Machine Learning
In OneZero. More on Medium.
The pathbreaking MIT professor on her new memoir, and the past, present, and future of our efforts to make technology feel human
In the fall of 1976, Sherry Turkle was recruited to the faculty of MIT to join what would soon become the program on Science, Technology, and Society — one of the nation’s first. After having written a book on French psychoanalysis — a “sociology of the sciences of the mind,” as she describes it — Turkle was fascinated with the cultural forces that shift our thought.
So when she encountered computers for the first time, she had one pressing question on her mind: How would these new machines change us?
Turkle has spent the last four decades investigating that question…
General Intelligence
DALL-E can create images based on text descriptions alone
OneZero’s General Intelligence is a roundup of the most important artificial intelligence and facial recognition news of the week.
OpenAI is earning a reputation for building some of the A.I. industry’s most futuristic prototypes.
The Microsoft-backed research outfit is now led by Y Combinator founder Sam Altman. …
The potential for the new artificial intelligence program is nearly unfathomable
On July 3, 1896, the Lumiére brothers embarked on one of the most remarkable demo series of all time. After creating one of the world’s first films — a 50-second clip of a train arriving at La Ciotat Station in Southern France — they toured the world, projecting their new creation for audiences who had never seen a film before. As the train approached the camera, many people reportedly (and perhaps apocryphally) leaped out of their chairs and dove to the floor. They thought the train would come out of the screen and crush them.
‘If the truck I’m in ever gets a camera installed in it facing me… I will stop the truck and quit on the spot’
Over the last three years, hundreds of thousands of freight trucks in the United States have been equipped with machine learning algorithms to analyze drivers’ behavior. They can detect how many times per trip drivers pick up their cellphone, get distracted while driving, or even just look fatigued when they’re behind the wheel.
The tech is built into driver-facing dash cameras, which have been adopted by the trucking industry over the last 10 years. These cameras have already been a contentious issue in the trucking community. But the ability to proactively recognize behaviors in the cabin using machine learning adds…
A leading expert in the emergent field of A.I. law argues it’s high time to update the three laws of robotics
Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics are probably the most famous and influential science fictional lines of tech policy ever written. The renowned writer speculated that as machines took on greater autonomy and a greater role in human life, we would need staunch regulations to ensure they could not put us in harm’s way. And those proposed laws hark back to 1942, when the first of Asimov’s Robot stories were published. Now, with A.I., software automation, and factory robotics ascendant, the dangers posed by machines and their makers are even more complex and urgent.
General Intelligence
These dangerous technologies are still in their infancy, and they’ll continue to become more accurate and convincing
OneZero’s General Intelligence is a roundup of the most important artificial intelligence and facial recognition news of the week.
Less than 10 years ago, some of the most basic artificial intelligence algorithms, like image recognition, required the sort of computing power typically found in data centers. Today, those tools are available on your smartphone, and are far more powerful and precise.
Like nuclear power or rocket propulsion, artificial intelligence is considered a “dual-use” technology, which means that its capacity for harm is equal to its potential for good.
Earlier this week Vice reported the latest example of one of these…
General Intelligence
Russian firm NTech Lab plans to roll emotional detection features worldwide as soon as 2021
OneZero’s General Intelligence is a roundup of the most important artificial intelligence and facial recognition news of the week.
NTech Lab, makers of Russia’s expansive real-time facial recognition surveillance system, is set to roll out “aggression detection” as well as “violence detection” features, which will flag law enforcement when the algorithm thinks someone is committing or about to commit violence starting in 2021.
The firm recently got an injection of cash from the Russian government and an unnamed Middle Eastern partner. …
A.I. researchers are turning to neuroscience to build smarter, more powerful neural networks
In 1998, an engineer in Sony’s computer science lab in Japan filmed a lost-looking robot moving trepidatiously around an enclosure. The robot was tasked with two objectives: avoid obstacles and find objects in the pen. It was able to do so because of its ability to learn the contours of the enclosure and the locations of the sought-after objects.
But whenever the robot encountered an obstacle it didn’t expect, something interesting happened: Its cognitive processes momentarily became chaotic. The robot was grappling with new, unexpected data that didn’t match its predictions about the enclosure. The researchers who set up the…
How long will it be until an A.I. can make an actual feature film on demand?
Let’s say for the sake of argument you’re stuck at home for a long time watching too much of the stuff we euphemistically call “streaming content,” by which I mean movies and TV. Come up with your own reason — anything from being one of Japan’s pathologically introverted hikikomori to, say, hiding out from some sort of potentially lethal respiratory virus. In any case, you will at some point sour on all the available programming options and scroll glumly through all the familiar title selection menus until you give up. …
The discovery of a chemical compound with antibiotic properties is a helpful case study in the potential — and limits — of using A.I. to develop new treatments
In late February, a paper appeared in the journal Cell with encouraging news regarding one of the world’s most persistent public health problems. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University had used artificial intelligence to identify a chemical compound with powerful antibiotic properties against some of the world’s most drug-resistant strains of bacteria — a welcome discovery in a world where 700,000 people die every year from drug-resistant infections. It was the first time an antibacterial compound had been identified this way. …
