philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Joe Hunting, Director of ‘We Met in Virtual Reality,’ Launching Virtual Reality Production Company Painted Clouds

Joe Hunting, director of the HBO film “We Met In Virtual Reality,” is starting a production company called Painted Clouds, focusing exclusively on virtual reality filmmaking. The company aims to create original films and series using real time VR, including the popular platform VRChat. ...

Hunting’s “We Met In Virtual Reality,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022, is a documentary showcasing online connection through virtual reality, also filmed exclusively in VR. Taking place amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the film illustrates the nature of virtual expression and interaction whilst people were physically isolated. Variety‘s Peter Debruge called Hunting’s documentary “a warmhearted, often humorous look at the sociology of such spaces.” ...

See the full story here: https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/joe-hunting-vr-painted-clouds-we-met-in-virtual-reality-1235769359/

From 65 to 103, Older Adults Experience Virtual Reality Differently Depending on Their Age: Evidence From a Large-scale Field Study in Nursing Homes and Assisted Living Facilities

Abstract

There is growing interest in applications of virtual reality (VR) to improve the lives of older adults, but the limited research on older adults and VR largely treats older adults as a monolith, ignoring the substantial differences across 65 to 100+ year olds that may affect their experience of VR. There are also few existing studies examining the experiences and challenges facing those who facilitate VR for older adults (e.g., caregiving staff). We address these limitations through two studies. In Study 1, we explore variation within older adults’ experiences with VR via a field study of VR use among a large (N = 245) and age-diverse (M age = 83.6 years old, SD age = 7.9, range = 65 - 103 years old) sample of nursing home and assisted living facility residents across 10 US states. Age was negatively associated with the extent to which older adults enjoyed VR experiences. However, the negative relationship between age and older adults’ attitudes toward VR was significantly less negative than the relationship between age and their attitudes towards other technologies (cell phones and voice assistants). In Study 2, we surveyed caregiving staff (N = 39) who facilitated the VR experiences for older adult residents and found that the caregiving staff generally enjoyed the activity relative to other activities and felt it to be beneficial to their relationship with residents.

Read the full research paper here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4570743

What Did Ancient Egyptian Art Look Like in Its Glory Days? The Louvre and Snapchat’s New A.R. Program Offers a Glimpse

Snap, owner of the video messaging app Snapchat, has partnered with the Louvre on a free program called Egypt Augmented, which will give users an interactive deep dive into the museum’s renowned Egyptian treasures using augmented reality (A.R.).

The experience, designed by Snap’s own A.R. Studio, leverages the technology to bring iconic works like the Chamber of Ancestors and the Dendera Zodiac to life in dynamic ways. Viewers scan the QR codes posted near the chosen artworks, open up Snapchat’s camera, and see these ancient artworks in a new light. The technology will virtually restore faded paint, revealing “shapes, materials, colors, and decorations” of selected works that have faded to bare stone over the years, according to the press release.

See the full story here: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/louvre-museum-snapchat-egyptian-treasures-2382519

LinkedIn Tests Generative AI to Field Cybersecurity Questions From Employees and Suppliers

... Response times to employees’ questions on the chatbot were found to be about five seconds or less, which compares with around 15 minutes when a human helper responded, according to a spokeswoman for the company. Early tests show the chatbots are around 90% accurate. ...

“Security has to be a business differentiator, security has to be part of your strategic plan to grow your business,” he said. Belknap said he is looking into other ways generative AI could help his cybersecurity team defend the company against hackers, such as by detecting malware. ...

When the final version of the chatbot is released, LinkedIn plans to track how many of its interactions with employees require little to no human engagement, according to the spokeswoman for the company. ...

See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/linkedin-tests-generative-ai-to-field-cybersecurity-questions-from-employees-and-suppliers-d61d35a6

OpenAI Developing ‘Provenance Classifier’ for GenAI Images

OpenAI is developing an AI tool that can identify images created by artificial intelligence — specifically those made in whole or part by its Dall-E 3 image generator. Calling it a “provenance classifier,” company CTO Mira Murati began publicly discussing the detection app last week but said not to expect it in general release anytime soon. This, despite Murati’s claim it is “almost 99 percent reliable.” That is still not good enough for OpenAI, which knows there is much at stake when the public perception of artists’ work can be impacted by a filter applied by AI, which is notoriously capricious. ...

TechCrunch writes that in addition to achieving something closer to 100 percent accuracy across the board, OpenAI is also concerned about “the philosophical question of what, exactly, constitutes an AI-generated image.”

Artwork wholly generated by DALL-E 3 is an obvious example, “but what about an image from DALL-E 3 that’s gone through several rounds of edits, has been combined with other images and then was run through a few post-processing filters?” muses TechCrunch. ...

The usefulness of an OpenAI AI image detector optimized for Dall-E 3 may be limited if it cannot spot pictures generated by competing technologies like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Firefly, Digital Trends points out, adding that “anything that can highlight fake images could have a positive impact.” ...

See the full story here: https://www.etcentric.org/openai-developing-provenance-classifier-for-genai-images/

Adult Entertainment Actors Say Their Defenses Against AI Are More Elusive

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Not all porn stars are resisting the technology. In August, adult performer Brandi Love partnered with AI developer Forever Voices to create a Telegram chatbot. Other actors using AI to create AI companions include Amouranth, Caryn Marjorie, Lena Moon, and Adriana Chechik.

Fake actors, however, are another matter entirely.

“We can't compete with AI images of girls as these figures are ‘perfect’ in the viewer's eyes,” Tate said. “They aren't real, but there is already a market for fans interacting with these AI models.” ...

See the full story here: https://decrypt.co/203159/porn-stars-fight-ai-deepfakes-with-less-support

Second Capitol AI forum emphasizes need for funding

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's second AI forum todaycentered on a need for more government funding in AI research, according to Axios. The closed-door forum drew academics, CEOs of smaller AI firms, civil society groups, and venture capitalists, including Marc Andreessen from Andreessen Horowitz and John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins.

More:

• As reported by Axios, participants stressed a need for increased government funding for AI research in the areas of data, modeling, and education.
• Outside of the meeting, Schumer told reporters that a minimum of $32B is required for government initiatives, like a National AI Research Resource.
• During the forum, Steve Case, co-founder of AOL and CEO of Revolution, called for fostering competition in AI to prevent Silicon Valley's monopoly.
• MIT AI researcher Max Tegmark said there was reluctance to discuss regulating artificial general intelligence and "superintelligence" in forthcoming advanced AI models.

See the original story here: https://www.axios.com/pro/tech-policy/2023/10/24/second-capitol-ai-forum-emphasizes-need-for-funding

The Infinite [Felix and Paul]

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With this exhibition, Infinity Experiences—a joint venture of PHI Studio and Felix & Paul Studios—is tackling a big issue in the 360 video space: how to distribute content and get your experiences in front of an audience. While the number of people who own VR headsets is increasing, the awareness of — and therefore, demand for — narrative and 360 content remains low. As a result, there has been little incentive for the major players to monetize 360 and narrative the way they have monetized games. This leaves innovative and accomplished creators in a sticky situation; they want to continue to pioneer, but struggle to find a business plan that allows them to build a library that will entice an audience and in turn incentivize monetization. ...

see the full story here: https://inthelookclub.medium.com/the-infinite-8c0e69771a83

Atom Computing is the first to announce a 1,000+ qubit quantum computer

Today, a startup called Atom Computing announced that it has been doing internal testing of a 1,180 qubit quantum computer and will be making it available to customers next year. The system represents a major step forward for the company, which had only built one prior system based on neutral atom qubits—a system that operated using only 100 qubits.

The error rate for individual qubit operations is high enough that it won't be possible to run an algorithm that relies on the full qubit count without it failing due to an error. But it does back up the company's claims that its technology can scale rapidly and provides a testbed for work on quantum error correction. And, for smaller algorithms, the company says it'll simply run multiple instances in parallel to boost the chance of returning the right answer. ...

See the full story here: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/10/atom-computing-is-the-first-to-announce-a-1000-qubit-quantum-computer/?mc_cid=0b37a589a8&mc_eid=116e9f337b

How Does AI ‘Think’? We Are Only Starting to Understand That

PhilNote: This is an excellent update primer.

... If you’ve gotten this far, here’s the payoff: If today’s large language models are capable of some amount of reasoning, however elementary, it could yield what could be years of rapid advances in the abilities of generative AIs.

In part, that’s because language isn’t just another medium of communication, like pictures or sound. It’s a technology humans developed for describing absolutely everything in the world we can conceive of, and how it all relates. Language gives us the ability to build models of the world, even absent any other stimuli, like vision or hearing, says Aguera y Arcas. ...

That is why a large language model can write fluently about the relationship between, say, two colors, even though it has never “seen” either of them, he says. ...

...we might soon have AI-based assistants that are completely personalized to data specific to us. Google is already attempting a first version of this—an update to its Bard generative AI allows it to search and synthesize across all of your emails, calendar items and documents, as long as they are already in Google’s system—but it’s primitive and prone to error. ...

Between the invention of the steam engine and the debut of the locomotive, more than a century elapsed. Meanwhile, a new science was born, which in turn became the midwife of countless other advancements essential to the Industrial Revolution. If the development of generative AIs conforms to this pattern at all, its near future will include transformative inventions—AIs expert in different subjects, truly personal assistants—followed by years of refinement, mad scrambles to harness and benefit from these new technologies, and possibly another sort of Industrial Revolution. But rather than a revolution predicated on energy and matter, this one will be based on the manipulation of data and insight. ...

See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/how-does-ai-think-95f6381b