Music made with AI will be eligible for a Grammy
To better reflect an evolving industry, artists using machine learning for their compositions now have the opportunity to win an award. However, as stressed by Harvey Mason Jr. – CEO of the Recording Academy – only the human creators who contributed to a song can be nominated. Last month, the Recording...
Current in Technology
Can Atlantic Declaration reinforce UK as an AI leader?
Rishi Sunak's recent meeting at the White House was his opportunity to defy his critics and demonstrate the UK's potential to lead the AI industry. The last few years have seen growth in AI development, impacting economies worldwide. Recently, Sunak revealed that the UK will host a significant summit on artificial...
A once-retired California mine could supply the US renewable revolution
The US may have its own rare Earth element supply chain, and the very first in the Western Hemisphere at that. Could this end China’s dominance over the West’s renewable revolution? Just across the border from Nevada resides the only large-scale rare-Earth element mine in the entire Western Hemisphere. Named Mountain...
Tencent launches WeChat Palm Payments in China
This week, Tencent started introducing palm recognition through its WeChat Pay service. The tech is to be installed in Beijing’s Airport Express Line, where it will take payments by scanning people’s palm prints and their unique formation of veins without physical contact. Like the idea of completing financial transactions with...
Wimbledon to use AI commentary at upcoming championships
The All England Club has teamed up with tech group IBM to leverage the boom in large language models such as ChatGPT to cover matches that would ordinarily be watched in silence. Although Wimbledon has a reputation for favouring tradition over change, it’s set to follow a global trend...
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...
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 of AI tools and services. Despite years of AI research and in-house work, the company has been unable to create popular...
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, especially in Africa. Despite the continent’s rapid technological advancement, there is still a significant gap in the access and use of...
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 generative systems like ChatGPT. The British-Canadian earned his chops over half a century in computer science and cognitive phycology. Now, at...
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 on both adversaries and allies. It caused distress over the future of the country’s foreign relationships within government. Despite the fanfare,...
