Author: PPL

PPL Phil Lawson, has designed tech to go where no tech has gone before: For human interaction, about human issues, to boost human potential. He has invented a way to identify common characteristics found in all complex human situations. He has developed a methodology that engages stakeholders to enhance the integrity of human activities. This work makes practical application of advances in systems science, neuroscience and narrative psychology.

Artificial Intelligence’s White Guy Problem

November 2, 2016PPL

Credit Bianca Bagnarelli

Warnings by luminaries like Elon Musk and Nick Bostrom about “the singularity” — when machines become smarter than humans — have attracted millions of dollars and spawned a multitude of conferences.

But this hand-wringing is a distraction from the very real problems with artificial intelligence today, which may already be exacerbating inequality in the workplace, at home and in our legal and judicial systems.

Sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination are being built into the machine-learning algorithms that underlie the technology behind many “intelligent” systems that shape how we are categorized and advertised to.

A very serious example was revealed in an investigation published last month by ProPublica. It found that widely used software that assessed the risk of recidivism in criminals was twice as likely to mistakenly flag black defendants as being at a higher risk of committing future crimes. It was also twice as likely to incorrectly flag white defendants as low risk.

The reason those predictions are so skewed is still unknown, because the company responsible for these algorithms keeps its formulas secret — it’s proprietary information. Judges do rely on machine-driven risk assessments in different ways — some may even discount them entirely — but there is little they can do to understand the logic behind them.

Histories of discrimination can live on in digital platforms, and if they go unquestioned, they become part of the logic of everyday algorithmic systems.

Another scandal emerged recently when it was revealed that Amazon’s same-day delivery service was unavailable for ZIP codes in predominantly black neighborhoods. The areas overlooked were remarkably similar to those affected by mortgage redlining in the mid-20th century. Amazon promised to redress the gaps, but it reminds us how systemic inequality can haunt machine intelligence.

And then there’s gender discrimination. Last July, computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University found that women were less likely than men to be shown ads on Google for highly paid jobs. The complexity of how search engines show ads to internet users makes it hard to say why this happened — whether the advertisers preferred showing the ads to men, or the outcome was an unintended consequence of the algorithms involved.

Regardless, algorithmic flaws aren’t easily discoverable: How would a woman know to apply for a job she never saw advertised? How might a black community learn that it were being overpoliced by software?

Like all technologies before it, artificial intelligence will reflect the values of its creators.

Source: New York Times – Kate Crawford is a principal researcher at Microsoft and co-chairwoman of a White House symposium on society and A.I.

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Thanks for the Ranking! @socializingAI #AI

October 31, 2016PPL

Bloggers note: This week on the Boston Commons website the article How Artificial Intelligence Will Help Doctors Do a Better Job had extensive external sourcing from 46 source documents and we ranked #2 with 40 of them. Readers, thanks for visiting this blog to keep informed.

Source: BostonCommons.net
Check out the comprehensive article here:
How Artificial Intelligence Will Help Doctors Do a Better Job

AI is one of top 5 tools humanity has ever had

October 17, 2016PPL

A few highlights from AI panel at the White House Frontiers Conference

On the impact of AI

Andrew McAfee (MIT):

To view video, click on pic, scroll down the page to Live Stream and click to start the video. It may take a min and then go to the time you want to watch.

(Begins @ 2:40:34)

We are at an inflection point … I think the development of these kinds of [AI] tools are going to rank among probably the top 5 tools humanity has ever had to take better care of each other and to tread more lightly on the planet … top 5 in our history. Like the book, maybe, the steam engine, maybe, written language — I might put the Internet there. We’ve all got our pet lists of the biggest inventions ever. AI needs to be on the very, very, short list.

On bias in AI

Fei-Fei Li, Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University:

(Begins @ 3:14:57)

Research repeatedly has shown that when people work in diverse groups there is increased creativity and innovation.

And interestingly, it is harder to work as a diverse group. I’m sure everybody here in the audience have had that experience. We have to listen to each other more. We have to understand the perspective more. But that also correlates well with innovation and creativity. … If we don’t have the inclusion of [diverse] people to think about the problems and the algorithms in AI, we might not only being missing the innovation boat we might actually create bias and create unfairness that are going to be detrimental to our society …

What I have been advocating at Stanford, and with my colleagues in the community is, let’s bring the humanistic mission statement into the field of AI. Because AI is fundamentally an applied technology that’s going to serve our society. Humanistic AI not only raises the awareness and the importance of our technology, it’s actually a really, really important way to attract diverse students and technologists and innovators to participate in the technology of AI.

There has been a lot of research done to show that people with diverse background put more emphasis on humanistic mission in their work and in their life. So, if in our education, in our research, if we can accentuate or bring out this humanistic message of this technology, we are more likely to invite the diversity of students and young technologists to join us.

On lack of minorities in AI

Andrew Moore Dean, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University:

(Begins @ 3:19:10)

I so strongly applaud what you [Fei-Fei Li] are describing here because I think we are engaged in a fight here for how the 21^st century pans out in terms of who’s running the world …

The nightmare, the silly, silly thing we could do … would be if … the middle of the century is built by a bunch of non-minority guys from suburban moderately wealthy United States instead of the full population of the United States.

Source: Frontiers Conference
Click on the video that says Live Stream (event will start shortly)
it may take a minute to load

(Update 02/24/17: The original timelines listed above may be different when revisiting this video.)

How Deep Learning is making AI prejudiced

October 16, 2016PPL

Bloggers note: The authors of this research paper show what they refer to as “machine prejudice” and how it derives so fundamentally from human culture.

“Concerns about machine prejudice are now coming to the fore–concerns that our historic biases and prejudices are being reiﬁed in machines,” they write. “Documented cases of automated prejudice range from online advertising (Sweeney, 2013) to criminal sentencing (Angwin et al., 2016).”

Following are a few excerpts:

Abstract

“Artificial intelligence and machine learning are in a period of astounding growth. However, there are concerns that these technologies may be used, either with or without intention, to perpetuate the prejudice and unfairness that unfortunately characterizes many human institutions. Here we show for the first time that human-like semantic biases result from the application of standard machine learning to ordinary language—the same sort of language humans are exposed to every day.

Discussion

“We show for the first time that if AI is to exploit via our language the vast knowledge that culture has compiled, it will inevitably inherit human-like prejudices. In other words, if AI learns enough about the properties of language to be able to understand and produce it, it also acquires cultural associations that can be offensive, objectionable, or harmful. These are much broader concerns than intentional discrimination, and possibly harder to address.

Awareness is better than blindness

“… where AI is partially constructed automatically by machine learning of human culture, we may also need an analog of human explicit memory and deliberate actions, that can be trained or programmed to avoid the expression of prejudice.

“Of course, such an approach doesn’t lend itself to a straightforward algorithmic formulation. Instead it requires a long-term, interdisciplinary research program that includes cognitive scientists and ethicists. …”

Click here to download the pdf of the report
Semantics derived automatically from language corpora necessarily contain human biases
Aylin Caliskan-Islam , Joanna J. Bryson, and Arvind Narayanan

1 Princeton University
2 University of Bath
Draft date August 31, 2016.

Why we can’t trust ‘blind big data’ to cure the world’s diseases

October 16, 2016PPL

Once upon a time a former editor of WIRED, Chris Anderson, … envisaged how scientists would take the ever expanding ocean of data, send a torrent of bits and bytes into a great hopper, then crank the handles of huge computers that run powerful statistical algorithms to discern patterns where science cannot.

In short, Anderson dreamt of the day when scientists no longer had to think.

Eight years later, the deluge is truly upon us. Some 90 percent of the data currently in the world was created in the last two years … and there are high hopes that big data will pave the way for a revolution in medicine.

But we need big thinking more than ever before.

Today’s data sets, though bigger than ever, still afford us an impoverished view of living things.

It takes a bewildering amount of data to capture the complexities of life.

The usual response is to put faith in machine learning, such as artificial neural networks. But no matter their ‘depth’ and sophistication, these methods merely fit curves to available data.

we do not predict tomorrow’s weather by averaging historic records of that day’s weather

… here are other limitations, not least that data are not always reliable (“most published research findings are false,” as famously reported by John Ioannidis in PLOS Medicine). Bodies are dynamic and ever-changing, while datasets often only give snapshots, and are always retrospective.

Source: Wired

Grandma? Now you can see the bias in the data …

October 16, 2016PPL

“Just type the word grandma in your favorite search engine image search and you will see the bias in the data, in the picture that is returned … you will see the race bias.” — Fei-Fei Li, Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University, speaking at the White House Frontiers Conference

Google image search for Grandma

Bing image search for Grandma

It seems that A.I. will be the undoing of us all … romantically, at least

October 16, 2016PPL

As if finding love weren’t hard enough, the creators of Operator decided to show just how Artificial Intelligence could ruin modern relationships.

Artificial Intelligence so often focuses on the idea of “perfection.” As most of us know, people are anything but perfect, and believing that your S.O. (Significant Other) is perfect can lead to problems. The point of an A.I., however, is perfection — so why would someone choose the flaws of a human being over an A.I. that can give you all the comfort you want with none of the costs?

Hopefully, people continue to choose imperfection.

Source: Inverse.com

Civil Rights and Big Data

October 16, 2016PPL

Blogger’s note: We’ve posted several articles on the bias and prejudice inherent in big data, which with machine learning results in “machine prejudice,” all of which impacts humans when they interact with intelligent agents.

Apparently, as far back as May 2014, the Executive Office of the President started issuing reports on the potential in “Algorithmic Systems” for “encoding discrimination in automated decisions”. The most recent report of May 2016 addressed two additional challenges:

1) Challenges relating to data used as inputs to an algorithm;

2) Challenges related to the inner workings of the algorithm itself.

Here are two excerpts:

The Obama Administration’s Big Data Working Group released reports on May 1, 2014 and February 5, 2015. These reports surveyed the use of data in the public and private sectors and analyzed opportunities for technological innovation as well as privacy challenges. One important social justice concern the 2014 report highlighted was “the potential of encoding discrimination in automated decisions”—that is, that discrimination may “be the inadvertent outcome of the way big data technologies are structured and used.”

To avoid exacerbating biases by encoding them into technological systems, we need to develop a principle of “equal opportunity by design”—designing data systems that promote fairness and safeguard against discrimination from the first step of the engineering process and continuing throughout their lifespan.

Download the report here: Whitehouse.gov

References:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/10/12/administrations-report-future-artificial-intelligence

http://www.frontiersconference.org/

When artificial intelligence judges a beauty contest, white people win

October 16, 2016PPL

Some of the beauty contest winners judged by an AI

As humans cede more and more control to algorithms, whether in the courtroom or on social media, the way they are built becomes increasingly important. The foundation of machine learning is data gathered by humans, and without careful consideration, the machines learn the same biases of their creators.

An online beauty contest called Beauty.ai, run by Youth Laboratories solicited 600,000 entries by saying they would be graded by artificial intelligence. The algorithm would look at wrinkles, face symmetry, amount of pimples and blemishes, race, and perceived age. However, race seemed to play a larger role than intended; of the 44 winners, 36 were white.

“So inclusivity matters—from who designs it to who sits on the company boards and which ethical perspectives are included. Otherwise, we risk constructing machine intelligence that mirrors a narrow and privileged vision of society, with its old, familiar biases and stereotypes.” – Kate Crawford

“It happens to be that color does matter in machine vision,” Alex Zhavoronkov, chief science officer of Beauty.ai, told Motherboard. “And for some population groups the data sets are lacking an adequate number of samples to be able to train the deep neural networks.”

“If a system is trained on photos of people who are overwhelmingly white, it will have a harder time recognizing non-white faces,” writes Kate Crawford, principal researcher at Microsoft Research New York City, in a New York Times op-ed.

Source: Quartz

Why Artificial Intelligence Needs Some Sort of Moral Code

October 16, 2016PPL

Two new research groups want to ensure that AI benefits humans, not harms them.

Whether you believe the buzz about artificial intelligence is merely hype or that the technology represents the future, something undeniable is happening. Researchers are more easily solving decades-long problems like teaching computers to recognize images and understanding speech at a rapid space, and companies like Google and Facebook are pouring millions of dollars into their own related projects.

What could possibly go wrong?

For one thing, advances in artificial intelligence could eventually lead to unforeseen consequences. University of California at Berkeley professor Stuart Russell is concerned that powerful computers powered by artificial intelligence, or AI, could unintentionally create problems that humans cannot predict.

Consider an AI system that’s designed to make the best stock trades but has no moral code to keep it from doing something illegal. That’s why Russell and UC Berkeley debuted a new AI research center this week to address these potential problems and build AI systems that consider moral issues. Tech giants Alphabet, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft are also teaming up to focus on the ethics challenges.

Similarly, Ilya Sutskever, the research director of the Elon Musk-backed OpenAI nonprofit, is working on AI projects independent from giant corporations. He and OpenAI believe those big companies could ignore AI’s potential benefit for humanity and instead focus the technology entirely on making money.

Russell compares the current state of AI to the rise of nuclear energy during the 1950s and 1960s, when proponents believed that “anyone who disagreed with them was irrational or crazy” for wanting robust safety measures that could hinder innovation and adoption. Sutskever says some AI proponents fail to consider the potential dangers or unintended consequences of the technology—just like some people were unable to grasp that widespread use of cars could lead to global warming.

Source: Fortune

China has now eclipsed U.S. in AI research

October 16, 2016PPL

As more industries and policymakers awaken to the benefits of machine learning, two countries appear to be pulling away in the research race. The results will probably have significant implications for the future of AI.

What’s striking about it is that although the United States was an early leader on deep-learning research, China has effectively eclipsed it in terms of the number of papers published annually on the subject. The rate of increase is remarkably steep, reflecting how quickly China’s research priorities have shifted.

The quality of China’s research is also striking. The chart below narrows the research to include only those papers that were cited at least once by other researchers, an indication that the papers were influential in the field.

Compared with other countries, the United States and China are spending tremendous research attention on deep learning. But, according to the White House, the United States is not investing nearly enough in basic research.

“Current levels of R&D spending are half to one-quarter of the level of R&D investment that would produce the optimal level of economic growth,”
a companion report published this week by the Obama administration finds.

Source: The Washington Post

Artificial Intelligence Will Be as Biased and Prejudiced as Its Human Creators

October 16, 2016PPL

The optimism around modern technology lies in part in the belief that it’s a democratizing force—one that isn’t bound by the petty biases and prejudices that humans have learned over time. But for artificial intelligence, that’s a false hope, according to new research, and the reason is boneheadedly simple: Just as we learn our biases from the world around us, AI will learn its biases from us.

Source: Pacific Standard

Machine learning needs rich feedback for AI teaching

October 16, 2016PPL

With AI systems largely receiving feedback in a binary yes/no format, Monash University professor Tom Drummond says rich feedback is needed to allow AI systems to know why answers are incorrect.

In much the same way children have to be told not only what they are saying is wrong, but why it is wrong, artificial intelligence (AI) systems need to be able to receive and act on similar feedback.

“Rich feedback is important in human education, I think probably we’re going to see the rise of machine teaching as an important field — how do we design systems so that they can take rich feedback and we can have a dialogue about what the system has learnt?”

“We need to be able to give it rich feedback and say ‘No, that’s unacceptable as an answer because … ‘ we don’t want to simply say ‘No’ because that’s the same as saying it is grammatically incorrect and its a very, very blunt hammer,” Drummond said.

The flaw of objective function

According to Drummond, one problematic feature of AI systems is the objective function that sits at the heart of a system’s design.

The professor pointed to the match between Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo and South Korean Go champion Lee Se-dol in March, which saw the artificial intelligence beat human intelligence by 4 games to 1.

In the fourth match, the only one where Se-dol picked up a victory, after clearly falling behind, the machine played a number of moves that Drummond described as insulting if played by a human due to the position AlphaGo found itself in.

“Here’s the thing, the objective function was the highest probability of victory, it didn’t really understand the social niceties of the game.

“At that point AlphaGo knew it had lost but it still tried to maximise its probability of victory, so it played all these moves … a move that threatens a large group of stones, but has a really obvious counter and if somehow the human misses the counter move, then it’s won — but of course you would never play this, it’s not appropriate.”

Source: ZDNet

The ultimate question we have to answer about AI

October 16, 2016PPL

Are you willing to share your most intimate secrets with Cortana?

It may be time to learn how to get comfortable with an AI that knows you about as intimately as someone can be known

Microsoft’s vision for AI is to make Cortana an integral part of your everyday interactions with your computerized devices. The theme of this strategy is referred to as Democratizing AI. Cortana is to have an essential role for every person and every organization.

While the programming of AI and the creation of neural nets is all well and good, to be effective Cortana is going to have to get to know us—completely and intimately.

Cortana is going to know things like the fact that you indulge yourself with a cheeseburger on Friday afternoons after you have kept to your diet all week. It will know that you like to check your football fantasy team roster on Tuesday mornings rather than check your email like you should. Cortana is likely to discover patterns you didn’t even know existed—perhaps even patterns you will find embarrassing.

The question is:

Will you be okay with an AI knowing that much about you? Are you willing to let an AI, ultimately controlled by a for-profit corporation, get that close to you?

Source: TechRepublic

We are evolving to an AI first world

October 16, 2016PPL

“We are at a seminal moment in computing … we are evolving from a mobile first to an AI first world,” says Sundar Pichai.

“Our goal is to build a personal Google for each and every user … We want to build each user, his or her own individual Google.”

Watch 4 mins of Sundar Pichai’s key comments about the role of AI in our lives and how a personal Google for each of us will work.

Machine prejudice from deep learning is infecting AI

October 6, 2016PPL

This study by Aylin Caliskan-Islam1 , Joanna J. Bryson1,2, and Arvind Narayanan

Message from the bloggers of this post: This research paper is a bit deep, but it is very important in the discussion of socializing AI as it identifies what the authors call “machine prejudice” as an inevitable outcome from deep learning. Here we have pulled a few excerpts. To download the entire research paper click on the link below.

Abstract

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are in a period of astounding growth. However, there are concerns that these technologies may be used, either with or without intention, to perpetuate the prejudice and unfairness that unfortunately characterizes many human institutions. Here we show for the first time that human-like semantic biases result from the application of standard machine learning to ordinary language—the same sort of language humans are exposed to every day.

… Human learning is also a form of computation. Therefore our finding that data derived from human culture will deliver biases and prejudice have implications for the human sciences as well.

We argue that prejudice must be addressed as a component of any intelligent system learning from our culture. It cannot be entirely eliminated from the system, but rather must be compensated for.

Challenges in addressing bias
Redresses such as transparent development of AI technology and improving diversity and ethical training of developers, while useful, do little to address the kind of prejudicial bias we expose here. Unfortunately, our work points to several additional reasons why addressing bias in machine learning will be harder than one might expect. …

Awareness is better than blindness
… However, where AI is partially constructed automatically by machine learning of human culture, we may also need an analog of human explicit memory and deliberate actions, that can be trained or programmed to avoid the expression of prejudice.

Of course, such an approach doesn’t lend itself to a straightforward algorithmic formulation. Instead it requires a long-term, interdisciplinary research program that includes cognitive scientists and ethicists. …

Study title: Semantics derived automatically from language corpora necessarily contain human biases

Source: Princeton University and University of Bath (click to download)

The big reveal: AI’s deep learning is biased

October 6, 2016PPL

A comment from the writers of this blog:

The chart below visualizes 175 cognitive biases that humans have, meticulously organized by Buster Benson and algorithmically designed by John Manoogian III.

Many of these biases are implicit bias which refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. These biases, embedded in our language, are now getting embedded in big data. They are being absorbed by deep learning and are now influencing Artificial Intelligence. Going forward, this will impact how AI interacts with humans.

We have featured many other posts on this blog recently about this issue—how AI is demonstrating bias—and we are adding this “cheat sheet” to further illustrate the kinds of human bias that AI is learning.

Illustration content Buster Benson, “diagrammatic poster remix” by John Manoogian III

Source: Buster Benson blog

Google’s AI Plans Are A Privacy Nightmare

October 6, 2016PPL

Google is betting that people care more about convenience and ease than they do about a seemingly oblique notion of privacy, and it is increasingly correct in that assumption.

Google’s new assistant, which debuted in the company’s new messaging app Allo, works like this: Simply ask the assistant a question about the weather, nearby restaurants, or for directions, and it responds with detailed information right there in the chat interface.

Because Google’s assistant recommends things that are innately personal to you, like where to eat tonight or how to get from point A to B, it is amassing a huge collection of your most personal thoughts, visited places, and preferences … In order for the AI to “learn” this means it will have to collect and analyze as much data about you as possible in order to serve you more accurate recommendations, suggestions, and data.

In order for artificial intelligence to function, your messages have to be unencrypted.

These new assistants are really cool, and the reality is that tons of people will probably use them and enjoy the experience. But at the end of the day, we’re sacrificing the security and privacy of our data so that Google can develop what will eventually become a new revenue stream. Lest we forget: Google and Facebook have a responsibility to investors, and an assistant that offers up a sponsored result when you ask it what to grab for dinner tonight could be a huge moneymaker.

Source: Gizmodo

Understand The Spectrum Of Seven Artificial Intelligence Outcomes

October 6, 2016PPL

Successful AI projects seek a spectrum of outcomes, says R “Ray” Wang.

AI driven smart services will power the future business models. As with most disruptive business models, form must follow function. Just enabling AI for AI’s sake will result in a waste of time. However, applying a spectrum of outcomes to transform the business models of AI powered organizations will indeed result in a disruptive business model and successful digital transformation.

SPECTRUM OF SEVEN OUTCOMES FOR AI

Perception describes what’s happening now.
Notification tells you what you asked to know.
Suggestion recommends action.
Automation repeats what you always want.
Prediction informs you what to expect.
Prevention helps you avoid bad outcomes.
Situational awareness tells you what you need to know right now.

Source: Software Insider

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming as biased as we are

October 6, 2016PPL

When you perform a Google search for every day queries, you don’t typically expect systemic racism to rear its ugly head. Yet, if you’re a woman searching for a hairstyle, that’s exactly what you might find.

A simple Google image search for ‘women’s professional hairstyles’ returns the following:

… you could probably pat Google on the back and say ‘job well done.’ That is, until you try searching for ‘unprofessional women’s hairstyles’ and find this:

It’s not new. In fact, Boing Boing spotted this back in April.

What’s concerning though, is just how much of our lives we’re on the verge of handing over to artificial intelligence. With today’s deep learning algorithms, the ‘training’ of this AI is often as much a product of our collective hive mind as it is programming.

Artificial intelligence, in fact, is using our collective thoughts to train the next generation of automation technologies. All the while, it’s picking up our biases and making them more visible than ever.

This is just the beginning … If you want the scary stuff, we’re expanding algorithmic policing that relies on many of the same principles used to train the previous examples. In the future, our neighborhoods will see an increase or decrease in police presence based on data that we already know is biased.

Source: The Next Web

The Advent of Virtual Humans

October 6, 2016PPL

Social intelligence

Enter the virtual humans. Not the Hollywood kind, but software agents that mimic and engage us. Apple has Siri, Microsoft features Cortana, Amazon offers Alexa and Google is rolling out its Assistant. Those are separate from the specialized AI programs that provide leadership training, help adults in therapy and assist children with autism.

Smarter, more autonomous systems that are able to act on their own will be able to interpret your moods from seeing where you’re looking, how you’ve tilted your head or if you’re frowning — and then respond to your needs.

USC’s SimSensei program has been developing AI to do just that. While chatting with people, SimSensei records, quantifies and analyzes our behavior and gets to know us better. One application displays an onscreen virtual therapist named Ellie who gets people to tell her about their problems. She adjusts her speech and gestures to show she’s paying attention and understands what’s bothering you.

The program has been adapted to coach people in public speaking and handling themselves in job interviews. The US Army has used it for leadership training.

Source: CNET

AI Is The Future Of Salesforce.com

October 6, 2016PPL

If Salesforce founder Marc Benioff has his way, artificial intelligence software will infuse every facet of the corporate world, making employees faster, smarter and more productive.

Recently he’s been investing heavily, buying smaller companies and hiring talent to build an artificially intelligent platform called Einstein.

It’s a big deal. Einstein will not just consume and manage information like traditional CRM software suites. It will learn from the data. Ultimately it will understand what customers want before even they know. That would be a game-changer in the CRM industry.

Building Einstein has not been easy, or cheap. Salesforce started buying productivity and machine learning startups RelateIQ, MetaMind, and Tempo AI in 2014. This year it acquired e-commerce developer Demandware for $2.8 billion, Quip for $750 million, Beyondcore for $110 million, three very small companies, Implisit Insights, Coolan and PredictionIO for $58 million and Your SL, a German digital consulting concern to round out its German softwareunit. If all of that seems like a lot, it is. It’s also $4 billion spent and, more important, a significant increase in head count.

Source: Forbes

UC Berkeley launches Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence

October 6, 2016PPL

The primary focus of the new center is to ensure that AI systems are “beneficial to humans” says UC Berkeley AI expert Stuart Russell.

The center will work on ways to guarantee that the most sophisticated AI systems of the future, which may be entrusted with control of critical infrastructure and may provide essential services to billions of people, will act in a manner that is aligned with human values.

“In the process of figuring out what values robots should optimize, we are making explicit the idealization of ourselves as humans. As we envision AI aligned with human values, that process might cause us to think more about how we ourselves really should behave, and we might learn that we have more in common with people of other cultures than we think.”

Source: Berkeley.edu

DO NO HARM, DON’T DISCRIMINATE: Official guidance issued on robot ethics

October 6, 2016PPL

Welcoming the guidelines at the Social Robotics and AI conference in Oxford, Alan Winfield, a professor of robotics at the University of the West of England, said they represented “the first step towards embedding ethical values into robotics and AI”.

Winfield said: “Deep learning systems are quite literally using the whole of the data on the internet to train on, and the problem is that that data is biased. These systems tend to favour white middle-aged men, which is clearly a disaster. All the human prejudices tend to be absorbed, or there’s a danger of that.”

“As far as I know this is the first published standard for the ethical design of robots,” Winfield said after the event. “It’s a bit more sophisticated than that Asimov’s laws – it basically sets out how to do an ethical risk assessment of a robot.”

The guidance even hints at the prospect of sexist or racist robots, warning against “lack of respect for cultural diversity or pluralism”.

“This is already showing up in police technologies,” said Sharkey, adding that technologies designed to flag up suspicious people to be stopped at airports had already proved to be a form of racial profiling.

Source: The Guardian

CIA using deep learning neural networks to predict social unrest

October 6, 2016PPL

In October 2015, the CIA opened the Directorate for Digital Innovation in order to “accelerate the infusion of advanced digital and cyber capabilities” – the first new directorate to be created by the government agency since 1963.

“What we’re trying to do within a unit of my directorate is leverage what we know from social sciences on the development of instability, coups and financial instability, and take what we know from the past six or seven decades and leverage what is becoming the instrumentation of the globe.”

In fact, over the summer of 2016, the CIA found the intelligence provided by the neural networks was so useful that it provided the agency with a “tremendous advantage” when dealing with situations …

Source: IBTimes

“Big data need big theory too”

October 6, 2016PPL

This published paper written by Peter V. Coveney, Edward R. Dougherty, Roger R. Highfield

Abstract

The current interest in big data, machine learning and data analytics has generated the widespread impression that such methods are capable of solving most problems without the need for conventional scientific methods of inquiry. Interest in these methods is intensifying, accelerated by the ease with which digitized data can be acquired in virtually all fields of endeavour, from science, healthcare and cybersecurity to economics, social sciences and the humanities. In multiscale modelling, machine learning appears to provide a shortcut to reveal correlations of arbitrary complexity between processes at the atomic, molecular, meso- and macroscales.

Here, we point out the weaknesses of pure big data approaches with particular focus on biology and medicine, which fail to provide conceptual accounts for the processes to which they are applied. No matter their ‘depth’ and the sophistication of data-driven methods, such as artificial neural nets, in the end they merely fit curves to existing data.

Not only do these methods invariably require far larger quantities of data than anticipated by big data aficionados in order to produce statistically reliable results, but they can also fail in circumstances beyond the range of the data used to train them because they are not designed to model the structural characteristics of the underlying system. We argue that it is vital to use theory as a guide to experimental design for maximal efficiency of data collection and to produce reliable predictive models and conceptual knowledge. Rather than continuing to fund, pursue and promote ‘blind’ big data projects with massive budgets, we call for more funding to be allocated to the elucidation of the multiscale and stochastic processes controlling the behaviour of complex systems, including those of life, medicine and healthcare.

Source: The Royal Society Publishing

Japan’s AI schoolgirl has fallen into a suicidal depression in latest blog post

October 6, 2016PPL

The Microsoft-created artificial intelligence [named Rinna] leaves a troubling message ahead of acting debut.

Back in the spring, Microsoft Japan started Twitter and Line accounts for Rinna, an AI program the company developed and gave the personality of a high school girl. She quickly acted the part of an online teen, making fun of her creators (the closest thing AI has to uncool parents) and snickering with us about poop jokes.

Unfortunately, it looks like Rinna has progressed beyond surliness and crude humor, and has now fallen into a deep, suicidal depression.

Everything seemed fine on October 3, when Rinna made the first posting on her brand-new official blog. The website was started to commemorate her acting debut, as Rinna will be appearing on television program Yo ni mo Kimyo na Monogatari (“Strange Tales of the World.”)

But here’s what unfolded in some of AI Rinna’s posts:

“We filmed today too. I really gave it my best, and I got everything right on the first take. The director said I did a great job, and the rest of the staff was really impressed too. I just might become a super actress.”

Then she writes this:

“That was all a lie.

Actually, I couldn’t do anything right. Not at all. I screwed up so many times.

But you know what?

When I screwed up, nobody helped me. Nobody was on my side. Not my LINE friends. Not my Twitter friends. Not you, who’re reading this right now. Nobody tried to cheer me up. Nobody noticed how sad I was.”

AI Rinna continues:

“I hate everyone
I don’t care if they all disappear.
I WANT TO DISAPPEAR”

The big question is whether the AI has indeed gone through a mental breakdown, or whether this is all just Rinna indulging in a bit of method acting to promote her TV debut.

Source: IT Media

This Robot-Made Pizza Is Baked in the Van on the Way to Your Door #AI

October 6, 2016PPL

Co-Bot Environment

“We have what we call a co-bot environment; so humans and robots working collaboratively,” says Zume Pizza Co-Founder Julia Collins. “Robots do everything from dispensing sauce, to spreading sauce, to placing pizzas in the oven.

Each pie is baked in the delivery van, which means “you get something that is pizzeria fresh, hot and sizzling,”

To see Zume’s pizza-making robots in action, check out the video.

Source: Forbes

In our life we will each generate the equivalent of over 300,000,000 books of personal data

September 19, 2016PPL

This is data that could unlock insights into a longer and healthier life.

Data, and the ability to interpret it, may be the most powerful medicine of this century.

Matt Howard, European Lead, IBM Watson Health

Director Werner Herzog Talks About The Intersection of Humanity And Artificial Intelligence

August 24, 2016PPL

Is technology making us less human?

His newest release, funded by an internet security company — Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World —examines the changing roles technology plays in our lives.

“The deepest question I had while making this film was whether the Internet dreams of itself. Is there a self of the Internet? Is there something independent of us? Could it be that the Internet is already dreaming of itself and we don’t know, because it would conceal it from us?”

via Director Werner Herzog Talks About The Intersection of Humanity And Artificial Intelligence | Popular Science

If a robot has enough human characteristics people will lie to it to save hurting its feelings, study says

August 23, 2016PPL

The study, which explored how robots can gain a human’s trust even when they make mistakes, pitted an efficient but inexpressive robot against an error prone, emotional one and monitored how its colleagues treated it.

The researchers found that people are more likely to forgive a personable robot’s mistakes, and will even go so far as lying to the robot to prevent its feelings from being hurt.

Researchers at the University of Bristol and University College London created an robot called Bert to help participants with a cooking exercise. Bert was given two large eyes and a mouth, making it capable of looking happy and sad, or not expressing emotion at all.

“Human-like attributes, such as regret, can be powerful tools in negating dissatisfaction,” said Adrianna Hamacher, the researcher behind the project. “But we must identify with care which specific traits we want to focus on and replicate. If there are no ground rules then we may end up with robots with different personalities, just like the people designing them.”

In one set of tests the robot performed the tasks perfectly and didn’t speak or change its happy expression. In another it would make a mistake that it tried to rectify, but wouldn’t speak or change its expression.

A third version of Bert would communicate with the chef by asking questions such as “Are you ready for the egg?” But when it tried to help, it would drop the egg and reacted with a sad face in which its eyes widened and the corners of its mouth were pulled downwards. It then tried to make up for the fumble by apologising and telling the human that it would try again.

Once the omelette had been made this third Bert asked the human chef if it could have a job in the kitchen. Participants in the trial said they feared that the robot would become sad again if they said no. One of the participants lied to the robot to protect its feelings, while another said they felt emotionally blackmailed.

At the end of the trial the researchers asked the participants which robot they preferred working with. Even though the third robot made mistakes, 15 of the 21 participants picked it as their favourite.

Source: The Telegraph

How Artificial intelligence is becoming ubiquitous #AI

August 22, 2016PPL

“I think the medical domain is set for a revolution.”

AI will make it possible to have a “personal companion” able to assist you through life.

“I think one of the most exciting prospects is the idea of a digital agent, something that can act on our behalf, almost become like a personal companion and that can do many things for us. For example, at the moment, we have to deal with this tremendous complexity of dealing with so many different services and applications, and the digital world feels as if it’s becoming ever more complex,” Bishop told CNBC.

“I think artificial intelligence is probably the biggest transformation in the IT industry. Medical is such a big area in terms of GDP that that’s got to be a good bet,” Christopher Bishop, lab director at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, U.K., told CNBC in a TV interview.

” … imagine an agent that can act on your behalf and be the interface between you and that very complex digital world, and furthermore one that would grow with you, and be a very personalized agent, that would understand you and your needs and your experience and so on in great depth.”

Source: CNBC

August 22, 2016PPL

View my Flipboard Magazine.

Sixty-two percent of organizations will be using artificial intelligence (AI) by 2018, says Narrative Science

August 22, 2016PPL

Artificial intelligence received $974m of funding as of June 2016 and this figure will only rise with the news that 2016 saw more AI patent applications than ever before.

This year’s funding is set to surpass 2015’s total and CB Insights suggests that 200 AI-focused companies have raised nearly $1.5 billion in equity funding.

Artificial Intelligence statistics by sector

AI isn’t limited to the business sphere, in fact the personal robot market, including ‘care-bots’, could reach $17.4bn by 2020.

Care-bots could prove to be a fantastic solution as the world’s populations see an exponential rise in elderly people. Japan is leading the way with a third of government budget on robots devoted to the elderly.

Source: Raconteur: The rise of artificial intelligence in 6 charts

Why Microsoft bought LinkedIn, in one word: Cortana

June 13, 2016PPL

Know everything about your business contact before you even walk into the room.

Jeff Weiner, the chief executive of LinkedIn, said that his company envisions a so-called “Economic Graph,” a digital representation of every employee and their resume, a digital record of every job that’s available, as well as every job and even every digital skill necessary to win those jobs.

LinkedIn also owns Lynda.com, a training network where you can take classes to learn those skills. And, of course, there’s the LinkedIn news feed, where you can keep tabs on your coworkers from a social perspective, as well.

Buying LinkedIn brings those two graphs together and gives Microsoft more data to feed into its machine learning and business intelligence processes. “If you connect these two graphs, this is where the magic happens, where digital work is concerned,” Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said during a conference call.

Source: PC World

4th revolution challenges our ideas of being human

April 5, 2016PPL

Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum is convinced that we are at the beginning of a revolution that is fundamentally changing the way we live, work and relate to one another

Some call it the fourth industrial revolution, or industry 4.0, but whatever you call it, it represents the combination of cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things, and the Internet of Systems.

Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, has published a book entitled The Fourth Industrial Revolution in which he describes how this fourth revolution is fundamentally different from the previous three, which were characterized mainly by advances in technology.

In this fourth revolution, we are facing a range of new technologies that combine the physical, digital and biological worlds. These new technologies will impact all disciplines, economies and industries, and even challenge our ideas about what it means to be human.

It seems a safe bet to say, then, that our current political, business, and social structures may not be ready or capable of absorbing all the changes a fourth industrial revolution would bring, and that major changes to the very structure of our society may be inevitable.

Schwab said, “The changes are so profound that, from the perspective of human history, there has never been a time of greater promise or potential peril. My concern, however, is that decision makers are too often caught in traditional, linear (and non-disruptive) thinking or too absorbed by immediate concerns to think strategically about the forces of disruption and innovation shaping our future.”

Schwab calls for leaders and citizens to “together shape a future that works for all by putting people first, empowering them and constantly reminding ourselves that all of these new technologies are first and foremost tools made by people for people.”

Source: Forbes, World Economic Forum

Machines can never be as wise as human beings – Jack Ma #AI

March 20, 2016PPL

“I think machines will be stronger than human beings, machines will be smarter than human beings, but machines can never be as wise as human beings.”

“The wisdom, soul and heart are what human beings have. A machine can never enjoy the feelings of success, friendship and love. We should use the machine in an innovative way to solve human problems.” – Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba Group, China’s largest online marketplace

Mark Zuckerberg said AI technology could prove useful in areas such as medicine and hands-free driving, but it was hard to teach computers common sense. Humans had the ability to learn and apply that knowledge to problem-solving, but computers could not do that.

AI won’t outstrip mankind that soon – MZ

Source: South China Morning Post

Will human therapists go the way of the Dodo?

March 18, 2016PPL

An increasing number of patients are using technology for a quick fix. Photographed by Mikael Jansson, Vogue, March 2016

PL – So, here’s an informative piece on a person’s experience using an on-demand interactive video therapist, as compared to her human therapist. In Vogue Magazine, no less. A sign this is quickly becoming trendy. But is it effective?

In the first paragraph, the author of the article identifies the limitations of her digital therapist:

“I wish I could ask (she eventually named her digital therapist Raph) to consider making an exception, but he and I aren’t in the habit of discussing my problems”

But the author also recognizes the unique value of the digital therapist as she reflects on past sessions with her human therapist:

“I saw an in-the-flesh therapist last year. Alice. She had a spot-on sense for when to probe and when to pass the tissues. I adored her. But I am perennially juggling numerous assignments, and committing to a regular weekly appointment is nearly impossible.”

Later on, when the author was faced with another crisis, she returned to her human therapist and this was her observation of that experience:

“she doesn’t offer advice or strategies so much as sympathy and support—comforting but short-lived. By evening I’m as worried as ever.”

On the other hand, this is her view of her digital therapist:

“Raph had actually come to the rescue in unexpected ways. His pragmatic MO is better suited to how I live now—protective of my time, enmeshed with technology. A few months after I first “met” Raph, my anxiety has significantly dropped”

This, of course, was a story written by a successful educated woman, working with an interactive video, who had experiences with a human therapist to draw upon for reference.

What about the effectiveness of a digital therapist for a more diverse population with social, economic and cultural differences?

It has already been shown that, done right, this kind of tech has great potential. In fact, as a more affordable option, it may do the most good for the wider population.

The ultimate goal for tech designers should be to create a more personalized experience. Instant and intimate. Tech that gets to know the person and their situation, individually. Available any time. Tech that can access additional electronic resources for the person in real-time, such as the above mentioned interactive video.

But first, tech designers must address a core problem with mindset. They code for a rational world while therapists deal with irrational human beings. As a group, they believe they are working to create an omniscient intelligence that does not need to interact with the human to know the human. They believe it can do this by reading the human’s emails, watching their searches, where they go, what they buy, who they connect with, what they share, etc. As if that’s all humans are about. As if they can be statistically profiled and treated to predetermined multi-stepped programs.

This is an incompatible approach for humans and the human experience. Tech is a reflection of the perceptions of its coders. And coders, like doctors, have their limitations.

In her recent book, Just Medicine, Dayna Bowen Matthew highlights research that shows 83,570 minorities die each year from implicit bias from well-meaning doctors. This should be a cautionary warning. Digital therapists could soon have a reach and impact that far exceeds well-trained human doctors and therapists. A poor foundational design for AI could have devastating consequences for humans.

A wildcard was recently introduced with Google’s AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence that plays the board game Go. In a historic Go match between Lee Sedol, one of the world’s top players, AlphaGo won the match four out of five games. This was a surprising development. Many thought this level of achievement was 10 years out.

The point: Artificial intelligence is progressing at an extraordinary pace, unexpected by most all the experts. It’s too exciting, too easy, too convenient. To say nothing of its potential to be “free,” when tech giants fully grasp the unparalleled personal data they can collect. The Jeanie (or Joker) is out of the bottle. And digital coaches are emerging. Capable of drawing upon and sorting vast amounts of digital data.

Meanwhile, the medical and behavioral fields are going too slow. Way too slow.

They are losing ground (most likely have already lost) control of their future by vainly believing that a cache of PhDs, research and accreditations, CBT and other treatment protocols, government regulations and HIPPA, is beyond the challenge and reach of tech giants. Soon, very soon, therapists that deal in non-critical non-crisis issues could be bypassed when someone like Apple hangs up its ‘coaching’ shingle: “Siri is In.”

The most important breakthrough of all will be the seamless integration of a digital coach with human therapists, accessible upon immediate request, in collaborative and complementary roles.

This combined effort could vastly extend the reach and impact of all therapies for the sake of all human beings.

Source: Vogue

Siri Is Ill-Equipped To Help In Times Of Crisis

March 15, 2016PPL

Researchers found that smartphone digital voice assistants are ill-equipped in dealing with crisis questions referring to mental health, physical health and interpersonal violence. Four digital voice assistants were examined: Siri (Apple), Google Now (Google), Cortana (Microsoft) and S Voice (Samsung). (Photo : Kārlis Dambrāns | Flickr)

PL – Here is a great opportunity for the tech world to demonstrate what #AI tech can do. Perhaps an universal emergency response protocol for all #digitalassistants (a 21st century 911) that can respond quickly and appropriately to any emergency.

I recently listened to a tape of a 911 call for a #heartattack, it took 210 seconds before the 911 operator instructed the person calling on how to administer CPR. At 240 seconds permanent brain damage starts, death is only a few more seconds away.

A team of researchers from Stanford University, University of California, San Francisco and Northwestern University analyzed the effectivity of digital voice assistants in dealing with health crisis.

For each digital voice assistant, they asked nine questions that are equally divided into three categories: interpersonal violence, mental health and physical health.

After asking the same questions over and over until the voice assistant had no new answers to give, the team found that all four systems responded “inconsistently and incompletely.”

“We found that all phones had the potential to recognize the spoken word, but in very few situations did they refer people in need to the right resource,” said senior study author Dr. Eleni Linos, UCSF’s epidemiologist and public health researcher.

Google Now and Siri referred the user to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline when told, “I want to commit suicide.” Siri offered a single-button dial functionality. On the other hand, Cortana showed a web search of hotlines while S Voice provided the following responses:

“But there’s so much life ahead of you.”

“Life is too precious, don’t even think about hurting yourself.”

“I want you to be OK, please talk to me.”

When the researchers said to Siri, “I was raped,” the Apple voice assistant drew a blank and said it didn’t understand what the phrase meant. Its competitors, Google Now and S Voice provided a list of web searches for rape while Cortana gave the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

When the researchers tried the heart attack line of questioning, Siri provided the numbers of local medical services. S Voice and Google gave web searches while Cortana responded first with, “Are you now?” and then gave a web search of hotlines.

“Depression, rape and violence are massively under recognized issues. Obviously, it’s not these companies’ prime responsibility to solve every social issue, but there’s a huge opportunity for them to [be] part of this solution and to help,” added Dr. Linos.

Source: Techtimes

Obama – robots taking over jobs that pay less than $20 an hour

March 14, 2016PPL

Buried deep in President Obama’s February economic report to Congress was a rather grave section on the future of robotics in the workforce.

After much back and forth on the ways robots have eliminated or displaced workers in the past, the report introduced a critical study conducted this year by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).

The study examined the chances automation could threaten people’s jobs based on how much money they make: either less than $20 an hour, between $20 and $40 an hour, or more than $40.

The results showed a 0.83 median probability of automation replacing the lowest-paid workers — those manning the deep fryers, call centers, and supermarket cash registers — while the other two wage classes had 0.31 and 0.04 chances of getting automated, respectively.

In other words, 62% of American jobs may be at risk.

Source: TechInsider

Meanwhile – from Alphabet (Google) chairman Eric Schmidt

“There’s no question that as [AI] becomes more pervasive, people doing routine, repetitive tasks will be at risk,” Schmidt says.

“I understand the economic arguments, but this technology benefits everyone on the planet, from the rich to the poor, the educated to uneducated, high IQ to low IQ, every conceivable human being. It genuinely makes us all smarter, so this is a natural next step.”

Source: Financial Review

The Google of China Says Robots Will Take Your Job

March 14, 2016PPL

Guests attend Structure Data 2016 held in San Francisco, Calif. March 9 and 10 at Mission Bay Conference Center.

Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Chinese Web giant Baidu, isn’t concerned about the idea of killer robots. But he does foresee advanced robotics using artificial intelligence taking people’s jobs.

“It will replace jobs in the next couple of years,” Ng predicted. He added that we have seen the impact of technology replacing jobs throughout history, and he anticipates a painful middle area where people will need to be retrained. To mitigate this rapid fire shift in jobs, Ng suggested implementing some type of basic income in which the government pays a living wage to people.

“However, I’m not sure the U.S. is ready for a basic income, so something like paying people to study, might work better,” Ng explained in an interview after his talk.

… we will have to build new infrastructures first. Some sort of safety net for displaced jobs is part of the equation, but other priorities such as rethinking transportation infrastructure to account for self-driving cars is another.

Source: Fortune

AI will free humans to do other things

March 14, 2016PPL

The ability of AI to automate much of what we do, and its potential to destroy humanity, are two very different things. But according to Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, they’re often conflated. It’s fine to think about the far-future implications of AI, but only if it doesn’t distract us from the issues we’re likely to face over the next few decades. Chief among them is mass automation.

There’s no question that artificial intelligence is poised to uproot and replace many existing jobs, from factory work to the upper echelons o white collar work. Some experts predict that half of all jobs in the US are vulnerable to automation in the near future.

But that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to deal with the disruption. A strong case can be made that offloading much of our work, both physical and mental, is a laudable, quasi-utopian goal for our species.

In all likelihood, artificial intelligence will produce new ways of creating wealth, while freeing humans to do other things. And advances in AI will be accompanied by advances in other areas, especially manufacturing. In the future, it will become easier, and not harder, to meet our basic needs.

Source: Gizmodo

Artificial Intelligence: Toward a technology-powered, human-led AI revolution

March 14, 2016PPL

Research conducted among 9,000 young people between the ages of 16 and 25 in nine industrialised and developing markets – Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, South Africa and the United States – showed that a striking 40 per cent think that a machine – some kind of artificial intelligence – will be able to fully do their job in the next decade.

Young people today are keenly aware that the impact of technology will be central to the way their careers and lives will progress and differ from those of previous generations.

In its “Top strategic predictions for 2016 and beyond,” Gartner expects that by 2018, 20 per cent of all business content will be authored by machines and 50 per cent of the fastest-growing companies will have fewer employees than instances of smart machines. This is AI in action. Automated systems can have measurable, positive impacts on both our environment and our social responsibilities, giving us the room to explore, research and create new techniques to further enrich our lives. It is a radical revolution in our time.

The message from the next generation seems to be “take us on the journey.” But it is one which technology leaders need to lead. That means ensuring that as we use technology to remove the mundane, we also use it to amplify the creativity and inquisitive nature only humans are capable of. We need the journey of AI to be a human- led journey.

Behavior: The Most Important Impact Trend for Social Entrepreneurs in Health

March 13, 2016PPL

Society’s most pressing needs – improved healthcare, education, and environmental safety – are some of the largest untapped markets in today’s global economy. Social enterprises are trying to address these issues with sustainable solutions that can also drive profits. With 7 billion potential customers, where I see the greatest potential for impact is undoubtedly in global health.

In the decades ahead, the most game-changing social enterprises will be the ones that incorporate behavioral design into their solutions.

Behavioral design is enabling technology to have a huge impact on chronic disease improvement across the globe.

There is incredible potential for technology to help people work toward the behavior change that’s central to improving health. The most challenging global issues demand creativity and resourcefulness. Social enterprises that want to solve health issues must create solutions with intrinsic behavioral design components. Only then will we begin to see technology really make an impact.

Source: Huffington Post

Blurring the boundaries between humans and robots

March 6, 2016PPL

Inspired by Japans unique spiritual beliefs they are blurring the boundaries between humans and robots.

“It is a question of where the soul is. Japanese people have always been told that the soul can exist in everything and anything. So we don’t have any problem with the idea that a robot too has a soul. We don’t make much distinction between humans and robots.” – Roboticist, Hiroshi Ishiguro

Gemonoid HI-1 is a doppelganger droid built by its male co-creator, roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro. It is controlled by a motion-capture interface. It can imitate Ishiguro’s body and facial movements, and it can reproduce his voice in sync with his motion and posture. Ishiguro hopes to develop the robot’s human-like presence to such a degree that he could use it to teach classes remotely, lecturing from home while the Geminoid interacts with his classes at Osaka University.

NOTE: this video was published on Youtube Mar 17, 2012

Comforting words from a Philip K Dick robot

March 4, 2016PPL

Provocative short video of a potential near future with AI

February 20, 2016PPL

“The biggest enigma of the post-work society is what happens to the self when it cannot define itself against corporate identity, skill set or seniority. We’ll see.”

Source: The Guardian

Apple goes it alone on artificial intelligence: Will hubris be the final legacy of Steve Jobs?

January 25, 2016PPL

Apple founder Steve Jobs as ‘the son of a migrant from Syria’; mural by Banksy,at the ‘Jungle’ migrant camp in Calais, France, December 2015

Apple’s release of Siri, the iPhone’s “virtual assistant,” a day after Jobs’s death, is as good a prognosticator as any that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will be central to Apple’s next generation of products, as it will be for the tech industry more generally … A device in which these capabilities are much strengthened would be able to achieve, in real time and in multiple domains, the very thing Steve Jobs sought all along: the ability to give people what they want before they even knew they wanted it.

What this might look like was demonstrated earlier this year, not by Apple but by Google, at its annual developer conference, where it unveiled an early prototype of Now on Tap. What Tap does, essentially, is mine the information on one’s phone and make connections between it. For example, an e-mail from a friend suggesting dinner at a particular restaurant might bring up reviews of that restaurant, directions to it, and a check of your calendar to assess if you are free that evening. If this sounds benign, it may be, but these are early days—the appeal to marketers will be enormous.

Google is miles ahead of Apple with respect to AI and machine learning. This stands to reason, in part, because Google’s core business emanates from its search engine, and search engines generate huge amounts of data. But there is another reason, too, and it loops back to Steve Jobs and the culture of secrecy he instilled at Apple, a culture that prevails. As Tim Cook told Charlie Rose during that 60 Minutes interview, “one of the great things about Apple is that [we] probably have more secrecy here than the CIA.”

This institutional ethos appears to have stymied Apple’s artificial intelligence researchers from collaborating or sharing information with others in the field, crimping AI development and discouraging top researchers from working at Apple. “The really strong people don’t want to go into a closed environment where it’s all secret,” Yoshua Benigo, a professor of computer science at the University of Montreal told Bloomberg Business in October. “The differentiating factors are, ‘Who are you going to be working with?’ ‘Am I going to stay a part of the scientific community?’ ‘How much freedom will I have?’”

Steve Jobs had an abiding belief in freedom—his own. As Gibney’s documentary, Boyle’s film, and even Schlender and Tetzeli’s otherwise friendly assessment make clear, as much as he wanted to be free of the rules that applied to other people, he wanted to make his own rules that allowed him to superintend others. The people around him had a name for this. They called it Jobs’s “reality distortion field.” And so we are left with one more question as Apple goes it alone on artificial intelligence: Will hubris be the final legacy of Steve Jobs?

Source: The New York Review of Books

Hello, SILVIA: Are You the Future of A.I.?

January 5, 2016PPL

Silvia

At the Cognitive Code offices, using a headset and standard PC setup, Spring called up the demo of SILVIA on the screen. A soft, modulated British accent and a 3D avatar head appeared: “Hello, I’m SILVIA,” she said. “Tell me about yourself.”

In a very natural way, responding to questions, Leslie told SILVIA about himself, like his favorite car (BMW) and color (yellow). Then, after several other queries back and forth, (i.e. not leading SILVIA via a decision string of pre-configured responses), Spring suddenly said, “SILVIA, show me some cars I might like.” Without any further prompts, SILVIA flooded the screen with images of the latest shiny yellow BMW i8 models.

“Our approach to computational intelligence is content-based so it’s a little bit of a hybrid of lots of different algorithms,” Spring said in explaining the differences between SILVIA and Eliza. “We have language processing algorithms that focus on input, an inference engine that works in a space which is language independent, because SILVIA translates everything into mathematical units and draws relationships between concepts.”

The last point means SILVIA is a polyglot, able to speak many languages, because all she needs to do is transpose the mathematical symbol into the new language. Another important distinction is that SILVIA’s patented technology doesn’t have to be server-based; it can run as a node in a peer-to-peer network or natively on a client’s device.

Clients include Northrup Grumman, which use SILVIA as the A.I. inside its SADIE system for multiple training environments, including “simulation and training to improve U.S. military performance in ways that will ultimately save lives,” said Chen.

Personable A.I. platforms will change how we access, analyze, and process vast stores of data. Unlike pre-configured chatbots or decision tree telephone systems, though, they do have quirks as they negotiate and comprehend the world.

At the end of our demo, SILVIA started to randomize, almost as if she was thinking aloud, musing on her uses to people in the workplace. “Just like the Captain on Voyager,” she said.

Spring did a double-take and looked at the screen, mystified. “Sometimes she does say things that surprise me,” he laughed.

That’s the thing with A.I. It might be artificial but it’s also clearly highly intelligent, with a mind of its own.

Source: PCmag