Facebook / Meta Platforms

Two items re: the highly negative/dangerous side of AI — at least to me

On 05/10/2023, in 21st century, emerging technologies, engineering, ethics, Facebook / Meta Platforms, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, morals/values, robotics, society, the downsides of how people use tech, United States, by Daniel Christian

ChatGPT scams are the new crypto scams, Meta warns — from engadget.com by Karissa Bell
Meta plans to roll out new “Work Accounts” for businesses to guard against hacks.

Excerpt:

As the buzz around ChatGPT and other generative AI increases, so has scammers’ interest in the tech. In a new report published by Meta, the company says it’s seen a sharp uptick in malware disguised as ChatGPT and similar AI software.

In a statement, the company said that since March of 2023 alone, its researchers have discovered “ten malware families using ChatGPT and other similar themes to compromise accounts across the internet” and that it’s blocked more than 1,000 malicious links from its platform. According to Meta, the scams often involve mobile apps or browser extensions posing as ChatGPT tools. And while in some cases the tools do offer some ChatGPT functionality, their real purpose is to steal their users’ account credentials.

AI Is Reshaping the Battlefield and the Future of Warfare — from bloomberg.com by Jackie Davalos and Nate Lanxon
In this episode of AI IRL, Jackie Davalos and Nate Lanxon talk about one of the most dangerous applications of artificial intelligence: modern warfare

Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence has triggered an arms race with the potential to transform modern-day warfare. Countries are vying to develop cutting-edge technology at record speed, sparking concerns about whether we understand its power before it’s deployed.

From DSC:
I wish that humankind — especially those of us in the United States — would devote less money to warfare and more funding to education.

Radar Trends to Watch: May 2023 Developments in Programming, Security, Web, and More [Loukides]

On 05/02/2023, in Amazon, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), computer science, Facebook / Meta Platforms, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, platforms, programming, tools, trends, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, web design and production, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

Radar Trends to Watch: May 2023 Developments in Programming, Security, Web, and More — from oreilly.com by Mike Loukides

Excerpt:

Large language models continue to colonize the technology landscape. They’ve broken out of the AI category, and now are showing up in security, programming, and even the web. That’s a natural progression, and not something we should be afraid of: they’re not coming for our jobs. But they are remaking the technology industry.

One part of this remaking is the proliferation of “small” large language models. We’ve noted the appearance of llama.cpp, Alpaca, Vicuna, Dolly 2.0, Koala, and a few others. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Small LLMs are appearing every day, and some will even run in a web browser. This trend promises to be even more important than the rise of the “large” LLMs, like GPT-4. Only a few organizations can build, train, and run the large LLMs. But almost anyone can train a small LLM that will run on a well-equipped laptop or desktop.

Major announcements from a key vendor in the AI space — NVIDIA

On 03/21/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, 3D, A/V -- audio/visual, art, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, creativity, design, emerging technologies, engineering, entrepreneurship, Facebook / Meta Platforms, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, Holographic comms, human-computer interaction (HCI), immersion, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, languages and translation, media/film, Metaverse, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), new business models, NVIDIA, online media, pace of change, personalized/customized learning, platforms, society, technology (general), tools, United States, user experience (UX), vendors, Virtual courts and law firms, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, visualizing information, web-based collaboration, Web3, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Explore Breakthroughs in AI, Accelerated Computing, and Beyond at GTC — from nvidia.com
The Conference for the Era of AI and the Metaverse

Addendums on 3/22/23:

Generative AI for Enterprises — from nvidia.com
Custom-built for a new era of innovation and automation.

Excerpt:

Impacting virtually every industry, generative AI unlocks a new frontier of opportunities—for knowledge and creative workers—to solve today’s most important challenges. NVIDIA is powering generative AI through an impressive suite of cloud services, pre-trained foundation models, as well as cutting-edge frameworks, optimized inference engines, and APIs to bring intelligence to your enterprise applications.

NVIDIA AI Foundations is a set of cloud services that advance enterprise-level generative AI and enable customization across use cases in areas such as text (NVIDIA NeMo™), visual content (NVIDIA Picasso), and biology (NVIDIA BioNeMo™). Unleash the full potential with NeMo, Picasso, and BioNeMo cloud services, powered by NVIDIA DGX™ Cloud—the AI supercomputer.

Some example plusses and minuses of technology

On 12/22/2022, in Facebook / Meta Platforms, privacy, society, by Daniel Christian

On the plus side:

Automation & Higher Ed — from prawfsblawg.blogs.com by Orly Lobel

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

I was delighted to see this thoughtful review of my new book The Equality Machine in Inside Higher Ed focused on some of the questions nearest and dearest to prawfs’ hearts: the future of the professor and higher education as AI becomes more and more part of our learning and teaching. In The Equality Machine, I have a chapter that considers robots and automation in education but does not delve into universities and higher ed. Here’s [an excerpt from] the review:

If the dream of creating high-quality/low-cost scaled online programs is ever to be realized, artificial intelligence—AI—will likely be the key enabling technology. The job of the AI in a scaled (high-enrollment) online course will be to optimally connect the instructor to the learner. The AI will determine when the human instructor should coach, encourage and engage with the learner—and when to hold back. The professor and the AI will collaborate to scale the relational model of learning that is the secret sauce of effective instructional practices.

Integrating faculty and AI to scale quality online learning is, to my knowledge, today more an idea than a reality. After reading The Equality Machine, however, I’m more hopeful than ever that this vision will come to fruition. While not focusing on higher education, the book provides enough examples of the transformative powers of digital technology to enhance human flourishing that some level of academic techno-optimism may be warranted.

ChatGPT doesn’t just write your students’ essays for you.

20 ways ChatGPT can help you teach/learn

? /startthread

1. Ask ChatGPT to write your lesson plans. (Or at least to get some new ideas.)

— Matt Miller (@jmattmiller) December 19, 2022

.

On the negative side:

DC: This is where technology can go horribly wrong. Actually, it’s often not our tools…it’s how we use them — that’s the opportunity or that’s the problem.https://t.co/LovpGdeu7V

— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) December 21, 2022

A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook? — from technologyreview.com
Robot vacuum companies say your images are safe, but a sprawling global supply chain for data from our devices creates risk.

We Haven’t Seen the Worst of Fake News — from theatlantic.com by Matteo Wong; behind paywall
Deepfakes still might be poised to corrupt the basic ways we process reality—or what’s left of it.

From DSC:
It seems to me one of the key potential values that journalism can provide us with is finding out and reporting on the truth. On curating items that are true.

The Spawn of ChatGPT Will Try to Sell You Things — from wired.com by Will Knight
Companies are exploring how to adapt powerful new chatbot technology to negotiate with customer service—and to persuade humans to buy stuff.

Excerpt:

ChatGPT, the recently viral and surprisingly articulate chatbot, has dazzled the internet with its ability to dutifully answer all sorts of knotty questions—albeit not always accurately. Some people are now trying to adapt the bot’s eloquence to play different roles. They hope to harness the AI like that behind ChatGPT to create programs that can persuade, cajole, and badger with super-human tenacity—in some cases to empower consumers but in others to win sales.

Radar Trends to Watch: December 2022 [Loukides]

On 12/10/2022, in art, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Blockchain, collaboration, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, copyright/ownership/NFTs, cryptocurrencies, emerging technologies, Facebook / Meta Platforms, IBM, internet, programming, social learning / networks, social media, by Daniel Christian

Radar Trends to Watch: December 2022 — from oreilly.com by Mike Loukides
Developments in Security, Cryptocurrency, Web, and More

Excerpt:

This month’s news has been overshadowed by the implosion of SBF’s TFX and the possible implosion of Elon Musk’s Twitter. All the noise doesn’t mean that important things aren’t happening. Many companies, organizations, and individuals are wrestling with the copyright implications of generative AI. Google is playing a long game: they believe that the goal isn’t to imitate art works, but to build better user interfaces for humans to collaborate with AI so they can create something new. Facebook’s AI for playing Diplomacy is an exciting new development. Diplomacy requires players to negotiate with other players, assess their mental state, and decide whether or not to honor their commitments. None of these are easy tasks for an AI. And IBM now has a 433 Qubit quantum chip–an important step towards making a useful quantum processor.

Artificial Intelligence in Video Production [Anderson]

On 10/09/2022, in 21st century, art, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, creativity, design, digital storytelling, digital video, experimentation, Facebook / Meta Platforms, Google, graphics, media/film, storytelling, by Daniel Christian

Artificial Intelligence in Video Production — from provideocoalition.com by Iain Anderson

Introduction

Artificial Intelligence has promised so much for so long, and in many ways, it’s been less than perfect. Siri doesn’t quite understand what you’re asking; Google Translate can’t yet seamlessly bridge the gap between languages, and navigation software still doesn’t always offer an accurate route. But it’s getting pretty good. While a variety of AI-based technologies have been improving steadily over the past several years, it’s the recent giant strides made in image generation that’s potentially groundbreaking for post production professionals. Here, I’ll take you through the ideas behind the tech, along with specific examples of how modern, smart technology will change your post workflow tomorrow, or could today.

Also relevant/see:

Google’s newest AI generator creates HD video from text prompts — from arstechnica.com by Benj Edwards
Not to be outdone by Meta, Google’s AI generator can output 1280×768 HD video at 24 fps.
Google demos two new text-to-video AI systems, focusing on quality and length — from theverge.com by James Vincent

Radar Trends to Watch: October 2022 — from oreilly.com by Mike Loukides
Developments in Machine Learning, Metaverse, Web3, and More

Excerpt:

September was a busy month. In addition to continued fascination over art generation with DALL-E and friends, and the questions they pose for intellectual property, we see interesting things happening with machine learning for low-powered processors: using attention, mechanisms, along with a new microcontroller that can run for a week on a single AA battery. In other parts of the technical universe, “platform engineering” has been proposed as an alternative to both DevOps and SRE. We’ve seen demonstrations of SQL injection-like attacks against GPT-3; and companies including Starbucks, Chipotle, and Universal Studios are offering NFT-based loyalty programs. (In addition to a Chipotle’s steak grilling demo in the Metaverse.)

Also relevant/see:

General AI News — from essentials.news

OpenAI Says DALL-E Is Generating Over 2 Million Images a Day—and That’s Just Table Stakes [Dorrier]

On 10/04/2022, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, design, digital video, disruption, emerging technologies, Facebook / Meta Platforms, graphics, media/film, open courseware and systems, vendors, by Daniel Christian

OpenAI Says DALL-E Is Generating Over 2 Million Images a Day—and That’s Just Table Stakes — from singularityhub.com by Jason Dorrier

Excerpt:

The venerable stock image site, Getty, boasts a catalog of 80 million images. Shutterstock, a rival of Getty, offers 415 million images. It took a few decades to build up these prodigious libraries.

Now, it seems we’ll have to redefine prodigious. In a blog post last week, OpenAI said its machine learning algorithm, DALL-E 2, is generating over two million images a day. At that pace, its output would equal Getty and Shutterstock combined in eight months. The algorithm is producing almost as many images daily as the entire collection of free image site Unsplash.

And that was before OpenAI opened DALL-E 2 to everyone.

Here’s a look at what DALL·E 2 can do. ???

Want to see more? Follow along on Instagram: https://t.co/eKejIFxWdn

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) April 6, 2022

From DSC:
Further on down that Tweet is this example image — wow!
.

.

On the video side of things, also relevant/see:

Meta’s new text-to-video AI generator is like DALL-E for video — from theverge.com by James Vincent
Just type a description and the AI generates matching footage

A sample video generated by Meta’s new AI text-to-video model, Make-A-Video. The text prompt used to create the video was “a teddy bear painting a portrait.” Image: Meta

From DSC:
Hmmm…I wonder…how might these emerging technologies impact copyrights, intellectual property, and/or other types of legal matters and areas?

Some developments in Web 3.0, holographic communications, & some top XR vendors majoring in education

On 09/23/2022, in 3D, A/V -- audio/visual, Alternatives, Augmented Reality (AR), Blockchain, communications, emerging technologies, Europe, Facebook / Meta Platforms, immersion, Metaverse, Microsoft, telecommunications, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, Web3, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

Top 5 Developments in Web 3.0 We Will See in the Next Five Years — from intelligenthq.com

Excerpt:

Today, websites have turned highly engaging, and the internet is full of exciting experiences. Yet, web 3.0 is coming with noteworthy trends and things to look out for.

Here are the top 5 developments in web 3.0 expected in the coming five years.
.

European telco giants collaborate on 5G-powered holographic videocalls — from inavateonthenet.net

Excerpt:

Some of Europe’s biggest telecoms operators have joined forces for a pilot project that aims to make holographic calls as simple and straightforward as a phone call.

Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone are working with holographic presence company Matsuko to develop an easy-to-use platform for immersive 3D experiences that could transform communications and the virtual events market

Advances in connectivity, thanks to 5G and edge computing technology, allow smooth and natural movement of holograms and make the possibility of easy-to-access holographic calls a reality.
.

Top XR Vendors Majoring in Education for 2022 — from xrtoday.com

Excerpt:

Few things are more important than delivering the right education to individuals around the globe. Whether enlightening a new generation of young students, or empowering professionals in a complex business environment, learning is the key to building a better future.

In recent years, we’ve discovered just how powerful technology can be in delivering information to those who need it most. The cloud has paved the way for a new era of collaborative remote learning, while AI tools and automated systems are assisting educators in their tasks. XR has the potential to be one of the most disruptive new technologies in the educational space.

With Extended Reality technology, training professionals can deliver incredible experiences to students all over the globe, without the risks or resource requirements of traditional education. Today, we’re looking at just some of the major vendors leading the way to a future of immersive learning.

The Metaverse Will Reshape Our Lives. Let’s Make Sure It’s for the Better. — from time.com by Matthew Ball

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

The metaverse, a 30-year-old term but nearly century-old idea, is forming around us. Every few decades, a platform shift occurs—such as that from mainframes to PCs and the internet, or the subsequent evolution to mobile and cloud computing. Once a new era has taken shape, it’s incredibly difficult to alter who leads it and how. But between eras, those very things usually do change. If we hope to build a better future, then we must be as aggressive about shaping it as are those who are investing to build it.

The next evolution to this trend seems likely to be a persistent and “living” virtual world that is not a window into our life (such as Instagram) nor a place where we communicate it (such as Gmail) but one in which we also exist—and in 3D (hence the focus on immersive VR headsets and avatars).

Facebook Seems to Be Adding Video-Course Features. For Edtech, That Raises Old Fears. [Mollenkamp]

On 06/22/2022, in Alternatives, Facebook / Meta Platforms, heutagogy, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, online media, online tutoring, platforms, tools, vendors, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Facebook Seems to Be Adding Video-Course Features. For Edtech, That Raises Old Fears. — from edsurge.com by Daniel Mollenkamp

Excerpts:

The tech giant Meta, widely known under its previous name Facebook, seems to be eyeing a way to allow users to offer video classes.

Since at least last year, Meta has experimented with Facebook Classes, a program designed to make online instruction through its platform smoother. A consultant recently noticed a company announcement about the features in the U.K. version of the platform and shared a screenshot on Twitter.

New! Facebook Classes for Events

‘Classes’ is new event type which can be selected when creating a new online event on Facebook.

It aims to make it easier to instruct and discover a class on Facebook pic.twitter.com/L0BvBuTXkM

— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) January 21, 2021

The company did not respond to questions about the program. But recent reports have speculated that the company could “bootstrap an online course ecosystem.”

Meta’s learning offering could be most trouble for other tech behemoths like Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams, according to some speculations.

Either way, Meta’s possible entrance into the market plays into a long-standing fear of big tech in the edtech industry.

Radar Trends to Watch: June 2022 [O’Reilly]

On 06/03/2022, in 21st century, Amazon, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, ethics, Facebook / Meta Platforms, Google, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, internet, IT in HE, NVIDIA, platforms, programming, robotics, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Radar Trends to Watch: June 2022 — from oreilly.com

Excerpt:

The explosion of large models continues. Several developments are especially noteworthy. DeepMind’s Gato model is unique in that it’s a single model that’s trained for over 600 different tasks; whether or not it’s a step towards general intelligence (the ensuing debate may be more important than the model itself), it’s an impressive achievement. Google Brain’s Imagen creates photorealistic images that are impressive, even after you’ve seen what DALL-E 2 can do. And Allen AI’s Macaw (surely an allusion to Emily Bender and Timnit Gebru’s Stochastic Parrots paper) is open source, one tenth the size of GPT-3, and claims to be more accurate. Facebook/Meta is also releasing an open source large language model, including the model’s training log, which records in detail the work required to train it.

The AR Roundup: April 2022 [Emrich]

On 05/03/2022, in A/V -- audio/visual, Augmented Reality (AR), communities of practice, corporate / business world, emerging technologies, Facebook / Meta Platforms, marketing/social marketing, marketplaces, Metaverse, vendors, web-based collaboration, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

The AR Roundup: April 2022 — from linkedin.com by Tom Emrich

Excerpts:

Every month I round up what you may have missed in Augmented Reality including the latest stats, funding news and launch announcements and more. Here is what happened in augmented reality between April 1-30, 2022.

The amazing opportunities of AI in the future of the educational metaverse [Darbinyan]

On 04/29/2022, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, distance education, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, Facebook / Meta Platforms, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, immersion, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, languages and translation, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, learning spaces, library / librarians, lifelong learning, Metaverse, Michigan, more voice more choice more control, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), NVIDIA, online learning, personalized/customized learning, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, United States, universities, virtual field trips, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, visualizing information, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, wearables, web-based collaboration, Web3, by Daniel Christian

The amazing opportunities of AI in the future of the educational metaverse — from forbes.com by Rem Darbinyan

Excerpt:

Looking ahead, let’s go over several potential AI-backed applications of the metaverse that can empower the education industry in many ways.

Multilingual Learning Opportunities
Language differences may be a real challenge for students from different cultures as they may not be able to understand and keep up with the materials and assignments. Artificial intelligence, VR and AR technologies can enhance multilingual accessibility for learners no matter where they are in the world. Speech-to-text, text-to-speech and machine translation technologies enrich the learning process and create more immersive learning environments.
…
AI can process multiple languages simultaneously and provide real-time translations, enabling learners to engage with the materials in the language of their choice. With the ability to instantly transcribe speech across multiple languages, artificial intelligence removes any language barriers for students, enabling them to be potentially involved, learn and communicate in any language.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education Market size exceeded USD 1 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 40% between 2021 and 2027. (source)

Along the lines of innovation within our educational learning ecosystems, see:

3 Questions for Coursera’s Betty Vandenbosch & U-M’s Lauren Atkins Budde on XR — from insidehighered.com by Joshua Kiim
How might extended reality shape the future of learning?

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

[Lauren Atkins Budde] “Being able to embed quality, effective extended reality experiences into online courses is exponentially a game-changer. One of the persistent constraints of online learning, especially at scale, is how do learners get hands-on practice? How do they experience specific contexts and situations? How do they learn things that are best experienced? XR provides that opportunity for actively doing different kinds of tasks, in various environments, in ways that would otherwise not be possible. It will open up Lauren Atkins Buddeboth how we teach online and also what we teach online.”
…
These courses are really exciting and cover a broad range of disciplines, which is particularly important. To choose the right subjects, we did an extensive review of insights from industry partners, learners and market research on in-demand and emerging future-of-work skills and then paired that with content opportunities where immersive learning is really a value-add and creates what our learning experience designers call “embodied learning.”

Addendum on 5/1/22:
Can the Metaverse Improve Learning? New Research Finds Some Promise — from edsurge.com by Jeffrey R. Young

“The findings support a deeper understanding of how creating unique educational experiences that feel real (i.e., create a high level of presence) through immersive technology can influence learning through different affective and cognitive processes including enjoyment and interest,” Mayer and his colleagues write.

“WayRay’s AR Car Display Could Change Driving Forever” [Melnick] + several other resources re: AR, MR, VR, XR

On 04/07/2022, in Augmented Reality (AR), creativity, digital storytelling, engineering, entrepreneurship, Facebook / Meta Platforms, health, journalism, new media literacies, story, storytelling, wearables, XR - extended reality, youth, by Daniel Christian

WayRay’s AR Car Display Could Change Driving Forever — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick

How One Hospital Is Using An AR Bear To Calm Young Patients — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick

Excerpt:

Children’s Health of Orange County (CHOCK), a children’s hospital located in Orange County, California, has transformed its lovable mascot ‘Choco’ into an AR (augmented reality) experience that walks children through the steps of a standard MRI scan. The idea is that by familiarizing younger patients with the process, they’ll feel more comfortable during the actual procedure.

Arizona State Launching New VR/AR Classes, Nonny De La Peña To Helm — by Darragh Dandurand

Excerpt:

The Center for Narrative and Emerging Media (NEM) will be housed in Downtown Los Angeles in the Herald Examiner Building, newly renovated to welcome faculty, staff, and students. NEM’s goal is to teach and support students, from reporters to artists to entrepreneurs and engineers, who are pursuing careers across the burgeoning creative technology sector.

Why Meta decided against an open VR app store — from protocol.com by Janko Roettgers and Nick Statt

Learning Ecosystems

Two items re: the highly negative/dangerous side of AI — at least to me

Some example plusses and minuses of technology

On the plus side:

On the negative side:

Some developments in Web 3.0, holographic communications, & some top XR vendors majoring in education

The Metaverse Will Reshape Our Lives. Let’s Make Sure It’s for the Better. [Ball]

Facebook Seems to Be Adding Video-Course Features. For Edtech, That Raises Old Fears. [Mollenkamp]

The AR Roundup: April 2022 [Emrich]

“WayRay’s AR Car Display Could Change Driving Forever” [Melnick] + several other resources re: AR, MR, VR, XR

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