Google suspends engineer who claims its AI is sentient
... The engineer’s concerns reportedly grew out of convincing responses he saw the AI system generating about its rights and the ethics of robotics. In April he shared a document with executives titled “Is LaMDA Sentient?” containing a transcript of his conversations with the AI (after being placed on leave, Lemoine published the transcript via his Medium account), which he says shows it arguing “that it is sentient because it has feelings, emotions and subjective experience.” ...
A linguistics professor interviewed by WaPo agreed that it’s incorrect to equate convincing written responses with sentience. “We now have machines that can mindlessly generate words, but we haven’t learned how to stop imagining a mind behind them,” said University of Washington professor Emily M. Bender.
Timnit Gebru, a prominent AI ethicist Google fired in 2020 (though the search giant claims she resigned), said the discussion over AI sentience risks “derailing” more important ethical conversations surrounding the use of artificial intelligence. “Instead of discussing the harms of these companies, the sexism, racism, AI colonialism, centralization of power, white man’s burden (building the good “AGI” [artificial general intelligence] to save us while what they do is exploit), spent the whole weekend discussing sentience,” she tweeted. “Derailing mission accomplished.” ...
See the full story here: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/13/23165535/google-suspends-ai-artificial-intelligence-engineer-sentient
Ukrainians are using 3D technology to preserve hundreds of cultural artifacts in a digital archive, far away from Russia’s attacks
A blown-up Russian tank near Kyiv, a monument for Ukrainian writer Borys Hrinchenko, an apartment building destroyed by artillery and a slide in a children's playground covered in graffiti. In Ukraine, these objects are among hundreds of landmarks, cultural sites, monuments and everyday things that civilians have scanned on mobile phones through an app called Polycam. The app's software generates a detailed 3D model that will live permanently in a digital archive as part of an initiative called Backup Ukraine. ...
... It took Kamynin roughly an hour to scan the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Pirogoshcha, an Orthodox cathedral in Kyiv, originally built in 1132. It was the first building in Kyiv that was built entirely of brick without the use of stone, according to the church's website. The church was destroyed in 1935 during the Soviet era but was later reconstructed in the late 1900s. ...
See the full story here: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/ukraine-uses-3d-technology-to-preserve-cultural-heritage/index.htmlhttps://www.cnn.com/style/article/ukraine-uses-3d-technology-to-preserve-cultural-heritage/index.html
ADVANCED AI COULD LEAD TO ‘THE TROLLEY PROBLEM’ IN FUTURE
... When it comes to autonomous vehicles, I believe this is a very new type of product with two distinct aspects. One is that autonomous cars are expected to be clever, adaptable beings with their minds. So, they have some kind of control. They also make judgments that have life and death implications for people, whether they are in the automobile or on the road. As a result, I believe that people are quite concerned that current product safety standards and traditional means of regulating goods would not work in this circumstance, in part because the vehicle’s conduct may eventually become even different from that of the person who programmed it.
See the full story here: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/advanced-ai-could-lead-to-the-trolley-problem-in-future/
Deepfakes Go Mainstream: How Metaphysic’s AGT Entry Will Impact Entertainment
On June 6, 2022, Chris Umé and Thomas Graham, the founders of Metaphysic, joined the America’s Got Talent stage with Daniel Emmet. Using the technology Metaphysic developed, Daniel Emmet performed "You’re the Inspiration" using AGT judge Simon Cowell’s likeness live on-stage.
This performance stunned the judges and captured the crowd, resulting in four yesses. The group is moving forward to the next round of AGT—but what does their use of deepfake tech mean for the future of entertainment? ...
See the full story here: https://www.makeuseof.com/deepfakes-mainstream-agt-entry/
A.I. gurus are leaving Big Tech to work on buzzy new start-ups
- Four of the best-funded new AI start-ups — Inflection, Cohere, Adept and Anthropic — have recently poached dozens of AI scientists with backgrounds in Big Tech.
- The start-ups’ hiring efforts are being fueled by venture capital firms and billionaires keen to cash in on any success they have.
- The companies are building new products and services on top of a new technology known as a “transformer.”
See the full story here: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/10/ai-gurus-are-leaving-big-tech-to-work-on-buzzy-new-start-ups.html
Amazon launches AR-powered virtual shoe try-on in its iOS app
... In this virtual try-on, customers can simply point their camera at their feet and scroll through a variety of shoes to see how they look from different angles. But, the tool can’t be used to determine shoe size. While the new feature is currently available for iOS customers with an iPhone 7 or newer, Amazon confirmed in its blog post that it will be available for Android customers soon. ...
See the full story here: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/9/23161127/amazon-augmented-reality-virtual-shoe-try-on
Tribeca Immersive Unveils VR, AR and World’s Biggest Holographic Screen
PhilNote: this is a really nice overview of the offerings at the Tribecca Immersive festival.
... There's even a holographic film showing off a new 65-inch display by Looking Glass Factory for the first time. It takes the pint-sized version CNET last looked at and stretches it out to cinematic scale. ...
Most of Tribeca Immersive is installed at Spring Studios, the festival's central hub. But two in-person pieces take place elsewhere in the city: A VR project called Evolver taking place at a stand-alone space near the southern tip of Manhattan, a project that involves well-known auteurs like director Terrence Malick as a producer and Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood providing music, and a site-specific piece called Mushroom Cloud NYC / Rise you can unlock on a pier on the Hudson River, which incorporates augmented reality and an NFT.
The Spring Studio's main space is where Looking Glass' giant holographic display is screening Zanzibar: Trouble in Paradise, a lusciously shot documentary short about women who farm seaweed on an African island as they grapple with impacts of climate change. ...
See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/tribeca-immersive-unveils-vr-ar-and-worlds-biggest-holographic-screen/
Timnit Gebru and the fight to make artificial intelligence work for Africa
The way Timnit Gebru sees it, the foundations of the future are being built now. In Silicon Valley, home to the world’s biggest tech companies, the artificial intelligence(AI) revolution is already well under way. Software is being written and algorithms are being trained that will determine the shape of our lives for decades or even centuries to come. ...
... As she explains it, Dair’s mission is to convince Silicon Valley to take its ethical responsibilities more seriously — but also to persuade leaders in the Global South to make better decisions and to implement proper regulatory frameworks. For instance, Gmail passively scans all emails in Africa for the purposes of targeted advertising, but the European Union has outlawed this to protect their citizens.
“Our governments need to ask better questions,” says Sefala. “If it is about AI for Johannesburg, they should be talking to the researchers here.” ...
See the full story here: https://mg.co.za/africa/2022-06-09-timnit-gebru-and-the-fight-to-make-artificial-intelligence-work-for-africa/
