Government
Expert source on ethical AI in the workplace and hiring (Includes interview)
Britt argues that artificial intelligence – when used ethically – is positively impacting people when it comes to hiring and the employee experience. He expands further by saying that AI should be used to enhance human capability and help workers improve and grow – not to place a "big brother" monitoring system on them. Digital Journal spoke with CallMiner's Britt about examples of how AI has helped companies develop and retain top talent, simplify jobs, and drastically improve the employee experience. Digital Journal: How is artificial intelligence disrupting business? Britt: If by disruption we mean a radical change in a business, then the most disruptive aspects of AI is the need to rethink existing human-built processes to be AI processes, basically transforming a business from Human-to-Human to Machine-to-Human.
The Problem With Including AI In School Curriculum
One of the main reasons to integrate AI in the current school curriculum is to make the upcoming generation familiar with technology. The Government of India and the educational board have been pushing for more artificial intelligence to be integrated into the education system, not from the perspective of enhancing it, but also with the intention of making young minds more aware and skilled when it comes to artificial intelligence. Today, children are curious about the smart conversational devices and AI used in applications like Siri and Alexa; some of them even wonder how Netflix gives them precise recommendations. Gradually, they will grow curious and try to learn what algorithms are, what a neural network is, and how they work. The Government of India and the educational board have been taking measures to make the existing school curriculum more AI-centric with a firm belief that the students will learn about AI, have fun and also take India forward.
Natural language processing for word sense disambiguation and information extraction
This research work deals with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and extraction of essential information in an explicit form. The most common among the information management strategies is Document Retrieval (DR) and Information Filtering. DR systems may work as combine harvesters, which bring back useful material from the vast fields of raw material. With large amount of potentially useful information in hand, an Information Extraction (IE) system can then transform the raw material by refining and reducing it to a germ of original text. A Document Retrieval system collects the relevant documents carrying the required information, from the repository of texts. An IE system then transforms them into information that is more readily digested and analyzed. It isolates relevant text fragments, extracts relevant information from the fragments, and then arranges together the targeted information in a coherent framework. The thesis presents a new approach for Word Sense Disambiguation using thesaurus. The illustrative examples supports the effectiveness of this approach for speedy and effective disambiguation. A Document Retrieval method, based on Fuzzy Logic has been described and its application is illustrated. A question-answering system describes the operation of information extraction from the retrieved text documents. The process of information extraction for answering a query is considerably simplified by using a Structured Description Language (SDL) which is based on cardinals of queries in the form of who, what, when, where and why. The thesis concludes with the presentation of a novel strategy based on Dempster-Shafer theory of evidential reasoning, for document retrieval and information extraction. This strategy permits relaxation of many limitations, which are inherent in Bayesian probabilistic approach.
Neural Machine Translation with Imbalanced Classes
We cast neural machine translation (NMT) as a classification task in an autoregressive setting and analyze the limitations of both classification and autoregression components. Classifiers are known to perform better with balanced class distributions during training. Since the Zipfian nature of languages causes imbalanced classes, we explore the effect of class imbalance on NMT. We analyze the effect of vocabulary sizes on NMT performance and reveal an explanation for 'why' certain vocabulary sizes are better than others.
SINDy-PI: A Robust Algorithm for Parallel Implicit Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics
Kaheman, Kadierdan, Kutz, J. Nathan, Brunton, Steven L.
Accurately modeling the nonlinear dynamics of a system from measurement data is a challenging yet vital topic. The sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (SINDy) algorithm is one approach to discover dynamical systems models from data. Although extensions have been developed to identify implicit dynamics, or dynamics described by rational functions, these extensions are extremely sensitive to noise. In this work, we develop SINDy-PI (parallel, implicit), a robust variant of the SINDy algorithm to identify implicit dynamics and rational nonlinearities. The SINDy-PI framework includes multiple optimization algorithms and a principled approach to model selection. We demonstrate the ability of this algorithm to learn implicit ordinary and partial differential equations and conservation laws from limited and noisy data. In particular, we show that the proposed approach is several orders of magnitude more noise robust than previous approaches, and may be used to identify a class of complex ODE and PDE dynamics that were previously unattainable with SINDy, including for the double pendulum dynamics and the Belousov Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction.
GraphChallenge.org Sparse Deep Neural Network Performance
Kepner, Jeremy, Alford, Simon, Gadepally, Vijay, Jones, Michael, Milechin, Lauren, Reuther, Albert, Robinett, Ryan, Samsi, Sid
The MIT/IEEE/Amazon GraphChallenge.org encourages community approaches to developing new solutions for analyzing graphs and sparse data. Sparse AI analytics present unique scalability difficulties. The Sparse Deep Neural Network (DNN) Challenge draws upon prior challenges from machine learning, high performance computing, and visual analytics to create a challenge that is reflective of emerging sparse AI systems. The sparse DNN challenge is based on a mathematically well-defined DNN inference computation and can be implemented in any programming environment. In 2019 several sparse DNN challenge submissions were received from a wide range of authors and organizations. This paper presents a performance analysis of the best performers of these submissions. These submissions show that their state-of-the-art sparse DNN execution time, $T_{\rm DNN}$, is a strong function of the number of DNN operations performed, $N_{\rm op}$. The sparse DNN challenge provides a clear picture of current sparse DNN systems and underscores the need for new innovations to achieve high performance on very large sparse DNNs.
Army Seeks AI Ground Truth
Deep neural networks are being mustered by U.S. military researchers to marshal new technology forces on the Internet of Battlefield Things. U.S. Army and industry researchers said this week they have developed a "confidence metric" for assessing the reliability of AI and machine learning algorithms used in deep neural networks. The metric seeks to boost reliability by limiting predictions based strictly on the system's training. The goal is to develop AI-based systems that are less prone to deception when presented with information beyond their training. SRI International has been working since 2018 with the Army Research Laboratory as part of the service's Internet of Battlefield of Things Collaborative Research Alliance.
Researchers find AI is bad at predicting GPA, grit, eviction, job training, layoffs, and material hardship
A paper coauthored by over 112 researchers across 160 data and social science teams found that AI and statistical models, when used to predict six life outcomes for children, parents, and households, weren't very accurate even when trained on 13,000 data points from over 4,000 families. They assert that the work is a cautionary tale on the use of predictive modeling, especially in the criminal justice system and social support programs. "Here's a setting where we have hundreds of participants and a rich data set, and even the best AI results are still not accurate," said study co-lead author Matt Salganik, a professor of sociology at Princeton and interim director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. "These results show us that machine learning isn't magic; there are clearly other factors at play when it comes to predicting the life course." The study, which was published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the fruit of the Fragile Families Challenge, a multi-year collaboration that sought to recruit researchers to complete a predictive task by predicting the same outcomes using the same data.
New MI5 head promises to focus on China and harness AI
MI5's deputy head will take the top job at the spy agency next month promising a sharper focus on China and to work more closely with the private sector in harnessing artificial intelligence in tackling hostile state and terrorist activity. Ken McCallum, a career MI5 officer, has been the agency's deputy director general since April 2017 and was seen by insiders as the heir apparent at an organisation that prides itself on internal appointments to its leading position. The Glaswegian is the youngest ever boss of MI5, although the organisation will only say he is "in his 40s" – and replaces Sir Andrew Parker, who had been due to step down in April after seven years as the director general in charge of the the UK's domestic security service. His appointment was announced by the home secretary, Priti Patel, on Monday. "MI5's purpose is hugely motivating," McCallum said.
How one data-driven agency -- the Census Bureau -- found extra value in machine learning - FedScoop
Like many agencies, the Census Bureau looks for reductions in expenses and workloads when it makes decisions about machine learning. But the agency has discovered another advantage in the technology: It can find data that employees never knew they needed. More than 100 different surveys are handled by siloed programs within the Census Bureau, and the capture, instrumentation, processing and summation of the resulting data is "really hard to manage," said Zachary Whitman, chief data officer, at an AFCEA Bethesda event Wednesday, The bureau's dissemination branch exports data in a consolidated system where discovery and preparation is "difficult" for employees, Whitman said. So the agency is piloting ML that flags valuable information employees may not have even been searching for originally. "How do you get people to translate into information they might not know about but would be very valuable to them?" Whitman said.