Media
Robots, smart content and the Amazon Echo juggernaut
The South By Southwest (SXSW) festival is a whirlwind best described as "trying to drink from a firehose". There is so much happening at any one moment you have a real fear of missing out. Even though this was my third visit, the challenge of navigating the schedule to ensure you find the gems while making time to meet some of the most brilliant minds in tech, digital and content creation can be overwhelming. Robotics is moving at a rapid pace but still the sheer oddness and impracticality of what I saw was at times astounding. The best example for me was presented by Japanese Communication giant NTTS's Dr Higashinaka and roboticist Dr Ishiguro who have built life-sized robotic humanoid models that can have basic conversations with humans.
Adobe Is Building An AI To Automate Web Design. Should You Worry? Co.Design
The new project, which uses Adobe's AI and machine learning program Sensei and integrates into the Adobe Experience Manager CMS, will debut at the company's Sneaks competition later in March. While Adobe hasn't committed to integrating it into any of its products, it's one of the most ambitious attempts to marry machine learning and graphic design to date. There have been efforts to use AI in the design world beforeโfor instance, Wix's Advance Design Intelligence and automated projects like Mark Maker, but Adobe's is notable because of the company's sheer reach in the design world. Although it's just a prototype, it's one to watch closely. The as-of-yet unnamed new product is designed, first and foremost, to make it easier to customize websites for users at large-enterprise customers. When I viewed a demo, for instance, machine learning and AI techniques were applied to editing the Food Network's web pages.
Artificial Intelligence Developed That Lip-Reads Better Than Humans
Scientists from the Oxford University along with Google's DeepMind have developed an artificial intelligence system that can lip-read better than humans. The system was trained by thousands of hours of BBC news programs, the media outlet said Friday. The system, called "Watch, Attend and Spell," can correctly lip-read 50 percent of silent speech correctly, while professional lip-readers only got 12 percent right, researchers found. Read: Google AI Firm DeepMind Develops'Streams' App to Help UK Doctors With Patients Some words that rhyme, such as like mat, bat and mat, have similar mouth shapes. However, it's context is what helps lip-reading, Joon Son Chung from the university's Department of Engineering said. The system learns "things that come together, in this case the mouth shapes and the characters and what the likely upcoming characters are," explained Joon.
The Nature of Robots
The title of Alex Garland's 2015 thoughtful psychological thriller Ex Machina derives its name from the ancient Greek phrase deus ex machina, meaning'god from the machine.' By omitting the deus from the film's title, it's clear Garland wants his audience to question both the roles of God and man. There's the godly referencing and positioning of Oscar Isaacs's secluded genius, Nathan, the creator of Ava, a robot with consciousness played by Alicia Vikander. And Ava's emotional existence itself goes against the idea of the natural in God, since she is a manmade creation. Meanwhile, the natural world of Ex Machina -- the trees that blend Nathan's perfectly rectangular home into the forest -- acts as a direct juxtaposition to the technological imagery that fills the rest of the film.
Siri keeps sending people looking for escorts to an esports bar
An owner of an esports bar in Toronto says that his establishment has been getting some pretty odd calls recently, and he's pointing the blame at Siri. You can use Alexa in Amazon's app now, and it's really smart Alvin Acyapan, co-owner of the bar Meltdown Toronto, says that if you ask Siri to locate a sex worker in the Toronto area, it will suggest their bar. Hi @AppleSupport, could you please explain why #siri is saying that people can find prostitutes at our place? The bar also posted images of Siri's response to Reddit, where they went into a little bit more detail. "We've been getting calls about it for a few months now. Thought it was just a prank or that my number is somehow similar to an actual brothel," Acyapan wrote on Reddit.
Pandora's Brain
Bill Gates has floated the idea of taxing robots which replace human workers. He said it in an interview (here) with Quartz, a media outlet owned by The Atlantic, and staffed by journalists from The Economist, the New York Times and other publications that Dirty Donald would label as fake news. They made a nice short video (here) to promote the piece, with Gates giggling at the end about the idea of paying more taxes. It's a neat idea, and has got a lot of people online very excited. It could help to pay for Universal Basic Income, which is also very exciting to a lot of people online. And it could slow down the pace of cognitive automation, although that isn't an aspect he is majoring on.
The Robots Cometh
The age of the bot has begun. We just have barely begun to notice. It's only been 10 years, and smartphones have fundamentally changed our world, the bot revolution will come quicker, and have an even greater impact on us. The bots cometh in all shapes and sizes, hardware and software, automations and AI and robot fried and foe. But most likely our most common interaction with them in the very near future will be in the form of messenger/personal assistant and customer service bots.
Siri, Alexa, and robots could change how we talk
Tech giants are in a race to see who can build the most powerful voice-activated assistant, but there's a side effect that we haven't considered: Kids who grow up asking Amazon's Alexa questions or summoning Siri might lose some social skills. What if artificial intelligence changes the way we talk? Experts in robotics, machine learning, and AI descended on Austin for South by Southwest this week, and the biggest questions were lifted straight from the film Her. Is it changing the way we interact with each other? Will kids think they can order around their friends the same way they tell Alexa to tell them a joke?