“Thomas Jeffrey Hanks started following you.” It was this beguiling message that set off a bizarre chain of events in August that led to the Hellenic Institute of Cultural Diplomacy believing that American actor Tom Hanks would appear at an event it was organizing in Athens.
Source: Fake Tom Hanks fools NGO promising Athens appearance of US star | Life | ekathimerini.com
The Canadian scientist Donna Strickland is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo, a former president of the Optical Society and as of Tuesday, one of the winners of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics. But until the hours after Ms Strickland’s win, the physicist did not have her own Wikipedia page as she was not considered significant enough.
Source: Wikipedia criticised after it emerges female Nobel laureate had page rejected | The Independent
Consumer genomics is making it easier than ever to identify individuals from anonymous DNA databases. Even if you’ve never spit in a tube.
Source: Genome Hackers Show No One’s DNA Is Anonymous Anymore | WIRED
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women.
Source: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women | Reuters
Facebook Inc. said it removed 559 pages and 251 accounts that were coordinating the spread of misinformation and spam in the U.S. — and most originated from within the country.
Source: Facebook Removes 559 Pages, 251 Accounts Spreading U.S. Misinformation – Bloomberg
Using information from ten different cities around the world, the researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, have developed a model that can predict with 80% accuracy whether a new business will fail within six months. The results will be presented at the ACM Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp), taking place this week in Singapore.
Source: Social media data used to predict retail failure | University of Cambridge
A new algorithm called BigGAN creates detailed photos from scratch, representing a leap forward for AI. But it may come at a steep price.
Source: A Google intern’s BigGAN AI makes super realistic images
Facebook, Google, and smaller tech companies are now using machine learning to flag misinformation—but automated systems aren’t reliable enough on their own
Source: AI-Human Partnerships Tackle “Fake News” – IEEE Spectrum
Social media bots and Russian trolls promoted discord and spread false information about vaccines on Twitter, according to new research led by the George Washington University. Using tactics similar to those at work during the 2016 United States presidential election, these Twitter accounts entered into vaccine debates months before election season was underway.
«Μετά λύπης μου σας πληροφορώ ότι οι φήμες περί του θανάτου μου είναι κάπως υπερβολικές». Μ’ αυτήν τη φράση είχε αντιδράσει ο Μαρκ Τουέιν όταν δημοσιεύτηκε σε μια εφημερίδα η είδηση ότι πέθανε. Και είχε προβλέψει την πραγματική χρονολογία της αποδημίας του, γράφει η Κατερίνα Τζωρτζινάκη.
