Artificial intelligence reaches the ‘podcast’
Maybe inspired by all these stories, the writer Manuel Bartual has just released Biotopia, a newsletter-like sound fiction that he began working on during confinement: “Biotopía is a center of investigation and advanced technological development in which the matter, the time and the space behave in a strange way. It is actually a sound fiction.
Speaking one night with the actress Nikki García while we were having dinner on Skype, it occurred to us that we could prepare a podcast to get my head busy with something in those days, so I started to think about how that could be podcast, taking advantage of the fact that she had the means to record herself from home and then I could edit everything from mine ”. Biotopia It is a project that is born from certain limitations and makes them a narrative virtue. For example, to incorporate other voices into Biotopia, Bartual was using the resource of phone calls, which has allowed the rest of the actors and actresses who have participated to record themselves from their homes, using most of their mobile phones.
One of the peculiarities of Biotopia is the use of algorithmic voices: “We have used a text reading application that allows you to choose between different voices. One of the Biotopia characters is AmaIA, an artificial intelligence developed by an entertainment science team whose latest work is Inside Biotopia, a series on the origin of this scientific community ”.
The idea of listening to a podcast complete whose host Be a non-human voice is not something crazy. James Ryan, a student at California’s Santa Cruz University, presented this idea as part of his doctoral thesis. ... It is almost a podcast infinite, because its plots are automatically generated by a software.
See the full story here: https://theunionjournal.com/artificial-intelligence-reaches-the-podcast-blog-wine-days-and-podcasts/
Manned Fighter To Face Autonomous Drone Next Year In Sci-Fi Movie-Like Showdown
The Air Force is hoping to pit an autonomous drone equipped with an artificial intelligence-driven flight control system against a fighter jet with a human pilot in a little over a year. The service has described this effort in the past as a "big moonshot" that could revolutionize air-to-air combat in ways that have so far been limited to the realm of fiction - at least as far as we know.
At its most basic, a UCAV would be able to perform many of the same functions as manned aircraft, but would be able to make key decisions faster and more accurately, taking into account much more information in a shorter period of time, without any concern about being distracted or confused by the general chaos of combat. They can also be networked into swarms that work cooperatively to maximize their combat effectiveness at any given time far beyond what a human-piloted formation could.
See the full story here: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33866/manned-fighter-to-face-an-autonomous-drone-next-year-in-a-sci-fi-movie-like-showdown
WalkinVR is Looking to Make Virtual Reality More Accessible for Handicapped Users
Essentially, WalkinVR allows users to finely tune certain aspects of VR experiences. The developers behind the software say that it can “enhance [a] person’s movement and adapt them to play existing Virtual Reality games.” This takes the form of additions that allow easier turning, leaning, and crouching in games to go along with extended movement range when it comes to your hands. The program also can increase the dynamic of hand movements meaning that actions that could be slower in the real world could be seen as faster in the VR realm.
WalkinVR also lets users opt to use various pads to perform actions in games rather than the native buttons that appear on controllers. Plus, hand tracking via Kinect or Azure has also been implemented to the software so that those who can’t hold controllers can still have their motions followed.
WalkinVR website here: https://www.walkinvrdriver.com
See the full story here: https://www.vrfitnessinsider.com/walkinvr-is-looking-to-make-virtual-reality-more-accessible-for-handicapped-users/
Why the buzz around DeepMind is dissipating as it transitions from games to science
- DeepMind shot to fame in 2016 when it built a computer program called AlphaGo that learned how to play the board game Go and became better than any human.
- The London AI lab, which is owned by Alphabet, is now going through a quieter period, with far less media attention.
- DeepMind is shifting its focus from building “AI agents” that can play games to building AI agents that can have real world impact, particularly in areas of science like biology.
One ex-DeepMinder said the buzz around the company is now more in line with what it should be. “The whole AlphaGo period was nuts,” they said. “I think they’ve probably got another few milestones ahead, but progress should be more low key. It’s a marathon not a sprint, so to speak.”
See the full story here: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/05/google-deepmind-alphago-buzz-dissipates.html
Prada Brings Virtual Reality to Home Entertainment
A range of contents, available at popular platforms, including YouTube VR and VEER, will guide users in an immersive journey through the Prada world with stops in several locations, including the brand’s Epicenter stores in Tokyo, New York an Los Angeles, as well the Fondazione Prada in Milan and Venice.
Using the virtual reality technology, users will also have the chance to take a closer look to the Prada spring 2020 collection and to discover the secrets of the Made to Measure project, as well as the artisanal making of the Prada men’s shows.
Among the several initiatives developed by the company, in May, the Prada Group signed a partnership with leading customer experience management platform Sprinklr aimed at reinforcing the digital culture within the company. Based in New York, Sprinklr is a global software service with more than 1,800 employees helping brands in 150-plus countries.
See the full story here: https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/prada-brings-virtual-reality-to-home-entertainment-1203645366/
Wharton’s A.I. expert predicts the future of artificial intelligence in business
"Right before a take, marker has snapped and it's time for action.Shot on a real set at high iso, some noise, view at 100%.More filmmaking images:"
Kartik Hosanagar has taught a course on the business impact of emerging tech for 17 years at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Lately, interest in the portion of the class that deals with artificial intelligence has been so great that Hosanagar and Wharton last month announced a whole new initiative called Wharton AI for Business.
The project includes a new course on the business implications of A.I. as well as a guest lecture series,...
The most successful companies, he says, will be those that are able to take a big step back and think about how they can use A.I. to do something far more strategic. “The question is, what can you do uniquely with that technology that everyone else can’t do?”
He uses the example of streaming platforms such as Netflix or Amazon and entertainment companies such as Disney. They face a dilemma because social distancing has disrupted their content creation pipelines: With actors and film crews unable to work in close proximity, production on many shows has had to pause. ...
Hosnagar says studios could turn to advanced A.I., similar to the technology used to create deepfakes, to create visually realistic content without actors or film crews. “Those that are able to do this might be able to get more films and TV shows out in a period of scarcity,” he says. “But not every studio can change production the same way.”
Figuring out how best to use A.I. strategically requires a realistic understanding of what your company is actually capable of —not only whether you have the right tech chops, but what your customers want and how this fits with your overall brand and market position.
But Hosanagar thinks the pandemic may actually present an opportunity for startups too by removing some of the advantage of having vast amounts of historical data.
Like some other folks I’ve spoken to for this newsletter, Hosanagar thinks the pandemic will accelerate the use of unsupervised learning algorithms, which don’t need big, labelled data sets to train on. He also thinks there is a greater role for reinforcement learning, where A.I. software learns from simulated experience. And he thinks that A.I. systems in the future will have to incorporate a wider diversity of data to become more inclusive of disruptions such as those caused by Covid-19.
See the full story here: https://fortune.com/2020/06/02/whartons-a-i-expert-predicts-the-future-of-artificial-intelligence-in-business/