Today’s AI isn’t prepared for the messiness of reality

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What began as a warning label on financial statements has become useful advice for how to think about almost anything: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.” So why do so many in the AI field insist on believing the opposite? Too many researchers and practitioners remain stuck on the idea that the data they gathered in the past will produce flawless predictions for future data. If the past data are good, then the outcome will also be good in the future. That line of thinking received a major wake-up call recently when an MIT study found that the 10 most-cited data sets were riddled with label errors (in the training dataset, a picture of a dog is labeled as a cat, for example). These data sets form the foundation of how many AI systems are built and tested, so pervasive errors could mean that AI isn’t as advanced as we may think. After all, if AI can’t tell the difference between a mushroom and a spoon, or between the sound of Ariana Grande hitting a high note and a whistle (as the MIT study found and this MIT Tech Review article denotes), then why should we trust it to make decisions about our health or to drive our cars? The knee-jerk response from academia has been to refocus on cleaning up these benchmark data sets Read More …

Here’s how to fix cryptocurrency’s energy consumption problem

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Just as with mining in the real world, the people who mine cryptocurrency use powerful equipment to increase their chance of finding valuable resources. But all that power comes at a cost: namely, massive energy consumption. However, an alternative method for unearthing digital gold could change all that. It’s called “proof of stake,” and it’s a much more computationally efficient form of cryptocurrency mining. A very brief explanation of crypto mining This section could fill an entire book, but the very basic idea is that cryptocurrencies are decentralized, meaning that there’s no “bank” that holds all the digital coins Read More …

The Gmail-enhancing superpower you didn’t know you needed

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For a service that’s all about interacting with other (alleged) humans, Gmail does a curiously poor job of putting people front and center. Sure, the Gmail inbox is all about communication—but have you ever found yourself staring at an email and struggling to remember what you know about the person who sent it or exchanges you’ve had in the past? If you interact with enough mammals over email, it’s bound to happen. And Gmail just doesn’t have particularly powerful tools for providing the on-demand context you need to successfully navigate your way out of that situation. Up until a matter of months ago, in fact, Gmail didn’t have any real form of integration with its companion Google Contacts service. Late last year, Google added a Contacts panel into the website’s sidebar, which was a significant step—but the information in that panel is still pretty limited and lacking. You can see basic contact info for people who emailed you and a list of past emails involving them, and that’s about it. If you want any additional details, you’ll have to stop what you’re doing, click away from the message, and move over to a whole other page to find it. Read More …

The Gmail-enhancing superpower you didn’t know you needed

Posted onAuthoradmin

For a service that’s all about interacting with other (alleged) humans, Gmail does a curiously poor job of putting people front and center. Sure, the Gmail inbox is all about communication—but have you ever found yourself staring at an email and struggling to remember what you know about the person who sent it or exchanges you’ve had in the past? If you interact with enough mammals over email, it’s bound to happen. And Gmail just doesn’t have particularly powerful tools for providing the on-demand context you need to successfully navigate your way out of that situation. Up until a matter of months ago, in fact, Gmail didn’t have any real form of integration with its companion Google Contacts service. Late last year, Google added a Contacts panel into the website’s sidebar, which was a significant step—but the information in that panel is still pretty limited and lacking. You can see basic contact info for people who emailed you and a list of past emails involving them, and that’s about it. If you want any additional details, you’ll have to stop what you’re doing, click away from the message, and move over to a whole other page to find it. Let me tell you: You can do better. With the right add-on, you can bring detailed, genuinely helpful contact information right into your inbox—so you can see it right alongside messages and gain the context you need to interact intelligently. It’s similar to what you’d get with a customer relationship management (CRM) system, but you don’t have to work in sales to benefit from its presence. It’s an incredibly basic email function, in fact, and once you see how good Gmail can be with it in the mix, you won’t want to go back. Try out one of these three exceptional Gmail contact-enriching tools, and watch your email efficiency soar. Gmail enhancer #1: The custom contacts panel The simplest Gmail contacts enhancement worth considering is an add-on called, rather appropriately, Contacts+ . The service is available in a variety of forms , but the one you’ll want to use is the Chrome browser extension , which brings the most pertinent info directly into the Gmail website. Once you have the extension installed and you’ve signed up with the service, you’ll find a button to activate it in the panel at the right of the Gmail desktop site (if you don’t see that button, the little left-facing arrow in the lower-right corner of the screen will reveal it) Read More …

How the online echo chamber gave us the Arizona election audit

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Reporting on the audit of the 2020 presidential election now going on in Maricopa County, Arizona, National Memo’ s Steven Rosenfeld writes that one floor observer was overheard saying, “I hope they are fake ballots, because I am seeing so many Biden.” After the November 7 election, Trump supporters wondered how Biden could possibly have won when all they’d seen for months were reports of packed Trump rallies, yards filled with Trump signs, and excited Facebook posts about Trump and his upcoming win. They were honestly shocked when Trump lost. They simply couldn’t connect up their own experience with the result of the election. They live within a right-wing echo chamber where opposing viewpoints are rarely heard. They saw the widespread support for Biden only through the lens of right-wing misinformation and disinformation. They dismissed Biden’s continual lead in the polls as “fake.” Facebook, the go-to social media platform for Trump supporters in 2020, did a lot to contribute to the echo chamber. When the social network’s algorithms pick up on a user’s interest in right-wing content, it serves them more and more of it, and filters out other opinions. All through the campaign, many Trump supporters saw nothing but news posts and shared memes about Trump’s achievements as president, his huge rallies, and his mockery of Joe Biden and the Democrats. And right-wingers were, and remain, the most energized group on Facebook, even as Donald Trump remains expelled from the platform after he helped incite an insurrection on January 6. The top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages in the last 24 hours are from: 1. Dan Bongino 2. Franklin Graham 3. Read More …