Tech & Society
Deepfakes for Good: Tencent on the commercial value of deepfakes
A strategy manifesto from one of China’s biggest tech companies declares, amid familiar visions of ubiquitous AI, that deepfakes are more boon than bane.
Tech & Society
Letters
Values for the AI Community, Part 2: Readers Respond
Last week, I asked what values the AI community stands for. Thank you to everyone who replied! The email responses in aggregate ran to 55 pages of text, and I enjoyed reading all of them.
Letters
Values for the AI Community
Earlier this week, I asked a question on social media: What is the most important problem that the AI community should work on? Thousands of you responded. The most frequently mentioned themes included...
Tech & Society
Retail Surveillance Revealed: How Rite-Aid used face recognition for security
A major retailer’s AI-powered surveillance program apparently targeted poor people and minorities. Rite-Aid, a U.S.-based pharmacy chain, installed face recognition systems in many of its New York and Los Angeles stores.
Tech & Society
AI Steps Up: This prosthetic leg uses AI to learn a human-like stride.
A prosthetic leg that learns from the user’s motion could help amputees walk more naturally. Researchers from the University of Utah designed a robotic leg that uses machine learning to generate a human-like stride.
Letters
Making AI Fair, Accountable, and Reliable
I spoke last week at the National Intergovernmental Audit Forum, a meeting attended by U.S. federal, state, and local government auditors. (Apparently some of the organizers had taken AI for Everyone.)
Tech & Society
Generation Text: How beta testers reacted to GPT-3
People granted early access to OpenAI’s latest language model are raving about its way with words — and more. Beta testers of GPT-3 are showing off the model’s ability to write business memos, craft blogs, pen tweets, and even generate computer code.
Tech & Society
Grade-AI Sushi: How Tuna Scope assesses the quality of sushi-grade fish
Computer vision is helping sushi lovers enjoy top-quality maguro. Japanese restaurant chain Kura Sushi is using a smartphone app called Tuna Scope to grade its suppliers’ offerings, according to the news outlet The Asahi Shimbun.
Tech & Society
AI Against Covid Progress Report: How Chinese authorities used AI to fight Covid
A new report details the role of AI in China’s effort to fight the coronavirus. Researchers at Synced, a China-based AI publication, describe how nearly 90 machine learning products have contributed to the country’s pandemic response.
Tech & Society
AI Makes Headlines: Primer introduces an automated headline generator.
Which headline was written by a computer? A: FIFA to Decide on 2022 World Cup in March B: Decision in March on 48-team 2022 World Cup, Says Infantino
Tech & Society
Monsters in Motion: Source of Madness is an AI-powered Lovecraftian nightmare.
How do you control a video game that generates a host of unique monsters for every match? With machine learning, naturally. The otherworldly creatures in Source of Madness learn how to target players through reinforcement learning.
Letters
A Victory for International Education
Last week, I wrote about the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy that would have forced international students to leave the country if their university went fully online to manage the risk of Covid-19.