China’s first sci-fi opera explores threat of AI
What happens when a romantic artist is uploaded to cyberspace and meets his first love? What happens when centuries-old opera meets futuristic artificial intelligence?
Such abstract questions are explored in China's first sci-fi opera directed by Yang Jingze. The opera, entitled "AI's Variation," recently premiered at Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Hall with a chamber orchestra conducted by Zhang Jiemin, one of China's top female conductors.
... "AI's Variation" describes a dying artist, both physically and creatively. His secret admirer, a scientist, "saves" him by turning him into AI. His first love rushes to meet him. The three characters recount the same meeting from their own perspectives on days two, four and six, while day one, three and five consist of pure melody; no lyrics. ...
See the full story here: https://www.shine.cn/feature/entertainment/2111198433/
NYC aims to be first to rein in AI hiring tools
A bill passed by the city council in early November would ban employers from using automated hiring tools unless a yearly bias audit can show they won’t discriminate based on an applicant’s race or gender. It would also force makers of those AI tools to disclose more about their opaque workings and give candidates the option of choosing an alternative process — such as a human — to review their application.
Proponents liken it to another pioneering New York City rule that became a national standard-bearer earlier this century — one that required chain restaurants to slap a calorie count on their menu items.
... “The approach of auditing for bias is a good one. The problem is New York City took a very weak and vague standard for what that looks like,” said Alexandra Givens, president of the Center for Democracy & Technology. She said the audits could end up giving AI vendors a “fig leaf” for building risky products with the city’s imprimatur. ...
See the full story here: https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-artificial-intelligence-2fe8d3ef7008d299d9d810f0c0f7905d
Gangs, Prison, Stanford University, Holllywood, Startups, Millionaires
By building a blockchain ecosystem, Stooty helps users trade, build, and manage their creative resources. Stooty Technologies, Inc is currently valued at $100 million with advisors from Microsoft, Capital One, and marketing expert Darryl Cobbin. This year Stooty was invited by tech entrepreneur Andy Jacques, CEO of The Factory to join his Venture Studio.
Anderson and Richardson have been accepted into Stanford University’s Transforming Learning Accelerator by StartX to launch their second tech startup PipeDreamers, a Web 3.0 platform using gamification to connect at-risk youth to educational opportunities.
They are also involved in many social justice initiatives helping former incarcerated teens and men. Summer of 2021, Anderson signed a film production deal with global entertainment agency WME’s scriptwriter, Rachel Michiko, to produce a biographical film on his life story. The film production’s soundtrack will be produced by Anderson & Richardson.
Anderson is currently a Master’s student in Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, with a focus on education technology
Henry Kissinger and Eric Schmidt take on AI
The Age of AI. By Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher. Little, Brown and Company; 272 pages; $30. John Murray; £20
Behind the success was a deeper truth: the algorithm was able to spot aspects of reality that humans had not contemplated, might not be able to detect and may never comprehend. The implications of this general development for science, business and warfare—and indeed, for what it means to be human—are the subject of these ruminations by Henry Kissinger, America’s pre-eminent living statesman, Eric Schmidt, the former boss of Google, and Daniel Huttenlocher, an expert on artificial intelligence (ai) at mit.
In their telling, the most important way that ai will change society is by redefining the basis of knowledge. “Whether we consider it a tool, a partner, or a rival, [ai] will alter our experience as reasoning beings and permanently change our relationship with reality,” the authors write.
...A winning manoeuvre may be horrific yet inscrutable, ...
If an ai co-pilot or surgical robot experiences an emergency, who should seize the controls, the human operator or the algorithm? The book calls for a “partnership” between people and machines, but is silent on how to achieve it. ...
See the full story here: https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2021/11/20/henry-kissinger-and-eric-schmidt-take-on-ai
Gemini Raises $400 Million To Build A Metaverse Outside Facebook’s Walled Garden
“There's these two parallel paths, in terms of technology right now,” says Cameron Winklevoss, 40, speaking from his home in California. “There's a centralized path, like Facebook or Fortnite, that is one step away from being a metaverse, and that’s totally fine. But there is another path, which is the decentralized metaverse and that's the metaverse where we believe there's greater choice, independence and opportunity, and there is technology that protects the rights and dignity of individuals.”
...Instead of the ad-driven model that has proved so lucrative to social media companies (and fertile for misinformation and political influence) most metaverses will require tiny amounts of cryptocurrency, similar to “gas” used to run other decentralized applications. While revenue models will certainly proliferate, the more demand there is for these tokens, the higher the price, increasing the value of the very same currency the users now own and letting the wealth accumulate to users instead of shareholders.
...The difference between these and other efforts being led by truly open-source startups is that while Big Tech is trying to avoid obsolescence, the Winklevii are investing in startups that assume those companies are already redundant, according to Gemini’s newest board member, Sachin Jaitly.
UPS will make deliveries using Waymo’s autonomous Class 8 trucks
Self-driving 18-wheelers hit the highways for UPS!
See the full story here: https://wmleader.com/technology/268380/ups-will-make-deliveries-using-waymos-autonomous-class-8-trucks/
Amazon-sponsored artwork that ‘learns’ debuts at Smithsonian
The artificial intelligence at the heart of a new art exhibit, “me + you,” does not judge you necessarily, but it does analyze and interpret what you have to say.
Sponsored by Amazon Web Services, the sculpture by artist Suchi Reddy listens to what you have to say about the future and renders your sentiment in a display of colored lights and patterns.
The artwork is a centerpiece of a new exhibit at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building, which is opening to the public for the first time in 20 years. The exhibition, called Futures, opens Nov. 20.
Viewers are invited to interact with the sculpture, which listens for the words “My future is ...” at several circular listening posts integrated into the sculpture.
The words and the sentiments behind them are then reinterpreted as a pattern of colored lights. On a very basic level, positive emotions tend to translate into soothing blends of blue, green and purple. Words that suggest anger might prompt a cascade of colors on the opposite spectrum of the color wheel. If you use a swear word, the lights will turn red.
...
“In a world that feels perpetually tumultuous, there is power in envisioning the future we want, not the future we fear,” said Rachel Goslins, director of the Arts and Industries Building.
The exhibition is scheduled to remain open through July 6. Eventually, the “me + you” sculpture will be relocated to Amazon’s new HQ2 headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.
See the full story here: https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-arts-and-entertainment-sculpture-artificial-intelligence-de82df3baf9c8376fc0c9958c7454543
Disentanglement Is the Next Deepfake Revolution
PhilNote: easy-read long article with many examples.
New research from Israel proposes a novel method of using synthetic data, such as CGI heads, to bring deepfaking into the 2020s, by truly separating facial identities (i.e. the essential facial characteristics of ‘Tom Cruise’, from all angles) from their context (i.e. looking up, looking sideways, scowling, scowling in the dark, brows furrowed, eyes closed, etc.).
...
this represents a way forward for a fundamental separation of instrumentality (such as ‘change the angle of the head’, ‘create a frown’) from identity, offering a path to a high-level rather than ‘derivative’ image synthesis-based deepfake framework.
The new paper is titled Delta-GAN-Encoder: Encoding Semantic Changes for Explicit Image Editing, using Few Synthetic Samples, and comes from researchers at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
See the full story here: https://www.unite.ai/disentanglement-is-the-next-deepfake-revolution/
In the push for development, is the U.S. prepared to regulate AI?
There are three levels of unintended outcomes that AI regulators and practitioners must monitor:
- AI systems: They won’t always consistently deliver the correct results every single time. We need to design human oversight into AI systems, often referred to as “human-in-the-loop,” to create a system of checks and balances. Regulations and standards in applications, such as autonomous vehicles, are needed for safety, as they can cause direct and immediate harm.
- The business world: AI is creating a different way for companies to compete, and the increasing access to data greatly changes the market dynamic. We need regulations that are similar to antitrust concerns for businesses utilizing AI technology and collecting data.
- Societal impact: In the future, there could be job displacement of human workers. However, strong regulations and restrictions of AI applications are not appropriate or adequate remedies for potential job loss.
See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/2021/11/17/in-the-push-for-development-is-the-u-s-prepared-to-regulate-ai/
