Greg Brockman, Chairman and CTO of Open AI, the world’s leading AI research lab, will keynote the NYC Media Lab Summit 2021, “Future Imperfect,” taking place virtually October 6th and 7th.
In the five short years of its existence, OpenAI has become one of the leading AI research labs in the world.
"OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity,” says the company in its mission statement.
Greg Brockman, who dropped out of both Harvard and MIT, began his career as one of the early employees and CTO of the payments company Stripe. OpenAI was founded by Elon Musk. Today the non-profit artificial intelligence research company 120-person shop is at the forefront of innovation in AI.
“Summit 2021: Future Imperfect,” will include panels on the benefit of diverse teams; the role of storytelling, spatial computing and machine-generated content in media; green tech; the future of the space industry and more.
Recognition of AI as an inventor, being a progressive move, can certainly pose challenges, primarily to human inventors. Patent law requires that a patent should be non-obvious to a person skilled in the art, and the recognition of an AI inventor could possibly raise the bar for a person skilled in the art, making it difficult for human inventors to obtain patents.
Another aspect that warrants attention is the lack of autonomy in AI and the human contributions made in AI-generated inventions. The extent to which an AI has made an invention in an autonomous manner with minimal human input will vary on a case-to-case basis and lawmakers need to clearly define the ‘extent of contribution’ that will be substantial enough to claim inventorship and be able to identify that contribution in every case.
The European Parliament has stated that any wrongful acts or omissions by an AI will make its human operator/manufacturer/user liable and not the AI itself. This could discourage the use of AI for inventions. Further, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia held that only a human being can be legally listed on a patent as an inventor.
Wearing a VR headset and a movement sensor on their back, children are asked to play two games. In both experiments, children show control abilities similar to adults' when using their head, but have difficulty using their torso to control the games, unlike adults.
The scientists believe that head control is easier in VR environments because the desired orientation is aligned with the visual input. The torso control, on the other hand, requires the user to separate vision from the actual control, which requires complex head-torso coordination. Young children tend to rely stronger on the visual input than the internal sensation of body posture. The novelty of the VR environment appears to overwhelm the child's brain, which pays less attention to the internal signals.
The new XR Programs and Research Fund will invest the money globally over two years to ensure metaverse technologies are "built in a way that's inclusive and empowering," Facebook said.
The company said it plans to work with researchers across four areas including data privacy and safety, to allow users to get help if something they see in the metaverse makes them uncomfortable.
It will also research how to design technologies that are inclusive and accessible to all users, and also "encourage competition" in the nascent industry, Facebook added in a blog post.
Initial partners for Facebook's new metaverse fund include Howard University in Washington D.C., which will research the history of diversity in the information technology industry and how it could shape opportunity in the metaverse.
Seoul National University and the University of Hong Kong will research safety, ethics and responsible design, Facebook said.
ByteDance, the Chinese multinational internet company behind TikTok, has developed a new method for erasing faces in video so that identity distortion and other bizarre effects can be imposed on people in augmented reality applications. The company claims that the technique has already been integrated into commercial mobile products, though it does not state which products.
Once faces in video have been ‘zeroed’, there’s enough ‘face canvas’ to produce eye-boggling distortions, as well as potentially superimposing other identities. Examples supplied in a new paper from ByteDance researchers illustrate the possibilities, including restoring the ‘erased’ features in various comical (and certainly some grotesque) configurations:
Rec Room unveiled a new cross-platform multiplayer game called Rec Rally, where six players can race off-road vehicles inside the cartoon-style world of Rec Room.
It’s the first game made by the company, which has its roots in virtual reality but has expanded to multiple additional platforms.
Users-as-creators is a big theme in the latest gaming boom, which has seen UGC platform Roblox go public and Overwolf raise $52.5 million for PC gaming mods and helper apps.
THE fascinating story of a hand-carved stone which has become a major visitor attraction in Easter Ross has been given a high-tech twist – and there could be even more to come once a fresh probe gets under way.
The use of augmented reality technology for the interpretation of the Hilton Stone allows its story to be told via smartphone.
Meanwhile a new geophysical survey of the area planned for next month could reveal other artefacts currently hidden from view, opening a new chapter in a story dating back hundreds of years.
"Whilst the original Hilton Stone resides in Edinburgh, a magnificent full sized intricately carved replica stands where we believe the original stone was located. This is the largest manifestation of a Pictish cross slab on the Pictish trail.
The secret life of machines can be uncovered at “Renaissance 2.0,” now open at Modernism West, located inside Foreign Cinema in San Francisco’s Mission District.
One of the paintings done by the famed robot is headed for auction at Sotheby’s in New York City.
Pilat said she initially set out to paint portraits of Spot, but her 12-piece collection evolved as she connected with the machine.
“Everything important in the world right now is happening in Silicon Valley and in the same way The Renaissance happened, the changes will make the world a different place,” said Pilat. “There’s no going back.”
NASA released its first digital, interactive graphic novel on Saturday in celebration of National Comic Book Day. “First Woman: NASA’s Promise for Humanity” imagines the story of Callie Rodriguez, the first woman to explore the Moon.
While Callie’s story is fictional, the first woman and the first person of color will walk on the Moon, achieving these historic milestones as part of NASA’s Artemis missions. Through this graphic novel, NASA aims to inspire the next generation of explorers – the Artemis Generation.
Download, read, and interact with “First Woman” or listen to the audio version exclusively on NASA’s SoundCloud.
... The major tech firms are already starting to build ‘proto-metaverse’ projects. Facebook’s recently released Horizon Workrooms, for instance, creates a virtual office, where you can interact with colleagues, collaborate on work and see what your co-workers are doing on their screens. ...
In the same way that today’s broadband networks use content delivery networks (CDNs) to push, say, Netflix movies closer to the end user, ensuring the data has less distance to travel, the metaverse will require similar ‘cheats’ to make sure the user experience isn’t spoiled.
Games such as Fortnite “actually predict to some degree” where the player is going to move next, said Heinz, meaning that Epic Games can “add just a little bit of latency into the experience and not ruin it”.
Similar techniques will need to be developed for the metaverse. “We will need to invent cheats there to... reduce latency and build the experience.”
