Welcome to the June 16, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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EU Lawmakers Lay Groundwork for 'Historic' AI Regulation
Deutsche Welle (Germany)
June 14, 2023
On June 14, the European Parliament voted to regulate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems across the European Union, laying the groundwork for the passage of the first-of-its-kind AI Act. The proposed legislation is intended to both foster AI innovation and minimize AI threats to health and safety. AI systems would be categorized based on four risk levels, from minimal to unacceptable. Among other things, the law would take aim at "social scoring systems" that make judgments based on a person's behavior or appearance, applications that subliminally manipulate children and other vulnerable groups, and predictive policing tools. Said European Parliament member Dragos Tudorache, "We as a union are doing something that I think is truly historic.”
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Study Reveals TikTok's Spread of COVID-19 Misinformation
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Information Sciences
June 8, 2023
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Morgan Lundy investigated the TikTok video-sharing social media application's role in spreading misinformation about COVID-19. Lundy said qualitative analysis is required for such research because TikTok's video format complicates the detection of misinformation. She collected data by combining algorithm training and hashtag sampling and searched for "community language" rather than expected terms to acquire a broader depiction of misinformation's appearance on TikTok. Lundy found TikTok users opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine avoided anti-misinformation initiatives by using intentionally coded language, misspellings, and alternate hashtags. Her study found that logical fallacies, in which some information may be factual but leads to false conclusions, are often used to spread vaccine misinformation.
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Quantum Computing Advance Begins New Era: IBM
The New York Times
Kenneth Chang
June 14, 2023
IBM researchers simulated the behavior of 127 atom-scale bar magnets in a magnetic field using a 127-qubit quantum processor, generating better answers for the Ising model than a conventional supercomputer. Using error mitigation, the researchers added and varied the amount of additional quantum noise to assess its impact. IBM's Abhinav Kandala explained, "Once we have results of these different noise levels, we can extrapolate back to what the result would have been in the absence of noise." The calculation was performed 600,000 times, each taking less than a thousandth of a second. University of California, Berkeley physicists determined that the quantum algorithm used was more accurate than classical algorithms for complex but solvable configurations of the Ising model.
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Deep Learning-Based Software Detects, Tracks Individual Cells
UC Santa Cruz Newscenter
Emily Cerf
June 13, 2023
A deep learning model developed by University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz) researchers can follow a cell's lineage over time. The DeepSea model can segment and track individual cells and detect cell division with high accuracy. DeepSea helps overcome the challenges associated with manually sorting through time-lapse microscopy images, performing segmentation in under a second. Using DeepSea, the researchers discovered that embryonic stem cells regulate their size, allowing smaller cells to spend more time growing before they divide. The model's training data set, software, and open source code are available on the DeepSea website.
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Georgia Won't Update Dominion Software Until After 2024 Election
CNN
Zachary Cohen; Sean Lyngaas
June 14, 2023
A two-year-old report unsealed this week as part of a lawsuit in Georgia indicates state election officials will not update flawed voting software until after 2024, claiming it is safe despite federal recommendations for upgrades. The report highlights vulnerabilities for certain Dominion Voting machines previously confirmed by federal cybersecurity officials. Georgia election officials say it is highly improbable that malefactors will exploit the flaws, and they have already followed some security recommendations without updating the software. Report author Alex Halderman at the University of Michigan warned not correcting the flaws until 2025 is "worse than doing nothing, since it puts would-be adversaries on notice that the state will conduct the presidential election with this particular version of software with known vulnerabilities, giving them nearly 18 months to prepare and deploy attacks."
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Rust Most Admired Language, Survey Finds
InfoWorld
Paul Krill
June 15, 2023
The Stack Overflow 2023 Developer Survey found Rust to be the programming language respondents most admire, with nearly 85% of Rust-using software developers desiring to keep using it versus 58% for JavaScript and 66% for Python. TypeScript and C alternative Zig were the next most highly admired languages. JavaScript was the most commonly used programming language among the nearly 90,000 polled developers for the 11th consecutive year, followed by HTML/CSS and Python. PostgreSQL and Amazon Web Services were the most-used database and cloud platform, respectively. The two most-used Web technologies were Node.js and React, while GitHub Copilot and Tabnine were the tools used most by artificial intelligence developers.
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Blood Centers Go High Tech to Recruit Donors
CBS News Miami
June 14, 2023
The nonprofit Blood Centers of America and healthcare company Abbott hope to enlist a new generation of blood donors by implementing mixed-reality headsets from Microsoft. Abbott programmed the holographic glasses to immerse donors in a virtual zen garden they can explore with eye movements while their arms remain stationary as they give blood. Donors' eyes remain visible in the real world, so blood center staffers can monitor them as they donate. The goal is to keep first-time donors calm, and the developers hope the technology will help attract younger participants. The New York Blood Center deployed the technology in New York City, while Abbott said blood centers in Houston, Chicago, and Columbus, OH, also are using the headsets this summer.
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An ML Approach to Freshwater Analysis
Syracuse University College of Arts & Sciences
Dan Bernardi
June 12, 2023
Researchers at Syracuse and Texas A&M universities used machine learning (ML) models to investigate the effects of human activity on salinity and alkalinity in U.S. rivers. The researchers applied data from 226 river monitoring sites nationwide and developed ML models to forecast each site's monthly salinity and alkalinity concentrations, pinpointing elevating contributors by analyzing 32 watershed factors. The models determined human activities significantly affected salinity, while more natural factors primarily increased alkalinity. A sodium prediction model identified the two most important salinity contributors as population density and impervious surface percentage, which "matched those of previous studies which focused on field observation, lab work, and statistical analysis," according to Syracuse's Tao Wen. Scientists can incorporate these findings into future research about efforts to enhance rock weathering for stripping carbon from the atmosphere.
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Renault-Led Concept Car Offers Cyberattack Protection
Bloomberg
Benoit Berthelot
June 14, 2023
French automaker Renault partnered with five French companies to deliver a concept car that features advanced biometry, energy efficiency, and cybersecurity protection. Renault and chipmaker STMicroelectronics, software developer Dassault Systemes, telecom carrier Orange, defense firm Thales, and information technology provider Atos developed the H1st Vision concept's various innovations. Features include electricity-saving vehicle-to-grid bidirectional technology; a "detect and response" cybersecurity system linked to a response center; sensors in the steering wheel that can analyze the driver's mood and health; and biometric detection of the driver's silhouette and face when they approach the vehicle. The Software République consortium said these innovations would be available in the Renault 5 model, which should go on sale next year.
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A Human Eye-Mimicking Chip
Interesting Engineering
Christopher McFadden
June 14, 2023
A small electronic device developed by researchers at Australia's RMIT University, Deakin University, and the University of Melbourne can mimic human vision and memory. The device is made from doped indium oxide, a sensing element thousands of times thinner than a human hair. The device can capture light, transmit information, and classify the information in a memory system, functioning like the human eye and human brain without the need for external computation. Additionally, it can retain data for long periods without refreshing its memory via constant electrical signals. RMIT's Sumeet Walia said, "We've made real-time decision-making possible with our invention because it doesn't need to process large amounts of irrelevant data, and it's not being slowed down by data transfer to separate processors."
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Robots Bring Human Touch to Warehouses
The Wall Street Journal
Liz Young
June 12, 2023
Robotics developers are engineering humanoid robots to deploy in warehouses. The companies say the robots will help to alleviate labor shortages and make warehouse redesigns unnecessary. Agility Robotics' nearly six-foot-tall Digit robot can carry up to 35 pounds, crouch, lift storage containers, and walk to a conveyor belt to deposit its load. Agility's Jonathan Hurst said Digit is designed to perform repetitive tasks that operators cannot find people to do, like loading and unloading containers. Digit can run for two hours on a 60-minute charge; Agility said the robot is intended to operate within a fleet, with two working while a third recharges.
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Oceans to Get Better Protection with Connected Underwater Technology
Horizon: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine (Belgium)
Helen Massy-Beresford
June 14, 2023
European scientists are using technologies like the Internet of Underwater Things to monitor and safeguard the oceans, as well as delving deeper into the sea's mysteries. The European Union (EU)-funded TEUTA project engineered acoustic technology that mimics whale and dolphin communications and helped Croatia-based H20 Robotics develop and retail acoustic devices and robotic platforms for underwater wireless networks. The instruments collect data underwater, then broadcast it to surface buoys for wireless transmission to the base through the cloud. H20 Robotics' Vladimir Djapic said enhancing communication between divers and land-based colleagues is one application of interest. The EU-funded NAUTILOS project will furnish new insights into oceans' physical, chemical, and biological processes by collecting previously inaccessible information with new-generation marine technologies.
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JPL Creates PDF Archive to Aid Malware Research
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
June 14, 2023
Data scientists at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have compiled 8 million portable document formats (PDFs) into an open source archive for enhancing online security. The corpus is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Safe Documents program. Experts can look through this archive to find malware that could be concealed within the files' code to help predict emerging online threats and to augment PDF technology. The researchers identified the PDFs for inclusion using Common Crawl, a public repository of web-crawl data, while specialized software re-fetched truncated files. The approximately 8-terabyte dataset is the largest publicly available corpus of its type.
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