Welcome to the December 30, 2022, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
Please note: In observance of the New Year holiday, TechNews will not be published on Monday, January 2. Publication will resume on Wednesday, January 4, 2023.
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Code-Generating AI Can Introduce Security Vulnerabilities
TechCrunch
Kyle Wiggers
December 28, 2022
Software engineers who use code-generating artificial intelligence (AI) systems are more likely to cause security vulnerabilities in the apps they develop, according to researchers affiliated with Stanford University. Their study looked at Codex, an AI code-generating system developed by research lab OpenAI. The researchers recruited developers to use Codex to complete security-related problems across programming languages, including Python, JavaScript, and C. Participants who had access to Codex were more likely to write incorrect and “insecure” solutions to programming problems compared to a control group, and they were more likely to say that their insecure answers were secure compared to the people in the control.
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Europe Taps Tech's Power-Hungry Data Centers to Heat Homes
The Wall Street Journal
Sam Schechner
December 30, 2022
In the past year, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft have begun connecting, or announced plans to connect, data centers to district heating systems in Ireland, Denmark, and Finland. Similarly, Google has said it is assessing opportunities to recover heat from its data centers across Europe, while Meta Platforms has been recovering excess heat from its data center in Odense, Denmark since 2020. Higher energy prices have boosted the financial incentive for tech companies to invest in systems necessary to sell off their excess heat. The EU, meanwhile, is in the final stages of negotiating a new directive that would require center operators to conduct feasibility studies of using their excess heat for homes and offices.
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Cambridge Researchers Develop VR Tool for Cancer Treatment
PC Magazine
Marco Marcelline
December 29, 2022
Video game designers and cancer researchers have teamed up at the U.K.'s University of Cambridge IMAXT Laboratory to turn spreadsheet data into highly detailed virtual reality (VR) imagery of cancer cells. With a VR headset, users can essentially step inside patients’ tumors, making it easier to assess the severity and origin of the cancer cells and glean better insight into how tumors can be treated.
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Robots Grip Better when They Grip Smarter
IEEE Spectrum
Charles Q. Choi
December 28, 2022
A robot has been trained by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute to grasp items of various sizes, weights, shapes, and surfaces. The team had the robot attempt to grab items from an open bin that were initially oriented in ways that would not allow the robot to pick them up. Researchers used reinforcement to train a neural network; as the system attempted random actions to grasp an object, it was rewarded when those actions led to success. The system eventually adopted the most successful patterns of behavior. After first training the system in a physics simulator, researchers then tested it in a simple robot with a pincer-like grip.
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To the Highest Bidder: A Military Database of Fingerprints, Iris Scans
The New York Times
Kashmir Hill; Ismay, John; Christopher F. Schuetze
December 27, 2022; et al.
German security researcher Matthias Marx successfully bid on eBay for a Secure Electronic Enrollment Kit, or SEEK II, which contained the names, nationalities, photographs, fingerprints, and iris scans of 2,632 people, mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq. Many were known terrorists and wanted individuals but others appeared to be people who had worked with the U.S. government or had been stopped at checkpoints. Over the past year, Marx and other researchers at the Chaos Computer Club, a European hacker association, bought six biometric capture devices on eBay, most for less than 200 Euro. Of the six, two of the SEEK II devices had sensitive data on them. The second SEEK II, with location metadata showing it was last used in Jordan in 2013, appeared to contain the fingerprints and iris scans of U.S. service members. “It was disturbing that they didn't even try to protect the data,” Marx said, referring to the U.S. military.
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Young People Want Trustworthy Mental Health Apps
University of Edinburgh
December 21, 2022
A lack of trust in mental health apps may prevent young adults from engaging with them, according to researchers at the U.K.'s University of Edinburgh. The researchers used statistical models to assess the attitudes of 248 participants between the ages of 17 and 25 toward digital health technologies. They observed a small to moderate positive association with higher intentions to use a digital mental health resource when the technology was perceived as trustworthy and useful. However, there was no difference in intention to use a resource based on perceived ease of use or mental health need. "These findings suggest there should be a focus on developing trustworthy digital health interventions with evidence about usefulness and effectiveness to improve uptake among young people," said the University of Edinburgh's Vilas Sawrikar.
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Why Restaurant Chains Are Investing in Robots and What It Means for Workers
CNBC
Amelia Lucas
December 27, 2022
This year brought a flurry of automation announcements in the restaurant industry, as it copes with staff shortages and higher labor costs. Automation solution providers say that robots are more consistent than overworked employees, and that artificial intelligence can improve the drive-thru process. Experts, however, say it will be years before robots pay off for companies or take the place of workers. More than a year and a half ago, McDonald's began testing software that could take drive-thru orders. At about two dozen test restaurants, the voice-ordering software had an accuracy in the low 80% range, well below the target of 95%.
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Recreated 'Blue Marble' Photo of Earth Tests Powerful Climate Model
Space.com
John Loeffler
December 25, 2022
To test a new climate modeling program, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) in Germany used climate simulation and weather data from 1972 to recreate the iconic "Blue Marble" image of the Earth taken by the crew of Apollo 17 that year. The team fed the 50-year-old weather data into a computer model that crunched hundreds of interacting climate variables. Starting two days prior to when Apollo 17 launched and the Blue Marble photo was taken, the simulation reproduced the weather conditions that produced the cloud cover and weather systems seen in the original image. The simulation goes beyond the atmosphere, incorporating the oceans as well. "Unlike the superficial beauty of the sun's light reflected by our Earth into the astronaut's camera lens, our Blue Marble is connected together by the laws of physics, which brings it into life and into motion," wrote MPI-M officials.
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Cheerful Chatbots Do Not Necessarily Improve Customer Service
Georgia Tech Research
December 21, 2022
Chatbots displaying positive emotions do not always improve customer service, according to Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) researchers. Chatbots expressing emotion used positive emotional adjectives such as "excited," "delighted," "happy," or "glad," and deployed more exclamation points. One analysis revealed that positive emotion was more beneficial when expressed by human agents rather than bots. A second study found participants appreciated positive chatbots more in communal rather than transactional exchanges, and a final analysis found customers who expect emotional chatbots tend to react positively to them.
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Quantum Computer Helps Ford Find Better EV Battery Materials
Popular Science
Harry Guinness
December 24, 2022
Ford researchers modeled electric vehicle battery materials using a quantum computer. The team calculated the ground-state energy of LiCoO2, a material that could be potentially used in lithium-ion batteries, using the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) algorithm to simulate gas-phase models. VQE uses a hybrid quantum-classical approach with the quantum computer employed to solve the parts of the molecular simulation that benefit most from its unique attributes. Researchers said that quantum-based computational chemistry on the kinds of quantum computers that will be available in the near-term will play “a vital role to find potential materials that can enhance the battery performance and robustness.”
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Astronauts Getting Their Medical Training from Playing Video Games
ZDNet
Stephanie Condon
December 23, 2022
Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, has partnered with Level Ex to train the crew of the upcoming Polaris Dawn space flight to perform medical ultrasound procedures. Level Ex uses real-time simulation technology to gamify medical training on applications that can be downloaded onto phones. In 2019, it received a grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to create the most realistic real-time ultrasound simulation ever, to provide "just-in-time" training to astronauts. Building on that work, Level Ex then partnered with SpaceX and others to develop just-in-time training and in-flight procedural guidance to help crews use an ultrasound. During the Polaris Dawn mission, the crew will track their blood flow patterns and measure the effectiveness of that training, with the ultimate goal of preparing future space travelers to monitor their health during long missions.
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AI Behind ChatGPT Could Help Spot Early Signs of Alzheimer's Disease
Drexel University
December 22, 2022
OpenAI's GPT-3, the artificial intelligence algorithm used in its ChatGPT chatbot, could be used to predict the early stages of dementia, according to researchers at Drexel University. The researchers trained the program using transcripts from a dataset of speech recordings that were compiled to test the ability of natural language processing (NLP) programs to predict dementia, then had the program identify whether transcripts from the dataset were produced by someone in the early stages of Alzheimer's. They found that GPT-3 outperformed two of the top NLP programs in accurately identifying both Alzheimer's and non-Alzheimer's examples. The researchers also found that GPT-3 was nearly 20% more accurate in predicting patient scores on the Mini-Mental State Exam, which is commonly used to predict dementia severity.
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Laid-Off Tech Workers Quickly Find New Jobs
The Wall Street Journal
Sarah Chaney Cambon; Gwynn Guilford
December 27, 2022
About 79% of workers recently hired after a tech-company layoff or termination landed a new job within three months of starting their search, according to a ZipRecruiter survey. Separate labor-market figures suggest employers across industries are still seeking to hire tech workers, though less so than earlier in the pandemic. For example, software developer job ads on Indeed.com are down 34% from a year earlier, and ads for mathematics roles—which include data scientists—are 28% lower. Overall postings are down 7.7% from a year ago. “With tech workers, it's a much bigger pullback,” said Nick Bunker of Indeed Hiring Lab. “It's still above pre-pandemic levels, but if the current trend keeps up, I don't imagine that talking point will be true anymore at some point next year."
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