One of the biggest complaints against AI is that it makes decisions that can’t be explained, which can lead to complaints about arbitrary or even biased results.
To let their citizens know more about the technology already in use in their cities, Amsterdam and Helsinki collaborated on websites that document how each city government uses algorithms to deliver services. The registry includes information on the data sets used to train an algorithm, a description of how an algorithm is used, how public servants use the results, the human oversight involved and how the city checks the technology for problems like bias.
Amsterdam has six algorithms fully explained—with a goal of 50 to 100—on the registry website, including how the city’s automated parking-control and trash-complaint reports work. Helsinki, which is only focusing on the city’s most advanced algorithms, also has six listed on its site, with another 10 to 20 left to put up.
“We needed to assess the risk ourselves,” says Linda van de Fliert, an adviser at Amsterdam’s Chief Technology Office. “And we wanted to show the world that it is possible to be transparent.”
The registries don’t give citizens personalized information explaining their individual bills or fees. But they provide citizens with a way to give feedback on algorithms, and the name, city department and contact information of the person responsible for the deployment of a particular algorithm. So far, at least one Amsterdam man who was displeased about getting an automated text about an overdue electricity bill used the registry to find out why the government contacted him.
Ms. van de Fliert has lost count of how many cities have reached out to learn more about the registry, and says she hopes that others pick up the project.
“It doesn’t make sense to do this just for Amsterdam and Helsinki,” Ms. van de Fliert says. “We all have the same needs.”
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CEEK hosted a booth in the gift lounge at the 2022 Grammy and this may have provided a new level of exposure for the project since a number of influencers and music fans would have visited the pop up. ...
Hosting the booth was made possible through CEEK VR’s partnership with Universal Music, which grants the protocol the rights to live performances for many popular artists including Lady Gaga, Bon Jovi, U2, Sting and Ziggy Marley. ...
This weekend the Philadelphia Orchestra will be sharing the stage with a giant computer.
At the center of Verizon Hall’s stage in the Kimmel Center stands a 40-foot tall, white monolith reaching the ceiling. It is a digital screen with 8.2 million pixels, each controlled by artificial intelligence.
As the orchestra plays Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis,” the screen comes alive with swirls and cascades of color. At times it looks like a melting cathedral; other times it appears to be an exploding woven rug. ...
“I will say, 50% of the performance is really machine serendipity, machine decisions, and the other half is human decisions,” Anadol said. “Of course, in the end the performance itself defines many things, like the speed, the feeling, the colors, and where the AI goes.” ...
A data steward ensures that an organization’s data is high quality, secure, and well maintained. Defines data elements, creates rules and procedures for data collection and accuracy checking, and executes tests on data systems. Being a steward assures that good data quality is maintained so that they may support the business process. Typically requires a bachelor’s degree in addition to experience or training and has other responsibilities, such as reporting to a manager. ...
For seven or eight years we've been hearing about Web3 and decentralized apps. It is all still a work in progress. Today most dApps are cumbersome, with a pretty poor consumer experience. A lot of that can be attributed to the underlying infrastructure. This is changing, finally. Last year $30 billion of venture funding was invested in decentralized infrastructure. We should be seeing some signficant improvements in these platforms this year. For instance, I found this announcement about Mysten Labs and SUI to be interesting. This project was started by the team that developed Libra crytocurrency inside Facebook. When that project came to an end, this team spun out and started something fresh. Their goal is to build a blockchain platform that does not suffer from the many obvious defects of the current generation of dApp platforms. This is interesting. If you have been following Web3, no doubt you are familiar with the kneejerk reaction among crypto-haters that goes like this: "blockchain is environmentally unfriendly and it will destroy the planet." Peer past the hyperbole, and what you are left with is a luddite view based on the (incorrect) assumption that no improvement in blockchain consensus mechanisms is possible. In 2022 we will see most of the major blockchain platforms (not bitcoin) make substantial improvements in efficiency and scalability, at the cost of only minor reductions in security. So in my view now is an excellent time to be rethinking this Luddite view. Instead of saying, "blockchain bad, blockchain inefficient" maybe now it is a good time to get smart about what might be possible if a very efficient, scalable, fast blockchain platform were available. This Medium article shares links to many exciting scenarios and examples, including dynamic NFTs, new kinds of games, loyalty programs, smart coupons, on-chain defi, and other advances in smart contracts. Disclosure: I have no stake in Mysten or SUI and I don't know anyone there. I am not flogging crypto and I currently hold no NFTs. So I am not a cheerleader for this stuff. Just a guy who is trying to get a glimpse of what the rest of this decade will look like. Articles like these, and the discussions that follow, are a good way to get into that.
... Successful and popular deepfake methods such as FaceSwap and DeepFaceLab/Livecurrently have zero capacity to create such granular biometric approximations, relying at best on talented impersonators on whom the faked identity is imposed, and much more commonly on apposite in-the-wild footage of ‘similar’ people. ...
These two dominant deepfake packages are based on autoencoders. Alternative human synthesis methods can use a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) or Neural Radiance Field (NeRF) approach to recreating human identity; but both these lines of research have years of work ahead even to produce fully photorealistic human video.
With the exception of audio (faked voices), biometric simulation is very far down the list of challenges facing human image synthesis. In any case, reproducing the timbre and other qualities of the human voice does not reproduce its eccentricities and ‘tells’, or the way that the real subject uses semantic construction. Therefore even the perfection of AI-generated voice simulation does not solve the potential firewall of biometric authenticity. ...
