An AI-powered “brain decoder” can now read your thoughts with surprising accuracy. Scientists from the University of Texas at Austin have achieved a groundbreaking feat: translating people’s brain activity, including their unspoken thoughts, into actual speech. This development, detailed in a study published in Nature, marks a significant advancement in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology. Traditionally,… Continue reading Mind-reading technology has arrived
Try talking to yourself without opening your mouth, by simply saying words internally. What if you could search the internet like that—and get an answer back? In the first live public demo of his new technology, TED Fellow Arnav Kapur introduces AlterEgo: a wearable AI device with the potential to let you silently talk to… Continue reading AlterEgo: a device that lets you speak with your mind
A group of researchers studied 15 months of human mobility movement data taken from 1.5 million people and concluded that just four points in space and time were sufficient to identify 95% of them, even when the data weren’t of excellent quality. That was back in 2013. Nearly ten years on, surveillance technologies permeate all aspects of… Continue reading Not Big Brother, but close: a surveillance expert explains some of the ways we’re all being watched, all the time
The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Anxious Generation delivers an urgent call for action. Haidt argues that the evidence is in. Teenagers’ widespread use of smartphones is causing a mental health crisis. Individual, collective and legislative action is required to limit their smartphone access. Haidt begins his book with an allegory. Imagine someone… Continue reading Have smartphones created an ‘anxious generation’? Jonathan Haidt sounds the alarm
Electric vehicles are often seen as the panacea to cutting emissions – and air pollution – from transport. Is this view correct? Yes – but only once uptake accelerates. Despite the recent boom in EV purchases, they’re still a tiny minority of the cars on the road. We would get more immediate benefit by focusing on electrifying… Continue reading Electric vehicles will start to cut emissions and improve air quality in our cities – but only once they’re common
Fake photography is nothing new. In the 1910s, British author Arthur Conan Doyle was famously deceived by two school-aged sisters who had produced photographs of elegant fairies cavorting in their garden. Today it is hard to believe these photos could have fooled anybody, but it was not until the 1980s an expert named Geoffrey Crawley… Continue reading AI image generation is advancing at astronomical speeds. Can we still tell if a picture is fake?
There is a fine line between creativity and self-destruction. Apple’s new crush advert, which shows items linked to creative pursuits being pulverised to make way for the new iPad Pro, tried to find that line but instead appears to have made a rare mis-step. It has angered a lot of people in the process. Apple has now apologised… Continue reading Apple’s ‘crush’ advert annoys people across generations – that’s why it misfired
With the proliferation of female robots such as Sophia and the popularity of female virtual assistants such as Siri (Apple), Alexa (Amazon), and Cortana (Microsoft), artificial intelligence seems to have a gender issue. This gender imbalance in AI is a pervasive trend that has drawn sharp criticism in the media (even Unesco warned against the dangers of… Continue reading Why is AI mostly female?
Rockstar Games has finally unveiled the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6, the highly anticipated next installment in its iconic open-world crime series. The trailer’s release was prompted by an early online leak. The GTA 6 trailer hints at a 2025 release date and takes players back to Rockstar’s fictional Miami setting, Vice City,… Continue reading GTA 6 trailer releases
People tend to rejoice in the disclosure of a secret. Or, at the very least, media outlets have come to realize that news of “mysteries solved” and “hidden treasures revealed” generate traffic and clicks. So I’m never surprised when I see AI-assisted revelations about famous masters’ works of art go viral. Over the past year alone articles have… Continue reading How AI is hijacking art history
