philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Subtitles, Closed Captioning Popular Among Young Viewers

... Even high-end AVsound systems can find the dialogue playing second fiddle to sound effects. The end result is more people than ever using subtitles. The Preply survey, conducted in May, reports Fox 13, found “members of Gen Z — which are often defined as those born between 1997 and 2012 — were much more likely to be frequent subtitle users (70 percent) compared to older viewers,” while “millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, were also more likely (53 percent) to use the feature than the average respondent. But older people, such as Gen X and Baby Boomers, were the groups least likely to frequently use subtitles.” ...

https://www.etcentric.org/subtitles-closed-captioning-popular-among-young-viewers/

Source - https://www.wsj.com/articles/cant-hear-what-actors-are-saying-on-tv-its-not-you-probably-11669400315

3 ways for insurers to prepare for the metaverse

1. More advanced claims processing

One of the most significant trends leading the insurance industry into the metaverse is the proliferation of remote claims processing. Insurance companies can already easily assess property or automotive damage without being physically present using technologies such as Visual Intelligence. These technologies help insurers review damage remotely at the pixel level, assess risks, and process claims far more quickly and accurately. However, human intervention is still important when the client requests it and in more severe cases.

While Visual Intelligence can take care of detecting the damage and estimating repair costs, there will still be times that customers will request to speak to a person. These cases could soon shift into the metaverse, allowing insurance managers or adjusters to perform damage assessments with all of the necessary data remotely, and then meet with customers and speak with them virtually in a designated space or room for the underwriting process, to negotiate rates, and more.

This virtual option could help add more context to more complex cases while also helping insurers maintain client trust and satisfaction. Additionally, it saves time and resources for both insurer and insured. Even with automating many steps in the claims process, customers could still have instant access to a real person in the metaverse.

2. Improving the underwriting and customer experience

Insurance underwriting is a critical process as it decides the amount of risk the insurance company is willing to take on behalf of its customer. It involves comprehensive assessments of both the object to be insured, as well as the customer's background and history. In the metaverse, underwriting meetings could be conducted in virtual spaces. ...

3. Workforce training

Contrary to popular belief, neither AI nor the metaverse will likely take over an underwriter's or insurance agent's job any time soon. Instead, these technologies could be used to train employees from anywhere and help them perform their work more efficiently. ...

See the full story here: https://www.dig-in.com/opinion/metaverse-insurance-preparations-ai-ar-vr

Brave New Zealand World: A chat with AI expert Dr Jade Leung

Dr Jade Leung works with artificial intelligence (AI) and is extremely clever, which makes thinking of questions to ask her a formidable undertaking. 

The 28-year-old Kiwi lives in San Francisco and is the governance lead at OpenAI, a research and deployment company focused on building advanced AI models. 

A Rhodes Scholar with a doctorate in international relations from the University of Oxford, she features in Prime’s new show Brave New Zealand World, a series looking at the greatest risks to humanity, including a future where artificial intelligence could rule the planet – and us. 

Leung talks to Felicity Monk about where AI is headed, what we can do to ensure it’s helpful – and not destructive – to humanity in the future and the brain-boggling complexities of her job. ...

See the full story here; https://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/300747054/brave-new-zealand-world-a-chat-with-ai-expert-dr-jade-leung

A Patent by Sony Hints at the Implementation of AI-Powered Gameplay Assistance Mechanism in PlayStation Consoles

A patent registered by Sony Interactive Entertainment titled AUTOMATED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) CONTROL MODE FOR PLAYING SPECIFIC TASKS DURING GAMING APPLICATIONS suggests that the company is developing a new AI technology for gameplay assistance for the players that can play and control games for the players based on their specific play style that will be saved in a default player profile for that player. 

The patent was applied for registration on 4th December 2020 and was published on 15th April 2021, which indicates that Sony has been working on this AI technology for a while now. The description of the patent further clarifies that this new system will help the players to perform difficult tasks in the game, or more simply, it will assist the players in clearing the hard difficulty stages of a game on their PlayStation console, which includes both the single player and multiplayer games. ...

See the full story here: https://appuals.com/sony-new-patent-ai-assistance-technology-in-games/

Virtual reality tools offer escape to blockaded Gaza youth

... According to Al-Khodary, virtual action and combat games are the most popular among young men, while young women tend to favour sports, music and travel.

"Since we are blockaded and it is difficult to travel and move from one place to another, we come to VR and make up for all these things and we live it in the virtual reality," said 16 year-old Nisreen Shamalakh as she put on her headset.

See the full story here: https://www.reuters.com/technology/virtual-reality-tools-offer-escape-blockaded-gaza-youth-2022-11-24/

Artists Equity Is Launched to Share the Wealth with Creatives

... “Not just writers and directors and stars, but also cinematographers, editors, costume designers and other crucial artists who, in my view, are very underpaid,” Affleck told NYT. The partners “have worked on films that have generated $10.7 billion at the global box office” with “three Oscars between them.” ...

Comparing Artists Equity to the 1919 founding of United Artists by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith “as a way to exert greater control over their creative and financial destinies,” NYTwrites that “more recently, the horror film producer Jason Blum has used — to spectacular effect — a business model in which established directors and stars work for union scale pay upfront in return for creative freedom and a stake in the financial success of the resulting film.” ...

See the full story here: https://www.etcentric.org/artists-equity-is-launched-to-share-the-wealth-with-creatives/

Three key takeaways from Meta’s Galactica AI

1- Be careful how you present your model

... What is clear is that even if we want to attribute some form of intelligence to LLMs, we must acknowledge that it is fundamentally different and largely incompatible with human intelligence—even if on the surface, it produces very convincing output. ...

2- Benchmarks are often misleading

... while benchmarks are a good tool to compare machine learning models against one another, they are not anthropomorphic measures of cognitive skills in machines.

3- Recognize the limits and powers of LLMs

One of the big challenges of large language models is that they can create output that is convincingly human but not based on human cognition. Models like Galactica can be extremely powerful but also dangerously misleading. ...

See the full story here: https://bdtechtalks.com/2022/11/21/meta-ai-galactica/

Few-shot learning AI accurately ‘senses’ home appliances

NIALM (Non-Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring) can "sense" appliances using electrical power. NIALM is used in homes and small buildings. For this, NIALM can require hundreds of labeled power signal images from each appliance type to train on. But there is a much faster and more cost-effective approach than "traditional" machine learning.

Researchers from the University of Johannesburg deployed Few Shot Learning (FSL) for NIALM. Classical FSL needs only 10 labeled, classified images to recognize appliances with very high accuracy. ...

See the full story https://techxplore.com/news/2022-11-few-shot-ai-accurately-home-appliances.html

The Creator Economy is the future of the economy

... Though Creator Economy startups can be found in 65 global cities, just three city-regions—the San Francisco, Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York—account for nearly two-thirds of all global venture capital investment in them.

The same three city-regions that lead in venture capital investment also have the largest numbers of startups—Los Angeles with 63, New York with 60, and San Francisco with 48. Next in line is London with 14 Creator Economy startups, followed by Chicago (seven), and Atlanta and Bangalore (with six each). Four cities, Austin, Miami, Denver-Boulder, and Tel Aviv, are home to five Creator Economy startups, and San Diego is home to four.  ...

TALENT MIGRATION—AND RISING POWER—IN THE CREATOR ECONOMY

While creators themselves are much more widely distributed than the platforms and startups that support their work, our interviews with leading creators and executives from Creator Economy companies, as well as our analysis of relevant data, identify Los Angeles and New York as by far the leading locations for Creators. ...

INEQUALITY IN THE CREATOR ECONOMY 

In fact, the distribution of economic rewards in the Creator Economy is as uneven as in the traditional economy. A vanishingly small percentage of Creator Economy superstars, such as YouTube’s MrBeastand TikTok’s Khaby Lame (the Senegalese-Italian factory worker who lost his job during the pandemic and then rose to fame on the strength of his quirky videos), earn tens of millions annually, but they are exceptions that prove a rule. ... Fully two-thirds of creators earn less than $25,000 annually, and more than a quarter earn less than $1,000. ...

When asked about their most important motivations in a 2022 survey, larger shares of creators listed self-expression (48%), fun (43%), passion (40%), and challenge (34%) than money-making (26%). Twenty percent said they were primarily motivated by a desire to advance a social issue or cause. ...

A PRESCRIPTION FOR A HEALTHY CREATOR ECONOMY

Digital platforms can promote less-established creators by tweaking their algorithms to introduce more discovery into users’ feeds.  ...

Public policy can help support creators as well. Federal, state, and local governments can identify, organize, and support clusters or networks of creators, much like their long-standing efforts to support high-tech and arts clusters. ...

See the full story here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90812387/the-creator-economy-is-the-future-of-the-economy

Neal Stephenson Joins Judges for $1M Inworld AI Character Grants

Virtual being platform Inworld AI is offering $1 million in development funding to AI character creators for games and other digital experiences. Snowcrash author Neal Stephenson and other leaders in AI and entertainment will serve as judges for the new Inworld AI Character Grants.

Inworld’s character grants will disburse up to $50,000 to those designing AI characters built with Inworld’s platform for use in current and upcoming video games, metaverse worlds, or other digital interactions. Inworld Studio’s engine constructs virtual beings out of what the user writes in the text fields, supplemented by the slider bars. That gives creators a huge amount of flexibility to define their AI personality to the smallest detail. They can fill in a whole history for the virtual character; their history, family, interests, experience, and knowledge. ...

Developers interested in the grants can submit gaming NPCs, virtual world populations, AI influencers or brand representatives, and other virtual beings. The AI Character Grant program follows Inworld receiving an Epic MegaGrant from Unity creator Epic Games as well as graduating from this year’s Disney Accelerator program, where it demonstrated a prototype ‘Droid Maker’ for designing the look and personality of an interactive droid from the Star Wars universe, ...

See the full story here: https://voicebot.ai/2022/11/17/neal-stephenson-joins-judges-for-1m-inworld-ai-character-grants/