Elon Musk Hosting A Hackathon @ His House

 

 

Tesla will be hosting an AI hackathon, together with the company’s artificial intelligence and autopilot team, at his house in four weeks’ time.

The Tesla chief announced his plans via Twitter on Sunday. Musk also mentioned Tesla’s “Dojo” supercomputer, which is speculated to be capable of processing vast amounts of data to train the company’s neural network. Through active learning, Tesla curates the most useful video clips from its fleet of connected cars and train the neural net to recognize things that it did not previously know.

With the upcoming AI hackathon, Tesla will get together with developers to seek out more efficient algorithms and overall improvements to the core logic for its Full Self-Driving suite through a time-boxed event. Working with the existing AI and autopilot team of Tesla, the carmaker may be able to accelerate the timeline and rollout of its full-featured Full Self-Driving suite sooner.

The hackathon will also allow Tesla to fish for new AI talents to join the team. On Sunday, Musk also mentioned that the electric carmaker is looking for world-class chip designers and C++/C engineers for vehicle control and other functions of Tesla vehicles.

Musk reiterated that educational attainment is not important when joining Tesla but rather a clear understanding of how AI and neural networks function and the ability to build useful applications using that knowledge.

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Stopping Racist Artificial Intelligence

Racist artificial intelligence can only be stopped if Silicon Valley giants share the secret databases used to train them, the creator of a viral selfie app has claimed. 

Trevor Paglen, is an artist and one of the pair behind an app that exposed racist and sexist flaws in a colossal database used to train AI. He has warned that these same terms could be present in systems developed by big technology companies.

The flaws could have spread to companies including Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Huawei if they used it as a “seed” database, he has claimed.

Paglen says that we can assume similar things are going on in the databases of Google and Facebook or whatever, but we can’t see that happening.

He also says there are often trade secrets, and  this is a huge problem for the field of machine learning in general, especially in applications that touch people’s everyday lives.

Paglan has called for “a lot more transparency” from companies on how machine learning systems are being used and how they’re classifying people to stop this from making biased decisions.

Mr Paglen’s app, created with the AI researcher Kate Crawford and called ImageNet Roulette, exposed that pictures of black and ethnic minority people generated race labels such as “negroid” or “black person”, while results from caucasian faces varied more widely, such as “researcher”, “scientist” or “singer”.

In other words, white people were more likely to be categorised as a specific profession or character type, whereas non-white people were more likely to be categorized by their race alone, that can have negative connotations.

The app, which was “trained” using a popular image recognition database called ImageNet, was described as “a peek into the politics of classifying humans in machine learning systems and the data they’re trained on”.

ImageNet, created by Stanford University scientists, has been credited with kickstarting the modern AI boom and has become a benchmark against which new image recognition systems are measured.

The team led by Stanford professor Fei-Fei Lin has committed to removing over 600,000 images of people from the database since the challenge went viral earlier this week.

Mr Paglen’s comments follow plans launched by the UK government to pilot diversity regulations for staff working on artificial intelligence to reduce the risk of sexist and racist computer programs.

 

Taylor Swift May Sue Microsoft Over Racist Twitter Bot

 

An artificially intelligent chatbot  used Twitter to learn how to talk into a bigot bot, so Taylor Swift reportedly threatened legal action because the bot’s name was Tay. Microsoft would probably rather forget the experiment where Twitter trolls took advantage of the chatbot’s programming and taught it to be racist in 2016.

Tay was a social media chatbot first geared toward teens in China. The bot, however, was programmed to learn how to talk based on Twitter conversations. In less than a day, the automatic responses the chatbot tweeted had Tay siding with Hitler, promoting genocide, and just generally hating everybody. Microsoft immediately removed the account and apologized.

According to The Guardian, the singer’s lawyer threatened legal action over the chatbot’s name. The singer claimed the name violated both federal and state laws. Rather than get in a legal battle with the singer, Smith writes, the company instead started considering new names. The chatbot began sending out racist tweets, giving the singer even more reason for concern. Microsoft removed the bot. But when the chatbot reappeared, Tay was no longer TayTweets but Zo, complete with new program that prevents the bot from broaching politics, race, and religion as topics. The revised chatbot, available on Messenger and others along with Twitter, was later criticized for being too much like a stereotypical teenage girl.

The Future Of HR Technology

With the increasing demand for specific skill sets, HR must lead teams into the future of work. An effective and robust HR function supported by leadership is critical to organizational success. As a result, HR practitioners must look toward adopting the latest tech, simplifying existing processes on the one hand and opening new paths for value addition on the other.

1. Robotic recruiters will share HR responsibilities

2. Everything will include an analytics layer

3. Remote-native HR toolkits will take center stage

4. The HR toolkit will span a broader workforce demographics

5. AR and VR will reshape employee experiences

6. Chatbots will offer meaningful conversations

7. IoT-ized products will unlock new areas of value

8. Real-time interactions will be the “new normal

Artificial Intelligence & Tutoring

AI is accelerating at a rapid pace in the education industry as companies that specialize in tutoring and even traditional textbook publishers get on board.

Dubbed adaptive learning, it’s designed to give students a personalized experience. AI is great at developing algorithms based on patterns it recognizes across sets of data. AI is useful in education because it can identify the gaps in a student’s understanding.

Because each student is different, AI allows a customized course of instruction that will get each student to mastery or understanding in the most efficient matter.

Chinese company Squirrel AI Learning, a leader in the AI education technology field, was founded in 2014. Currently, it has 1,700 schools, 3,000 staff members, a presence in 200 cities and an estimated valuation of $1 billion dollars. 

Squirrel AI Learning has partnered here in the US with Carnegie Mellon to help grow its US initiative further.

Derek Haoyang Li, founder and CEO of Squirrel AI Learning recently told MIT Technology Review, “When AI education prevails, human teachers will be like a pilot. Human teachers will focus on emotional communication.”

Traditional textbook companies who have long been associated with developing trends in education have already established footholds in the AI arena.

McGraw Hill has developed its own adaptive learning system called ALEKS. And, educational publishing powerhouse Pearson has just left its partnership with Knewton to develop its own proprietary program. 

 Alta, acts as a “virtual tutor” for hosts of college courses. While adaptive learning can be helpful for moving students through a course of study, opponents argue it can’t replace human teachers. AI has the ability to help a student master a course of study, but it can’t teach students how to learn. It also can’t help students determine what they’d like to learn more about, or how to cooperatively interact and solve problems with other students.

AI is proving to be a great tool in education and will most likely become more prevalent as the technology becomes more refined and readily available.

IBM Is Partnering With Seasoning maker McCormick using AI To learn and predict new flavor combinations.

The partnership highlights how technology is being used to disrupt the food industry by helping develop new products and respond to consumer preferences and offer improved nutrition and flavor. “More and more, food companies are embracing digitization and becoming data-driven,” better food predictions based on both human preference and data analysis. “Instead of using an expert panel or consumer panel they develop algorithms that can translate into how consumers view a product.

 

The Smart Shopping Cart For the Visually Impaired

Brazilian beer brand Skol is funding the creation of a smart shopping cart that helps the visually impaired shop in supermarkets. Users wear a headset, and get instructions from the AI-powered cart on how to navigate the aisles. The cart also features sensors that report obstacles such as smaller shelves, objects and people. Shelves will be labeled in braille at participating supermarkets. The smart carts hit the aisles in June 2019.

World Rankings For AI Readiness

The factors that was considered By Oxford Insights

Public service reform	Innovation	Global Innovation Index	Making progress on AI requires business as usual to change. If an innovative mindset is present in government, it should be picked up by general public service innovation indices.
	Digital public services	UN eGovernment Survey
	Government effectiveness	World Bank
Economy and skills	Digitization	Tufts’ Digital Evolution Index	It is vital to have the necessary skills in the workforce to be able to identify where AI should and should not be used, and to help build effective tools and systems. Increasing investment by government can stimulate the supply of skills in the economy and prompt demand from large companies in the private sector. AI startups reflect grassroots innovation and development, and a thriving tech sector.
	Technology skills	UN eGovernment Survey
	AI startups	Crunchbase
Digital infrastructure	Quality of data	UN eGovernment Survey	Artificial intelligence systems are build on data. Therefore the quality and availability of data and the ability of a government to work with it effectively are critical.
	Available data	OECD OURdata Index
	Data capability	Open Data Barometer

The United kingdom ranks first, reflecting its world-leading centers for AI research and strong technology industry. Although the UK has great starting conditions for AI development, it faces stiff competition from other countries seeking to be top of the global rankings. China, the US, Russia and Canada have all announced plans to be world leaders in AI. If the UK wishes to retain its high ranking in our capacity index, the government will need to continue to invest in order to remain competitive in future years.

The United States ranks 2nd lagging behind the UK on measures including digital skills and data quality. The U.S. should provide a stronger focus on digital skills training and data infrastructure. Although the US is likely to continue to do well due to tech clusters such as Silicon Valley, without government focus and investment the digital skills gap will continue to grow. As a result, the US will need to import more and more AI experts, potentially missing out on developing in-country talent.

Country	AI Rank	Index
UNITED KINGDOM	1	8.400058212
UNITED STATES	2	8.209167474
CANADA	3	7.863319516
KOREA	4	7.812407479
NETHERLANDS	5	7.761905159
FRANCE	6	7.744355794
JAPAN	7	7.597518368
AUSTRALIA	8	7.476332505
NEW ZEALAND	9	7.377215052
FINLAND	10	7.370989308
SWEDEN	11	7.186223717
SPAIN	12	7.179790582
GERMANY	13	6.959504184
ISRAEL	14	6.936561239
NORWAY	15	6.918981969
AUSTRIA	16	6.839885315
IRELAND	17	6.697854762
BELGIUM	18	6.611947802
ITALY	19	6.580167739
SWITZERLAND	20	6.52356742
DENMARK	21	6.399736836
MEXICO	22	6.191226484
ESTONIA	23	6.189188638
POLAND	24	5.903422964
PORTUGAL	25	5.787132218
CZECH REPUBLIC	26	5.778727424
CHILE	27	5.575553631
SLOVENIA	28	5.530326884
GREECE	29	5.506155491
LATVIA	30	4.864024162
TURKEY	31	4.653886802
ICELAND	32	4.584958664
SLOVAK REPUBLIC	33	4.561976147
HUNGARY	34	4.430075881
LUXEMBOURG	35	4.239717633

SOURCE: Oxford Insights

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Facebook Is Getting Redesigned

Facebook’s redesigned site is supposed to make it easier for users to send private messages and not post many public messages. Messenger is also getting end-to-end encryption to stop eavesdroppers in their tracks, but the feature isn’t coming any time soon.

An all-new Facebook interface

The updates make Facebook much easier to navigate, particularly for groups and messages, which are much more prominent. It’s part of a new focus on private conversations: encouraging friends, families, and individuals with shared interests to chat in private groups or messages rather than posting everything publicly.

The company is rolling out a new AI to moderate the site. The AI uses what’s called “self-supervised learning” to quickly find hate speech, scams, abuse, violence, fake accounts, bullying, and other bad behavior. This kind of content can be anything from mildly unpleasant to outright dangerous, and it’s great that Facebook is looking for solutions to get rid of it.

Facebook app updates are live now

 

The Facebook app and Messenger app have both been updated with a similar design. Both have a streamlined new interface with a simple row of tabs along the bottom of the screen to quickly navigate. Like the Facebook website, the Facebook app has a bigger focus on private groups, making it easier to find and browse groups, as well as chat and share in groups

Make friends and find dates

The site is adding a Meet New Friends feature that suggests people you might get along with based on shared interests, groups, or location. If you want to meet people through Facebook, you’ll have to turn the feature on and you’ll only see people who have also turned it on.

If you’re looking for more than friends, there’s also Facebook Dating. It’s very similar to Meet New Friends: you’ll have to enable it manually, and you’ll only see other users who have enabled it. To use it, you’ll have to create a dating profile, but don’t worry, because it won’t be part of your public profile.

A feature called Secret Crush rounds out Facebook’s suite of friend-finding features. This lets you select up to nine friends that you have a secret crush on, and if they also select you, your crush will be revealed.

If you aren’t interested in finding friends (or dates), these new features won’t be enabled by default, so they’re easy to ignore. Whether you’re interested in Facebook Dating or not, updates to the Facebook apps and websites make them much easier to use. If you use Facebook, there’s something you’ll like in this overhaul — so update your apps and check it out!

Nevada officials Are Using Artificial Intelligence To Prevent Traffic Crashes

Wearable Trends

Smartwatches
The use of smartwatch is increasingly becoming popular and the Apple series 4  comes with an inbuilt electrocardiogram to warn you in case you are developing a heart complication. Additionally, the watch automatically detects panic for instance in case of a fall which will trigger it to send help notifications to your physician and close family members.

Other popular models worth your consideration include; Fitbit, Huawei, Garmin, and Samsung. With these smartwatches, you can keep track of your day’s activities such as the distance covered and stay in track of your health goals more so when you want to reduce calorie intake and burn fats.

Smart rings
Popular among businessmen and individuals who spend most of their time in meetings and want to get notifications without attracting much attention by glancing at their smartwatch and other mobile devices. This wearable comes handy while shopping since you can use it to swipe for payment or gain access to your car and other smart home appliances.

The trending rings of 2019 that you can get include; the Lycos Life, Blinq, NFC Opn, Mc Lear, and Oura smart rings. You can keep track of your biometric activity data like the number of steps made and distance covered during the day, and the calories burnt. there’s also a panic button for emergencies.

Fitness Trackers
With increasing cases of health issues that are mainly attributed to the sedentary lifestyle, the use of fitness trackers is now becoming even more popular.

Such fitness wearables trackers of 2019 that you should get include; Suunto Spartan, and Polar OH1.

Medical wearables
There is an increasing demand in the use of medical wearables owing to its affordability and convenience as opposed to routine checkups that not only comes at a cost but also expensive. The latest advancement has seen these devices now capable of collecting highly accurate health data and connect remotely to the personal physician who will then be able to monitor your health progress and also check if you are correctly using your medications.

Typical examples of trending medical wearables of 2019 include; the Google smart lenses, health patch MD, Cloud DX vitality and iTBra. These come with patches and sensors that are capable of detecting body changes and analyzes the data and cautions individuals of developing diseases.

 

 

The Clooney Foundation for Justice

 

Microsoft and The Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) has unveiled a TrialWatch app in an effort to shine a light on injustice in courts around the globe – which too often are simply barbaric. CFJ’s TrialWatch program, which formally launched this year, aims to monitor trials around the world that pose a high risk of human rights violations: trials that oppress vulnerable groups, silence speech, or target political opponents. Through the program, a small group of trial lawyers and activists are trained to report on legal proceedings, boiling a trial down to a series of facts that can be easily recorded and ultimately compared.

The new app aims to augment the ability of TrialWatch’s monitors, making it easier to document happenings in a courtroom. It offers a platform to record audio and take pictures of people and documents, which are then uploaded to the cloud. Having a backup of these documents should serve to protect trial monitors.

Chester The AI Radiology Assistant Can diagnose Your X Ray

When you upload your own chest X-ray onto this free website, it could diagnose 14 diseases with 80% accuracy–in other words, about as well as a real radiologist.

There’s no co-pay. No prescription. And the consultation is completely private.

The Chester AI radiology assistant was developed in work led by Joseph Paul Cohen, a postdoctoral fellow at Mila (the Quebec AI institute) and the University of Montreal. He used an NIH dataset of chest X-rays and diseases to train software to spot diseases in these scans. Though he is not a clinical doctor, Cohen is focused on the intersection of health and deep learning. Previously, Cohen created an app called BlindTool, which used machine learning to train a phone’s camera to serve as the eyes for someone with vision impairment.

The user interface contains red and green sliders that depict the likelihood that you have each disease. At a glance, you can tell if you have a 7% or 70% chance of having pneumonia. Furthermore, with Chester AI, Cohen has created what he believes to be the first AI that can diagnose diseases in someone’s browser, through an AI run locally on your machine rather than in the cloud.

“This tool is for a second diagnosis. So far our interaction with doctors has been that it is useful if they are in a hurry (like in an ER) and want to have someone run this image to confirm what they think or to help them not miss anything,” says Cohen. “For radiologists in training, this will help them to form a consistent understanding no matter who their teacher is.”

 

Fighting Opiod Addiction With Artificial Intelligence

Courtesy of WVU Today WVU’s Fanny Ye has been awarded a grant that will support her research to develop AI techniques to combat the opioid epidemic.

Yanfang (Fanny) Ye, assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering at West Virginia University, has been awarded a grant from the National Institute of Justice in support of her work to develop novel artificial intelligence techniques to combat the opioid epidemic and trafficking. The award comes with about $1 million in funding over a three-year period.

 

“As of today, we still lack deep insight into the online ecosystem of opioid trafficking,” said Ye. “In addition to offline data, utilizing AI technologies to obtain knowledge and recognize patterns from online data across the darknet and surface net could provide valuable investigative leads, which might greatly facilitate law enforcement’s ability to prevent, respond to and disrupt opioid trafficking networks.”

 

As part of the grant, Ye, in collaboration with Xin Li, professor of computer science and electrical engineering, will design and develop new AI technologies to automate the analysis of large-scale surface net and darknet data to provide timely investigative leads to law enforcement agencies in the United States to combat opioid trafficking.

 

Dr. Ye and Dr. Li will use sophisticated pattern recognition research that can have a significant impact on disrupting the supply chain underlying opioid trafficking.”

Ye has extensive research and development experience in Internet security solutions. Before joining WVU, she was the principal scientist in Comodo Security Solutions, Inc., a provider of computer software and SSL digital certificates, and deputy director at Kingsoft Internet Security Corporation, the second biggest Internet security company in China. Ye proposed and developed cloud-based solutions for mining big data in the area of Internet security, especially for malware detection and adversarial machine learning. Her developed algorithms and systems have been incorporated into popular commercial products, including Comodo Internet Security and Kingsoft Antivirus that protect millions of users worldwide.

 

She also recently received the prestigious AICS 2019 Challenge Problem Winner, the ACM SIGKDD 2017 Best Paper and Best Student Paper awards (Applied Data Science Track), the IEEE EISIC 2017 Best Paper Award and the 2017 New Researcher of the Year Award from the Statler College. Ye has brought in nearly $2.5 million in research funding to WVU in the past two years.

 

 

Vatican & Microsoft Team Up To Promote Ethics In Artificial Intelligence.

The Vatican is teaming up with Microsoft on an academic prize to promote ethics in artificial intelligence.

Pope Francis met privately on Wednesday with Microsoft President Brad Smith and the head of a Vatican scientific office that promotes Catholic Church positions on human life.

The Vatican said Smith and Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia of the Pontifical Academy for Life told Francis about the international prize for an individual who has successfully defended a dissertation on ethical issues involving artificial intelligence.

The winner will receive 6,000 euros ($6,900) and an invitation to Microsoft’s Seattle headquarters. The theme of the Pontifical Academy’ of Life’s s 2020 plenary assembly is AI.

Artificial Intelligence Used To Detect Bullying

 

Researchers at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, are training algorithms to detect hate speech by teaching them how specific communities on Reddit target women, black people and those who are overweight by using specific words. Abusive speech is notoriously difficult to detect because people use offensive language for all sorts of reasons, and some of the nastiest comments do not use offensive words. Researchers at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, are training algorithms to detect hate speech by teaching them how specific communities on social media target women, black people and those who are overweight by using specific words.

Their findings suggest that individual hate-speech filters is needed for separate targets of hate speech, who is one of those leading the research.

The exercise in detecting online bullying is far from merely academic. Take social media giants like Instagram. One survey in 2017 found that 42% of teenage users have experienced bullying on Instagram, the highest rate of all social media sites assessed in the study. In some extreme cases, distressed users have killed themselves. And it isn’t just teenagers who are being targeted – Queen guitarist Brian May is among those to have been attacked on Instagram.

Instagram is now using AI-powered text and image recognition to detect bullying in photos, videos and captions. While the company has been using a “bullying filter” to hide toxic comments since 2017, it recently began using machine learning to detect attacks on users’ appearance or character, in split-screen photographs, for example. It also looks for threats against individuals that appear in photographs and captions.

Bullying exists offline in many forms. Recent revelations of sexual harassment within major technology firms in Silicon Valley have shone a light on how bullying and discrimination can impact people in the workplace. Almost half of women have experienced some form of discrimination while working in the European tech industry.

Spot – an intelligent chatbot that aims to help victims report their accounts of workplace harassment accurately and securely. It produces a time-stamped interview that a user can keep for themselves or submit to their employer, anonymously if necessary. The idea is to “turn a memory into evidence”, says Julia Shaw, a psychologist at University College London and co-creator of Spot. Another tool named Botler AI goes one step further by providing advice to people who have been sexually harassed. Trained on more than 300,000 US and Canadian court case documents, it uses natural language processing to assess whether a user has been a victim of sexual harassment in the eyes of the law, and generates an incident report, which a user can hand over to human resources or the police. The first version was live for six months and achieved 89% accuracy.

The algorithms developed in this study can fairly accurately address the question of who will attempt suicide, but not when someone will die,” say the researchers.

 

 

New Technology Being Developed To Detect Gun Violence Before It Begins

 

New security technologies are being developed everyday to preventing further gun violence. Athena, a new security technology, uses artificial intelligence to detect a firearm before it is used.

The system touts up to 99 percent accuracy when identifying guns. It can spot these weapons, or those making threatening motions, alerting someone who could prevent them from entering a building and causing harm.

The system connects directly to the security cameras that are already in place at a business or school campus, bypassing any heavy or costly installation. In case of double, the system instantly relays information and can directly alert the police.

The technology will also send real-time footage of an incident to law enforcement agencies, allowing them to know about the current situation before they arrive on scene.

While Athena promises that its algorithms will keep prices down, the main holdup could be that the system has a hard time distinguishing between a real and fake gun, leading to unnecessary alarms.

Tech Trends In Healthcare This Year

The advancement in technology in the area of healthcare has been said to have benefits that are extraordinary for medical practitioners and patients. Healthcare technology is no threat to medical practitioners. However, there should be great wisdom in using these tools.

As seen and started in most hospitals, the health records are being done handwritten on papers and are being stocked on vast piles of folders. These contain essential medical and personal information of the patients. Years have gone by, and the problem on this type of data recording has been a cycle that has never been solved. Thanks to developers of new technology, there will finally be an alternative to handwritten records (sometimes are too hard to figure out). The Electronic Health Records or HER will be replacing paper records and will make life easier for everyone.

Another part of the technology that will soon take over some tasks is the use of Artificial Intelligence for appointment scheduling, health status monitoring, and the notification of medical assistance. Accordingly, Artificial Intelligence or AI is already widely used in radiology and dermatology.

While AI is already slowly being introduced in healthcare, the IoMT or Internet of Medical Things is also being adopted by medical practitioners. IoMT is a set of medical devices and application software that helps determine and monitor issues on patients before becoming critical.

Moreover, the future in medical technology will also be using existing devices and gadgets that people have right now. There will soon be mobile healthcare applications that are capable of facilitating the medical conditions of patients. For example, the Mobile Ultrasound app that is already in use by some doctors.

These trends in healthcare technology are just some of the few things that are to be introduced to the public. The benefits and reviews have also been positive more than negative.

China & Artificial Intelligence

China’s leadership – including President Xi Jinping – believes that being at the forefront in AI technology is critical to the future of global military and economic power competition.

AI has become a new focus of international competition. AI is a strategic technology that will lead in the future; the world’s major developed countries are taking the development of AI as a major strategy to enhance national competitiveness and protect national security. China’s AI policy community is paying close attention to the AI industries and policies of other countries, particularly the United States.

Chinese officials have expressed concerns that AI “will lower the threshold of military action,” because states may be more willing to attack each other with AI military systems due to the lack of casualty risk. Chinese officials also expressed concern that increased used of AI systems would make misconceptions and unintentional conflict escalation more likely due to the lack of well-defined norms regarding the use of such systems. Additionally, Chinese officials displayed substantive knowledge of the cybersecurity risks associated with AI systems, as well as their implications for Chinese and international security.

China has already established two major new research organizations focused on AI and unmanned systems under the National University of Defense Technology. AI is viewed as a promising military “leapfrog development” for China meaning that it offers military advantages over the US and will be easier to implement in China than the United States. China now sees AI as “a race of two giants,” between itself and the United States.

China is advancing the state of the art in AI research, its companies are very successfully developing genuinely innovative and market-competitive products and services around AI applications. Sense Time, for example, is undisputed one of the world leaders in computer vision AI and claims to have achieved annual revenue growth of 400 percent for three consecutive years.

Although China has strength in AI Research and development and commercial applications, China’s leadership perceives major weaknesses relative to the United States in top talent, technical standards, software platforms, and semiconductors.

China’s strengths are mainly shown in AI applications and it is still weak on the front of core technologies of AI, such as hardware and algorithm development, China’s AI development lacks top-tier talent and has a significant gap with developed countries, especially the U.S., in this regard

 

 

Artificial intelligence Tool Used To Catch People Lying To The Police

British scientists have created a new computer program that can spot if someone has lied to police about being robbed.

The groundbreaking software analyses the wording of a victim’s statement in order to identify tell tale signs of fake reports.

Spanish police, who have been using the tool, found it was successful in more than 80 per cent of cases helping them to identify 64 false reports in just one week.

Developed by experts at Cardiff University, VeriPol, uses a combination of automatic text analysis and artificial intelligence to recognize when somebody has been lying or exaggerating to the police.

Thousands of false reports are submitted to the police each year with many perpetrators hoping to receive inflated insurance payouts or claims for crimes that never happened in the first place.

Using algorithms the machine is able to carefully analyze various features in the text, such as adjectives, acronyms, verbs, nouns, punctuation marks and numbers.

Experts claim a false statement is more likely to contain certain traits and giveaway signs, that can be spotted using artificial intelligence.

It is believed that false statements are more likely to be shorter than genuine ones and focus on the details of the stolen property rather than the incident itself.

Intelligent Stores Coming Your Way

 

The upcoming year plans to bring exciting technological breakthroughs. The “physical realm” of commerce will continue to dissolve, in 2019 and we’ll enter the age of “Experience-Driven, Unified Commerce”. A new type of retail paradigm where connectivity is ubiquitous, will exists without borders, and payment credentials are stored in the cloud. Consumers will interact with a host of “gateway” devices including smartphones, tablets, voice assistants, smartwatches, appliances, clothing, fashion accessories, automobiles, and more…anytime and everywhere. In order to keep up with the increasing demand for quick resolution and 24/7 accessibility, customer service will become increasingly automated, with AI-enabled live chat and virtual assistants becoming dominant communication channels.

The physical store of the future will be a significantly more digitized version of what exists today, with multiple smart devices working together on a single IoT platform to deliver hyper-personalized, adaptive and context specific experiences. AI will soon be applied across the entire retail product and service cycle, in areas such as product design and manufacturing, demand forecasting, supply chain management, price and assortment optimization, merchandising, promotions, customer experience. personalization, and post-sale customer service.

With AI and deep learning, retailers can use prediction analysis to determine which products might not sell under certain conditions – including market, economic, competitor and weather related factors – and create a combination of targeted discounts, dynamic, pricing, free shipping, enhanced services, product combinations etc., to clear out the inventory that is most likely not to sell after a certain period.

 

 

There’s A Huge Vacancy For AI Talent

Research study reveals that there is severe shortage of qualified talent in the country has left over 4,000 mid and senior-level job positions vacant in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector. Around 57 per cent of firms hiring for AI roles are looking for candidates with over five years of experience, while the average AI candidates has three years of experience.

It seems that academic and training programs just can’t keep up with the pace of innovation and new discoveries with AI. Not only do AI professionals need official training, they need on-the-job experience. Therefore, there aren’t enough experienced AI professionals to step into the leadership roles required by organizations who are just beginning to adopt AI strategies into their operations.

MIT wants to solve the problem and has announced a $1 billion initiative to start a new college of computing to train the next generation of machine learning

 

AI Robots Soon Will Determine If Your Marriage Failing

Imperial College Business School and dating website eharmony has investigated how AI will change dating in the next few years.

It found in-home listening devices such as Alexa and Google Home could predict with 75% accuracy the likelihood of a couple’s relationship ending.

By 2021 the popular AI assistants could analyze the acoustics of conversations between couples.When an argument breaks out, robots could even intervene with suggestions of a resolution.

The Future of Dating Report also believes DNA analysis could be routinely used to match people with their perfect partner.The report also explored how technology will better aid success in online dating. Most dating services use AI and machine learning to filter possible matches by analysing self-reported feelings and can capture behavioral data captured by wearable tech.

Nowadays, algorithms can predict compatibility, enhance dating experiences and help manufacture chemistry

Artificial Intelligence & Jail Time

 ProPublica found that algorithms tend to reinforce racial bias in law enforcement data. Algorithmic assessments tend to falsely flag black defendants as future criminals at almost twice the rate as white defendants. What is more, the judges who relied on these risk-assessments typically did not understand how the scores were computed.

This is problematic, because machine learning models are only as reliable as the data they’re trained on. If the underlying data is biased in any form, there is a risk that structural inequalities and unfair biases are not just replicated, but also amplified. So, AI engineers must be especially wary of their blind spots and implicit assumptions; it is not just the choice of machine learning techniques that matters, but also all the small decisions about finding, organizing and labeling training data for AI models.

In order to guard against unfair bias, all subjects should have an equal chance of being represented in the data. Sometimes this means that underrepresented populations need to be thoughtfully added to any training datasets.

NIT Study Reveals That Artificial Intelligence Is Racist & Sexist

An MIT study has revealed the way artificial intelligence system collect data often makes them racist and sexist.

Researchers looked at a host of systems, and found many of them exhibited a outrageous bias.

The team then developed system to help researchers make sure their systems are less biased.

Computer scientists are often quick to say that the way to make these systems less biased is to simply design better algorithms,’ said lead author Irene Chen, a PhD student who wrote the paper with MIT professor David Sontag and postdoctoral associate Fredrik D. Johansson.

‘But algorithms are only as good as the data they’re using, and our research shows that you can often make a bigger difference with better data.’

In one example, the team looked at an income-prediction system and found that it was twice as likely to misclassify female employees as low-income and male employees as high-income. 

They found that if they had increased the dataset by a factor of 10, those mistakes would happen 40 percent less often.

In another dataset, the researchers found that a system’s ability to predict intensive care unit (ICU) mortality was less accurate for Asian patients. 

However, the researchers warned existing approaches for reducing discrimination would make the non-Asian predictions less accurate 

Chen says that one of the biggest misconceptions is that more data is always better. Instead, researchers should get more data from those under-represented groups.

‘We view this as a toolbox for helping machine learning engineers figure out what questions to ask of their data in order to diagnose why their systems may be making unfair predictions,’ says Sontag.

The team will present the paper in December at the annual conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) in Montreal. 

Warning AI Is Watching When Tempted to divert Expenses To A Work Dinner

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One employee traveling for work checked his pooch into a kennel and billed it to his boss as a hotel expense. Another charged yoga classes to the corporate credit card as client entertainment. A third, after racking up a small fortune at a strip club, submitted the expense as a steakhouse business dinner.

These bogus or phony expenses, which occurred recently at major U.S. companies, have one thing in common: All were exposed by artificial intelligence algorithms that can in a matter of seconds sniff out fraudulent claims and forged receipts that are often undetectable to human auditors—certainly not without hours of tedious labor.

A company an 18-month-old AI accounting startup, named AppZen, has already signed up several big companies, including Amazon.com Inc., International Business Machine Corp., Salesforce.com Inc. and Comcast Corp. and claims to have saved its clients $40 million in fraudulent expenses. AppZen and traditional firms like Oversight Systems say their technology isn’t ousting  jobs —so far—but rather freeing up auditors to dig deeper into dubious claims and educate employees about travel and expense policies.

A report released in April, by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners analyzed 2,700 fraud cases from January 2016 to October 2017 that resulted in losses of $7 billion.

The world’s largest anti-fraud organization found travel and expense embezzlement typically accounts for about 14 percent of employee fraud. It has become easier to fool finance departments thanks to websites such as fakereceipts.us that make it easy to create a bogus paper trail.

The algorithms have already exposed some creative—and costly—frauds: employees tacking on bottles of vodka to their “work lunch” bill, buying $3,000 worth of Starbucks gift cards and claiming it as “coffee with a contact.” One employee expensed her $900 office farewell party and submitted a claim that contained an animated photograph of her face instead of any receipts—demonstrating how seriously she took the auditors.

Guido van Drunen, a principal in KPMG’s Forensic Advisory Services, believes some lower-level jobs will disappear as more and more companies adopt the technology in the coming years. But he says there’s no way AI can spot all the sneaky ways employees try to defraud their employers.

Info obtained from Accounting Today

China’s World’s First AI News Anchor

China’s Xinhua News Agency has debuted an artificial intelligence (AI) news anchor on Wednesday as the state-run media organization seeks to bring a “brand new” news experience to the world.

A report posted on YouTube by New China TV features a life-like, English-speaking “AI anchor” modeled after one of Xinhua’s actual presenters named Qiu Hao.

Explaining he is programmed to read texts typed into his system, the digital presenter said he would deliver the news without interruption.

“I will work tirelessly to keep you informed as texts will be typed into my system uninterrupted,” it said.

According to the South China Morning Post, Xinhua said its new AI anchors have officially become members of the Xinhua News Agency reporting team and will work with other anchors to bring authoritative, timely and accurate news information in both Chinese and English.

It was also hinted that AI anchors may one day “challenge” their human counterparts because of their ability to work 24 hours a day provided human editors keep inputting text into the system.

 

AI & Your Job

 

Many Compainies Rushing To Adopt AI But Stumbling

• Companies that are rushing to embrace artificial intelligence technologies are running into big problems with their data.
• Some companies don’t have enough data, others have it in disparate places, and still others don’t have it in a usable format.
• Because of such challenges, some early adopters have abandoned AI projects.

AI generally requires lots of data. But it needs to be the right kind of data, in very particular kinds of formats. And it often needs it to be “clean,” including only the kind of information it needs and none of what it doesn’t

Data-related issues are collectively the biggest challenge companies face with AI, said Paul Daugherty, chief technology and innovation officer of Accenture.

All of that adds up to a big problem for many businesses. The biggest challenge most organizations face when they start thinking about AI is their data,” said Paul Daugherty, the chief technology and innovation officer of consulting firm Accenture, in an interview earlier this month. He says “Often we’re seeing that that’s the big area that companies need to invest in.” In a recent survey by consulting firm Deloitte, a plurality of executives at companies that are early adopters of AI ranked “data issues” as the biggest challenge they faced in rolling out the technology. Some 16% said it was the toughest problem they confronted with AI, and 39% said it ranked in the top three.

Some companies don’t have the data they need. Others have databases or data stores that aren’t in good shape to be tapped by AI. Still others are dealing with issues related to trying to keep their data secure or maintain users’ privacy as they prepare for it to be used by AI systems.

Spain Police Using Artificial Intelligence To Detect Written Lies

Scientists have developed a tool that seems remarkably accurate at judging written falsehoods. Using machine learning and text analysis, they’ve been able to identify false robbery reports with such accuracy that the tool is now being rolled out to police stations across Spain. Computer scientists from Cardiff University and Charles III University of Madrid developed the tool, called VeriPol, specifically to focus on robbery reports. In their paper, published in the journal Knowledge-Based Systems earlier this year, they describe how they trained a machine-learning model on more than 1000 police robbery reports from Spanish National Police, including those that were known to be false. A pilot study in Murcia and Malaga in June 2017 found that, once VeriPol identified a report as having a high probability of being false, 83% of these cases were closed after the claimants faced further questioning. In total, 64 false reports were detected in one week. 

“Police officers across Spain are now using VeriPol and integrating it into their working practices. Ultimately we hope that by showing that automatic detection is possible it will deter people from lying to the police in the first instance.”

MIT building A 1 Billion Dollar AI College

Massachusetts Institute of Technology will not just look to churn out single-discipline artificial intelligence graduates, but work to integrate machine learning into other fields — whether that’s history, politics, chemistry, or anything else. The college will equip students and researchers in any discipline to use computing and A.I. to advance their disciplines and vice-versa, as well as to think critically about the human impact of their work

Google’s AI can Detect Breast Cancer Better Than Humans

Google has delivered further evidence that AI could become a valuable tool in detecting cancer. The company’s researchers have developed a deep learning tool that can spot metastatic (advanced) breast cancer with a greater accuracy than pathologists when looking at slides. The team trained its algorithm (Lymph Node Assistant, aka LYNA) to recognize the characteristics of tumors using two sets of pathological slides, giving it the ability to spot metastasis in a wide variety of conditions. The result was an AI system that could tell the difference between cancer and non-cancer slides 99 percent of the time, even when looking for extremely small metastases that humans might miss.

Will Artificial Intelligence Determine How Much You’ll Pay for Goods & Services?

One thousand dollars is the new normal for smart phones in less than a year. Smartphones have replaced dozens, maybe hundreds of other single-function devices, from portable stereos to flashlights to TVs, and even personal computers. The average person has more computing power and more high-tech functionality in his or her pocket than even the wealthiest family had back in the day.

What can AI do for you: AI will also be capable of making energy much less expensive to produce and store. The average consumer already has access to hundreds of products capable of reducing the amount of energy they consume, including “smart” appliances like refrigerators, which can optimize and automate certain functions to keep energy costs low. Moreover, AI algorithms can make clean, renewable energy sources (like wind and solar) more efficient, ultimately reducing the cost of production, and the costs of producing and distributing food products.

AI has the power to greatly reduce the cost of insurance in all areas, including health insurance and auto insurance. Refined algorithms can more specifically calculate an individual’s risk factors, giving them the best possible rate for any policy. Plus, advanced algorithms can lower the risk of needing to file an insurance claim. For example, AI-powered self-driving cars have the potential to greatly reduce the risk of collisions, which in turn would make insurance dramatically cheaper for everyone, and advanced algorithms in the medical field can detect instances of cancer and other complex illnesses sooner, reducing the total costs associated with curing or treating those illnesses.

Soon, AI algorithms will be so sophisticated and tech companies will be so mature that the value of consumer data will be much higher, and the average consumer will provide more data with every digital interaction. At that point, tech companies may be interested in providing consumers with smartphones and other devices for free, with the intention of collecting enough data to counteract the costs of production and distribution.

Health care costs will likely remain high for the foreseeable future, but gradually, AI will gain the power to reduce those costs. Proactive screenings can be automated.

Will Jobs Be Necessary In The future?

Instagram Will Use Artificial Intelligence To Detect bullying In Photos

Although the majority of photos shared on Instagram are positive and bring people joy, occasionally a photo is shared that is unkind or unwelcome,” Adam Mosseri, the new head of Instagram, said in a press release. “We are now using machine learning technology to proactively detect bullying in photos and their captions and send them to our Community Operations team to review.”

Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, also introduced its own anti-bullying tools this month. Those features allow users to remove “troll comments” from their feeds, with the options to delete or hide comments in “bulk” and report comments on behalf of the victim. Facebook has hired thousands of people to look over content that may run afoul of its rules.

Robotics & Racism

A 2016 investigation by ProPublica found that an algorithm used in the U.S. to influence prison sentencing, was racially biased, predicting that black defendants pose a higher risk of repeating offences than they actually do.

While in office, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder voiced concerns about these technologies to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and making sure the use of aggregate data analysis won’t have unintended consequences.

According to experts, users should not assume that there will be algorithmic fairness and lack of bias in AI programming, especially when these algorithms are trained from human-created datasets.

Because AI algorithms are also designed to perceive patterns in human decision making, they can pick up the implicit biases of their creators.

The criminal justice system is not the only realm in which the implementation of these algorithms have backfired, creating tension between government agencies, technology companies, and directly affected citizens.

Twitter’s attempt at using artificial intelligence to engage with millennials in the U.S. in 2016 went awry after Tay, their verified Twitter chatbot, began spewing anti-semitic and racist comments at users.

Experts agree that A lack of laws exclusively designed to protect against discrimination in relation to big-data and machine learning is a problem. Researchers and computer scientists now face the challenge of creating cutting-edge technology that refrains from relying on decades-old trends of institutional biases and discrimination.

 

In banking, 70% of front-office jobs will be dislocated by AI, the researchers say: 485,000 tellers, 219,000 customer service representatives, and 174,000 loan interviewers and clerks. They will be replaced by chatbots, voice assistants and automated authentication and biometric technology.

And 96,000 financial managers and 13,000 compliance officers will be laid off as AI-based anti-money-laundering, anti-fraud, compliance and monitoring software fills in. Another 250,000 loan officers will lose their jobs to AI-based credit underwriting and smart contracts technology.

A few banks have introduced chatbots to do work that might otherwise be done by customer service people. Bank of America’s erica is one example. USAA’s Alexa skill is another.

There has also been some chatbot controversy and backlash. There was Microsoft’s Tay, which spewed racist nonsense to customers.

 

Shooter Goes On“devastating” Rampage At Artificial Intelligence Firm’

 

The shooting happened at a block of offices in Middleton, a suburb of Madison, Wisc., around 11:30EST Wednesday, with those struck by bullets rushed to hospital for treatment after. The gunman was shot dead by police. The gunman worked at an IT firm called WTS Paradigm based in the complex. He talked to an unnamed employee who saw one person shot in the shoulder. Four others are said to be receiving hospital treatment for their injuries. No word on why

The Big Robotic Takeover

More Jobs that may be in jeopardy.

Lawyers–

A.I. can help perform tasks ranging from legal discovery (the pre-trial process in which lawyers decide which documents are relevant to a case) to creating contracts. They can even argue parking fines and handle divorce proceedings.

Data entry clerks

Journalists

 

Financial Analysts

A.I. is taking over. Computers can spot patterns and make trades faster than even the most eagle-eyed of human analysts. Machine learning tools are all the rage, while some estimates suggest that around 30 percent of banking sector jobs will be lost to A.I. within the next decade.

Telemarketers and customer service assistants

Smart chatbots can perform a lot of these tools easily.

Medics

Algorithms can make diagnoses about disease and computers are being used to make recommendations about the best cancer treatment. A.I. pharmacists, and wearable devices that can help treat physical disorders, or even robots carrying out surgery, there’s no doubt that cutting edge technology will have a big impact on a range of medical professions.

Construction workers or other manual labor jobs

humans still have an advantage over robots when it comes to dexterity. For example, Amazon’s warehouses use robots developed by Kiva Systems to move around racks of shelves and bring them to stationary human workers who then pick the required items off the shelf. Bricklaying robots can lay bricks, but require humans to do the grouting. This balance will shift as robots get more dexterous, but for now many humans will find themselves working alongside robots rather than being flat-out replaced by them.

Musicians and other artists

Artificial intelligence systems which can generate stock music, or create images based on a written description. These tools will only become more advanced. And due to the ability to scale this tech, they’ll be able to carry out far more work than an individual human creative.

 

 

Samsung Opens AI Research Hub In New York City

Samsung has opened its second U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) research facility (sixth globally), as the Korean electronics giant continues to double down on its investments in transformative technologies. Its latest center, which will focus chiefly on robotics, is located in Chelsea, New York City and was officially opened at a ceremony featuring renowned AI expert Daniel D. Lee, executive vice president of Samsung Research.

 

 

Artifical Inteligence(AI) Art Will Be At Christies In October

Portrait of Edmond Belamy, 2018, created by GAN (Generative Adversarial Network), which will be offered at Christie’s in October 23-25 2018. Image © Obvious

The work appears uncompleted: the facial features are somewhat indistinct and there are blank areas of canvas. Oddly, the whole composition is displaced slightly to the north-west. A label on the wall states that the sitter is a man named Edmond Belamy, but the giveaway clue as to the origins of the work is the artist’s signature at the bottom right. In cursive Gallic script it reads:

Image © Obvious

 

Artificial Intelligence Changing The Way People Are Hired

 

AI, can help HR understand whether they need to put in more sources to shorten hiring cycles for critical vacancies. Alongside, AI also helps HR pitch the job opportunity to extremely relevant candidates, thus weeding out outliers, and contributing to shortening the hiring cycle even more.

Recruitment agencies, as well as enterprise HR, have already adopted chatbots to perform many of the repetitive tasks that HR executives have to perform otherwise.

AI can help. Whether it’s sourcing, scheduling, or screening, AI-powered tools have a lot to offer to make the recruitment process better for everyone involved. AI-based programs can connect with different sources of candidate information and initiate email conversations.

The same tools can then build candidate profiles, keep on following up for a formal application, track application progress, and filter relevant applications from the larger set.

AI-powered tools can also engage in natural conversations with candidates on social media, mobile platforms, and instant messengers, using natural language processing capabilities to ensure the conversations are enjoyable and value adding. Apart from this AI has a role to play in scheduling candidate interviews and interactions without requiring an executive to do all the arrangements.

Cultural mismatch is a major reason why people leave organizations. AI can help you mitigate the cultural mismatch between your organization and your employees. AI-based tools can help build dynamic questionnaires which are used to assign cultural scores and grades to employees, and then match them with the cultural attributes of the organization, to determine better fits.

A 2017 Glassdoor report suggests that almost 66 percent of millennials expect to leave their current job by 2020. AI seeks to  reduce the numbers for your organization, saving you time and money.

The DeepFake Video Problem

 

Buzzfeed has created a video that shows a more troubling side of this technology. The video shows former President Barack Obama saying things he never said, and it looks surprisingly believable.

In the video above, Obama is voiced by Jordan Peele, who does a passable impersonation. Having Peele do the voice gets the video more attention, but there are probably voice actors who could do an even better job. Buzzfeed started by pasting Peele’s mouth over top of Obama’s, and then replaced Obama’s jawline to match the mouth movements. Rendering took 56 hours for a minute-long video.

The tool is known as FakeApp, but the videos are usually called “Deepfakes” because that’s the handle used by the original developer on Reddit. You can download the code freely all over the internet, but it’s not easy to set up — you need to configure Nvidia’s CUDA framework to run the FakeApp TensorFlow code, so the app requires a GeForce GPU. The video you want to alter has to be split into individual frames, and you need a large number of high-resolution photos of the face you want to insert. In the case of Obama, there are plenty of photos online that can be used to generate a model.

Currently, new technology on the internet lets anyone make videos of real people appearing to say things they’ve never said. Republicans and Democrats say this deceitful technology  will become the latest weapon in disinformation wars against the United States and other Western democracies. This technology uses facial mapping and artificial intelligence to produce videos that appear so genuine it’s hard to spot the phonies. Lawmakers and intelligence officials worry that the bogus videos — called deepfakes that could be used to threaten national security or interfere in elections.

When an average person can create a realistic fake video of the president saying anything they want, and the reverse is a concern, too. People may dismiss as fake genuine footage, say of a real atrocity, to score political points.

Realizing the implications of the technology, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is already two years into a four-year program to develop technologies that can detect fake images and videos. Right now, it takes extensive analysis to identify phony videos. It’s unclear if new ways to authenticate images or detect fakes will keep pace with deepfake technology.

Deepfakes are so named because they utilize deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence. They are made by feeding a computer an algorithm, or set of instructions, lots of images and audio of a certain person. The computer program learns how to mimic the person’s facial expressions, mannerisms, voice and inflections. If you have enough video and audio of someone, you can combine a fake video of the person with a fake audio and get them to say anything you want.

Deepfake technology still has a few flaws. For instance, people’s blinking in fake videos may appear unnatural. But the technology is improving.

1. Don’t jump to conclusions

2. Consider the source

3. Check where else it is (and isn’t) online

4. Inspect the mouth

5. Slow it down

 

 

 

 

Cool Travel Tech Gadgets

 

Smart Luggage

CX-1 is at the top of the class. Introduced by ForwardX, this high-tech suitcase features facial recognition software and a wristband equipped with GPS. Put the two together and the luggage can follow you around through the airport, to the taxi stand, or anywhere else a suitcase can roll.

If someone tries to snatch the bag, the wristband is designed to alert you while helping you track the thief. Not physically having to lug a heavy suitcase through the airport is reason enough to love this new travel technology.

Recording Sunglasses

Spectacles sunglasses feature functional sunglasses with a small video recorder built into the frame. The recorder is designed to record 10-second snaps of your day, which are then sent to your smartphone using the Snapchat app. The snaps are relegated to Snapchat Memories, keeping a database of your most memorable moments.

The Mavic Pro travel drone

This drone features smartphone control, GPS, a 4K camera and video recorder, 11 flight modes, and nearly 30 minutes of flying time.

You can fly the drone up to a distance of 4.3 miles, recording video or snapping photos along the way. It even has tripod and selfie settings, letting you capture miles-wide moments of your travel with minimal effort. This drone elevates travel photography and video to a whole new level, both literally and figuratively.

Hi-Tech Hotel Features

Voice-activated devices are already in place at Acme Hotel in Chicago, letting travelers communicate with staff and glean information using an Amazon Echo device in the room. Instead of calling the front desk or heading to the lobby, all you need to do is ask Alexa about morning coffee hours, weather conditions, or setting a wake-up alarm.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another high-tech option hitting the industry, with an automated form of intelligence expected to replace human interactions in certain areas, like customer service. AI-equipped chatbots would be able to answer general questions and provide basic support faster, more conveniently, and 24 hours a day.

 

 

 

Artificial Intelligence(AI) & Customer Service

 

AI & X-Ray

A new piece of software has been trained to use wifi signals — which pass through walls, but bounce off living tissue — to monitor the movements, breathing, and heartbeats of humans on the other side of those walls. The researchers say this new tech’s promise lies in areas like remote healthcare, particularly elder care, but it’s hard to ignore slightly more dystopian applications.

Project’s leader Dina Katabi, a 2013 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow who teaches electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, to talk about how the new tech may be used.

She says “We actually are tracking 14 different joints on the body … the head, the neck, the shoulders, the elbows, the wrists, the hips, the knees, and the feet,

“So you can get the full stick-figure that is dynamically moving with the individuals that are obstructed from you — and that’s something new that was not possible before.”

The Problem: identifying human activity from wifi signals isn’t really something that even humans know how to do themselves. So the team developed one A.I. program that monitored human movements with a camera, on one side of a wall, and fed that information to their wifi X-ray A.I., called RF-Pose, as it struggled to make sense of the radio waves passing through that wall on the other side.

The Goal: Katabi would like to get the RF-Pose A.I. sophisticated enough that it can help monitor a variety of human health data tied to movement, identifying the early manifestations and progression of diseases like Parkinson’s or multiple sclerosis (MS). (Prior versions of this research could already track physiological data like breathing patterns and heart rate.) She also said RF-Pose’s underlying tech could easily apply to a number of other potential uses: from search-and-rescue missions retrieving avalanche victims, to wild futuristic revivals of Xbox Kinect, to intervening in dicey hostage situations between terrorists and law enforcement.

AI Predicts How You’ll Look In Old Age

H. Yang et al., arXiv 1711.10352v1 (2017)

Scientists have created advanced artificial intelligence (AI) to render artificial aging that’s more realistic (and some say depressing) than ever.

The system uses a two-part AI algorithm called a generative adversarial network (GAN). The first part takes a face and produces another face of the same individual at a target age. During training, a second part compares this image with a real image of someone at that age and with the original image and provides feedback, encouraging the first part to improve its abilities. Other artificial aging systems have used GANs, but this one differs by focusing not just on getting the age right, but also on maintaining the individual’s identity. Unlike others, it also renders foreheads and (lack of) hair, as seen in the photos of Justin Timberlake and Kirsten Dunst above.

The researchers trained their AI on more than 100,000 images from two databases, including mugshots and celebrities at different ages. A separate computer program then judged how the AI performed on a novel set of images. When the AI aged photos of people more than 20 years, so that people under 30 were meant to look between 50 and 60, for example, the computer program saw them (on average) as a 60-year-old (for mugshots) or a 52-year-old (for celebs).

AI Is Changing The Economy & The Way We Do Business

Artificial intelligence can help researchers identify diseases before they happen, reducing treatment costs. Whether it is advanced data analytics or an increased use of robots in surgery, AI can be a set of tools that can assist or help doctors provide care. AI tools can also help to halt the rise of healthcare costs in several ways: they can assist surgeons in complicated surgeries; and reduce human errors by assisting in diagnoses. The predictive capabilities of AI can also help to manage re-admissions – and even the spread of epidemics – more efficiently.

Artificial intelligence, in particular machine learning, can also help in the back office with insurance claims. Using past claim data, the algorithms can quickly work through claims. The technology is not only being tested in Japan, but is also being trialed by the private sector – for example, insurance provider Prudential Singapore.

China is the leading nation when it comes to deploying AI in the context of city planning and management. Hangzhou, a city of nine million people, has built a “city brain” which ‘runs’ the government on a huge amount of data collected from sensors and cameras.

 

Sephora Uses Artificial Intelligence & Augmented​ Reality For Their Cosmetics

Sephora is the industry-leading chain of cosmetic stores that have used technology to position itself as the number one specialty beauty retailer in the world. While other cosmetic companies rely heavily on department store sales, Sephora offers customers a number of tech options that allow them to personalize their shopping experience by trying on makeup virtually using AR, matching their skin tone to a foundation with AI, and sampling a fragrance via a touchscreen and scented air.

Sephora’s was founded in France by Dominique Mandonnaud in 1970, and acquired by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton in 1997. The company now operates some 2,300 stores in 33 countries worldwide, with more than 430 stores across the Americas.

Sephora Virtual Artist, an AR tool that allows customers to try on thousands of shades of lipstick, eyeshadow, false lashes, and many other makeup products sold at Sephora. It also lets users go through beauty tutorials on their own face digitally to learn how to achieve certain looks. A new feature called Color Match taps AI to help customers find the right color shade for their skin tone via an uploaded photo. Virtual Artist is available in the Sephora app as well as in select stores.

For the past five years, ModiFace and Sephora experimented with AR. ModiFace worked closely with Sephora to ensure every single color of a virtual product matches the product in real life.

Customers in New York City can try out the Innovation Lab’s newest tech venture, Tap and Try. The technology lets you pick any lip or lash product on an endcap display, and immediately try it on using Sephora Virtual Artist combined with RFID scanning.

Several stores across North America offer Sephora’s Fragrance IQ experience with a first-to-market sensory technology called InstaScent. After filling out an online scent profile, InstaScent allows clients to test 18 different scents using a dry air delivery system so they can test them out without actually trying them on.

Justice Department Putting Up 2$ Million For Artificial Intelligence

The Justice Department says that it will put $2 million towards research on AI, which it believes could be used to fight human trafficking, illegal border crossings, drug trafficking, and child pornography.

 National Institute for Justice, the DoJ’s research wing, is funding the initiative in the hopes that it will help address the opioid crisis and fight crime by helping investigators sift through massive amounts of data.

“Crimes such as gang violence, migrant smuggling, and human and opioid trafficking generate volumes of data resulting from the use of various communications and social media technologies by gang members, traffickers, smugglers; and financial transactions related to illicit activities,”

NIJ also wants to fund research on detecting encrypted child pornography files without breaking encryption, according to its call for proposals.

 “Encryption poses a major challenge to law enforcement in its efforts to combat child pornography,” the announcement states. “NIJ seeks proposals for R&D projects that examine the potential for developing technologies that can distinguish a contraband file through its encrypted container—without breaking encryption—with a sufficient degree of certainty to support probable cause for a court order to unlock the device, based on the encryption pattern of a particular file type.”

Privacy advocates have warned that AI could be abused by law enforcement agencies—it’s difficult to keep bias from creeping into algorithms, as ProPublica recently documented in software designed to predict recidivism.

 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & The Workplace

UK recruiters are developing technology, including artificial intelligence that allows them to offer people jobs before they even start to look.

Hays, one of the biggest recruiters in the world and the largest in Britain by market capitalisation, has set up a partnership with LinkedIn that allows it to access some of the company’s data, such as when a user adds a skill or profile picture.

With this sort of information, AI can identify someone who is about to begin a formal job hunt, which would allow the company to pre-emptively contact them with relevant roles.

“Data and artificial intelligence can provide accurate insights as to whether an individual would be receptive to a particular job. Its a race to get very strong candidates in front of your client before the competition.

Hays is just one of the large global recruiters, several of which are headquartered in the UK, investing in technology in an effort to match jobseekers and roles more swiftly and efficiently.

One of its main rivals, PageGroup, has created an “innovations group” to find ways of improving the hiring process by making it more digital. That includes making it easier and quicker for candidates to find roles online themselves or for recruiters to single out individuals best suited for a role that has become vacant.

Tech screening

Technology is already replacing some of the more mundane tasks that headhunters typically undertake, such as screening CVs and manually sifting through candidates to draw up a shortlist.

Other developments include recruitment chatbots, a trend towards video CVs and using AI to profile job applicants.

But there is also the risk that the technology recruiters are adopting could cannibalise their own business, by automating their role as intermediaries and the swaths of jobs they would typically find candidates for.

“Technology is having a disruptive impact on the recruitment sector – particularly in the blue-collar sector where perhaps the disparity in skills between candidates is a lot less acute, however, it will hurt across the board at the lower levels of… white collar [jobs ] as well.”

Among blue-collar recruiters, there has been consolidation. Netherlands-based human resources consultancy Randstad bought online recruiter Monster in 2016 and Zurich-based Adecco Group acquired jobs website Vettery in February.

Art or science?

Technology has also offered opportunities to small newcomers such as recruiters specializing in a particular sector. For example, where recruitment companies once had to build their own database of candidates, it is now much easier to find people on networks such as LinkedIn.

But recruiters also argue that the art of job matching will never be fully replaced by science. Technology will free up consultants to be more productive, giving them more time to offer clients tailored advice and develop a wider understanding of the market, they say.

“What will happen is recruiters will actually end up being much more like business consultants rather than doing desktop research,” said Albert Ellis, chief executive of Harvey Nash, a recruiter that specializes in technology.

Still, the automation of jobs remains an impending threat. A recent report by McKinsey forecast that between 400m and 800m people could be displaced by automation by 2030.