Author: The Conversation
Type “Teddy bears working on new AI research on the moon in the 1980s” into any of the recently released text-to-image artificial intelligence image generators, and after just a few seconds the sophisticated software will produce an eerily pertinent image. Seemingly bound by only your imagination, this latest trend in synthetic media has delighted many, inspired others and struck fear in some. Google, research firm OpenAI and AI vendor Stability AI have each developed a text-to-image image generator powerful enough that some observers are questioning whether in the future people will be able to trust the photographic record. This image…
It is common to hear news reports about large data breaches, but what happens once your personal data is stolen? Our research shows that, like most legal commodities, stolen data products flow through a supply chain consisting of producers, wholesalers and consumers. But this supply chain involves the interconnection of multiple criminal organizations operating in illicit underground marketplaces. The stolen data supply chain begins with producers – hackers who exploit vulnerable systems and steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, bank account information and Social Security numbers. Next, the stolen data is advertised by wholesalers and distributors who sell…
In October, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa and his cabinet committed to a range of reforms to the country’s intelligence services. He based these reforms on recommendations made by the judicial commission of inquiry into state capture. The reforms include strengthening the office of the inspector general of intelligence. The office’s task is to monitor the crime intelligence division of the police, the State Security Agency, and the intelligence division of the national defence force. The president has since appointed a new inspector general, Imtiaz Fazel, for five years. This could be a fresh start for this office after years…
South Africa has notoriously high levels of violence against women. The latest police figures show that 10,818 rape cases were reported in the first quarter of 2022. The country has among the highest rape incidence in the world. How can gender-based violence in the country be reduced? It’s important to first understand the causes of gender-based violence – with a focus on sexual violence – globally and in South Africa. There are many contested theories. Louise du Toit, a Stellenbosch University philosopher, analysed four explanations that are often offered: past perpetrator violence social and economic exclusion injured masculinity or patriarchal…
The Fifa men’s World Cup 2022 in Qatar is arguably the most political in history. Even during the seemingly innocuous performance of South Korean pop star Jung Kook at the tournament’s opening ceremony, geopolitics were centre stage. For Kook, 25, is not just a good looking young man with a global fan base and a multi-million dollar fortune. In addition, he has a lucrative endorsement deal with the South Korean car maker Hyundai-Kia, which also happens to be a major Fifa sponsor. This kind of relationship is neither an accident nor a simple business arrangement. For years, the South Korean…
Smart urbanism is about using digital technologies to address urban problems. Across the continent, digital technologies and smart initiatives have been applied in myriad ways, including crime control, urban planning and traffic management. It hasn’t always worked, however. Sometimes these initiatives have failed because the technologies weren’t well integrated into the local context. Or policies didn’t pay attention to social realities and technical requirements. Ghana presents one such example. The country launched a smart initiative in 2017: a digital system to give every urban property an address. It’s a phone-based application which is designed to locate features anywhere in Ghana.…
What do a cybersecurity researcher building a system to generate alerts for detecting security threats and vulnerabilities, a wildfire watcher who tracks the spread of forest fires, and public health professionals trying to predict enrollment in health insurance exchanges have in common? They all rely on analyzing data from Twitter. Twitter is a microblogging service, meaning it’s designed for sharing posts of short segments of text and embedded audio and video clips. The ease with which people can share information among millions of others worldwide on Twitter has made it very popular for real-time conversations. Whether it is people tweeting…
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea My colleagues and I have developed a flexible, stretchable electronic device that runs machine-learning algorithms to continuously collect and analyze health data directly on the body. The skinlike sticker, developed in my lab at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, includes a soft, stretchable computing chip that mimics the human brain. To create this type of device, we turned to electrically conductive polymers that have been used to build semiconductors and transistors. These polymers are made to be stretchable, like a rubber band.…
South Africa has the dubious distinction of having one of the highest rates of unemployment and inequality in the world. It is also one of the world’s most emissions-intensive economies, measured in greenhouse gas emissions per unit of economic output. The co-existence of high unemployment and high emissions intensity is not a coincidence. South Africa’s history of segregation and apartheid has had profound implications for its development path. Choices were made that favoured investment in capital rather than labour. Economic growth was based, in part, on cheap (coal-based) energy, overlooking its high emissions. Coal has been the dominant fuel in…
Nigeria’s prison population is more than 76,000, housed in 240 correctional centres. About 70% of these inmates are still awaiting trial. They have been arrested and charged, but not yet convicted or cleared. This is the highest percentage of awaiting-trial prisoners in Africa. World Prison Brief’s latest report puts the figure at 12.4% for Ghana and 32.9% for South Africa. The presumption of innocence is enshrined in Nigeria’s constitution, in section 36(5). It says: Every person who is charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty. But the reality in Nigeria, as…