Business, Spoken

The operations overlords of WIRED make me use Airtable. It's a hip workflow tracker, with pretty color coding and copious tabs and a “robust” API that syncs with Slack. It's also, apparently, a superhero. The Captain America of spreadsheets. Airtable isn't just a shinier version of Excel—it's on a self-professed mission to “democratize software creation by enabling anyone to build tools that meet their needs.

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In November 2017, a Reddit account called deepfakes posted pornographic clips made with software that pasted the faces of Hollywood actresses over those of the real performers. Nearly two years later, deepfake is a generic noun for video manipulated or fabricated with artificial intelligence software. The technique has drawn laughs on YouTube, along with concern from lawmakers fearful of political disinformation.

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In January, Liz O’Sullivan wrote a letter to her boss at artificial intelligence startup Clarifai, asking him to set ethical limits on its Pentagon contracts. WIRED had previously revealed that the company worked on a controversial project processing drone imagery. O’Sullivan urged CEO Matthew Zeiler to pledge the company would not contribute to the development of weapons that decide for themselves whom to harm or kill.

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As casual dining chains have declined in popularity, many have experimented with surveillance technology designed to maximize employee efficiency and performance. Earlier this week, one Outback Steakhouse franchise announced it would begin testing such a tool, a computer vision program called Presto Vision, at a single outpost in the Portland, Oregon area. Your Bloomin' Onion now comes with a side of Big Brother.

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In March, Yoshua Bengio received a share of the Turing Award, the highest accolade in computer science, for contributions to the development of deep learning—the technique that triggered a renaissance in artificial intelligence, leading to advances in self-driving cars, real-time speech translation, and facial recognition. Now, Bengio says deep learning needs to be fixed.

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The social media company acquires CTRL-Labs, a “brain-machine-interface” startup that lets users control devices by tapping signals off a wristband.

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An international cybersecurity group has evicted the Chinese telecom company to comply with US sanctions. That could allow malware to spread more easily.

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Regulators say Juul hasn't proved its claim that e-cigarettes are safer than tobacco, and uses misleading appeals to kids.

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A bill approved by the state senate would set a three-year moratorium on police use of recognition algorithms. Privacy advocates want a permanent ban

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