philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

THE AUGMENTED REALITY BREADBOARD OF THE FUTURE

Developed at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, VirtualComponent uses augmented reality and some very clever electronics to transform the classic breadboard into a powerful mixed-reality tool for testing and simulating circuits. It’s not going to replace the $3 breadboard you’ve got hiding at the bottom of your tool bag, but one day it might be standard equipment in electronics classrooms.

Holes in the same row are still electrically linked like in the classic breadboard, but with two AD75019 cross-point switch arrays and an Arduino in the base, it has the ability to virtually “plug in” components at arbitrary locations as selected by the user. So rather than having to physically insert a resistor, the user can simply tell the software to connect a resistor between two selected holes and the cross-point array will do the rest.

What’s more, many of those components can be either simulated or at least augmented in software. For example, by using AD5241 digital potentiometers, VirtualComponent can adjust the value of the virtual resistor. To provide variable capacitance, a similar trick can be pulled off using an array of real capacitors and a ADG715 digital switch to connect them together; essentially automating what the classic “Decade Box” does. In the demonstration video after the break, this capability is extended all the way out to connecting a virtual function generator to the circuit.

See the full story here: https://hackaday.com/2019/05/27/the-augmented-reality-breadboard-of-the-future/

Niantic’s view of the future of augmented reality

Niantic has made no secret that Pokémon Go is a kind of stepping stone for the potential of AR, which could span many industries and lead to gaming experiences that could be far more engaging than the relatively crude AR in games today.

But that won’t make people happy in the future. The tech is a couple of generations ahead of where the games and applications are today, Finman said. Game companies need time to absorb new technologies and figure out what to do with them.

“What is new about augmented reality? There are two main tech mechanics,” he said. “The position of the device matters. Being able to move around. That is where a lot of AR is today. The second is the real world becomes content. How can games change based on where you are? If you are by a beach, are there more water Pokémon coming out? That’s where the new game loops are being explored.”

See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/25/niantics-view-of-the-future-of-augmented-reality/

To realize its VR dreams, Facebook needs to kill what Oculus has built

The company’s Quest product, which they released on Tuesday,offers a streamlined version of high-end virtual reality while leveraging time-honed software to make the process of getting up-and-running immeasurably easier. It’s probably the best VR product that’s been built yet, and one that has the mainstream firmly in view.

As the closing of the Oculus acquisition approaches its fifth birthday, one wonders where Facebook’s 10-year-plan for virtual reality begins to show some signs of critical success.

Whether the Quest succeeds or fails, I would not be surprised to see the company fade the high-end into its standalone line over time. The PC will always drive the most high-end experiences, but it’s no place to stake a platform that still needs to prove itself.

Facing its prolonged degradation, Nintendo reshaped its mobile and home consoles into a single product. Oculus needs to do the same, and they already have.

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com

Amazon Will Pay You to Help Develop Its Augmented Reality System, No Skills Required

The "Amazon Real World Image Study" is a new, limited time program based in New York City that asks the public to submit themselves to full body 3D scanning for Amazon's research and get paid in the process.

The Body Labs team, a New York-based startup acquired by Amazon in 2017, is conducting the program. The company's work revolves around artificial intelligence, computer vision, and body modeling.

Back when the company was independent, it described a process of capturing a photographic image of a person and then transforming that image into a 3D model of the person. That 3D data could then, based one part of the company's vision, be used for things such as fitting clothing to a person's body shape.

That vision fits in perfectly with Amazon's goal of allowing online shoppers to more accurately purchase items that fit by using augmented reality in the same way that the company has begun using AR to allow you to place items in your home before clicking the buy button.

In return for submitting yourself to Amazon's body scan, you'll get a $25 Amazon gift card. The process takes around 30 minutes and will require those involved to change into form-fitting clothing provided by Amazon.

See the full story here; https://next.reality.news/news/amazon-will-pay-you-help-develop-its-augmented-reality-system-no-skills-required-0198051/

Facebook’s A.I. Whiz Now Faces the Task of Cleaning It Up. Sometimes That Brings Him to Tears.

Mr. Schroepfer, 44, is in a position he never wanted to be in. For years, his job was to help the social network build a top-flight A.I. lab, where the brightest minds could tackle technological challenges like using machines to pick out people’s faces in photos. He and Mr. Zuckerberg wanted an A.I. operation to rival Google’s, which was widely seen as having the deepest stable of A.I. researchers. He recruited Ph.D.s from New York University, the University of London and the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris.

But along the way, his role evolved into one of threat removal and toxic content eliminator. Now he and his recruits spend much of their time applying A.I. to spotting and deleting death threats, videos of suicides, misinformation and outright lies.

“None of us have ever seen anything like this,” said John Lilly, a former chief executive of Mozilla and now a venture capitalist at Greylock Partners, who studied computer science with Mr. Schroepfer at Stanford University in the mid-1990s. “There is no one else to ask about how to solve these problems.”

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In late 2015, some of the A.I. work started to shift. The catalyst was the Paris terrorist attack, in which Islamic militants killed 130 people and wounded nearly 500 during coordinated attacks in and around the French capital. Afterward, Mr. Zuckerberg asked the Applied Machine Learning team what it might do to combat terrorism on Facebook, according to a person with knowledge of the company who was not authorized to speak publicly.

In response, the team used technology developed inside the new Facebook A.I. lab to build a system to identify terrorist propaganda on the social network. The tool analyzed Facebook posts that mentioned the Islamic State or Al Qaeda and flagged those that most likely violated the company’s counterterrorism policies. Human curators then reviewed the posts.

It was a turning point in Facebook’s effort to use A.I. to weed through posts and eliminate the problematic ones.

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Identifying rogue images is also one of the easier tasks for A.I. It is harder to build systems to identify false news stories or hate speech. False news stories can easily be fashioned to appear real. And hate speech is problematic because it is so difficult for machines to recognize linguistic nuances. Many nuances differ from language to language, while context around conversations rapidly evolves as they occur, making it difficult for the machines to keep up.

Delip Rao, head of research at A.I. Foundation, a nonprofit that explores how artificial intelligence can fight disinformation, described the challenge as “an arms race.” A.I. is built from what has come before. But so often, there is nothing to learn from. Behavior changes. Attackers create new techniques. By definition, it becomes a game of cat and mouse.

See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/technology/facebook-ai-schroepfer.html

Facebook still a great place to amplify pre-election junk news, EU study finds

A study carried out by academics at Oxford University to investigate how junk news is being shared on social media in Europe ahead of regional elections this month has found individual stories shared on Facebook’s platform can still hugely outperform the most important and professionally produced news stories, drawing as much as 4x the volume of Facebook shares, likes, and comments.

The study, conducted for the Oxford Internet Institute’s (OII) Computational Propaganda Project, is intended to respond to widespread concern about the spread of online political disinformation on EU elections which take place later this month, by examining pre-election chatter on Facebook and Twitter in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, and Swedish.

Junk news in this context refers to content produced by known sources of political misinformation — aka outlets that are systematically producing and spreading “ideologically extreme, misleading, and factually incorrect information” — with the researchers comparing interactions with junk stories from such outlets to news stories produced by the most popular professional news sources to get a snapshot of public engagement with sources of misinformation ahead of the EU vote.

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/21/facebook-still-a-great-place-to-amplify-pre-election-junk-news-eu-study-finds/

Sony Unit to Produce Movies, TV Shows Based on Games

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has launched PlayStation Productions to transform the company’s 100+ video games into film and television projects. The production company, headed by Asad Qizilbash, is at work on its first projects on Sony Pictures’ Culver City lot. SIE Worldwide Studios chair Shawn Layden, who also oversees the new production company, noted that, with 25 years developing games, the company believes “now is a good time to look at other media opportunities across streaming or film or television.”

The Hollywood Reporter, in an exclusive, notes that the original content library includes “adventure to sci-fi to action to mystery to horror.” “Instead of licensing our IP out to studios, we felt the better approach was for us to develop and produce for ourselves,” said Qizilbash. “One, because we’re more familiar, but also because we know what the PlayStation community loves.”

Although film adaptations of games haven’t always worked well, Hollywood is friendlier to the concept of adapting games largely because today’s directors and producers play them.

Layden agreed, noting that his goal is, “to be the first gaming entity to do something lasting and meaningful in a completely different medium.”

See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/sony-unit-to-produce-movies-tv-shows-based-on-games/

Facebook Turns to Robots to Advance Artificial Intelligence

Humans learn from experience to not “do dumb things,” and Facebook chief AI scientist Yann LeCun is trying to create a version of that for robots, saying that systems that learn “models of the world” are our best shot at advancing artificial intelligence. Unlike a rewards/demerits-based reinforcement learning, Facebook’s tack is to instill curiosity, by giving the robot freedom to try new things. With New York University, Facebook also dramatically reduced the number of tries to teach a robotic arm to grasp an object.

Wired reports that the technique is self-supervised learning, in which the robot “tries new things and updates a software model, which can help it predict the consequences of its actions.”

Facebook’s project marries AI and robots, which up until now have been more isolated pursuits, and “robots have remained fairly dumb.” Researchers, however, are now using robots “as platforms to refine [AI] software algorithms.”

“If you solve it in one context, you’ll solve it in the other context,” said LeCun. In this way, “AI is making robots smarter, but robots are also now helping advance AI.”

See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/facebook-turns-to-robots-to-advance-artificial-intelligence/

Virtual reality helps police in dealing with autistic people

This week, the company announced a partnership with Chicago police to train officers by using virtual reality headsets. It will be making the program, developed with the help of mental health and autism experts, available to police departments across the U.S.

For now, they offer two training modules: one for autism and another for dealing with people who have schizophrenia.

“The ability to tell the difference between someone who’s acting in an unusual way that may be due to their autism versus someone who could be a risk to you can be a really fine line,” said David Kearon of the advocacy group Autism Speaks. “When you’re trying to make that judgment very quickly, that’s where we see mistakes made.”

See the full story here: https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2019/05/24/virtual-reality-helps-police-learn-to-interact-with-autistic

Upcoming 10th Augmented World Expo To Shine Light On Immersive Computing

Inbar called 2019 “The Year of the Creator,” as a good number of authoring tools aimed at equipping the next generation of creators with easy-to-use object oriented tools for building XR experiences without code are coming of age. “The race to build an index of the real world is on, with companies working to align digital content with the physical environment on a global scale in order to enable next-level augmented reality,” said Inbar.

See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2019/05/24/upcoming-10th-augmented-world-expo-to-shine-light-immersive-computing/#56e9dc165128