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A.I. Is Not Sentient. Why Do People Say It Is?
Why Everyone Else Believes In the mid-1960s, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Joseph Weizenbaum, built an automated psychotherapist he called Eliza. This chatbot was simple. Basically, when you typed a thought onto a computer screen, it asked you to expand this thought — or it just repeated your words in the form […]
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The Word of the Year Is ‘Uncertainty’
More than two years into Pandemic Times, technology is more popular, stronger and richer than it was before. Or is it? This year — and particularly the past few weeks — has complicated what was a fairly straightforward understanding of how most of the tech industry and America’s superstar digital companies were faring. Repeatedly over […]
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Big Tech Is Proving Resilient as the Economy Cools
No boom can last forever, even for the technology industry’s most affluent companies. Investors punished the biggest tech companies earlier this year, erasing $2 trillion in market value over fears the industry would falter in the face of rising inflation and a slowing economy. But this week, as the United States reported that economic output […]
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The Default Tech Settings You Should Turn Off Right Away
There’s a catchy saying going around with a valuable lesson about our personal technology: The devil is in the defaults. The saying refers to the default settings that tech companies embed deep in the devices, apps and websites we use. These settings typically make us share data about our activities and location. We can usually […]
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Google Fires Engineer Who Claims Its A.I. Is Conscious
SAN FRANCISCO — Google fired one of its engineers, Blake Lemoine, on Friday, more than a month after he raised ethical concerns about how the company was testing an artificial intelligence chatbot that he believes has achieved consciousness. A Google spokesman, Chris Pappas, said Mr. Lemoine, a senior software engineer in its Responsible A.I. organization, […]
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The Tech Magic That Unleashed Your Best
Last week, our On Tech editor, Hanna Ingber, shared a story of her kiddo stumbling upon a design app that unlocked his amazing taste for interiors. We asked for your own tales of surprising ways in which technology helped you unleash creativity or discover new joys. You guys (sniff), the responses were lovely. We’re sharing […]
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The Google One-Star Review Scam Targeting Restaurants
In a new scam targeting restaurants, criminals are leaving negative ratings on restaurants’ Google pages as a bargaining chip to extort digital gift cards. Restaurateurs from San Francisco to New York, many from establishments with Michelin stars, said in recent days that they’ve received a blitz of one-star ratings on Google, with no description or […]
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Why South Korea Can’t Quit Internet Explorer
SEOUL — In South Korea, one of the world’s most technologically advanced countries, there are few limits to what can be done conveniently online — except if you’re using the wrong web browser. On Google Chrome, you can’t make business payments online as a corporate customer of one of the country’s largest foreign-owned banks. If […]
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Google Says It Will Delete Location Data When Users Visit Abortion Clinics
SAN FRANCISCO — Google said on Friday that it would delete abortion clinic visits from the location history of its users, in the company’s first effort to address how it will handle sensitive data in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The location data change will take place in the coming […]
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