Take a quadcopter with a camera, load it with image-recognition algorithms, have it fly over a beach, and—OH NO GET OUT OF THE WATER THERE’S A SHARK. That is, more or less, what will be happening on some of Australia’s beaches starting next month.
Source: AI Drones Will Help Stop Australian Shark Attacks – MIT Technology Review
The reality of AI is both less dramatic and more impactful than the hype. We are entering a new era of computing that will bring tremendous change. The past thirty-plus years have seen the personalization of computing hardware, with single, big machines supplanted by supercomputers in everyone’s pockets and on-demand cloud services. This technical advance has brought individuals access to services anytime, anywhere and has spurred major transformations on college and university campuses.
There didn’t seem to be anything strange about the new teaching assistant, Jill Watson, who messaged students about assignments and due dates in professor Ashok Goel’s artificial intelligence class at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her responses were brief but informative, and it wasn’t until the semester ended that the students learned Jill wasn’t actually a “she” at all, let alone a human being. Jill was a chatbot, built by Goel to help lighten the load on his eight other human TAs.
Source: How AI will Completely Transform Education | Digital Trends
“We are at the threshold of a revolution that would affect the daily lives of billions of people during the next decade…Chatbots are essentially a new user interface which provides consumers the ability to communicate with brands the same way they communicate with friends and family – via a natural conversation. In the not so distant future, we will be able to communicate with our bank, get recommendations on movies and order a cup of coffee from a friendly Chatbot.” claimed Yoav Barel, who founded the conference, in his opening speech.
Scientists from the Douglas Mental Health University Institute’s Translational Neuroimaging Laboratory at McGill have developed an algorithm that reliably detects signs of dementia before its onset. The technology could be used to help families prepare for treatment options, and to help researchers select better candidates for clinical trials that test drug effectiveness.
Source: Scientists Use Machine Learning To Spot Alzheimer’s Before Onset of Symptoms | Big Think
A pair of chatbots has recently done something children often do: create a secret language. Last month, researchers at Facebook found two bots developed in the social network’s AI division had been communicating with each other in an unexpected way. The bots, named Bob and Alice, had generated a language all on their own
Source: Facebook puts cork in chatbots that created a secret language – CNET
CLAUDE MONET USED brushes, Jackson Pollock liked a trowel, and Cartier-Bresson toted a Leica. Mario Klingemann makes art using artificial neural networks.
Source: A ‘Neurographer’ Puts the Art in Artificial Intelligence | WIRED
FOR MANY RUSSIAN students, the academic year started last Friday with tips on planetary domination from President Vladimir Putin. “Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia but for all humankind,” he said, via live video beamed to 16,000 selected schools. “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”
Source: For Superpowers, Artificial Intelligence Fuels New Global Arms Race | WIRED
Zach Lieberman is making sounds. “Click.” “Psh.” “Ah.” “Oorh.” “Eee.” With every noise, an amorphous white blob bursts onto a screen, leaving a trail of shapes lingering in the air. As Lieberman moves his phone backward through the cloud of blobs, the noises replay in reverse as if he were rewinding a vinyl record.
Source: An Artist Uses an iPhone to Visualize Sounds in AR | WIRED
How Google used artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate, one of its more popular services — and how machine learning is poised to reinvent computing itself.
