Oceania
80% of employers aren't worried about unethical use of AI – but maybe they should be - The Manufacturer
Companies around the world are expecting to apply artificial intelligence (AI) within their organisations in the next few years but are lagging in discussions of the ethics around it, new research has found. More than half of the employers questioned in a multi-country opinion survey say their companies do not currently have a written policy on the ethical use of AI or bots, although 21% expressed a definite concern regarding their companies and a potential for the unethical use of AI. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of the employers surveyed expect their companies to be using AI or advanced automation by 2022 to support efficiency in operations, staffing, budgeting or performance, although only 25% are using it now. Yet in spite of this growing trend, 54% of employers questioned say they are not troubled that AI could be used unethically by their companies as a whole or by individual employees (52%). Employees appear more relaxed than their bosses, with only 17% expressing concern about their companies.
Parallel Computation of Graph Embeddings
Duong, Chi Thang, Yin, Hongzhi, Hoang, Thanh Dat, Ba, Truong Giang Le, Weidlich, Matthias, Nguyen, Quoc Viet Hung, Aberer, Karl
Chi Thang Duong 1 Hongzhi Yin 2 Thanh Dat Hoang 3 Truong Giang Le Ba 3 Matthias Weidlich 4 Quoc Viet Hung Nguyen 5 Karl Aberer 1 1 EPFL 2 The University of Queensland 3 HUST 5 Griffith University 4 Humboldt-Universit at zu Berlin Abstract Graph embedding aims at learning a vector-based representation of vertices that incorporates the structure of the graph. This representation then enables inference of graph properties. Existing graph embedding techniques, however, do not scale well to large graphs. We therefore propose a framework for parallel computation of a graph embedding using a cluster of compute nodes with resource constraints. We show how to distribute any existing embedding technique by first splitting a graph for any given set of constrained compute nodes and then reconciling the embedding spaces derived for these sub-graphs. We also propose a new way to evaluate the quality of graph embeddings that is independent of a specific inference task. Based thereon, we give a formal bound on the difference between the embeddings derived by centralised and parallel computation. Experimental results illustrate that our approach for parallel computation scales well, while largely maintaining the embedding quality. 1 Introduction Graphs are a natural representation of relations between entities in complex systems, such as social networks or information networks. To enable inference on graphs, a graph embedding may be learned.
Australian support for African spatial data
Lisa Cornish is a Devex Reporter based in Canberra, where she focuses on the Australian aid community. Lisa formerly worked with News Corp Australia as a data journalist for the national network and was published throughout Australia in major metropolitan and regional newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph in Melbourne, Herald Sun in Melbourne, Courier-Mail in Brisbane, and online through news.com.au. Lisa was awarded the 2014 Journalist of the Year by the New South Wales Institute of Surveyors.
Taking Machine Learning To The Birds - Liwaiwai
The Cacophony Project's broad vision is to bring back New Zealand's native birds using the latest technology to monitor bird populations and humanely eliminate the introduced predators that are endangering them. The project started in our founder's backyard to measure the effectiveness of his efforts to protect the birds on his property. From this simple beginning, the project has quickly grown into a system that includes two edge devices, a cloud server, and automatic identification of animals using machine learning. The project has been completely open source from the beginning and sees regular contributions from a wide variety of volunteers. In New Zealand, our birds are our taonga, our precious things.
AI Forum calls for urgent action to address social, economic challenges Devdiscourse
New research published today by the Artificial Intelligence Forum of New Zealand (AI Forum) is calling for urgent action to progress the use of AI to address some of New Zealand's most pressing social, environmental and economic challenges, and not wait for a formal Government-led national strategy. The study called'Towards Our Intelligent Future' positions AI as a fundamental tool to tackle issues highlighted by the Treasury's new Living Standards Framework for Wellbeing, launched in December 2018, and also the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals. It reveals how New Zealand can benefit from AI supporting wellbeing and sustainability, along with the multi-billion dollar boost to the economy it could provide by 2030. By then, models from McKinsey and PwC show global GDP could be 14 percent higher with AI, and New Zealand could gain between 5.6 and 10.4 percent of total GDP, compared to a scenario without AI. It also shows New Zealand is performing reasonably well in the international AI discussion but highlights an urgent need to invest more and secure supply of homegrown talent.
Occ-Traj120: Occupancy Maps with Associated Trajectories
Lai, Tin, Zhi, Weiming, Ramos, Fabio
Trajectory modelling had been the principal research area for understanding and anticipating human behaviour. Predicting the dynamic path by observing the agent and its surrounding environment are essential for applications such as autonomous driving and indoor navigation suggestions. However, despite the numerous researches that had been presented, most available dataset does not contains any information on environmental factors---such as the occupancy representation of the map---which arguably plays a significant role on how an agent chooses its trajectory. We present a trajectory dataset with the corresponding occupancy representations of different local-maps. The dataset contains more than 120 locally-structured maps with occupancy representation and more than 110K trajectories in total. Each map has few hundred corresponding simulated trajectories that navigate from a spatial location of a room to another point. The dataset is freely available online.
A New Tool For Hackers – AI in Cybersecurity - Security Boulevard
There's no denying the crisis created by a sudden rise in automated phishing attacks. And while IT leaders are using AI to take security to the next level, what if this technology falls into the wrong hands- the bad guys? The dawn of the internet and advances in computing means we're able to trigger an exact solution to complex problems in diverse areas – ranging from astrophysics and biological systems to automation and precision. But at the same time, these systems are inherently vulnerable to cyber threats. In this fast-paced world where innovations come and go in the blink of the eye, cybersecurity remains top-of-mind, especially for companies dabbling with data-rich transformations such as the Internet of Things (IoT).
A 'deep fake' app will make us film stars – but will we regret our narcissism?
'You oughta be in pictures," goes the 1934 Rudy Vallée song. And, as of last week, pretty much anyone can be. The entry requirements for being a star fell dramatically thanks to the launch, in China, of a face-swapping app that can decant users into film and TV clips. Zao, which has quickly become China's most downloaded free app, fuses the face in the original clip with your features. All that is required is a single selfie and the man or woman in the street is transformed into a star of the mobile screen, if not quite the silver one. In other words, anyone who yearns to be part of Titanic or Game of Thrones, The Big Bang Theory or the latest J-Pop sensation can now bypass the audition and go straight to the limelight without all that pesky hard work, talent and dedication. A whole new generation of synthetic movie idols could be unleashed upon the world: a Humphrey Bogus, a Phony Curtis, a Fake Dunaway. Zao already has its first star: the 30-year-old artist and games developer Allan Xia, who unwittingly became the face of the app last weekend after inserting himself into a Leonardo DiCaprio montage. Western media outlets hadn't paid much attention to Zao, which can only be accessed by users with a Chinese phone account, until Xia, who is based in Auckland but has a Chinese number, uploaded his experiments. After that, every media story covering the app came embedded with a clip of him strutting around in a Hawaiian shirt in Romeo Juliet, and basking in the golden sunset on deck in Titanic. How long did it take to claw himself to the top of the A-list? All I did was take a selfie, which was then ranked by the app to give me an idea of how well it would be able to generate videos based on my photo. It's looking to match your facial features to what is already there in its library of clips."
Advances in technology risk turning society into a 'ghastly Orwellian police state', Met Commissioner warns
Britain risks sleepwalking into a "ghastly, Orwellian, omniscient police state" unless it addresses the ethical dilemmas posed by new technologies such as facial recognition and artificial intelligence, the Met Commissioner has warned. Cressida Dick said while the digital age presented numerous opportunities to help in the fight against crime it was vital there was a strict legal framework to ensure it was not used inappropriately. In a speech delivered at the Lowy Institute think tank in Sydney, Australia, Ms Dick said it was important to remember that the role of technology and data was to enable humans "to make better decisions.'' She said: "We're now tiptoeing into a world of robotics, AI [artificial intelligence] and machine learning ... the next step might be predictive policing. "People are starting to get worried about that ... particularly because of the potential for bias in the data or the algorithm, [like] live facial recognition software."
Artificial Intelligence, our best friend in a stressed, if not devastated, power grid
In today's multifaceted energy world, a growing number of prosumer assets are increasing the complexity of power grids. This is even more important in an ever-changing climate that more and more generates huge storms such as the Typhoon Lekima which caused 9.3 Billion in damage (5th Costliest known Pacific typhoons) and more than 90 deaths in the Philippines, Taiwan and China earlier this year, or the recent monstrous Category 5 Hurricane Dorian in the Atlantic Ocean. The director-general of the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism and Aviation, Joy Jibrilu, details the damage left in the aftermath from Hurricane Dorian and what the Bahamas will need to move forward especially on the infrastructures. This looks too similar to what we've seen in Porto Rico two years ago which suffered severe damage from the category 5 hurricane Maria. The blackout as a result of Maria has been identified as the largest in US history and the second-largest in world history.