Hundreds of AI tools have been built to catch covid. None of them helped.

[…] The AI community, in particular, rushed to develop software that many believed would allow hospitals to diagnose or triage patients faster, bringing much-needed support to the front lines—in theory. In the end, many hundreds of predictive tools were developed. None of them made a real difference, and some were potentially harmful. That’s the damning Read more about Hundreds of AI tools have been built to catch covid. None of them helped.[…]

Hey, AI software developers, you are taking Unicode into account, right … right?

[…] The issue is that ambiguity or discrepancies can be introduced if the machine-learning software ignores certain invisible Unicode characters. What’s seen on screen or printed out, for instance, won’t match up with what the neural network saw and made a decision on. It may be possible abuse this lack of Unicode awareness for nefarious Read more about Hey, AI software developers, you are taking Unicode into account, right … right?[…]

Australian Court Rules That AI Can Be an Inventor, as does South Africa

In what can only be considered a triumph for all robot-kind, this week, a federal court has ruled that an artificially intelligent machine can, in fact, be an inventor—a decision that came after a year’s worth of legal battles across the globe. The ruling came on the heels of a years-long quest by University of Read more about Australian Court Rules That AI Can Be an Inventor, as does South Africa[…]

Police Are Telling ShotSpotter to Alter Evidence From Gunshot-Detecting AI

On May 31 last year, 25-year-old Safarain Herring was shot in the head and dropped off at St. Bernard Hospital in Chicago by a man named Michael Williams. He died two days later. Chicago police eventually arrested the 64-year-old Williams and charged him with murder (Williams maintains that Herring was hit in a drive-by shooting). Read more about Police Are Telling ShotSpotter to Alter Evidence From Gunshot-Detecting AI[…]

TikTok’s AI is now available to other companies

TikTok’s AI is no longer a secret — in fact, it’s now on the open market. The Financial Times has learned that parent company ByteDance quietly launched a BytePlus division that sells TikTok technology, including the recommendation algorithm. Customers can also buy computer vision tech, real-time effects and automated translations, among other features. BytePlus debuted Read more about TikTok’s AI is now available to other companies[…]

Skyborg AI Computer “Brain” Successfully Flew A General Atomics Avenger Drone

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has announced that its Skyborg autonomy core system, or ACS, successfully completed a flight aboard a General Atomics Avenger unmanned vehicle at Edwards Air Force Base. The Skyborg ACS is a hardware and software suite that acts as the “brain” of autonomous aircraft equipped with the system. The tests Read more about Skyborg AI Computer “Brain” Successfully Flew A General Atomics Avenger Drone[…]

FB, Uni of Michigans latest AI doesn’t just detect deep fakes, it knows where they came from

On Wednesday, Facebook and Michigan State University debuted a novel method of not just detecting deep fakes but discovering which generative model produced it by reverse engineering the image itself. Beyond telling you if an image is a deep fake or not, many current detection systems can tell whether the image was generated in a Read more about FB, Uni of Michigans latest AI doesn’t just detect deep fakes, it knows where they came from[…]

Facebook AI Can Now Copy Text Style in Images Using Just a Single Word

We’re introducing TextStyleBrush, an AI research project that can copy the style of text in a photo using just a single word. With this AI model, you can edit and replace text in images. Unlike most AI systems that can do this for well-defined, specialized tasks, TextStyleBrush is the first self-supervised AI model that replaces Read more about Facebook AI Can Now Copy Text Style in Images Using Just a Single Word[…]

A.I. used at sea for first time off coast of Scotland to engage threats to ships

For the first time, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is being used by the Royal Navy at sea as part of Exercise Formidable Shield, which is currently taking place off the coast of Scotland. This Operational Experiment (OpEx) on the Type 45 Destroyer (HMS Dragon) and Type 23 Frigate (HMS Lancaster), is using the A.I. applications, Startle Read more about A.I. used at sea for first time off coast of Scotland to engage threats to ships[…]

Flawless Is Using Deepfake Tech to Dub Foreign Films Actors Lips

a company called Flawless has created an AI-powered solution that will replace an actor’s facial performance to match the words in a film dubbed for foreign audiences. […] What Flawless is promising to do with its TrueSync software is use the same tools responsible for deepfake videos to manipulate and adjust an actor’s face in Read more about Flawless Is Using Deepfake Tech to Dub Foreign Films Actors Lips[…]

PimEyes: a powerful facial-recognition and finding tool – like Clearview AI but for free

You probably haven’t seen PimEyes, a mysterious facial-recognition search engine, but it may have spotted you. If you upload a picture of your face to PimEyes’ website, it will immediately show you any pictures of yourself that the company has found around the internet. You might recognize all of them, or be surprised (or, perhaps, Read more about PimEyes: a powerful facial-recognition and finding tool – like Clearview AI but for free[…]

Dutch foreign affairs committee politicians were tricked into participating in a deepfake video chat w Russian opposition leaders’ chief of staff

Netherlands politicians (Geert Wilders (PVV), Kati Piri (PvdA), Sjoerd Sjoerdsma (D66), Ruben Brekelmans (VVD), Tunahan Kuzu (Denk), Agnes Mulder (CDA), Tom van der Lee (GroenLinks), Gert-Jan Segers (ChristenUnie) en Raymond de Roon (PVV).) just got a first-hand lesson about the dangers of deepfake videos. According to NL Times and De Volkskrant, the Dutch parliament’s foreign Read more about Dutch foreign affairs committee politicians were tricked into participating in a deepfake video chat w Russian opposition leaders’ chief of staff[…]

AI Dungeon text adventure generator’s sessions generate NSFW + violence (turns out people like porn), but some involved sex with children. So they put a filter on.

AI Dungeon, which uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 to create online text adventures with players, has a habit of acting out sexual encounters with not just fictional adults but also children, prompting the developer to add a content filter. AI Dungeon is straightforward: imagine an online improvised Zork with an AI generating the story with you as Read more about AI Dungeon text adventure generator’s sessions generate NSFW + violence (turns out people like porn), but some involved sex with children. So they put a filter on.[…]

EU draft AI regulation is leaked. Deostn’ define what AI is, but what risk is and how to handle it.

the draft “Regulation On A European Approach For Artificial Intelligence” leaked earlier this week, it made quite the splash – and not just because it’s the size of a novella. It goes to town on AI just as fiercely as GDPR did on data, proposing chains of responsibility, defining “high risk AI” that gets the Read more about EU draft AI regulation is leaked. Deostn’ define what AI is, but what risk is and how to handle it.[…]

Google AI Blog: Monster Mash: A Sketch-Based Tool for Casual 3D Modeling and Animation

Monster Mash, an open source tool presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2020 that allows experts and amateurs alike to create rich, expressive, deformable 3D models from scratch — and to animate them — all in a casual mode, without ever having to leave the 2D plane. With Monster Mash, the user sketches out a character, and Read more about Google AI Blog: Monster Mash: A Sketch-Based Tool for Casual 3D Modeling and Animation[…]

Sound location inspired by bat ears could help robots navigate outdoors

Sound location technology has often been patterned around the human ear, but why do that when bats are clearly better at it? Virginia Tech researchers have certainly asked that question. They’ve developed a sound location system that mates a bat-like ear design with a deep neural network to pinpoint sounds within half a degree — Read more about Sound location inspired by bat ears could help robots navigate outdoors[…]

Mixed Reactions to New Nirvana Song Generated by Google’s AI

On the 27th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death, Engadget reports: Were he still alive today, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain would be 52 years old. Every February 20th, on the day of his birthday, fans wonder what songs he would write if he hadn’t died of suicide nearly 30 years ago. While we’ll never know the Read more about Mixed Reactions to New Nirvana Song Generated by Google’s AI[…]

Yandex’s autonomous cars have driven over six million miles in ‘challenging conditions’ in Moscow

Yandex Yandex Yandex, Russia’s multi-hyphenate internet giant, began testing its autonomous cars on Moscow’s icy winter roads over three years ago. The goal was to create a “universal” self-driving vehicle that could safely maneuver around different cities across the globe. Now, Yandex says its trials have been a resounding success. The vehicles recently hit a major Read more about Yandex’s autonomous cars have driven over six million miles in ‘challenging conditions’ in Moscow[…]

Facebook is using AI to understand videos and create new products

Facebook has taken the wraps off a project called Learning from Videos. It uses artificial intelligence to understand and learn audio, textual, and visual representations in public user videos on the social network. Learning from Videos has a number of aims, such as improving Facebook AI systems related to content recommendations and policy enforcement. The Read more about Facebook is using AI to understand videos and create new products[…]

Bucks County woman created ‘deepfake’ videos to harass rivals on her daughter’s cheerleading squad, DA says

A Bucks County woman anonymously sent coaches on her teen daughter’s cheerleading squad fake photos and videos that depicted the girl’s rivals naked, drinking, or smoking, all in a bid to embarrass them and force them from the team, prosecutors say. The woman, Raffaela Spone, also sent the manipulated images to the girls, and, in Read more about Bucks County woman created ‘deepfake’ videos to harass rivals on her daughter’s cheerleading squad, DA says[…]

Facebook uses one billion Instagram photos to build massive object-recognition AI that partly trained itself

Known as SEER, short for SElf-supERvised, this massive convolutional neural network contains over a billion parameters. If you show it images of things, it will describe in words what it recognizes: a bicycle, a banana, a red-and-blue striped golfing umbrella, and so on. While its capabilities aren’t all that novel, the way it was trained Read more about Facebook uses one billion Instagram photos to build massive object-recognition AI that partly trained itself[…]

Furious AI Researcher Creates Site Shaming Non-Reproducible Machine Learning Papers

The Next Web tells the story of an AI researcher who discovered the results of a machine learning research paper couldn’t be reproduced. But then they’d heard similar stories from Reddit’s Machine Learning forum: “Easier to compile a list of reproducible ones…,” one user responded. “Probably 50%-75% of all papers are unreproducible. It’s sad, but Read more about Furious AI Researcher Creates Site Shaming Non-Reproducible Machine Learning Papers[…]

Waymo simulated (not very many) real-world (if the world was limited to 100 sq miles) crashes to prove its self-driving cars can prevent deaths

In a bid to prove that its robot drivers are safer than humans, Waymo simulated dozens of real-world fatal crashes that took place in Arizona over nearly a decade. The Google spinoff discovered that replacing either vehicle in a two-car crash with its robot-guided minivans would nearly eliminate all deaths, according to data it publicized Read more about Waymo simulated (not very many) real-world (if the world was limited to 100 sq miles) crashes to prove its self-driving cars can prevent deaths[…]

FortressIQ just comes out and says it: To really understand business processes, feed your staff’s screen activity to an AI

In a sign that interest in process mining is heating up, vendor FortressIQ is launching an analytics platform with a novel approach to understanding how users really work – it “videos” their on-screen activity for later analysis. According to the San Francisco-based biz, its Process Intelligence platform will allow organisations to be better prepared for Read more about FortressIQ just comes out and says it: To really understand business processes, feed your staff’s screen activity to an AI[…]

This site posted every face from Parler’s Capitol Hill insurrection videos

Late last week, a website called Faces of the Riot appeared online, showing nothing but a vast grid of more than 6,000 images of faces, each one tagged only with a string of characters associated with the Parler video in which it appeared. The site’s creator tells WIRED that he used simple, open source machine-learning Read more about This site posted every face from Parler’s Capitol Hill insurrection videos[…]