philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The Next Generation Of Artificial Intelligence (Part 2)

For the first part of this article series, see here.

The field of artificial intelligence moves fast. It has only been 8 years since the modern era of deep learning began at the 2012 ImageNet competition. Progress in the field since then has been breathtaking and relentless.

My previous column covered three emerging areas within AI that are poised to redefine the field—and society—in the years ahead. This article will cover three more.

4. Neural Network Compression

5. Generative AI

6. “System 2” Reasoning

See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robtoews/2020/10/29/the-next-generation-of-artificial-intelligence-part-2/?sh=1dec000b7a30

Motion Technology Startup DeepMotion Makes Motion Capture Accessible to Everyone with Launch of Animate 3D

With an AI-powered platform, Animate 3D turns 2D video files into 3D animations for use in games, film, and other creative applications.

Eliminating the need for traditional mocap hardware and suits, Animate 3D provides easy, accessible full-body motion capture, turning around animations in minutes. Animate 3D dramatically lowers the barrier to creating 3D animations for users ranging from amateurs to longtime industry professionals.

Animate 3D accepts .MP4 .MOV or .AVI files and generates high fidelity .FBX or .BVH animations, or can output into other easily shareable formats like .MP4 or .GIF. To further provide a creative visual aid, users can upload their own custom 3D characters to preview their animations on, and then download their animation already retargeted onto their characters, or simply download it as an .MP4 to share on social media. Between the web full of video content and being able to shoot your own content, iterating quickly, and creating a library of your own 3D motions is easier than ever before.

See the full story here: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/motion-technology-startup-deepmotion-makes-123800128.html

The Turing Test Aims to Understand Advancing Computers

“For artificial intelligence to fully pass the Turing Test, it would have to understand what it means to be human,” said Bruce Swett, the chief AI architect at Northrop Grumman. “We have all sorts of relationships that define us — with children, parents, friends, colleagues, groups, and organizations. There is a matrix of social interconnectedness that we intuitively know. No AI model understands that yet. That will take a long time.”

See the full story here: https://now.northropgrumman.com/the-turing-test-aims-to-understand-advancing-computers/

Virtual Reality Gives the Gift of Vision to Legally Blind Veterans

The IrisVision VR headset, which is an FDI Class I medical device, was developed by leading vision scientists in the United States. It has been backed by a grant from top vision institutions, including the National Eye Institute, and validated by eye specialists and researchers from top ophthalmology centers at Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, and UPMC Pittsburgh.

The wearable headset can be used to provide vision to those who suffer vision loss from a variety of causes including Macular Degeneration, Diabetic Retinopathy, Stargardt Disease, Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), Glaucoma, Cataracts, Aniridia, and Optic Atrophy, among others.

The strategic partnership between IrisVision and South Korea consumer electronics giant, Samsung was announced at the Consumer Technology Association’s annual CES (formerly the Consumer Electronics Show) trade event this past January. IrisVision had already been awarded with a CES 2019 Innovation Award that recognized its technology and customer success.

See the full story here: https://news.clearancejobs.com/2020/10/28/virtual-reality-gives-the-gift-of-vision-to-legally-blind-veterans/

Getting the story straight: Blockchain to curb fake news

Rather than responding to existing fake news, this solution prevents imposters, a type of fake news story that appears to be from a legitimate news agency.

The ANSAcheck project started in 2019. Giuseppe Perrone, the head of EY’s blockchain initiatives in the Mediterranean, served as EY’s leader. The ANSAcheck solution works by assigning a unique hash ID to every ANSA-created news story and posting the hash to Ethereum, the world’s largest public blockchain platform. If even one letter in the story is changed, the system will detect that it is not an identical copy to the original story. Story IDs are batched and posted multiple times each day to Ethereum. If ANSA updates the story, another entry is recorded on the blockchain and linked back to the original entry to form a chain of provenance.

When users click on the ANSAcheck sticker, the console viewer displays the transaction details on the blockchain.

More recently, EY was batching roughly 500–600 new stories every six hours, so the cost per transaction dropped to around $0.006 per story. Ethereum costs drove the decision to reduce the time of notarization. 

Mary Lacity is a Walton professor of information systems and the director of the Blockchain Center of Excellence at the University of Arkansas.

https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/wordpressua.uark.edu/dist/5/444/files/2018/01/BCoE2020ANSACaseStudyPost.pdf

See the full story here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/getting-the-story-straight-blockchain-to-curb-fake-news

See the background story on Ansa from April, 2020, "ANSA leveraging blockchain technology to help readers check source of news," here: https://www.ansa.it/english/news/science_tecnology/2020/04/06/ansa-using-blockchain-to-help-readers_af820b4f-0947-439b-843e-52e114f53318.html

How VR & AR Helped Solgaard Bring Their Unique Luggage To Life

Founder and CEO Adrian Solgaard had the idea for the carry-on closet bouncing around in his head for a while but hadn’t put pen to paper. It wasn’t until the Shape Immersive team invited him to play around with a VR design tool that he finally brought his sketch to life. 

“With VR it was a quick leap from what was in my head to reality, I could see the form and functionality of what I had been imagining in life-sized format,” says Adrian.

“There’s only so much you can communicate in 2D. If a photo shows the suitcase open and another photo shows it closed, that doesn’t communicate how it went from A to B,” says Adrian. 

Using AR, Solgaard can communicate the detail and craftsmanship of their products as well as the spatial experience of owning a carry-on closet. 

And as we contemplate the realities of a low-touch future, eCommerce brands will be looking for a competitive advantage in an increasingly crowded online market.

See the full story here: https://www.virtualrealitypulse.com/edition/daily-apple-oculus-2020-10-25?open-article-id=14743991&article-title=how-vr---ar-helped-solgaard-bring-their-unique-luggage-to-life&blog-domain=vrscout.com&blog-title=vrscout

What’s New In Gartner’s Hype Cycle For AI, 2020

See the full story here: https://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/165479/whats-new-in-gartners-hype-cycle-for-ai/

OpenAI’s GPT-3 Wrote This Short Film—Even the Twist at the End

Now there’s another feat to add to GPT-3’s list: it wrote a screenplay.

It’s short, and weird, and honestly not that good. But… it’s also not all that bad, especially given that it was written by a machine.

The three-and-half-minute short film shows a man knocking on a woman’s door and sharing a story about an accident he was in. It’s hard to tell where the storyline is going, but surprises viewers with what could be considered a twist ending.

The students that created the film used a tool derived from GPT-3 called Shortly Read to write the screenplay. They wrote the first several lines then let the AI take over.

According to media futurist and algorithmic filmmaker Alexis Kirke, we should get used to the idea of computers having a hand in our creative endeavors, especially when it comes to writing movie scripts. “A huge amount of experience has been codified by writers, producers, directors, script editors, and so forth,” he told Digital Trends. “Want to reduce the number of adverbs and adjectives in your script? There’s an algorithm for that. Want to ensure your characters’ dialog all sound[s] different from each other? There’s an algorithm for that. Want to generate alternative, less clichéd, rewrites of a page that keep its general meaning? There’s an algorithm for that.”

See the full story here: https://singularityhub.com/2020/10/23/an-ai-wrote-this-short-film-and-its-sort-of-fascinating/

Ethics vs. compliance in AI

But when it comes to responsible technology use, Heather Roff, senior research analyst, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, warned that viewing it as compliance could be detrimental. 

"Ethics is not compliance and if we think about ethics as compliance then we are failing as moral agents," Roff said during the panel. 

"If you think about ethics as compliance or compliance officers or inspectors general then you are actually getting the bare minimum of what ethics is. Ethics is about…how to think about doing things responsibility. What am I thinking about when I build it" and not "is the compliance officer watching."

Roff also said basic research and testing were integral to the ethics conversation. 

"Basic research is just not funded to the levels it needs to be funded," Roff said. "We need more basic research and funding for things like testing and evaluation...because testing supports the principles."

See the full story here: https://fcw.com/articles/2020/10/22/ai-defense-ethics-compliance.aspx

Carnegie Mellon U Big Brain Joe Marks Joins Weta Digital As Chief Technology Officer

Marks has over 35 years in as a technology executive with background in graphics, computer science and research and development. Marks will oversee the company’s technology initiatives that span visual effects as well as the newly announced Weta Animated division, and will report to Akkaraju, who said the company was grateful to “have attracted technology leadership of Joe Marks’s caliber to Weta Digital. A pivotal part of the future of VFX and animation rests in artificial intelligence, machine learning and cloud computing. Joe’s deep experience in these areas makes for a perfect fit at Weta as we continue to push the boundaries of our industry.”

Marks joins Weta Digital from Carnegie Mellon University, where he served as Executive Director of the Center for Machine Learning & Health, working at the forefront of innovation in digital healthcare. Marks is best-known for his prior roles at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL) and Disney Research where he orchestrated and led the premier R&D organization in the media and entertainment industry with labs in Pittsburgh, Zurich, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Marks’s research interests span CG, video processing, media distribution, robotics, HCI, mobile computing, computer vision, AI, sensors, embedded systems and behavioral economics.

“While working with The Walt Disney Company and the ACM SIGGRAPH community, I admired Weta for many years,” Marks said. “It’s an absolute thrill to be joining the company as it embarks on a new adventure in animated storytelling, while continuing their unparalleled tradition of excellence in VFX for live-action movies. 

See the full story here: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/carnegie-mellon-u-big-brain-160012314.html