry and regulators are struggling to contain robocalls that harangue consumers with billions of sleazy sales pitches and outright scams every month.

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission fined a Florida man $120 million for allegedly flooding consumers with almost 100 million robocalls with falsified caller IDs in just one three-month period.

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How Alphabet plans to keep hackers away from this year’s election

May 16, 2018, 10:00 am

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The company’s security incubator Jigsaw announced Project Shield today, offering a new level of free protection to candidates and political organizations.

As we all look ahead to this year’s midterms with a mixture of excitement and panic, fully expecting hackers to once again target U.S. election systems, Alphabet security incubator Jigsaw announced today that it’s offering a new level of free protection to candidates and political organizations.

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Will the EU’s tough new data law impact your business? Ask this bot

May 16, 2018, 6:45 pm

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A bot that helps companies understand Europe’s GDPR is just the latest to offer legal information in a natural language interface.

If you’re confused about whether your non-European business is still affected by the European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation, a new smart bot might be able to help.

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Russian-speaking hackers behind attacks on MyEtherWallet, Amazon DNS: report

May 17, 2018, 4:11 am

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Native speakers of Russian were likely involved in a sophisticated hack that redirected traffic to Amazon’s Route 53 DNS service last month in order to steal funds from users of MyEtherWallet.

Native speakers of Russian were likely involved in a sophisticated hack that redirected traffic to Amazon’s Route 53 DNS service last month in order to steal funds from users of MyEtherWallet, a tool for managing the cryptocurrency ethereum, according to a report from security firm RiskIQ.

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AI pioneer tells Elon Musk: Don’t fear the robot takeover

May 17, 2018, 5:01 am

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Jurgen Schmidhuber, an AI pioneer, has entered a long-running debate about the dangers of technology.

According to pioneering computer scientist Jurgen Schmidhuber, artificial intelligence is nothing to fear. In fact, Schmidhuber has even told this to longtime AI worrywart Elon Musk, CNBC reports.

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Don’t be afraid of these hallucinating MIT drones

May 17, 2018, 10:48 am

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MIT is using simulated environments that can train drones to deal with real-world obstacles without having to put lives or property at risk.

While plenty of people have speculated about what virtual reality might mean for everyone from video gamers to office workers, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have built a virtual reality environment for another audience: drones.

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How a free web demo exposed millions of Americans’ real-time locations

May 17, 2018, 1:15 pm

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The apparent flaw in LocationSmart’s system was revealed amid growing controversy over its role in a national cell-phone location tracking system.

A cell-phone tracking service called LocationSmart reportedly made anyone’s location available for the asking through a flaw in a public demo website.

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Amid the cloud giants, small providers find their niche

May 21, 2018, 2:00 am

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Emphasizing individual attention and specialty services, small cloud providers hold their own against tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft.

Think of cloud computing, and it’s likely you think first of the services offered by some of the giants of the technology world: Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure platform come to mind, and perhaps rival offerings from Google, Alibaba, and IBM.

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Star Wars-inspired flying robots joining space station crew

May 22, 2018, 1:00 am

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Smart NASA Astrobee robots the size of Jedi training droids will help astronauts on the International Space Station work faster and be more productive.

May the force be with them!

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Tech-Pentagon tension probably isn’t going away anytime soon

May 22, 2018, 11:10 am

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Workers have called on Google and other big tech companies to refuse Pentagon deals to harness the power of AI.

Google is still working with the U.S. Defense Department on an initiative known as Project Maven, training computers to recognize objects in images, such as photographs taken by drones, Gizmodo reports. That’s despite the reservations of thousands of employees who’ve reportedly petitioned the company to end its involvement with the military, with about a dozen even quitting over Google’s role in the project.

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5 last-minute GDPR resources to help bring businesses into compliance

May 23, 2018, 6:50 am

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The deadline is Friday and you’re still not prepared?! Check out these tools now.

This Friday is the deadline for compliance with the European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation, widely considered the strictest law in the world in terms of regulating the collection and use of consumer data. In broad strokes, GDPR generally requires companies get clear consent for collecting people’s personal data and allows people to access the data stored about them, fix it if it’s wrong, and delete it if they so choose.

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Goodbye polygraph? New tech uses AI to tell if you’re lying

May 23, 2018, 11:00 pm

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AVATAR looks for changes in the eyes, voice, posture, and more to determine truthfulness. Civil libertarians remain wary of the machine learning tech.

From schlocky daytime TV (Did you cheat on your girlfriend?) to police interrogations (Did you shoot him?), the old-fashioned polygraph is still considered a reliable way to get to the truth by many people. The trouble is it’s not, and that has been shown over and over again.

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