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NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Sunday postponed a Trump administration order that would have banned the popular video sharing app TikTok from U.S. smartphone app stores around midnight. A more comprehensive ban remains scheduled for November, about a week after the presidential election. The judge, Carl Nichols of the U.S District Court for the District of Columbia, did not agree to postpone the later ban. The ruling followed an emergency hearing Sunday morning in which lawyers for TikTok argued that the administration's app-store ban w...
IBM is getting out of the facial recognition business, saying it's concerned about how the technology can be used for mass surveillance and racial profiling. Ongoing protests responding to the death of George Floyd have sparked a broader reckoning over racial injustice and a closer look at the use of police technology to track demonstrators and monitor American neighborhoods. IBM is one of several big tech firms that had earlier sought to improve the accuracy of their face-scanning software after research found racial and gender disparities....
The Pentagon is adopting new ethical principles as it prepares to accelerate its use of artificial intelligence technology on the battlefield. The new principles call for people to "exercise appropriate levels of judgment and care" when deploying and using AI systems, such as those that scan aerial imagery to look for targets. They also say decisions made by automated systems should be "traceable" and "governable," which means "there has to be a way to disengage or deactivate" them if they are demonstrating unintended behavior, said Air Force L...
BOSTON (AP) — Did an artificial-intelligence system beat human doctors in warning the world of a severe coronavirus outbreak in China? In a narrow sense, yes. But what the humans lacked in sheer speed, they more than made up in finesse. Early warnings of disease outbreaks can help people and governments save lives. In the final days of 2019, an AI system in Boston sent out the first global alert about a new viral outbreak in China. But it took human intelligence to recognize the significance of the outbreak and then awaken response from the p...
Amazon wants President Donald Trump to submit to questioning over the tech company's losing bid for a $10 billion military contract. The Pentagon awarded the cloud computing project to Microsoft in October. Amazon later sued, arguing that Trump's interference and bias against the company harmed Amazon's chances. Amazon was considered an early front-runner for a project that Pentagon officials have described as critical to advancing the U.S. military's technological advantage over adversaries. The project, known as Joint Enterprise Defense...
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — You may not think you're in the same league as Jeff Bezos when it comes to being a hacking target. Probably not, but you — and just about anyone else, potentially including senior U.S. government figures — could still be vulnerable to an attack similar to one the Amazon founder and Washington Post owner apparently experienced. Two U.N. experts this week called for the U.S. to investigate a likely hack of Bezos' phone that could have involved Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A commissioned forensic repor...
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Tell your refrigerator about your dietary preferences and it'll concoct a recipe plan for the coming week, sending a shopping list to your smartphone when it notices you've run out of the right ingredients. Counter-top robotic arms help chop veggies. Artificially intelligent oven cameras and internet-connected meat thermometers keep track of what's cooking. And then — voila! — a stove-top camera can show off your culinary creations on Instagram. These are some of the new "smart kitchen" tech features on display this week at th...
The Trump administration is proposing new rules to guide future federal regulation of artificial intelligence used in medicine, transportation and other industries. But the vagueness of the principles announced by the White House is unlikely to satisfy AI watchdogs who have warned of a lack of accountability as computer systems are deployed to take on human roles in high-risk social settings, such as mortgage lending or job recruitment. The White House said that in deciding regulatory action, U.S. agencies "must consider fairness,...
Google, the company that helped make it fun to just sit around surfing the web, is jumping into the fitness-tracker business with both feet, buying Fitbit for about $2.1 billion. The deal could put Google in direct competition with Apple and Samsung in the highly competitive market for smartwatches and other wearable electronics. But it also raises questions about privacy and Google's dominance in the tech industry. The company's announcement Friday came with a promise that it won't sell ads using the intimate health data that Fitbit devices...
Employee activism and outside pressure have pushed big tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google into promising to slash their carbon emissions. But there's another thing these tech giants aren't cutting: Their growing business ties to the oil and gas industry. When Microsoft held an all-staff meeting in September, an employee asked CEO Satya Nadella if it was ethical for the company to be selling its cloud computing services to fossil fuel companies, according to two other Microsoft employees who described the exchange on condition...
A federal judge has dismissed allegations that bidding for a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon was rigged to favor Amazon. Friday's ruling dismissing Oracle's claims clears the Defense Department to award the contract to one of two finalists: Amazon or Microsoft. It will be a boon for whichever company gets to run the 10-year computing project, which the U.S. military considers vital to maintaining its technological advantage over adversaries and accelerating its use of artificial intelligence in warfare. Oracle and IBM...
Hopes that the tech industry was on the cusp of rolling personal robots into homes are dimming now that several once-promising consumer robotics companies have shut down. The latest casualty was San Francisco startup Anki, maker of the playful toy robot Cozmo, which upon its release in 2016 seemed like the start of a new wave of sociable machines. That dream ended this week when Anki CEO and co-founder Boris Sofman gathered many of the company's nearly 200 employees to deliver the news that all of them would be laid off Wednesday. The bad news...
Congress is starting to show interest in prying open the "black box" of tech companies' artificial intelligence with oversight that parallels how the federal government checks under car hoods and audits banks. One proposal introduced Wednesday and co-sponsored by a Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Cory Booker, would require big companies to test the "algorithmic accountability" of their high-risk AI systems, such as technology that detects faces or makes important decisions based on your most sensitive personal data. "Computers are...
Apple's ambitious leap into streaming video illustrates an escalating trend: Tech's biggest companies, faced with limits to their growth, are encroaching on each other's turf. Apple is taking on Netflix by launching a subscription TV service with its own original shows. Facebook is edging into Amazon's e-commerce sphere by enabling users to make purchases within Instagram. Google, which has already challenged Amazon and Microsoft in cloud computing, is launching an online game service that could undercut the lucrative game-console business at...
A group of Microsoft workers is demanding the company cancel a contract supplying the U.S. Army with HoloLens headsets that they say would turn real-world battlefields into a video game. Microsoft's head-mounted HoloLens displays use augmented reality, which means viewers can see virtual imagery superimposed over the scenery in front of them. A letter signed by more than 50 Microsoft employees Friday and circulated on an internal messaging board said the technology could help soldiers spot — and kill — adversaries on the battlefield. They say t...
At the heart of Apple's shocking FaceTime bug, which allowed just about anyone to turn an iPhone into a live microphone, stands a 14-year-old boy who stumbled upon the eavesdropping flaw more than a week before Apple took action. "The thing that surprised me the most was that this glitch happened in the first place," said Grant Thompson, a high school freshman in Tucson, Arizona. "I'm only 14 and I found it by accident, instead of the people at Apple that get paid to find glitches." Not only that, but Grant and his mom said they spent a week...
Robots aren't replacing everyone, but a quarter of U.S. jobs will be severely disrupted as artificial intelligence accelerates the automation of existing work, according to a new Brookings Institution report. Thursday's report from the Washington think tank says roughly 36 million Americans hold jobs with "high exposure" to automation — meaning at least 70 percent of their tasks could soon be performed by machines using current technology. Among those most likely to be affected are cooks, waiters and others in food services; short-haul truck d...
SEEKONK, Mass. (AP) — A wheeled robot named Marty is rolling into nearly 500 grocery stores to alert employees if it encounters spilled granola, squashed tomatoes or a broken jar of mayonnaise. But there could be a human watching from behind its cartoonish googly eyes. Badger Technologies CEO Tim Rowland says its camera-equipped robots stop after detecting a potential spill. But to make sure, humans working in a control center in the Philippines review the imagery before triggering a cleanup message over the loudspeaker. Rowland says 25 of t...
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Every year, the CES gadget show brings more devices promising to make life a little bit easier for harried parents. Sure, the kids might love them too: who wouldn't want a computerized Harry Potter wand that also teaches coding? The Las Vegas show's growing "family tech" sector encompasses products that range from artificially intelligent toys and baby monitors to internet-connected breast pumps. Their common thread is an appeal to parental anxiety about raising smart kids, occupying their time, tracking their whereabouts a...
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The CES 2019 gadget show is revving up in Las Vegas. Here are the latest findings and observations from Associated Press reporters on the ground. DING-DONG, THE PEEPHOLE IS RINGING Ring is giving the old-school peephole a high-tech spin. The company unveiled a new internet-connected video doorbell that fits into most peepholes. The new device is aimed at apartment dwellers or college students who want a video doorbell, but may not be allowed to install one next to their doors. Amazon bought Ring last year, giving it a shot a...
Microsoft's big bet on cloud computing is paying off as the company has surpassed Apple as the world's most valuable publicly traded company. The software maker's prospects looked bleak just a few years ago, as licenses for the company's Windows system fell with a sharp drop in sales of personal computers. But under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has found stability by focusing on software and services over the internet, or the cloud, with long-term business contracts. That 1990s personal-computing powerhouse is now having a renaissance moment,...
Intentionally or not, Microsoft has emerged as a kind of internet cop by devoting considerable resources to thwarting Russian hackers. The company's announcement Tuesday that it had identified and forced the removal of fake internet domains mimicking conservative U.S. political institutions triggered alarm on Capitol Hill and led Russian officials to accuse the company of participating in an anti-Russian "witch hunt." Microsoft stands virtually alone among tech companies with an aggressive approach that uses U.S. courts to fight computer fraud...
Microsoft has uncovered new Russian hacking efforts targeting U.S. political groups ahead of the midterm elections. The company said Tuesday that a group tied to the Russian government created fake websites that appeared to spoof two American conservative organizations: the Hudson Institute and the International Republican Institute. Three other fake sites were designed to look as if they belonged to the U.S. Senate. Microsoft didn't offer any further description of the fake sites, although it has previously outlined in court filings how this...
BOSTON (AP) — Personal home robots that can socialize with people are starting to roll out of the laboratory and into our living rooms and kitchens. But are humans ready to invite them into their lives? It's taken decades of research to build robots even a fraction as sophisticated as those featured in popular science fiction. They don't much resemble their fictional predecessors; they mostly don't walk, only sometimes roll and often lack limbs. And they're nowhere close to matching the language, social skills and physical dexterity of p...
Facebook is spending heavily to avoid a repeat of the Russian interference that played out on its service in 2016, bringing on thousands of human moderators and advanced artificial intelligence systems to weed out fake accounts and foreign propaganda campaigns. But it may never get the upper hand. Its adversaries are wily, more adept at camouflaging themselves and apparently aren't always detectable by Facebook's much-vaunted AI. They employ better operational security, constantly test Facebook's countermeasures and then exploit whatever holes...
