Cambridge Public Library Launches Augmented Reality Exhibition
The City of Cambridge installed a student-designed augmented reality exhibit exploring systemic racism in front of the Cambridge Public Library at Joan Lorentz Park earlier this month.
Students at the Cambridge Public Library STEAM Academy — a collaboration between the library and Innovators for Purpose, a local non-profit that gives young students experience working on real-world projects — created the exhibit, titled “This Should Not Be.”
The exhibit consists of several physical posts spread around the library that can each be converted to augmented reality with a cellphone, according to Reinhard Engels, manager of innovation and technology at the Cambridge Public Library.
See the full story here: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/11/16/cambridge-public-library-augmented-reality-exhibit/
Pandorabots’ Bot Battle highlights lack of industrywide metrics for open domain AI
Emerging technology fields need industrywide metrics to measure progress. So a pun-loving chatbot startup called Pandorabots decided to put on a flashy Bot Battle. The Bot Battle consisted of two virtual beings chatting 24 hours a day, seven days a week for two weeks (unlike humans, AIs never tire). Viewers were invited to vote on the better chatbot.
The first contestant, “Mark Zuckerb0rg,” is based on Facebook’s Blenderbot. He’s a terse figure who wears a “Make Facebook Great Again” hat and doesn’t shy away from intolerant opinions like “I don’t like feminists.” The Pandorabots chatbot Kuki is arguably more eloquent. But she’s a politician, often taking the conversation back to her comfort zone and delivering the same quips again and again. The winner? Kuki, with 79% of the votes and 40,000 views. But Pandorabots says the real aim of the Bot Battle is to spark an industrywide conversation about the need to agree on a chatbot evaluation framework.
See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/2020/11/13/pandorabots-bot-battle-highlights-lack-of-industrywide-metrics-for-open-domain-ai/
Facebook is now using AI to sort content for quicker moderation
... the algorithms judge various elements in any given post in concert, trying to work out what the image, caption, poster, etc., reveal together. If someone says they’re selling a “full batch” of “special treats” accompanied by a picture of what look to be baked goods, are they talking about Rice Krispies squares or edibles? The use of certain words in the caption (like “potent”) might tip the judgment one way or the other.
See the full story here: https://sportsgrindentertainment.com/facebook-is-now-using-ai-to-sort-content-for-quicker-moderation/
Vatican Library Enlists Artificial Intelligence to Protect Its Digitized Treasures
Founded by University of Cambridge mathematicians, Darktrace uses artificial intelligence (A.I.) modeled on the human immune system to detect abnormal activity in the Vatican’s digital systems, writes Brian Boucher for artnet News. On average, the A.I. system defends the library against 100 security threats each month, according to a Darktrace statement.
“While physical damage is often clear and immediate, an attack of this kind wouldn’t have the same physical visibility, and so has the potential to cause enduring and potentially irreparable harm, not only to the archive but to the world’s historical memory,” Miceli tells the Observer.
He adds, “These attacks have the potential to impact the Vatican library’s reputation—one it has maintained for hundreds of years—and have significant financial ramifications that could impact our ability to digitize the remaining manuscripts.”
Though the Vatican Library dates back to the days of the first Roman Catholic popes, little is known about the contents of its collections prior to the 13th century, per Encyclopedia Britannica. Pope Nicholas V (1447–1455) greatly expanded the collection, and by 1481, the archive held the most books of any institution in the Western world, according to the Library of Congress.
To date, about a quarter of the library’s 80,000 manuscripts have been digitized.
The library isn’t the only section of the Vatican that’s prone to cyber breaches. As the New York Times reported in July, Chinese hackers infiltrated the Holy See’s computer networks this summer ahead of sensitive talks in Beijing over the appointment of bishops—part of ongoing discussions that will determine how the Catholic Church operates in China.
See the full story here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/vatican-enlists-cybersecurity-firm-protect-digitized-treasures-180976256/
Oculus Pushes More Accessible VR Experiences With New Accessibility-Focused Virtual Reality Checks For Developers
The company described the VRCs as “a set of technical recommendations designed to help developers create more accessible VR software” that focus on various aspects of accessible design: visual, audible, interaction, and more. The goal with these Checks, Oculus said, is to encourage third-party developers to seriously consider making their apps more accessible to every user. VRCs typically are required criteria, but Oculus is instead casting these accessibility Checks as recommendations.
See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenaquino/2020/11/12/oculus-pushes-more-accessible-vr-experiences-with-new-accessibility-focused-virtual-reality-checks-for-developers/?sh=204e97ed73e8
Why AI can’t move forward without diversity, equity, and inclusion
Evolve, presented by VentureBeat on December 8th, is a 90-minute event exploring bias, racism, and the lack of diversity across AI product development and management, and why these issues can’t be ignored.
“A lot has been happening in 2020, from working remotely to the Black Lives Matter movement, and that has made everybody realize that diversity, equity, and inclusion is much more important than ever,” says Huma Abidi, senior director of AI software products and engineering at Intel – and one of the speakers at Evolve. “Organizations are engaging in discussions around flexible working, social justice, equity, privilege, and the importance of DEI.”
An algorithm used by hospitals was shown to prioritize the care of healthier white patients over sicker Black patients who needed more attention. In Oakland, an AI-powered software piloted to predict areas of high crime turned out to be actually tracking areas with high minority populations, regardless of the crime rate.
This can be addressed with regulation, and the inclusion of AI ethics principles in research and development, around responsible AI, fairness, accountability, transparency, and explainability, she says.
See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/2020/11/12/why-ai-cant-move-forward-without-diversity-equity-and-inclusion/
To own an AR future, Niantic wants to build a smarter map of the world
Niantic is continuing to bet heavily on the idea that it knows where consumer computing is headed, namely toward augmented reality.
A report from the firm suggests that the title has pulled in more than $1 billion in revenue since the start of the year, a marked increase since 2019 that might be surprising, given the social effects of a pandemic. Those revenues have allowed Niantic to be one of the more active acquirers in the AR infrastructure space, buying up small buzzy AR startups like Escher Reality, Matrix Mill and, most recently, 6D.ai.
Since the acquisition, Niantic has been integrating the tech into their developer platform and has been aiming to juice the technology with their own advances in semantic understanding so they can not only quickly gather what the geometry of a space looks like, but also peer into the context of what the objects are that make up that 3D mesh.
The ultimate goal of this data collection, the startup says, is to build an ever-updating 3D map of the world
As users gain access to more advanced tech like the lidar sensor inside the new iPhone 12 Pro, it’s likely that Niantic will gain access to more quality data themselves.
See the full story https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/11/to-own-an-ar-future-niantic-wants-to-build-a-smarter-map-of-the-world/