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Showing 1-10 of 18 results

  • OPINION

    Deepfakes will hijack your brain -- if you let them

    News, Published on 22/02/2024

    » Realistic AI-generated images and voice recordings may be the newest threat to democracy, but they're part of a longstanding family of deceptions. The way to fight so-called deepfakes isn't to develop some rumour-busting form of AI or to train the public to spot fake images. A better tactic would be to encourage a few well-known critical thinking methods -- refocusing our attention, reconsidering our sources, and questioning ourselves.

  • OPINION

    Ditch Google to avoid fake news

    News, Published on 15/01/2024

    » Searching for information has become instant and effortless -- just go to your nearest device, ask Siri or click a few keys. But are we better informed than we were before Google became a verb?

  • OPINION

    Why so unpatriotic?

    News, Published on 12/01/2024

    » Re: "Please Come Back", (Editorial Cartoon, Jan 11).

  • OPINION

    Google trial's secrecy seen as dangerous

    Oped, Published on 08/12/2023

    » The largest antitrust trial of the modern internet era, which wrapped up last month, has pitted the world's most popular search engine, Google, against the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). The case hearkens back to the DOJ's landmark lawsuit against Microsoft in the 1990s but with a critical difference: most of it was held behind closed doors. This unprecedented secrecy meant that only journalists and observers who were physically in the courtroom had access -- albeit limited -- to the proceedings.

  • OPINION

    Have we passed the point of no return with AI?

    Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/06/2023

    » 'Sometimes I think it's as if aliens have landed and people haven't realised because they speak very good English," said Geoffrey Hinton, the 'godfather of AI' (Artificial Intelligence), who resigned from Google and now fears his godchildren will become "things more intelligent than us, taking control".

  • OPINION

    How tyrants use tech to spy on us all

    News, Published on 08/02/2023

    » Parmy Olson: You're the co-authors of a new book, Pegasus: How a Spy In Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy, which tells the story of Pegasus, a powerful spyware developed by the Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO Group. In recent years, a range of governments around the world purchased this technology, allowing them to gain remote-control access to people's mobile phones without their knowledge. In 2020, a secret source leaked a list to your team of investigative journalists in Paris that contained 50,000 phone numbers that NSO Group's clients wanted to spy on. Among the names on the list were French president Emmanuel Macron, the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi and a raft of journalists, including your own colleagues.

  • OPINION

    The tragic misbehaviour of big business

    Oped, Published on 07/10/2022

    » Are successful businesspeople more like heroes or villains? In fictional accounts, one can find plenty of examples of each, from Charles Dickens's miserly Ebenezer Scrooge to Ayn Rand's rugged individualist entrepreneur John Galt. In F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan represents privileged old money, with its ruthlessness and incapacity for empathy, whereas Jay Gatsby is a self-made millionaire with no shortage of sentimentality and idealism.

  • OPINION

    Making sure net-zero pledges really count

    Oped, Published on 28/09/2022

    » Walking down a Toronto street recently I saw an ad touting a fossil-fuel company's net-zero credentials. But to see such belief-straining claims, I would not even need to leave my house.

  • OPINION

    Could the study of humanities be automated?

    Oped, Published on 29/09/2022

    » There has been much hand-wringing about the crisis of the humanities, and recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) have added to the angst. It is not only truck drivers whose jobs are threatened by automation. Now, they are demonstrating proficiency in the tasks that occupy humanities professors when they are not giving lectures: namely, writing papers and submitting them for publication in academic journals.

  • OPINION

    What's in a (soi) name?

    Guru, Pornchai Sereemongkonpol, Published on 24/06/2022

    » At the front of practically every soi in Bangkok, you'll notice a pole with a blue sign with white letters at the top proclaiming its name. However, if you look closer you may find many sois in Thailand can brighten your day with their curious names. Here are a few for your entertainment.

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