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VOICE ARCHIVE

Niall Firth

@niallfirth
22 posts
2025-09-05
It's pretty insane how much this new Synthesia avatar looks and sounds like the real @rhiannonwilliams.bsky.social.  Basically can't tell them apart.  Just a bit less cynical... And if she starts praising Ed Sheeran or Wet Leg you'll know you've got the clone. www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/04/ 1...
2025-09-05 View on X
MIT Technology Review

How Synthesia is combining AI voice and video models to improve avatar realism with natural gestures and accent, intonation, and expressiveness preservation

Check out my story, featuring weirdly smooth hands, addictive AI, and Ed Sheeran bad-mouthing (sorry Ed) www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/04/ 1... Niall Firth / @niallfirth : It's ...

2025-06-12
A big story out today with fascinating implications: is it possible to make fair AI?  —  @technologyreview.com, @lighthousereports.com and the Dutch newspaper Trouw have gained unprecedented access to a failed attempt by Amsterdam to do so.  —  www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/11/ 1...
2025-06-12 View on X
MIT Technology Review

How Amsterdam's experiment to create a fair welfare AI model, which considered 15 characteristics to evaluate welfare applicants for potential fraud, failed

This story is a partnership between MIT Technology Review, Lighthouse Reports, and Trouw, and was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

2025-05-21
So excited to announce the launch of Power Hungry: our special report all about AI and our climate future.  It comes in multiple parts but first read the centerpiece: this one-of-a-kind investigation into the energy costs of generative AI queries. www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/ 1...
2025-05-21 View on X
MIT Technology Review

Analysis: AI's energy consumption is exploding, with data centers' electricity use doubling from 2017 to 2023, accounting for 4.4% of all US energy consumption

The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn't tracking and consider where it's heading next.

2025-03-27
some fascinating insights in this latest from @caiwei.bsky.social on the data center boom in China, and the impact of DeepSeek on the business of GPU rental there.  —  www.technologyreview.com/2025/03/26/ 1...
2025-03-27 View on X
MIT Technology Review

Sources: many new Chinese AI data centers sit unused due to weak demand and DeepSeek-driven shifts; local reports: up to 80% of new computing resources are idle

A year or so ago, Xiao Li was seeing floods of Nvidia chip deals on WeChat.  A real estate contractor turned data center project manager …

2024-12-19
New findings show how the sources of data are concentrating power in the hands of the most powerful tech companies - new today from @melissahei.bsky.social www.technologyreview.com/2024/12/18/ 1...
2024-12-19 View on X
MIT Technology Review

An analysis of nearly 4,000 public datasets finds that over 90% of AI training datasets came from Europe and North America, and fewer than 4% came from Africa

that's reshaping the infrastructures of our world in ways that reflect the interests of those big corporations.” Niall Firth / @niallfirth : New findings show how the sources of da...

2023-10-18
Today, the inimitable @katienotopoulos writes for us about how to fix the internet. She refuses, she says, to “toss out the dancing-baby GIF with the tubgirl-dot-png bathwater.” Instead, she has an idea. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
2023-10-18 View on X
MIT Technology Review

Federated networks like Mastodon and a growing acceptance of paying for content may help move people away from big social platforms and improve online discourse

We're in a very strange moment for the internet.  We all know it's broken.  That's not news. Mastodon: @stefan@gardenstate.social , @jangles@mastodon.social , @Cassandra@artisan.ch...

2023-07-24
It wasn't that long ago that a US digital dollar seemed an inevitability. How things change. Now there are bills aimed at making sure one never sees the light of day. So what happens now? Smart piece from @mike_orcutt https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
2023-07-24 View on X
MIT Technology Review

A look at the Boston Fed's Project Hamilton, launched in 2020 to research how to design a US CBDC but ended in 2022 after opposition from anti-CBDC legislators

But it May be Criminalized Eswar Prasad / Financial Times : Central banks must not be blind to the threats posed by CBDCs Twitter: James Wester / @jameswester : “Now legislators in...

2023-05-02
Hinton now thinks there are two types of intelligence in the world: animal brains and neural networks. Great in-depth piece from @strwbilly after his exclusive conversation with Hinton last week. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
2023-05-02 View on X
MIT Technology Review

A profile of and interview with deep learning pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, who shares why he now thinks neural networks represent a “better form of intelligence”

“I have suddenly switched my views on whether these things are going to be more intelligent than us.”

2023-03-04
Want to know how ChatGPT came about? You need this oral history from @strwbilly that takes you deep behind the scenes with some key figures at OpenAI. A must-read. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
2023-03-04 View on X
MIT Technology Review

Q&A with OpenAI's Sandhini Agarwal, Liam Fedus, Jan Leike, and co-founder John Schulman on training ChatGPT, dealing with virality, fixing problems, and more

Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.  —  When OpenAI launched ChatGPT … Tweets: @tiagodf , @trengriffin , @antonioregalado , @techreview...

2022-11-19
and last one of a packed morning schedule: @strwbilly walks you through why Meta's language model for science just backfired. BEARS IN SPACE! https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
2022-11-19 View on X
MIT Technology Review

Meta AI and Papers with Code pull Galactica three days after launch, amid criticism the large language model for generating scientific text asserts falsehoods

and its hubris—show once again that Big Tech has a blind spot about the severe limitations of large language models. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...

2022-05-04
Meta has made its own version of GPT-3 - and it's going to give it to researchers to play with, including details of how it was made, reports @strwbilly https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
2022-05-04 View on X
MIT Technology Review

Meta's AI lab creates Open Pretrained Transformer, a language model trained with 175B parameters to match GPT-3's size, and gives it to researchers for free

2022-04-23
Zero-days used to be mostly used by rich nation state-backed hacking groups. Not any more. @HowellONeill explains why. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
2022-04-23 View on X
MIT Technology Review

Mandiant: one-third of all hacker groups exploiting zero-days in 2021 were financially motivated criminals as opposed to government-backed cyberespionage groups

Patrick Howell O'Neill / MIT Technology Review :

2022-04-22
Zero-days used to be mostly used by rich nation state-backed hacking groups. Not any more. @HowellONeill explains why. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
2022-04-22 View on X
MIT Technology Review

Mandiant: one-third of all hacker groups exploiting zero-days in 2021 were financially motivated criminals as opposed to government-backed cyberespionage groups

The most valuable hacking tools were once the domain of governments.  Not anymore.  —  Organized cybercriminals with money …

2022-03-04
Big story out @techreview this morning: How police created a surveillance machine in the wake of George Floyd's murder. Great investigation from @TateRyMo and @MinneapoliSam https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
2022-03-04 View on X
MIT Technology Review

An investigation details Operation Safety Net, a sprawling surveillance program in Minnesota to track protesters and journalists after George Floyd's murder

MIT Technology Review :

2022-01-19
Tonga's main subsea cable that connects it to the outside world has been damaged. That's making it harder to coordinate aid efforts and find out what's happening on the ground. I wanted to know how it could get back online. @stokel found out for me. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
2022-01-19 View on X
MIT Technology Review

A look at Tonga's internet blackout following the volcano blast, which initial investigations suggest destroyed the country's single undersea internet cable

a volcanic eruption broke it Isobel Asher Hamilton / Insider : Tonga's volcanic eruption ruptured a giant undersea internet cable and knocked the country's internet offline João To...

2021-12-16
The metaverse has a groping problem already. And firms expect users to deal with it themselves. from @tanyabasu https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
2021-12-16 View on X
MIT Technology Review

Meta says a woman was groped on its Horizon Worlds platform on November 26; an internal review says she should have used its “Safe Zone” tool

Last week, Meta (the umbrella company formerly known as Facebook) opened up access to its virtual-reality social media platform, Horizon Worlds.

2021-11-22
Just to say: you wouldn't believe how thorough Karen is when she does these stories. Watertight doesn't even do it justice. That's why they're so powerful. https://twitter.com/...
2021-11-22 View on X
MIT Technology Review

Investigation shows how Facebook and Google fund misinformation globally by paying millions of dollars in ad revenue to the operators of clickbait pages

some that you can trace to a body count. Great, if enraging, follow-the-money reporting here. https://twitter.com/... Ian Sherr / @iansherr : Still happening how many years after a...

2021-11-21
Just to say: you wouldn't believe how thorough Karen is when she does these stories. Watertight doesn't even do it justice. That's why they're so powerful. https://twitter.com/...
2021-11-21 View on X
MIT Technology Review

Investigation shows how Facebook and Google fund misinformation globally by paying millions of dollars in ad revenue to the operators of clickbait pages

A month after the fall of the democratic government.  —  In 2015, six of the 10 websites in Myanmar getting the most engagement …

2021-07-29
A few recent great stories from @techreview starting this morning with this brilliant, compassionate profile of Sophie Zhang, the Facebook whistleblower by @_KarenHao https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
2021-07-29 View on X
MIT Technology Review

Profile of Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook data scientist who wrote an exit memo detailing Facebook's inadequate steps to address global election misinformation

Sophie Zhang, a former data scientist at Facebook, revealed that it enables global political manipulation and has done little to stop it.

2020-06-20
Inside the UK's contact reading app fiasco, from @jamesrbuk https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
2020-06-20 View on X
MIT Technology Review

The UK government's efforts to build a centralized contract tracing app from scratch were plagued by poor technical execution and chaotic personnel management

The failed rollout of Britain's covid-19 app will damage digital contact tracing efforts worldwide—but its troubles were the result of clear, specific errors.