Africa
Facial Recognition Bans: What Do They Mean For AI (Artificial Intelligence)?
This week IBM, Microsoft and Amazon announced that they would suspend the sale of their facial recognition technology to law enforcement agencies. But the moves from the tech giants also illustrate the inherent risks of AI, especially when it comes to bias and the potential for invasion of privacy. Note that there are already indications that Congress will take action to regulate the technology. In the meantime, many cities have already instituted bans, such San Francisco. Because of the advances of deep learning and faster systems for processing enormous amounts of data, facial recognition has certainly seen major strides over the past decade.
Python Computer Vision Course
Learn Computer Vision. Introduction course to Computer Vision with Python. Make Computer Vision Apps? Learn Computer Vision theory? Build a strong portfolio with Computer Vision & Image Processing Projects? Looking to add Computer Vision algorithms in your current software project ? Whatever be your motivation to learn Computer Vision, I can assure you that you’ve come to the right course. You get. Complete course with 1 hour of video tutorials, Source code for all examples in the course. What you'll learn. Use basic Computer Vision techniques. Do image processing. Build: Image Similarity app, Face Detection app and Object Detection app! Master Computer Vision! .
3 world-changing examples of SAS on Azure
Last week we announced a new strategic partnership with Microsoft to further shape the future of AI and analytics in the cloud. This commitment will make it easy for SAS customers to move their analytics workloads to the cloud. And it will introduce SAS technologies to millions of Azure customers through APIs and deeper integrations that can enhance existing applications with analytics. To help illustrate how you can use SAS on Azure, I am sharing three inspiring examples from a recent SAS hackathon. Participants in this event were challenged to solve problems related to the United Nations Global Goals for Sustainable Development using SAS Viya .
A novel approach for multi-agent cooperative pursuit to capture grouped evaders
Qadir, Muhammad Zuhair, Piao, Songhao, Jiang, Haiyang, Souidi, Mohammed El Habib
An approach of mobile multi-agent pursuit based on application of self-organizing feature map (SOFM) and along with that reinforcement learning based on agent group role membership function (AGRMF) model is proposed. This method promotes dynamic organization of the pursuers' groups and also makes pursuers' group evader according to their desire based on SOFM and AGRMF techniques. This helps to overcome the shortcomings of the pursuers that they cannot fully reorganize when the goal is too independent in process of AGRMF models operation. Besides, we also discuss a new reward function. After the formation of the group, reinforcement learning is applied to get the optimal solution for each agent. The results of each step in capturing process will finally affect the AGR membership function to speed up the convergence of the competitive neural network. The experiments result shows that this approach is more effective for the mobile agents to capture evaders.
Abolish the #TechToPrisonPipeline
The authors of the Harrisburg University study make explicit their desire to provide "a significant advantage for law enforcement agencies and other intelligence agencies to prevent crime" as a co-author and former NYPD police officer outlined in the original press release.[38] At a time when the legitimacy of the carceral state, and policing in particular, is being challenged on fundamental grounds in the United States, there is high demand in law enforcement for research of this nature, research which erases historical violence and manufactures fear through the so-called prediction of criminality. Publishers and funding agencies serve a crucial role in feeding this ravenous maw by providing platforms and incentives for such research. The circulation of this work by a major publisher like Springer would represent a significant step towards the legitimation and application of repeatedly debunked, socially harmful research in the real world. To reiterate our demands, the review committee must publicly rescind the offer for publication of this specific study, along with an explanation of the criteria used to evaluate it. Springer must issue a statement condemning the use of criminal justice statistics to predict criminality and acknowledging their role in incentivizing such harmful scholarship in the past. Finally, all publishers must refrain from publishing similar studies in the future.
How artificial intelligence can improve resilience in mineral processing during uncertain times
As COVID-19 continues to affect millions of lives and livelihoods, it is delivering perhaps the most significant shock to industries--from education to healthcare to food supply--in almost a century. Mineral processing companies also have to grapple with profound uncertainty and volatility. Before COVID-19, some were already taking steps to build their capabilities to cope with fluctuations inherent in commodities markets. But recent events triggering challenges in workforce availability, supply chains, and demand created a need for higher levels of operational resilience in a short period of time. Here is where recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) helped.
Text search tool makes finding documents easier
Based in New York, Grafiti was co-founded by former journalist Farhan Mustafa and venture advisor Akbar Dawood. Dawood is an advisor to Untethered Labs. Mustafa, who also has a background in data analytics, said he came up with the idea for Grafiti.io while working as a consultant and producer for the Al Jazeera Media Network. Frustrated by the drudgery of combing through news stories looking for charts and graphs while reporting for Al Jazeera in the Middle East, Mustafa wanted a tool that would surface visual information onto a single page, instead of having to go into each story to see the visuals. Grafiti has a platform that does that.
Countries agree regulations for automated driving
Geneva – More than 50 countries, including Japan, South Korea and the European Union member states, have agreed common regulations for vehicles that can take over some driving functions, including having a mandatory black box, the U.N. announced Thursday. The binding rules on Automated Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS) will come into force in January 2021. The measures were adopted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations, which brings together 53 countries, not just in Europe but also in Africa and Asia. "This is the first binding international regulation on so-called'Level 3' vehicle automation," UNECE said in a statement. "The new regulation therefore marks an important step towards the wider deployment of automated vehicles to help realize a vision of safer, more sustainable mobility for all."
Improving global health equity by helping clinics do more with less
More children are being vaccinated around the world today than ever before, and the prevalence of many vaccine-preventable diseases has dropped over the last decade. Despite these encouraging signs, however, the availability of essential vaccines has stagnated globally in recent years, according the World Health Organization. One problem, particularly in low-resource settings, is the difficulty of predicting how many children will show up for vaccinations at each health clinic. This leads to vaccine shortages, leaving children without critical immunizations, or to surpluses that can't be used. The startup macro-eyes is seeking to solve that problem with a vaccine forecasting tool that leverages a unique combination of real-time data sources, including new insights from front-line health workers.
On the Relationship Between Probabilistic Circuits and Determinantal Point Processes
Zhang, Honghua, Holtzen, Steven, Broeck, Guy Van den
Scaling probabilistic models to large realistic problems and datasets is a key challenge in machine learning. Central to this effort is the development of tractable probabilistic models (TPMs): models whose structure guarantees efficient probabilistic inference algorithms. The current landscape of TPMs is fragmented: there exist various kinds of TPMs with different strengths and weaknesses. Two of the most prominent classes of TPMs are determinantal point processes (DPPs) and probabilistic circuits (PCs). This paper provides the first systematic study of their relationship. We propose a unified analysis and shared language for discussing DPPs and PCs. Then we establish theoretical barriers for the unification of these two families, and prove that there are cases where DPPs have no compact representation as a class of PCs. We close with a perspective on the central problem of unifying these tractable models.