A Georgia man spent almost a week in jail after Louisiana police wrongly identified him as a fugitive using facial recognition software. Randal Reid, 28, was driving to his mother’s home for Thanksgiving celebrations when local police pulled him over and arrested him, according to local news. Using facial recognition software, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office (JPSO) had identified Reid as a suspect in a spate of thefts. $10,000 worth of Chanel and Louis Vuitton purses had been stolen. The problem? Reid had never set foot in Louisiana. “They told me
It’s 2022. Why are people still renting out slave cabins? In a long overdue statement, Airbnb has announced they will no longer allow people to list or rent properties previously used to house enslaved people. Airbnb’s “1830 Slave Cabin” According to BuzzFeed News, Airbnb came under fire earlier in July for listing an “1830s slave cabin” on their website. Five months later, the company will finally remove all slavery-related listings from its website. The vacation rental site has stated that any listing of a plantation residence that “existed during the time
Are we leaving Twitter or not? That’s the question many Black Twitter users have been asking themselves for months now. The only problem is, where exactly will we be leaving to go? What is Spill? Enter: Spill. The social media app, designed by former Twitter employees, Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell and DeVaris Brown, is slowly becoming the chosen alternative for many. The pair who met on their first day working at Twitter made friends after noticing they were the only Black guys. Their friendship has since blossomed into a partnership that led
This article by Christian Ilube was first published on Medium. What is ChatGPT? Open AI is an artificial intelligence research company that aims to create AI to benefit all of humanity. In 2020, they announced GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3), an AI capable of any reading/writing task e.g., question answering, summarising text, or continuing a story. It was created as a step on the way to Open AI’s grand mission of solving general intelligence, creating an AI able to learn any intellectual task that a human can do. Despite not being general intelligence, GPT-3 still has many
Black-owned fiber and material science firm Aja Labs has raised $2.5 million to commercialize its first product, hair extensions made from plant material. The seed funding round, led by Impact America Fund, included Better Ventures, SOSV’s IndieBi, and a range of leaders across different sectors, including public health, cosmetics, business, and beauty. Aja Labs, co-founded by Osahon Ojeaga and Mary Moore, is an innovative company is working to build a better-for-you and better-for-the-planet product focusing on sustainability and human wellness. Their patent-pending hair extensions will be sold under the consumer brand Nourie and will include
Every year Forbes releases their long-awaited list of young innovators shaping the world today. The annual list serves as a positive reminder that young people are working to change the world, which makes the future look not so bleak. This year’s North American list featured a handful of Black women in tech who are on the verge of making it big – so let’s meet some of them. Kalina Bryant – Founder of UnapologeTECH Kalina Bryant is an example of someone who wears many hats and wears them all well.
Bobbi Wilson experienced her first encounter with law enforcement at nine years old after her neighbor reported her to the police for playing outside with lanternflies. When Dr. Ijeoma Opara, a tenure track assistant professor at Yale, came across the story, she decided to reach out to Bobbi’s family. Bobbi Wilson’s Story On Oct 22, Wilson wandered outside her house with an anti-bug spray she had made after learning about invasive species on TikTok. Bobbi used the non-toxic solution to do her part in saving her local trees and the
Morehouse College has become the first college to offer classes in the metaverse. By donning a headset, students at the Atlanta-based liberal arts HBCU can immerse themselves in past, present, and future worlds. Dr Muhsinah Morris PhD spearheaded Morehouse College’s metaversity campus in partnership with VictoryXR, with funding from Meta, Southern Company, Unity, T-Mobile For Business, National Science Foundation (NSF), and Qualcomm. Immersive learning Morris taught an advanced inorganic chemistry lab virtually to a dozen students as part of a pilot last spring. She believes the metaverse’s experiential and active learning environment will
Since Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, many users have been searching for a new social networking platform they can call home. Mastodon, a social network built on open-source software, seems to be their best bet, with just over a million active users already signed up. But is it worth the hype? What is Mastodon? The events which have transpired since Elon’s takeover has sent Twitter on a tumultuous downward spiral. From the exodus (or ousting) of thousands of staff to the new Twitter Blue feature being pulled from the site in
With constant news of layoffs, hiring freezes, and restructures, we know it’s a hard time for many in the tech industry – especially people of color. When underperforming, companies retreat to what they know and who they know. They default to what is familiar, and, all too often, this means older, white men. We saw this at the peak of the pandemic, and it seems we are seeing it now. POCIT was launched to platform the stories of people of color in tech but also to create new ones. Our recruitment platform has
