Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence
Ray Bradbury on War, Recycling, and Artificial Intelligence – JSTOR Daily
One of the roles of science fiction is to provide readers with a glimpse of how the future could be. Ray Bradbury didnt get everything about the future right. We havent yet seen books and reading made illegal (as in his 1953 Fahrenheit 451), just as we havent yet discovered another planet ready for American colonizers (as in his 1950 The Martian Chronicles). And yet, the themes he explored in those booksmass media and censorship, colonization and environmental changeare more relevant than ever. Even in his lesser-known workssuch as the 1951 sci-fi collection, The Illustrated Man, Bradbury tackles a surprising array of issues that feel as if they were ripped from todays headlines.
Readers today will find in The Illustrated Man a fresh perspective that illuminates global issues like artificial intelligence and climate change. Bradbury also engages with the political and cultural challenges of migration: specifically, the crossing of the U.S.Mexico border, which has since received much attention with the dawn of the so-called Trump Era.
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Theres a story in The Illustrated Man called The Highway, where Bradbury tells a tale about the beginning of an atomic war in the US. The war, however, is experienced through the eyes of a Mexican peasant, Hernando, who lives next to a highway in northern Mexico.
One day, Hernando glimpses a procession of hundreds of American tourists driving north to return to the US. They are heading home, that is, to join the fight in an upcoming atomic war. When the last car stops by Hernando, he sees a group of young Americans crying for help: their car needs water to continue their way back home. Right before they leave, the driver tells Hernandowho doesnt know why all the cars are driving so fast or why these young Americans are so desperatethat the end of the world has finally arrived. Hernando doesnt react to the young mans confession. The car leaves. Hernando goes back to his rural routine, but suddenly stops to wonder: What do they mean the World?
Here, Bradbury highlights the generational and cultural gap between the young Americans and the aging Hernando, who lives with his wife and works their land, recycling the automobile waste that travelers from north of the border leave behind. Its a harrowing scene, but also terrifically realistic: it illustrates not only the clashing of multiple incompatible worldviews, but shows how all such worldseven those seemingly distant from the centers of powerare threatened by contemporary global dangers. Its moments like these that ensure Bradburys relevance, even one hundred years after his birth.
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Bradburys eye for contemporary troubles extends beyond the dangers of global disaster. In the prologue to The Illustrated Man, Bradbury introduces a character who has an existential problem: his torso is covered in living tattoos. Having the tattoos becomes a curse because the illustrations on his body acquire life of their own. The living illustrations unveil an ominous, even prophetic future for the person that looks at them. The Illustrated Man describes his curse:
So people fire me when my pictures move. They dont like it when violent things happen in my illustrations. Each illustration is a little story. If you watch them, in a few minutes they tell you a tale. In three hours of looking you could see eighteen or twenty stories acted right on my body, you could hear voices and think thoughts. Its all here, just waiting for you to look.
Unexpectedly, through this illustrated character, Bradbury highlights the possible dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Today, there are fears that AI will permeate and disrupt the political organization of postmodern societies. For instance, AI can predict the affinities and choices of an individual based on the application of algorithms. What The Illustrated Man shows is the consequence of those predictions once revealed to ordinary people. The Illustrated Man, not without melancholy, says:
If Im with a woman, her picture comes there on my back, in an hour, and shows her whole lifehow shell live, how shell die, what shell look like when shes sixty. And if its a man, an hour later his pictures here on my back. It shows him falling off a cliff, or dying under a train. So Im fired again.
In his article If Planet Death Doesnt Get Us, an AI Superintelligence Most Certainly Will, Bryan Walsh suggests that if a super artificial intelligence becomes able to disregard human valueswhile also increasing its intelligencethen humanity might end up controlled by a nonhuman entity with a vision of the future that does not adhere to the crucial ethical issues that societies are facing today.
The Illustrated Man, as Bradbury formulated him, can be read as a metaphor for the intersection between human values (the jobless fate of the Illustrated Man) and a superintelligence that determines human life through visual representations of the future (the living, prophetic tattoos). Most importantly, Bradburys story doesnt prophesize the invention of this particular machine so much as it examines the ways in which humans would react to such an invention.
The fear that individuals will surrender their ethical compasses to technology is a constant specter in Bradburys stories. In The Illustrated Man, this fear is represented by the refusal of the characters to accept the futures that the illustrations predict for them. Bradburys Illustrated Man, and those around him, represent the ways that humans will struggle againstand violently rejectthe enigmatic directives of any intelligence beyond our own, even if (as Bradbury notes) the intelligence is speaking truthfully.
* * *
Where did Bradburys inspiration for these particular stories in The Illustrated Man come from? The clashes he foresaw in the futurequestions of AI and global catastrophe, atomic war and border crossingcame from his own forays into Mexico in 1945.
In fact, Bradbury himself experienced the traumatic effects of crossing the USMexico border. Between October and November of 1945, Bradbury and his friend Grant Beach traveled from Los Angelesacross southern Arizona, New Mexico, and Texasto Mexico City. On their way, they found swarms of locusts and other hardships familiar from news stories today. But what was most shocking and traumatic for Bradbury was that this trip into Mexico surprisingly challenged his own deeply-held, exotic ideas about Mexican people, which he had acquired while growing up in East Los Angeles.
While in Mexico City, Bradbury spent most of his time seeking the murals of Jos Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Diego Rivera. It is possible to suggest that Bradbury found inspiration for The Illustrated Man in these murals. The muralsperhaps what Bradbury saw as informative, or even prophetic, illustrationsrepresent past, present, and future Mexican society from a Marxist perspective, featuring people in motion with plenty of stories, colors, and historical clues (thus bringing to the audience a multilayered experience).
One of the most famous paintings by David Alfaro Siqueiros, Our Present Time, depicts a faceless man reaching with arms wide open to a space ahead of him, embracing an uncertain future. This is the very same fate of the Illustrated Man. Furthermore, many of the catastrophic themes that Bradbury engages with in The Illustrated Man are also present in these Mexican murals.
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What future did Bradbury see for us? And did he embrace it? In The Fox and the Forest, included in The Illustrated Man, Bradbury sets his story explicitly in Mexico. The plot of the story is not complicated: William and Susan Travis are a married couple living in the year 2155.
That year is not a good time to be alive, since there is war, slavery, and a generalized social unhappiness. In order to escape from the apocalyptic 2155, the couple travel in time back to 1938 rural Mexico, where they believe that peace, simplicity, and happiness can be found. When it seems that they have been able to escape from their time, the 2155 police show up to take them back to the future, thus frustrating the couples escapade.
This narrative has a very pessimistic tone, evoking the nostalgia of older and happier times. Those from the future view our present as superior to their own time. Bradburys dark future, it seems, is unavoidableeven in our own present day.
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More than 60 years ago, The Martian Chronicles (1950), Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and The Illustrated Man (1951) fascinated the young members of the generation growing up after the darkness of the Second World War, but before the new kinds of wars known to our own era. Now, as the 21st century unravelswith all of its challenges, technological dilemmas, and even proliferation of tattoosBradbury remains a fundamental figure of the sci-fi genre.
Bradbury had certainly not anticipated that by 2020 (like what Hernando does in The Highway) recycling was going to become a mainstream human endeavor, or that the USMexico border was going to catalyze many of the 21stcentury anxieties about global migration and demographic explosion. And yet, his stories seem to rhyme with our own era. Readers will keep finding in Bradburys tales about the future a contemporary interpretation of our everlasting fears about the end of the world, as well as a whisper of hope.
In the epilogue of The Illustrated Man, the narrator sees his own death in one of the living tattoos: it is the Illustrated Man that chokes him to death. The narrator decides to run away from this terrible fate. In this age of global catastrophe, who doesnt recognize the desire to run from such incontrovertible proofs of the worlds doom?
And yet, just like the world today, Bradbury too oscillated between utopia and dystopia. For as many people shown running from their prophesied demises, Bradbury shows young peoplelike those who Hernando couldnt understandcharging home to meet a near-certain death. Bradburys work, ultimately, is for them: those readers who believe that science fiction is an effective tool to illustrate how the worst consequences of todays global political decisions will be faced by future generations.
Young people are approaching an uncertain globalized future with plenty of possible outcomes, both dystopian and utopian. Nothing is simple: the technology that Walsh decries, the kind that the Illustrated Man fears, is even today becoming an effective tool for social mobilizations (lets think about the protests, from Hong Kong to Chile, organized through social media). Meanwhile, today, we know more than ever that any fight for the future will require the work and sacrifice of the whole world: not just car-driving Americans, but people like Hernando, too. Clearly, even Bradbury cant get everything right.
Perhaps, if Bradbury was alive today, he would ask young people: what role will you play, when my future comes crashing into your present?
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Ray Bradbury on War, Recycling, and Artificial Intelligence - JSTOR Daily
Artificial intelligence to study the behavior of Neanderthals – HeritageDaily
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Abel Mocln, an archaeologist at the Centro Nacional de Investigacin sobre la Evolucin Humana (CENIEH), has led a study which combines Archaeology and Artificial Intelligence, published in the journalArchaeological and Anthropological Sciences, about the Navalmallo Rock Shelter site, situated in the locality of Pinilla de Valle in Madrid, which shows the activity by Neanderthal groups of breaking the bones of medium-sized animals such as deer, for subsequent consumption of the marrow within.
The particular feature of the study lies in its tremendous statistical potential. For the first time, Artificial Intelligence has been used to determine the agent responsible for breaking the bones at an archaeological site, with highly reliable results, which it will be possible to compare with other sites and experiments in the future.
Credit: CENIEH
We have managed to show that statistical tools based on Artificial Intelligence can be applied to studying the breaking of the fossil remains of animals which appear at sites, states Mocln.
In the work, it is not just this activity carried out by the Neanderthals which is emphasized, but also aspects of the methodology developed by the authors of the study. On this point, Mocln insists on the importance of Artificial Intelligence as this is undoubtedly the perfect line of work for the immediate future of Archaeology in general and Taphonomy in particular.
The largest Neanderthal settlement
The Navalmallo Rock Shelter, about 76,000 years old, offers one of the few large windows into Neanderthal behavior within the Iberian Meseta. With its area of over 300 m2, it may well be the largest Neanderthal camp known in the center of the Iberian Peninsula, and it has been possible to reveal different activities conducted by these hominins here, such as hunting large animals, the manufacture of stone tools and the systematic use of fire.
In this study, part of the Valle de los Neandertales project, which includes other locations in the archaeological site complex of Calvero de la Higuera, the collaborating researchers were Rosa Huguet, of the IPHES in Tarragona, Beln Mrquez and Csar Laplana, of the Museo Arqueolgico Regional in Madrid, as well as the three codirectors of the Pinilla del Valle project: Juan Luis Arsuaga, Enrique Baquedano and Alfredo Prez Gonzlez.
CENIEH
Header Image Abrigode Navalmallo Credit: CENIEH
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Artificial intelligence to study the behavior of Neanderthals - HeritageDaily
Using artificial intelligence to speed up cancer detection – University of Leeds
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport visited the University today to hear how researchers are being trained to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) in the fight against cancer.
Baroness Nicky Morgan met PhD researchers involved increating the next generation of intelligent technology that will revolutionisehealthcare.
The University is one of 16 centres for doctoral training inAI funded by UKResearch and Innovation, the Government agency responsible forfostering research and development.
The focus of the doctoral training at Leedsis to develop researchers who can apply AIto medical diagnosisand care.
Scientists believe intelligent systems and data analyticswill result in quicker and more accurate diagnosis. Early detection is at theheart of the NHS planto transform cancer survival rates by 2028.
Baroness Morgan said: "Weare committed to being a world leader in artificial intelligence technology andthrough our investment in 16new Centres for Doctoral Training we arehelping train the next generation of researchers.
"It was inspirational to meet some of the leading experts from medicineand computer science working in the new centre at Leeds Universitytoday.They are doing fantastic work to diagnose cancer quicker whichcould save millions of lives."
Baroness Morgan spent time talking to the PhD researchers.
Professor Lisa Roberts, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation with Baroness Nicky Morgan
Anna Linton is a neuroscientist accepted onto the firstcohort of the programme, which started in the autumn.
She said: The healthcare system can generate a vastquantity of information but sometimes it is assessed in isolation.
I am interested in researching AI systems that can analysemedical notes, the results of pathology tests and scans and identify patternsin that disparate information and make order of it, to give a unified pictureof a patients health status.
That information will help the GP or other healthcareprofessional make a more precise diagnosis.
Dr Emily Clarke is a hospital doctor specialising inhistopathology, the changes in tissue caused by disease. She is an associatemember of the doctoral training programme on a research scholarship from the Medical Research Council.
She wants to develop an AI system to improve the diagnosisof melanoma, a type of skin cancer whose incidence, according to CancerResearch UK, has more than doubled since the early 1990s. It has thefastest rising incidence of any cancer.
Melanoma is detected from the visual examination by ahistopathologist of tissue samples taken during a biopsy. But up to one in sixcases is initially misdiagnosed.
Dr Clarke said: I am hoping we can develop an automatedsystem that can help histopathologists identify melanoma. Diagnosing melanomacan be notoriously difficult so it is hoped that in the future AI may helpbuild a knowledge base of the types of cell changes that are suggestive ofmelanoma and provide a more accurate prediction of a patients prognosis."
Dr Emily Clarke discussing her research project
About 10 researchers will be recruited onto the training programmeeach year. When it is fully up and running, there will be 50 people studyingfor a PhD.
We cant be complacent. We need to ensure there are enough talented and creative people with the skills and knowledge to harness and develop this powerful technology.
Professor Lisa Roberts, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Researchand Innovation, said: The research at Leeds will ensure the UK remains at theforefront of an important emerging technology that will shape healthcare forfuture generations.
There is little doubt that our researchers will becontribute to future academic and industrial breakthroughs in the field of AI,enabling industry in the UK to remain at the heart of innovation in AI.
David Hogg, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Director of the Leeds Centre forDoctoral Training, said: The UK is a world leader in AI.
But we cant be complacent. We need to ensure there areenough talented and creative people with the skills and knowledge to harnessand develop this powerful technology.
The PhD researchers will be supervised by leading expertsin computer science and medicine from the University and Leeds TeachingHospitals NHS Trust. To harness thetechnology requires researchers with a strong understanding of medicine,biology and computing and we aim to give that to them.
The researchers joining the Leeds training programme come from a range ofbackgrounds: some are computer scientists and others are biologists orhealthcare professionals but all are able to think computationally and are able to express problems and solutions in a form that can be executed by a computer.
The programme is hosted bythe Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA), establishedwithUniversityinvestmenttosupport innovation in medical bioinformatics, funded by the MedicalResearch Council, andConsumer Data, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
LIDA has now grown to support aportfolio in excess of 45 million of research across the University, bringingtogether over 150 researchers and data scientists. It supports the Universityspartnership withthe Alan Turing Institute, the UKs national institute for data scienceand artificial intelligence.
The University has a strong track record in applyingdigital technologies to healthcare. In partnership with Leeds TeachingHospitals NHS Trust, it is bringing together nine hospitals, seven universitiesand medical technology companies to create a digital pathology network whichwill allow medical staff to collaborate remotely and to conduct AI research. This is known as the Northern Pathology Imaging Co-operative.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is a leader in usingdigital pathology for cancer diagnosis.
Main photo shows some of the PhD researchers with - front, from left - Professor David Hogg, Director of the Leeds Centre for Doctoral Training, Baroness Nicky Morgan, Secretary of State for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport, and Professor Lisa Roberts, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation.
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Using artificial intelligence to speed up cancer detection - University of Leeds
Implementing Artificial Intelligence In Your Business (infographic) – Digital Information World
Learning by doing is a great thing unless its costing you money, then it may not seem worth it. In the business world when new technologies come around it may be tempting to take a wait and see approach to them, watching your competitors successes and failures before taking the time to implement new technologies. Unfortunately when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), the potential payoff is too big to ignore, and waiting to see how your competitors do implementing this technology could leave your business in the dust.
Taking the right steps toward implementing AI is crucial. Some companies know that they need to hire a data scientist but they dont know what they expect the person to do and they will try to hire someone with no framework or plan in place.
The first step toward integrating artificial intelligence into your business strategy is to take it seriously and make a plan for how it will work. Start with an end goal in mind and work your way back from there. Next, figure out exactly what AI application will help you achieve that goal. With that in mind, start a pilot program with a targeted goal, keeping in mind that it could take a year or more to see any results from such a program.
While going through the growing pains of implementing an enterprise-wide system of AI, it may seem as though this technology is a huge waste of time and money. Learning by doing is a valuable way to understand the ins and outs of any new technology, and even if your companys experiment fails you can still gain valuable insights from failures. These insights can help you find a better focus for your next artificial intelligence experiment.
Currently, fewer than a third of AI pilots progress past the exploratory state to be fully implemented. This does not mean failure, though, it simply means the hypothesis needs to be adjusted before the experiment is altered and started again from the beginning. As with any new technology, there are going to be growing pains and opportunities to learn more.
This can translate to many different outcomes. AI algorithms can be used to reduce waste and improve quality by removing unnecessary variables. It can help meet rising demand and cut variable costs through analysis. It can make adjustments and predict when the market will shift. Some examples from real businesses:
Today, more than 60% of business leaders urgently need to find and implement a strategy for using artificial intelligence in their businesses, but less than half of those actually have a plan. Learn more about implementing AI in your business below.
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Implementing Artificial Intelligence In Your Business (infographic) - Digital Information World
Artificial intelligence to update digital maps and improve GPS navigation – Inceptive Mind
While Google and other technology giants have their own dynamics to keep the most detailed and up-to-date maps possible, it is an expensive and time-consuming process. And in some areas, the data is limited.
To improve this, researchers at MIT and Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) have developed a new machine-learning model based on satellite images that could significantly improve digital maps for GPS navigation. The system, called RoadTagger, recognizes the types of roads and the number of lanes in satellite images, even in spite of trees or buildings that obscure the view. In the future, the system should recognize even more details, such as bike paths and parking spaces.
RoadTagger relies on a novel combination of a convolutional neural network (CNN) and a graph neural network (GNN) to automatically predict the number of lanes and road types (residential or highway) behind obstructions.
Simply put, this model is fed only raw data and automatically produces output without human intervention. Following this dynamic, you can predict, for example, the type of road or if there are several lanes behind a grove, according to the analyzed characteristics of the satellite images.
The researcher team has already tested RoadTagger using real data, covering an area of 688 square kilometers of maps of 20 U.S. cities, and achieved 93% accuracy in the detection of road types and 77% in the number of lanes.
Maintaining this degree of accuracy on digital maps would not only save time and avoid many headaches for drivers but could also prevent accidents. And of course, it would be vital information in case of emergency or disasters.
The researchers now want to further improve the system and also record additional properties, including bike paths, parking bays, and the road surface after all, it makes a difference for drivers whether a former gravel track is now paved somewhere in the hinterland.
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Artificial intelligence to update digital maps and improve GPS navigation - Inceptive Mind
Artificial Intelligence can be used in judicial process but cannot replace human discretion: CJI – Gadgets Now
NEW DELHI: Chief Justice of India S A Bobde on Friday underlined the need for artificial intelligence (AI) in the judicial system, especially in cases of repetitive nature and document management, to expedite dispute resolution process.
He, however, cautioned that AI cannot replace human discretion, which is necessary for a just decision making.
Speaking at 79th Foundation Day celebration of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), the Chief Justice of India said the use of technology in judicial functioning is a fascinating area and a significant breakthrough.
"Though I must make one thing clear: Because we have been dealing with the introduction of artificial intelligence in courts, I am firmly of the view, based on the experience of systems that have used artificial intelligence, that it is only the repetitive area or decision making such as rates of taxation, etc, or something that is invariably the same or which is in a sense mechanical, and that must be covered by artificial intelligence," he said.
AI can play a significant role in tribunals like ITAT in docket management and decision making, he said adding that "the artificial intelligence system we are looking to employ in courts possesses the reading speeds of 1 million character per second. I can imagine a similar system can be used to read and extract all relevant facts, compute tax effect and assist in a myriad of ways to propel the pace of decision making".
Bobde added that it is reassuring to discover that more nations are taking up steps towards experimenting and implementing AI in their respective justice delivery systems.
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Artificial Intelligence can be used in judicial process but cannot replace human discretion: CJI - Gadgets Now
What Is Artificial Intelligence | Artificial Intelligence Wiki
What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has played a key part in ushering in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. According to the World Economic Forum, it is disrupting almost every industry in every country.
We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. Klaus Schwab,Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum Geneva
Artificial intelligence is a conglomeration of concepts and technologies that means different things to different people self-driving cars, robots that impersonate humans, machine learning, and more and its applications are everywhere you look. The typical definition of AI looks something like this:
Source: KDNuggets
Jeremy Achin, CEO of DataRobot, defines AI more simply:
An AI is a computer system that is able to perform tasks that ordinarily require human intelligence. These artificial intelligence systems are powered by machine learning. Many of them are powered by machine learning, some of them are powered by specifically deep learning, some of them are powered by very boring things like just rules.
For a more in-depth explanation, watch Jeremys keynote on the subject from the Japan AI Experience.
Artificial intelligence systems are critical for companies that wish to extract value from data by automating and optimizing processes or producing actionable insights. Artificial intelligence systems powered by machine learning enable companies to leverage large amounts of available data to uncover insights and patterns that would be impossible for any one person to identify, enabling them to deliver more targeted, personalized communications, predict critical care events, identify likely fraudulent transactions, and more.
Harvard Business Review gives key insight into how important AI is in todays economic environment:
The effects of AI will be magnified in the coming decade, as manufacturing, retailing, transportation, finance, healthcare, law, advertising, insurance, entertainment, education, and virtually every other industry transform their core processes and business models to take advantage of machine learning.
Companies that fail to adopt AI and machine learning technologies are fated to be left behind:
DataRobot was founded on the belief that emerging AI and machine learning technologies should be available to all enterprises, regardless of size and resources. Thats why we invented automated machine learning, which allows users of all skill levels to easily and rapidly build and deploy machine learningmodels.
DataRobot believes in the democratization of AI, and for that reason, we developed a platform to enable business users across organizations to gain actionable, practical insights that result in tangible business value. DataRobot makes the power of AI accessible to users throughout your business, helping your organization transform into an AI-driven enterprise.
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What Is Artificial Intelligence | Artificial Intelligence Wiki
Artificial Intelligence | Azure Blog and Updates | Microsoft …
Thursday, January 16, 2020
Today, advancing our commitment to enhancing accessibility through technology, were announcing the general availability of Immersive Reader, an Azure Cognitive Service.
Tuesday, December 3, 2019
Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) is enabling organizations to improve their business in areas like customer service and employee engagement by automating some of the most commonly requested services, which frees up employees to take on more value-adding activities. While the benefits of conversational AI are well established, determining who in an organization should build these solutions is not always clear.
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
In an age where low-latency and data security can be the lifeblood of a business, containers make it possible for enterprises to meet these needs when harnessing artificial intelligence (AI). Since introducing Azure Cognitive Services in containers this time last year, businesses across industries have unlocked new productivity gains and insights.
Monday, November 25, 2019
Multi-language speech transcription was recently introduced into Microsoft Video Indexer at the International Broadcasters Conference (IBC). It is available as a preview capability and customers can already start experiencing it in our portal.
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Organizations face challenges when it comes to extracting insights, finding meaning, and uncovering new opportunities in the vast troves of content at their disposal. In fact, 82 percent of
Monday, November 18, 2019
It's exciting to see the PyTorch Community continue to grow and regularly release updated versions of PyTorch! Recent releases improve performance, ONNX export, TorchScript, C++ frontend, JIT, and distributed training. Several new experimental features, such as quantization, have also been introduced.
Thursday, November 7, 2019
This week at Microsoft Ignite, we announced updates to our products to make it easier for organizations to build robust conversational solutions, and to deploy them wherever their customers are. We are sharing some of the highlights below.
Wednesday, November 6, 2019
Azure Cognitive Services brings AI within reach of every developer without requiring machine learning expertise. All it takes is an API call to embed the ability to see, hear, speak, understand, and accelerate decision-making into your apps.
Monday, November 4, 2019
Over the past few years, weve seen incredible transformation across industries as companies harness the power of AI to transform business processes and drive impact for their customers.
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Congratulations to the TensorFlow community on the release of TensorFlow 2.0! In this blog, we aim to highlight some of the ways that Azure can streamline the building, training, and deployment of your TensorFlow model.
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Artificial Intelligence | Azure Blog and Updates | Microsoft ...
How Artificial Intelligence Will Make Decisions In Tomorrows Wars – Forbes
A US-built drone piloted by artificial intelligence. (Photo by Cristina Young/U.S. Navy via Getty ... [+] Images)
Artificial intelligence isn't only a consumer and business-centric technology. Yes, companies use AI to automate various tasks, while consumers use AI to make their daily routines easier. But governmentsand in particular militariesalso have a massive interest in the speed and scale offered by AI. Nation states are already using artificial intelligence to monitor their own citizens, and as the UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) revealed last week, they'll also be using AI to make decisions related to national security and warfare.
The MoD's Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) has announced the initial injection of 4 million in funding for new projects and startups exploring how to use AI in the context of the British Navy. In particular, the DASA is looking to support AI- and machine learning-based technology that will "revolutionise the way warships make decisions and process thousands of strands of intelligence and data."
In this first wave of funding, the MoD will share 1 million between nine projects as part of DASAs Intelligent Ship The Next Generation competition. However, while the first developmental forays will be made in the context of the navy, the UK government intends any breakthroughs to form the basis of technology that will be used across the entire spectrum of British defensive and offensive capabilities.
"The astonishing pace at which global threats are evolving requires new approaches and fresh-thinking to the way we develop our ideas and technology," said UK Defence Minister James Heappey. "The funding will research pioneering projects into how A.I and automation can support our armed forces in their essential day-to-day work."
More specifically, the project will be looking at how four conceptsautomation, autonomy, machine learning, and AIcan be integrated into UK military systems and how they can be exploited to increase British responsiveness to potential and actual threats.
"This DASA competition has the potential to lead the transformation of our defence platforms, leading to a sea change in the relationships between AI and human teams," explains Julia Tagg, the technical lead at the MoD's Defence Science and Technology Laborator (Dstl). "This will ensure UK defence remains an effective, capable force for good in a rapidly changing technological landscape."
On the one hand, such an adaption is a necessary response to the ever-changing nature of inter-state conflict. Instead of open armed warfare between states and their manned armies, geopolitical rivalry is increasingly being fought out in terms of such phenomena as cyber-warfare, micro-aggressive standoffs, and trade wars. As Julia Tagg explains, this explosion of multiple smaller events requires defence forces to be much more aware of what's happening in the world around them.
"Crews are already facing information overload with thousands of sources of data, intelligence, and information," she says. "By harnessing automation, autonomy, machine learning and artificial intelligence with the real-life skill and experience of our men and women, we can revolutionise the way future fleets are put together and operate to keep the UK safe."
That said, the most interestingand worryingelement of the Intelligent Ship project is the focus on introducing AI-enabled "autonomy" to the UK's defence capabilities. As a number of reports from the likes ofthe Economist, MIT Technology Review and Foreign Affairs have argued, AI-powered systems potentially come with a number of serious weaknesses. Like any code-based system they're likely to contain bugs that can be attacked by enemies, while the existence of biases in data (as seen in the context of law and employment) indicate that algorithms may simply perpetuate the prejudices and mistakes of past human decision-making.
It's for such reasons that the increasing fondness of militaries for AI is concerning. Not only is the British government stepping up its investment in military AI, but the United States government earmarked $927 million for "Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning investments to expand military advantage" in last year's budget. As for China, its government has reportedly invested "tens of billions of dollars" in AI capabilities, while Russia has recently outlined an ambitious general AI strategy for 2030. It's even developing 'robot soldiers,' according to some reports.
So besides being the future of everything else, AI is likely to be the future of warfare. It will increasingly process defence-related information, filter such data for the greatest threats, make defence decisions based on its programmed algorithms, and perhaps even direct combat robots. This will most likely make national militaries 'stronger' and more 'capable,' but it could come at the cost of innocent lives, and perhaps even the cost of escalation into open warfare. Because as the example of Stanislav Petrov in 1983 proves, automated defence systems can't always be trusted.
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How Artificial Intelligence Will Make Decisions In Tomorrows Wars - Forbes
The World Economic Forum Jumps On the Artificial Intelligence Bandwagon – Forbes
Sergey Tarasov - stock.adobe.com
Last Friday, the World Economic Forum (WEF) sent out a press announcement about an artificial intelligence (AI) toolkit for corporate boards. The release pointed to a section of their web site titled Empowering AI Leadership. For some reason, at this writing, there is no obvious link to the toolkit, but the press team was quick to provide the link. It is well laid out in linked we pages, and some well-produced pdfs are available for download. For purposes of this article, I have only looked at the overview and the ethics section, so here are my initial impressions.
As would be expected from an organization focused on a select few in the world, the AI toolkit is high level. Boards of directors have broad but shallow oversight over companies, so there is no need to focus on details. Still, it is wished that a bit more accuracy had been involved.
The description of AI is very nice. There are many definitions and, as Ive repeatedly pointed out, the meaning of AI and of machine learning (ML) continue to both be changing and to have different meanings to many. The problem in the setup is one that many people miss about ML. In the introductory module, the WEF claims The breakthrough came in recent years, when computer scientists adopted a practical way to build systems that can learn. They support that with a link to an article that gets it wrong. The breakthrough mentioned in the article, the level of accuracy in an ML system, is far more driven by a non-AI breakthrough than a specific ML model.
When we studied AI in the 1980s, deep learning was known and models existed. What we couldnt do is run them. Hardware and operating systems didnt support the needed algorithms and the data volumes that were required to train them. Cloud computing is the real AI breakthrough. The ability to link multiple processors and computers in an efficient and larger virtual machine is what has powered the last decades growth of AI.
I was also amused about with list of core AI techniques where deep learning and neural networks are listed at the same level as the learning methods used to train them. Im only amused, not upset, because boards dont need to know the difference to start, but its important to introduce them to the terms. I did glance at the glossary, and its a very nice set of high-level definitions of some of these so interested board members can get some clarification.
On a quick tangent, their definition of bias is well done, as only a few short sentences reference both the real world issue of bias and the danger of bias within an AI system.
Ethics are an important component (in theory) to the management of companies. The WEF points out at the beginning of that module that technology companies, professional associations, government agencies, NGOs and academic groups have already developed many AI codes of ethics and professional conduct. The statement reminds me of the saying that standards are so important that everyone wants one of their own. The module then goes on to discuss a few of the issue of the different standards.
Where I differ from the WEF should be no surprise. This section strongly minimized governmental regulation. Its all up to the brave and ethical company. As Zuckerbergs decision that Facebook will allow lies in political advertisements as long as it makes the firm and himself wealthier, it is clear that governments must be more active in setting guidelines on technical companies, both in at large and within the AI arena. Two years ago, I discussed how the FDA is looking at how to handle machine learning. Governments move slowly, but they move. Its clear that companies need to be more aware of the changing regulatory environment. Ethical companies should be involved in both helping governments set reasonable regulations, ones that protect consumers as well as companies, and should be preparing systems, in advance, to match where they think a proper regulatory environment will evolve.
The WEFs Davos meetings are, regardless of my own personal cynicism about them, where government and business leaders meet to discuss critical economic issues. Its great to see the WEF taking a strong look at AI and then presenting what looks like a very good, introductory, toolkit for boards of directors, but the need for strong ethical positions means that more is needed. It will be interesting to see how their positioning advances over the next couple of years. F
Excerpt from:
The World Economic Forum Jumps On the Artificial Intelligence Bandwagon - Forbes