Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and the future of…everything [Hamblen]

On 04/14/2021, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, corporate / business world, data related items, emerging technologies, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, innovation, internet, IT in HE, technology (general), telecommunications, by Daniel Christian

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and the future of…everything — from fierceelectronics.com by Matt Hamblen

Excerpt:

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed his reputation as a futurist, predicting every single car, truck, cell tower—indeed every single edge device—will in effect be a data center in a decade.

He also said in a call with reporters on Tuesday that the chip shortage hurting automakers will sort itself out in a couple of years.

The concept of edge devices acting with the capabilities of a data center might not be completely new, but Huang cemented it.

“Every single data center will have its infrastructure computing platform isolated from the application platform in five or 10 years,” he told reporters as part of the company’s GTC21 event. “It’s going to be complete. Every single edge device will be a data center…Every single cell tower will be a data center, every base station…Every single car… truck, shuttle will be a data center.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook: AR Is “Critically Important” For The Company’s Future [Carlton]

On 04/11/2021, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, 3D, A/V -- audio/visual, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), communications, computer science, corporate universities / corporate training, education, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, future, future of higher education, generational differences, higher education, ideas, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Mixed Reality (MR), mobile learning, mobile technologies, programming, technologies for your home, tools, training / L&D, vision/possibilities, wearables, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

Apple CEO Tim Cook: AR Is “Critically Important” For The Company’s Future — from vrscout.com by Bobby Carlton

Excerpts:

When the subject of AR and it’s potential came up, Cook said “You and I are having a great conversation right now. Arguably, it could even be better if we were able to augment our discussion with charts or other things to appear.”

In Cook’s opinion, AR will change the way we communicate with our friends, colleagues, and family. It’ll reshape communication in fields such as health, education, gaming, and retail. “I’m already seeing AR take off in some of these areas with use of the phone. And I think the promise is even greater in the future,” said Cook.

Also see:

How Extended Reality Tools Can Bring New Life to Higher Education — from by Soulaymane Kachani

And it is not enough to try to use existing VR/XR applications and tailor them to educational scenarios. These tools can and should be created with pedagogy, student experience, and learning outcomes as the priority.

Pro:

AI-powered chatbots automate IT help at Dartmouth — from edscoop.com by Ryan Johnston

Excerpt:

To prevent a backlog of IT requests and consultations during the coronavirus pandemic, Dartmouth College has started relying on AI-powered chatbots to act as an online service desk for students and faculty alike, the school said Wednesday.

Since last fall, the Hanover, New Hampshire, university’s roughly 6,600 students and 900 faculty have been able to consult with “Dart” — the virtual assistant’s name — to ask IT or service-related questions related to the school’s technology. More than 70% of the time, their question is resolved by the chatbot, said Muddu Sudhakar, the co-founder and CEO of Aisera, the company behind the software.

Con:

The Foundations of AI Are Riddled With Errors — from wired.com by Will Knight
The labels attached to images used to train machine-vision systems are often wrong. That could mean bad decisions by self-driving cars and medical algorithms.

Excerpt:

“What this work is telling the world is that you need to clean the errors out,”says Curtis Northcutt, a PhD student at MIT who led the new work.“Otherwise the models that you think are the best for your real-world business problem could actually be wrong.”

How a Discriminatory Algorithm Wrongly Accused Thousands of Families of Fraud [Geiger]

On 03/26/2021, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, emerging technologies, ethics, Europe, law schools, legal reform, legislatures / government / legal, morals/values, policy, political science, society, sociology, the downsides of how people use tech, United States, by Daniel Christian

How a Discriminatory Algorithm Wrongly Accused Thousands of Families of Fraud — from vice.com by Gabriel Geiger; with thanks to Sam DeBrule for this resource
Dutch tax authorities used algorithms to automate an austere and punitive war on low-level fraud—the results were catastrophic.

Excerpt:

Last month, Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte—along with his entire cabinet—resigned after a year and a half of investigations revealed that since 2013, 26,000 innocent families were wrongly accused of social benefits fraud partially due to a discriminatory algorithm.

Forced to pay back money they didn’t owe, many families were driven to financial ruin, and some were torn apart. Others were left with lasting mental health issues; people of color were disproportionately the victims.

On a more positive note, Sam DeBrule (in his Machine Learnings e-newsletter) also notes the following article:

Can artificial intelligence combat wildfires? Sonoma County tests new technology — from latimes.com by Alex Wigglesworth

14th Annual Edition | 2021 Tech Trends Report — from the Future Today Institute

Our 2021 Tech Trends Report is designed to help you confront deep uncertainty, adapt and thrive. For this year’s edition, the magnitude of new signals required us to create 12 separate volumes, and each report focuses on a cluster of related trends. In total, we’ve analyzed nearly 500 technology and science trends across multiple industry sectors. In each volume, we discuss the disruptive forces, opportunities and strategies that will drive your organization in the near future.

Now, more than ever, your organization should examine the potential near and long-term impact of tech trends. You must factor the trends in this report into your strategic thinking for the coming year, and adjust your planning, operations and business models accordingly. But we hope you will make time for creative exploration. From chaos, a new world will come.

Some example items noted in this report:

Natural language processing is an area experiencing high interest, investment, and growth.
+ No-code or low-code systems are unlocking new use cases for businesses.
Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google Cloud’s low-code and no-code offerings will trickle down to everyday people, allowing them to create their own artificial intelligence applications and deploy them as easily as they could a website.
The race is on to capture AI cloudshare—and to become the most trusted provider of AI on remote servers.
COVID-19 accelerated the use of AI in drug discovery last year. The first trial of an AI-discovered drug is underway in Japan.

Items re: AI — via Sam DeBrule’s “Machine Learnings” e-Newsletter

On 03/22/2021, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), change, emerging technologies, ethics, legislatures / government / legal, morals/values, parents/guardians, platforms, political science, privacy, society, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, United States, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
The items below are from Sam DeBrule’s Machine Learnings e-Newsletter.

#Awesome

“Sonoma County is adding artificial intelligence to its wildfire-fighting arsenal. The county has entered into an agreement with the South Korean firm Alchera to outfit its network of fire-spotting cameras with software that detects wildfire activity and then alerts authorities. The technology sifts through past and current images of terrain and searches for certain changes, such as flames burning in darkness, or a smoky haze obscuring a tree-lined hillside, according to Chris Godley, the county’s director of emergency management…The software will use feedback from humans to refine its algorithm and will eventually be able to detect fires on its own — or at least that’s what county officials hope.” – Alex Wigglesworth Learn More from Los Angeles Times >

#Not Awesome

Hacked Surveillance Camera Firm Shows Staggering Scale of Facial Recognition — from
A hacked customer list shows that facial recognition company Verkada is deployed in tens of thousands of schools, bars, stores, jails, and other businesses around the country.

Excerpt:

Hackers have broken into Verkada, a popular surveillance and facial recognition camera company, and managed to access live feeds of thousands of cameras across the world, as well as siphon a Verkada customer list. The breach shows the astonishing reach of facial recognition-enabled cameras in ordinary workplaces, bars, parking lots, schools, stores, and more.

The staggering list includes K-12 schools, seemingly private residences marked as “condos,” shopping malls, credit unions, multiple universities across America and Canada, pharmaceutical companies, marketing agencies, pubs and bars, breweries, a Salvation Army center, churches, the Professional Golfers Association, museums, a newspaper’s office, airports, and more.

Two items re: AI — and one not positive at all

On 03/19/2021, in 21st century, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), computer science, data related items, Facebook / Meta Platforms, political science, programming, the downsides of how people use tech, youth, by Daniel Christian

How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation — from technologyreview.com by Karen Hao

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

By the time thousands of rioters stormed the US Capitol in January, organized in part on Facebook and fueled by the lies about a stolen election that had fanned out across the platform, it was clear from my conversations that the Responsible AI team had failed to make headway against misinformation and hate speech because it had never made those problems its main focus. More important, I realized, if it tried to, it would be set up for failure.

The reason is simple. Everything the company does and chooses not to do flows from a single motivation: Zuckerberg’s relentless desire for growth. Quiñonero’s AI expertise supercharged that growth. His team got pigeonholed into targeting AI bias, as I learned in my reporting, because preventing such bias helps the company avoid proposed regulation that might, if passed, hamper that growth. Facebook leadership has also repeatedly weakened or halted many initiatives meant to clean up misinformation on the platform because doing so would undermine that growth.

In other words, the Responsible AI team’s work—whatever its merits on the specific problem of tackling AI bias—is essentially irrelevant to fixing the bigger problems of misinformation, extremism, and political polarization. And it’s all of us who pay the price.

Artificial Intelligence In 2021: Five Trends You May (or May Not) Expect — from forbes.com by Nisha Talagala

The future of work after COVID-19 [McKinsey & Co.]

On 03/06/2021, in analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, bots, career development, change, changing business models, computer science, data related items, engineering, entrepreneurship, Europe, future, health, India, leadership, lifelong learning, programming, society, strategy, UK, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

The future of work after COVID-19 — from mckinsey.com

Excerpts:

This report on the future of work after COVID-19 is the first of three MGI reports that examine aspects of the postpandemic economy. The others look at the pandemic’s long-term influence on consumption and the potential for a broad recovery led by enhanced productivity and innovation. Here, we assess the lasting impact of the pandemic on labor demand, the mix of occupations, and the workforce skills required in eight countries with diverse economic and labor market models: China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Together, these eight countries account for almost half the global population and 62 percent of GDP.

A wave of billion-dollar computer vision startups is coming [Toews]

On 03/04/2021, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, change, corporate / business world, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, future, innovation, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

A wave of billion-dollar computer vision startups is coming — from forbes.com by Rob Toews

Excerpt:

Today, computer vision is finding applications across every sector of the economy. From agriculture to retail, from insurance to construction, entrepreneurs are applying computer vision to a wide range of industry-specific use cases with compelling economic upside.

Expect to see many computer vision startups among the next generation of “unicorns.” A crop of high-growth computer vision companies is nearing an inflection point, poised to break out to commercial scale and mainstream prominence. It is an exciting and pivotal time in the technology’s journey from research to market.

Whistleblowers: Software Bug Keeping Hundreds Of Inmates In Arizona Prisons Beyond Release Dates [kjzz.org]

On 03/01/2021, in Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, computer science, culture, platforms, programming, society, tools, United States, by Daniel Christian

Whistleblowers: Software Bug Keeping Hundreds Of Inmates In Arizona Prisons Beyond Release Dates— from kjzz.org

Excerpt:

According to Arizona Department of Corrections whistleblowers, hundreds of incarcerated people who should be eligible for release are being held in prison because the inmate management software cannot interpret current sentencing laws.

KJZZ is not naming the whistleblowers because they fear retaliation. The employees said they have been raising the issue internally for more than a year, but prison administrators have not acted to fix the software bug. The sources said Chief Information Officer Holly Greene and Deputy Director Joe Profiri have been aware of the problem since 2019.

The Arizona Department of Corrections confirmed there is a problem with the software.

The Triple Threat Facing Generalist Law Firms, Part 2: Legal Tech [Hollar Barnard]

On 02/24/2021, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, society, trends, United States, videoconferencing, Virtual courts and law firms, by Daniel Christian

The Triple Threat Facing Generalist Law Firms, Part 2: Legal Tech — from jdsupra.com by Katherine Hollar Barnard

Excerpts:

In Legaltech, a Walmart associate general counsel estimated the product provided a 60 to 80 percent time savings. That’s great news for Walmart – less so for lawyers who bill by the hour.
…
Sterling Miller, the former general counsel of Marketo, Inc., Sabre Corporation and Travelocity.com, made a compelling case for why law firm clients are turning to technology: In-house lawyers are incentivized to find the most efficient, lowest-cost way to do things. Many law firm lawyers are incentivized to do just the opposite.

To be sure, software is unlikely to replace lawyers altogether; legal minds are essential for strategy, and robots have yet to be admitted to the bar. However, technology’s impact on an industry dominated by the billable hour will be profound.

Also see:

Judge John Tran spearheaded adoption of tech to facilitate remote hearings and helped train lawyers — from abajournal.com by Stephanie Francis Ward; with thanks to Gabe Teninbaum for this resource

Excerpt:

If you need a judge who can be counted on to research all courtroom technology offerings that can help proceedings continue during the COVID-19 pandemic, look no further than John Tran of the Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia.

After the Virginia Supreme Court issued an order June 22 stating that remote proceedings should be used to conduct as much business as possible, Tran offered webinars to help lawyers with the Fairfax Bar Association get up to speed with Webex, the platform the court uses for remote proceedings.

“When Webex has a news release, he’s all over that. He’s already had a private demo. He is one of a small number of exceptionally tech-savvy judges,” says Sharon Nelson, a Fairfax attorney and co-founder and president of the digital forensics firm Sensei Enterprises.

AI in the Legal Industry: 3 Impacts and 3 Obstacles [exigent-group.com]

On 02/20/2021, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, culture, emerging technologies, innovation, law schools, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, trends, using teams, vendors, by Daniel Christian

AI in the Legal Industry: 3 Impacts and 3 Obstacles — from exigent-group.com

Excerpt:

In this article, we’ll talk about three current impacts AI has had on the legal industry as well as three obstacles it needs to overcome before we see widespread adoption.

Consider JPMorgan’s Contract Intelligence (COIN) software. Rather than rely on lawyers to pour over their commercial loan contracts, the banking giant now uses COIN to review these documents for risk, accuracy and eligibility. Not only does this save JPMorgan 360,000 hours per year in contract review, it also results in fewer errors. One can also look to major law firms like DLA Piper, which now regularly rely on AI for M&A due diligence. At Exigent, we’ve had first-hand experience using AI to support document analysis for our clients as well.

2. Legal departments need to build cross-functional expertise
…bringing greater diversity into the legal department is essential if the efficiencies promised by AI in the legal industry are to be realized.

Fortunately, some legal departments have begun to bring data scientists on board in addition to lawyers. And the industry is beginning to open up to hybrid roles, like legal technologists, legal knowledge engineers, legal analysts and other cross-functional experts. It’s clear that a greater diversity of skills are in the legal department’s future; it’s just a matter of how smoothly the transition goes.

Categories

Tags