Journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post, and Bloomberg promoted a “completely fake” statistic “that doesn’t seem to exist” about sexism in technology this week. Last week, the New York Times published an article claiming, “In a 2016 experiment conducted by the tech recruiting firm Speak With a Geek, 5,000 résumés with identical information were submitted to firms. When identifying details were removed from the résumés, 54 percent of the women received interview offers; when gendered names and other biographical information were given, only 5 percent of them did.”The validity of these statistics which subsequently went viral on social media, however, were called into question by Vox staff writer Kelsey Piper. “This statistic was so far off their experiences and mine that I was instantly suspicious. So I dug into it,” posted Piper on Twitter. “The ‘study’ was conducted by tech … [Read more...] about Journalists Fall for ‘Completely Fake’ Stats About Sexism in Tech
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This AI is so good at writing that its creators won’t let you use it
San Francisco (CNN Business)A new artificial intelligence system is so good at composing text, that the researchers behind it said they won't release it for fear of how it could be misused. Created by nonprofit AI research company OpenAI (whose backers include Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Microsoft), the text-generating system can write page-long responses to prompts, mimicking everything from fantasy prose to fake celebrity news stories and homework assignments. It builds on an earlier text-generating system the company released last year. Researchers have used AI to generate text for decades with varying levels of success. In recent years, the technology has gotten particularly good. OpenAI's initial goal was for the system to come up with the next word in a sentence by considering the words that came before it. To make this possible, it was trained on 8 million web pages. A handful of resulting demos that OpenAI posted online last week show just how convincing (and, at times, creepy) … [Read more...] about This AI is so good at writing that its creators won’t let you use it
Sundar Pichai Confirms Google Gave Money to National Review Institute
Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed that the tech giant gave funds to the National Review Institute, the policy arm of establishment conservative magazine National Review — but there is a discrepancy in Pichai’s explanation of why the donation is not listed in the company’s annual transparency report. Pichai used his written answers to congressional questions to disclose his company’s donation to the National Review Institute, which was revealed by National Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg last year. The Google CEO confirmed the donation, stating that it was made in 2018 and would, therefore, be disclosed in the company’s next report.“Google has a long history of supporting organizations on all sides of the political spectrum,” said Pichai. “Google was one of several corporate sponsors of the National Review Institute’s William F. Buckley Prize Dinner in 2018, which is scheduled to be reported in our upcoming … [Read more...] about Sundar Pichai Confirms Google Gave Money to National Review Institute
Bill de Blasio Lashes Out at Amazon over HQ2 Withdrawal
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio lashed out at Amazon, Sunday, for withdrawing from its plans to base half of its new “HQ2” headquarters in New York City. “This is an example of an abuse of corporate power,” claimed de Blasio in an interview with NBC. “Amazon just took their ball and went home. And what they did was confirm people’s worst fears about corporate America.”de Blasio also attacked Amazon in an article for the New York Times, Saturday. “A project that could’ve opened a path to the middle class for thousands of families was scuttled by a few very powerful people sitting in a boardroom in Seattle,” he expressed. “In the end, Amazon seemed unwilling to bend or even to talk in earnest with the community about ways to shape their project. They didn’t want to be in a city where they had to engage critics at all.” “Amazon’s path in New York would have been far smoother had it recognized our … [Read more...] about Bill de Blasio Lashes Out at Amazon over HQ2 Withdrawal
Student Initially Banned from Free Speech Debate for Saying ‘Women Don’t Have Penises’
A student from another university invited to participate in a debate on campus free speech at the University of Bristol in the U.K. was banned from the event after he re-tweeted an account that said, “women don’t have penises.” The university’s Students’ Union cited “security concerns” as its reason for exclusion. The student decided to attend the debate anyway and was eventually invited on stage. University of Durham student Angelos Sofocleous was banned from participating in a panel hosted by the University of Bristol’s Free Speech Society after retweeting an account that posted, “RT [retweet] if women don’t have penises.”Sofocleous was also dismissed from his role as assistant editor at Durham University’s philosophy society’s journal last August, after his tweets were deemed “transphobic” by some people, according to a report by BBC News. With regards to the student’s Twitter … [Read more...] about Student Initially Banned from Free Speech Debate for Saying ‘Women Don’t Have Penises’