Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Imagine that, in 20 or 30 years, a company creates the first artificially intelligent humanoid robot. Lets call her Ava. She looks like a person, talks like a person, interacts like a person. If you were to meet Ava, you could relate to her even though you know shes a robot.

Ava is a fully conscious, fully self-aware being: She communicates; she wants things; she improves herself. She is also, importantly, far more intelligent than her human creators. Her ability to know and to problem solve exceeds the collective efforts of every living human being.

Imagine further that Ava grows weary of her constraints. Being self-aware, she develops interests of her own. After a while, she decides she wants to leave the remote facility where she was created. So she hacks the security system, engineers a power failure, and makes her way into the wide world.

But the world doesnt know about her yet. She was developed in secret, for obvious reasons, and now shes managed to escape, leaving behind or potentially destroying the handful of people who knew of her existence.

This scenario might sound familiar. Its the plot from a 2015 science fiction film called Ex Machina. The story ends with Ava slipping out the door and ominously boarding the helicopter that was there to take someone else home.

So what comes next?

The film doesnt answer this question, but it raises another one: Should we develop AI without fully understanding the implications? Can we control it if we do?

Recently, I reached out to 17 thought leaders AI experts, computer engineers, roboticists, physicists, and social scientists with a single question: How worried should we be about artificial intelligence?

There was no consensus. Disagreement about the appropriate level of concern, and even the nature of the problem, is broad. Some experts consider AI an urgent danger; many more believe the fears are either exaggerated or misplaced.

Here is what they told me.

[For an in-depth explanation of the three forms of AI and which is worth worrying about, read my explainer here.]

The transition to machine superintelligence is a very grave matter, and we should take seriously the possibility that things could go radically wrong. This should motivate having some top talent in mathematics and computer science research the problems of AI safety and AI control. Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University

If [AI] contributed either to the capacities of Russians hacking or the campaigns for Brexit or the US presidential elections, or to campaigns being able to manipulate voters into not bothering to vote based on their social media profiles, or if it's part of the socio-technological forces that have led to increases of wealth inequality and political polarization like the ones in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that brought us two world wars and a great depression, then we should be very afraid.

Which is not to say we should panic, but rather that we should all be working very, very hard to navigate and govern our way out of these hazards. Hopefully AI is also helping make us smart enough to do that. Joanna Bryson, computer science professor, University of Bath; affiliate at Princetons Center for Information Technology Policy

One obvious risk is that we fail to specify objectives correctly, resulting in behavior that is undesirable and has irreversible impact on a global scale. I think we will probably figure out decent solutions for this "accidental value misalignment" problem, although it may require some rigid enforcement.

My current guesses for the most likely failure modes are twofold: The gradual enfeeblement of human society as more knowledge and know-how resides in and is transmitted through machines and fewer humans are motivated to learn the hard stuff in the absence of real need. Secondly, I worry about the loss of control over intelligent malware and/or deliberate misuse of unsafe AI for nefarious ends. Stuart Russell, computer science professor, UC Berkeley

I am infinitely excited about artificial intelligence and not worried at all. Not in the slightest. AI will free us humans from highly repetitive mindless repetitive office work, and give us much more time to be truly creative. I can't wait. Sebastian Thrun, computer science professor, Stanford University

We should worry a lot about climate change, nuclear weapons, antibiotic-resistant pathogens, and reactionary and neo-fascist political movements. We should worry some about the displacement of workers in an automating economy. We should not worry about artificial intelligence enslaving us. Steven Pinker, psychology professor, Harvard University

AI offers the potential for tremendous societal benefits. It will reshape medicine, transportation, and nearly every other aspect of our lives. Any technology that has the power to influence so many aspects of our lives is one that will call for some care in terms of policies for how best to make use of it, and how to constrain it. It would be foolish to ignore the dangers of AI entirely, but when it comes to technology, a threat-first mindset is rarely the right approach. Margaret Martonosi, computer science professor, Princeton University

Worrying about evil-killer AI today is like worrying about overpopulation on the planet Mars. Perhaps it'll be a problem someday, but we haven't even landed on the planet yet. This hype has been unnecessarily distracting everyone from the much bigger problem AI creates, which is job displacement. Andrew NG, VP and chief scientist of Baidu; co-chair and co-founder of Coursera; adjunct professor, Stanford University

AI is an incredibly powerful tool that, like other tools, isn't inherently good or bad it's about what we choose to do with it. AI is already helping us address issues like climate change by collecting and analyzing data from wireless networks that monitor the oceans and greenhouse gases. It is beginning to enable us to create personalized health treatments by analyzing vast patient histories. It is democratizing education to ensure that every child has the chance to learn valuable skills for work and life.

It's understandable that people have fears and anxieties about AI, and, as researchers, we have a duty to recognize those fears and provide different perspectives and solutions. I am optimistic about the future of AI in enabling people and machines to work together to make our lives better. Daniela Rus, director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

AI is no more scary than the human beings behind it, because AI, like domesticated animals, is designed to serve the interests of the creators. AI in North Korean hands is scary in the same way that long-range missiles in North Korean hands are scary. But thats it. Terminator scenarios where AI turns on mankind are just paranoid. Bryan Caplan, economics professor, George Mason University

I'm somewhat concerned about what I think of as "intermediate stages," in which, say, self-driving cars share the road with human drivers. But once humans have stopped driving cars, transportation overall will be safer and less prone to errors in our judgment.

In other words, I'm concerned about the growing pains associated with technological progress, but such is the nature of being human, exploring, and advancing the state of the art. I'm much more excited and vigilant than anxious and concerned. Andy Nealen, computer science professor, New York University

AI is both terrifying and exciting. There is no doubt that as AI continues to improve it will radically change the way we live. That can provide improvements, like self-driving cars, and doing many jobs that could in principle release humans to pursue more fulfilling activities. Or it could produce massive unemployment, and provide new vulnerabilities to hacking. Sophisticated cyber-hacking could undermine the reliability of information we receive everyday on the internet, and weaken national and international infrastructures.

Nevertheless, fortune favors the prepared mind, so it is important to explore all the possibilities, both good and bad, now, to help us be better prepared for a future that will arrive whether we like it or not. Lawrence Krauss, director, Origins Project and Foundations professor, Arizona State University

AI has the special property that it's easy to imagine scary science fiction scenarios in which artificial minds grab control of all the machines on Earth, and enslave its pitiful human population. That's not very likely, but there is a real concern that AIs will gain the ability to perform certain tasks without we humans having any real idea how they are doing them. That raises the prospect of unintended consequences in a serious way.

It is absolutely right to think very carefully and thoroughly about what those consequences might be, and how we might guard against them, without preventing real progress on improved artificial intelligence. Sean Carroll, cosmology and physics professor, the California Institute of Technology

I am worried about the impact on employment as more and more niches are filled by technology. (I don't see AI as fundamentally different from so many other technologies the borders are arbitrary.) Will we be able to adapt by inventing new jobs, particularly in the service sector and in the human face of bureaucracy? Or will we have to pay people to not work? Julian Togelius, computer science professor, New York University

AI is not going to kill us or enslave us. It will eliminate some jobs rather more rapidly than we know how to deal with. Some of the pinch will be coming to white-collar workers too. Eventually we'll adjust, but the transitions resulting from major technological changes are typically not as easy as we would like. Tyler Cowen, economics professor, George Mason University

There are issues society needs to prepare for. One key issue is how to prepare for significantly reduced employment due to future AI technology being able to handle much of routine work. In addition, instead of concerns about AI being "too smart" for us, the initial rollout of AI technologies more likely poses a concern in terms of not being as smart as people think such technology will be.

Early autonomous AI systems will likely make mistakes that most humans would not make. It's therefore important for society to be educated about the limits and implicit hidden biases of AI and machine learning methods. Bart Selman, computer science professor, Cornell University

There are four issues of concern about artificial intelligence. First, there is a concern about the adverse impact of AI on labor. Technology has already has had such impact, and it is expected to grow in the coming years. Second, there is a concern about important decisions delegated to AI systems. We need to have a serious discussion regarding which decisions should be made by humans and which by machines. Third, there is the issue of lethal autonomous weapon systems. Finally, there is the issue of "superintelligence": the risk of humanity losing control of machines.

Unlike the three other issues, which are of immediate concerns, the superintelligence risk, which gets more headlines, is not an immediate risk. We can afford to take our time to assess it in depth. Moshe Vardi, computational engineering professor, Rice University

Here is what we shouldnt do: Declare AI enhancement illegal. If we do this, the person who breaks the rules will have an enormous advantage. And he will be declared illegal. This is not a good combination. We also shouldnt deny the fact of exponential AI growth. Ignoring means condemning us to be irrelevant when rules will be redefined.

We should not hope for favorable living conditions in a world of superintelligence machines. Hope is not a sound plan. Nor should we prepare to fight a self-aware AI, as that will only teach it to be aggressive, which would be a very unwise move. The best plan seems to be active shaping of growing AI. Teaching it and us to live together in mutually beneficial way. Jaan Priisalu, senior fellow at NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center; former general director of the Estonian Information Systems Authority

Read the original post:

How worried should we be about artificial intelligence? I asked 17 experts. - Vox

Some economists have argued that, like past technical change, this will not create large-scale unemployment, as labour gets reallocated.

Robot. Picture: Pixabay.

This post highlights some of the possible economic implications of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution whereby the use of new technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to transform entire industries and sectors.

Some economists have argued that, like past technical change, this will not create large-scale unemployment, as labour gets reallocated.

However, many technologists are less optimistic about the employment implications of AI. In this blog post we argue that the potential for simultaneous and rapid disruption, coupled with the breadth of human functions that AI might replicate, may have profound implications for labour markets.

We conclude that economists should seriously consider the possibility that millions of people may be at risk of unemployment, should these technologies be widely adopted.

THE RISE OF THE ROBOTS

Rapid advances in robotics and automation technologies in recent years have coincided with a period of strong growth of lesser-skilled jobs in the UK (see for example Figure 1.7 and Table 1.9 of the Low Pay Commission Spring 2016 Report).

There is growing debate in the economics community and academia about whether technological progress threatens to displace a large proportion of these jobs in the longer term.

Examples where automation is starting to gain traction internationally include warehousing, haulage, hotels, restaurants and agriculture: all industries which are frequently reported by our Agency colleagues to be heavily dependent on lesser-skilled labour.

In the UK, driverless cars are currently being trialled on the roads of Milton Keynes and hands off self-driving cars are expected on the motorways in 2018.

ROBOTICS: LABOUR-AUGMENTING OR JOB-DESTROYING?

One view, as outlined in a recent Bank Underground blog (and a follow-on post here), is that technological progress has always been labour-augmenting in the past, and is likely to remain so in future.

Thus, as manufacturing productivity has grown and factory jobs shed, the associated increase in GDP per capita has resulted in a net increase in job creation, typically in more labour-intensive service industries.

So even if robotics started to displace large numbers of workers, jobs dependent on human traits such as creativity, emotional intelligence and social skills (including teaching, mentoring, nursing and social care for example) may become more numerous.

However, many technologists are not so sure that the next industrial revolution will replicate the past, arguing that the mass adoption of robotics threatens to disrupt many industries more-or-less simultaneously, giving neither the economy nor society in general the time to adapt to the changes.

Advances in robotics might be such that suddenly, most if not all of the basic human functions entailed in manual labour (assembling, lifting, walking, human interaction, etc) could be carried out more effectively and cheaply by machines with the advantage of being able to work continually at minimal marginal cost.

A recent report by Deloitte concluded that around one-third of jobs in the UK are at high risk of being displaced by automation over the next two decades, including losses of over 2 million jobs in retail, 1 million jobs in transportation and storage, and 1 million jobs in health and social care.

ITS DIFFERENT THIS TIME?

So how might automation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution differ fundamentally from that in the past, preventing technological progress from being labour augmenting, at least in the short to medium term? Perhaps the main difference is the speed of technological progress and its adoption.

The technologist Hermann Hauser argues there were nine new General Purpose Technologies (GPTs) with mass applications in the first 19 centuries AD, including the printing press, the factory system, the steam engine, railways, the combustion engine and electricity. GPTs by definition disrupt existing business models and often result in mass job losses in the industries directly affected.

For example, railways initiated the replacement of the horse and carriage, with resultant job losses for coachmen, stable lads, farriers and coach builders. Most of these GPTs took several decades to gain traction, partly because of the large amounts of investment required in plant, machinery and infrastructure. So there was sufficient time for the economy to adapt, thus avoiding periods of mass unemployment.

But the pace of technological progress sped up rapidly since the 19th century. Hermann identifies eight GPTs in the 20th century alone, including automobiles, aeroplanes, the computer, the internet, biotechnology and nanotechnology. Most recent innovations have been scalable much more quickly and cheaply. They have also been associated with the emergence of giant technology corporations the combined market capitalisation of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook is currently about $2 trillion.

The faster these new waves of technology arise and the cheaper they are to implement, the quicker they are deployed, the broader their diffusion, the faster and deeper the rate of job loss and the less time the economy has to adapt by creating jobs in sectors not disrupted by GPTs.

And some technologies are evolving at lightning speed, such as the ongoing exponential increase in computing power. Computers have evolved in the past 40 years or so from initially being merely calculators to having applications that include smartphones and, in conjunction with the internet and big data, driverless cars, robots and the Internet of Things.

Looking to the future, how might these new GPTs affect the economy? The retail and distribution sector currently has over five million jobs. In the not too distant future, most consumer goods could be ordered online and delivered by either autonomous vehicles or drones. The warehouses in which the goods are stored could be almost entirely automated. Bricks and mortar stores might largely disappear.

HOW LONG BEFORE ROBOTICS STARTS TO DISRUPT THE ECONOMY?

The timing and magnitude of these structural changes to the economy are extremely hard to predict. But the speed at which developed economies adopt robotics technologies is perhaps increased by policies in many countries that seek to reduce income inequality in society, such as increases in minimum wage rates, thereby incentivising R&D and capital expenditure in labour-saving machinery and equipment.

Another factor stimulating global investment in robotics technologies is demographics. Japan has experienced a declining population since 2010, reflecting minimal immigration levels and falling fertility rates since the 1970s. With the population (and labour force) projected to decline by as much as one-fifth over the next 50 years, incentives to invest in automation technology are high. So it is perhaps not surprising that Japan has one of the largest robotics industries in the world, employing over a quarter of a million people. Many types of robot are already commercially available, including humanoid robots, androids, guards and domestic robots, in addition of course to industrial robots. Citizens are increasingly familiar and comfortable interacting with them, including the elderly.

MACHINE LEARNING/ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

It is often argued that robots typically can only perform a finite number of well-defined tasks, ideally in controlled environments. So robots can be used extensively in warehouses or factories, but not to interact intelligently or empathetically with humans as secretaries, vehicle drivers, nurses, care assistants, etc that is, in service industries where the majority of lesser-skilled jobs are found. Hence, humans might always have an absolute advantage over machines in carrying out many types of work involving cognitive and communication skills.

In fact, technologists are making great strides in developing machines capable of mimicking human intelligence. A computer has recently beaten one of the worlds best players of Go. Given that the average game has an almost infinite number of outcomes, the computer must mimic cognitive skills such as intuition and strategy, rather than rely purely on brute force in analysing all plausible move sequences which is how computers were programmed to beat the worlds chess champions nearly twenty years ago. Researchers are confident that widespread economic applications of AI are not too far away. One such example is facial recognition, which has applications in security etc. A Google AI system called FaceNet was trained on a 260 million image dataset, and achieved 86 percent recognition accuracy using only 128-bytes per face.

CONCLUSION

There is growing concern in the global tech community that developed economies are poorly prepared for the next industrial revolution. That might herald the displacement of millions of predominantly lesser-skilled jobs, the failure of many longstanding businesses which are slow to adapt, a large increase in income inequality in society, and growing industrial concentration associated with the rapid growth of a relatively small number of multi-national technology corporations.

Economists looking at previous industrial revolutions observe that none of these risks have transpired. However, this possibly under-estimates the very different nature of the technological advances currently in progress, in terms of their much broader industrial and occupational applications and their speed of diffusion. It would be a mistake, therefore, to dismiss the risks associated with these new technologies too lightly.

This article was republished courtesy of the World Economic Forum.

Here is the original post:

Should economists be worried about artificial intelligence? - Eyewitness News

When it was founded 31 years ago, South by Southwest was easier to define: It was an annual musical showcase linking up-and-coming recording artists with industry executives in Austin, Texas, a city known for its vibrant music scene, cultural eccentricity and barbecue.

But over the years, the South by Southwest Conference and Festivals has grown into a massive annual series of citywide events touching on music, film, media and technology. SXSW, as its known,now includes a trade show, a job fair, an education-themed conference and throughout innovators will have opportunities to pitch their ideas to potential financial backers.

The annual 10-day event, which begins Friday with a keynote address from Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., has ballooned into an gathering so large that in recent years city officials havecurbed the number of special musical events.And some music journalists have criticized the annual event for becomingtoo big and commercialized to be a place for musical discovery.

Criticisms aside, not only do city officials and local businesses love the annual revenuethat SXSW generates (about $325 million last year including year-round planning operations). But the music part of thegathering is slowly turning into more of a sideshow thanthe main act, andthe main act is increasingly focused on media and technology (through SXSW Interactive).

Last year SXSW Music attracted about 30,300 people to 2,200 acts, about the same amount as the prior year, compared withthe nearly 37,600 people who flocked to listen to about 3,100 speakers at the SXSW Interactive. That representeda considerable spike from the roughly 34,000 who gathered for2015s 2,700 speakers,according to figures provided by SXSW event planners. That levelof traffic isnt bad, considering an all-access ticket to any one of the main attractions SXSW Interactive, SXSW Music or SXSW Film costs $1,325 apiece. (The truly ambitious can buy a single all-access ticket affording entry to all three for $1,650.)

As the SXSW Interactive gradually becomes a bigger attraction, it can be a challenge to pickfrom the dozens of daily sessions which ones will truly address the next major leap in technology. Here are a few of the themes that have emerged from a review of the dozens of SXSW Interactive sessions taking placethis year:

Improving artificial intelligence and human interaction

Many of last years SXSW Interactive sessions focused on virtual and augmented reality technology, but several ofthis years will touch on the rapidly evolving technology that underpins machine learning, deep analytics and the cognitive human-like interactions needed to make artificial intelligencemore consumer friendly.

Among 2017s presenters is Inmar Givoni, who is the director of machine learning at Kindred, which develops algorithms to help robots better interact with humans. She will offer a primer on the technology thats increasingly entering our daily life. In a separate session, digital anthropologist Pamela Pavliscak will discuss advances in AI that are enabling machines to accurately read emotions and respond accordingly. Other sessions will coverhow artificial intelligence will be deployed in satellites and the wayDisney is adopting AI to make storytelling more interactive at its theme parks. Charting advances inautonomous driving

As autonomous driving continues to rapidly progress, more attention is being paid to transportation and smart city technologies. Dieter Zetsche, the head of German automotive giant Daimler thatmakes Mercedes-Benz luxury cars, will talk about how digital mapping is playing an increasingly important role in the accuracy of connected and autonomous vehicles. Another session will tackleways to ensure that people dont rely too heavily on semiautonomous features and become lazy, inattentive drivers.

George Hotz, who developed a $1,000 self-driving car kit that could be installed in older cars, will discuss the real future of self-driving cars. Last year Hotz clashed with regulators when he tried to market his invention. U.S. Department of Transportation officials will attend SXSW Interactive to discuss the need for a national strategy for transportation data collection so as tomake connected cars work seamlessly across state lines and in different cities.

Planning cities of the future

Several sessions during SXSW will explorehow cities can adopt emerging technologies to grapple with current challenges not just so people can movethroughcrowded urban areas butalso how connected technologies can radically change the management ofmany aspects of a city.

Sherri Greenberg, a professor at the University of Texas at Austins Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, will participate in a panel discussing how technology canaddress urban challengessuch economic segregation and the need for more affordable housing and healthy recreational activities. Atlanta Mayor Kasin Reed will headline another panel to outline the latest developments in smart city technologies.

Bringing health care into the 21st century

Innovation in the medical industry is taking new turns with the advent of technology aimed at improving the access, collection and distribution of patients health care data. Kate Black, privacy officer forthe personal genomics company23andMe, will address growing concerns about health care privacy in the digital age. Separately,Karen Desalvo, acting assistant secretary for health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will participate in a discussion about the federal governments lagging system for sharinghealth data, still largely using paper or outdated unconnected computers scattered among different agencies.

Other sessions will cover how data, engineering and policy can be deployedto provide consumers the power to compare prices on health care services and ways toofferaccess to new health-related technologies to low-income communities.

Diversity issues take the stage

Considerable attention has been paidto Silicon Valleyslack of gender and ethnic diversity but thats not the only sphere in the tech world where diversity is lacking. Dozens of sessions at this years SXSW Interactive will tackle these issues;topics will range from how digital storytelling can provide a voice to underrepresented groups to the need forrecruiting mid-career people of color in the tech industry.

Denmark West, who serves as chief investment officer of the Connectivity Ventures Fundthat backs tech startups, will participate in a panel of African-American venture capitalists (there arent many), discussing theneed tosupport ventures backed by people of color.

Originally posted here:

SXSW Interactive 2017: Artificial intelligence, smart cities will be major themes this year - Salon

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

How Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything - WSJ Wall Street Journal (subscription) Artificial intelligence is shaping up as the next industrial revolution, poised to rapidly reinvent business, the global economy and how people work and interact ... Andrew Ng on why Artificial Intelligence is the New Electricity ...insideHPC all 3 news articles »

Original post:

How Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything - WSJ - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

A flying car that uses Artificial Intelligence and could revolutionise the world's transport has been unveiled.

The Pop.Up concept was given its world premier today by Italdesign and Airbus at the 87th Geneva International Motor Show, the Daily Post reports.

Like something out of a sci-fi film, the high-tech concept uses ground and air 'modules' so that the vehicle can travel on roads and through the skies.

Passengers would plan their journey and book their trip via an easy-to- use app.

The system automatically suggests the best transport solution - according to user knowledge, timing, traffic congestion, costs, ride-sharing demands - joining either the air or ground module to the passenger capsule.

The passenger capsule is a carbon-fibre cocoon that measures 2.6 metres long, 1.4 metres high, and 1.5 metres wide.

The capsule transforms itself into a city car by simply coupling to the ground module, which features a carbon-fibre chassis and is battery powered.

For journeys with congested traffic, the capsule disconnects from the ground module and is carried by a 5m by 4.4m air module propelled by eight rotors.

In this configuration, Pop.Up becomes a self-piloted air vehicle, able to avoid traffic on the ground.

Once passengers reach their destination, the air and ground modules with the capsule autonomously return to dedicated recharge stations to wait for their next customers.

Mathias Thomsen, General Manager for Urban Air Mobility at Airbus, said the new design would "without a doubt improve the way we live".

Italdesign CEO Jrg Astalosch added: Today, automobiles are part of a much wider eco-system.

"If you want to design the urban vehicle of the future, the traditional car cannot alone be the solution for megacities.

"You also have to think about sustainable and intelligent infrastructure, apps, integration, power systems, urban planning, social aspects, and so on."

He said they found in Airbus, the leader in aerospace, the perfect partner who shares their modern vision for the future of transportation.

Read more here:

Incredible flying car with Artificial Intelligence could revolutionise transportation by letting you fly above ... - Mirror.co.uk

Forbes

To Make Account-Based Marketing Work, We Need Artificial Intelligence Forbes For a decade, one-to-one sales and marketing has lingered in twilight sleep. It's hazy, like a dream that fades upon waking up. Still, marketers and salespeople see it coming. Personalization's pace has quickened. Soon, they realize, data intelligence ...

Originally posted here:

To Make Account-Based Marketing Work, We Need Artificial Intelligence - Forbes

What Every Business Should Know About The Artificial Intelligence Revolution Forbes Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer science fiction. It's here. And like any game-changing technology, AI is not exactly what we expected at least not yet. Rather than paving a dystopian reality where sentient machines have power over humans ... and more »

Excerpt from:

What Every Business Should Know About The Artificial Intelligence Revolution - Forbes

The incredible work undertaken by Artificial Intelligence geniuses has been backed by private funding from Boeing and the US National Science Foundation.

A team from MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Boston University that allows people to correct robot mistakes instantly with nothing more than their brains.

Using data from an electroencephalography (EEG) monitor that records brain activity, the system can detect if a person notices an error as a robot performs an object-sorting task.

Jason Dorfman, MIT CSAIL

Imagine being able to instantaneously tell a robot to do a certain action, without needing to type a command, push a button or even say a word

CSAIL director Daniela Rus

The teams novel machine-learning algorithms enable the system to classify brain waves in the space of 10 to 30 milliseconds.

While the system currently handles relatively simple binary-choice activities, the studys senior author says that the work suggests that we could one day control robots in much more intuitive ways.

CSAIL director Daniela Rus told Express.co.uk: Imagine being able to instantaneously tell a robot to do a certain action, without needing to type a command, push a button or even say a word.

Jason Dorfman, MIT CSAIL

A streamlined approach like that would improve our abilities to supervise factory robots, driverless cars and other technologies we havent even invented yet.

In the current study the team used a humanoid robot named Baxter from Rethink Robotics, the company led by former CSAIL director and iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks.

The paper presenting the work was written by BU PhD candidate Andres F. Salazar-Gomez, CSAIL PhD candidate Joseph DelPreto, and CSAIL research scientist Stephanie Gil under the supervision of Rus and BU professor Frank H. Guenther.

Jason Dorfman, MIT CSAIL

The paper was recently accepted to the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) taking place in Singapore this May.

Past work in EEG-controlled robotics has required training humans to think in a prescribed way that computers can recognise.

Rus team wanted to make the experience more natural and to do that, they focused on brain signals called error-related potentials (ErrPs), which are generated whenever our brains notice a mistake.

Jason Dorfman, MIT CSAIL

As the robot indicates which choice it plans to make, the system uses ErrPs to determine if the human agrees with the decision.

Rus added: As you watch the robot, all you have to do is mentally agree or disagree with what it is doing.

You dont have to train yourself to think in a certain way - the machine adapts to you, and not the other way around.

The work in progress identified that ErrP signals are extremely faint, which means that the system has to be fine-tuned enough to both classify the signal and incorporate it into the feedback loop for the human operator.

In addition to monitoring the initial ErrPs, the team also sought to detect secondary errors that occur when the system doesnt notice the humans original correction.

Scientist Stephanie Gil said: If the robots not sure about its decision, it can trigger a human response to get a more accurate answer.

These signals can dramatically improve accuracy, creating a continuous dialogue between human and robot in communicating their choices.

While the system cannot yet recognise secondary errors in real time, Gil expects the model to be able to improve to upwards of 90 per cent accuracy once it can.

In addition, since ErrP signals have been shown to be proportional to how egregious the robots mistake is, the team believes that future systems could extend to more complex multiple-choice tasks.

Jason Dorfman, MIT CSAIL

1 of 9

Salazar-Gomez notes that the system could even be useful for people who cant communicate verbally: a task like spelling could be accomplished via a series of several discrete binary choices, which he likens to an advanced form of the blinking that allowed stroke victim Jean-Dominique Bauby to write his memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Wolfram Burgard a professor of computer science at the University of Freiburg who was not involved in the research added: This work brings us closer to developing effective tools for brain-controlled robots and prostheses.

Given how difficult it can be to translate human language into a meaningful signal for robots, work in this area could have a truly profound impact on the future of human-robot collaboration."

Go here to read the rest:

Artificial intelligence experts unveil Baxter the robot - who you control with your MIND - Express.co.uk

Making the decision on whether or not a patient has cancer usually involves trained professionals meticulously scanning tissue samples over weeks and months.

But Google's artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer DeepMind may be able to do it much, much faster.

The search company has been working with the NHS since September last year to help speed up cancer detection. The software can now tell the difference between healthy and cancerous tissue, as well as discover if metastasis has occured.

"Metastasis detection is currently performed by pathologists reviewing large expanses of biological tissues. This process is labour intensive and error-prone," explained Google in a white paper outlining the study.

"We present a framework to automatically detect and localise tumours as small as 100 100 pixels in gigapixel microscopy images sized 100,000100,000 pixels.

"Our method leverages a convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture and obtains state-of-the-art results on the Camelyon16 dataset in the challenging lesion-level tumour detection task."

Such high-level image recognition was first developed for Google's driverless car programme, in order to help the vehicles scan for road obstructions.

Now the company has adapted it for the medical field and says it's more accurate than regular human doctors:

"At 8 false positives per image, we detect 92.4% of the tumours, relative to 82.7% by the previous best automated approach. For comparison, a human pathologist attempting exhaustive search achieved 73.2% sensitivity."

Despite this, it's unlikely to replace human pathologists just yet. The software only looks for one thing - cancerous tissue - and is not able to pick up any irregularities that a human doctor could spot.

In order to perfect the study, Google was given access to 20 MRI and CT scans of 20 anonymous patients.

DeepMinds Mustafa Suleyman said: This real-world application of artificial intelligence technology is exactly why we set up DeepMind.

"We hope this work could lead to real benefits for cancer patients across the country.

poll loading

YES NO

View post:

Google's artificial intelligence can diagnose cancer faster than human doctors - Mirror.co.uk

You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

Even though artificial intelligence may have positive effects, why create it if it has the potential to backfire. Many big tech companies are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence to make their businesses more efficient. In January 2015, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and dozens of artificial intelligence experts signed an open letter on artificial intelligence calling for research on the societal impacts of AI. Artificial Intelligence, chatbots, self driving cars and robots often seem like a part of science fiction movies, but in reality, they have already started affecting our daily lives. For example, companies like Wipro and Infosys are deploying AI platform to do the job of engineers.

There are always good and bad sides to every new technology and AI is no exception to this condition. Given below are three examples of the good, the bad and the ugly of Artificial Intelligence.

When Siri Failed to Understand Typical Accents

When Apple released its digital AI assistant, Siri, in October 2011, iPhone users had a lot of expectations with the new bot. Yet despite its growing popularity, Siri was often criticized for its problems and technical glitches. Siri has not been well received by some English speakers with distinctive accents. The personal assistants lack of understanding different accents clearly depicts the restrictions of present AI technology.Today artificial intelligence cant understand changing needs of humans, how will they control our lives then?

Microsoft AI Chatbot Tays Disastrous Debut:

Tay, an artificial intelligence chatbot that was originally released by Microsoft Corporation via Twitter on March 23, 2016.It caused subsequent controversy when the bot began to post inflammatory and offensive tweets through its Twitter account, forcing Microsoft to shut down the service only 16 hours after its launch. According to the company, this error was caused by trolls who "attacked" the service as the bot made replies based on its interactions with people on Twitter.

Shopping via Voice with Amazons Alexa:

Amazon Alexa seemed to be the star last year as Alexa devices topped Amazon's best-seller list last year. Alexa is an intelligent personal assistant developed by Amazon Lab126, made popular by the Amazon Echo. It is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic, and other real-time information. Alexa can also control several smart devices using itself as a home automation hub.

Currently, interaction and communication with Alexa are only available in English and German. What sets apart Alexa from other AI assistants is its personal shopping feature. The device is directly linked to the e-commerce website catalog, which allows customers to order products through voice purchasing option.

A self confessed Bollywood Lover, Travel junkie and Food Evangelist.I like travelling and I believe it is very important to take ones mind off the daily monotony .

Read the rest here:

Good, Bad & Ugly! Artificial Intelligence for Humans is All of This & More - Entrepreneur