Developing new AI is dangerous. But not doing it is even riskier.
We need more civic education on artificial intelligence, says Eileen Donahoe.
What’s more important to fight AI-enabled disinformation: policies or social norms?
Category: policy – Page 22
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The decline has come faster than the governments predicted. Will this change China’s stance?
Population in China has dipped for the first time in over 60 years, as per data released by the National Bureau of Statistics today. The country that had 1.41260 billion people in 2021 now has 1.41175 billion at the end of 2022. The small difference in decimals here is actually a difference of 850,000 people on the ground.
The decline in China’s population comes in the backdrop of the country reeling under an intense wave of COVID-19 infections after letting go of its ‘zero-COVID’ policy.
Danielvfung/iStock.
This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has captured rare footage of a black hole eating up a start and creating a gas cloud that is as large as the solar system.
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Leading The Global Fight Against Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) — Dr. Haileyesus Getahun, MD, MPH, Ph.D., Director of AMR Global Coordination, World Health Organization (WHO)
Dr. Haileyesus Getahun, MD, MPH, Ph.D. is Director of AMR (Antimicrobial Resistance) Global Coordination at the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Quadripartite (FAO/UNEP/WHO/WOAH) Joint Secretariat on Antimicrobial Resistance. (https://www.who.int/about/people/biography/dr-haileyesus-getahun)
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threatens the effective prevention and treatment of an ever-increasing range of infections caused by bacteria, parasites, viruses and fungi. AMR occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death. As a result, the medicines become ineffective and infections persist in the body, increasing the risk of spread to others. Over 1.27 million deaths worldwide were attributed to AMR infections in 2019. Antimicrobials — including antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals and antiparasitics — are medicines used to prevent and treat infections in humans, animals and plants. Microorganisms that develop antimicrobial resistance are sometimes referred to as “superbugs”.
Every year, the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) puts out its AI Index, a massive compendium of data and graphs that tries to sum up the current state of artificial intelligence. The 2022 AI Index, which came out this week, is as impressive as ever, with 190 pages covering R&D, technical performance, ethics, policy, education, and the economy. I’ve done you a favor by reading every page of the report and plucking out 12 charts that capture the state of play.
It’s worth noting that many of the trends I reported from last year’s 2021 index still hold. For example, we are still living in a golden AI summer with ever-increasing publications, the AI job market is still global, and there’s still a disconcerting gap between corporate recognition of AI risks and attempts to mitigate said risks. Rather than repeat those points here, we refer you to last year’s coverage.
Following China’s abrupt U-turn on zero-COVID policy last month, the country has seen an increase in COVID cases. A leading doctor at one of Shanghai’s top hospitals estimates that up to 70% of the city’s population has been infected with COVID-19.
A sharp-eyed developer at Krita noticed recently that, in the settings for their Adobe Creative Cloud account, the company had opted them (and everyone else) into a “content analysis” program whereby they “may analyze your content using techniques such as machine learning (e.g. for pattern recognition) to develop and improve our products and services.” Some have taken this to mean that it is ingesting your images for its AI. And … they do. Kind of? But it’s not that simple.
First off, lots of software out there has some kind of “share information with the developer” option, where it sends telemetry like how often you use the app or certain features, why it crashed, etc. Usually it gives you an option to turn this off during installation, but not always — Microsoft incurred the ire of many when it basically said telemetry was on by default and impossible to turn off in Windows 10.
That’s gross, but what’s worse is slipping a new sharing method and opting existing users into it. Adobe told PetaPixel that this content analysis thing “is not new and has been in place for a decade.” If they were using machine learning for this purpose and said so a decade ago, that’s quite impressive, as is that apparently no one noticed that whole time. That seems unlikely. I suspect the policy has existed in some form but has quietly evolved.
India will reach its population peak in 2065.
India is the second most populous country in the world. With 1,414 billion, it comes right after China. However, contrary to China’s population-reducing policy, India’s population is increasing and seems to surpass China in a few decades.
As BBC reported, China reduced its population growth rate by about half, from two percent in 1973 to 1.1 percent in 1983. According to demographers, much of this was accomplished by trampling on human rights.
A study suggests that the world’s population will shrink after 2100, reaching much lower numbers than what the U.N. currently predicts, and major shifts in economic power are also likely to happen.