Spark 433

When your smart home becomes smarter than you

What happens when you your connected microwave has access to your personal health data? It might just refuse to make you popcorn. Futurist Amy Webb weighs in on one possible future for the smart home: when it decides it's smarter than you are.

How AI can tackle cybersecurity

Ransomware, internet of things botnets, and cyberespionage are on the rise, but there's a chronic shortage of cybersecurity specialists. Spark host Nora Young sits down with Ann Johnson, Corporate Vice President - Cybersecurity Solutions Group Microsoft, thinks we need to do more to create a supportive, diverse environment to draw professionals in. But she also thinks we need to rely on AI to meet the increasing demand.

AI art, creativity and authorship

Ahmed Elgammal wrestles with questions of whether creative images made by artificial intelligence can be considered "art."

Behind Wikipedia is an enormous digital card catalog called Wikidata

Most people have used Wikipedia, the volunteer-driven repository of knowledge that contains entries on just about everything. Less known, however, is Wikidata, a project that is converting all of Wikipedia's content into machine-readable code, and also creating a free-to-use database system. And that's fantastic news to librarians! Katie Mika, a data services librarian at the University of Colorado, explains why.