Category: Stories
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Now you know: Blogging is ‘un-Christian’
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Andrew Orlowski
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Blathering on blogs is un-Christian, an Evangelical church has warned. “Blogging has become a socially accepted practice – just as are dating seriously too young, underage drinking and general misbehaving,” notes the monthly of the Reformed Church of God, Ambassador Youth. Blogging “often makes the blogger feel good or makes him feel as if his…
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Do Artificial Intelligence Chatbots look like their programmers?
by
Andrew Orlowski
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Do pets eventually resemble their owners? Or do owners get to look like their pets? It’s heck of a conundrum – but one we might now be a little closer to solving. For the past fortnight it’s been hard to escape the animated faces of “Joan”, or “George” the graphical representations of what we’re told…
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The Emperor’s New AI
by
Andrew Orlowski
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“It looks like you’re trying to have a conversation with a computer – can I help? In the early 1970s, no science show was complete without predictions of HAL-like intelligent autonomous computers by the turn of the century. The Japanese, fearing their industrial base would collapse without a response to this omniscient technology, poured hundreds…
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Are Google’s glory days behind it? – Colly Myers
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Andrew Orlowski
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Colly’s prognosis was sound. In December 2008, Google announced its intention to make “social search” a significant factor in its search results – the end of the hegemony of the algorithm. “It’s a well known aspect of man and machine systems. Complex systems with no control fall over. Every example of it you can think…
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Google vows to keep hoarding your porn queries
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Andrew Orlowski
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“With so many people searching for keywords like murder, kill, suicide, etc., are we a mentally/emotionally sick nation?” writes a concerned AOLer at AOLSearchLogs.com, a forum that accompanies a searchable database of AOL user’s queries. Another AOLer moves swiftly to quell his concerns. “As a whole, no,” responds ‘Matthew’, with the confidence of a veterinary…
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AOL’s search logs: the ultimate “Database Of Intentions”
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Andrew Orlowski
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AOL Labs prompted a weekend of hyperventilation in the ‘blogosphere’ by publishing the search queries from 650,000 users. This mini-scandal may yet prove valuable, however, as it reveals an intriguing psychological study of the boundaries of what is considered acceptable privacy. In his turgid book on Google – one so obsequious and unchallenging that Google…