The news: Microsoft says OpenAI will help it jointly develop and train new AI technologies for its Azure cloud computing service. They’ll also work together on OpenAI’s mission to try to achieve AGI—machines with the capacity to learn tasks the way human beings do.
Show me the money:OpenAI began as a nonprofit research lab in 2015 with the mission of developing safe AGI. But AI models need mountains of data to crunch, and that requires expensive computing power. So earlier this year, OpenAI set up a new for-profit arm to help pay for its work.
Moonshot: Many AI researchers believe AGI is unachievable. OpenAI may try to reach it by scaling existing deep-learning approaches rather than by developing new ones. There’s no guarantee that will work, so Microsoft’s billion-dollar bet is a risky one.
In a sign that times are indeed a-changin’, it has emerged that the number of people who watched Wireless Festival in virtual reality was almost double the number of people who attended in real life.
Held in London’s Finsbury Park earlier this month, Wireless Festival was attended by 130,000 people, with music fans turning up to see rappers like Cardi B, Skepta, Travis Scott and J Hus.
But some 250,000 people watched the festival live on virtual reality app MelodyVR, which works on smartphones and VR headsets like Oculus and Samsung Gear VR.
The stats suggest that VR, which has struggled to break into the mainstream, might still find an audience.
Today, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced a commitment of nearly $50 million in research to better understand how technology is transforming our democracy and the way we receive and engage with information. Amidst a growing debate over technology’s role in our democracy, these investments will help ensure society is equipped to make evidence-based decisions on how to govern and manage the now-digital public square.
Knight’s investment will fund new, cross-disciplinary research at 11 American universities and research institutions, including the creation of five new centers of study — each reflecting different approaches to understanding the future of democracy in a digital age (see descriptions and Table A below). In addition, Knight has opened a new funding opportunity for policy and legal research addressing major, ongoing debates about the rules that should govern social media and technology companies.
There are many challenges to developing robots that could operate within your body, not the least of which is finding a power source -- you can't exactly strap a big battery on them. That might not be an issue thanks to Georgia Tech researchers. They've developed minuscule "bristle-bots" that move by tapping vibration from a variety of sources, whether it's ultrasound or a nearby speaker. The trick was to mate a tiny piezoelectric actuator to a 3D-printed polymer body whose bristle-like legs are angled to move in specific directions in a resonant response to vibrations.
The bots are only 2mm (about 0.08in) long and weigh just 5mg (less than 0.0002oz), but they can move relatively briskly at about 8mm (just over 0.31in) per second. They're flexible, too. The actuators are made out of lead zirconate titanate that can turn voltage into vibration for movement, or the reverse if they need to power sensors.
November 9, 2019 : Notification of first review cycle results
January 6, 2020 : Revised paper submissions due to second review cycle
January 22, 2020 : Final notifications
January 31, 2020 : Camera-ready material due from authors of accepted papers
Overview
IEEE VR 2020 seeks original, high-quality papers in all areas related to virtual reality (VR), including augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and 3D user interfaces (3DUIs).
Inquiries contact: program2020@ieeevr.org
Topics
IEEE VR 2020 seeks contributions in VR/AR/MR and 3DUI including, but not limited to, the following topics:
3D and volumetric display and projection technology
3D authoring
3D user interaction
3DUI metaphors
Audio interfaces, sound rendering, spatialized audio, auditory perception and psychoacoustics
Collaborative interactions
Computer graphics techniques
Crowd simulation
Embodied agents, virtual humans and (self-)avatars
Ethical issues
Haptic and tactile interfaces, wearable haptics, passive haptics, pseudo haptics, other touch-based UI
Human factors and ergonomics
Immersive / 360° video
Immersive analytics and visualization
Input devices
Locomotion and navigation
Mediated and diminished reality
Mobile, desktop or hybrid 3DUIs
Modeling and simulation
Multi-user and distributed systems
Multimodal capturing and reconstruction
Multimodal input and output
Multimodal/cross-modal Interaction and perception
Multisensory rendering, registration, and synchronization
Non-fatiguing 3DUIs
Non-visual interfaces (such as olfactory)
Perception and cognition
Presence, body ownership, and agency
Scene description and management issues
Software architectures, toolkits, and engineering
Storytelling
Teleoperation and telepresence
Therapy and rehabilitation
Touch, tangible and gesture interfaces
Tracking and sensing
Usage research, evaluation methods and empirical studies
All VR Journal Papers submissions should be formatted using the IEEE Computer Society TVCG journal format described at http://junctionpublishing.org/vgtc/Tasks/camera_tvcg.html. Including a teaser image on page 1 is encouraged but not required.
Contacts
Journal Papers Chairs:
Joseph Gabbard, Virginia Tech, USA
Joaquim Jorge, INESC-ID / Técnico Lisboa, POR
Torsten Wolfgang Kuhlen, RWTH Aachen University, GER
Two German engineers from the Research Center for Artificial Intelligence have come up with a unique VR controller that uses a dual folding fan-like system that opens and closes in different configurations—based on what is happening in the VR experience—to give you dynamic and passive haptic feedback.
Put simply, they’ve created artificial weight in VR through drag and weight shifting.
In a recently published paper, André Zenner and Antonio Krüger outlined their work on a system they are calling Drag:on that gives you the sensation of haptic weight through different types of feedback based on body movement, the digital object being interacted with, and how you handle said digital object.
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Perception of Virtual Ratchet Resistance lets you grab a tool in VR to loosen or tighten a bolt. As you turn your tool to tighten the bolt, the fans will open causing more resistance. Turn your tool the other direction, and the fans will close giving you the sensation of the bolts loosening.
Media, however, isn't quite there yet—though many technology-forward artists say that multi-sensory, immersive experiences are where its future is headed. That's what the Gray Area Festival, running July 25–28 at the Gray Area Theater and Pier 70, seeks to explore with a weekend of workshops, performances and installations from artists eager to embrace the latest technological tools.
The festival's biggest attraction is the U.S. premiere of the ISM Hexadome, an installation by the Institute of Sound and Music in Berlin. Presented at Pier 70, it's comprised of six 20-foot-tall screens and can fit about 200 people. Essentially, it's a 360-degree theater for showing audiovisual works by a wide variety of artists, including Radiohead's Thom Yorke, whose beat-driven, sci-fi new album Anima explores the concept of a techno-dystopia. (Barri, who handles Yorke's visuals for his tours, collaborated on the visual component of his Hexadome piece. )
The other major performance at the Gray Area Festival is Louis-Philippe Demers and Bill Vorn's Inferno, where audience members don "robot exoskeletons"—bulky mechanical suits that physically force their wearers to dance in time with the dark, industrial techno soundtrack.
"There’s definitely a trend in people wanting to have experiences in environments instead of objects. Really when you get down to it, this trend is more of a return," says Threw.
To create the glove, they outfitted a piece of soft silicone with sensors that detect hand motions and actuators—small silicone bubbles coupled with electrodes to generate an electric force—that provide physical feedback to the user’s fingertips.
A team member wore the glove to interact with a virtual chess board. When the virtual hand touched a piece, software prompted the glove to produce electricity, which caused the center part of the glove’s fingertips to fill with air, giving a sense of the object’s shape, the team reports today in Scientific Reports.
Right next to that tower in Denver where I notched those crazy speeds is a small bakery with delicious bread. When I stepped inside, the 5G signal vanished. That’s the other thing about millimeter waves: Most can’t penetrate walls or other hard obstacles.
The carriers plan to use this technology to blanket large outdoor and even indoor spaces. AT&T, for instance, is targeting shopping malls, stadiums and convention centers. Unlike its competitors, AT&T is also restricting the network to business customers looking to develop products for the faster network. (These are the only people who should be buying 5G devices right now anyway.)
In approaching this problem of social responsibility, software designers have begun to develop their systems through two ethical lenses.
First, they have adopted the approach used by medical ethicists who involve humans in studies associated with new clinical trials and medical procedures. These safeguards have been in continuous development since the Nuremberg Code of 1947 and include informed consent by the human subject and transparency in the potential adverse reaction an individual may have to the trial involved. They give special consideration to the involvement of minors and vulnerable members of society who may not themselves be able to make informed decisions. These considerations are directly translatable to the development of AI in our homes. Strong corporate social responsibility informs the customer that the device is always observing us; asks for “informed” consent; provides consumers accurate knowledge and ownership regarding data retention, while also protecting minors.
The second lens is the use of design thinking, where the product development passes through five stages: Empathy, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. The first of these, the empathy stage, is crucial in aligning AI products with social dynamics. In this stage, designers aim at gaining a deep understanding of the actual user experience with the product. This differs from traditional design processes as AI solutions are algorithmic, based on data that may have elevated levels of bias from inappropriate sourcing or application.
Without such design considerations, society will be increasingly uncomfortable with AI, and turn away from it, sadly failing to reap the significant benefits it can provide.
In a sign that times are indeed a-changin’, it has emerged that the number of people who watched Wireless Festival in virtual reality was almost double the number of people who attended in real life.
Finding 3: Got a 5G signal? Don’t go inside.
In approaching this problem of social responsibility, software designers have begun to develop their systems through two ethical lenses.