The sensationalist hype around AI has a lot of people believing that the technology may be too advanced or too technical for their businesses to take advantage of. This is false. AI is here now and you can start using it today.
Continue reading… “Five AI clouds you can use today”
Karen, you don’t need a puppy dog filter, you just need to stop blinking in the Christmas photo!
Facebook wants to recreate eyes in photos using AI.
There’s always one person. Seventeen takes. And Karen’s blinking.
But no need to host an intervention — Facebook plans to fix your photos with AI.
Continue reading… “Facebook develops AI to open your damn eyes in photos”
Wireless radio signals can be used to monitor a person’s precise movements through a solid wall, thanks to artificial intelligence. The technology could help us monitor people for health and safety less intrusively—but it also raises a range of security and privacy issues.
Continue reading… “We can now use AI to see through walls”
Sotheby’s acquired startup Thread Genius, whose machine learning tech can discern clients’ artistic and style leanings–and suggest customized purchases.
Just a few doors down from its CEO and the wood-paneled cubicles where sharply dressed professionals sit, the eighth floor of Sotheby’s New York takes on a very different vibe.
Suddenly, it’s more Silicon Valley than Upper East Side as staid formality gives way to a group of millennials, some in T-shirts with their sneakered feet on desks. Computer code is scrawled on whiteboards and the room’s glass wall. It is here where the storied auction house–founded in 1744–meets its future.
Continue reading… “Can AI have good taste? Auction giant Sotheby’s is counting on it”
When science-fiction worlds introduce robots that look and behave like people, sooner or later those worlds’ inhabitants confront the question of robot self-awareness. If a machine is built to truly mimic a human, its “brain” must be complex enough not only to process information as ours does, but also to achieve certain types of abstract thinking that make us human. This includes recognition of our “selves” and our place in the world, a state known as consciousness.
One example of a sci-fi struggle to define AI consciousness is AMC’s “Humans” (Tues. 10/9c starting June 5). At this point in the series, human-like machines called Synths have become self-aware; as they band together in communities to live independent lives and define who they are, they must also battle for acceptance and survival against the hostile humans who created and used them.
Continue reading… “Will AI ever become conscious?”
Major companies are bringing together new machine learning algorithms, better and cheaper sensors, and increased computing power in hopes of addressing growing global demand for food and agriculture’s diminishing labor force.
The big picture: Alphabet’s X and John Deere, startups and universities are looking to AI-based agriculture to address these problems. But farming presents hard problems for AI that, if solved, could ultimately help it be deployed in more structured places (think: homes).
Continue reading… “The AI farm experiment”
Rotman School of Management professor Ajay Agrawal explains how AI changes the cost of prediction and what this means for business.
With so many perspectives on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) flooding the business press, it’s becoming increasingly rare to find one that’s truly original. So when strategy professor Ajay Agrawal shared his brilliantly simple view on AI, we stood up and took notice. Agrawal, who teaches at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and works with AI start-ups at the Creative Destruction Lab (which he founded), posits that AI serves a single, but potentially transformative, economic purpose: it significantly lowers the cost of prediction.
Continue reading… “The economics of artificial intelligence”
The digital manipulation of video may make the current era of “fake news” seem quaint.
In a dank corner of the internet, it is possible to find actresses from Game of Thrones or Harry Potter engaged in all manner of sex acts. Or at least to the world the carnal figures look like those actresses, and the faces in the videos are indeed their own. Everything south of the neck, however, belongs to different women. An artificial intelligence has almost seamlessly stitched the familiar visages into pornographic scenes, one face swapped for another. The genre is one of the cruelest, most invasive forms of identity theft invented in the internet era. At the core of the cruelty is the acuity of the technology: A casual observer can’t easily detect the hoax.
Continue reading… “The era of fake video begins”
Artificial intelligence is the future. Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple are all making big bets on AI. (Amazon owner Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post.) Congress has held hearings and even formed a bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Caucus. From health care to transportation to national security, AI has the potential to improve lives. But it comes with fears about economic disruption and a brewing “AI arms race .” Like any transformational change, it’s complicated. Perhaps the biggest AI myth is that we can be confident about its future effects. Here are five others.
Continue reading… “Five myths about artificial intelligence”
Google co-founder Sergey Brin sent the message in a letter to Alphabet shareholders (Source: Getty)
One of Google’s top execs and president of Alphabet Sergey Brin has raised concerns about the AI revolution in a letter to Alphabet’s shareholders.
In his annual letter sent to shareholders of Google umbrella organisation Alphabet yesterday, Brin said that “new questions and responsibilities” had been raised about the potential of AI.
Continue reading… “Google exec issues warning over future of AI”
The Flintstones, a cartoon about life in the Stone Age, has just surpassed The Jetsons, a cartoon about life in the distant future, when it comes to technological innovation. Researchers have successfully trained artificial intelligence to generate new clips of the prehistoric animated series based on nothing but random text descriptions of what’s happening in a scene.
Continue reading… “This AI can automatically animate new Flintstones cartoons”
Fake news has been a problem swamping the internet. Now there is a way to make fake videos with nothing more than your laptop. FakeApp can be used to make fake videos of people using images or other videos of them. Several social media platforms are filled with these deepfakes. While the technology still needs works, it’s been used to put celebrities into pornographic films. What would happen if world leaders became digital puppets? Following is a full transcript of the video.
Continue reading… “Face-swapping videos could lead to more ‘fake news’”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.