Lightelligence releases prototype of its optical AI accelerator chip
Accelerator chips that use light rather than electrons to carry out computations promise to supercharge AI model training and inference. In theory, they could process algorithms at the speed of light — dramatically faster than today’s speediest logic-gate circuits — but so far, light’s unpredictability has foiled most attempts to emulate transistors optically.
Boston-based Lightelligence, though, claims it’s achieved a measure of success with its optical AI chip, which today debuts in prototype form. It says that latency is improved up to 10,000 times compared with traditional hardware, and it estimates power consumption at “orders of magnitude” lower.
The chip in question — which is about the size of a printed circuit board — packs photonic circuits similar to optical fibers that transmit signals. It requires only limited energy, because light produces less heat than the electricity, and is less susceptible to changes in ambient temperature, electromagnetic fields, and other noise. It’s designed to slot into existing machines at the network edge, like on-premises servers, and will eventually ship with a software stack compatible with algorithms in commonly used frameworks like Google’s Tensorflow, Facebook’s Caffe2 and Pytorch, and others.
See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/15/lightelligence-releases-prototype-of-its-optical-ai-accelerator-chip/
New York City’s AI task force stalls
Nearly one year after its founding, the Automated Decision Systems Task Force hasn’t even agreed on the definition of an automated decision system
In May 2018, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the formation of the Automated Decision Systems Task Force, a cross-disciplinary group of city officials and experts in artificial intelligence (AI), ethics, privacy, and law. Established by Local Law 49, the goal of the ADS Task Force is to develop a process for reviewing algorithms the city uses—such as those for determining public school assignments, predicting which buildings should be inspected, and fighting tenant harassment—through the lens of equity, fairness, and accountability.
“Algorithms should be subject to the same scrutiny with which we treat any regulation, standard, rule, or protocol. It is essential that they are highly vetted, transparent, accurate and do not generate injurious, unintended consequences,” Stringer wrote. “Without such oversight, misguided or outright inaccurate algorithms can fester and lead to increasingly problematic outcomes for city residents, employees, and contractors.”
This lack of progress to date reflects the overall difficulty of regulating technology, a field that’s coming under increased scrutiny at federal, state, and local levels. This month, the House and Senate introduced the Algorithmic Accountability Act, which, if passed, would require the FTC to create rules for assessing the impact of automated decision systems. HUD recently sued Facebook for housing discrimination in its ads, the New York Civil Liberties Union is suing ICE for its immigrant risk assessment algorithm, and a Connecticut judge recently ruled that tenant screening companies that use algorithmic risk assessments must comply with fair housing rules.
See the full story here: https://ny.curbed.com/2019/4/16/18335495/new-york-city-automated-decision-system-task-force-ai
EU Votes For Copyright Rules Opposed by Nativist Groups
In a vote of 348 to 274, nineteen out of the European Union’s 28 member countries voted in favor of reformed laws to protect content creators. Critics of the reform — including large tech companies — argue that the rules will reduce free speech online, with Articles 11 and 13 of particular concern. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker declared that the new copyright rules are “fit for the digital age.” In the lead-up to the vote, nativist groups in many countries worked to defeat the new rules.
VentureBeat reports that Article 11, the so-called link tax, “requires websites to pay publishers a fee if they display excerpts of copyrighted content” or even a link to it; and Article 13, the so-called upload filter, “makes digital platforms legally liable for any copyright infringements on their platform.”
See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/eu-votes-for-copyright-rules-opposed-by-nativist-groups/
Disney, Rutgers Scientists Use AI to Generate Storyboards
The system first “determines if a given snippet contains a particular syntactic structure and subsequently splits and assembles it into simpler sentences, recursively processing it until no further simplification is possible,” then applies a “coordination step and a lexical simplifier, which “matches actions in the simplified sentences with 52 animations (expanded to 92 by a dictionary of synonyms) in a predefined library.”
The content is fed to the pipeline, dubbed Cardinal, which turns the actions into previsualizations in the Unreal video game engine. The system has been trained with “scene descriptions from 996 screenplays drawn from over 1,000 scripts scraped from freely available sources including IMSDb, SimplyScripts, and ScriptORama5.” The system is made up of “525,708 descriptions containing 1,402,864 sentences, 920,817 (over 40 percent) of which had at least one action verb.”
See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/disney-rutgers-scientists-use-ai-to-generate-storyboards/
Sony Just Filed A Patent For Watching Live eSports Via PlayStation VR Like You’re Actually There
Filed in 2017 and 2018, respectively, the two patents were published just last week. The first one illustrates a way for owners of Sony's VR headset to virtually join a live event — and not just join, but be there. The proposed feature would anchor spectators to a physical location in the venue to virtually spectate and feel as though they're really there, participating in the event, crowd and all.
The second patent, on the other hand, would allow players to turn their friends into NPC crowds so they can spectate as the user players their games. "Generic spectators" don't quite match the realism of other elements in current-generation gaming, Sony stated in the patent, and it wants to populate NPC crowds with pals for "a more entertaining and engaging experience."
See the full story here: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/241520/20190415/sony-just-filed-a-patent-for-watching-live-esports-via-playstation-vr-like-you-re-actually-there.htm
‘Superhot VR’ Has Now Generated More Revenue Than The Original PC Game
Superhot VR’s next stop is Oculus Quest, where it will be a launch day title. Many of the long-reigning champions of the best-sellers lists are also making their way to Quest, including Job Simulator, Beat Saber, I Expect You to Die, Moss, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, OrbusVR: Reborn and more. We’ll be waiting patiently to see just how these ‘legacy’ titles fare on Oculus’ upcoming VR headset, one that promises to not only bring many of the games that ostensibly sold PC VR systems in the first place, but is doing it at a decidedly more consumer-oriented $400 price tag.
First Look: Your Home Made Perfect, BBC Two’s virtual reality property show
Your Home Made Perfect, the first British virtual reality and visual effects property show, is coming to BBC Two this week Tuesday (16 April).
Presented by Angela Scanlon, the 'groundbreaking' property and makeover series sees innovative architects, Laura Jane Clark and Robert Jamison, transform ordinary homes into extraordinary ones.
The concept of Your Home Made Perfect was first announced in July 2018 (with a working title called Watch This Space) and back then we were pretty excited about this new format coming to primetime TV. At the time, BBC Two controller Patrick Holland said the show 'promises to be the next great property series on BBC Two'. But is it?
Well we’ve watched the first episode ahead of its launch (Tuesday 16 April at 8pm on BBC Two), and we can guarantee that you'll love it. With state-of-the-art virtual reality (VR) and visual effects, homeowners will be able to ‘step into’ their newly imagined home in the ultimate ‘try before you buy’ experience. Believe us, it’s a game changer.
See the full story here: https://www.housebeautiful.com/uk/renovate/design/a22070303/your-home-made-perfect-virtual-reality-bbc-two-property-show/
Jack Daniel’s Joins the Augmented Reality Marketing Fray with Interactive Label & App
While Jack Daniel's is one of the most iconic brands in the liquor business, when it comes to augmented reality marketing, it's joining a long list of others telling a very familiar story in the growing marketing medium.
See the full story here: https://mobile-ar.reality.news/news/jack-daniels-joins-augmented-reality-marketing-fray-with-interactive-label-app-0196200/