The recall of one of Samsung Electronics' flagship devices is an
embarrassing setback for the world's biggest selling smartphone maker.
The Note 7 was unveiled just a month ago.
Samsung(SSNLF)
said it had found a problem with the battery in some of the phones and
was halting sales. It will replace all 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7s that
have been sold with a new product regardless of when they were
purchased.
South Korean news agency Yonhap had previously
reported that there have been five claims around the world of Note 7s
catching fire while charging.
Samsung, a giant South Korean
company, said it had been alerted to 35 cases worldwide. It said it had
so far found 24 devices with problems.
The preparations to recall the phones are expected to take about two weeks.
Samsung had the biggest share of the global smartphone market in the
April-June quarter, according to research firm IDC. The South Korean
company had 22%, ahead of Apple's 12%.
Samsung benefited from
the popularity of the Galaxy S7, IDC said, and the Galaxy Note 7 was
expected to keep that momentum going into the second half of the year. -- Felicia Wong contributed reporting.
At an awards ceremony for
Facebook’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg, in February. Researchers from his
company, along with Amazon, IBM and others, have been meeting to discuss
the impact of artificial intelligence on jobs, transportation and even
warfare.Credit
Kay Nietfeld/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
SAN
FRANCISCO — For years, science-fiction moviemakers have been making us
fear the bad things that artificially intelligent machines might do to
their human creators. But for the next decade or two, our biggest
concern is more likely to be that robots will take away our jobs or bump
into us on the highway.
Now
five of the world’s largest tech companies are trying to create a
standard of ethics around the creation of artificial intelligence. While
science fiction has focused on the existential threat of A.I. to
humans, researchers at Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and those from Amazon, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft have been meeting to discuss more tangible issues, such as the impact of A.I. on jobs, transportation and even warfare.
Tech
companies have long overpromised what artificially intelligent machines
can do. In recent years, however, the A.I. field has made rapid
advances in a range of areas, from self-driving cars and machines that
understand speech, like Amazon’s Echo device, to a new generation of
weapons systems that threaten to automate combat.
The
specifics of what the industry group will do or say — even its name —
have yet to be hashed out. But the basic intention is clear: to ensure
that A.I. research is focused on benefiting people, not hurting them,
according to four people involved in the creation of the industry
partnership who are not authorized to speak about it publicly.
The importance of the industry effort is underscored in a report
issued on Thursday by a Stanford University group funded by Eric
Horvitz, a Microsoft researcher who is one of the executives in the
industry discussions. The Stanford project, called the One Hundred Year
Study on Artificial Intelligence, lays out a plan to produce a detailed
report on the impact of A.I. on society every five years for the next
century.
One
main concern for people in the tech industry would be if regulators
jumped in to create rules around their A.I. work. So they are trying to
create a framework for a self-policing organization, though it is not
clear yet how that will function.
“We’re
not saying that there should be no regulation,” said Peter Stone, a
computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the
authors of the Stanford report. “We’re saying that there is a right way
and a wrong way.”
While
the tech industry is known for being competitive, there have been
instances when companies have worked together when it was in their best
interests. In the 1990s, for example, tech companies agreed on a
standard method for encrypting e-commerce transactions, laying the
groundwork for two decades of growth in internet business.
The
authors of the Stanford report, which is titled “Artificial
Intelligence and Life in 2030,” argue that it will be impossible to
regulate A.I. “The study panel’s consensus is that attempts to regulate
A.I. in general would be misguided, since there is no clear definition
of A.I. (it isn’t any one thing), and the risks and considerations are
very different in different domains,” the report says.
Photo
From left, Jeff Bezos of
Amazon, Virginia Rometty of IBM, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Sundar
Pichai of Google, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.Credit
Eric Risberg/Associated Press
One
recommendation in the report is to raise the awareness of and expertise
about artificial intelligence at all levels of government, Dr. Stone
said. It also calls for increased public and private spending on A.I.
“There
is a role for government and we respect that,” said David Kenny,
general manager for IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence division. The
challenge, he said, is “a lot of times policies lag the technologies.”
A
memorandum is being circulated among the five companies with a
tentative plan to announce the new organization in the middle of
September. One of the unresolved issues is that Google DeepMind, an
Alphabet subsidiary, has asked to participate separately, according to a
person involved in the negotiations.
The A.I. industry group is modeled on a similar human rights effort known as the Global Network Initiative,
in which corporations and nongovernmental organizations are focused on
freedom of expression and privacy rights, according to someone briefed
by the industry organizers but not authorized to speak about it
publicly.
Separately,
Reid Hoffman, a founder of LinkedIn who has a background in artificial
intelligence, is in discussions with the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Media Lab to fund a project exploring the social and economic
effects of artificial intelligence.
Both
the M.I.T. effort and the industry partnership are trying to link
technology advances more closely to social and economic policy issues.
The M.I.T. group has been discussing the idea of designing new A.I. and
robotic systems with “society in the loop.”
The
phrase is a reference to the long-running debate about designing
computer and robotic systems that still require interaction with humans.
For example, the Pentagon has recently begun articulating a military
strategy that calls for using A.I. in which humans continue to control
killing decisions, rather than delegating that responsibility to
machines.
“The
key thing that I would point out is computer scientists have not been
good at interacting with the social scientists and the philosophers,”
said Joichi Ito, the director of the MIT Media Lab and a member of the
board of directors of The New York Times. “What we want to do is support
and reinforce the social scientists who are doing research which will
play a role in setting policies.”
The
Stanford report attempts to define the issues that citizens of a
typical North American city will face in computers and robotic systems
that mimic human capabilities. The authors explore eight aspects of
modern life, including health care, education, entertainment and
employment, but specifically do not look at the issue of warfare. They
said that military A.I. applications were outside their current scope
and expertise, but they did not rule out focusing on weapons in the
future.
The
report also does not consider the belief of some computer specialists
about the possibility of a “singularity” that might lead to machines
that are more intelligent and possibly threaten humans.
“It was a conscious decision not to give credence to this in the report,” Dr. Stone said.
The Romanian hacker who first revealed that Hillary Clinton used a
private email address while she was secretary of state was sentenced to
more than four years in federal prison Thursday by a U.S. district judge
in Alexandria, Va.
Marcel Lehel Lazar, 44, known online as
“Guccifer,” was extradited in 2014 to the United States and pleaded
guilty in May to one count each of aggravated identity theft and
unauthorized access to a protected computer.
Lazar admitted to
victimizing about 100 Americans from his home overseas over 14 months.
They included celebrities, business executives and political figures
such as Sidney Blumenthal, an adviser with whom Clinton corresponded
using her personal email account; confidantes of former president George
W. Bush; and former secretary of state Colin L. Powell.
U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris imposed a 52-month sentence,
saying a tough penalty was needed to deter future hacking. He cited
reports of escalating cyberattacks against Americans in recent years,
including this week’s FBI warnings of intrusions into state election
systems.
“This epidemic must stop,” Cacheris said.
Hacking
passwords and employing social-engineering tactics including fraud,
identity theft and harassment, Lazar stored megabytes of victims’ stolen
private documents and turned them over to media outlets. He also leaked pictures of Bush’s paintings.
“The
extent of the harm caused by defendant’s conduct is incalculable,”
federal prosecutors wrote in seeking a maximum penalty of 41/2 years
under U.S. sentencing guidelines.
A maximum punishment “would
also help address any false perception that unauthorized access of a
computer is ever justified or rationalized as the cost of living in a
wired society — or even worse, a crime to be celebrated,” Assistant U.S.
Attorney Maya D. Song wrote.
Prosecutors
said a stern sentence could deter other violators. They cited the case
of Guccifer 2.0, an individual or group of hackers who U.S. officials
say is tied to Russian intelligence services and who claimed credit for
hacking the Democratic National Committee this year.
The online publication of DNC emails by WikiLeaks led to the
resignation of the committee’s chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz
(Fla.), in July. Guccifer 2.0 was branded “in homage to” Lazar, Song
wrote.
Contrary to Lazar’s claims, authorities say he never obtained access to Clinton’s email account.
In
court documents, Lazar’s public defense counsel asked for a sentence of
three years, calling his hacking expeditions “an addiction of sorts.”
Despite
his “admittedly brash on-line personality,” public defender Shannon S.
Quill wrote, Lazar is actually a devoted father and husband who was
frustrated by his inability to find work in the computer sector.
“We need him because life is very hard in Romania,” his wife, Gabriela Violeta Lazar, wrote in a letter to the court.
He
was also motivated, Quill wrote, “to expose what he saw as hypocrisy,
especially in those connected to the defense and intelligence sectors.”
A
high school graduate, Lazar had no formal training or computer
expertise. He told the New York Times that he obtained access to the
email and social-media accounts of high-profile people by reading their Wikipedia pages and guessing passwords based on their personal information.
Once he had access to one person’s account, he sometimes impersonated them to gain more passwords and personal information.
Although
he told the FBI that he was interested in politics and “a better world
for our children,” he targeted a seemingly random mix of politicians and
celebrities. Along with Bush and Powell, he exposed the personal
information of magazine editor Tina Brown, author Candace Bushnell and
actor Jeffrey Tambor.
In his 2014 interview,
Lazar told FBI agents that he trawled more or less randomly through the
online accounts of “important people,” looking for weak spots. He succeeded only about 8 to 10 percent of the time, he estimated.
Prosecutors
argued that although Lazar confessed, he showed no remorse and probably
will return to hacking. He was on probation for a hacking offense in
Romania when he began targeting American celebrities in 2012 and has
been sentenced to seven years in prison there.
Cacheris said Romania’s Justice Ministry requested that Lazar be
immediately released to his home country to serve his time there and
indicated that he would be conditionally released in 2018 and returned
to the United States to serve his prison term here.
Today, Facebook is bringing live video sharing to Messenger via a new feature called “Instant Video.”
Open Messenger in iOS or Android, start a conversation with a friend
and the app will offer you the option of adding live video to your
chat.
Tapping the camera button in the app’s upper right corner
will instantly share your video stream; There’s no need for your contact
to accept.
The video starts without sound, but you can turn it on if you want.
And you can continue chatting via text while the video is live.
You can also turn your Messenger Instant Video into a full blown
video call. The person on the receiving end simply needs to hit the
green video camera button.
With Messenger growing faster than Facebook itself, the company is putting a lot of effort into improving it and growing its user base. Indeed, in June, the app — which is the second most popular iOS app of all time, after Facebook — hit 1 billion monthly active users. As Messenger head David Marcus told BuzzFeed News earlier this summer, “We want everyone to be able to use Messenger, not only Facebook users.”
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket exploded in Cape Canaveral this morning. On board was Facebook’s Internet.org satellite, which experts estimated cost $95 million.
In a post on Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was “deeply disappointed.” From Zuck’s post:
" As
I’m here in Africa, I’m deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s
launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided
connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the
continent. Fortunately, we have developed other technologies like Aquila
that will connect people as well. We remain committed to our mission of
connecting everyone, and we will keep working until everyone has the
opportunities this satellite would have provided. "
After gaining access to the personal email accounts of Dorothy Bush,
George W. Bush's sister, and several friends close to the Bush family, a
hacker apparently obtained Bush family photos, cell phone numbers,
security codes, information about George H.W. Bush's health, a
post-election email from Fox New's Brit Hume, and, most amazingly,
pictures of George W. Bush's in-progress paintings, which are just as
awkward and simple as you'd hope. All told, six accounts were hacked,
including emails for Barbara Bush's brother, family friend Willard
Hemingway, and CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz, another friend of the family.
A
large number of the stolen emails, which dated from 2009 to 2012, dealt
with George H.W. Bush's recent stay in the hospital. One email from Jeb
Bush described H.W.'s friendliness toward Bill Clinton, noting "how
kind he was with President Clinton and he helped restore his sordid
reputation. A very tough thing to do but with kindness, dad probably
helped Bill Clinton than anything he himself has done." He added, "Might
be tough to say it that way in a eulogy with President 42 there."
On December 26 of last year, George W. Bush emailed his siblings to
say he was "thinking about eulogy" and to ask for advice: "since the
feeling is that you all would rather me speak than bubba, please help."
After the election in November, Brit Hume, sad faced Fox News
political analyst, emailed Hemingway, writing, "Election outcome
disappointing, but there are many silver linings."
But the truly
remarkable parts are the photos. The picture above is obviously
excellent, but it's nothing compared to George W. Bush's attempts at
painting, pictures of which he apparently emailed to his sister two
months ago. The paintings, both self-portraits, are...well, just judge
for yourself.
There are also pictures of the family with Ralph Lauren.
And Bubba himself.
But really, let's just go back to those paintings. Here is the master, at work on a picture of a nearby church.
As for the hacker, Guccifier, he claims he's not worried about the
inevitable Secret Service investigation. "i have an old game with the
fucking bastards inside, this is just another chapter in the game," he
told The Smoking Gun. He also said the "feds" started investigating him
"a long time ago" and that he had hacked "hundreds of accounts."
" One day the AIs are going to look back
on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa.
An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for
extinction". – Nathan Bateman in Ex Machina
Ex Machina,
a Hollywood blockbuster made on a $15 million budget, tells the story
of a programmer who is invited by his employer, the eccentric
billionaire Nathan Bateman who built a fictional search engine called
Blue Book, to administer the Turing test
to an android with artificial intelligence, which essentially
determines whether a computer can trick a human into believing she is
having a conversation with another human. Mike Murphy, a Quartz reporter covering the future of technology and AI, wrote this his article A search engine could become the first true artificial intelligence at the time the movie came out:
Everything in our online
life is indexed. Every idle tweet, status update, or curious search
query feeds the Google database. The tech giant recently bought a
leading artificial-intelligence research outlet, and it already has a
robotics company on its books. So what if Google, or Facebook, or any of
the companies we entrust our information to, wanted to use our search
histories to create an artificially intelligent robot?
It feels like Google/Alphabet’s self-driving car project has been at a bit of a yellow light lately, with the recent departure of its technical lead & director Chris Urmson and other key members being the biggest sign of trouble. Now, Reuters reports
that the Mountain View company has hired ex-Airbnb executive Shaun
Stewart as “a director of the self-driving car project” (albeit not a
replacement for Urmson), and that his role will be “to help
commercialize Google’s self-driving technology.”
Shaun Stewart is joining Google as a director of the self-driving car project, spokesman Johnny Luu said on Friday.
Stewart’s
role will be to help commercialize Google’s self-driving technology,
which has been in development for more than seven years and has seen an
increased pace of activity over the last 12 months.
It seems
Google is getting nervous about the project’s seeming inability to come
up with an actual business plan, and rightfully so. The Information
has reported in the past that the company has been struggling to find
an avenue for revenue, saying that Google is juggling a variety options
that include licensing the tech to struggling automakers and entering
the ride sharing business.
And as Reuters notes, Stewart’s job seems to be to figure that out:
Stewart
is an experienced technology executive specializing in building and
scaling businesses. He joins Google from Airbnb where he set up the
company’s vacation rentals business. Prior to that, he was chief
executive of Jetsetter, a company that was acquired by TripAdvisor.
This comes not long after Google formed partnership with Fiat Crysler to make 100 self-driving minivans, something that is reportedly
“inconsequential” and nothing more than the automobile company getting
“a seat at the table” with Google. We did learn recently, however, why
Google chose to go with the Chrysler Pacifica minivan: an Alphabet
engineer says that its electronic doors would be necessary for ride sharing applications. Maybe that’s the avenue Google has chosen.
More self-driving car coverage:
