The RECC’E - DAY 77 | 03.18.22 | AI x REALITY

Day 77 / 365

32YEARS ago today the largest art robbery in US history took place: 13 works of art worth over $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

RECC’E OF THE DAY

7.7%MORE trustworthy than human faces - how AI generated faces were described by participants in a study where psychologists built a gender, age and a racially inclusive sample of 400 synthetic images that NVDIA's A.I. had created. Similar to the latest technology used in deepfake media.

48.2%OF PARTICIPANTS’ guesses were correct in spotting a real vs AI crafted faces meaning 51.8% of guesses were wrong. This brought researchers to the stunning conclusion that we have now passed a threshold where humans are unable to determine the difference between reality and the ever growing capabilities of AI.

TRACKING: UKRAINE

7kOF 150K Russian soldiers sent across the Ukraine border since the war began have now been killed according to US intelligence.  

3.8kCIVILIANS evacuated from Ukrainian cities yesterday was a huge drop from the 60k rescued only a day earlier.

43ATTACKS on Ukrainian healthcare have now been registered by the World Health Organisation; any of which would be a violation of international humanitarian law.   

800BURGER KING stores along with numerous other branches of international brands are managing to remain open in Russia due to the fact they are franchises operated by a 3rd party.  

50kTONNES of food is regularly stored in Kyiv before being distributed around the country however one of Ukraine’s biggest food storage facilities has now been destroyed in 2 Russian airstrikes leaving Ukrainians officials concerned Moscow will try to starve the country into submission.

15POINT plan for peace edges closer as Russia’s demands become ‘more realistic’ in the face of it’s rating on debt default risk being cut from ‘CC’ to ‘CCC’ as international sanctions cause the country difficulties in debt repayments.

NEED-TO-KNOW

40kNEW chemical weapon suggestions have been produced by AI in just 6 hours. Researchers put AI normally used to search for helpful drugs into a kind of “bad actor” mode to show how easily it could be abused at a biological arms control conference. The AI came up with tens of thousands of new substances, some of which were similar to VX, the most potent nerve agent ever developed.

$4.1bPER FLIGHT is the cost of launching NASA’s new mega rocket the ‘Space Launch System’ or SLS. This system will power the upcoming Artemis missions which will put an astronaut back on the moon by 2025 for the first time since 1972.

1PERSON dies every 36 seconds in the United States from cardiovascular disease. Now researchers have developed an ‘acoustic fabric’ which when woven into a shirt’s lining can detect subtle changes in a wearers heartbeat. The fibers can also be made to generate sound, such as a recording of spoken words that another fabric can detect. The fabric can detect the angle of sound to within 1 degree at a distance of 3 meters away.

SHOULD-KNOW

$8.45bDEAL sees Amazon acquire MGM; bringing with it the James Bond franchise and an assortment of blockbuster classics. It’s Amazon’s 2nd most expensive acquisition after Whole Foods in 2017.

13%OF PEOPLE think Elon Musk’s ‘Singularity’ brain chip will be good for society. Musk’s 6 year old company ‘Neuralink’ is aiming to one day achieve “symbiosis” between humans and AI. 78% would not be in favour of an IQ-enhancing brain chip and 56% believe the technology will be bad for society as a whole.

3SPACE X facilities will be hosting a 1st of it’s kind fellowship - space based surgery. The groundbreaking program training astronaut surgeons of the future hopes to send its graduates - who will get a certification in aerospace medicine - to the red planet early next decade with the express goal of keeping their fellow space explorers alive.

GOOD-TO-KNOW

$3EXTRA MEMBER fee’s are being rolled out by Netflix in a trial across Chile, Costa Rica and Peru in a bid to stop password-sharing following the giants slowing growth. The sub-account feature means subscribers will be able to share their service with people outside of their household for less than a full priced standalone service. 

621kCOVID infections have now been recorded in a single day across South Korea, the new record brings with it a record daily 429 deaths. The national caseload now sits at 8.2m with 7.2m of those recorded since the start of February.  

2.5kYEAR OLD ‘scared pool’ has been uncovered on a Sicilian island. What was thought to be a military port has turned out to be an ancient pool used by worshipers to track the movements of the stars. It’s the largest structure of its kind to be unearthed in the Mediterranean region; at 172 feet long and 119 feet wide its bigger than an Olympic swimming pool.

 

SIGN-OFF STAT

82%OF MOTHERS in Denmark work regularly, the highest proportion in the world. Greece comes in at last place — less than 50% of mothers work nationwide.

  

   

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND FOLKS AND WE’LL SEE YOU AGAIN BRIGHT AND EARLY MONDAY MORNING WITH THE DAYS MOST FASCINATING DATA FROM AROUND THE WORLD. 

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