Media
Can we create AI ethics before we finish creating AI?
Sometimes in today's tech-driven world, in the race to be first with the next big breakthrough, it can seem like we've ended up retrofitting the rules and regulations for how these innovations (platforms, media, devices) should operate only once we are too far dependent on them, and all the positive roles they play โ once they are an integral part of our society, or have changed it altogether. What would happen if we instead could create the principles and guidelines for an entire innovation or industry before it becomes standard, before its even fully invented? Actually, in healthcare it's required. Doctors have long taken the Hippocratic Oath. Those who work in the field do so in service of the patient.
Making Music using Machine Learning: Music Making Machine (M3)
Robots are usually associated with automation, science, and engineering. But can robots have other talents? If you play a melody to a robot, would it be able to comprehend it and come up with a musical response? Can it learn music, compose its own musical, compete with humans, and even surpass them? Could robots be the next Jonas Brothers, Imagine Dragons, or Mozart?
Data Science Explains Why Every Hit Pop Song Sounds the Same
There's a Nirvana song that you may not have heard that, ironically, describes why you have heard another Nirvana song, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," which dominated the airwaves in the early '90s and still endures today. It's called "Verse Chorus Verse" and it follows the song structure it's named for, which most pop songs, including "Teen Spirit" and recent smashes like "Old Town Road," rely on. The only weird thing, though, is that the song is about frontman Kurt Cobain's chronic stomach pain and the medications he illegally took. That title is a play on a common dig at pop songs--all of them sound the same. Now, two student researchers at the University of San Francisco have leveraged Spotify data to figure out if that's really true.
For a more dangerous age, a delicious skewering of current AI ZDNet
For most of the past sixty years, a rich critique of artificial intelligence was avidly pursued, mostly by insiders, people either practicing AI or interested onlookers who were in close proximity. Now the world finds itself in a strange state: Just as AI has gone mainstream, showing up everywhere from your Instagram feed to your smartphone voice assistant, many of those voices of criticism have been lost as a generation of thinkers passed away, people like MIT scientist Marvin Minsky and UC Berkeley professor of philosophy Herbert Dreyfus. But a small contingent of critics remains, and the world needs them to keep a balance in its view of AI as the use of AI becomes more entwined with everyday life. They include Judea Pearl, whose Book of Why reminds AI practitioners of the need for causal reasoning; and University of Toronto professor Hector Levesque, whose test for common sense, the Winograd Schema Challenge, sets a high bar for conventional AI. But none have been more prolific in the modern era in the critique of AI than NYU professor of psychology Gary Marcus. In five books and numerous articles in popular publications such as The New York Times and The New Yorker, Marcus has skewered the latest AI headlines, to remind people of the limits to present AI.
Chinese Newspaper Auto Generating Science News - Robot Writers AI
China Science Daily is using artificial intelligence to auto-generate news stories, based on article abstracts it finds in major scientific journals. Those journals include some of the most influential scientific publications in the world, including Science, Nature, Cell and the New England Journal of Medicine. So far, China Science Daily has published more than 200 articles using AI. The primary impetus behind the effort: To offer Chinese scientists easy access to scientific research from around the world โ devoid of language barriers -- according to Zhang Mingwei, deputy editor-in-chief, China Science Daily. Keaton Patti, who has written for Marvel and Comedy Central, says he trained an AI writing system to be Batman-savvy by having it view approximately 1,000 hours of Batman films. The result: "One has to wonder what the AI was computing when it had Batman say, "'Alfred, give birth to Robin,'" observes ScreenRant.
Chinese Newspaper Auto Generating Science News - Robot Writers AI
China Science Daily is using artificial intelligence to auto-generate news stories, based on article abstracts it finds in major scientific journals. Those journals include some of the most influential scientific publications in the world, including Science, Nature, Cell and the New England Journal of Medicine. So far, China Science Daily has published more than 200 articles using AI. The primary impetus behind the effort: To offer Chinese scientists easy access to scientific research from around the world โ devoid of language barriers -- according to Zhang Mingwei, deputy editor-in-chief, China Science Daily. Keaton Patti, who has written for Marvel and Comedy Central, says he trained an AI writing system to be Batman-savvy by having it view approximately 1,000 hours of Batman films. The result: "One has to wonder what the AI was computing when it had Batman say, "'Alfred, give birth to Robin,'" observes ScreenRant.
Taylor Swift threatened Microsoft with legal action over racist chatbot 'Tay'
Fox News Flash top headlines for Sept. 10 are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com Pop superstar Taylor Swift apparently tried to stop Microsoft from calling its chatbot Tay after the AI-powered bot morphed into a racist troll, according to Microsoft President Brad Smith. In his new book, Tools and Weapons, Smith wrote about what happened when his company introduced a new chatbot in March 2016 that was meant to interact with young adults and teenagers on social media. "The chatbot seems to have filled a social need in China, with users typically spending fifteen to twenty minutes talking with XiaoIce about their day, problems, hopes, and dreams," Smith and his co-author wrote in the book.
Deep Fusion is the iPhone's take on AI photography
In announcing the iPhones 11 Pro, Phil Schiller tipped us off to a new feature that'll come to the flagship smartphones in the next year. Deep Fusion is a system which Schiller describes as "computational photography mad science," which is likely to be the company's answer, more or less, to Google's Night Sight. As Schiller explained, when you're about to take an image with the new iPhone 11 Pro, the camera will snap 8 images before you press the shutter. When you do, it'll then take one long exposure, and then stitch a new image together, "pixel-by-pixel" to create one with lots of detail and very little noise. It's not specifically designed for shooting in the dark, but it's clear that Apple is parking its tanks on Google's lawn. Night Sight has been one of the strengths of the last few Pixel phones, using machine learning to create well-lit images in dark environments.
AI bringing truth to data journalism ZDNet
Wouldn't it be fabulous to know for sure that an article you read online is authentic and contains trusted sources? If everyone used AI to fact check, fake news and data could be eliminated permanently from online news sites. Menlo Park, CA-based AI startup, Diffbot has announced an official partnership with the European Journalism Centre to combat fake news. The company is the only other US company aside from Microsoft and Google to crawl and index the entire web to create its Knowledge Graph. Journalists can access the DKG through the Data Journalism platform created by the European Journalism Centre to provide resources, materials, online courses and community forums for data journalists all over the world.