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.

Robot helpers are on the rise and getting more useful

(JOSH EDELSON / AFP/Getty Images

(JOSH EDELSON / AFP/Getty Images

Source: Forbes

Today’s digital assistants are designed to abstract ever further away from pages of links towards synthesizing information on our behalf. For example,

Microsoft’s Cortana marketing material touts that it “gets to know you by learning your interests over time … she looks out for you, providing proactive, useful recommendations … stores your interests, friends, and favorite routines … continually learning about your world.”

Google’s Now is “about giving you just the right information at just the right time … alert you that there’s heavy traffic between you and your butterfly-inducing date … share news updates on a story you’ve been following [or] remind you to leave for the airport.”

Apple describes Siri as “the intelligent personal assistant that helps you get things done … send your messages, place calls, make dinner reservations … [even] track places like your location, home, or workplace [so] you can ask for help based on location [like] remind me to call my wife when I leave the office.”

Facebook announced its M as “a personal digital assistant … that completes tasks and finds information on your behalf … it can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more.”

Source: LATimes

You may not have unwrapped a robot on Christmas, but your new year will be filled with artificial intelligence.

“We’re going to start to see more personal assistants (in the new year), and the ones that are already online will get more useful,” said Brian Blau, an analyst at Gartner.

The assistants, sometimes referred to as “chatbots,” represent noteworthy advancements to computer programs that simulate conversations. Chatbots are not new — think Apple’s Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana.

But in 2016, you’ll encounter different, smarter varieties of chatbots, some appearing in your favorite social media applications.

“Chatbots are designed to answer questions, to perform searches, to interact with you in a very simple form, such as jokes or weather,” said Brian Solis, principal analyst with Altimeter Group. “Ultimately, they should be able to anticipate your needs and help you shop.”

These robot helpers are also expected to assume more human-like qualities in 2016, exchanging messages in a conversational style rather than a computer’s mechanical responses.

The human side of chatbots will be most apparent in mobile messaging applications such as Facebook Messenger, where the social network has already begun perfecting its own virtual assistant called “M.” M, first released to a small number of Messenger users in August, can strike up a conversation or crack a joke — but also book travel, make purchases or wait on hold with the cable company when you’re not in the mood.

Powered by both artificial intelligence and actual humans (who help train the digital robots), M is the digital equivalent of a secretary or hotel concierge. The persona was originally code-named “Moneypenny” after the fictional character in James Bond films.

Google is also working to add question-and-answer computer programs inside a messaging app, the Wall Street Journal reported last month. Google is likely motivated by a desire to gain ground in the mobile messaging realm, where rivals such as Facebook are far more dominant. The company also has a financial interest to remain at the forefront of Internet search, a behavior that, on smartphones, has migrated away from the traditional search engine.

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A Legal Definition Of Artificial Intelligence?

Defining the terms: artificial and intelligence

image from Shutterstock

image from Shutterstock

For regulatory purposes, “artificial” is, hopefully, the easy bit. It can simply mean “not occurring in nature or not occurring in the same form in nature”. Here, the alternative given after the “or” allows for the possible future use of modified biological materials.

This, then, leaves the knottier problem of “intelligence”.

Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments.

Definition proposed by: Marcus Hutter (now at ANU) and Shane Legg (now at Google DeepMind) 

This informal definition signposts things that a regulator could manage, establishing and applying objective measures of ability (as defined) of an entity in one or more environments (as defined). The core focus on achievement of goals also elegantly covers other intelligence-related concepts such as learning, planning and problem solving.

But many hurdles remain.

First, the informal definition may not be directly usable for regulatory purposes because of AIXI’s own underlying constraints. One constraint, often emphasised by Hutter, is that AIXI can only be “approximated” in a computer because of time and space limitations.

Another constraint is that AIXI lacks a “self-model” (but a recently proposed variant called “reflective AIXI” may change that).

Second, for testing and certification purposes, regulators have to be able to treat intelligence as something divisible into many sub-abilities (such as movement, communication, etc.). But this may cut across any definition based on general intelligence.

From a consumer perspective, this is ultimately all a question of drawing the line between a system defined as displaying actual AI, as opposed to being just another programmable box …

Source: Lifehacker

PL: Ouch

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Google exec: With robots in our brains, we’ll be godlike

Futurist and Google exec Ray Kurzweil thinks that once we have robotic implants, we’ll be funnier, sexier and more loving. Because that’s what artificial intelligence can do for you.

“We’re going to add additional levels of abstraction,” he said, “and create more-profound means of expression.”

More profound than Twitter? Is that possible?

Kurzweil continued: “We’re going to be more musical. We’re going to be funnier. We’re going to be better at expressing loving sentiment.”

Because robots are renowned for their musicality, their sense of humor and their essential loving qualities. Especially in Hollywood movies.

Kurzweil insists, though, that this is the next natural phase of our existence.

“Evolution creates structures and patterns that over time are more complicated, more knowledgeable, more intelligent, more creative, more capable of expressing higher sentiments like being loving,” he said. “So it’s moving in the direction that God has been described as having — these qualities without limit.”

Yes, we are becoming gods.

“Evolution is a spiritual process and makes us more godlike,” was Kurzweil’s conclusion.

Source: CNET by Chris Matyszczyk

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The Ethics Of AI Fulfilling Our Desires Vs Saving Us From Ourselves

What happens as machines are called upon to make ever more complex and important decisions on our behalf?

Big data

A display at the Big Bang Data exhibition at Somerset House highlighting the data explosion that’s radically transforming our lives. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images for Somerset House)

Driverless cars are among the early intelligent systems being asked to make life or death decisions. While current vehicles perform mostly routine tasks like basic steering and collision avoidance, the new generation of fully autonomous cars being test driven pose unique ethical challenges.

For example, “should an autonomous vehicle sacrifice its occupant by swerving off a cliff to avoid killing a school bus full of children?”

Alternatively, should a car “swerve onto a crowded sidewalk to avoid being rear-ended by a speeding truck or stay put and place the driver in mortal danger?”

On a more mundane level, driverless cars have already faced safety questions for strictly obeying traffic laws, creating a safety hazard as the surrounding traffic goes substantially faster.

Digital assistants and our health

Imagine for a moment the digital assistant that processes a note from our doctor warning us about the results of our latest medical checkup and that we need to lose weight and stay away from certain foods. At the same time, the assistant sees from our connected health devices that we’re not exercising much anymore and that we’ve been consuming a lot of junk food lately and actually gained three pounds last week and two pounds already this week. Now, it is quitting time on Friday afternoon and the assistant knows that every Friday night we stop by our local store for a 12 pack of donuts on the way home. What should that assistant do?

Should our digital assistant politely suggest we skip the donuts this week? Should it warn us in graphic detail about the health complications we will likely face down the road if we buy those donuts tonight? Should it go as far as to threaten to lock us out of our favorite mobile games on our phone or withhold our email or some other features for the next few days as punishment if we buy those donuts? Should it quietly send a note to our doctor telling her we bought donuts and asking for advice? Or, should it go as far as to instruct the credit card company to decline the transaction to stop us from buying the donuts?

The Cultural Challenge

Moreover, how should algorithms handle the cultural differences that are inherent to such value decisions? Should a personal assistant of someone living in Saudi Arabia who expresses interest in anti-government protest movements discourage further interest in the topic? Should the assistant of someone living in Thailand censor the person’s communications to edit out criticism of government officials to protect the person from reprisals?

Should an assistant that determines its user is depressed try to cheer that person up by masking negative news and deluging him with the most positive news it can find to try to improve his emotional state? What happens when those decisions are complicated by the desires of advertisers that pay for a particular outcome?

As artificial intelligence develops at an exponential rate, what are the value systems and ethics with which we should imbue our new digital servants?

When algorithms start giving us orders, should they fulfill our innermost desires or should they save us from ourselves?

This is the future of AI.

Source: Forbes

Read more on AI ethics on our post: How To Teach Robots Right and Wrong

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The next big thing in technology is …

Well, there’s drones, drones and more drones … and there’s this:

“Making the machines more driving the conversation, augmenting people’s capabilities in every walk of business life.”

“I really believe that this combination of what machine learning and humans and experts can do is to be able to provide this truly personalized experience in many more places in our lives than we are seeing today.” 

Watch to learn more:

Source: Fortune

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Google’s new AI will reply to your emails so you don’t have to

People who have the Inbox email program on their iPhones or Android devices will soon have a new option when it comes to replying to emails. Instead of coming up with their own responses on their mobile devices, they’ll get to choose between three options created by a neural network built by Google researchers.

Google claims it has built an AI that can read incoming emails, understand them, and generate a short, appropriate response that the recipient can then edit or send with just a click.

google email ai2

In the case of Smart Reply, what Google has done is combine several systems to build a neural network that can read your email, parse what the words in the email mean, and then not only generate a response, but generate three different responses. This is more than just building out rules for common words that fall in an email. This is truly teaching a computer to understand the text of an email. It uses the type of neural networks found in natural language processing to understand what a person means and also generate a reply.

Another bizarre feature of our early prototype was its propensity to respond with “I love you” to seemingly anything. As adorable as this sounds, it wasn’t really what we were hoping for. Some analysis revealed that the system was doing exactly what we’d trained it to do, generate likely responses—and it turns out that responses like “Thanks”, “Sounds good”, and “I love you” are super common—so the system would lean on them as a safe bet if it was unsure. Normalizing the likelihood of a candidate reply by some measure of that response’s prior probability forced the model to predict responses that were not just highly likely, but also had high affinity to the original message. This made for a less lovey, but far more useful, email assistant.

Source: Fortune

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Facebook’s very different approach to AI

The mandate for the 50-person AI team is also vintage Zuckerberg: Aim ridiculously high, and focus on where you want to go over the long term.

“One of our goals for the next five to 10 years,” Zuckerberg tells me, “is to basically get better than human level at all of the primary human senses: vision, hearing, language, general cognition. Taste and smell, we’re not that worried about,” he deadpans. “For now.”

YannLeCun2

Click on the image above to watch a video demonstrating some of Facebook’s AI work. Source: Facebook

In part, the AI effort is an attempt to prepare Facebook for an era in which devices from wristwatches to cars will be connected, and the density of incoming information which the service will have to deal with will grow exponentially. “There’s just going to be a lot more data generated about what’s happening in the world, and the conventional models and systems that we have today won’t scale,” says Jay Parikh, the company’s VP of engineering. “If there’s 10x or 20x or 50x more things happening around you in the world, then you’re going to need these really, really intelligent systems like what Yann and his team are building.”

But [Rob] Fergus and his fellow researchers have the freedom to start small rather than think immediately of the massive data problems posed by services with several hundred million users or more.

Yann LeCun [Director, Facebook AI Research] has given Facebook a lab with a strong university like feel. Rather than having to make sure their work lines up with Facebook’s product plans, researchers—many of them fellow academics—can pursue their passions while a separate group, Applied Machine Learning, is responsible for figuring out how to turn the lab’s breakthroughs into features.

“The senior research scientists, you don’t tell them what to work on,” LeCun says. “They tell you what’s interesting.”

Technologies incubated by LeCun and his team are already popping up in Facebook products such as Moments, a new app that scours your phone’s camera roll for snapshots of friends, then lets you share those photos with those people. “Most researchers do care about their stuff having practical relevance,” says Fergus, who is technically still on leave from NYU, where he worked alongside LeCun. “In academia, a great outcome is you publish a paper that people seem to like at a conference.”

LeCun’s work is directly affecting Facebook’s bottom line, in the form of better spam-prevention tools and software to verify that ads are up to company standards, a task that was once a labor-intensive manual process. “I joke that the lab has paid for itself over the next five years with work they’ve already done,” says Schroepfer.

Source:  FastCompany

Click here to learn about Google’s approach to AI

Click here to learn more about Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for Facebook

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Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Bold Plan For The Future Of Facebook

zuckerberg fastcompany cover The Facebook of today—and tomorrow—is far more expansive than it was just a few years ago.

It’s easy to forget that when the company filed to go public on February 1, 2012, it was just a single website and an app that the experts weren’t sure could ever be profitable.

Now, “a billion and a half people use the main, core Facebook service, and that’s growing.”

“But 900 million people use WhatsApp, and that’s an important part of the whole ecosystem now.” Zuckerberg says. “Four hundred million people use Instagram, 700 million people use Messen­ger, and 700 million people use Groups. Increasingly, we’re just going to go more and more in this direction.”

Zuckerberg is betting his company’s future on three major technology initiatives …  One is developing advanced artificial intelligence …  second is virtual reality …  the third is bringing the Internet, including Facebook, of course, to the 4 billion–plus humans who aren’t yet connected …

Zuckerberg isn’t interested in doing everything—just the things he views as deeply related to his company’s central vision, and crucial to it. “There are different ways to do innovation,” he says, drawing a stark contrast without ever mentioning Page, Google, or Alphabet. “You can plant a lot of seeds, not be committed to any particular one of them, but just see what grows. And this really isn’t how we’ve approached this. We go mission-first, then focus on the pieces we need and go deep on them, and be committed to them.”

facebook use timeFacebook’s mission is “to give everyone in the world the power to share and make the world more open and connected,” as Zuckerberg says, explaining that he is now spending a third of his time overseeing these future initiatives. “These things can’t fail. We need to get them to work in order to achieve the mission.”

The mandate for the 50-person AI team is also vintage Zuckerberg: Aim ridiculously high, and focus on where you want to go over the long term. “One of our goals for the next five to 10 years, is to basically get better than human level at all of the primary human senses: vision, hearing, language, general cognition. Taste and smell, we’re not that worried about,” he deadpans. “For now.”

One of the company’s guiding principles is “Done is better than perfect.”

Zuckerberg has earned the right to trust his gut. “At the beginning of Facebook, I didn’t have an idea of how this was going to be a good business,” he tells me. “I just thought it was a good thing to do.” He pauses. “Very few people thought it was going to be a good business early on, which is why almost no one else tried to do it.”

Today, everyone understands: Not worrying about whether Facebook was a good business turned out to be a great way to do business. Zuckerberg has recalibrated his ambitions accordingly. As Andreessen tells me, “This is a guy who’s 31. He’s got a 40- or 50-year runway. I don’t even know if there’s a precedent.”

Source: FastCompany  (it’s a very in-depth article)

Click here to learn about Google’s approach to AI

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How Google Aims To Dominate AI

There are more than 1000 researchers at Google working on these machine intelligence applications

The Search Giant Is Making Its AI Open Source So Anyone Can Use It

Internally, Google has spent the last three years building a massive platform for artificial intelligence and now they’re unleashing it on the world


In November 2007, Google laid the groundwork to dominate the mobile market by releasing Android, an open ­source operating system for phones. Eight years later to the month, Android has an an 80 percent market share, and Google is using the same trick—this time with artificial intelligence.

Introducing TensorFlow,
the Android of AI

Google is announcing TensorFlow, its open ­source platform for machine learning, giving anyone a computer and internet connection (and casual background in deep learning algorithms) access to one of the most powerful machine learning platforms ever created.

More than 50 Google products have adopted TensorFlow to harness deep learning (machine learning using deep neural networks) as a tool, from identifying you and your friends in the Photos app to refining its core search engine. Google has become a machine learning company. Now they’re taking what makes their services special, and giving it to the world.

TensorFlow is a library of files that allows researchers and computer scientists to build systems that break down data, like photos or voice recordings, and have the computer make future decisions based on that information. This is the basis of machine learning: computers understanding data, and then using it to make decisions. When scaled to be very complex, machine learning is a stab at making computers smarter.

But no matter how well a machine may complement or emulate the human brain, it doesn’t mean anything if the average person can’t figure out how to use it. That’s Google’s plan to dominate artificial intelligence—making it simple as possible. While the machinations behind the curtains are complex and dynamic, the end result are ubiquitous tools that work, and the means to improve those tools if you’re so inclined.

Source:  Popular Science

Click here to learn more about Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for Facebook

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Is an Affair in Virtual Reality Still Cheating?

virtual reality sexI hadn’t touched another woman in an intimate way since before getting married six years ago. Then, in the most peculiar circumstances, I was doing it. I was caressing a young woman’s hands. I remember thinking as I was doing it: I don’t even know this person’s name.

After 30 seconds, the experience became too much and I stopped. I ripped off my Oculus Rift headset and stood up from the chair I was sitting on, stunned. It was a powerful experience, and I left convinced that virtual reality was not only the future of sex, but also the future of infidelity.

Whatever happens, the old rules of fidelity are bound to change dramatically. Not because people are more open or closed-minded, but because evolving technology is about the force the issues into our brains with tantalizing 1s and 0s.

Source: Motherboard

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Pigeons diagnose breast cancer, could teach AI to read medical images

Pigeons training to read breast cancer x-rays

Pigeons training to read breast cancer x-rays

After years of education and training, physicians can sometimes struggle with the interpretation of microscope slides and mammograms. [Richard] Levenson, a pathologist who studies artificial intelligence for image analysis and other applications in biology and medicine, believes there is considerable room for enhancing the process.

“While new technologies are constantly being designed to enhance image acquisition, processing, and display, these potential advances need to be validated using trained observers to monitor quality and reliability,” Levenson said. “This is a difficult, time-consuming, and expensive process that requires the recruitment of clinicians as subjects for these relatively mundane tasks. “Pigeons’ sensitivity to diagnostically salient features in medical images suggest that they can provide reliable feedback on many variables at play in the production, manipulation, and viewing of these diagnostically crucial tools, and can assist researchers and engineers as they continue to innovate.”

“Pigeons do just as well as humans in categorizing digitized slides and mammograms of benign and malignant human breast tissue,” said Levenson.

Source: KurzwielAI.net

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Quote

Yann LeCun on AI systems as an extension of our brains

AI Quote

Yann LeCun, director of Facebook AI Research
Photo by Randi Klett - Deep Learning expert Yann LeCun leads Facebook's AI research lab

Photo by Randi Klett – Deep Learning expert Yann LeCun leads Facebook’s AI research lab

“AI systems are going to be an extension of our brains, in the same way cars are an extension of our legs. They are not going to replace us – they are going to amplify everything we do, augmenting your memory, giving you instant knowledge.”

Source: Bt.com

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Toyota Invests $1 Billion in Artificial Intelligence Research Center in California

Breaking News, Nov. 6:

Gill Pratt, a roboticist who will oversee Toyota's new research laboratory in the United States, at a news conference Friday in Tokyo. (Yuya Shino/Reuters)

Gill Pratt, a roboticist who will oversee Toyota’s new research laboratory in the United States, at a news conference Friday in Tokyo. (Yuya Shino/Reuters)

Toyota, the Japanese auto giant, on Friday announced a five-year, $1 billion research and development effort headquartered here. As planned, the compound would be one of the largest research laboratories in Silicon Valley.

Conceived as a research facility bridging basic science and commercial engineering, it will be organized as a new company to be named Toyota Research Institute. Toyota will initially have a laboratory adjacent to Stanford University and another near M.I.T. in Cambridge, Mass.

Toyota plans to hire 200 scientists for its artificial intelligence research center.

The new center will initially focus on artificial intelligence and robotics technologies and will explore how humans move both outdoors and indoors, including technologies intended to help the elderly.

When the center begins operating in January, it will prioritize technologies that make driving safer for humans rather than completely replacing them. That approach is in stark contrast with existing research efforts being pursued by Google and Uber to create self-driving cars.

“We want to create cars that are both safer and incredibly fun to drive,” Dr. Pratt said. Rather than completely removing driving from the equation, he described a collection of sensors and software that will serve as a “guardian angel,” protecting human drivers.

In September, when Dr. Pratt joined Toyota, the company announced an initial artificial intelligence research effort committing $50 million in funding to the computer science departments of both Stanford and M.I.T. He said the initiative was intended to turn one of the world’s most successful carmakers into one of the world’s top software developers.

In addition to focusing on navigation technologies, the new research corporation will also apply artificial intelligence technologies to Toyota’s factory automation systems, Dr. Pratt said.

Source: NY Times

 

 

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AI predicted to impact the U.S. economy by “trillions” by 2025

Accenture Expands Global Artificial Intelligence Capabilities and R&D Agenda

“Artificial intelligence will disrupt businesses and industries on a global scale, and we see this shift going well beyond deploying analytics, cognitive computing or machine learning systems in isolation,” said Paul Daugherty, Accenture’s chief technology officer. “We are investing early to drive more innovation at Accenture, recruit top talent in every location we operate in, and infuse more intelligence across our global business to help clients accelerate the integration of intelligence and automation to transform their businesses.”

Accenture has also established the Accenture Technology Labs University Grant on Artificial Intelligence; awarding the inaugural grant to an academic research team at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics at University College Dublin. The research team will explore the interface between humans and machines, using cognitive analysis to better understand how both can collaborate and interact effectively.

Analyst firm IDC predicts that the worldwide content analytics, discovery and cognitive systems software market will grow from US$4.5 billion in 2014 to US$9.2 billion in 20191, with others citing these systems as catalyst to have a US$5 trillion – US$7 trillion potential economic impact by 2025.

Source: Businesswire

 

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The trauma of telling Siri you’ve been dumped

Of all the ups and downs that I’ve had in my dating life, the most humiliating moment was having to explain to Siri that I got dumped.

burn photo of ex

I found an app called Picture to Burn that aims to digitally reproduce the cathartic act of burning an ex’s photo

“Siri, John isn’t my boyfriend anymore,” I confided to my iPhone, between sobs.

“Do you want me to remember that John is not your boyfriend anymore?” Siri responded, in the stilted, masculine British robot dialect I’d selected in “settings.”

Callously, Siri then prompted me to tap either “yes” or “no.”

I was ultimately disappointed in what technology had to offer when it comes to heartache. This is one of the problems that Silicon Valley doesn’t seem to care about.

The truth is, there isn’t (yet) a quick tech fix for a breakup.

A few months into the relationship I’d asked Siri to remember which of the many Johns* in my contacts was the one I was dating. At the time, divulging this information to Siri seemed like a big step — at long last, we were “Siri Official!” Now, though, we were Siri-Separated. Having to break the news to my iPhone—my non-human, but still intimate companion—surprisingly stung.

Even if you unfollow, unfriend and restrain yourself from the temptation of cyberstalking, our technologies still hold onto traces of our relationships.

Perhaps, in the future, if I tell Siri I’ve just gotten dumped, it will know how to handle things more gently, offering me some sort of pre-programmed comfort, rather than algorithms that constantly surface reminders of the person who is no longer a “favorite” contact in my phone.

Source: Fusion 

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Inside the surprisingly sexist world of artificial intelligence

women in aiRight now, the real danger in the world of artificial intelligence isn’t the threat of robot overlords — it’s a startling lack of diversity.

There’s no doubt Stephen Hawking is a smart guy. But the world-famous theoretical physicist recently declared that women leave him stumped.

“Women should remain a mystery,” Hawking wrote in response to a Reddit user’s question about the realm of the unknown that intrigued him most. While Hawking’s remark was meant to be light-hearted, he sounded quite serious discussing the potential dangers of artificial intelligence during Reddit’s online Q&A session:

The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence. A superintelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble.

Hawking’s comments might seem unrelated. But according to some women at the forefront of computer science, together they point to an unsettling truth. Right now, the real danger in the world of artificial intelligence isn’t the threat of robot overlords—it’s a startling lack of diversity.

I spoke with a few current and emerging female leaders in robotics and artificial intelligence about how a preponderance of white men have shaped the fields—and what schools can do to get more women and minorities involved. Here’s what I learned:

  1. Hawking’s offhand remark about women is indicative of the gender stereotypes that continue to flourish in science.
  2. Fewer women are pursuing careers in artificial intelligence because the field tends to de-emphasize humanistic goals.
  3. There may be a link between the homogeneity of AI researchers and public fears about scientists who lose control of superintelligent machines.
  4. To close the diversity gap, schools need to emphasize the humanistic applications of artificial intelligence.
  5. A number of women scientists are already advancing the range of applications for robotics and artificial intelligence.
  6. Robotics and artificial intelligence don’t just need more women—they need more diversity across the board.

In general, many women are driven by the desire to do work that benefits their communities, desJardins says. Men tend to be more interested in questions about algorithms and mathematical properties.

Since men have come to dominate AI, she says, “research has become very narrowly focused on solving technical problems and not the big questions.”

Source: Quartz

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The danger of tech’s far reaching tentacles

Jobs one last thing

Steve Jobs during one of his presentations of new Apple products. Photograph: Christoph Dernbach/Corbis

Excerpt from Tim Adams interview with Danny Boyle, director of Steve Jobs:

Tim Adams: We have all been complicit, I suggest, in the rise of Apple to be world’s most valuable company, in the journey that Jobs engineered from rebellion to ubiquity and all that it entails. Did Boyle want the film to comment on that complicity?

Danny Boyle: I think so. Ultimately it is about his character, and a father and a daughter. But you do want it to try and be part of the big story of our relationship with these giant corporations. All the companies that were easy to criticise, banks, oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, they have been replaced by tech guys. And yet the atmosphere around them remains fairly benign. Governments are not powerful enough any more to resist them and the law is not quick enough. One of the reasons I wanted to do this [direct the movie Steve Jobs] is that sense that we have to constantly bring these people to account. I mean, they have emasculated journalism for one thing. They have robbed it of its income. If you want to look at that malignly you certainly could do: they have made it so nobody can afford to write stories about them. Their tentacles are so far reaching in the way the world is structured that there is a danger they become author and critic at the same time. Exactly what Jobs used to accuse IBM of.”

Source: The Gaurdian

 

 

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“Cognitive” is both an era of technology and a business model

Ginni Rometty CEO IBM

Some highlights from this video are included below:


“When digital business marries up with digital intelligence it is the dawn of a new era about being a cognitive business. When every product, every service, how you run your company, can actually have a piece that learns and thinks as part of it, you will be a cognitive business.”

“Cognitive is both an era of technology and a business model.”

“I think this next decade it is about: Can you become a cognitive business? And to me, if you take big data, cloud, mobility, this is the fourth, and I believe it is the most disruptive of these trends. It is clearly the one–you guys have been with me as Watson has grown up, right?–he is symbolic of this era and he is the first real platform of it.”

“This idea that systems that can understand, they can reason, they can learn, are here.”

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Enhancing Social Interaction with an AlterEgo Artificial Agent

AlterEgo: Humanoid robotics and Virtual Reality to improve social interactions

The objective of AlterEgo is the creation of an interactive cognitive architecture, implementable in various artificial agents, allowing a continuous interaction with patients suffering from social disorders. The AlterEgo architecture is rooted in complex systems, machine learning and computer vision. The project will produce a new robotic-based clinical method able to enhance social interaction of patients. This new method will change existing therapies, will be applied to a variety of pathologies and will be individualized to each patient. AlterEgo opens the door to a new generation of social artificial agents in service robotics.

Source: European Commission: CORDIS

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Emotionally literate tech to help treat autism

Researchers have found that children with autism spectrum disorders are more responsive to social feedback when it is provided by technological means, rather than a human.

When therapists do work with autistic children, they often use puppets and animated characters to engage them in interactive play. However, researchers believe that small, friendly looking robots could be even more effective, not just to act as a go-between, but because they can learn how to respond to a child’s emotional state and infer his or her intentions.

Children with autistic spectrum disorders prefer to interact with non-human agents, and robots are simpler and more predictive than humans, so can serve as an intermediate step for developing better human-to-human interaction,’ said Professor Bram Vanderborght of Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.

Researchers have found that children with autism spectrum disorders are more responsive to social feedback when it is provided by technological means, rather than a human,’ said Prof. Vanderborght.

Source: Horizon Magazine

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Meet Pineapple, NKU’s newest artificial intelligence

Pineapple will be used for the next three years for research into social robotics

“Robots are pineapple 1getting more intelligent, more sociable. People are treating robots like humans! People apply humor and social norms to robots,” Dr. [Austin] Lee said. “Even when you think logically there’s no way, no reason, to do that; it’s just a machine without a heart. But because people attach human attributes to robots, I think a robot can be an effective persuader.”

pineapple 2 ausitn lee Anne thompson

Dr. Austin Lee and Anne Thompson with Pineapple the robot

Source: The Northerner

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The Rise of the Robot Therapist

 Social robots appear to be particularly effective in helping participants with behaviour problems develop better control over their behaviour

Romeo Vitelli Ph.D.
Romeo Vitelli Ph.D.

In recent years, we’ve seen a rise in different interactive technologies and new ways  of using them to treat various mental problems.  Among other things, this includes online, computer-based, and even virtual reality approaches to cognitive-behavioural therapy. But what about using robots to provide treatment and/or emotional support?  

A new article published in Review of General Psychology provides an overview of some of the latest advances in robotherapy and what we can expect in the future. Written by Cristina Costecu and David O. David of Romania’s Babes-Bolyai University and Bram Vanderborgt of Vrije Universiteit in Belgium, the article covers different studies showing how robotics are transforming personal care.    

What they found was a fairly strong treatment effect for using robots in therapy. Compared to the participants getting robotic therapy, 69 percent of the 581 study participants getting alternative treatment performed more poorly overall.

As for individuals with autism, research has already shown that they can be even more responsive to treatment using social robots than with human therapists due to their difficulty with social cues.

Though getting children with autism to participate in treatment is often frustrating for human therapists, they often respond extremely well to robot-based therapy to help them become more independent.

 Source: Psychology Today

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Round-the-clock AI Nurse saves lives

Sentient [Technologies] has its eyes on other big problems – for instance, finding an intelligent way to respond to sepsis infections, which kill 37,000 people in the UK every year at a rate greater than bowel cancer and lung cancer. “I can’t imagine a better place to use data,” [Antoine] Blondeau said. “It’s about saving lives. It’s about life and death.”

“The idea was: ‘Let’s create an AI nurse […] this nurse would always be on the clock, always on the lookout for you’.” The nurse they eventually built, in partnership with MIT, collected data on 6,000 patients for a year and was able to use that “to predict the onset of sepsis ahead of time with more than 90 percent accuracy.”

Source: Wired UK

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The man who invented the tech behind Siri says humans can be replaced in finance, healthcare and retail

1antoine Sentient tech

Will algorithms like Sentient’s ultimately replace humans completely?

“Yes, we are trying to minimise the amount of human intervention. Our thesis is there will be more and more applications with limited human value,” Mr [Antoine] Blondeau said. “But this doesn’t mean it should not be supervised. As long as humans can see what the system is doing, you can trace its steps and interpret the outcomes.”

— Antoine Blondeau, Chief executive, Sentient Technologies [the world’s best-funded AI company]

Source: The Telegraph

 

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Geoff Hinton on “AI as a friend”

AI Quotes

GEOFF HINTON – GOOGLE – UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
geoff hinton

Geoff Hinton – Google, Distinguished Researcher, University of Toronto as a Distinguished Emeritus Professor

He [Geoff Hinton] painted a picture of the near-future in which people will chat with their computers, not only to extract information, but for fun – reminiscent of the film, Her, in which Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with his intelligent operating system.

“It’s not that far-fetched,” Hinton said. “I don’t see why it shouldn’t be like a friend. I don’t see why you shouldn’t grow quite attached to them.”

Source: The Guardian – Thursday 21 May 2015

 

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Owners of first humanoid robot sign agreement not to have sex with it

Pepper agreement

© Yuya Shino / Reuters

A Japanese-based company Softbank, which has created Pepper the robot, has forced customers to sign a document forbidding its owners from using the humanoid for sexual purposes, as well as creating sexy apps.

Even after having paid nearly $2,000 US dollars for the robot, users may have to return Pepper to its makers should they get too personal with the emotional artificial being. 

The clause reads that Pepper must not be used “for sexual activity and actions for the purpose of indecent acts, or acts for the purpose of meeting and dating and making acquaintance of the opposite sex.”

Currently Pepper is available for purchase for Japanese residents only and they must be older than 20.

Source: rt.com

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Maciej Ceglowski on “Everywhere I look there is this failure to capture the benefits of technological change”

AI Quotes

Maciej Ceglowski is the founder of Pinboard among other things
Maciej Ceglowski - photo webstock flicr

Maciej Ceglowski – photo webstock flicr

Everywhere I look there is a Failure to capture the benefits of technological change.

So what kinds of ideas do California central planners think are going to change the world? 

Well, right now, they want to build space rockets and make themselves immortal. I wish I was kidding.

Source: AVC.com (VC blog)

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How To Teach Robots Right and Wrong

Artificial Moral Agents

Prof.-Nayef-Al-Rodhan_gallerylarge

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Over the years, robots have become smarter and more autonomous, but so far they still lack an essential feature: the capacity for moral reasoning. This limits their ability to make good decisions in complex situations.

The inevitable next step, therefore, would seem to be the design of “artificial moral agents,” a term for intelligent systems endowed with moral reasoning that are able to interact with humans as partners. In contrast with software programs, which function as tools, artificial agents have various degrees of autonomy.

However, robot morality is not simply a binary variable. In their seminal work Moral Machines, Yale’s Wendell Wallach and Indiana University’s Colin Allen analyze different gradations of the ethical sensitivity of robots. They distinguish between operational morality and functional morality. Operational morality refers to situations and possible responses that have been entirely anticipated and precoded by the designer of the robot system. This could include the profiling of an enemy combatant by age or physical appearance.

The most critical of these dilemmas is the question of whose morality robots will inherit.

Functional morality involves robot responses to scenarios unanticipated by the programmer, where the robot will need some ability to make ethical decisions alone. Here, they write, robots are endowed with the capacity to assess and respond to “morally significant aspects of their own actions.” This is a much greater challenge.

The attempt to develop moral robots faces a host of technical obstacles, but, more important, it also opens a Pandora’s box of ethical dilemmas.

Moral values differ greatly from individual to individual, across national, religious, and ideological boundaries, and are highly dependent on context … Even within any single category, these values develop and evolve over time.

Uncertainty over which moral framework to choose underlies the difficulty and limitations of ascribing moral values to artificial systems … To implement either of these frameworks effectively, a robot would need to be equipped with an almost impossible amount of information. Even beyond the issue of a robot’s decision-making process, the specific issue of cultural relativism remains difficult to resolve: no one set of standards and guidelines for a robot’s choices exists.    

For the time being, most questions of relativism are being set aside for two reasons. First, the U.S. military remains the chief patron of artificial intelligence for military applications and Silicon Valley for other applications. As such, American interpretations of morality, with its emphasis on freedom and responsibility, will remain the default.

Source: Foreign Affairs The Moral Code, August 12, 2015

PL – EXCELLENT summary of a very complex, delicate but critical issue Professor Al-Rodhan!

In our work we propose an essential activity in the process of moralizing AI that is being overlooked. An approach that facilitates what you put so well, for “AI to interact with humans as partners.”

We question the possibility that binary-coded AI/logic-based AI, in its current form, will one day switch from amoral to moral. This would first require a universal agreement of what constitutes morals, and secondarily, it would require the successful upload/integration of morals or moral capacity into AI computing. 

We do think AI can be taught “culturally relevant” moral reasoning though, by implementing a new human/AI interface that includes a collaborative engagement protocol. A protocol that makes it possible for AI to interact with the person in a way that the AI learns what is culturally relevant to each person, individually. AI that learns the values/morals of the individual and then interacts with the individual based on what was learned.

We call this a “whole person” engagement protocol. This person-focused approach includes AI/human interaction that embraces quantum cognition as a way of understanding what appears to be human irrationality. [Behavior and choices of which, from a classical probability-based decision model, are judged to be irrational and cannot be computed.]

This whole person approach, has a different purpose, and can produce different outcomes, than current omniscient/clandestine-style methods of AI/human information-gathering that are more like spying then collaborating, since the human’s awareness of self and situation is not advanced, but rather, is only benefited as it relates to things to buy, places to go and schedules to meet. 

Visualization is a critical component for AI to engage the whole person. In this case, a visual that displays interlinking data for the human. That breaks through the limitations of human working memory by displaying complex data of a person/situation in context. That incorporates a human‘s most basic reliable two ways of know, big picture and details, that have to be kept in dialogue with one another. Which makes it possible for the person themselves to make meaning, decide and act, in real-time. [The value of visualization was demonstrated in 2013 in physics with the discovery of the Amplituhedron. It replaced 500 pages of algebra formulas in one simple visual, thus reducing overwhelm related to linear processing.]        

This kind of collaborative engagement between AI and humans (even groups of humans) sets the stage for AI to offer real-time personalized feedback for/about the individual or group. It can put the individual in the driver’s seat of his/her life as it relates to self and situation. It makes it possible for humans to navigate any kind of complex human situation such as, for instance, personal growth, relationships, child rearing, health, career, company issues, community issues, conflicts, etc … (In simpler terms, what we refer to as the “tough human stuff.”)

AI could then address human behavior, which, up to now, has been the elephant in the room for coders and AI developers.

We recognize that this model for AI / human interaction does not solve the ultimate AI morals/values dilemma. But it could serve to advance four major areas of this discussion:

  1. By feeding back morals/values data to individual humans, it could advance their own awareness more quickly. (The act of seeing complex contextual data expands consciousness for humans and makes it possible for them to shift and grow.)

  2. It would help humans help themselves right now (not 10 or 20 years from now).

  3. It would create a new class of data, perceptual data, as it relates to individual beliefs that drive human behavior.

  4. It would allow for AI to process this additional “perceptual” data, collectively over time, to become a form of “artificial moral agent” with enhanced “moral reasoning” “working in partnership with humans.”

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Dr. Richard Terrile on “introduce morality into these machines.”

AI Quotes

Dr. Richard Terrile, Dir. of Center for Evolutionary Computation & Automated Design at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab

richard.j.terrile“I kind of laugh when people say we need to introduce morality into these machines. Whose morality? The morality of today? The morality of tomorrow? The morality of the 15th century? We change our morality like we change our clothing.”

Source: Huffington Post

Dr. Richard Terrile is an astronomer and the director of the Center for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  He uses techniques based on biological evolution and development to advance the fields of robotics and computer intelligence. 

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Internet to create a free teen-friendly hub where students can access info in one place

“I began my career as a high school teacher in the Bronx at a 5,000-student high school that’s since been shut down for chronic low-performance. That experience helped me understand how alone so many young people are as they are trying to figure out their future. Their parents are busy, their friends are worried about their own issues, and often they don’t have a teacher or other adult who is there to guide them,” Executive Director of GetSchooled.com Marie Groark

PL – Did you know the average high school student spends less than one hour per school year with a guidance counselor mulling over college decisions? This, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

Not only is this not nearly enough time to make decisions that can impact the rest of their lives, but for kids whose families can’t afford college prep, that might be their only interaction with someone equipped to steer them toward higher education.

Get Schooled has turned to the Internet to create a free teen-friendly hub where students can access relevant info in one place, from how to find and apply for scholarships to info on standardized tests to what type of school fits their personality. They cut the boredom factor with celebrity interviews and a gamification model that awards students points as they engage, redeemable for offline rewards.

We believe a role for AI, as a next step in this expanding opportunity, is to engage and collaborate with students individually about their own life and future. Get to know the unique perspective and situation of each student. To guide the student in what they personally need precisely when they need it. Equipping them with information tailored to their own personal journey. 

Source: Fast Company

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Huh? Personal assistants versus virtual assistants versus digital assistants

PL – Maybe this sheds additional light on the explosive growth in “digital” assistants.

Apparently the human variety of personal assistants comes with some human complications like, sex drugs and rock and roll!

One company, Time etc, touts virtual assistants [remote humans/not on site] as an alternative. Why? Read the following excerpt from a CNBC article printed Sept. 14, 2015: 

“The most shocking part was the sex, drugs and rock and roll,” said Time etc Founder and CEO Barnaby Lashbrooke. “I must have led a very sheltered life, because I’ve never had that stuff happen to me.”

When they’re not answering calls and getting coffee, [human] personal assistants seem to be having a great time at the office.

One in 20 small business decision makers said that their personal assistants have had sex in the office, and nearly one in 10 said that their PA had taken drugs there, according to survey results shared with the Big Crunch.

The survey was commissioned by Time etc, a company that provides virtual personal assistant services, to point out the issues and risks businesses faced by employing full-time PAs in-house.

SexDrugsOfficeWork

One in six reported that a PA had broken office equipment, and one in eight said they had stolen it. A full 23 percent said that a PA had told someone something that was secret or confidential, and 15 percent had used a company card for personal use. And of course, those are only the debaucherous activities that business people know about.

Time etc argues that a [human] virtual assistant is a safer and more secure option than a physical assistant, and that for most of its approximately 4,500 clients, it’s 80 to 90 percent cheaper. While a virtual assistant can’t do physical tasks like getting coffee, outsourcing assistants reduces human resources costs and can be more efficient than a full-time employee, said Lashbrooke.

Source: CNBC

PL – While Time etc promotes human virtual assistants, take a look at the graph below that shows the explosion in digital assistants, examples of which are Siri, Google Now, Cortana and Amazon Echo. 

This should cause humans some pause about why AI is entering their job space. There’s certainly more to it than this, but the fact that AI is entering the workforce, in significant ways, is alarming. 

University of Oxford researchers are predicting that up to 66 percent of the workforce has a medium to high risk of being displaced by AI in the next 10 to 20 years. (See blog post about that here.) 

digital assistant

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A second pair of (robot) hands in space

Humanoid robot to teach astronauts on board ISS

French researchers have developed ‘autobiographical memory’ for the Nao robot and this system will help the ISS crew to pass the key information to the next batch.

An astronaut usually spends around six months aboard the ISS (International Space Station) per expedition, though in some exceptional cases the crew members might spend around a year but then eventually they are replaced by new crew members.

On the other hand, a robot does not require to eat or breathe and thus can afford to live easily on the spacecraft and hence it is the only permanent member of ISS.

Researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) have developed a special system known as “autobiographical memory” for the ‘Nao humanoid robot’ which can be used by the ISS crew members to pass on the key information and assist the next batch of astronauts aboard ISS with maintenance and repair procedures.

Autobiographical memory:

Under the present conditions wherein humanoid Robonaut 2 is permanently flying aboard the ISS, it is becoming much more essential for a robot to understand the concept of cooperative behavior so that it can help in the transmission of knowledge to humans.

read more here:
Source: Trechworm

 

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Why artificial intelligence could be the ultimate prize

five logos

The five biggest technology companies in the Western world are each competing to create their own virtual assistants; your personal guides to help navigate the digital world.

Facebook recently announced a concierge service called “M“ through its Messenger app, and most people have already played with Apple’s Siri (which got a big upgrade last week for the new Apple TV).

Add to that Google Now, Microsoft’s Cortana and Amazon, which has the Echo – a voice-activated living-room device that can control the ambience of your home – and the stage is set for a showdown.

You will be asking your Siri or Cortana to order food, book flights, make restaurant bookings, call a cab, have your car repaired, call Ryanair customer service and buy everything. It’s the super-charged, super-lucrative Search 2.0.

What this means in practice is that services will become proactive: your virtual assistant learns more about you and it will start to tell you what you need, without you having to ask.

So what’s in it for the companies?

Eventually, the virtual assistant that wins – and the company behind it – will know you better than you know yourself, so you can’t live life without it. That’s the ultimate prize.

Source: stuff.co.nz

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We’re alive today because AI was not in control 30 years ago

Stanislav Petrov A back-lit red screen flashed the word ‘LAUNCH’

Sept 26, 1983:

It was just after midnight when the alarm bells began sounding. One of the system’s satellites had detected that the United States had launched five ballistic missiles. And they were heading toward the USSR. Electronic maps flashed; bells screamed; reports streamed in. A back-lit red screen flashed the word ‘LAUNCH.’

[Stanislav] Petrov, however, had a hunch — “a funny feeling in my gut,” he would later recall– that the alarm ringing through the bunker was a false one. It was an intuition that was based on common sense:  The alarm indicated that only five missiles were headed toward the USSR. Had the U.S. actually been launching a nuclear attack, however, Petrov figured, it would be extensive — much more, certainly, than five. Soviet ground radar, meanwhile, had failed to pick up corroborative evidence of incoming missiles — even after several minutes had elapsed. The larger matter, however, was that Petrov didn’t fully trust the accuracy of the Soviet technology when it came to bomb-detection. He would later describe the alert system as “raw.”

Petrov’s colleagues were professional soldiers with purely military training; they would, being trained to follow instructions at all costs, likely have reported a missile strike had they been on shift at the time. Petrov, on the other hand, trusted his own intelligence, his own instincts, his own gut. He made the brave decision to do nothing.

One thing that seems clear, however, is that the world carried on into September 27, 1983 in some part because Stanislav Petrov decided to trust himself over malfunctioning machines. And that may have made, in a very broad and cosmic sense, all the difference.
– The Atlantic

PL – What a story about irrational versus rational thinking! Humans versus machines. Now, for fun, let’s jump to a blog post about Google’s new self-driving cars, still in the testing/developing phase, which could be great for humans, but at present, they are facing the same dilemmas as the professional soldiers mentioned above.  

 

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Irrational thinking mimics much of what we observe in quantum physics

Quantum Physics Explains Why You Suck at Making Decisions (but what about AI?)

We normally think of physics and psychology inhabiting two very distinct places in science, but when you realize they exist in the same universe, you start to see connections and find out how they can learn from one-another. Case in point: a pair of new studies by researchers at Ohio State University that argue how quantum physics can explain human irrationality and paradoxical thinking — and how this way of thinking can actually be of great benefit.

Conventional problem-solving and decision-making processes often lead on classical probability theory, which outlines how humans make their best choices based on evaluating the probability of good outcomes.

But according to Zheng Joyce Wang, a communications researcher who led both studies, choices that don’t line up with classical probability theory are often labeled “irrational.” Yet, “they’re consistent with quantum theory — and with how people really behave,” she says.

The two new papers suggest that seemingly-irrational thinking mimics much of what we observe in quantum physics, which we normally think of as extremely chaotic and almost hopelessly random.

Quantum-like behavior and choices don’t follow standard, logical processes and outcomes. But like quantum physics, quantum-like behavior and thinking, Wang argues, can help us to understand complex questions better.

Wang argues that before we make a choice, our options are all superpositioned. Each possibility adds a whole new layer of dimensions, making the decision process even more complicated. Under conventional approaches to psychology, the process makes no sense, but under a quantum approach, Wang argues that the decision-making process suddenly becomes clear.

Source: Inverse.com

PL – As noted in other posts on this site, AI is rational, based on logic and following rules. And that has its own complications. (see Google cars post.)

If humans, as these papers suggest, operate in a different space, mimicking much of quantum physics, the question we should be asking ourselves is: What would it take for average humans and machines to COLLABORATE in solution-finding? Particularly, about human behavior and growth — the “tough human stuff,” as we, the writers of this blog, have labeled it. 

Let’s not make this about one or the other. How can humans and machines benefit each other? Is there a way to bridge the divide? We propose there is. 

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The great disconnect at Google about ‘people needs’

Eric Schmidt: AI Progress Is Just Starting

ericschmidtWhen AI becomes useful in practical matters, it gets utilized more and more. Schmidt thinks that the inflection point of AI use is just about here and that it will take off soon. He thinks that practical things will lead the way in the utilization curve of AI.

Schmidt wants society’s use of AI to “keep thinking first and foremost about people’s real needs, and the real world we all inhabit.”

An expert vacation planner, a supersmart email filter, and music services that predictively analyze what you want to listen to next are the some functions that he sees AI being used for.

AI will be solving practical, everyday problems, and doing well enough at it that AI use will seem the best way to solve such problems.

PL – Okay, we can’t let this one go. Google “keeps thinking first and foremost about people’s real needs?” And then Schmidt lists: A vacation planner? An email filter? Music filter? That’s cool. And useful, don’t get us wrong.

But, we think “real needs” of people should include, first and foremost, personal growth, relationships, parenting, well-being, jobs, careers, conflicts … These are real-world needs in the real world we inhabit. 

We think HUMAN BEHAVIOR is the elephant in the room for the tech world. 

Source: Information Week

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15 key moments in the story of artificial intelligence

The BBC provides a concise summary of key events in the development of AI from 1943 to 2014. (click here)

tortise robotFrom Grey Walter’s nature-inspired ‘tortoise’. It was the world’s first mobile, autonomous robot.

roombaTo the incredibly successful Roomba (10m+ units sold).

robotsTo dancing and self-aware robots interacting with humans. (Great video, click here)

Watson playing jeopardyTo Watson’s winning Jeopardy 

and Google’s self-driving cars.google cars

 

 

Source:  BBC

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BBC Video: What is AI?

Watch 2 min video by clicking on the image below. (It will take you to a new page. Video at top of page runs automatically.)

BBC Video What is AI

What is artificial intelligence?
13 September 2015

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Facebook M: Virtual agent is big, a moonshot

The vision of having an intelligent, virtual agent is big. A moonshot if you like.

Above anything else, the ease of interacting with an intelligence working on our behalf, ordering and booking things, scheduling, searching and retrieving recommendations has the potential to ease the next billion people into the digital world in a far simpler manner than the myraid of interfaces do now.

Recently Facebook announced its take on the Virtual Assistant, M, which is to be supported by a human workforce, to help you get things done.facebook-m-iphone-press

It’s a significant step, with profound implications for Facebook’s future place in all our lives. As the big tech companies vie for ownership over our interactions with the world, we might not be far away from having Facebook arrange our dry cleaning, turn on our heating, or bring us food when we’re hungry.

Yann Lecun, in charge of the group’s Artificial Intelligence since December 2013, has spoken of a revolution on its way.

Mike Schroepfer, the company’s CTO, has said of Facebook in general that “eventually it is like this super intelligent helper that’s plugged into all the information streams in the world”. The company has been pretty open about where they see things going.

Source: thenextweb

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Google Self-driving cars: Irrational humans versus rational machine

New York Times:

One Google car, in a test in 2009, couldn’t get through a four-way stop because its sensors kept waiting for other human drivers to stop completely and let it go. The human drivers kept inching forward looking for the advantage – paralyzing Googles robot.

Tom Supple, a Google safety driver said, “It is always going to follow the rules, I mean to the point where human drivers who get in the car and are like ‘Why is the car doing that?'” 

_____Six years later in August of 2015 the problem continues as a standoff with a bike rider at an intersection demonstrates _____

The Register:

Oxtox [the bike rider] says the Googlemobile “apparently detected my presence … and stayed stationary for several seconds.” He then started his track stand, thinking the car would go through the intersection. “It finally began to proceed, but as it did, I rolled forward an inch while still standing. The car immediately stopped.”

“I continued to stand, it continued to stay stopped. Then as it began to move again, I had to rock the bike to maintain balance. It stopped abruptly.”

This sequence of events continued “for about two full minutes and the car never made it past the middle of the intersection.”

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First feature film ever told from the point of view of artificial intelligence

Stephen Hawkings, Elon Musk and Bill Gates will love this one! (Not)

“We made NIGHTMARE CODE to open up a highly relevant conversation, asking how our mastery of computer code is changing our basic human codes of behavior. Do we still control our tools, or are we—willingly—allowing our tools to take control of us?”

The movie synopsis: “Brett Desmond, a genius programmer with a troubled past, is called in to finish a top secret behavior recognition program, ROPER, after the previous lead programmer went insane. But the deeper Brett delves into the code, the more his own behavior begins changing … in increasingly terrifying ways.

“NIGHTMARE CODE came out of something I learned working in video-game development,” Netter says. “Prior to that experience, I thought that any two programmers of comparable skill would write the same program with code that would be 95 percent similar. I learned instead that different programmers come up with vastly different coding solutions, meaning that somewhere deep inside every computer, every mobile phone, is the individual personality of a programmer—expressed as logic.

“But what if this personality, this logic, was sentient? And what if it was extremely pissed off?”

Available on Google Play

Fangoria

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Sex Dolls with Artificial Intelligence to Ease Your Loneliness?

realbotix-sex-dolls-artificial-intelligenceRobotic sex dolls that talk back, flirt and interact with the customer

Abyss Creations, the company beyond Realdoll (life-sized, silicone sex dolls), wants to start making robotic sex dolls that talk back, flirt and interact with the customer. The project, called Realbotix, is the company’s first venture into the world of artificial intelligence. It involves an AI-powered animatronic head that can be fitted onto preexisting doll bodies, a pocket-pet doll accessible through an app and a version of the doll in virtual reality.

Does interactivity make for a better sex doll?

We really look at this as much more than being just a sex doll. We’re looking at all the ways this could be used as a companion. The intimacy part of it is obviously very interesting, and a lot of people gravitate toward it. But the implications of what it could do is so much bigger.

For some of our customers, just having the dolls in their house makes them feel not as lonely as they did before. There are people out there that have dolls that they choose to make a permanent part of their being. They don’t want a real relationship with all the responsibility that comes along with it. Usually, for those kinds of people, it’s just an act of time. They’re going through a loss of a loved one or a divorce, and this is a diversion for them to take the edge off of the loneliness. Our hope is that it can be a device to help people get through some of those times.

Source: psfk

PL – Here are more blog posts with different perspectives on the topic: Wider debate around sex robots encouraged.
Human-robot: A new kind of Love?
SIRI-OUSLY: Sex Robots are actually going to be good for humanity

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Wider debate around sex robots encouraged

Campaign calls for ban on sex robots

Leading academics in robot ethics have warned that their creation will only increase the objectification of women and children, further dehumanising those who are abused for sex.

The warning comes as artificial intelligence approaches a point where it could be used in robots designed solely to satisfy sexual desires. But such robots, campaigners argue, should not exist.

“The development of sex robots and the ideas to support their production show the immense horrors still present in the world of prostitution,” read a statement on the Campaign Against Sex Robots website. The authors of the campaign argued that sex robots would further increase the perceived “inferiority of women and children” and continue to justify their use as “sex objects”.

The campaign, led by Kathleen Richardson, a senior research fellow in the ethics of robotics at De Montfort University in Leicester and Erik Brilling, an associate senior lecturer in informatics from the University of Skövde in Sweden, hopes to encourage a wider debate around the development of sex robots and their potential implications for society.

 The development of “ethical technologies” that reflect the human principles of dignity, mutuality and freedom are critical, the campaign argues. To this end the campaign has called on scientists and roboticists to refuse to help with the development of sex bots, by withholding code, hardware and ideas.

The issue of human-robot sexual relations has made both the big and small screen this year. The AMD and Channel 4 co-production Humans and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina both explored the potential dangers.

Source: Wired

PL – Here are more blog posts with different perspectives on the topic: Sex dolls with artificial intelligence to ease your loneliness?
Human-robot: A new kind of Love?
SIRI-OUSLY: Sex Robots are actually going to be good for humanity

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SIRI-OUSLY: Sex robots are actually going to be good for humanity

pygmalions statueThe relationship between humans and their artificial counterparts runs right back to the myths of ancient Greece, where sculptor Pygmalion’s statue was brought to life with a kiss. It is the stuff of legend and of science fiction.

But just as we should avoid importing existing gender and sexual biases into future technology, so we should also be cautious not to import established prudishness.

If robots oughtn’t to have artificial sexuality, why should they have a narrow and unreflective morality? It’s one thing to have a conversation and conclude something about the development of technology; it’s another to demand silence before anyone has had the chance to speak.

Machines are what we make them

But robotics also allows us to explore issues without the restrictions of being human. A machine is a blank slate that offers us the chance to reframe our ideas. The internet has already opened up a world where people can explore their sexual identity and politics, and build communities of those who share their views. Aided by technology, society is rethinking sex/gender dualism. Why should a sex robot be binary?

 

'gynoid' customer service robotAnd sex robots could go beyond sex. What about the scope for therapy? Not just personal therapy (after all, companion and care robots are already in use) but also in terms of therapy for those who break the law. Virtual reality has already been trialled in psychology and has been proposed as a way of treating sex offenders. Subject to ethical considerations, sex robots could be a valid way of progressing with this approach.

To campaign against development is shortsighted. Instead of calling for an outright ban, why not use the topic as a base from which to explore new ideas of inclusivity, legality and social change? It is time for new approaches to artificial sexuality, which includes a move away from the machine-as-sex-machine hegemony and all its associated biases.

Machines are what we make them. At least, for now—if we’ve lost control of that then we have a whole other set of problems. Fear of a branch of AI that is in its infancy is a reason to shape it, not ban it. A campaign to stop killer robots is one thing, but a campaign against sex robots? Make love, not war.

Source: Quartz
Kate Devlin
Senior Lecturer, University of London

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Human-robot: A new kind of love?

Intimate artificial intelligence

If a robot could be built to be as sensitive and caring as humans can be, would you want one? They could enter our lives so totally that we might even fall in love with them.

It’s time to think about robots: what they can do for us and what they might mean to us before we get in too deep.

BBC new kind of love

Today the idea of someone loving a robot may seem strange or even utterly wrong. Yet over history, opinions of what are morally acceptable actions and what are not have changed constantly. There may be no reason to think our attitude to loving an artificial intelligence will be any different.

Source: BBC

PL – Here are more blog posts with different perspectives on the topic: Wider debate around sex robots encouraged.
Sex Dolls with Artificial Intelligence to Ease Your Loneliness?
SIRI-OUSLY: Sex Robots are actually going to be good for humanity 

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Technology firms are waging war over the lucrative artificial intelligence market

A booming market that is set to reach $11.1 billion by 2024

“Intelligent machines will form the backbone of what we call the invisible revolution: technologies interacting so seamlessly they become invisible. This technology revolution will help how humans and intelligent machines interact in complex, yet complementary ways.”  Patrice Simard, distinguished engineer and deputy managing director at Microsoft

What is unclear, however, is which firm will ultimately win the AI race.

Apple’s Siri has received major upgrades in the upcoming launch of iOS 9. The iPhone maker says that Siri can now answer more questions and more accurately understand queries.

In May Google announced a major upgrade to Google Now that allows the service to “understand” over 100 million locations. Google Now not only lists basic information, but also provide users a range of suggestions, including when would be the best time to visit a local restaurant.

With the launch of Windows 10 in July, Microsoft incorporated Cortana into its operating system and improved its understanding and relevance on several tasks.

The fight, in other words, is on for control of the growing market.

Source: Fortune

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