Technology

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Inside Waymo’s Secret World for Training Self-Driving Cars

At any time, there are 25000 self-driving cars making their way through Austin, Mountain View, and Phoenix. Except not in the real world, but in a simulation, designed to test fully autonomous cars in thousands of scenarios. Fascinating insights into the race to make human drivers absolete.

From Weekly Filet #244, in August 2017.

Facebook’s Secret Censorship Rules Protect White Men from Hate Speech But Not Black Children

An important piece that sheds light on how Facebook decides on what is allowed on the platform and what gets removed. It has been shared widely and also been used as proof that Facebook is actively discriminating and opressing voices (the title of the piece certainly sets the tone). I think that’s wrong. Facebook deals with billions and billions of pieces of content every day and needs a set of rules that work across hundreds of national laws and cultural norms. That is a highly complex problem to solve. And while Facebook as arguably the worlds largest arbiter of human expression certainly needs to take more responsibilty, I don’t think lazy, one-dimensional criticism is helpful.

From Weekly Filet #238, in June 2017.

How Facial Recognition Works

A short explainer on facial recognition that works with your own face. There’s also a notable piece on the widespread use of facial recognition in China (the text is behind a paywall, the video isn’t).

From Weekly Filet #238, in June 2017.

Click Here to Kill Everyone

«You can think of the sensors as the eyes and ears of the internet. You can think of the actuators as the hands and feet of the internet. And you can think of the stuff in the middle as the brain. We are building an internet that senses, thinks, and acts. This is the classic definition of a robot. We’re building a world-size robot, and we don’t even realize it.» An important text by security expert Bruce Schneier on how dangerous the internet is becoming, why markets won’t help and why regulation is needed, but hard to do.

From Weekly Filet #233, in March 2017.

Yuval Harari, author of «Sapiens» on AI, religion, and 60-day meditation retreats

Can humans expect empathy from superintelligent entities once they are here? What does it mean when your doctor is an algorithm? And what will people do when there is no more work for them – or will there? your doctor is an algorithm? A super interesting talk with Yuval Harari, the author of «Sapiens» and now «Homo Deus». So many takeaways, but what instantly stuck with me: how he describes religion as a virtual reality game.

From Weekly Filet #232, in March 2017.

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