Meanwhile in 鈥� New York, a charity is buying up outsize debt to forgive it
In New York, a charity is buying up outsize debt to forgive it. Bills for hospital stays can be expensive, and loan companies may charge high interest rates. Ownership of those debts can be bought and sold for cents on the dollar, turning the loans, and their future returns, into speculative investments for traders. RIP Medical Debt bought $1.5 million worth of medical debts for $12,500 and then forgave the debtors. The charity plans to continue raising funds for its mission.聽
In London, artificial intelligence leveled up its strategic gameplay ability, again. Robots have been beating humans at increasingly complicated strategy games since 1994, when a computer program beat world checkers champion Marion Tinsley at his own game; since then, computers have won victories in chess and the game Go. In December 2018, the most complex game yet fell to a bot named AlphaStar, owned by Google鈥檚 parent company, Alphabet. AlphaStar went 5-0 against a human world champion in 鈥淪tarCraft II,鈥� a vastly complicated strategy video game. To secure its victory, AlphaStar compressed 200 years鈥� worth of gameplay into two weeks.
In San Bruno, Calif., YouTube is removing conspiracy videos from 鈥渞ecommended鈥� lists. YouTube鈥檚 algorithm suggests videos to users based on past watching habits, but it鈥檚 not always funny cat videos. For example, consuming legitimate news content can sometimes pull up conspiracy videos arguing that Earth is flat. YouTube won鈥檛 fully remove the videos, since they don鈥檛 violate community guidelines, but it will work to prevent people who weren鈥檛 looking for them from accidentally finding them.聽
