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Good morning readers, I''m Giorgio Tarraf, and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

Get ready to taste the internet

Meiji University researchers have developed a "screen" that can produce any combination of taste on the human tongue. It functions by applying different voltages to five gels, each containing an electrolyte that simulates one basic taste (acidic, bitter, sweet, salty, and even trendy umami). By controlling the amount of ions that touch your tongue, the device can generate any flavour. It can even generate complex flavour profiles - from sushi to gummy bears - without using a single food item, or replacing any part of the device. Mainstream adoption will give this device infinite use cases, including diet control, marketing, culinary education and other, ahem. more personal applications.

DATA

Infinite monkeys: Find any written text. Ever.

The infinite monkey theorem states that "if infinite monkeys sat at typewriters, they would eventually reproduce all the works of Shakespeare." Well, now they have. The Library of Babel project computationally reproduced every possible combination of letters, words, and sentences in the English language. It includes every legal text, play, poem, constitution, and scripture. According to its author, it currently contains about 104,677 books. Your search results are not generated after your search. They are already fixed, catalogued, and classified. The theory used is an ingenious mix of data science and philosophy. It even includes this very text.

MEDIA

Visit the uncanny valley: Virtual influencers take Instagram by storm

Since the 1970s, realistic computer-generated images depicting humans have triggered repulsion in observers. In the past year, an advanced form of machine learning known as generative adversarial networks has finally crossed the uncanny valley. AI-generated faces now seem oddly familiar, even comfortable. Refresh the following page to meet your new fake friends, but remember that these people do not exist. Given that we're now in 2020, things get even weirder. Photorealistic models are now becoming celebrity influencers, amassing millions of followers on Instagram.

The most famous is 19-year-old singer Lil Miquela, who has 2.4 million Instagram followers, has posed with DJ Diplo, has been featured in Vogue, and has promoted high-end brands on her profile. She even posed in a Prada ad with real-life model Bella Hadid, though Bella was herself animated. Noonoori is another more cartoon-like influencer who has posted ads for Versace and for the World Economic Forum. Established brands such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and luxury retailer Yoox have created their own virtual models to market their products.

Beyond the ultimate ability to control the visuals, their lack of existence makes virtual influencers the perfect marketing tool with no baggage, history, or distractions from the brand message.

Good morning readers, I''m Giorgio Tarraf, and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

Facebook AI Research recently published a paper describing a fully unsupervised neural transcompiler. A transcompiler is a type of translator that converts source code from a high-level programming language to another. The research team used machine translation to train the transcompiler on source code from open source GitHub projects. The system translated between C++, Java and Python with high accuracy that outperformed all existing methodologies by a wide margin. What is notable is that Facebook's transcompiler requires no expertise in the source or target languages and can easily be generalised to other programming languages.

The implications are significant as the private and public sectors spend hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of hours updating their code base for modern uses. In 2012, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia spent five years and $750 million to translate COBOL, a 61-year-old programming language, into JavaScript. More recently, government agencies in the US have been urgently calling for coders who understand COBOL to better process skyrocketing unemployment claims due to COVID-19.

DATA

Health tracking to become embedded in our clothes

MIT researchers have invented a flexible, comfortable and washable device embedded in textiles. A recent publication in Nature describes a compression shirt that can "detect skin temperature, as well as heart rate and respiration, with high degrees of accuracy." A single shirt can have over 30 sensors and an accelerometer. It is also capable of transmitting data wirelessly to a smartphone.

The technology''s applications are broad for athletes and sports hobbyists alike. The high sensor density and accuracy also makes the material ideal for telemedicine and for remote health monitoring of loved ones. The research was partly funded by a NASA grant, hinting to upcoming applications for astronauts.

MEDIA

AI journalist confuses mixed-race Little Mix singers

Microsoft laid off dozens of journalists and editorial workers at its Microsoft News and MSN organisations in May. They were largely replaced by AI that pieces together news and images from across the web. The experiment was short lived as a few weeks later robots illustrated a news story about racism with a photo of the wrong mixed-race member of the band Little Mix. In light of the Black Lives Matter movement, Microsoft took swift action to pull out the AI from its editorial team. Back in April, Google's Vision AI faced similar controversy when it produced results that many interpreted as racist.

Algorithmic bias has been a subject of in-depth research for many years, dating all the way back to the 1970s. If training databases are racially biased, algorithms sometimes adopt these biases in their learning. It is high time scientists tackled this issue as the societal consequences could be dire, especially as law enforcement applications become mainstream.

Good morning readers, I''m Giorgio Tarraf, and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

Deepfakes: privacy tool or democracy hack?

The impact of machine learning technology to hyper realistically map people's faces onto others has yet to be fully realised. It is now easier than ever to create deepfakes using mid-range consumer tech and a reasonable number of high-quality photos and videos. Some online tools even allow users to create deepfakes with a few clicks using cloud computing power rented for a few hours. The privacy implications are significant, and deepfakes are an area of active research at L'Atelier - watch this space for more in the coming weeks. Facebook has recently launched a training dataset to help AI detect deepfakes, albeit with mediocre confidence levels.

A startup claims to use deepfake technology to protect user privacy by anonymising video that is currently unusable due to data usage regulations. This avatar will replace the video subject by impersonating their actions and emotions. Some advocates argue that this bypasses the need to request express consent before running analytics. This raises an interesting question: when does an avatar stop being "you"? Does using filters on Instagram that transform a user's face and voice mean that he or she is giving up privacy rights? As synthetic content enters the real world through AR, these questions will become increasingly salient.

DATA

Soon to be released: AI deemed too dangerous to release

OpenAI, the Elon Musk and Peter Thiel-backed initiative initially slated to prevent the misuse of AI is now a for profit. The company has now reversed its initial decision not to release the code to an AI that can generate convincing, yet completely fake, news stories. The GPT-2 model can replicate the style and grammar of a short input text that sets the tone and theme of the desired output. Just a few words can lead to fake news stories generated in seconds.

Analysts have found it so convincing that it led to OpenAI issuing a statement expressing concern about the misuse of the technology as it releases it commercially. This technology puts a firehose of falsehood that can flood the internet in the hands of everyone. Find the code here, and try a simplified version here. 

Please use it responsibly and share your favorite outputs on Twitter, or not.
 

MEDIA

Peak 2020: Apple patents socially distant selfies

As physical distancing becomes a norm, friend groups and families are sometimes unable to gather, let alone get close enough for a group picture. Apple has recently been granted a patent that allows people in different locales to appear in a group picture. A user can invite others to join them in a photo that groups faces in augmented reality. Though it was only recently published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the patent application predates COVID-19.

If you are curious about what tech companies are working on, I highly recommend playing around with Google's patent search or the slightly more technical USPTO database. Feel free to send me your favourites or share them on Twitter.

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

Scientists find brainhack for language learning

Nerve simulation improves adults'' language learning performance by 13%, according to a new study published in the Science of Learning journal. The new apparatus used in the study appears to restore some of the brain plasticity of children - who are much more adept than adults at picking up new languages naturally - by using a small device that sits over the ear. Electrical pulses then painlessly stimulate the transcutaneous vagus nerve (tVNS). 

One author predicts that this technology will enter the mainstream in 2-5 years, starting with individuals who suffer from brain damage. This brainhack might become yet another tool for enhancing mental performance, for example by integrating it in our AR headworn devices. I would be particularly interested in using it to learn a new programming language. Would you?

DATA

AI speeds up the hunt for COVID-19 drug

The World Economic Forum has published a report compiling AI-fueled methodologies used by researchers to dramatically accelerate their frantic search for a COVID-19 treatment. The report finds that AI facilitates research cooperation and significantly improves existing models and algorithms used for drug discovery.

London-based BenevolentAI, one of the companies using AI to look for a COVID-19 treatment, aims to gather immense amounts of data from across the research spectrum to identify potential drug leads. AI can speed up the process by analysing all available biomedical data and information in a systematic search for existing approved medicines. 

AI's superhuman pattern recognition abilities have already successfully identified treatment candidates for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), ulcerative colitis, atopic dermatitis and programmes with partners on progressive kidney and lung diseases, as well as glioblastoma.

It is important to note that while computers can accelerate the scientific process, they do not replace researchers. Any machine-generated leads are put through more traditional research and rigorous clinical trials before reaching patients. Whilst machine learning models can point in useful directors, it is still up to scientists to get us there. As we streamline drug discovery and trial systems, we might be able to build resilient path and alliance to help us identify and control future pandemics.

MEDIA

Tool "cloaks" photos from facial recognition

A new tool developed by the University of Chicago's Sand Lab uses AI to subtly alter photos in order to trick facial recognition systems. Fawkes, as the tool is called, makes almost imperceptible changes at the pixel level that make the images useless to facial recognition algorithms scanning these photos. Scientists call this process "cloaking."

When analysing the clocked images, the training algorithm learns a highly distorted version of one's face, rendering it incapable of matching it to uncloaked images. The cloaking effect is not easily detected by machines as it does not trigger errors during machine training.

The cloaking effect has fooled Microsoft Azure Face API, Amazon Rekognition, and Face++ - the three leading algorithms on the market - with a 100% success rate. 

You can try Fawkes yourself at the bottom of this page. The source code is also available for review on GitHub.

Good morning readers, I''m Giorgio Tarraf, and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

A Chinese startup is selling sunglasses that can measure the temperature of 200 people in just two minutes. It could be used effectively in crowded spaces to identify individuals who may be infected by the novel coronavirus. Equipped with an infrared sensor and a camera, the glasses allow their wearer to "see" other people''s temperature from up to almost 10 feet away and can take pictures and videos on demand. Researchers have expressed unease with the data security and ethics of mass monitoring tools. Could these glasses be modified to recognise and track individuals in the near future? With enough devices in the population, crowd-sourced surveillance could become a reality.

DATA

Self-taught AI predicts the future

The Economist asked an AI client to predict the future. The unedited answers predicted turbulent markets, transformative societal change, a growth in AI-generated fake news, and an electoral loss for Donald Trump. The tool does not understand the questions or explain its conclusions. It builds its own answers from a learning dataset of approximately 8 million webpages. What if search engines started directly answering our more complex queries about the future rather than point us to a list of sources? The implications of certain-sounding predictions from an authoritative AI may in fact become self-fulfilling prophecies.

MEDIA

Art-based fashion in a virtual world creates novel income sources for quarantined creatives

The Getty Museum now allows users to import all of its artwork into Animal Crossing with a single click. Animal Crossing is a game that allows players to grow and sell crops to build a virtual island, where friends come to visit. It is the fastest-selling game in history, with 5 million copies sold in March 2020 and a community 11 million strong. The Museum''s art can be used to design shirts, cover walls and floors, make paintings for an easel or canvas, and for display on mannequins. These virtual assets can also be traded, gifted or sold for Bells, the in-game currency, sparking new sources of income for quarantined creatives. Now that conferences are held on cute virtual islands, you might as well get a designer outfit to impress your virtual crush.

THE VIRTUAL ECONOMY

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

A newly developed technique combines brain-computer interfaces and AI-powered algorithms to understand thoughts and generate visuals that represent them. The resulting images are completely synthetic and are directly created in response to the user's thoughts.

The novel method, named neuroadaptive generative modeling, is detailed in a study published in the Scientific Reports journal. Participants were asked to focus on specific features of shown images, such as smiles or age, without making any physical or mental effort. The data output was used to teach an algorithm how a given user's brain processes visual information. The resulting synthetic images were then evaluated by the participants. The study found that an astounding 83% of images matched users' intentions. You can watch the technology in action in this short video.

The technique can be expanded beyond the generation of human faces. It could also facilitate the visualisation of abstract ideas into drawings or illustrations. Notably, the method does not allow the computer to draw a specific person from one's thoughts. The computer relies on a user's categorisation of features, likely providing "insight into social, cognitive, and emotional processes," according to a senior researcher who contributed to the publication.

In the long term, we can foresee a technology that allows us to imagine and generate virtual worlds, people and experiences in real time, limited only by our imagination.

DATA

Self-erasing chips could identify counterfeit devices

A new material developed at the University of Michigan enables the creation of data storage that gets erased when exposed to light or a sudden change in temperature. The technology could be used to identify sensitive shipments that have been tampered with. For example, if a device or a shipment is opened, its data would be erased, signalling possible in-transit tampering to the recipient.

The technology comprises a unique, ultra-thin layer of semi-conductors coated in a molecule that shrinks when exposed to light. The barcode-like device is powered by the stretched molecules that can store energy for seven days. It can be read using a special device and erased in a flash if needed. Watch an explanatory video here.

The University of Michigan is planning to continue to develop and commercialise the technology. Future iterations of the device will aim to increase the duration of energy storage for anti-counterfeiting applications.

MEDIA

The Social Dilemma

"Algorithms are opinions embedded in code," says tech whiz Cathy O''Neil in the latest Netflix hit The Social Dilemma. The documentary features a slew of former big tech executives and inventors who are sounding the alarm on the unintended consequences of their creations. The inventor of the 'Like' button, for example, initially wanted to "spread positivity and love in the world" but now worries that his innovation has contributed to a depression epidemic among teens.

The documentary presents notifications as algorithmic attempts to reach into our brains, create addiction, feed us more ads, and potentially cause societal collapse. The movie lays bare the inner workings of engagement, growth and advertising algorithms, finely tuned to hijack our outsmarted human brains. By the third act, I had reduced the number of phone apps that can push notifications by 80%. It''s a fascinating watch despite its use of sensationalist narrative devices.

Watch this teenager go through intense distress soon after she realises her phone is accidentally locked away for two days. This is an incident eerily similar to a situation portrayed in the documentary that I initially found far too unrealistic.

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

AR goggles guide military dogs

The US army is using AR technology to direct dogs tasked with scouting dangerous environments. The head-mounted goggles allow handlers to send visual cues to their K9 units at a safe distance. Traditional guiding methods required a handler on site using laser pointers and hand signals.

DATA

GPT-3 bot posing as human fools Reddit for a week

A bot powered by a supermassive AI language model fooled online users for a week. The bot used GPT-3 to pose as a human posting on AskReddit, a forum where over 30 million users ask each other questions about anything and everything.

The bot remained undetected for a week before raising a red flag not due to the content of its posts, but rather their frequency. Long, detailed posts were sometimes posted only minutes apart from the automated account. Looking at the bot's post history, we find a sad post related to friendship, a history lesson about the future of humanity, a scary story about the illuminati, and an essay on the nature of reality.

It has become increasingly difficult to identify and control bots that flood our information platforms. Recent research showed that nearly half of Twitter users posting about 'reopening America' during the COVID-19 pandemic are bots. Alarmingly, they also claim that over 82% of the top 50% most influential retweeters on topics related to the pandemic are not human.

With the growing availability of intelligent language generators, it will become trivially easy to flood the internet with skewed worldviews. With every AI breakthrough, it becomes nearly impossible for people to parse human and bot generated opinions. The only scalable solution appears to be other intelligent algorithms that can recognise if a user is a bot or not.

MEDIA

AI video upscaling makes the past feel current

AI makes it possible to increase the resolution of very old videos to make them feel modern. Thanks to algorithms that can fill in 'missing' pixels, deep neural networks and other advanced methods, 12 frame per second grainy footage can be transformed into gorgeous 60 fps 4k video.

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

IBM hits new quantum computing milestone

Only 2 years ago, quantum computing (QC) was in the same category as nuclear fission: a physical impossibility forever two decades away. However, major development leaps have accrued over the past two years, launching a tight race among inventors. Most recently, in late August, IBM announced it had achieved Quantum Volume of 64, putting it on a par with a Honeywell quantum computer. IBM''s previous Quantum Volume milestone, announced in January this year, was 32.

Quantum computing is a novel way of conducting calculations. The holy grail of QC is to execute chains of complex instructions that can be solved orders of magnitude faster than traditional computers. It does so by leveraging properties of quantum mechanics that challenge our standard understanding of physics.

It is unfair to compare quantum computers to the one you are using right now. Here is a technical slide that gives a brief overview of the major differences in information storage and calculation methods. These fundamental differences are why QC power is measured in Quantum Volume. This metric "measures the length and complexity of quantum circuits, the building blocks of quantum applications." Another interesting nomenclature to delve into is the qubit, the basic unit of quantum information. (Warning: Wikipedia rabbit hole)

DATA

Quantum computing breaks encryption

(Long video, but great overview)

QC has many wonderful potential applications - from chemical engineering, pharmaceutical development and space travel, to forecasting and financial modelling. It also has the unfortunate side effect of unlocking all our digital secrets.

Much of the security of our private data relies on encryption. Bank account information, passwords, browser histories, online data storage, emails, and online shopping all rely on industry standard encryption methods that keep our information safe. Every time you see "https://" in your browser, encryption is at play. In fact, I highly recommend this browser extension to secure your browsing by default.

Encryption is an algorithmic process that encodes human-readable (plain-text) information into encrypted data (ciphertext) that can only be read by machines or people who hold a key. The data is remixed using complex encryption algorithms (ciphers) that are very easy to calculate in one direction (encrypt), but very hard to mathematically solve in the other (decrypt). It has to do with prime numbers, and if you're curious about the advanced math, you can read more about it here.

Note that I said very hard, and not impossible. The reason encryption is secure is because traditional computers are relatively slow and unable to crack the codes in any reasonable time - think thousands of years. Quantum computing is orders of magnitude better at cracking these codes. In fact, a fully realised quantum computer could crack the best industry standard encryption in about 8 hours.

No need to store all your passwords on post-it notes just yet, as this is not expected to happen for about 25 years. Furthermore, computer scientists are already developing post-quantum cryptography methods to secure our data in the long term.

MEDIA

This is what a quantum computer looks like

Seriously, just take a moment to ponder these wonders of engineering.

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

Telescope captures the world''s largest photo - and it's of broccoli

A camera developed for use in a telescope in Chile has captured the highest-resolution photo ever taken. You will not find the camera in your smartphone just yet, as it is the size of a small car and weighs nearly 3 tons. The photo of broccoli was taken as a test shot to showcase how the camera captures the detail of broccoli''s logarithmic fractal structure. Indeed, the 3,200-megapixel photo captures the beautifully complex and repeating patterns of this common vegetable.

The camera of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will be pointed at the night sky to survey nearly the entire night sky of the southern hemisphere. One of its main goals is to map the entire Milky Way. The telescope is expected to go live in 2022, however concerns about light pollution caused by internet satellites such as Elon Musk's Starlink fleet would likely challenge its ability to conduct research effectively.

DATA

The COVID-19 global crisis - in data  

The Financial Times has published a free article showcasing relevant data that helps explain the scale and impact of Covid-19. The stunning piece and data visualisations guide the reader through a timeline punctuated by the daily death toll as governments enacted lockdowns and other public health measures. It also helps explain why certain measures succeeded or failed in their socio-cultural and geopolitical contexts.

MEDIA

AI writes compelling short film

This short film is almost entirely written by GPT-3, the latest version of AI synthetic language generators. The student-produced film is a surreal and surprisingly compelling story.

You can see the immense progress in AI language generation technology by watching this oddly terrifying example released two years ago.

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

Cyborg drone uses moth antenna to navigate toward smell

A team at the University of Washington has developed a drone capable of travelling towards scents. The device, called Smellicopter, uses a surgically removed moth antenna as a sensor to autonomously fly to the odour source while avoiding obstacles.

The scientists are now planning to modify the antenna to identify odours other than floral scents, for example, the source of gas leaks. You can watch the Smellicopter in action in this video and read the findings here.

DATA

Cybersecurity giant hacked, dangerous tech stolen

FireEye, a cybersecurity firm tasked with protecting government and corporate secrets, announced December 8 that it had recently been attacked by a "highly sophisticated threat actor." The breach put the world on high alert as the attacker had managed to steal the company''s offensive tools. The "Red Team Assessment Tools," as they are known, are used to test the security of FireEye''s clients by mimicking advanced cyberattacks.

The company has since released more than 300 measures to counter its own stolen technology. FireEye''s CEO also issued a press release acknowledging the breach, suggesting that it was a state-sponsored attack.

In unrelated news, the EU drug regulator was also hacked last week, exposing COVID-19 vaccine data.

MEDIA

What is the price of your privacy?

L''Atelier BNP Paribas has simulated a virtual assistant set in 2030 to explore the future privacy implications of our daily data decisions. The Choose Your Own Adventure experiment allows you to explore 1,100 pathways for your data and the technologies that enable them. Try it out and watch how sharing your personal data could transform your life.

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

mRNA breakthrough enables COVID-19 vaccines

Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines were seen as a far-fetched solution until Moderna and BioNTech recently announced successful COVID-19 vaccines. After 15 years of research, a recent breakthrough finally made mRNA stable enough to be delivered to humans.

mRNA vaccines, like other vaccines, boost the body''s immunity to reduce the likelihood of an individual catching an infectious disease. Unlike other vaccines, however, they can be developed much faster and can target a wider set of pathologies.

mRNA is a protein created in the process of sending information from the DNA in a cell''s nucleus to the body''s protein-making machines. It is a genetic blueprint for building proteins. Most vaccines work by injecting dead or harmless versions of a virus, or some characteristic proteins from a virus, to allow the body to recognise the pathogen and develop a faster and more efficient response when faced with a harmful version. mRNA vaccines, however, inject this blueprint instead of a weakened virus or part of a virus into the body. The body can then use the mRNA to build a protein characteristic of the virus and develop immunity.

This property makes mRNA vaccines even safer than traditional vaccines as at no point does any part of the pathogen (such as COVID-19) enter the body through the vaccine. The versatility of the technology also helps speed up vaccine development for new pathologies. In fact, mRNA vaccines are currently being developed to treat certain types of cancer, such as melanoma.

DATA

Assess the COVID-19 risk of your holiday gatherings

An interactive map showcases the localised risk of attending an event based on COVID-19 infection rates in the US and Europe. The tool developed by the Georgia Institute of Technology and Stanford University statistically accounts for the increase in testing and for the underestimation of tested cases compared to the real infection rate. The exact methodology has been published in Nature Human Behaviour.

The tool clearly presents the risk of gathering in groups. If we assume that the real number of cases is five times larger than tested, a hypothetical 10-person gathering in Paris has a 13% chance of including a person who is COVID-19 positive. In some areas of the US, a 10-person gathering has a 99% chance of including a COVID-19-positive individual.

Some people plan to get tested before meeting up with families for the holidays. However, the time lag between the moment of testing and the gathering, and the unreliability of tests makes this a risky endeavour nonetheless. Even if you are willing to risk your own health and your family''s, triggering a super spreader event could cost your community dearly.

If you must meet, remember to maintain physical distancing, gather outdoors, wear a mask, and limit the size of your party. Zoom is also offering free and unlimited video calls during Thanksgiving.

MEDIA

AI designs a 3D-printed supercar

CZinger, an American supercar company, used computational engineering and 3D printing to design and build its latest model. Zinger AI used parameters set by humans to generate futuristic designs based on the most efficient possible structure rather than conventional car parts. The machine, for example, diminished the length of wire needed around the car, reducing both the weight of the vehicle and the space traditionally taken up by cabling. Many of the bespoke parts were then 3D printed and assembled by robotic arms. The result is an impressive hybrid gasoline V8 engine that powers 1250hp and a 0-60mph time of just 1.9 seconds.

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

A quantum network made up of eight nodes has been successfully tested in the city of Bristol in the United Kingdom. This experiment paves the way for the development of a quantum internet that enables safer online communication.

The experiment improves on quantum key distribution (QKD) technology that allows two users to share cryptographic keys without the risk of interception. However, with QKD as the number of users increases, the number of required receivers balloons. For example, a hundred users in a QKD network would require nearly 10,000 boxes, hampering scalability.

The research article describes eight users with eight receiver boxes connected across the city via the existing fiber optics network. A QKD network would have required 58 boxes instead. 

This breakthrough is enabled by a novel "multiplexing entanglement" methodology. The technology splits light particles emitted by a single user across the network, hence "multiplexing," and leverages quantum entanglement properties, or the ability of a pair of particles to mimic each other's state at a distance without communicating.

The team of scientists is optimistic that their network can be scaled to millions of users at a low cost by retrofitting existing internet fiber infrastructure.

DATA

Crypto wallet holding $700m up for grabs

A crypto wallet file holding 69,000 Bitcoin (over $700 million) is currently traded via hacker networks. The wallet is reportedly the seventh largest in existence. The file is encrypted, so whoever breaks that encryption, could in theory control the money.

The locked file is currently selling for more than $1,000 on locked wallet marketplaces. Analysts warn that the received file could be malicious or even forged. They also warn that this wallet contains another person's private funds.

Crypto wallets are wallet.dat computer files that can be copied, uploaded, or shared electronically. Wallet files contain public and private cryptographic keys that allow a user to claim and control the cryptocurrency. The currency itself is stored and maintained on a decentralised ledger or blockchain.

Earlier this year, a former Google engineer claimed to have recovered nearly $300,000 worth of cryptocurrency locked in an encrypted zip file.

MEDIA

Create your own toy cryptocurrency

Interactive crypto currency demo ToyCoin allows users to play with many facets of crypto. The demo can run a crypto coin in a browser, make transactions, mine currency, and even allows some harmless hacking to showcase security features.

The intro tour walks the user through the steps of generating a demo wallet while providing helpful explanations. It is a great overview of the many complex processes that allow decentralised currencies to exist and function.

Advanced users may be interested in the code behind the demo, which is amazingly made up of only 220 lines.

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

Photons drastically improve neural network performance

Researchers from George Washington University have described a process that uses photons (or light) instead of electricity to enable more complex machine learning. The paper demonstrates that photonic transmission speeds up the performance of artificial neural networks (ANN) by orders of magnitude - up to the speed of light - with notable reductions in energy consumption.

ANNs are machine learning systems inspired by the human brain. They consist of software units that mimic neurons that process and transmit information to one another. Like a brain, the system can learn from a training dataset and then be used to solve complex problems. A limiting factor of the efficiency of ANNs is their processing speed. The electronic transmission of data from one neuron to another costs time and therefore money. The larger the training set, or the more complex the question, the slower the output. 

While it is yet unclear when the photon-based technology will make its way to consumer electronics, data centres and other high throughput entities could immensely benefit from this breakthrough method.

DATA

Microsoft, Nintendo among 50 firms hit by source code leak

Hackers have made public the source code of over 50 enterprises. The attack targeted banks, gaming giants, software and fintech companies. The impact of this leak is yet to be seen as bad actors can now pore over the software blueprints that run some of the most valuable companies around the world. The source code will allow anyone to understand how things work behind the curtain. The Nintendo leak, in particular, generated a lot of buzz online due to its massive scope and bizarre content.

What was also surprising is the poor security that was supposed to protect this valuable code. Check out this article to learn how to protect your organisation from similar attacks.

MEDIA

In visuals: how GPT-3 works

It is difficult to wrap one''s mind around how a machine can learn, be trained, and become capable of human-readable output. Jay Alammar has put together a series of animations that explain in simple terms how GPT-3, the cutting-edge tool released by OpenAI, has come into being. GPT-3 is an incredibly large and complex piece of code, however its mechanics are quite easy to grasp. For more detailed explanations about its architecture, check out this technical paper that describes it.

For more AI-related visual learning, check out this machine learning roadmap that describes the processes needed to properly leverage machine learning. Be sure to follow the branches to unravel great write-ups of the problems, resources, tools, and mathematics related to machine learning. This very long video will give you a walkthrough.

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

"Hello world," says bio-hacked connected bacteria

Scientists at the University of Padua in Italy have published a scientific paper in which they describe a method to store and transmit information using bacterial DNA. The bacterial nanonetworks can store archival information in bacterial DNA, and bio-engineered motile bacteria can retrieve and move that information to a different location. The first text stored and transmitted was "Hello world," an iconic phrase for computer programmers.

While it is unclear whether this technology can leave the lab, the real-world applications could be significant. The scientists are optimistic about large-scale data storage solutions "in the near future." MIT researchers foresee applications in smart cities for the detection of pathogens, pollution, and as data gathering tools.

DATA

Ghost work, the invisible human labour that powers AI

MEDIA

Machine learning lets us watch the Masters paint

In this week''s episode of nothing is sacred (and that''s awesome), machine learning unravels and reproduces the techniques of humanity''s most illustrous artists. MIT''s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has developed a machine that can take a photograph of a finished painting and produce a timelapse video of the steps taken to create it. The synthetic videos are so realistic that nearly half the time viewers were unable to differentiate between a time lapse of a real artist and the machine-generated videos. Watch a video of Timecraft in action here, and the code is available here.

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

GPT-3: The second coming of AI?

Remember the AI from two newsletters ago deemed to dangerous to release? It has evolved. OpenAI is planning to commercially release GPT-3, an updated version of GPT-2, the AI most famous for generating instant fake news. The internet went wild. Yes, 3 is bigger than 2, therefore GPT-3 must be better than GPT-2. But how much better? Well, it has over 100x more parameters. It is so big that it just cannot be run on traditional computers.

Twitter users freaked out over how it can write code out of descriptions or even build apps from a few sentences that describe what you want to achieve. Some had it write fiction in an infinity of languages, others looked for the meaning of life. 

Peeling off the hype and looking at the published paper, the developers outline the main strengths of GPT-3 as "translation, question-answering, and cloze tasks, as well as several tasks that require on-the-fly reasoning or domain adaptation, such as unscrambling words, using a novel word in a sentence, or performing 3-digit arithmetic." They also find that its news generation capabilities are now even better at fooling humans. GPT-3 is great, but it's not a game changer. Yet. In simple terms, GPT-3 is the mega-evolution of a Pok?mon, not a new type or even species. 

Nevertheless, VCs rushed to find startups that can leverage the model in their technology. However, many seem to forget that GPT-3 only knows what it is taught. In fact, since its training set stops in August 2019, it does not even know about COVID-19. It is also very slow. 

The fact that the AI will remain closed source is also problematic. This means that there will be no competitive advantage to startups implementing it as it cannot be edited or taught. Ironically, it may also slow down AI research as it demotivates even the most active developers of open-source software. They just cannot compete. It is also unclear how OpenAI will be able to scale this behemoth of a model commercially. 

DATA

Even with generational data, AI can't predict our lives

Predictive AI has long been touted as the end-all for policy making and impact evaluation. A study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America used 15 years of data to attempt to predict the lives of children in households across the US. The data comes from a Princeton study that collected data from a random sampling of children born in 2000 at 1, 3, 5, 9, and 15 years old. 

The challenge given to hundreds of social scientists was to make predictions across a series of outcomes that include household poverty levels, school performance and "grit." However, no matter the method used - from simple statistical analysis to machine learning - none were able to generate meaningful predictions. Critics of the study argued that it was flawed by design as it included subjective measurements such as "grit."

Regardless, this outcome raises concerns about the use of predictive algorithms for the prevention of crime or the allocation of justice, which may themselves be based on subjective criteria. Experts interviewed by MIT predict a 60-70% accuracy in the best possible outcomes of risk assessment algos used in the criminal justice system.

It is unclear whether policymakers understand the shortcomings of even the most advanced machines. The costs of algorithmic miscalculations would be unmeasurable, leaving little accountability to the policymakers who blindly implement life-altering policies based on inaccurate predictions. The societal costs of a software bug would be so incalculable that even the smartest machine couldn't compute them.

MEDIA

VR time machine allows artist to relive a year of his life

Viewer discretion advised

Lucas Rizzotto recorded a year of his life using Snapchat's face-mounted Spectacles for a year. He used two cameras to record in stereoscopic 3D to be viewed in VR, and then built and coded a retro-futuristic time machine. Don't you wish you could spend 2020 in 2019? I won't spoil the outcomes and learnings. Just enjoy the trip - back in time!

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

Your next gadget could be made of paper

Engineers at Purdue University have developed self-powered paper electronic devices using a novel printing process that transforms a flexible sheet of paper or cardboard into a keyboard or any other easy-to-use human-machine interface.

Videos published with the study show a printed sheet of paper coated with a novel liquid that allows multiple layers of electronic circuits to be printed invisibly. The scientists claim that the technology is likely to be scalable. The circuits are powered by contact with the user and require no external batteries thanks to vertical pressure sensors.

As a proof of concept, the research group developed a notebook that is also a musical input instrument. Watch it in action here.

DATA

Ransomware attack on hospital kills patient

A patient at a German hospital has died due the consequences of a ransomware attack at the D?sseldorf University Hospital. This is reportedly the first death directly caused by a cyber attack.

Ransomware attacks hit the mainstream in 2017 when hackers unleashed the WannaCry cryptoworm on 300,000 organisations, including a major telecom provider in Spain and National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in Great Britain, demanding Bitcoin as payment. 

Ransomware has since seen a seven-fold increase year on year thanks to the development of new software and ransomware-as-a-service business models. The amounts demanded are also growing. WannaCry hackers demanded the equivalent of $300 in Bitcoin in 2017, while earlier this year the University of California San Francisco had to pay a $1.14 million ransom to regain access to its data.

MEDIA

A map of all conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories are swirling around the internet like hurricanes. Often fueled by bots and capturing the minds of hundreds of millions of people the world over, they have become the religion of the internet.

Whether you believe that the Moon is made of cheese or that you've seen the Loch Ness monster, put on your tinfoil hat and explore Alex Eylar's map of secrets, theories, cover-ups, and other fascinating mysteries.

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

3D printer builds 2-storey home 

A Belgian firm has successfully completed a proof-of-concept two-storey home using 3D printing technology. While this is not the first example of 3D-printed architecture, it is most certainly the most ambitious and most practical. A 10-by-10-metre machine printed the shell of the house while the windows and roof were added by humans. 

The ability to standardise and automate construction would likely facilitate the development of low-cost human-scale housing. This also opens up the possibility to 3D print architecture from virtual worlds into the real world, creating analogue versions of virtual environments.

This technology will hit its stride once the printer becomes smaller than the object it needs to print, potentially using robotic arms or drones rather than scaffolding. Once combined with the ability to print metal and other materials, the potential applications could be endless.

DATA

6G expected in 2028 with focus on immersion 

The evolution from 2G to 5G took over 20 years, however it may take less than 10 for the mainstream adoption of 6G. As 5G technology gets deployed worldwide - not without controversy - Samsung announced significant progress on 6G. The company describes the technology as 50 times faster than 5G, with a tenth of the latency, or time of data "in flight."

In a white paper, Samsung says it aims to use 6G to enable high-fidelity mobile holograms and immersive Extended Reality (XR), a field that encompasses AR, VR and Mixed Reality (MR) technology. The company also claims that its technology will have the bandwidth to create digital twins that can fully replicate reality and enable human or sensor interaction in real time, at a massive scale.

MEDIA

Smart tattoos turn our skin into interactive electronics

Google is developing tattoos that interact with their environments. The rub-on temporary tattoos include ultra-thin electronics that can sense touch, bend, and squeeze interactions. They can even light up! The applications in the arts and in consumer technology are endless. Imagine turning your body into a musical instrument, or using subtle finger gestures to control the world around you. Watch it in action in this video from 2017. Unfortunately, the latest developments appear to be kept under wraps for now. Watch this space for updates.

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

Your future windows could be made of wood

A novel transparent material made from wood outperforms glass in durability, insulation, and cost. The findings published by the Forest Products Lab in the Journal of Advanced Functional Materials describe a process to transform plentiful and fast-growing wood into transparent sheets suitable for architectural use.

Glass production releases nearly 25,000 metric tons of carbon a year. Transparent wood is produced at a fraction of the environmental cost as it is treated at room temperature. The resulting material is lighter than glass and five times more thermally efficient. It is also compatible with existing industrial equipment, an important factor that could drive mainstream adoption once transparent wood enters mass production.

DATA

Machine learning makes fake news old news  

A new machine learning tool can identify fake news with 90% accuracy when tested on data from the 2016 US election. The novel application uses domain registration data to identify fake news sites before they go viral. By monitoring contextual information rather than content, the tool can act in real time. This makes it a useful tool to slow the spread of fake news on social media.

MEDIA

The chaotic beauty of biology

American company Digizyme has released incredible images of the landscape inside a human cell. The images are generated using X-rays, nuclear magnetic resonance, and datasets containing electron microscopy images. Take a moment to marvel at the landscapes and their detailed labels. You can even select a specific molecular pathway to highlight its components.

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives. This week, L''Atelier is launching a research report that breaks down the tech that will bring us to a transhumanist age of mixed real-virtual reality by the 2030s. Explore the Strativerse.

TECH

Want to control your dreams? There's an app for that

Much of the "research" around dreams often focuses on pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo, leaving the field a black box. An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the MIT Media Lab recently published a paper describing a device that can incorporate information into dreams. The paper outlines a Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI) protocol, a complex system of sensors controlled through an app that can not only create a sort of dream journal, but also help guide dreams. 

The technology was incorporated in Dormio, a website, app and device that tracks dreams and delivers audio cues "at precise times in the dream cycle to make dream direction possible." Even in early trials, Dormio appears to impact productivity, memory enhancement, and creativity levels once awake. 

Much of the applications in the short to medium term will serve to advance sleep science and dream engineering, and to better understand the human brain. In the longer run, this technology has the potential to enter the mainstream as a feature of wearable devices.

DATA

Data breach exposes more than 1 million DNA profiles

A security breach in July at genealogy service GEDmatch exposed 1.45 million DNA profiles, making their data available to law enforcement. The hacking attack was coordinated to breach a series of genealogy websites using phishing and taking advantage of the fact that many people reuse passwords across websites.

GEDmatch hit the mainstream when its data was used by law enforcement to catch the Golden State Killer in April 2018. The service is designed to help users find lost relatives through DNA matching, with an optional setting to share the data with law enforcement. The website quickly found resounding success, with around 1.3 million DNA profiles uploaded by the end of 2019, and more than 200,000 opting into the data-sharing arrangement.

Researchers and journalists quickly pointed out the immense security and privacy risk of sharing and centralising DNA data. Though we can change our passports or credit cards in case of theft, genetic data is forever. Moreover, due to the nature of genetics and advances in statistics, DNA profiles reveal a lot of information about users' relatives who may not even have heard of the website. Some researchers estimate that more than 60% of white Americans can be identified using the data in GEDmatch.

Protect yourself and others from phishing or links impersonating legitimate websites to steal information by following these guidelines.

MEDIA

Robot videos are the new cat videos

Boston Dynamics has been at the forefront of advances in robotics for decades. Since its acquisition by Google in 2014, the company has produced numerous viral videos of amazing robots that mimic humans or animals. My favourite is Spot, a robot that makes a terrifyingly adorable pet.

Good morning, readers. I''m Giorgio Tarraf and I spend too much time on the internet so you don''t have to. Every week, I compile articles that showcase the subtle, yet fundamental, ways technology transforms our lives.

TECH

Soft robots and other advances in robotics

From R2-D2 to Sophia, we have largely been conditioned to imagine robots as cold, hard machines that are only flexible at mechanically built joints. This could change soon as a researcher at Colorado State University has developed robotic arms made of soft common materials such as sewing thread. The power of this discovery lies in the flexibility, hardiness, ease of repair and low cost of the materials required to build robots that fit better in our daily lives. Imagine a 3D printer that can create simple tools out of a cheap, widely available spool of thread. Other applications mimic our biological muscles that are in fact made of threads of tissue working in sync to create accuracy, dexterity and strength. Though this discovery is at an early stage, it could transform robotics in the coming decade.

In other news, a paper in the journal Nature describes a robotic researcher that has been tested to conduct 688 experiments autonomously, for 22 hours a day. It is unclear what it did for the two remaining hours. Watch it in action here.

DATA

Balloons extend internet connectivity in Kenya

Google''s Loon project aims to bring connectivity to rural areas by using balloons to beam down a 4G LTE network from the stratosphere. The helium balloons are "tennis-court-sized" and have been tested in Peru and Puerto Rico during the past three years. The latest trial in Kenya showcases cutting-edge methods in broadband and earth science to maintain stable paths and continuous connectivity while surfing on the Earth's wind currents.

Internet access is a significant tool for development, notably in remote areas. Despite their shortcomings, Loon and other space internet technologies may help even out inequality in the long term by bridging the digital divide, especially as costs go down due to competitive pressure and economies of scale.

MEDIA

Live satellite photos of our pale blue dot

Zoom.Earth gathers images from weather satellites and displays them in near real time. The data is updated as often as every 10 minutes at some resolutions. You can travel in time or follow storm paths, large fires, and other large-scale events. The developers also maintain a great Twitter feed. It is a feat of cartography, computer science and data science.

Take a moment and ponder the beauty and fragility of our planet as we float together on our tiny pale blue dot.