Showing 1 - 10 of 44
7-Eleven deserves more than shareholder primacy
News, Published on 09/09/2024
» Over two weeks from the first report of Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc's bid to acquire Japan's Seven & I Holdings Co, the battle lines for public opinion are being drawn.
I'm with the band -- how music made me British
News, Published on 31/08/2024
» 'Wonderwall' is all I remember. The rest of Oasis is a blur to me. I was still living in New York City when the band had their global breakthrough -- and that song was everywhere. From the album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, it's one of the few mid-1990s songs whose lyrics this Boomer can remember. I admired its Beatles-like off-kilter poetics, its love-will-save-the-day (if not, maybe it'll just save me) sentimentality. And Liam Gallagher's voice, while not beautiful, was pure plaintive Britpop, a plangent inflexion echoing from as far back as 1962's Love Me Do by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
Esports industry should be embarrassed right now
News, Adam Minter, Published on 15/07/2024
» The first-ever Esports World Cup was launched in Saudi Arabia last weekend with a record-breaking US$60 million (2.1 billion baht) prize pool.
AI's brain fog no defence for arts
News, Published on 05/07/2024
» Ever notice how science fiction gets things wrong about future technology? Instead of flying cars, we got viral tweets that fuelled culture wars. Instead of a fax machine on your wrist, we got memes. We're having a similar reality check with artificial intelligence. Sci-fi painted a future with computers that delivered reliable information in robotic parlance. Yet businesses who've tried plugging generative AI tools into their infrastructure have found, with some dismay, that the tools "hallucinate" and make mistakes. They are hardly reliable. And the tools themselves aren't stiff and mechanistic either. They're almost whimsical.
Ripe time to allow AI whistleblowers speak out
News, Published on 18/06/2024
» Here's an AI advancement that should benefit all of us: It's getting easier for builders of artificial intelligence to warn the world about the harms their algorithms can cause -- from spreading misinformation and displacing jobs, to hallucinating and providing a new form of surveillance. But who can these would-be whistleblowers turn to? An encouraging shift toward better oversight is underway, thanks to changes in compensation policies, renewed momentum to speak out among engineers and the growing clout of a British government-backed safety group.
Taylor Swift can learn a lot from Billie Eilish
News, Published on 17/05/2024
» Not long ago, I lamented the lack of climate anthems. Perhaps we'll find one on Hit Me Hard and Soft, the third studio album from Billie Eilish that's due to drop today.
It's getting too hot to vote in India
News, David Fickling, Published on 24/04/2024
» How do you run a democracy when the mercury rises above 40 degrees Celsius? That's the problem faced by voters in India. A swath of the country's east is sweltering under a heatwave. The city centre of Kolkata has emptied out, schools have cancelled classes, and one TV presenter collapsed on air with heat stroke.
Will AI create more fake news than it exposes?
News, Tyler Cowen, Published on 08/04/2024
» The best large-language models can already write like humans, especially if prompted properly. Photos and images can be faked at low cost. Yet-to-be-released technology can create convincing voice simulations. There are signs that some academic papers contain traces of GPT-4. If even professors are faking it, then surely the dam has burst.
Disney's 'Shogun' has a lot to teach the West
News, Published on 28/02/2024
» One of the most famous tales ever set in Japan is back. Walt Disney Co is spending millions on a glossy new adaptation of the James Clavell saga Shogun, the story of the Englishman who arrives in 1600s Japan and goes on to become a samurai.
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.