... Now an exciting collaboration between humans and AI machines is pushing this process further than ever before. Soren Arlt, Carlos Ruiz-Gonzalez and Mario Krenn at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, in Germany, have discovered an entirely new phenomena by re-interpreting the results from an automated discovery process. “We go beyond rediscovery and use AI to discover a hidden concept that lies at the heart of quantum optics,” they say.
The new phenomenon has potential application in quantum communication and quantum computing. But more significantly it paves the way for a new field of human-machine collaboration in science. ...
PhilNote: Watch the 5 minute video on The Simulation, which describes how Fable is creating a metaverse where avatars live, react with each other, and are guided and trained by humans.
Fable has unveiled The Simulation, a place where you can create and nurture AI characters and enable them to dwell on their own in different metaverse worlds.
Today, Fable is launching its first town in The Simulation, a place called AI Nouns Town, where owners of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can sign up and adopt AI characters. Rather than play in a world with AI characters, Fable is letting the AI characters play in the worlds. And if Fable puts enough of these worlds together, it can become a kind of metaverse (which is the biggest subject of our GamesBeat Summit Next 2022 event coming on Tuesday and Wednesday in San Francisco).
As software development company Niantic experiments with increasingly immersive augmented reality activations, the Pokémon Go developer is girding itself for a potential wave of unprecedented legal challenges.
At the moment, the augmented reality space is a bit of a wild west, with creators using Niantic’s technology to virtually modify privately owned locations in the physical world or experiment with brands’ intellectual properties in funky ways. For years, the nascent medium of AR was too small to attract the attention of these rights holders — but as Niantic’s AR technology grows more complex and all-encompassing, the situation could reach a tipping point. ...
One such example of an expanded AR activation is the digital art exhibition put on in New York City’s Times Square by Ukrainian artist Artem “Giant” Humilevskiy, which launched on October 14. The experience lets users superimpose Humilevskiy’s self portraits over Times Square’s usual billboards and digital screens, with some of the art available for sale as non-fungible tokens.
The Times Square exhibition is an eye-catching example of how AR technologies can transform public spaces, but it was also a source of consternation for Niantic’s communications team, which worried that the activation could draw legal challenges from the owners and administrators of the physical billboards that were painted over in augmented reality. ...
This is a valid question, according to legal experts who believe there could be merit to a potential lawsuit by the owners of the painted-over real estate, as well as the brands that paid top dollar for marquee ad space in prominent locations. ...
“I think there’s lots we’re working on that the Supreme Court is going to have to settle eventually,” Morris said.
... A half-century ago, the San Diego singer-songwriter was sitting at a local Der Wienerschnitzel, finishing the lyrics of “Peaceful, Easy Feeling,” a poignant, mellow love song made famous by the Eagles.
Today, he’s promoting a Halloween-themed music video that he produced, in part, with the help of a robot. Or artificial intelligence, to be more precise. “Ghost Car” is streaming on YouTube, competing with zillions of other offerings for attention. ...
He wrote the song and lyrics. Then his son, Robert, fed the lyrics into AI software, did some modifications and produced fluid visuals that range from Dean’s head morphing into a skeleton to the night sky shattering into pieces roughly where the moon was located. ...
... Warren Craddock worked at Lytro from August 2011 to June 2013, before the XR phase. On Twitter, he recounts a key problem with Lytro’s light-field technology: the cameras could physically photograph only tiny objects, such as a single piece of sushi. But people prefer to photograph other people.
So as it refocused on XR, Lytro began building bigger, heavier cameras to capture larger scenes and objects as light field. In the process, the cameras became so large and heavy that they had to be moved to the location by crane. A fundamental issue, according to Craddock, that the team was aware of but ignored for years.
“Everyone knew, deep-down, that middle-school geometry doomed the design, but everyone also fervently believed that it could somehow be overcome by sheer will, or hard work, or a stroke of genius,” Craddock writes.
Craddock sees this behavior as a recurring problem in cultures that arise around products, methods, or inventions: Discussions about fatal flaws would be excluded. Instead, sophisticated ways to paper over them evolved, becoming more sophisticated over time. ...
Craddock experienced this phenomenon two more times in his career. After leaving Lytro, he hired on at Google in June 2013 to work on Google Glass, specifically on the design of the camera. ...
Craddock hit it a third time, with the AI-controlled automatic camera Google Clips. Here, the problem, according to Craddock, was that Clips took pictures from odd angles, but people preferred photos of other people at eye level. ...
For someone who’s been writing about the intersection of (or, as I prefer to say, the collision of) media, entertainment and technology for decades, the annual Infinity Festival in Los Angeles can be a bit of a candy store, a chance to survey in one place the bleeding edges of change in all those fields.
This year’s gathering, the fifth, runs from Nov. 2 to Nov. 5 at the Goya Studios in Hollywood. ...
“The show has always been a professional conference focused on how storytelling is being enabled by technology, with a true focus on the media and entertainment category,” said the show’s Chief Curator, Lori H. Schwartz. “Story is part of how all business categories communicate their offerings and in terms of (media and entertainment), it’s at the core of the actual product as well. So our audience has always been a mixture of creative, business and technology resources who are focused on the business of making content.” ...
Perhaps the conference’s splashiest event of the conference takes place before it quite starts. Two-time Oscar winner Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) and the festival’s immersive cinema chair, Intel’sINTC+3.4% Ravi Velhal, will premiere Le Musk, billed as a “full-length sensory cinema experience.” ...
The conference is well suited for Los Angeles, which not only features all the Hollywood studios, but an substantial and growing technology presence, including huge production centers for AppleAAPL+2.7% TV+/Beats Music, Google/YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, and NetflixNFLX+8%, whose Los Angeles operations are largely just a few blocks from Goya Studios, where the conference will take place. ...
Pear Bureau Northwest’s new augmented reality experience reaches consumers in a fun, more immersive way. The experience takes the user on a digital journey that demonstrates how to elevate every day dishes by simply adding pears.
By scanning the QR code with their mobile camera, users will see the AR application open with a colorful animation of pears that become sliced before being added to a dish such as a pizza or salad. Once complete, the user is then shown information on how to “Check the Neck” for proper ripeness before being taken to a landing page of recipes for the dishes they just viewed, along with additional information on how to ripen and store pears at home.
A real estate investor purchased a three-bedroom house in South Carolina via an NFT marketplace over the weekend for $175,000 paid in USDC.
The purchase of 149 Cottage Lake Way, Columbia was made possible via Roofstock onChain, the web3 subsidiary of real estate company Roofstock. The buyer, real estate investor Adam Slipakoff, said he was able to buy a fully title-insured, rent-ready property with one click. ...
... Each rental property sold on its platform via NFT is owned by an individual single-purpose Limited Liability Company (LLC) registered in Wyoming and the NFT sold is associated with the sole ownership of the LLC, the company told The Block.
As buyers' names need to be made public due to legal requirements, there is an initial set-up process for would-be buyers joining the site in which they mint a non-transferrable membership token.
This marks the membership token with a "verified buyer" flag, after which buyers can connect to an NFT marketplace and purchase a Home onChain NFT with a single click, resulting in sale and settlement.
“The sale of the NFT results in a change in the ownership of the LLC, and thus the underlying property,” a company spokesperson said.
As the metaverse develops, Interpol is worried lawbreakers, scammers, and terrorists will also migrate to VR worlds to perpetrate crimes including targeting minors, data theft, financial fraud, phishing, and sexual assault and harassment, among others.
“By identifying these risks from the outset, we can work with stakeholders to shape the necessary governance frameworks and cut off future criminal markets before they are fully formed,” says Madan Oberoi, Interpol’s executive director of technology and innovation.
“But in order for police to understand the metaverse, we need to experience it,” Oberoi added.
... Israeli dairy farmer Izzet Kocak purchased two virtual reality headsets for cattle from a Russian manufacturer after seeing them demonstrated by the Russian entity. He was looking for ways to increase milk production to offset high feed prices.
The headsets transport indoor-housed cows virtually to a setting of calming green pastures, which is believed to give them an emotional boost. Kocak also plays classical music in the barn while cows are wearing the headsets.
Kocak ran a mini-trial on his farm to measure the impact the headsets had on milk production. After 10 days of wearing the devices, the two test cows’ milk production increased by about 22%, from 48.5 pounds per day to 59.5 pounds per day. He said milk quality also improved. ...
