At a time when the effects of climate change are accelerating and published science overwhelmingly supports the view that humans are responsible for the rate of change, powerful groups remain in denial across politics, the media, and industry. Now more than ever, we need scientists and policymakers to work together to create and implement effective policy which […] … learn more→
Blog Archives
Climate scientists and policymakers need to trust each other (but not too much)
Teaching machines to teach themselves
Are you tired of telling machines what to do and what not to do? It’s a large part of regular people’s days – operating dishwashers, smartphones and cars. It’s an even bigger part of life for researchers like me, working on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Much of this is even more boring than driving […] … learn more→
The rise of cybercrime: What you need to know
Did you know that a simple error in awareness can lose you or your organization anywhere from hundreds to millions of dollars? More importantly, do you know how to effectively protect your network infrastructure from a multitude of attacks? Don’t worry. You’re in the right place. Keep reading to discover a number of statistics and […] … learn more→
Does regulating artificial intelligence save humanity or just stifle innovation?
Some people are afraid that heavily armed artificially intelligent robotsmight take over the world, enslaving humanity – or perhaps exterminating us. These people, including tech-industry billionaire Elon Musk and eminent physicist Stephen Hawking, say artificial intelligence technology needs to be regulated to manage the risks. But Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg disagree, saying the technology is not nearly advanced enough for […] … learn more→
Google’s new Go-playing AI learns fast, and even thrashed its former self
Just last year Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo took the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by storm, showing that a computer program could beat the world’s best human Go players. But in a demonstration of the feverish rate of progress in modern AI, details of a new milestone reached by an improved version called AlphaGo Zero were published this week in Nature. Using […] … learn more→
Insights on the increasing number of cyber attacks
The Recent Cyber Attack on Equifax It was recently reported that between May and late July of 2017, hackers breached the cyber security of Equifax and gained access to the personal information of 143 million Americans as well as some Canadian consumers from the province of British Columbia. This was discovered in late July, but […] … learn more→
LIGO announcement vaults astronomy out of its silent movie era into the talkies
When LIGO detected its first gravitational wave back in September 2015, I was pretty excited to say the least. As part of a decades-long endeavor, our whole team was ecstatic to observe gravitational waves – which are literally ripples in space – caused by two black holes smashing together. It was the first time that Einstein’s predictions about these […] … learn more→
Virtual reality breathes new life into African fossils, art and artefacts
Digital technology has become an integral part of our everyday lives. So it was only a matter of time before the ways people interact with the past and ancient artefacts in museum settings became digital, too. The problem is that technology can be extremely expensive. Many museums just don’t have the funding to obtain, develop […] … learn more→
The only safe email is text-only email
It’s troubling to think that at any moment you might open an email that looks like it comes from your employer, a relative or your bank, only to fall for a phishing scam. Any one of the endless stream of innocent-looking emails you receive throughout the day could be trying to con you into handing […] … learn more→
Never mind killer robots – even the good ones are scarily unpredictable
The heads of more than 100 of the world’s top artificial intelligence companies are very alarmed about the development of “killer robots”. In an open letter to the UN, these business leaders – including Tesla’s Elon Musk and the founders of Google’s DeepMind AI firm – warned that autonomous weapon technology could be misused by […] … learn more→
