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Researchers have discovered a surprisingly simple way to detect deepfake video calls: ask the suspect to turn sideways. The trick was shared this week by Metaphysic.ai, a London-based startup behind the viral  Tom Cruise deepfakes. The company used DeepFaceLive, a popular app for video deepfakes, to transform a volunteer into various celebrities. Most of the recreations were impressive when they looked straight-ahead. But once the...

The idea of a car that turns into a plane in three minutes sounds like a dream. Imagine you’re driving along during peak hour. You get an alert of incoming traffic and shapeshift into an aircraft that takes to the skies, overtaking commuter delays, toll bridges, and construction delays — suck it, gridlock! But the reality of the flying car (aka air car) is...

In this series we examine some of the most popular doomsday scenarios prognosticated by modern AI experts. Previous articles include Misaligned Objectives, Artificial Stupidity, Wall-E Syndrome, Humanity Joins the Hivemind, and Killer Robots. We’ve covered a lot of ground in this series (see above), but nothing comes close to our next topic. The “democratization of expertise” might sound like a good thing — democracy, expertise, what’s not...

It’s strike season on the London Underground, and that means one thing for the UK’s interminable Tory governments: time to rev-up the driverless hype train. Conservative politicians have long called for a fully-autonomous metro. In 2012, then-London Mayor Boris Johnson said Britain’s capital would have driverless trains within 10 years. A decade later, he claimed the switch would free people from being “prisoners of the...

The future of last-mile package delivery is fast and contactless, with delivery providers focused on eliminating traffic and parking challenges. An increasingly prominent option is the use of uncrewed aerial vehicles or drones.  This week research comparing the environmental impact of different forms of last-mile delivery was published in the scientific journal Patterns. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University compared the energy consumption of quadcopter...

Say you had millions of dollars to spend. If you’re an automotive enthusiast, perhaps you’d buy the latest Ferrari or a 1956 Aston Martin. But would you spend an exorbitant amount for a car you can’t physically drive? It may sound illogical, but research by Vanarama shows people are digging deep into their pockets to buy car-related NFTs. This means that they own the...

Have you ever been catfished? Maybe you’ve met someone on a dating app and decided to go for a coffee or a drink, but when you showed up, the person looked nothing like their profile pictures. Unfortunately, this kind of deception is such a part of dating in 2022 that we’ve almost come to accept it. But that kind of deceit would never happen...

Experts believe some 80-percent of the universe could be made up of a mysterious substance called “dark matter.” Some even think there’s an entire group of particles forming a “dark sector” that could be as complex as the matter and antimatter families. Unfortunately, the quest to finally observe dark matter is hitting a wall. Simply put we need more particle colliders. And whether they...

In an effort to bring personal flying machines to the skies, French inventor and former jet-ski champion Franky Zapata is taking invites for people to try out his latest flying machine – the JetRacer.  Meet the JetRacer  The JetRacer is a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft powered by ten kerosene-fueled micro-turbo-jet engines.  The Zapata JetRacer Controlled by two joysticks, it’s capable of a...

What if wearable electronics could monitor your health and detect diseases even before symptoms appear? That’s exactly the vision of Sihong Wang and his research team at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME). “With this work we’ve bridged wearable technology with artificial intelligence and machine learning to create a powerful device which can analyze health data right on our own...

Today, social media users want serendipitous shopping experiences — where new brands and ideas pop up on their feeds like wizened wizards in an RPG. In this world, your social media profile is your shop window. How you dress it up, counts. If you’re a solopreneur or an influencer, social media will likely be one of the first touchpoints your audience will have with...

The USA’s “love affair with the automobile” hasn’t been kind to pedestrians. In 2020, more than 6,500 people were struck and killed while walking in the country. A new report by Smart Growth America lays most of the blame on roadways. “Our nation’s streets are dangerous by design, designed primarily to move cars quickly at the expense of keeping everyone safe,” the study authors...

Last month saw the Eurobike 2022 conference in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, bringing a swag of new ebikes, cargo bikes, and escooters to industry professionals and product enthusiasts. Here’s some of the tech that caught my eye. The Noordung ebike  At first glance, the Slovakian Noordung ebike looks like any cool, retro-inspired lightweight carbon fiber ebike. But it possesses a couple of superpowers. It...

Two Stanford heavyweights have weighed in on the fiery AI sentience debate — and the duo is firmly in the “BS” corner. The wrangle recently rose to a crescendo over arguments about Google’s LaMDA system. Developer Blake Lemoine sparked the controversy. Lemoine, who worked for Google’s Responsible AI team, had been testing whether the large-language model (LLM) used harmful speech. The 41-year-old told The...

This week an inquiry into the lies of truck and bus maker Hino Motors revealed why the brand doctored emissionsdata on gas-guzzling engines over the last 20 years. Their excuse: company culture.   Hino Motors, a Toyota Motor Corp affiliate, was found in March to have falsified data related to the carbon emissions and fuel performance of four engines – a deception that dates back...

Litigants could game Wikipedia to influence legal decisions, according to new research. A study led by Neil Thompson from MIT’s Computer Science and AI Laboratory (CSAIL) discovered that judges were more likely to cite legal cases that have a Wikipedia article. The finding has sparked  concerns that judicial decisions are being shaped by unreliable information. The openness of Wikipedia could also lead legal judgements...

This week farmers found big chunks of metal from a SpaceX Crew-1 Trunk in a remote paddock in rural Australia. While it’s not an everyday occurrence, rocket body reentries (parts of space debris returning to Earth) are a trend that’s likely to increase. The body of a Crew-1 trunk before it burned and landed back on earth.  Dr. Brad Tucker, Astrophysicist, and Cosmologist at...

AAA research shows that consumers may encounter as many as 20 names for a single advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) feature.  For example, take blind spot warning. This functionality detects vehicles in the blind spot while driving and notifies the driver of their presence. Some systems provide an additional warning if the driver activates the turn signal).  Audi calls blind spot warning “Audi side...

You might think new ideas in food startups are done to death. From ghost kitchens to 10-minute grocery deliveries, many people buy and cook our food, so we don’t have to.  Now, a US company called Wonder has created an entirely new business model: chefs-on-wheels.  It’s a somewhat novel idea. Consumers order food through a mobile app. The food is par-cooked (in ghost or...

This article is part of our coverage of the latest in AI research. Large language models like GPT-3 have advanced to the point that it has become difficult to measure the limits of their capabilities. When you have a very large neural network that can generate articles, write software code, and engage in conversations about sentience and life, you should expect it to be...

This article was originally published on .cult by Michiel Mulders. .cult is a Berlin-based community platform for developers. We write about all things career-related, make original documentaries, and share heaps of other untold developer stories from around the world. So you’ve spotted an eye-catching crypto project, but you’re wondering if it’s safe to actually take the leap and invest? Analyzing crypto projects for investment purposes...

This article was originally published on .cult by Louis Minvielle. .cult is a Berlin-based community platform for developers. We write about all things career-related, make original documentaries, and share heaps of other untold developer stories from around the world. If you remember our past investigations and analyses, you might remember a curious postulate we put forward: even though their talents are in high demand,...

The wind is great for producing electricity without generating greenhouse gas emissions. But there’s a dirty secret — what happens to turbines at the end of their life?  This week, a study by the University of South Australia’s Future Industries Institute revealed the huge waste legacy of discarded wind turbines. And the problem is only getting worse.  And as more countries transition from gas...

Human beings are inherently social creatures, having existed in close-knit hunter-gatherer groups for most of our 200,000-year history. Now we live in a world that is more connected than ever. 5 billion people have access to the internet. Revolutionary communication technologies like Facebook are free to use. These miracles should satiate our ancient need for community, right? Not quite. Paradoxically, loneliness is on the...