Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

I like Gartners concept of the technology hype cycle. It assumes that expectations of new technologies quickly ramp to an inflated peak, drop into a trough of disillusionment, then gradually ascend a slope of enlightenment until they plateau. Of course, not all technologies complete the cycle or transition through the stages at the same pace.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has arguably been in the trough for 60 years. I am thinking of Kubricks HAL and Roddenberrys computer that naturally interact with humans. Thats a long trough, and despite popular opinion, the end is nowhere in sight.

Theres so much excitement and specialized research taking place that AI has fragmented into several camps such as heuristic programming for game-playing AI, natural language processing for conversational AI, and machine learning for statistical problems. The hype is building again, and just about every major tech company and countless startups are racing toward another inflated peak and subsequent trough.

The reason expectations are so high is because of breakthroughs in three broad categories: compute, data and algorithms. The compute innovations refer to general cloud services and specific improvements in processing arrays and graphics processing units (GPUs).

The availability of huge data sets has also been important for machine learning. Large labeled and annotated data sets have enabled progress in computer vision, natural language and speech recognition. There are numerous public data sets available, plus many of the larger firms are also using their own private data.

The third ingredient is advanced algorithms that with compute power and data provide responses or predictions. For example, algorithms are used to recommend movies to watch, stocks to trade and updates to include on a timeline. The concept is as old as computing itself, but suddenly vastly improved.

Or is it? While a computer beat a human chess champion 21 years ago, it wasnt until two months ago that a different computer beat a human champion at Go. There was an impressive milestone on Jeopardy in 2011and more recently a breakthrough regarding Ms. Pac-Man.

AI will definitely change the world, but just dont hold your breath, at least not regarding general purpose AI. Specialized AI, such as self-driving cars, is progressing quickly. The general AI stuff is almost useless.

I have yet to find any general AI solution to be helpful. For example, Google Assistant often suggests to me the best time to leave for the airport. Its invariably wrong. It largely bases its recommendation on my current location and traffic conditions. My personal algorithm for determining the best time to leave for the airport involves relatively big data. I consider variables such as how I intend to get there (car, bus or shuttle). If by car, then I factor in where I intend to park. Then there's gate and concourse information; whether I have PRE on my boarding pass; and whether I intend to eat at the airport before departure.

Usually, I take the bus to the airport and query Google about the bus schedule. The famed Google Assistant cant recognize that pattern. Telling me when to leave to catch the airport bus could be more helpful.

But having the data to answer the question isnt Googles problem. The difficulty lies in understanding the question. Emmanuel Mogenet, head of Google Research Europe, recently highlighted the limitations of natural language processing with a similar example. Google Assistant cant answer will it be dark when I get home? Let me put that in context. Google cant answer this question even when it knows where the user is, where the user lives, and when the sun sets at that location.

This is not a question that has an answer Google can look up. It needs to pull all this information together, and doing that requires truly understanding the relationship between the question and the data. Thats a hard puzzle to solve. Now consider that Google Assistant is six times more likely to correctly answer a question than Amazons Alexa.

Alexa now boasts more than 15,000 skills. These skills are largely simple web queries. The AI part is using speech instead of a keyboard.

AI has a ways to go, but thats not even the whole problem. As with my airport example above, AI works best when it has access to contextual data. That often means exposing personal and confidential data to the service, which is a practice riddled with concerns and liabilities. Its not as if security breaches are rare.

Theres also the little issue that AI is very hard to test. Developing self-driving cars requires driving cars millions of miles. That just doesnt scale, so we keep discovering gaps with each new application. Even self-driving car behavior can be surprising. Volvo recently found that its self-driving cars cannot recognize kangaroos.Oops.

I think its important to reset expectations about AI. Its fantastic that some people find Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa helpful sometimes. We should briefly celebrate the tremendous progress in kitchen timer technologyand then get back to work.

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AI heading back to the trough - Network World

Your email was blocked, weve contacted an HR representative.

This message could go a long way towards weeding out some of the sexual explicit messaging in the workplace, most recently highlighted by a New York Timesreport.

Although it would by no means block all suggestive comments that occur in the workplace, there is a way to make an artificial intelligence (AI) become more aware of what is happening in the digital realm. This could happen as employees increasingly use workplace tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, send emails using a corporate server or text using company-managed apps.

AI services in the workplace already can analyze workers e-mails to determine if they feel unhappy about their job, says Michelle Lee Flores, a labor and employment attorney. In the same way, AI can use the data-analysis technology (such as data monitoring) to determine if sexually suggestive communications are being sent.

RANSOMWARE: WHAT IS IT?

Of course, there are privacy implications. In terms of Slack, it is an official communication channel sanctioned and managed by the company in question. The intent is to discuss projects related to the firm, not to ask people out on a date. Flores says AI could be seen as a reporting tool to scan messages and determine if an innocuous comment could be misinterpreted.

If the computer and handheld devices are company issued, employees should have no expectation of privacy as to anything in the emails or texts, she says.

When someone sends a sexually explicit image over email or one employee starts hounding another, an AI can be ever watchful, reducing how often the suggestive comments and photos are distributed. Theres also the threat of reporting. An AI can be a powerful leveraging tool, one that knows exactly what to look for at all times.

More than anything, AI could curb the tide. A bot installed on Slack or on a corporate email server could at least look for obvious harassment issues and flag them.

Dr. Jim Gunderson, an AI expert, says he could see some value in using artifical intelligence as a reporting tool, and could augment some HR functions. However, he notes that even humans sometimes have a hard time determining whether an off-hand comment was suggestive or merely a joke. He says sexual harassment is usually subtle -- a word or a gesture.

HOW AI FIGHTS THE WAR ON FAKE NEWS

If we had the AI super-nanny that could monitor speech and gesture, action and emails in the workplace, scanning tirelessly for infractions and harassment it would inevitably exchange a sexual-harassment free workplace for an oppressive work environment, he adds.

Part of the issue is that an AI can make mistakes. When Microsoft released a Twitter bot called Tay into the wild last year, users trained it to use hate speech.

Though artificial intelligence has become more prevalent in recent years, the technology is far from perfect. An AI could wrongly identify a message that is discussing the problem of sexual abuse or read into a comment that is meant as a harmless joke, unnecessarily putting an employee under the microscope.

But still, there is hope. Experts say an AI that watches our conversations is impartial -- it can flag and block content in a way that is unobtrusive and helpful, not as a corporate overlord that is watching everything we say.

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How artificial intelligence could battle sexual harassment in the workplace - Fox News

Googles plans a big research project aimed at making artificial intelligence more useful.

The search giant debuted an initiative on Monday that brings together various Google researchers to study how people interact with software powered by AI technologies like machine learning.

Companies like Facebook ( fb ) and Google ( goog ) have been using AI to improve tasks like quickly translating languages and recognizing objects in pictures. But the technology has the potential to be able to do more.

The problem for companies like Google is to figure out more uses for AI beyond simply improving existing products and create entirely new products based on AI.

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One way Google hopes the project, called PAIR (short for People plus AI Research), will lead to more compelling uses of AI is to focus on the human side, Google researchers Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Vigas wrote in a blog post. They want to figure out how and where to best use it from a human standpointand not just simply create AI-powered software for its own sake.

We don't have all the answersthat's what makes this interesting researchbut we have some ideas about where to look, the two researchers wrote.

Some of PAIRs goals include looking at how professionals like doctors, designers, farmers, and musicians could use AI to aid and augment their work. The researchers did not mention how exactly PAIR will do accomplish this in the Monday announcement, but Google has been already looking at how AI can aid specific industries like healthcare through its DeepMind business unit , for example.

The initiative also hopes to discover ways to ensure machine learning is inclusive, so everyone can benefit from breakthroughs in AI. Left unsaid is the fact that big companies like Google and Facebook are hiring many of the top leaders in areas like deep learning , which has led to some academics questioning whether big companies are hoarding AI talent and failing to share breakthroughs in AI to increase their own profits.

The researchers also wrote that PAIR would create AI tools and guidelines for developers that would make it easier to build AI-powered software thats easier of troubleshooting if something goes wrong. One of the ways AI-powered software is different from traditional varieties is that conventional testing and debugging methods fail to work on AI software that constantly changes based on the data it ingests.

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This Is How Google Wants to 'Humanize' Artificial Intelligence - Fortune

WayCare, the startup that wants to use artificial intelligence (AI) to predict traffic accidents and congestion, has scored its first U.S. pilot project with the city of Las Vegas.

The six-month paid pilot, which should officially begin in September, will see a coalition of city, state and county agencies test out a new way of doing things. Where a typical traffic center might rely on calls to send out responders to an accident, the idea behind WayCare is to anticipate when and where those accidents might happen so that agencies like Nevada Highway Patrol can put resources in place beforehand.

If its successful, that means that at the very least those responders can be onsite, helping people and cleaning up the mess, more quickly. The city and states hope is that the presence of those resources might even prevent accidents.

They can know where they should place their vehicles, visibly, within the next two hours, said Noam Maital, WayCares chief executive officer.

The pilot projects cost is in the tens of thousands of dollars, Maital said, though he declined to name a specific number. It will run on two corridors along U.S. 95 and Interstate 15.

In totality, the project is about more than traffic prediction its about data analytics and situational awareness. Its not news to traffic management officials and highway patrol officers that accidents are more likely to happen when a vehicle is parked on a highway shoulder or debris is cluttering up a lane.

But its one thing for a veteran police officer to know from experience, and another entirely to pull diverse data streams into a central location and analyze them.

There will be an overlap like, yes, the highway patrolman was right, but why was he right? said Dan Langford, director of the Nevada Center for Advanced Mobility.

The purpose of the program will be to crunch large data sets to find relationships where humans might not think to look. Perhaps its not just cars swerving to avoid a blown-out tire in the passing lane maybe its the angle of the sun in the sky, or a dust cloud floating across the highway. Maybe its something else.

With the rich analytics you see the correlation between those types of events and the situation on the roadways, said Brian Hoeft, director of traffic management for the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada.

In the longer term, the use of learning algorithms to understand congestion might help the city better focus its efforts and funding to accommodate more traffic.

And at the moment, a looming increase in traffic is very much on the minds of southern Nevadas government officials. Following the development of a long-standing notoriety among sports fans for lacking professional teams despite its size, Las Vegas has attracted two teams in one fell swoop the National Hockey League expansion Golden Knights and the National Football Leagues Raiders, formerly of Oakland, Calif. The latter is getting a brand-new stadium. Then theres the two new casinos, the W Las Vegas and Lucky Dragon, along with Resorts World Las Vegas aiming for a 2020 grand opening.

The project is forward-looking in another way: It anticipates a future of connected and autonomous vehicles. The city is placing more than one bet on that future; it created an innovation district last year as a means of testing out new transportation technologies, and early this year it pilot-tested a self-driving shuttle on Fremont Street.

Connected and autonomous vehicles become a source of data that can be used in WayCares solution, Langford said. So an example would be if an autonomous vehicle sees a vehicle on the side of the roadway, it can report that.

WayCare is also having talks with Ft. Lauderdale and Tampa, Fla., to potentially set up pilot projects. Maital said there are other cities considering pilots as well.

What were looking at,"Maital said, "is first to really establish the relationship with the city of Las Vegas to show that this is something theyre going to need on a day-to-day basis in terms of managing incidents, taking proactive measures and [enabling cooperation] between all the agencies."

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Las Vegas to Pilot WayCare's Accident Prediction Artificial ... - Government Technology

In BriefAI is being used for much more than many realize. In fact,particle physicists are currently pushing the limits of ourunderstanding of the universe with the help of these technologies. AI Particle Physics

Many might associate current artificial intelligence (AI) abilities with advanced gameplay, medical developments, and even driving. But AI is already reaching far beyond even these realms. In fact, AI is now helping particle physicists to discover new subatomic particles.

Particle physicists began integrating AI in the pursuit of particles as early as the 1980s, as the process of machine learning suits the hunt for fine patterns and subatomic anomalies particularly well. But, once an unexplored and novel technique, AI is now a fully integrated and standard part of everyday life within particle physics.

Pushpalatha Bhat, physicist at Fermilab, described the problem in an interview with Science Magazine. This is the proverbial needle-in-the-haystack problemThats why its so important to extract the most information we can from the data. And this extraction is where AI comes in handy. And this ability to extract data lent itself to the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson particle, which occurred using the LHC.

While AI has not and will never replace the worlds scientists, this unparalleled tool is being applied in ways that many could never have even predicted. It is, as previously mentioned, helping researchers to push the boundaries of understanding. Its helping us to create modes of transportation that not only make daily life easier, but save countless lives.

AI is proving to be an essential component in the current quest to travel to and explore Mars, allowing probes to be controlled remotely and trusted to make changes in behavior according to a changing environment. And, even beyond medical advances, AI is making treatments more enjoyable for both patients and healthcare providers, altering an often-intimidating system.

AI technologies are also being designed that are capable of creating art. From paintings to music, we are learning that advanced machine learning algorithms are more than just the new face of industry. This makes a lot of people uneasy. Images of Will Smith in iRobot come into view, the voice of Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Oddysey starts speaking, and our science fiction nightmares seem realized.

But, while AI is not yet a perfectly integrated part of daily life, it is certainly pushing us forward. So, who knows, thanks to AI, we may soon really put humans onto the red planet and particle physicists might smash protons just right and revealmore about our universe than we could have ever hoped to know.

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AI is Changing Everything Even Science Itself - Futurism

Melanie Cook Head of Strategy and Business Consultancy, Southeast Asia SapientRazorfish

Of the countries in Asia-Pacific, China is taking the lead in artificial intelligence (AI) research. Its even eclipsing the US on an international level, according to Melanie Cook, head of strategy and business consultancy for Southeast Asia at digital agency SapientRazorfish. eMarketers David Green spoke with Cook about the growing importance of AI for businesses in the region and how China pulled ahead of the pack.

eMarketer: Artificial intelligence is a broad notion. What is considered AI, and what are some examples?

Melanie Cook: AI includes machine learning, algorithm and data analysis. Theres definitely a sliding scale of AI-ness, but its now all been clumped together.

For example, IBM calls [question-answering computer system] Watson a platform of services, not AI, because Watson will help churn through all of the dark data you havethe data that has been collecting and collecting, but because of its complexity and its sheer volume, its dark. IBM was born out of the human-computer interaction school of thought, as opposed to the AI school.

Interestingly, IBM recently featured Watson in a campaign where it helps a fashion designer create a clothing line in Australia. Watson analyzed trends from over the past 10 to 20 years as well as social data and what people and experts were talking about, and then wrapped it all up into a foresight package for the designer, who then created her next collection. Its a human giving Watson a task and then interpreting what Watson has given back rather than just allowing Watson to design the clothing.

eMarketer: How do you explain the value of artificial intelligence to your clients?

Cook: There are predictive experiences that absolutely need AI. Say youre in customer service. Someone calls and if youre linked to their Netflix or you know they have kids, for example, you can have a more well-rounded conversation with them.

AI and automation make the human more intelligent so they can have more relevant conversations with the customer.

AI and automation make the human more intelligent so they can have more relevant conversations with the customer, and eventually have a positive impact on the business. Our consultancy ensures that AI and data analysis as a whole are seen as augmentative to the people within the organization were working with.

eMarketer: What progress in AI has been made in Asia-Pacific compared with the rest of the world?

Cook: [President] Trump is pulling back on government-funded AI research. He has proposed a meager $175 million towards AI research in the US, leaving the rest of the research to be done by private institutions like Google, Amazon, Apple, Boston Dynamics, etc.

China is leading in Asia-Pacific when it comes to AI research. In China, the private and public sectors are basically one, and theyre spending billions on AI as China grapples with an aging population. Given that there are far fewer economically active people, theyre looking to automate because they realize those people need to generate higher income per capita. They will automate away cheap labor and release these economically active kids who will look after their elders so that they can command a higher salary.

In China, the private and public sectors are basically one, and theyre spending billions on AI as China grapples with an aging population.

eMarketer: What about in Singapore, where youre based?

Cook: Technology adoption rates are much slower in Singapore purely because we have less than 10% of the population of the US, let alone India or China. Singapore is also quite a risk-averse cultureAI isnt an imperative for a market this small.

A lot of big businesses in the region are still suffering from an inability to disrupt themselves and change. Change agents tend to be ones that are first concentrating on the market, and when the market is small, that means the change agent is small as well.

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How China Emerged as the World Leader in Artificial Intelligence Research - eMarketer

Professor Moshe BenBassat has been a leader in Artificial Intelligence for several decades. During a long academic career with positions at Tel Aviv University, USC, and UCLA, Professor BenBassat made significant contributions in Pattern Recognition, Artificial Intelligence, Optimization, Data Science and Machine Learning.

Following his invention of "service chain optimization," he founded ClickSoftware which has been leading this space with AI-centric products since its inception in 1997. Moshe served as ClickSoftware's CEO until 2015, at which point it was acquired for nearly $0.5 Billion. Moshe also founded Plataine which is focused on intelligent automation for smart manufacturing, leveraging Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Artificial Intelligence technologies. In addition to being an advisory board member, Professor BenBassat also is an investor in CarLabs.

Ryan McManus is SVP of Partnerships and Corporate Development for EVRYTHNG and President of EVRYTHNG Inc, an IoT Smart Products platform company; he also serves on the Board of Directors for Nortech Systems. He has over 20 years' experience as a leader in both digital business startups and large corporate digital transformations. He previously founded Accenture's Digital Business Strategy and Transformation practice and served as the Accenture Strategy COO and a leader in the firm's Corporate Strategy, M&A and International Expansion businesses. He is the author of several articles on digital business and corporate strategy, serves on two advisory boards with the Aspen Institute, and has served as an advisor to Fortune 100 companies, technology startups and non-profits.

CarLabs was founded and initially funded by a team of automotive insiders and executives including founder of NewCars.com and former VP of R&D for Cars.com and Shopzilla, Martin Schmitt; e-commerce pioneer, former Head of Internet Strategy at Packard Bell/NEC, and former Co-Founder and CEO of MatchCraft, Uzi Eliahou; and former COO of NewCars.com and former VP of Search Marketing at Cars.com, Isabel Sopoglian.

"We are extremely pleased to have these seasoned advisors on our team as we lead the industry in adopting conversational commerce technology," said Martin Schmitt, CarLabs Co-Founder and CEO. "We believe our platform can significantly help the auto industry more effectively navigate its rapidly evolving relationship with today's consumers."

CarLabs aggregates all vehicle data into a single platform that delivers information to users conversationally on any messaging platform. This creates a powerful, multi-channel marketing platform that synchronizes campaign messages and improves shopping metrics for car sellers while improving the customer experience by reducing the friction points to a sale.

The company is currently white labeling its platform for auto brands and turning complex data into simple, personalized conversations on whichever messaging platform car shoppers choose to use: Facebook Messenger, SMS, web, Amazon Alexa, etc.

"After decades in the Artificial intelligence space I can safely say that now is a transformative time for the technology and CarLabs is the leader in the automotive conversational marketing space," said Professor BenBassat advisor and angel investor at CarLabs.

About CarLabs

CarLabs, headquartered in Calabasas, California, has created a first-of-its kind, AI-driven, ad-tech and conversational commerce platform. Its technology translates millions of complex automotive data points into direct answers to car shopper and owner questions. Questions like "What is the most fuel efficient SUV under $35,000?"

Now automotive companies can leverage the power of artificial intelligence and messaging to enable effective multi-channel sales and marketing campaigns across desktop, mobile, email, and other digital channels. To learn more visit http://www.carlabs.com and follow-us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/artificial-intelligence-and-digital-transformation-pioneers-join-carlabs-300484662.html

SOURCE CarLabs

https://www.carlabs.com

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Artificial Intelligence And Digital Transformation Pioneers Join CarLabs - PR Newswire (press release)

The Hindu

Is artificial intelligence fuelling natural stupidity? - OPINION - The ... The Hindu We are at a stage where the genial news environment committed to truth and public interest is under pressure. and more »

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Is artificial intelligence fuelling natural stupidity? - OPINION - The ... - The Hindu

A Kiwi company developing artificial intelligence has delivered its latest digital human, called Rachel.

Rachel can see, hear and respond to you.

She is an avatar created by two-time Oscar winner Mark Sagar, who worked on the blockbuster movie of the same name.

Mr Sagar, of Auckland-based company Soul Machines, says his aim is to make man socialise with machine, by putting a human face on artificial intelligence.

"So what we are doing with Soul Machines is trying to build the central nervous system for humanising this kind of computer," he says.

A favourite theme of Hollywood, the interaction between human and computer is already here in much simpler forms, from Siri on your iPhone to virtual assistants in your home.

China's third-largest technology company Baidu has just announced artificial intelligence is its major focus, including driverless cars.

Soul Machines' goal is just as complex - emotions. The startup's prototype was Baby X, which gets upset and needs reassurance when Mr Sagar hides, and can also recognise pictures.

The technology's advancing so quickly, a later version helps people in Australia with disabilities.

And the version after that is so detailed it has a warning on its Youtube video - this is not real.

Newshub.

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Kiwi startup Soul Machines reveals latest artificial intelligence creation, Rachel - Newshub

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a real and growing part of our lives.

From voice-controlled assistants to online ordering to self driving cars in development, AI is the brains behind computer software. As it improves computers, making them faster and smarter, is this technology a threat?

"I wouldn't see it as a threat, necessarily," Recode reporter April Glaser told CNBC's "On the Money" in an interview. laser covers robots, drones and other smart machines for the technology news website.

"But artificial intelligence programs do know more than you or I do, particularly when it comes to specific areas."

One example is in medicine, where AI technology is helping doctors recognize cancerous tumors.

"If something has artificial intelligence in it that means it has software in it that allows the computer program to do something on its own without a human pressing a button the entire time."

Glaser said using AI, companies are "able to anticipate behavior by drawing on your past behavior. They require a tremendous amount of data that they process, these software algorithms, in order to determine what you might want next."

She added that "there are all sorts of ways these predictive algorithms can and have already creeped into our lives."

While shopping on Amazon, the site might suggest you may want a flashlight to go with that tent you've bought. On Netflix, it knows what movies you might enjoy.

"So if you typically go for romantic comedies, then it's going to suggest romantic comedy next based on your behavior," she told CNBC.

Computers continue to improve because, Glaser said, "they are getting smarter because the more data that you feed it the more refined the results will become."

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Get smart: How artificial intelligence is changing our lives - CNBC