Lifeboat Foundation

ONE YEAR AGO Google artificial intelligence researcher Timnit Gebru tweeted, “I was fired” and ignited a controversy over the freedom of employees to question the impact of their company’s technology. Thursday, she launched a new research institute to ask questions about responsible use of artificial intelligence that Gebru says Google and other tech companies won’t.

“Instead of fighting from the inside, I want to show a model for an independent institution with a different set of incentive structures,” says Gebru, who is founder and executive director of Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research (DAIR). The first part of the name is a reference to her aim to be more inclusive than most AI labs—which skew white, Western, and male —and to recruit people from parts of the world rarely represented in the tech industry.

Gebru was ejected from Google after clashing with bosses over a research paper urging caution with new text-processing technology enthusiastically adopted by Google and other tech companies. Google has said she resigned and was not fired, but acknowledged that it later fired Margaret Mitchell, another researcher who with Gebru co-led a team researching ethical AI. The company placed new checks on the topics its researchers can explore. Google spokesperson Jason Freidenfelds declined to comment but directed WIRED to a recent report on the company’s work on AI governance, which said Google has published more than 500 papers on “responsible innovation” since 2018.

U.S. health officials on Wednesday reported the country’s first case of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, in a person in California.

The Covid-19 case was identified by the California and San Francisco health departments in a person who had traveled to South Africa and returned on Nov. 22, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a release. The individual, who was fully vaccinated with the Moderna shot but had not received a booster, had mild symptoms and has since recovered, federal and local officials said. The person has been isolating since testing positive on Nov. 29. All close contacts have tested negative thus far.

The discovery of Omicron in the United States is not a surprise. Upon characterizing the mutations in the variant, scientists in South Africa last week quickly raised the world’s alarms about the potential threat it posed, but it had already started to circulate silently. Some two dozen countries, from the United Kingdom to Australia to Israel, have already reported cases, many in travelers.

The new Covid variant omicron will likely “overwhelm the whole world” in the coming months, according to Singapore doctor Leong Hoe Nam.

People and companies are betting on life becoming more digitized and the much-hyped, little-understood metaverse taking off; virtual land is becoming as much of an investment as physical land, and if current trends continue, may stand to give early adopters a huge payout. Metaverse Group chose its plot of land very intentionally, and knows exactly what use it will be put to; located in Decentraland’s Fashion Street district, the space will be used “to facilitate fashion shows and commerce within the exploding digital fashion industry.”

Let’s back up a bit. Decentraland is a decentralized virtual world built on the Ethereum blockchain, with “decentralized” obviously being the key word and the platform’s big differentiator. “The people who use Decentraland own Decentraland,” Dave Carr, communications lead for the platform, told Euronews Next. “We have a decentralized autonomous organization in which people can submit proposals and vote on proposals submitted by others. And this effectively determines the future direction of Decentraland.”

Facebook, now Meta, aims to rule the metaverse of the future, but it seems likely that people will gravitate towards platforms like Decentraland precisely because they’re not owned or controlled by a centralized authority. Facebook hasn’t done a great job of earning its users’ trust, and it could take a long time for the company to turn consumer sentiment around. Meanwhile, Decentraland’s emphasis on autonomy and the lack of a single powerful decision-maker may be just what virtual world enthusiasts are looking for.

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At 2 mins 26 seconds when I say “Peter” I meant “Paul”. Sorry!

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Here’s a quick reminder that one of the expected results of the current pandemic is the slow, controlled, but inevitable destruction of the Canadian economy as government assets are secretly pulled out of circulation and redistributed to international bankers and their wealthiest clients.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is asking Parliament to approve billions in new spending during a brief four-week sitting in Ottawa, but is facing questions because it has not released a full accounting of how it spent more than $600Bln last year.

Electrify America announced that it has now deployed over 30 MW of battery capacity using Tesla Powerpacks at over 140 charging stations.

In 2019, Tesla and Electrify America, VW’s electric vehicle charging network, announced that they reached a deal for the former to deploy Powerpacks at more than 100 charging stations operated by the latter.

We have been tracking their progress in deploying those battery systems since it appears to be the largest deployment of energy storage at electric vehicle charging stations.

After Google ditched Qualcomm chips in its Pixel phones, Android chief Hiroshi Lockheimer brings a message of peace to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit.

Harrison.ai, a Sydney-based company that creates medical devices with AI technology, announced today it has raised $129 million AUD (about $92.3 million USD) in what it called one of the largest Series B rounds ever for an Australian startup.

The funding was led by returning investor Horizons Ventures and included participation from new investors Sonic Healthcare and I-MED Radiology Network. Existing backers Blackbird Ventures and Skip Capital also returned for the round, which brings Harrison.ai’s total raised over the past two years to $158 million AUD.

Harrison.ai announced it has also formed a joint venture with Sonic Healthcare, one of the world’s largest medical diagnostics providers, to develop and commercialize new clinical AI solutions in pathology. The partnership will focus first on histopathology, or the diagnosis of tissue diseases.