Tag: Design

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 faces rotated a full 90-degrees, the images became distorted and the spell was broken. The fakes fell apart at a sharp 90° profile. Credit: Metaphysic.ai The team believes the defects emerge because the software uses fewer…

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 a lot less spontaneous and a lot less flexible.  And I’m here to burst your bubble following the news of Samson Sky’s successful FAA inspection.  This week, after 14 years of design, R&D, and fundraising, Samson…

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 to like? But it’s our intent to convince you that it’s the single greatest AI-related threat our species faces by the time you finish reading this article. In order to properly understand this, we’ll have to…

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 unions.” The government reiterated the case during recent funding talks with Transport for London (TfL), which operates the local underground network. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps made working towards driverless trains a condition of the bailout. Shapps…

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 drones against diesel and electric medium-duty trucks, small vans, and electric cargo bicycles on a per-package basis. They found that greenhouse-gas emissions per parcel were 84% lower for drones than for diesel trucks. Unsurprisingly, drones consumed…

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 cars’ digital rendering (although anyone can view and download it), but they’ll never get to lay a single hand on the vehicle. In fact, as per the study, buyers are willing to pay even more for…Thi

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 in a professional setting… would it? By now, you’ve probably heard about the Madbird job scam that hit the news back in February. Madbird was advertised as a British-based design agency run by a charismatic and…This stor

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 get built is, seemingly, completely up to the powers-that-be in the European and US political arenas. Cash rules everything The development of particle colliders has been one of humankind’s most expensive scientific endeavors. However, they haven’t…

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 high degree of maneuverability, with a video of Zapata flipping and turning the aircraft at speed while flying over water.   Not Zapata’s first rodeo Zapata crossing the English Channel Zapata’s had a long history with…

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 bodies,” Wang says. The assistant professor and his team envision a future where wearable biosensors can track indicators of health, including sugar, oxygen, and metabolites in people’s blood. With this purpose in mind, they have developed…