Like Google and Amazon before it, Apple has been caught sending voice assistant recordings to contractors, who listen to snippets of your requests and conversations, without telling anyone. In response to the privacy concerns that raises, Apple says it will eventually give users control over whether their Siri data gets sent to third-party eavesdroppers, but it's unclear whether that consent will be opt-in or opt-out. Letting people opt out of data collection is better than not giving them any choice at all. But for decades, that's been the extent of the conversation. It gives too many giant tech companies plausible deniability for the rampant hoovering of your personal information, and allows them to implicitly blame the victim when they overreach: Don't get angry at us, you could have opted out this whole time.

Apple has suspended its practice of having human contractors listen to users' Siri recordings to "grade" them, following a Guardian report revealing the practice. The company said it would not restart the programme until it had conducted a thorough review of the practice. It has also committed to adding the ability for users to opt out of the quality assurance scheme altogether in a future software update. Apple said: "We are committed to delivering a great Siri experience while protecting user privacy. While we conduct a thorough review, we are suspending Siri grading globally. Additionally, as part of a future software update, users will have the ability to choose to participate in grading."

A new study suggest that the same racial stereotypes applied to people are also applied to their mechanical kin. Researchers from the Human Interface Technology Laboratory in New Zealand say humans perceive robots that resemble humans to have a certain race and may apply stereotypes on the bot depending on the shade of its'skin'. The findings come from what's known as a shooter bias test. In the experiment, participants were shown various images of armed and unarmed subjects and asked to make a split-second reaction test based on the level of'threat.' Robots are more likely to be deemed a threat if their'skin' is darker An affirmative reaction came in the form of participants pressing a button, or in other words, choosing to pull the trigger. What they found was that people were more apt to'shoot' robots with darker tones than lighter ones even when they were posing no threat.

Amazon says that U.S. government requests for customer data have seen a substantial spike so far this year. As reported by TechCrunch, the most recent figures released from the company -- which date between January and June 2019 -- show a 14 percent increase in subpoenas and a nearly 35 percent increase in the number of search warrants. Information handed over by the company comes from several sources according to TechCrunch, including Amazon's Echo voice assistant, Alexa, its e-reader, the Kindle, and even its home security devices sold by Ring. The company also experienced an uptick in interest for its cloud services, Amazon Web Services, which separately reported a 77 percent uptick in the number of subpoena requests over the last six-month period. According to data released in the company's latest report, Amazon's response varied depending on the type of requests.

Scientists have created a new insect-sized robot that's virtually weightless, yet can still withstand the density of a human being. Researchers at the University of California, Berekely, developed the miniature device based on the durability of cockroaches. Measuring just one inch-long and 1.5cm wide, it's lighter than a grain of sand can scurry across the floor at a speed comparable with the real thing. Developers hope the gadgets can assist in future search and rescue missions, where they can access hard-to-reach places. The robot was built using Piezoelectric materials, which expands or contracts in response to electric voltage. To manage this reaction, researchers coated the PVDF in a layer of an elastic polymer, which made the material bend, rather than grow or shrink.

If you suffered during the recent record-smashing heatwave across Europe, there's bad news. Such heatwaves are the new normal for countries like the UK, and we can expect even more extreme ones in the next few years, say climate scientists who have studied the event. "People say, oh this is historic and this will make history," says Friederike Otto of Oxford University in the UK. "It will probably not make history because we should expect that these records will be broken in the next few years."

Suppose we scan 1 million similar women, and we tell everyone who tests positive that they have cancer. Then we will have correctly told all 10,000 women with cancer that they have it. Of the remaining 990,000 women whose lumps were benign, we will incorrectly tell 49,500 women that they have cancer. Therefore, of the women we identify as having cancer, about 83 percent will have been incorrectly diagnosed. Imagine you or a loved one received a positive test result.

Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician who lived in the first half of the 19th century. In 1842, Lovelace was tasked with translating an article from French into English for Charles Babbage, the "Grandfather of the Computer." Babbage's piece was about his Analytical Engine, a revolutionary new automatic calculating machine. Although originally retained solely to translate the article, Lovelace also scribbled extensive ideas about the machine into the margins, adding her unique insight, seeing that the Analytical Engine could be used to decode symbols and to make music, art, and graphics. Her notes, which included a method for calculating the Bernoulli numbers sequence and for what would become known as the "Lovelace objection," were the first computer programs on record, even though the machine could not actually be built at the time.1 Though never formally trained as a mathematician, Lovelace was able to see beyond the limitations of Babbage's invention and imagine the power and potential of programmable computers; also, she was a woman, and women in the first half of the 19th century were typically not seen as suited for this type of career. Lovelace had to sign her work with just her initials because women weren't thought of as proper authors at the time.2 Still, she persevered,3 and her work, which would eventually be considered the world's first computer algorithm, later earned her the title of the first computer programmer.

I recently attended the Shift Happens conference in Washington, D.C., which focuses on digital transformation within the modern workplace. Industry leaders and analysts as well as technology visionaries spoke about a number of hot topics, including artificial intelligence, the internet of things and the future of technology. The idea behind the conference is to bring technology thought leaders together with practitioners to spark discussion around where technology will take our world in the years ahead. With technology evolving faster than ever before and data being collected at previously unimaginable levels, it's critically important for business owners and compliance officers to understand and prepare so they can minimize future shock. These shifts in perspective were at the core of the session by Toni Townes-Whitley, president of regulated industries at Microsoft: "Digital Leadership: Insights from the Trenches."

Travel protection may be one of the least exciting elements of the vacation purchase journey, but technology has radically reshaped the product and service delivery over the last five years, with even greater changes on the horizon for travel agents and consumers alike. Today, travelers can avail themselves of a host of services that could not have been developed without technology. For example, airline passengers can request their insurance company track their flights, and if there is a delay that meets their plan's terms and conditions, a claim can be automatically filed, and funds transferred to their bank account even while they are waiting in an airport lounge to depart. "Proactive payments for some travel delays, digital payments made directly to debit cards, and a focus on claims automation have drastically altered the way our customers get reimbursed for covered travel situations," said Dan Durazo, Allianz director, marketing and communications, USA. "These innovations have simplified and expedited the claims process to put money back in travelers' pockets faster than ever before," he said.