Daily Archives: February 17, 2017

Each winter, hundreds of AI researchers from around the world convene at the annual meeting of the Association of the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Last year, a minor crisis erupted over the schedule, when AAAI announced that 2017s meeting would take place in New Orleans in late January. The location was fine. The dates happened to conflict with Chinese New Year.

The holiday might not have been a deal breaker in the past, but Chinese researchers have become so integral to the meeting, it could not go on without them. They had to reschedule. Nobody would have put AAAI on Christmas day, says current AAAI president Subbarao Kambhampati. Our organization had to almost turn on a dime and change the conference venue to hold it a week later.

The 2017 AAAI meetingwhich ultimately relocated to San Franciscowrapped up just last week. And as expected, Chinese researchers had a strong showing in the historically U.S.-dominated conference. A nearly equal number of accepted papers came from researchers based in China and the U.S. This is pretty surprising and impressive given how different it was even three, four years back, says Rao.

Chinas rapid rise up the ranks of AI research has people taking notice. In October, the Obama White House released a strategic plan for AI research, which noted that the U.S. no longer leads the world in journal articles on deep learning, a particularly hot subset of AI research right now. The country that had overtaken the U.S.? China, of course.

Its not just academic research. Chinese tech companies are betting on AI, too. Baidu (a Chinese search-engine company often likened to Google), Didi (often likened to Uber), and Tencent (maker of the mega-popular messaging app WeChat) have all set up their own AI research labs. With millions of customers, these companies have access to the huge amount of data that training AI to detect patterns requires.

Like the Microsofts and Googles of the world, Chinese tech companies see enormous potential in AI. It could undergird a whole set of transformative technologies in the coming decades, from facial recognition to autonomous cars.I have a hard time thinking of an industry we cannot transform with AI, says Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Baidu. Ng previously cofounded Coursera and Google Brain, the companys deep learning project. Now he directs Baidus AI research out of Sunnyvale, California, right in Silicon Valley.

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Chinas success in AI has been partly fueled by the governments overall investment in scientific research at its universities. Over the past decade, government spending on research has grown by double digits on average every year. Funding of science and technology research continues to be a major priority, as outlined by the the Five-Year Plan unveiled this past March.

When Rao first started seeing Chinese researchers at international AI meetings, he recalls they were usually from Tsinghua and Peking University, considered the MIT and Harvard of China. Now, he sees papers from researchers all over the country, not just the most elite schools. Machine learningwhich includes deep learninghas been an especially popular topic lately. The number of people who got interested in applied machine learning has tremendously increased across China, says Rao. This is the same uptick that the White House noticed in its report on a strategic plan for AI research.

Chinese tech companies are part of the infusion of research dollars to universities, too. At Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, computer scientist Qiang Yang collaborates with Tencent, which sponsors scholarships for students in his lab.

The students get access to mountains of data from WeChat, the messaging app from Tencent that is akin to Facebook, iMessage, and Venmo all rolled into one. (With AI, they cant do it without a lot of data and a platform to test it on, says Yang, which is why industry collaboration is so key.) In return, Tencent gets a direct line to some of the most innovative research coming out of academic labs. And of course, some of these students end up working at Tencent when they graduate.

The quantity of Chinese AI research has grown dramatically, but researchers in the U.S. are still responsible for a lot of the most fundamental groundbreaking work. The very clever ideas on changing network architecture, I see those in the U.S., says Ng. What Chinese researchers have been very good at doing is seizing on an idealike machine learningand cranking out papers on its different applications.

Yet as the research matures in China, Ng says, it is also becoming its own distinct community. After a recent international meeting in Barcelona, he recalls seeing Chinese language write-ups of the talks circulate right way. He never found any in English. The language issue creates a kind of asymmetry: Chinese researchers usually speak English so they have the benefit of access to all the work disseminated in English. The English-speaking community, on the other hand, is much less likely to have access to work within the Chinese AI community.

China has a fairly deep awareness of whats happening in the English-speaking world, but the opposite is not true, says Ng. He points out that Baidu has rolled out machine translation and voice recognition services powered by AIbut when Google and Microsoft, respectively, did so later, the American companies got a lot more publicity.

And when it comes to actually shipping new features, China companies can move more quickly. The velocity of work is much faster in China than in most of Silicon Valley, says Ng. When you spot a business opportunity in China, the window of time you have to respond usually very shortshorter in China than the United States.

Yang chalks it up to Chinas highly competitive ecosystem. WeChat, for example, has built a set of features around QR codes (yes, really), chat, payments, and friend discovery that make it indispensable to daily life in China. American social media companies only wish they had that kind of loyalty. Product managers at Tencent have good sense of what customers want, and they can can quickly turn technology into reality, says Yang. This cycle is very short. And to stay competitive, theyre primed to integrate AI to improve their products. Whether Chinese tech companies use the AI wave to break into the international market remains to be seenbut theyre already using AI to compete for customers in China.

In the academic world, AAAI has now taken steps to make sure Chinese researchers have input on the meetings. The exact date of Chinese New Year changes every year, but its always in January or February, when the AAAI meeting usually takes place. Cant have them conflicting again.

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China's Artificial-Intelligence Boom - The Atlantic

The European Parliament today called for EU-wide liability laws to cover robotics and artificial intelligence. MEPs also want researchers to adopt ethical standards that "respect human dignity".

In a resolution today MEPs noted that several countries are planning robotics regulations and that the EU needs to take the lead on setting these standards, so as not to be forced to follow those set by third countries.

According to a European Parliamentary press release, MEPs said draft legislation was urgently needed to clarify liability in accidents involving self-driving cars.

Although manufacturers including Volvo, Google, and Mercedes say they will accept full liability if their autonomous vehicles cause a collision, this is not currently a legal requirement.

MEPs recommended a mandatory insurance scheme and a supplementary fund to ensure that victims of accidents involving driverless cars are fully compensated.

Additionally, they propose a voluntary ethical code of conduct for robotics researchers and designers to ensure that the machines operate in accordance with legal and ethical standards and that robot design and their use respect human dignity.

The resolution arises from a report by Mady Delvaux MEP, which was adopted by the European Parliaments committee on legal affairs in January.

Several of its clauses regarding the potential introduction of a basic income to deal with the effect that robotics and artificial intelligence may have on the jobs market were removed, prompting Delvaux to complain: Although I am pleased that the plenary adopted my report on robotics, I am also disappointed that the right-wing coalition of ALDE, EPP and ECR refused to take account of possible negative consequences on the job market. They rejected an open-minded and forward-looking debate and thus disregarded the concerns of our citizens.

MEPs also asked the Commission to consider creating a European agency for robotics and artificial intelligence, which would be available to supply public authorities with technical, ethical and regulatory expertise.

The European Parliament resolution will now be answered by the European Commission, which alone has legislative initiative in the EU. The Commission is not obliged to draft new laws but must explain its rationale for rejecting Parliamentary resolutions.

Therese Comodini Cachia MEP, of the Maltese centre-right Nationalist Party and Parliament's rapporteur for robotics, said: Despite the sensations reported in the past months, I wish to make one thing clear: Robots are not humans and never will be," EU Reporter reports. "No matter how autonomous and self-learning they become they do not attain the characteristics of a living human being. Robots will not enjoy the same legal physical personality.

"However for the purposes of the liability for damages caused by robots, the various legal possibilities need to be explored. Who will bear responsibility in case of an accident of an automated car? How will any legal solution affect the development of robotics, those who own them and victims of the damage?

We invite the European Commission to consider the impact of different solutions to make sure that harm caused to persons and to our environment is properly addressed, she concluded.

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MEPs in 'urgent' call for new laws on artificial intelligence and robotics - The Register

While leading Google through the aughts, Eric Schmidt made a miscalculation.

"I was proven completely wrong" about artificial intelligence, Alphabet's executive chairman said at the RSA security conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Schmidt has initially skeptical about the technology, and he's since acknowledged how vital it is to both the company's mission and to the global economy.

Indeed, Google ( goog ) CEO Sundar Pichai has described the world as having entered an "AI-first" era. The preceding phase was a focus on all things mobile- and smartphone-first (see: Android), according to Pichai, who succeeded Schmidt after a second CEO stint by Google co-founder Larry Page.

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Schmidt's assessment back then was that artificial intelligence research faced tremendous obstacles that inhibited its progress. He "didn't think it would scale," he said of the machine learning tech.

And he said he also didn't think it would "generalize," meaning becoming more flexible and elastic, like the human mind, rather than remaining a specialized tool suited only to specific tasks.

Schmidt had underestimated the power of simple algorithms to "emulate very complex things," he said, while qualifying that "we're still in the baby stages of doing conceptual learning."

Read more: Forget Artificial Intelligence. Why 'Artificial Stupidity' Is the Real Threat

In other words, computer scientists are still teaching machines to heuristically categorize basic elements of the world: building representations of "things" and "actions" by parsing the components of images (like colors, shapes, and lines), as well as sounds (like tones, pitches, and phonemes).

"General AI," or mimicking the elasticity of human thought, is still decades away from reality, by Schmidt's estimation. But he has become more bullish about the prospect in recent years.

For more on artificial intelligence, watch Fortune' s video:

The moment that changed everything, he said, was the success of a particular Google experiment involving neural networks in 2012. Ironically, Schmidt said, the team's creation didn't uncover some major mathematical breakthrough. Rather, it found something far more mundane.

"You'd think it would have been the discovery of basic set theory," Schmidt said, referring to an esoteric realm of mathematics. "Instead, it was the discovery of cats on YouTube."

Indeed, the Google Brain team had tasked thousands of computer processors with recognizing objects in YouTube video thumbnail images. The resultan ability to distinguish catshelped launch a wave of renewed interest in the field of deep learning. (For more on that tech revolution, read this recent Fortune feature .)

As far as questions about apocalyptic scenarios, like a robot uprising, Schmidt echoed statements he has made in the past by throwing water on the alarmists. "These are important philosophical questions, but ones that we're not facing right now," he said.

In Schmidt's view, the positives far outweigh the negatives for AI. "Things that bedevil us, like traffic accidents and medical diagnoses will get better," he said.

"I will stake my reputation that that will be the real narrative over the next five years."

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Google's Eric Schmidt: 'I Was Wrong' About Artificial Intelligence ... - Fortune

EMERGING TECH

The future of federal IT belongs to CIOs who can build flexible, nimble organizations able to maximize the advantage of existing technologies like cloud services and automated machine intelligence while laying the groundwork for a range of emerging technologies on the horizon.

Thats according to a new report on government technology trends for 2017 published Wednesday by Deloitte. Researchers identified eight technologies they believe have an opportunity to disrupt and change the way the federal government leverages information, data and software over the next two years.

Some are a continuation of existing trends that are already established, like IT consolidation and greater reliance on cloud-based software and services. Others, like artificial intelligence, mixed reality and nanotechnology veer more into the outer edges of what is currently possible today, but may have far more relevance a few years down the line.

Scott Buchholtz, director of systems integration at Deloitte, said he is optimistic that the changing federal landscape will provide both the necessary space and incentive for CIOs to start thinking beyond their old legacy architectures.

I believe that some of the changing demographics in the marketplace, some of the restrictions on budgets that were likely to see and some of the convergence going on are likely to make government more open to automation and the role of technologythat a lot of our commercial clients have been using for years, said Buchholtz.

That includes tools like artificial intelligence, machine learning, along with virtual and augmented reality. Buccholtz said these still-nascent technologies have the potential for broad application in federal IT, but need more trailblazers willing to create successful and relevant test cases.

Last year, the Obama administration encouraged agencies to create their own high-risk, high-reward research on AI, remarking, the walls between humans and AI systems are slowly beginning to erode. Last October, the General Services Administration launched new digital communities to provide agency guidance on how to incorporate AI and mixed reality.

According to Deniece Peterson, director of federal market analysis at Deltek (disclosure: the author previously worked at Deltek), this has set the stage for IT managers to start laying the groundwork for some these technologies in 2017 and begin pilot and test programs to build a case for broader adoption down the line.

When it comes to dollars, a lot of this is stuff thats popping up in R&D [budgets] so when they want to expand it, they have an example to point to, Peterson said.

Breaking down the silos between IT and the agencies they serve is another trend that is expected to accelerate over the next two years. Building on past consolidation efforts, IT unbounded is Deloittes term for the process federal CIOs are using to change their operations in order to better match the nimble, adaptable nature of their private sector counterparts.

These efforts might get a boost in the form of a new president who hails from the private sector and has often spoke of making government work more like a business.

I believe that the new administration is placing a very different focus than has traditionally been the case on technology and management of technology, Buchholtz said. Were still in the early days, so it remains to be seen, but there are many indications that theres going to be a much higher expectation for outcomes and results, particularly in the technology space.

Peterson said a Trump administration may have the will to change the way federal IT works, but bureaucratic red tape and the long-term nature of the budget, appropriations and contracting cycles perpetually leave agencies dealing with yesterdays technology solutions.

Absent passage of legislative reform such as the Modernizing Government Technology Act, that process is likely to continue hampering efforts to make the federal government more nimble.

If the Trump administrations intent could meet with Congress passing [IT modernization reform], it will be a step in the right direction, said Peterson.

Rounding out Deloittes other trends are a greater reliance on inevitable architecture like cloud-based services and automated technologies that have been steadily gaining traction over the past few years, along with a list of exponential technologies like quantum computing, nanotechnology and biotechnology. These are the tools that Deloitte thinks will form the foundations of the modern IT architecture. To get there, Buchholtz said IT managers will need the freedom to think outside the box and discard the risk-adverse mindset that currently dominates federal decision making.

I think its important to realize that we collectively as a country have created an environment where failed experiments are punished disproportionately to success, Buchholtz said. We need to figure out how to better enable those with vision to fail small and fail quickly, but also get up, keep going and learn [the necessary] lessons.

About the Author

Derek B. Johnson is a freelance writer.

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Artificial intelligence and the promise of a changing federal landscape - Washington Technology

Japans embrace of modern technology has never been fully comfortable or all-encompassing. Robot animals keep nonagenarians company in nursing homes, even as banking remains firmly stuck in the past. Robot dinosaurs tend to guests at a hotel, while fax is still a widely used form of communication.

The world of shogi, Japans answer to chess and Go, is now grappling with the rise of the robots. Last year, the country was shaken by an alleged cheating scandal when a top-ranked shogi player, Hiroyuki Miura, was accused by other players of cheating after he won a tournament in October. His opponents raised suspicions because Miura had repeatedly left the room during a matchinsinuating that he went to use his phone to check what the best moves were. Miura, who denied wrongdoing, was suspended by the Japan Shogi Association (JSA) as they investigated the claims.

Miura was eventually cleared of wrongdoing after an investigation, and the head of the JSA stepped down in November as a result. But the ugly episode exposed deep-seated fears that computers are finally challenging in a serious way one of Japans most sacred art forms, on a par with traditions such as sumo wrestling and flower arrangement (ikebana). Shogi professionals, who wear traditional Japanese dress during title matches, are popularly known and celebrated. Newspapers (link in Japanese) and television stations (link in Japanese) dedicate coverage to games, and games are also streamed live online.

The trepidation is reminiscent of what happened when Googles AlphaGo beat the worlds top Go player, Lee Sedol, last March in Seoul. Many had believed then that AI would not be able to beat a top Go player for at least another decade.

Shogi players are very respected in Japan. There is a real fear that their status in Japan could be threatened by AI, said Noboru Kosaku, a shogi player and a researcher on the amusement industry at the Osaka University of Commerce.

Kosaku explained that Japans reverence for shogi dates back to the Heian period (794 to 1185), when it was played by monks and samurai alike, and was a symbol of intelligence that was also loved by commoners. There is something profound, he said, in shogi cultures emphasis on respect for ones opponents, whether one wins or loses.

An article in Japanese publication Toyo Keizai (link in Japanese) on Jan. 4 described the near-scandal and the rise of AI as an unprecedented crisis for the shogi world, and warned that the fear of AI was creating feelings of doubt and suspicion among the shogi community. The Asahi Shimbun, one of Japans biggest newspapers, warned of the artificial monster of AI.

How will pro shogi players recover their trust in one another, not to mention the trust of shogi fans? the newspaper asked.

While Deep Blue managed to beat chess master Garry Kasparov in 1997, it wasnt until 2012 that a computer vanquished a retired shogi pro. An active pro fell the following year. Shortly after that, AI programs won in a series of high-level matches, known as the Den-onsen.

The human defeat in Den-onsen made most Japanese people aware for the first time of the hard reality that, through continued development, AI was beginning to drag humans down from the leading role in intellectual activities, according to a paper written by Matake Kamiya, a professor of international relations at the National Defense Academy of Japan, and Sato Yasumitsu, chairman of the Professional Shogi Players Association. One of the defeated players was Miurathe player at the center of last years brouhahawho with typical Japanese contriteness apologized for failing to fulfill his duty to beat the computer.

Shogi is seen to be a more difficult game than chess because once players capture an opponents piece, they can use that piece as their ownmeaning that while chess games on the whole get simpler as fewer pieces are left on the board, shogi gets more complex, a shogi professional told the New York Times (paywall) in 1999. Shogi is played on a 99 grid with an average game length of 110 moves, and chess on a 88 grid with an average game length of 80 moves. There are about 10120 possible moves in chess, compared to 10220 for shogithe number one followed by 220 zeros.

Koji Tanagawa, the JSA chairman who resigned after last years incident, later said the situation could have been avoided if the association had taken steps to change the rules to prevent any misconduct. The World Chess Federation, or FIDE, banned players from bringing mobile phones or similar devices into the gaming venue in 2014, as well as from leaving the playing venue without permission from the arbiter.

But as a testament to Japans reverence for shogi players, such rules were not drawn up until last years uproar. As of last December (link in Japanese), contestants are no longer allowed to bring smartphones and other devices into matches, or leave the shogi hall while a match is in process. Previously, players could look at their smartphones when they went for breaks. Now their gadgets must be kept in lockers.

At its root, shogi relies on seizensetsu, or the belief that humans are fundamentally good. Yoshiharu Habu, a professional shogi player, told the Sankei newspaper (link in Japanese) last year after the new regulations were announced: Seizensetsu is fundamental to the world of shogi, but I suppose we may be entering an era where we can no longer just stick to that.

The new head of the JSA, Yatsumitsu Sato, who was appointed earlier this month, vowed in his first speech (link in Japanese) in the role to bring shogi up-to-date with the times, while at the same time safeguarding the honor and tradition of one of the worlds most intelligent games.

Growing fears of the power of AI in shogi are also apparent in popular culture. A recently released comic book translated as The Eternal Hand (link in Japanese) predicts that the shogi world will begin to be destroyed by computers in 2030, with human players plummeting in popularity and eventually succumbing to work with computers, the new masters of the game.

Late last year, a film about shogi player Satoshi Murayama called Satoshi no Seishun hit Japanese cinemas. It shows Murayama, who died at 29 in 1997, delivering one of his most famous proclamations: The day will never come when a computer defeats a pro shogi player.

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Artificial intelligence has brought doubt and suspicion to the ancient world of Japanese chess - Quartz

TECH billionaire Elon Musk believes artificial intelligence could be catastrophic for humanity who are set to become a cyborg race which will have to grapple with 15 per cent of the global work force being without a job.

The creative genius added a universal income would have to be introduced for the global population because robots will do everything.

AP:Associated Press

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Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, the entrepreneur also told the 4000 strong conference he saw space flights to the far reaches of the solar system being as common as a plane ride in 50 years.

And self-driven cars were just 10 years away from usurping human driven vehicles completely.

The business magnate, who was being interviewed by Mohammad Abdulla Alergawi, the Minister of Cabinet Affairs and the Future for the UAE, told the slightly perplexed crowd: One of the most troubling questions is artificial intelligence. I dont mean narrow A.I deep artificial intelligence, where you can have AI which is much smarter than the smartest human on earth. This is a dangerous situation.

He also warned world governments: "Pay close attention to the development of artificial intelligence.

"Make sure researchers dont get carried away scientists get so engrossed in their work they dont realise what they are doing."

When asked if he thought A.I was a good or a bad thing Musk said: "I think it is both.

"One way to think of it is imagine you were very confident we were going to be visited by super intelligent aliens in 10 years or 20 years at the most.

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"Digital super intelligence will be like an alien."

He then joked: "It seems probable. But this is one of the great questions in physics and philosophy where are the aliens?

"Maybe they are among us I dont know. Some people think I am an alien. Not true. "Of course I would say that though wouldnt I?"

He went on: "If there are super intelligent aliens out there they are probably already observing us.

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The minister introduced Musk by comparing him in brilliance to Albert Einstein but the billionaire revealed that while many may admire his genius, he wasnt that comfortable with it: "I think that they probably shouldnt want to be me it sounds better than it is.

"It is not as much fun as you think. It could be worse for sure (but) I am not sure I want to be me."

Musk also discussed how he saw human beings as already being cyborgs as we become more and more dependent on technology.

To muted laughter from the crowd he explained: "To some degree we are already a cyborg - you think of all the digital tools that you have - your phone, your computer. "The applications that you have. The fact that you can ask a question and instantly get an answer from Google and other things.

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"You already have a digital tertiary layer. Think of the limbic system the animal brain and the cortex as the thinking part of the brain, and your digital self as a third layer.

"If you die your digital ghost is still around. All of their emails, and social media, that still lives if they die.

"Over time we will see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence. It is all about the band width of the brain.

"The digital extension of yourself. Output if anything is getting worse. We do most of our output through our thumbs which is very slow.

"Some high band width interface to the brain will be something which helps achieve symbiosis between human and machine intelligence, which solves a control and usefulness problem."

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Musk went on to say autonomous cars would be a great convenience, but also a game changer for society, adding he saw the advances in technology causing mass unemployment.

This would result in huge swathes of the population losing their direction and purpose: "I think (driving) might be the single largest employer in various forms.

"We need to figure out new roles what do those people do? It will be very disruptive and very quick."

Estimating there are nearly two and half billion cars and trucks in the world, he added: "The point at which we see full autonomy appear, will not be the point where we see mass upheaval.

"We are just not smart enough to realise it. Any advanced alien civilization that was at all interested in populating the galaxy, even without exceeding the speed of light, at say 10 or 20 per cent of the speed of light, you could populate the entire galaxy in 20 million years max.

"That is nothing in the grand scheme of things."

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"That disruption will take place over 20 years. But 20 years to have 12 15 per cent of the work force unemployed is a short time."

His solution was unemployment benefit for the masses: "What to do about mass employment this is going to be a big challenge.

"We will need to have some kind of universal basic income I dont think there will be a choice.

"There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better.

"These are things that I wish would happen, these are things probably will happen.

"I think some kind of universal income will be necessary.

"The harder challenge is how do people then have meaning because a lot of people derive their meaning from their employment.

"If you are not needed, if there is not a need for your labour. Whats the meaning? "Do you have meaning, are you useless? That is a much harder problem to deal with."

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The business magnate also his plans for space flight revealing he would like to see travel to different planets and solar systems as a common occurrence in as little as 50 years: "I hope we are out there on Mars, and maybe beyond, the moons of Jupiter. I hope we are travelling frequently outside the solar system and nearby star systems.

"I believe all of this will be possible in 50 years."

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Tech billionaire issues stark warning saying artificial intellgence could DESTROY human race which is already 'part ... - The Sun