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Digital repression across borders is on the rise

“Digital targeting has a serious impact on the well-being of victims, undermines their ability to engage in transnational advocacy work, violates fundamental rights such as the right to privacy, freedom of expression,... Read more »

The secret police: A private security group regularly sent Minnesota police misinformation about protestors

“I felt like I was in a nightmare. It was just so deeply incongruous,” she says. “Honestly, I felt quite humiliated by it, because there were all these people who were trying... Read more »

The Download: a military AI boom, and China’s industrial espionage

Exactly two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Alexander Karp, the CEO of data analytics company Palantir, made his pitch to European leaders. With war on their doorstep, Europeans ought to... Read more »

Why business is booming for military AI startups 

Militaries are responding to the call. NATO announced on June 30 that it is creating a $1 billion innovation fund that will invest in early-stage startups and venture capital funds developing “priority”... Read more »

The Download: Tweaking AI for energy efficiency, and China’s leaked data

What’s the news?: Deep learning is behind machine learning’s most high-profile successes. But this incredible performance comes at a cost: training deep-learning models requires huge amounts of energy. Now, new research shows... Read more »

These simple changes can make AI research much more energy efficient

Since the first paper studying this technology’s impact on the environment was published three years ago, a movement has grown among researchers to self-report the energy consumed and emissions generated from their... Read more »

The Download: India’s deadly heatwaves, and the need for carbon removal

The residents of Nagla Tulai, a farming village in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, have always had to endure hot summers, but the past few years of punishingly cruel heat... Read more »

We need to draw down carbon—not just stop emitting it

But carbon removal has become a touchy topic. There are real concerns that the growing focus on drawing down the greenhouse gas could encourage governments and businesses to delay or even avoid... Read more »

No power, no fans, no AC: The villagers fighting to survive India’s deadly heatwaves

At the end of April, when the daytime temperature crossed 45 °C (113 °F), most residents of Nagla Tulai sought succor in the hot winds blowing outdoors. Since northwest India first began... Read more »

The Download: China’s livestreaming crackdown, and a huge police data hack

For Zeng, a young Chinese woman, an hour scrolling Douyin, the domestic version of TikTok, has become a daily ritual. Livestreaming took off in China in 2016 and has since become one... Read more »