Should we put restrictions on AI in music?
An anonymous artist called ‘ghostwriter’ created a song using AI-generated vocals from Drake and The Weeknd. It gained over 250,000 streams overnight before it was pulled from Spotify. Is this the start of an AI takeover in music? A song made using AI-generated vocals from The Weeknd and Drake was...
Current in Technology
Google launches new AI tool PaLM 2
In an attempt to keep up with the competition, Google has announced PaLM 2, a ‘next-generation language model’ that will be available for many of its upcoming products. It will be in direct competition with services like Midjourney and DALL-E. Google is attempting to throw itself back to the forefront...
AI ‘godfather’ Geoffrey Hinton warns of its risks and quits Google
For half a century, AI ‘godfather’ Geoffrey Hinton nurtured the technology at the heart of chatbots like ChatGPT. Now, having left Google, he warns it could cause serious harm in the future. Regarded by many as a ‘godfather’ of AI technology, Geoffrey Hinton’s pioneering research paved the way for sophisticated...
Closing the technology gender divide in Africa
Technology is an essential tool for social and economic development in Africa. However, despite significant progress in recent years, there is still a significant gender gap in technology access and participation across the African continent. As the world becomes increasingly digital, the gender divide in technology is a growing concern,...
Chicago researchers create EV battery prototype with 1,000-mile range
Researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory and the Illinois Institute of Technology have created a prototype battery with the potential to expand the range of electric vehicles to 1,000 miles. This could also be huge for sustainable aircrafts. The average electric vehicle on the market will likely have a range...
How has espionage evolved in the modern world?
Espionage has been a part of human history for centuries and will continue to be an issue in the modern world. Especially in the age of rapidly advancing technology. The US recently faced scrutiny after highly classified documents from the Pentagon leaked online, implicating that the US was spying...
Google employees reportedly call Bard ‘worse than useless’
In its efforts to prevent Microsoft and Open AI running away in the commercial AI chatbot race, Google rolled out Bard way ahead of schedule. A new report claims company employees begged executives not to launch it at the time. Chiefs at Microsoft probably can’t believe their luck. AI has long been tipped as the next massively lucrative venture within tech, and ChatGPT remains largely unchallenged as the benchmark product. In...
Opinion – dApps could eventually topple big tech
By democratizing our data, dApps could be the internet’s saving grace. Decentralized applications (dApps) are apps that run on block-chain or peer-to-peer technology, meaning that users interact directly with each other, not a central authority. This is not the case with most applications. Photos posted to Instagram, for example, are sent to Meta’s servers and redistributed to followers. Throughout this process, Meta has the power to censor content or decide...
Emergency alert phone notifications being tested in the UK
The first nationwide test of a public warning system that sends emergency notifications to UK mobile phones will take place later this month. Sundays in the UK are pretty decent; there’s Premier League football, often a lunchtime roast, and cherished time spent with family. What we wouldn’t typically associate our day of rest with, however, is a startling jolt of primal fear. Those in east Suffolk and Reading will soon have...
OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 is helping the visually impaired
The ubiquitous generative AI chatbot is already answering daily queries for visually impaired people with more detail and efficiency than human volunteers. While the recreational uses of AI continue to make headlines every week, the technology’s ability to make day-to-day living more accessible is going under the radar. Largely regarded as the benchmark for quality within tech’s latest race, OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 is now able to accurately break down visual prompts...
