philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

US Army researchers discover technique for using Augmented Reality to overcome bright lighting conditions

The US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Army Research Laboratory has recently announced that its researchers have discovered a new technique for using augmented reality (AR) to overcome bright lighting conditions during the day by using low contrast dimming highlights – something that DEVCOM says will open up new research questions that will improve warfighter AR and heads-up display performance in outdoor operations.

The discovery could help pave the way towards enabling the use of AR by US warfighters in challenging environments including desert, snow, marine and dense urban settings. The approach also has applications for other display technologies such as image intensifiers, infrared and fused night vision displays and also has potential for laser eye protection, according to DEVCOM.

See the full story here: https://www.auganix.org/us-army-researchers-discover-technique-for-using-augmented-reality-to-overcome-bright-lighting-conditions/

In Georgia, Facebook’s Changes Brought Back a Partisan News Feed

While Facebook’s controls were in place, we found that links to traditional news sites were present in almost all election-related posts that appeared on our Georgia panelists’ feeds. After Dec. 16, however, when Facebook flipped the switch to turn on political advertising for the Georgia election, we noticed that partisan content quickly elbowed out news sites, replacing a significant proportion of mentions of the election in our users’ feeds.

See the full story here: https://themarkup.org/citizen-browser/2021/01/05/in-georgia-facebooks-changes-brought-back-a-partisan-news-feed?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTmpjelptSmlNelZrTkRWaSIsInQiOiJ6anB1c092dkdTY1JNRlhBaUZaQWRLREF1dFhjdlpaQUYyQ0dcLzJVWlUyQnhDSUM3eStoSTI3c05ZT1lxQWR3QW10dmZxVGNcL0FSQU9BUENFcSt5S0kxeDA2bDV5SmVtNE1pK3A3WFVvTk55THM3WW9Rd2l3Z1RTXC9ZckJuYjVsMSJ9

See the full story here: https://themarkup.org/citizen-browser/2021/01/05/in-georgia-facebooks-changes-brought-back-a-partisan-news-feed?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTmpjelptSmlNelZrTkRWaSIsInQiOiJ6anB1c092dkdTY1JNRlhBaUZaQWRLREF1dFhjdlpaQUYyQ0dcLzJVWlUyQnhDSUM3eStoSTI3c05ZT1lxQWR3QW10dmZxVGNcL0FSQU9BUENFcSt5S0kxeDA2bDV5SmVtNE1pK3A3WFVvTk55THM3WW9Rd2l3Z1RTXC9ZckJuYjVsMSJ9

China opens first 5G virtual reality theme park

China opened its first 5G virtual reality (VR) theme park in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The new theme park designed by VR entertainment company, Sky Limit Entertainment, is situated on a tourism street in the southern Chinese city of Liuzhou.

Visitors can enjoy simulation games and rides, player vs player games to parachute and ski simulators.

Meanwhile, VR Star Theme Park, located in Nanchang, previously led the way after opening its doors in 2019. Boasting three floors with more than 40 simulators, roller coasters, and high speed racing cars, it is heaven for VR fanatics.

See the full story here: https://www.iol.co.za/travel/world/asia/watch-china-opens-first-5g-virtual-reality-theme-park--8cc3b173-5725-561a-885a-fc7a93cc7c4a

What AI Can and Cannot Do for the Intelligence Community

...modern AI can achieve extraordinary performance on what might be called “thinking fast” tasks but not on “thinking slow” tasks, to trade on the memorable terminology of Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. “Thinking fast” tasks, for this essay, refer to tasks that involve a human or machine quickly and intuitively associating an input with an output, like spotting and recognizing planes. “Thinking slow” tasks are deliberate and do not require matching an input with an output, like determining the wisdom of purchasing a particular satellite.

A quintessential thinking-fast task is object detection in imagery intelligence. A human analyst can visually scan images for objects, such as planes or buildings. Deep learning computer vision techniques, including object detection within geospatial imagery, can also scan images for objects, aiding and indeed accelerating the processing of raw intelligence data. The body of geospatial machine learning research produced by the SpaceNet collaboration and the Defense Innovation Unit’s xView challenges makes this abundantly clear.

Other think-fast tasks related to collection, processing, and analysis may benefit from machine learning such as speech-to-text transcription, including identifying human speech in noisy environments and cross-language translation. Collection efforts can also take advantage of machine learning on “edge devices,” computer-speak for low-power, low-bandwidth devices operating in remote locations.

What can’t AI do for the IC?

Modern deep learning isn’t very good at deliberative thinking. It just doesn’t think slow, at least not yet. This deficiency means that those steps of the intelligence cycle that most require abstract deliberation—planning, communicating, and evaluating—will present serious machine learning difficulties.

See the full story here; https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2021/01/what-ai-can-and-cannot-do-intelligence-community/171195/

Consumers don’t understand blockchain but covet what it enables, survey reveals

Los Angeles-based digital media consulting company Vorhaus Advisors recently released a Forte-commissioned survey of more than 2,000 consumers surveyed in June 2020.

Its "Untapped Opportunities: Games, Virtual Goods, and Blockchain" report shows that, in the general population across the US, only one in four (25%) of adults have any idea about blockchain.

Less than one in five (18%) of US adults say they have used a product or service related to blockchain. However, this percentage rises to 25% among the younger 18 to 34 age demographic.

Almost two in three (63%) of virtual goods buyers would spend and play games more if those virtual goods had real-world value and could be traded or sold, and 64% say they would play more often.

But blockchain enables new business opportunities for game companies, due to its ability to enable the creation of in-game digital assets and collectible one-of-a-kind items that players can own. 

It can also facilitate player-driven in-game services, and provide a foundation for secure, verified peer-to-peer transactions.

What consumers need is clarity. The clarity in which type of blockchain to use, and clarity about whether the version of Bitcoin you are buying/selling/using is trusted.

See the full story here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/consumers-dont-understand-blockchain-but-covet-what-it-enables-survey-reveals/

Here are the robots taking the virtual stage at CES 2021

Robots to keep us safe

One such droid is Coro-Bot, an "antivirus disinfection robot" created by Hills Engineering from South Korea. The robot has autonomous driving capabilities, allowing it to move independently around environments. It uses its flexible arms to identify the areas in need of cleaning, and sterilizes them using ultraviolet. It also contains an air circulator that it says kills airborne coronavirus and other viruses using a far-Infrared ceramic filter. It's easy to imagine robots such as these being used in hospitals and other environments in which it's imperative to ensure there's no sign of coronavirus.

Robots to entertain and educate

If you've been keeping an eye on the robotics world, you might have already spied Moxie around over the past year. This friendly-faced teal robot made by startup Embodied was recently announced as one of Time's best inventions of 2020. Plus, it was listed as a CES 2021 Innovation Award Honoree.

From Japan, Yukai Engineering always brings the fun to CES with its cute home robots -- one of which is famously a cushion with a robotic tail. This year at the show, the company is introducing the Petit Qoobo, an identical but smaller sibling to its much-enjoyed animated cusion, along with an updated version of its Bocco Emo emotional home companion robot.

Each Moflin develops an individual personality over time and can express emotion through movement and sound.

Robots that take the manual out of manual labor

One of the biggest names in agriculture, John Deere has been a big presence in recent years at CES by bringing its iconic and eye-catching green machinery to the show floor. This year, the company has been given a CES Innovation Award for the robotic capabilities of its X Series combine harvesters. With cameras that allow farmers to see directly inside grain tanks, computer vision, autonomous driving capabilities and in-field machine-to-machine communication, the X Series must be among the biggest robots to ever win the award. The company is already giving select reporters a virtual experience of its CES wares. 

See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/news/here-are-the-robots-taking-the-virtual-stage-at-ces-2021/

2020 Survey of Artificial General Intelligence Projects for Ethics, Risk, and Policy

From the Abstract:

This paper presents a survey of AGI R&D projects that are active in 2020 and updates a previous survey of projects active in 2017. Both surveys attempt to identify every active AGI R&D project and characterize them in terms of relevance to ethics, risk, and policy, focusing on seven attributes:

•   The type of institution in which the project is based
•   Whether the project publishes open-source code
•   Whether the project has military connections
•   The nation(s) in which the project is based
•   The project’s goals for its AGI
•   The extent of the project’s engagement with AGI safety issues
•   The overall size of the project 

Regarding policy, several conclusions can be drawn. First, the concentration of projects in the US and its allies could greatly facilitate the establishment of international public policy for AGI. Second, the large and growing number of corporate projects suggests an urgent need to attend to the corporate governance and political economy of AGI R&D. Third, the smaller but still significant number of academic projects suggests that research policy institutions, such as review boards that evaluate risky research, have an important role to play. Fourth, the large number of projects with open-source code presents a policy challenge because it makes it AGI R&D accessible to anyone anywhere in the world. Fifth, the large difference in size between the largest and smallest projects suggests that policymaking may benefit from a focus on larger projects. Finally, the absence of large government projects suggests that the primary role of governments may be as regulators of private-sector AGI R&D rather than as drivers of AGI R&D.

This study has some limitations, meaning that the actual state of AGI R&D may differ from what is presented here. The survey is based exclusively on openly published information and projects were sought out primarily using the English language. It is possible that this survey missed some AGI R&D projects. ...

PhilNote: The appendices describe every project that they found. The authors acknowledge that their report could be incomplete because it only includes publicly available data.

See the full 150 page report here: http://gcrinstitute.org/papers/055_agi-2020.pdf

How to Make Artificial Intelligence More Democratic

a study from Western University suggests, there has been a "de-democratization" in AI: the number of researchers able to contribute to cutting-edge developments is shrinking. This narrows the pool of people who are able to define the research directions for this pivotal technology, which has social implications. It may even be contributing to some of the ethical challenges facing AI development, including privacy invasion, bias and the environmental impact of large models.

To combat these problems, researchers are trying to figure out how to do more with less. One such recent advance is called “less than one”–shot learning (LO-shot learning), developed by Ilia Sucholutsky and Matthias Schonlau from the University of Waterloo.[Office1] [RK2]  The principle behind LO-shot learning is that it should be possible for an AI to learn about objects in the world without being fed an example of each one.

Allowing AIs to learn with considerably less data is important for several reasons. First, it better encapsulates the actual process of learning by forcing the system to generalize to classes it has not seen. By building in abstractions that capture the relationships between objects, this technique also reduces the potential for bias. 

Next, the less extensive the data one needs to use, the less incentive exists to surveil people to build better algorithms. For example, soft distillation techniques have already impacted medical AI research, which trains its models using sensitive health information. In one recent paper, researchers used soft distillation in diagnostic x-ray imagery based on a small, privacy-preserving data set.

Finally, allowing AIs to learn with less plentiful data helps to democratize the field of artificial intelligence. With smaller AIs, academia can remain relevant and avoid the risk of professors being poached by industry. 

See the full story here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-make-artificial-intelligence-more-democratic/

Shanghai Disneyland Tops Out Its New Zootopia Ride

Zootopia will be the eighth themed land at Shanghai Disneyland.

See the full story here: https://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/202012/7941/?

You can’t go to a concert any time soon. Can a pair of wooden speakers bring the show to you?

Oda’s creators never meant for the speakers to replace live music, even if the timing seems prescient. They say the service is an alternative to the Instagram Live and Facebook gigs that have been popping up during the pandemic as well as the seemingly endless scroll of virtual meetings. You cannot listen to an Oda concert on your phone, laptop or your Sonos speakers. The shows are transmitted through an illuminated box, or “lighthouse,” that connects to the specially designed speakers, which cost $299 a pair. Oda’s business model is to earn most of its income off subscriptions. The first season, which runs through March, will be free as a kind of dress rehearsal. After that, subscribers will pay $79 per season.

“We have so many ways to get distracted, and we’re already seeing people looking for more minimalist experiences,” Ohanian says. “What Oda does is it forces you to be present and just paying attention with your ears.”

See the full story here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/road-to-recovery/oda-speakers-music-service/2020/12/29/4b46dd8c-439c-11eb-a277-49a6d1f9dff1_story.html