The biggest tech trends of 2022, according to over 40 experts — from fastcompany.com by Mark Sullivan
Startup founders, Big Tech execs, VCs, and tech scholars offer their predictions on how Web3, the metaverse, and other emerging ideas will shape the next year.

We asked startup founders, Big Tech execs, VCs, scholars, and other experts to speculate on the coming year within their field of interest. Altogether, we collected more than 40 predictions about 2022. Together, they offer a smart composite look at the things we’re likely to be talking about by this time next year.

 
 

AI bots to user data: Is there space for rights in the metaverse? — from news.trust.org by Sonia Elks
In a virtual world populated by digital characters, privacy and property rights face unprecedented challenges, campaigners say

From virtual goods to AI-powered avatars that can be hired out by companies, a fast-growing digital world is pushing ownership and privacy rights into unchartered territory.

NYC Targets Artificial Intelligence Bias in Hiring Under New Law — from news.bloomberglaw.com by Erin Mulvaney

New York City has a new law on the books—one of the boldest measures of its kind in the country—that aims to curb hiring bias that can occur when businesses use artificial intelligence tools to screen out job candidates.

Employers in the city will be banned from using automated employment decision tools to screen job candidates, unless the technology has been subject to a “bias audit” conducted a year before the use of the tool.

‘Innovation Averse’ Law Schools Risk Missing Out on the Legal Industry’s Regulatory Renaissance — from law.com

“If law professors and legal educators and law school administrators aren’t in tune with how the practice of law is changing, not just in terms of how you deliver legal services, but these new areas that are emerging, then we’re doing a great disservice to our students,” said April Dawson, associate dean of Technology and Innovation at North Carolina Central University School of Law, during the “Redesigning Legal” speaker series panel discussion this week.

 

Top 10 Healthcare Artificial Intelligence News Of 2021 — from medicalfuturist.com by Dr. Bertalan Meskó & Dr. Pranavsingh Dhunnoo

Excerpt:

As 2021 is about to wrap up, we are reflecting on some of the most important news revolving around artificial intelligence (A.I.) in healthcare. These range from the principles laying the groundwork for the safe and effective development of A.I.-powered medical devices to a sober look at the technology’s role in the pandemic. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the top 10 healthcare A.I. news of the year that was.

 

DeepMind Says Its New AI Has Almost the Reading Comprehension of a High Schooler — from futurism.com by Victor Tangermann
A provocative claim!

Excerpt:

Alphabet’s AI research company DeepMind has released the next generation of its language model, and it says that it has close to the reading comprehension of a high schooler — a startling claim.

It says the language model, called Gopher, was able to significantly improve its reading comprehension by ingesting massive repositories of texts online.

 

If the vision of the “Web3” comes to fruition, how might these developments impact the future of lifelong learning? [Christian]

The next age of the internet could suck power away from Big Tech while living on the same backbone as cryptocurrencies. Here’s what to know about Web3. — from businessinsider.com by Katie Canales

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

  • Web3 is the next generation of the internet and will exist on the blockchain.
  • It will be decentralized, meaning it won’t be controlled entities like Facebook or Google.
  • Twitter, GameStop, Reddit, and VC firm a16z are all putting resources into building Web3.

One aspect of the metaverse is that users will hopefully be able to go virtually from platform to platform with one single account — just like we will in Web3. 

And NFTs, one-of-a-kind tokens representing your ownership of a virtual good, could be more easily bought and sold with cryptocurrencies within a space like Web3. 


From DSC:
How might “Web3” translate into the future of lifelong learning? Here’s one vision/possibility:

There could be several entities and services feeding one's cloud-based learner profile

Each person would have a learner profile/account that could seamlessly log into multiple education/training providers’ platforms and services. The results of that learning could be stored in one’s cloud-based learner profile. This type of next-generation learning platform would still need subject matter experts, instructional designers, programmers, and other team members. But the focus would be on building skills — skills that an artificial intelligence-backed interface would demonstrate are currently being requested by the modern workplace.  This constantly-being-updated list of skills could then link to the learning-related experiences and resources that people could choose from in order to develop those skills.

The following vision/graphic also comes to my mind:

Learning from the living class room


 

From DSC:
As I looked at the article below, I couldn’t help but wonder…what is the role of the American Bar Association (ABA) in this type situation? How can the ABA help the United States deal with the impact/place of emerging technologies?


Clearview AI will get a US patent for its facial recognition tech — from engadget.com by J. Fingas
Critics are worried the company is patenting invasive tech.

Excerpt:

Clearview AI is about to get formal acknowledgment for its controversial facial recognition technology. Politico reports Clearview has received a US Patent and Trademark Office “notice of allowance” indicating officials will approve a filing for its system, which scans faces across public internet data to find people from government lists and security camera footage. The company just has to pay administrative fees to secure the patent.

In a Politico interview, Clearview founder Hoan Ton-That claimed this was the first facial recognition patent involving “large-scale internet data.” The firm sells its tool to government clients (including law enforcement) hoping to accelerate searches.

As you might imagine, there’s a concern the USPTO is effectively blessing Clearview’s technology and giving the company a chance to grow despite widespread objections to its technology’s very existence. 

Privacy, news, facial recognition, USPTO, internet, patent,
Clearview AI, surveillance, tomorrow, AI, artificial intelligence

 

Top 7 Artificial Intelligence Trends In 2022 — from techfunnel.com by Anirudh Menon

Excerpt:

If we look at the last couple of years, we have seen a significant leap in the way Artificial Intelligence is becoming an integral part of many organizations’ business plans. Already the journey of digital transformation has catapulted thanks to Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence and because of the pandemic situation, we saw significant innovation in the technology front, which will reach new heights in the year 2022 and further.

As strongly claimed by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google Inc, the impact of artificial intelligence will be far greater than fire and electricity on humanity. Well, it might sound a bit exaggerated but what it implies is that the year 2022 is going to see new developments in this space and it will constantly create new benchmarks.

 

From DSC:
When I ran across the items below, I couldn’t help but wonder…”What does the legal realm need to know here?”

The Ultimate List Of Crypto Lending Platforms — from 101blockchains.com by Diego Geroni

The Ultimate List Of Crypto Lending Platforms

Know The Vulnerabilities And Security Concerns Associated With NFT — from 101blockchains.com by Diego Geroni

Know The Vulnerabilities And Security Concerns Associated With NFT

Radar trends to watch: December 2021 — from oreilly.com by Mike Loukides
Developments in Programming, Quantum Computing, Cryptocurrency, and More

Radar trends to watch: December 2021

NFT sales reached $27 billion this year — from protocol.com by Nat Rubio-Licht
OpenSea dominated the business.

UNISWAP – Know Everything About The Largest Decentralized Exchange (DEX) — from 101blockchains.com by Diego Geroni

UNISWAP – Know Everything About The Largest Decentralized Exchange (DEX)

 

The birds have fled from the bird feeders...

From DSC:
Each day, I try to ensure that there’s enough bird seed in the bird feeders. You see, I’m a bird watcher and I especially enjoy the different kinds of birds in our area as well as appreciating the variety of colors and designs of the birds. But it often perplexes me when the birds fly away when they see motion in our kitchen. They become afraid and in a spirit of looking out for #1, they fly away.

Hmmm. I’m setting out food to help you survive, yet you fly away in fear when I come close.

I wonder if that’s how the LORD feels with me/us sometimes. He provides so richly, deeply, and generously (waaaaayyy more than I do). Yet I can’t help but wonder if He senses our fears, doubts, and our “flying away” from Him at times…? He provides. We fly.

The situation is getting better. And my trying to be faithful helps the birds overcome their anxieties. They are staying on the bird feeder more often, even when they see me approach. It appears that the trust levels are growing. 


Along the lines of bird watching, below is a very cool app I just recently saw. I can use all the help I can get in this area (not to mention a ton of other areas)!

Identify the birds that you see of hear with Merlin Bird ID

 

AI bots to user data: Is there space for rights in the metaverse? — from reuters.com by Sonia Elks

Summary

  • Facebook’s ‘metaverse’ plans fuel debate on virtual world
  • Shared digital spaces raise privacy, ownership questions
  • Rights campaigners urge regulators to widen safeguards

 

 

From DSC:
From my perspective, both of the items below are highly-related to each other:

Let’s Teach Computer Science Majors to Be Good Citizens. The Whole World Depends on It. — from edsurge.com by Anne-Marie Núñez, Matthew J. Mayhew, Musbah Shaheen and Laura S. Dahl

Excerpt:

Change may need to start earlier in the workforce development pipeline. Undergraduate education offers a key opportunity for recruiting students from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic, gender, and disability groups into computing. Yet even broadened participation in college computer science courses may not shift the tech workforce and block bias from seeping into tech tools if students aren’t taught that diversity and ethics are essential to their field of study and future careers.

Computer Science Majors Lack Citizenship Preparation
Unfortunately, those lessons seem to be missing from many computer science programs.

…and an excerpt from Why AI can’t really filter out “hate news” — with thanks to Sam DeBrule for this resource (emphasis DSC):

The incomprehensibility and unexplainability of huge algorithms
Michael Egnor: What terrifies me about artificial intelligence — and I don’t think one can overstate this danger — is that artificial intelligence has two properties that make it particularly deadly in human civilization. One is concealment. Even though every single purpose in artificial intelligence is human, it’s concealed. We don’t really understand it. We don’t understand Google’s algorithms.

There may even be a situation where Google doesn’t understand Google’s algorithms. But all of it comes from the people who run Google. So the concealment is very dangerous. We don’t know what these programs are doing to our culture. And it may be that no one knows, but they are doing things.

Note:Roman Yampolskiy has written about the incomprehensibility and unexplainability of AI: “Human beings are finite in our abilities. For example, our short term memory is about 7 units on average. In contrast, an AI can remember billions of items and AI capacity to do so is growing exponentially. While never infinite in a true mathematical sense, machine capabilities can be considered such in comparison with ours. This is true for memory, compute speed, and communication abilities.” So we have built-in bias and incomprehensibility at the same time.

From DSC:
That part about concealment reminds me that our society depends upon the state of the hearts of the tech leaders. We don’t like to admit that, but it’s true. The legal realm is too far behind to stop the Wild West of technological change. The legal realm is trying to catch up, but they’re coming onto the race track with no cars…just as pedestrians walking or running as fast as they can….all the while, the technological cars are whizzing by. 

The pace has changed significantly and quickly

 

The net effect of all of this is that we are more dependent upon the ethics, morals, and care for their fellow humankind (or not) of the C-Suites out there (especially Facebook/Meta Platforms, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Apple) than we care to admit. Are they producing products and services that aim to help our societies move forward, or are they just trying to make some more bucks? Who — or what — is being served?

The software engineers and software architects are involved here big time as well. “Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.” But that perspective is sometimes in short supply.

 

Timnit Gebru Says Artificial Intelligence Needs to Slow Down — from wired.com by Max Levy
The AI researcher, who left Google last year, says the incentives around AI research are all wrong.

Excerpt:

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCHERS are facing a problem of accountability: How do you try to ensure decisions are responsible when the decision maker is not a responsible person, but rather an algorithm? Right now, only a handful of people and organizations have the power—and resources—to automate decision-making.

Since leaving Google, Gebru has been developing an independent research institute to show a new model for responsible and ethical AI research. The institute aims to answer similar questions as her Ethical AI team, without fraught incentives of private, federal, or academic research—and without ties to corporations or the Department of Defense.

“Our goal is not to make Google more money; it’s not to help the Defense Department figure out how to kill more people more efficiently,” she said.

From DSC:
What does our society need to do to respond to this exponential pace of technological change? And where is the legal realm here?

Speaking of the pace of change…the following quote from The Future Direction And Vision For AI (from marktechpost.com by Imtiaz Adam) speaks to massive changes in this decade as well:

The next generation will feature 5G alongside AI and will lead to a new generation of Tech superstars in addition to some of the existing ones.

In future the variety, volume and velocity of data is likely to substantially increase as we move to the era of 5G and devices at the Edge of the network. The author argues that our experience of development with AI and the arrival of 3G followed by 4G networks will be dramatically overshadowed with the arrival of AI meets 5G and the IoT leading to the rise of the AIoT where the Edge of the network will become key for product and service innovation and business growth.

Also related/see:

 
 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian