Month: December 2023

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If a machine or an AI program matches or surpasses human intelligence, does that mean it can simulate humans perfectly? If yes, then what about reasoning—our ability to apply logic and think rationally before making decisions? How could we even identify whether an AI program can reason? To try to answer this question, a team of researchers has proposed a novel framework that works like a psychological study for software.

"This test treats an 'intelligent' program as though it were a participant in a psychological study and has three steps: (a) test the program in a set of experiments examining its inferences, (b) test its understanding of its own way of reasoning, and (c) examine, if possible, the cognitive adequacy of the source code for the program," the researchers note.

They suggest the standard methods of evaluating a machine’s intelligence, such as the Turing Test, can only tell you if the machine is good at processing information and mimicking human responses. The current generations of AI programs, such as Google’s LaMDA and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for example, have come close to passing the Turing Test, yet the test results don’t imply these programs can think and reason like humans.

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Criminal suspects can refuse to provide phone passcodes to police under the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, according to a unanimous ruling issued today by Utah's state Supreme Court. The questions addressed in the ruling could eventually be taken up by the US Supreme Court, whether through review of this case or a similar one.

The case involves Alfonso Valdez, who was arrested for kidnapping and assaulting his ex-girlfriend. Police officers obtained a search warrant for the contents of Valdez's phone but couldn't crack his passcode.

Valdez refused to provide his passcode to a police detective. At his trial, the state "elicited testimony from the detective about Valdez's refusal to provide his passcode when asked," today's ruling said. "And during closing arguments, the State argued in rebuttal that Valdez's refusal and the resulting lack of evidence from his cell phone undermined the veracity of one of his defenses. The jury convicted Valdez."

Enlarge / Girl with an ecstasy tablet on her tongue. (credit: Getty | UniversalImagesGroup)

A corporation dedicated to studying the benefits of psychedelic drugs filed an application with the Food and Drug Administration this week for approval to use MDMA—aka ecstasy or molly—in combination with talk therapy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

If approved, it would be the first-of-its-kind combination treatment—a psychedelic-assisted therapy. An approval would also require the Drug Enforcement Administration to reclassify MDMA, which is currently in the DEA's most restricted category, Schedule I, which is defined as drugs "with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse." The category also includes LSD, heroin, and marijuana.

The public benefit corporation (PBC) that filed the FDA application was created by MAPS, The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which has been supporting this type of work since 1986. The application is based on positive data from two randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase III studies, which were funded and organized by MAPS and MAPS PBC.

File photo of the US military's X-37B test vehicle after a landing in 2012. (credit: Boeing)

China has launched its top-secret military spaceplane for a third time, days after the US military's winged spacecraft was grounded for several weeks due to problems with its SpaceX rocket.

Observers believe China's spaceplane looks much like the US military's X-37B, a reusable craft that Pentagon officials are similarly tight-lipped about. But there's a distinction in that US officials will publicly discuss, at least in broad terms, the purpose of the X-37B and release images of the spacecraft.

The US military has two X-37Bs in its inventory, each with a cargo bay that could fit a large refrigerator. They resemble small space shuttles, with dimensions about one-quarter those of NASA's retired shuttle orbiters. The X-37B spaceplanes have flown in space six times, logging missions as long as two-and-a-half years, thanks to deployable solar panels that generate power for greater endurance.

Enlarge / An assortment of Ubiquiti cameras. (credit: Ubiquiti)

Users of UniFi, the popular line of wireless devices from manufacturer Ubiquiti, are reporting receiving private camera feeds from, and control over, devices belonging to other users, posts published to social media site Reddit over the past 24 hours show.

“Recently, my wife received a notification from UniFi Protect, which included an image from a security camera,” one Reddit user reported. “However, here's the twist—this camera doesn't belong to us.”

Stoking concern and anxiety

The post included two images. The first showed a notification pushed to the person’s phone reporting that their UDM Pro, a network controller and network gateway used by tech-enthusiast consumers, had detected someone moving in the backyard. A still shot of video recorded by a connected surveillance camera showed a three-story house surrounded by trees. The second image showed the dashboard belonging to the Reddit user. The user’s connected device was a UDM SE, and the video it captured showed a completely different house.

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Chrome has finally announced plans to kill third-party cookies. It's been almost four years since third-party cookies have been disabled in Firefox and Safari, but Google, one of the world's largest ad companies, has been slow-rolling the death of the tracking cookie. Ad companies use third-party cookies to track users across the web, and that web activity is used to show users relevant ads. Now that Google's alternative user-tracking ad system, the "Privacy Sandbox," has launched in Chrome, it's finally ready to do away with the previous form of ad tracking. The new timeline to kill third-party cookies is the second half of 2024.

Google's blog post calls the rollout "Tracking Protection" and says the first tests will begin on January 4, where 1 percent of Chrome users will get the feature. By the second half of 2024, the rollout should hit everyone on desktop Chrome and Android (Chrome on iOS is just a reskinned Safari and is not applicable). The rollout comes with some new UI bits for Chrome, with Google saying, "If a site doesn’t work without third-party cookies and Chrome notices you’re having issues—like if you refresh a page multiple times—we’ll prompt you with an option to temporarily re-enable third-party cookies for that website from the eye icon on the right side of your address bar." Since other browsers have been doing this for four years, it's hard to imagine many web admins not being ready for it.

Chrome's new third-party cookies controls. (credit: Google)

Google says the rollout is "subject to addressing any remaining competition concerns from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority." Chrome's Privacy Sandbox switch represents the world's most popular browser (Google Chrome) integrating with the web's biggest advertising platform (Google Ads) and shutting down alternative tracking methods used by competing ad companies. So, some regulators are naturally interested in the whole process.