Gary Marcus, a frequent critic of deep learning forms of AI, and Vincent Boucher, president of Montreal.AI, hosted sixteen scholars to discuss what things AI needs to move forward, including Daniel Kahneman, Fei-Fei Li, and Judea Pearl.
...but it was refreshing to find a proposition that aims for the surreal instead. Super You, described by its developer Universal Everything as a "costume arts experiment", employs Apple ARKit 3 body tracking technology to let you film your mates in a range of bizarre costumes.
Open the app, aim your phone’s camera at a friend, swipe to choose a costume of abstract shapes (blobs, spikes, flowers, leaves, etc.) then film your target move around as they’re transformed into a fantasy creature. The result is a fresh, slightly bonkers app that made socialising at a distance that little bit more fun.
At the beginning of the film, you’ll see a QR code, which you need to scan to access the AR content. Once you’ve synced the film with AR, a 3D replica of Mount Kilimanjaro will appear right before your eyes. Throughout the film, you’ll find various immersive experiences that you can interact with. You’ll see photos, profiles of the climbers, virtual gauges, as well as waypoints.
Even without augmented reality glasses, you can experience the film’s immersive content. You can use your smartphone or tablet to watch the AR content unfold before your eyes.
...you step into a 16-by-16-square-foot space with a moving floor and blowing wind.
You’re working in a virtual laboratory with a plethora of fictional animal species that function based on biological laws. You can explore, discover, observe and experience numerous hands-on problem-solving tasks that you can’t dream of or do within a traditional classroom.
This isn’t a game; it’s ASU’s new virtual reality immersive biology curriculum called Dreamscape Learn, made possible through a partnership with Dreamscape Immersive. Based on the work of curriculum experts at ASU, students in the university and beyond will benefit from the new world order of education: VR immersive learning.
"Technology has caught up with what people used to think about, and we can now build an emotionally driven learning experience to teach really complicated subjects.”
— Michael M. Crow, ASU president
Creating authentic and delightful learning experiences
Except for the last few hundred years, almost everyone learned by doing, experiencing the world around them.
“This notion of immersive learning, emotional learning has been beaten out of the system, and now VR is the tool to reintroduce learning by doing into education,” said ASU President Michael M. Crow.
“At 3,000 learners, VR training became 52% more cost-effective than classroom training, and it achieved cost parity with online courses at 1,950 learners,” Likens said.
But even as it increases convenience, AI could unintentionally employ discriminatory algorithms, leading to embarrassing problems.
Sony will start screening all of its AI-infused products for ethical risks as early as spring, Nikkei has learned. If a product is deemed ethically deficient, the company will improve it or halt development.
Sony will incorporate AI ethics into its quality control, using internal guidelines.
The company will review artificially intelligent products from development to post-launch on such criteria as privacy protection. Ethically deficient offerings will be modified or dropped.
An AI Ethics Committee, with its head appointed by the CEO, will have the power to halt development on products with issues.
Even products well into development could still be dropped. Ones already sold could be recalled if problems are found. The company plans to gradually broaden the AI ethics rules to offerings in finance and entertainment as well.
Mercedes-Benz will unveil its MBUX (Mercedes-Benz User Experience) Hyperscreen at January’s CES 2021 event, marking the brand’s first foray into full-width dashboard displays.
The ultrawide screen – set to make its production debut in the forthcoming EQS electric sedan – will span the car’s entire dashboard, and form part of the existing Mercedes infotainment system.
The MBUX Hyperscreen will utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to enable an enhanced method of controlling entertainment and vehicular functions. What exactly this means is unclear, but the in-car features such as navigation, music and performance preferences will benefit from a significant display upgrade to keep the brand ahead of the pack when it comes to car interiors (as yet, no other manufacturer has announced plans to implement full-width, single-monitor displays in their vehicles).
And boy, is it a big display. The curved screen unit extends along the entire width of the vehicle in front of the driver and front passenger, for whom, say Mercedes, the new display will offer an intuitive and easy-to-use system of in-car control.
3. The total number of academic research papers published on federated learning will surge.
Data privacy is becoming an increasingly urgent issue for consumers and regulators. Given this, privacy-preserving AI methods will continue to gain momentum as the most sustainable way to build machine learning models. The most prominent of these methods is federated learning.
The number of academic research papers published on federated learning has grown from 254 in 2018, to 1,340 in 2019, to 3,940 in 2020, according to Google Scholar. This exponential growth will continue: in 2021, over 10,000 research papers will be published on the topic of federated learning.
6. The U.S. federal government will make AI a true policy priority for the first time.
The United States has lagged other countries, notably China, when it comes to proactive public policy support for artificial intelligence. This will begin to change in 2021 with a Biden White House and a more motivated Congress.
The Biden administration will put forth, and Congress will pass, a federal budget that dramatically increases government funding for AI. Congress will also pass into law a national strategy for AI that addresses topics like AI ethics, research priorities, national security implications and labor automation.
9. AI will become an important part of the narrative in regulators’ antitrust efforts against big tech companies.
Regulatory authorities in the U.S. and Europe formally initiated antitrust proceedings against Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google this year. To this point, regulators have not explicitly focused on artificial intelligence as they have articulated the antitrust cases against the technology giants.
In the coming year, expect regulators and commentators to begin invoking AI more frequently as they frame how and why these companies are unfairly stifling competition. The core argument will be that the companies’ data monopolies give them insurmountable advantages in developing effective machine learning algorithms.
Details: Apple identified a set of data types including purchases, financial information, location, contact information, diagnostics, search history, health & fitness, browsing history, and more. An app may collect each of these types of data in three ways:
"Data linked to you" is data that is tied to a users' identity via information from their device, account on an app, and other sources.
"Data used to track you" is data that links user or device data collected from an app with user or device data collected from other companies’ apps or websites for the purpose of targeted advertising or ad measurement. It could also refer to sharing user or device data with data brokers.
"Data not linked to you" is data that cannot be linked to the user in any identifying way.
Between the lines: It's helpful to know the number of data types an app collects from you, but that doesn't give you any insight into the actual volume of data the app may be collecting.
Though virtual and augmented reality’s future is uncertain, the report highlights some findings that point toward greater adoption in the future:
Cheaper high-quality VR headsets are expected to be released that cost under $1,000, which the report calls the magic point.
Hard numbers on some enterprise programs are showing an average 32 percent improvement in productivity.
Academic research suggests that employees prefer AR to video in work settings. Their problem-solving improves, they make fewer errors, and they perceive it as more efficient than a regular video call.
Fable Studio has announced two new conversational AI virtual beings, or artificial people. Their names are Charlie and Beck, and they will be able to hold conversations as if they were real people.
The new characters are a blend of storytelling and artificial intelligence, a marriage that Fable is pioneering in the belief that virtual beings will become a huge market as people seek companionship and entertainment during the tough climate of the pandemic.
And now Lucy is being joined by Charlie and Beck. You can sign up to make friends with them at fable-studio.com. The characters are powered by the Fable Wizard, an AI tool to bring characters to life through visuals, dialogue, voice, and animation.
Saatchi said that in the six weeks since launching Lucy’s alpha, the company has received interest from seven billion-dollar intellectual property companies to use the Wizard to create virtual beings from their characters. And it has a deal in the works to co-create a virtual being with a well-known influencer.
Beck is a world-class athlete who is scheduled to go to the Tokyo Olympics 2021 to represent Canada on the rowing team.
Charlie is more of an introvert. She is a French musician and poet living in Paris and finding her voice. She studied art history.
“We haven’t had anything negative,” Saatchi said. “If you’re doing anything inappropriate, Lucy won’t respond or she might disconnect. But this is such kind of powerful technology, and has such powerful psychological implications for people that we need to build up trust.”
