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“Wall Street jobs won’t be spared from automation” + 22 other resources containing predictions for our future

On 12/22/2016, in Amazon, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, biology, bots, business, career development, communications, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, data related items, design, emerging technologies, engineering, future, game-changing environment, Google, graphics, health, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, internet, IT in HE, machine-to-machine communications, Microsoft, multimedia, platforms, play, robotics, tools, trends, user experience (UX), vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, web design and production, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Wall Street Jobs Won’t Be Spared from Automation — from hbr.stfi.re by Thomas H. Davenport

Excerpt:

Some conference participants were concerned that this beleaguered region might grow. In fact, one attendee — an old friend who strategizes about technology for a big New York bank — commented that perhaps Wall Street would become “the new Rust Belt.” His concern was that automation of the finance industry would hollow out jobs in that field in the same way that robotics and other technologies have reduced manufacturing employment.

This is a sobering prospect, but there is plenty of evidence that it’s a real possibility. Key aspects of the finance industry have already been automated to a substantial degree. Jobs in the New York finance field have been declining for several years. According to data from research firm Coalition Ltd., more than 10,000 “front-office producer” jobs have been lost within the top 10 banks since 2011. Coalition also suggests that global fixed-income headcount has fallen 31% since 2011.

Predictions for 2017: How Will the Digital World of Work Transform HR? — from hrdailyadvisor.blr.com

Excerpt:

According to a new report, organizations are moving away from hierarchies, focusing on improving the employee experience, redesigning training, and reinventing the role of HR.

Business and HR leaders should rethink almost all of their management and HR practices as the proliferation of digital technologies transform the way organizations work, according to predictions for 2017 from Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP.

This year’s report includes 11 predictions about rapid technological, structural, and cultural changes that will reshape the world of work, including management, HR, and the markets for HR and workplace technology.

Artificial intelligence has a big year ahead — from cnet.com by Stepehn Shankland
In 2017, AI won’t just be for the nerdy companies. Machine learning can help with mortgage applications and bridge safety, too.

Excerpt:

Get ready for AI to show up where you’d least expect it.

In 2016, tech companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft launched dozens of products and services powered by artificial intelligence. Next year will be all about the rest of the business world embracing AI.

Artificial intelligence is a 60-year-old term, and its promise has long seemed like it was forever over the horizon. But new hardware, software, services and expertise means it’s finally real — even though companies will still need plenty of human brain power to get it working.

AI was one of the hottest trends in tech this year, and it’s only poised to get bigger. You’ve already brushed up against AI: It screens out spam, organizes your digital photos and transcribes your spoken text messages. In 2017, it will spread beyond digital doodads to mainstream businesses.

2017 Design Trends: Predictions from Top Creatives — howdesign.com by Callie Budrick

Excerpt:

The design world has seen its own changes and updates as well. And as we know, change is the only constant. We’ve asked some of the top creatives to share what 2017 design trends they think will be headed our way.

MapR Executive Chairman and Founder John Schroeder Identifies 6 Big Data Predictions for 2017 — from businesswire.com

Excerpt:

SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The market has evolved from technologists looking to learn and understand new big data technologies to customers who want to learn about new projects, new companies and most importantly, how organizations are actually benefitting from the technology. According to John Schroeder, executive chairman and founder of MapR Technologies, Inc., the acceleration in big data deployments has shifted the focus to the value of the data. John has crystallized his view of market trends into these six major predictions for 2017…

The Most Exciting Medical Technologies of 2017 — from medicalfuturist.com

Excerpt:

2016 was a rich year for medical technology. Virtual Reality. Augmented Reality. Smart algorithms analysing wearable data. Amazing technologies arrived in our lives and on the market almost every day. And it will not stop in the coming year. The role of a futurist is certainly not making bold predictions about the future. No such big bet has taken humanity forward. Instead, our job is constantly analysing the trends shaping the future and trying to build bridges between them and what we have today. Still, people expect me to come up with predictions about medical technologies every year, and thus here they are.

2017 Predictions For AI, Big Data, IoT, Cybersecurity, And Jobs From Senior Tech Executives — from forbes.com by Gil Press

Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence (and machine/deep learning) is the hottest trend, eclipsing, but building on, the accumulated hype for the previous “new big thing,” big data. The new catalyst for the data explosion is the Internet of Things, bringing with it new cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The rapid fluctuations in the relative temperature of these trends also create new dislocations and opportunities in the tech job market.

The hottest segment of the hottest trend—artificial intelligence—is the market for chatbots. “The movement towards conversational interfaces will accelerate,” says Stuart Frankel, CEO, Narrative Science. “The recent, combined efforts of a number of innovative tech giants point to a coming year when interacting with technology through conversation becomes the norm. Are conversational interfaces really a big deal? They’re game-changing. Since the advent of computers, we have been forced to speak the language of computers in order to communicate with them and now we’re teaching them to communicate in our language.”

Allen Institute for AI Eyes the Future of Scientific Search — from wired.com by Cade Metz

Excerpt:

Google changed the world with its PageRank algorithm, creating a new kind of internet search engine that could instantly sift through the world’s online information and, in many cases, show us just what we wanted to see. But that was a long time ago. As the volume of online documents continues to increase, we need still newer ways of finding what we want.

That’s why Google is now running its search engine with help from machine learning, augmenting its predetermined search rules with deep neural networks that can learn to identify the best search results by analyzing vast amounts of existing search data. And it’s not just Google. Microsoft is pushing its Bing search engine in the same direction, and so are others beyond the biggest names in tech.

3 Forces Shaping Ed Tech in 2017 — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser
Ovum’s latest report examines the key trends that are expected to impact higher education in the new year.

Excerpts:

Institutions Will Support the Use of More Innovative Tech in Teaching and Learning
Schools Will Leverage Technology for Improving the Student Experience
The Next-Generation IT Strategy Will Focus More on IT Agility

Virtual Reality, AI Top Predictions for 2017 — from techzone360.com by Alicia Young

Excerpt:

We’ve seen a lot of exciting new innovations take place over the course of 2016. This year has introduced interesting new uses for virtual reality—like using VR to help burn victims in hospitals mentally escape from the pain during procedures—and even saw the world’s first revolutionary augmented reality game in the form of Pokémon Go. The iPhone 7 was also introduced, leaving millions of people uncertain of their feelings regarding Apple, while Samsung loyalists just prayed that their smartphones would stay in one piece.

Undoubtedly, there have been quite a few ups and downs in technology over the past year. With any luck, 2017 will provide us with even more new innovations and advancements in tech. But what exactly do we have to look forward to? TMC recently caught up with Jordan Edelson, CEO of Appetizer Mobile, to discuss his thoughts on 2016 and his predictions for what’s to come in the future. You can find the entire exchange below.

The Fourth Transformation: Augmented Reality & Artificial Intelligence — from forbes.com by John Koetsier

Excerpt:

Since then, we’ve seen three transformations. The latest, augmented reality plus artificial intelligence, will change more than the previous three combined. At least, that’s what tech evangelist Robert Scoble and author Shel Israel say in their new book: The Fourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality & Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything.

15 Virtual Reality Trends We’re Predicting for 2017 — from appreal-vr.com by Yariv Levski

Excerpt:

2016 is fast drawing to a close. And while many will be glad to see the back of it, for those of us who work and play with Virtual Reality, it has been a most exciting year. By the time the bells ring out signalling the start of a new year, the total number of VR users will exceed 43 million. This is a market on the move, projected to be worth $30bn by 2020. If it’s to meet that valuation, then we believe 2017 will be an incredibly important year in the lifecycle of VR hardware and software development. VR will be enjoyed by an increasingly mainstream audience very soon, and here we take a quick look at some of the trends we expect to develop over the next 12 months for that to happen.

Our Tech Predictions for 2017 — from medium.com

Excerpts:

Every December, we take a look back at big ideas from the past twelve months that promise to gain momentum in the new year. With more than eleven thousand projects launched between our Design and Tech categories in 2016, we have a nice sample to draw from. More importantly, we have a community of forward-thinking backers who help creators figure out which versions of the future to pursue. Here are some of the emerging trends we expect to see more of in 2017.

Everyday artificial intelligence
Whether chatting with a device as if it’s a virtual assistant strikes you as a sci-fi dream come true or a dystopian nightmare, we’re going to see an increasing number of products that use voice-controlled artificial intelligence interfaces to fit into users’ lives more seamlessly. Among the projects leading the way in this arena are Vi, wireless earphones that double as a personal trainer; Bonjour, an alarm clock that wakes you up with a personalized daily briefing; and Dashbot, a talking car accessory that recalls Kit, David Hasselhoff’s buddy from Knight Rider. One of the factors driving this talking AI boom is the emergence of platforms like Microsoft’s Cognitive Service, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Speech API, which allow product developers to focus on user experience rather than low-level speech processing. For the DIY set, Seeed’s ReSpeaker offers a turnkey devkit for working with these services, and we’ll surely see more tools for integrating AI voice interfaces into all manner of products.

3 reasons 2017 is the year to develop a company chatbot — from thenextweb.com by Ellie Martin

Excerpt:

During Microsoft’s Build Conference earlier this year, CEO Satya Nadella delivered the three-hour keynote address, in which he highlighted his belief that the future of technology lies in human language. In this new wave of technology, conversation is the new interface, and “bots are the new apps.” While not as flashy as virtual reality nor as immediately practical as 3D printing, chatbots are nevertheless gaining major traction this year, with support coming from across the entire tech industry. The big tech enterprises are all entering the chatbot space, and many startups are too.

Out with the apps, in with the chatbots. The reason for the attention is simple: The power of the natural language processor, software that processes and parses human language, creating a simple and universal means of interacting with technology.

When kids toys come to life: How AR is transforming play — from thememo.com by Kitty Knowles
We asked three entrepreneurs to explain why AR toys are going to be the next big trend.

By 2030, this is what computers will be able to do — from medium.com by the World Economic Forum

Excerpt:

Developments in computing are driving the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance. In this interview Justine Cassell, Associate Dean, Technology, Strategy and Impact, at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, and co-chair of the Global Future Council on Computing, says we must ensure that these developments benefit all society, not just the wealthy or those participating in the “new economy”.

Artificial Intelligence will drive innovation and development in 2017, says Ericsson — from tech.firstpost.com

Excerpt:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an important development and consumers globally will see it playing a much more prominent role — both in society and at work — next year, a new report said on Tuesday. Ericsson ConsumerLab, in its annual trend report titled “The 10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2017 and beyond”, said that 35 percent of advanced internet users want an AI advisor at work and one in four would like AI as their manager.At the same time, almost half of the respondents were concerned that AI robots will soon make a lot of people lose their jobs.

21 technology tipping points we will reach by 2030 — from businessinsider.com by Cadie Thompson

Excerpt:

From driverless cars to robotic workers, the future is going to be here before you know it. Many emerging technologies you hear about today will reach a tipping point by 2025, according to a report from The World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Software & Society. The council surveyed more than 800 executives and experts from the technology sector to share their respective timelines for when technologies would become mainstream. From the survey results, the council identified 21 defining moments, all of which they predict will occur by 2030. Here’s a look at the technological shifts you can expect during the next 14 years.
…
The first robotic pharmacist will arrive in the US 2021.

The Chatbot Revolution: Rise of the Conversational User Interface — from tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com by Aakrit Vaish

Excerpt:

At Haptik, we have now been working on chatbots for over 3 years, and this post will attempt to make some sense of where we are as an industry.

AI, VR, Chatbots to Take Off in 2017 Microsoft Researchers Predict — from eweek.com by Pedro Hernandez
Prominent Microsoft researchers share their tech predictions for an AI-enabled future that blurs the line between physical and virtual experiences.

Excerpt:

A new year is quickly approaching and Microsoft Research is offering a glimpse at what the tech scene has in store for 2017 along with some hints at the Redmond, Wash., tech giant’s own priorities for the coming year. This year, the company gathered prominent women researchers to share their thoughts on what to expect next year. Surprising nobody’s who’s been following Microsoft’s software and cloud computing strategy of late, the company is betting big on artificial intelligence (AI).

11 IoT Predictions for 2017 — from ioti.com by Brian Buntz

Excerpt:

It’s still early days for the Internet of Things. As recently as 2014, 87 percent of consumers had never heard of the technology, according to Accenture. In 2016, and 19% of business and government professionals reported that they had never heard of the Internet of Things while 18% were only vaguely familiar with it, according to research from the Internet of Things Institute. Although the technology is getting the most traction in the industrial space, the most promising use cases for the technology are just starting to come to light. To get a sense of what to expect as we head into 2017, we spoke with Stanford lecturer and IoT author Timothy Chou, Ph.D.; Thulium.co CEO Tamara McCleary; industry observer and influencer Evan Kirstel; and Sandy Carter, CEO and founder of Silicon-Blitz.

Addendums:

The future of robotics: 10 predictions for 2017 and beyond — from zdnet.com by Bob Violino
DC: One of the items mentioned here was the emergence of the chief robotics officer…interesting.
.
15 tech trends in autonomous cars, artificial intelligence, and machine learning for 2017 — from venturebeat.com by John Brandon
Tech is about to change dramatically next year. Want to stay up to date? These predictions from the famed design firm frog spell things out for you. In each section, a designer explains all of the details. Which one is already on your radar?

Research study suggests VR can have a huge impact in the classroom — from uploadvr.com by Joe Durbin

Excerpt:

“Every child is a genius in his or her own way. VR can be the key to awakening the genius inside.”

This is the closing line of a new research study currently making its way out of China. Conducted by Beijing Bluefocus E-Commerce Co., Ltd and Beijing iBokan Wisdom Mobile Internet Technology Training Institution, the study takes a detailed look at the different ways virtual reality can make public education more effective.

“Compared with traditional education, VR-based education is of obvious advantage in theoretical knowledge teaching as well as practical skills training. In theoretical knowledge teaching, it boasts the ability to make abstract problems concrete, and theoretical thinking well-supported. In practical skills training, it helps sharpen students’ operational skills, provides an immersive learning experience, and enhances students’ sense of involvement in class, making learning more fun, more secure, and more active,” the study states.

VR for Education – what was and what is — from researchvr.podigee.io

Topics discussed:

VR for education: one time use vs everyday use
Ecological Validity of VR Research
AR definition & history
Tethered vs untethered
Intelligent Ontology-driven Games for Teaching Human Anatomy
Envelop VR
VR for Education
Gartner curve – then and now

Virtual reality industry leaders come together to create new association — from gvra.com

Excerpt:

CALIFORNIA — Acer Starbreeze, Google, HTC VIVE, Facebook’s Oculus, Samsung, and Sony Interactive Entertainment [on 12/7/16] announced the creation of a non-profit organization of international headset manufacturers to promote the growth of the global virtual reality (VR) industry. The Global Virtual Reality Association (GVRA) will develop and share best practices for industry and foster dialogue between public and private stakeholders around the world.

The goal of the Global Virtual Reality Association is to promote responsible development and adoption of VR globally. The association’s members will develop and share best practices, conduct research, and bring the international VR community together as the technology progresses. The group will also serve as a resource for consumers, policymakers, and industry interested in VR.

VR has the potential to be the next great computing platform, improving sectors ranging from education to healthcare, and contribute significantly to the global economy. Through research, international engagement, and the development of best practices, the founding companies of the Global Virtual Reality Association will work to unlock and maximize VR’s potential and ensure those gains are shared as broadly around the world as possible.

For more information, visit www.GVRA.com.

Occipital shows off a $399 mixed reality headset for iPhone — from techcrunch.com by Lucas Matney

Excerpt:

Occipital announced today that it is launching a mixed reality platform built upon its depth-sensing technologies called Bridge. The headset is available for $399 and starts shipping in March; eager developers can get their hands on an Explorer Edition for $499, which starts shipping next week.

From DSC:
While I hope that early innovators in the AR/VR/MR space thrive, I do wonder what will happen if and when Apple puts out their rendition/version of a new form of Human Computer Interaction (or forms) — such as integrating AR-capabilities directly into their next iPhone.

Enterprise augmented reality applications ready for prime time — from internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com by Beth Stackpole
Pokémon Go may have put AR on the map, but the technology is now being leveraged for enterprise applications in areas like marketing, maintenance and field service.

Excerpt:

Unlike virtual reality, which creates an immersive, computer-generated environment, the less familiar augmented reality, or AR, technology superimposes computer-generated images and overlays information on a user’s real-world view. This computer-generated sensory data — which could include elements such as sound, graphics, GPS data, video or 3D models — bridges the digital and physical worlds. For an enterprise, the applications are boundless, arming workers walking the warehouse or selling on the shop floor, for example, with essential information that can improve productivity, streamline customer interactions and deliver optimized maintenance in the field.

15 virtual reality trends we’re predicting for 2017 — from appreal-vr.com by Yariv Levski

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

2016 is fast drawing to a close. And while many will be glad to see the back of it, for those of us who work and play with Virtual Reality, it has been a most exciting year.

By the time the bells ring out signalling the start of a new year, the total number of VR users will exceed 43 million. This is a market on the move, projected to be worth $30bn by 2020. If it’s to meet that valuation, then we believe 2017 will be an incredibly important year in the lifecycle of VR hardware and software development.

VR will be enjoyed by an increasingly mainstream audience very soon, and here we take a quick look at some of the trends we expect to develop over the next 12 months for that to happen.

Murdoch University hosts trial of virtual reality classroom TeachLivE — from communitynews.com.au by Josh Zimmerman

Excerpt:

IN an Australian first, education students will be able hone their skills without stepping foot in a classroom. Murdoch University has hosted a pilot trial of TeachLivE, a virtual reality environment for teachers in training.

The student avatars are able to disrupt the class in a range of ways that teachers may encounter such as pulling out mobile phones or losing their pen during class.

8 Cutting Edge Virtual Reality Job Opportunities — from appreal-vr.com by Yariv Levski
Today we’re highlighting the top 8 job opportunities in VR to give you a current scope of the Virtual Reality job market.

Epson’s Augmented Reality Glasses Are a Revolution in Drone Tech — from dronelife.com by Miriam McNabb

Excerpt:

The Epson Moverio BT-300, to give the smart glasses their full name, are wearable technology – lightweight, comfortable see-through glasses – that allow you to see digital data, and have a first person view (FPV) experience: all while seeing the real world at the same time. The applications are almost endless.

Volkswagen Electric Car To Feature Augmented Reality Navigation System — from gas2.org by Steve Hanley

Excerpt:

Volkswagen’s pivot away from diesel cars to electric vehicles is still a work in progress, but some details about its coming I.D. electric car — unveiled in Paris earlier this year — are starting to come to light. Much of the news is about an innovative augmented reality heads-up display Volkswagen plans to offer in its electric vehicles. Klaus Bischoff, head of the VW brand, says the I.D. electric car will completely reinvent vehicle instrumentation systems when it is launched at the end of the decade.

These global research centers are a proof that virtual reality is more than gaming — from haptic.al by Deniz Ergürel

Excerpt:

For decades, numerous research centers and academics around the world have been working the potential of virtual reality technology. Countless research projects undertaken in these centers are an important indicator that everything from health care to real estate can experience disruption in a few years.
…

Virtual Human Interaction Lab — Stanford University
Virtual Reality Applications Center — Iowa State University
Institute for Creative Technologies—USC
Medical Virtual Reality — USC
The Imaging Media Research Center — Korea Institute of Science and Technology
Virtual Reality & Immersive Visualization Group — RWTH Aachen University
Center For Simulations & Virtual Environments Research — UCIT
Duke immersive Virtual Environment —Duke University
Experimental Virtual Environments (EVENT) Lab for Neuroscience and Technology — Barcelona University
Immersive Media Technology Experiences (IMTE) — Norwegian University of Technology
Human Interface Technology Laboratory — University of Washington

Where Virtual and Physical Worlds Converge — from disruptionhub.com

Excerpt:

Augmented Reality (AR) dwelled quietly in the shadow of VR until earlier this year, when a certain app propelled it into the mainstream. Now, AR is a household term and can hold its own with advanced virtual technologies. The AR industry is predicted to hit global revenues of $90 billion by 2020, not just matching VR but overtaking it by a large margin. Of course, a lot of this turnover will be generated by applications in the entertainment industry. VR was primarily created by gamers for gamers, but AR began as a visionary idea that would change the way that humanity interacted with the world around them. The first applications of augmented reality were actually geared towards improving human performance in the workplace… But there’s far, far more to be explored.

VR’s killer app has arrived, and it’s Google Earth — from arstechnica.com by Sam Machkovech
Squishy geometry aside, you won’t find a cooler free VR app on any device.

Excerpt:

I stood at the peak of Mount Rainier, the tallest mountain in Washington state. The sounds of wind whipped past my ears, and mountains and valleys filled a seemingly endless horizon in every direction. I’d never seen anything like it—until I grabbed the sun.

Using my HTC Vive virtual reality wand, I reached into the heavens in order to spin the Earth along its normal rotational axis, until I set the horizon on fire with a sunset. I breathed deeply at the sight, then spun our planet just a little more, until I filled the sky with a heaping helping of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Virtual reality has exposed me to some pretty incredible experiences, but I’ve grown ever so jaded in the past few years of testing consumer-grade headsets. Google Earth VR, however, has dropped my jaw anew. This, more than any other game or app for SteamVR’s “room scale” system, makes me want to call every friend and loved one I know and tell them to come over, put on a headset, and warp anywhere on Earth that they please.

VR is totally changing how architects dream up buildings — from wired.com by Sam Lubell

Excerpt:

In VR architecture, the difference between real and unreal is fluid and, to a large extent, unimportant. What is important, and potentially revolutionary, is VR’s ability to draw designers and their clients into a visceral world of dimension, scale, and feeling, removing the unfortunate schism between a built environment that exists in three dimensions and a visualization of it that has until now existed in two.

How VR can democratize Architecture — from researchvr.podigee.io

Excerpt:

Many of the VR projects in Architecture are focused on the final stages of design process, basically for selling a house to a client. Thomas sees the real potential in the early stages: when the main decisions need to be made. VR is so good for this, as it helps for non professionals to understand and grasp the concepts of architecture very intuitively. And this is what we talked mostly about.

How virtual reality could revolutionize the real estate industry — from uploadvr.com by Benjamin Maltbie

Will VR disrupt the airline industry? Sci-Fi show meets press virtually instead of flying — from singularityhub.com by Aaron Frank

Excerpt:

A proposed benefit of virtual reality is that it could one day eliminate the need to move our fleshy bodies around the world for business meetings and work engagements. Instead, we’ll be meeting up with colleagues and associates in virtual spaces. While this would be great news for the environment and business people sick of airports, it would be troubling news for airlines.

How theaters are evolving to include VR experiences — from uploadvr.com by Michael Mascioni

#AI, #VR, and #IoT Are Coming to a Courthouse Near You! — from americanbar.org by Judge Herbert B. Dixon Jr.

Excerpt:

Imagine during one of your future trials that jurors in your courtroom are provided with virtual reality headsets, which allow them to view the accident site or crime scene digitally and walk around or be guided through a 3D world to examine vital details of the scene.

How can such an evidentiary presentation be accomplished? A system is being developed whereby investigators use a robot system inspired by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover using 3D imaging and panoramic videography equipment to record virtual reality video of the scene.⁶ The captured 360° immersive video and photographs of the scene would allow recreation of a VR experience with video and pictures of the original scene from every angle. Admissibility of this evidence would require a showing that the VR simulation fairly and accurately depicts what it represents. If a judge permits presentation of the evidence after its accuracy is established, jurors receiving the evidence could turn their heads and view various aspects of the scene by looking up, down, and around, and zooming in and out.

Unlike an animation or edited video initially created to demonstrate one party’s point of view, the purpose of this type of evidence would be to gather data and objectively preserve the scene without staging or tampering. Even further, this approach would allow investigators to revisit scenes as they existed during the initial forensic examination and give jurors a vivid rendition of the site as it existed when the events occurred.

Microsoft goes long for mixed reality — from next.reality.news

Excerpt:

The theme running throughout most of this year’s WinHEC keynote in Shenzhen, China was mixed reality. Microsoft’s Alex Kipman continues to be a great spokesperson and evangelist for the new medium, and it is apparent that Microsoft is going in deep, if not all in, on this version of the future. I, for one, as a mixed reality or bust developer, am very glad to see it.

As part of the presentation, Microsoft presented a video (see below) that shows the various forms of mixed reality. The video starts with a few virtual objects in the room with a person, transitions into the same room with a virtual person, then becomes a full virtual reality experience with Windows Holographic.

Today, we’re at the Windows Hardware Engineering Community event (WinHEC) in Shenzhen, China –where our OEM partners have created more than 300 Windows devices shipping in 75 countries generating more than 8 billion RMB in revenue for Shenzhen partners. We continue this journey with Intel, Qualcomm and hardware engineering creators from around the world. Together, we will build the next generation of modern PCs supporting mixed reality, gaming, advanced security, and artificial intelligence; make mixed reality mainstream; and introduce always-connected, more power efficient cellular PCs running Windows 10.

Also see:

The Race For AI: Google, Twitter, Intel, Apple In A Rush To Grab Artificial Intelligence Startups

Excerpt:

Nearly 140 private companies working to advance artificial intelligence technologies have been acquired since 2011, with over 40 acquisitions taking place in 2016 alone. Corporate giants like Google, IBM, Yahoo, Intel, Apple and Salesforce, are competing in the race to acquire private AI companies, with Samsung emerging as a new entrant in October with its acquisition of startup Viv Labs, which is developing a Siri-like AI assistant, and GE making 2 AI acquisitions in November.

Amazon Opening Store That Will Eliminate Checkout — and Lines — from bloomberg.com by Jing Cao
At Amazon Seattle location items get charged to Prime account | New technology combines artificial intelligence and sensors

Excerpt:

Amazon.com Inc. unveiled technology that will let shoppers grab groceries without having to scan and pay for them — in one stroke eliminating the checkout line.

The company is testing the new system at what it’s calling an Amazon Go store in Seattle, which will open to the public early next year. Customers will be able to scan their phones at the entrance using a new Amazon Go mobile app. Then the technology will track what items they pick up or even return to the shelves and add them to a virtual shopping cart in real time, according a video Amazon posted on YouTube. Once the customers exit the store, they’ll be charged on their Amazon account automatically.

Amazon Introduces ‘Amazon Go’ Retail Stores, No Checkout, No Lines — from investors.com

Excerpt:

Online retail king Amazon.com (AMZN) is taking dead aim at the physical-store world Monday, introducing Amazon Go, a retail convenience store format it is developing that will use computer vision and deep-learning algorithms to let shoppers just pick up what they want and exit the store without any checkout procedure.

Shoppers will merely need to tap the Amazon Go app on their smartphones, and their virtual shopping carts will automatically tabulate what they owe, and deduct that amount from their Amazon accounts, sending you a receipt. It’s what the company has deemed “just walk out technology,” which it said is based on the same technology used in self-driving cars. It’s certain to up the ante in the company’s competition with Wal-Mart (WMT), Target (TGT) and the other retail leaders.

Google DeepMind Makes AI Training Platform Publicly Available — from bloomberg.com by Jeremy Kahn
Company is increasingly embracing open-source initiatives | Move comes after rival Musk’s OpenAI made its robot gym public

Excerpt:

Alphabet Inc.’s artificial intelligence division Google DeepMind is making the maze-like game platform it uses for many of its experiments available to other researchers and the general public.

DeepMind is putting the entire source code for its training environment — which it previously called Labyrinth and has now renamed as DeepMind Lab — on the open-source depository GitHub, the company said Monday. Anyone will be able to download the code and customize it to help train their own artificial intelligence systems. They will also be able to create new game levels for DeepMind Lab and upload these to GitHub.

Related:
Alphabet DeepMind is inviting developers into the digital world where its AI learns to explore — from qz.com by Dave Gershgorn

After Retail Stumble, Beacons Shine From Banks to Sports Arenas — from bloomberg.com by Olga Kharif
Shipments of the devices expected to grow to 500 million

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Beacon technology, which was practically left for dead after failing to deliver on its promise to revolutionize the retail industry, is making a comeback.

Beacons are puck-size gadgets that can send helpful tips, coupons and other information to people’s smartphones through Bluetooth. They’re now being used in everything from bank branches and sports arenas to resorts, airports and fast-food restaurants. In the latest sign of the resurgence, Mobile Majority, an advertising startup, said on Monday that it was buying Gimbal Inc., a beacon maker it bills as the largest independent source of location data other than Google and Apple Inc.
…
Several recent developments have sparked the latest boom. Companies like Google parent Alphabet Inc. are making it possible for people to use the feature without downloading any apps, which had been a major barrier to adoption, said Patrick Connolly, an analyst at ABI. Introduced this year, Google Nearby Notifications lets developers tie an app or a website to a beacon to send messages to consumers even when they have no app installed.
…
But in June, Cupertino, California-based Mist Systems began shipping a software-based product that simplified the process. Instead of placing 10 beacons on walls and ceilings, for example, management using Mist can install one device every 2,000 feet (610 meters), then designate various points on a digital floor plan as virtual beacons, which can be moved with a click of a mouse.

Google’s Hand-Fed AI Now Gives Answers, Not Just Search Results — from wired.com by Cade Metz

Excerpt:

Ask the Google search app “What is the fastest bird on Earth?,” and it will tell you.

“Peregrine falcon,” the phone says. “According to YouTube, the peregrine falcon has a maximum recorded airspeed of 389 kilometers per hour.”

That’s the right answer, but it doesn’t come from some master database inside Google. When you ask the question, Google’s search engine pinpoints a YouTube video describing the five fastest birds on the planet and then extracts just the information you’re looking for. It doesn’t mention those other four birds. And it responds in similar fashion if you ask, say, “How many days are there in Hanukkah?” or “How long is Totem?” The search engine knows that Totem is a Cirque de Soleil show, and that it lasts two-and-a-half hours, including a thirty-minute intermission.

Google answers these questions with the help from deep neural networks, a form of artificial intelligence rapidly remaking not just Google’s search engine but the entire company and, well, the other giants of the internet, from Facebook to Microsoft. Deep neutral nets are pattern recognition systems that can learn to perform specific tasks by analyzing vast amounts of data. In this case, they’ve learned to take a long sentence or paragraph from a relevant page on the web and extract the upshot—the information you’re looking for.

Deep Learning in Production at Facebook — from re-work.co by Katie Pollitt

Excerpt:

Facebook is powered by machine learning and AI. From advertising relevance, news feed and search ranking to computer vision, face recognition, and speech recognition, they run ML models at massive scale, computing trillions of predictions every day.

At the 2016 Deep Learning Summit in Boston, Andrew Tulloch, Research Engineer at Facebook, talked about some of the tools and tricks Facebook use for scaling both the training and deployment of some of their deep learning models at Facebook. He also covered some useful libraries that they’d open-sourced for production-oriented deep learning applications. Tulloch’s session can be watched in full below.

The Artificial Intelligence Gold Rush — from foresightr.com by Mark Vickers
Big companies, venture capital firms and governments are all banking on AI

Excerpt:

Let’s start with some of the brand-name organizations laying down big bucks on artificial intelligence.

Amazon: Sells the successful Echo home speaker, which comes with the personal assistant Alexa.
Alphabet (Google): Uses deep learning technology to power Internet searches and developed AlphaGo, an AI that beat the world champion in the game of Go.
Apple: Developed the popular virtual assistant Siri and is working on other phone-related AI applications, such as facial recognition.
Baidu: Wants to use AI to improve search, recognize images of objects and respond to natural language queries.
Boeing: Works with Carnegie Mellon University to develop machine learning capable of helping it design and build planes more efficiently.
Facebook: Wants to create the “best AI lab in the world.” Has its personal assistant, M, and focuses heavily on facial recognition.
IBM: Created the Jeopardy-winning Watson AI and is leveraging its data analysis and natural language capabilities in the healthcare industry.
Intel: Has made acquisitions to help it build specialized chips and software to handle deep learning.
Microsoft: Works on chatbot technology and acquired SwiftKey, which predicts what users will type next.
Nokia: Has introduced various machine learning capabilities to its portfolio of customer-experience software.
Nvidia: Builds computer chips customized for deep learning.
Salesforce: Took first place at the Stanford Question Answering Dataset, a test of machine learning and comprehension, and has developed the Einstein model that learns from data.
Shell: Launched a virtual assistant to answer customer questions.
Tesla Motors: Continues to work on self-driving automobile technologies.
Twitter: Created an AI-development team called Cortex and acquired several AI startups.

IBM Watson and Education in the Cognitive Era — from i-programmer.info by Nikos Vaggalis

Excerpt:

IBM’s seemingly ubiquitous Watson is now infiltrating education, through AI powered software that ‘reads’ the needs of individual students in order to engage them through tailored learning approaches.

This is not to be taken lightly, as it opens the door to a new breed of technologies that will spearhead the education or re-education of the workforce of the future.

As outlined in the 2030 report, despite robots or AI displacing a big chunk of the workforce, they will also play a major role in creating job opportunities as never before.In such a competitive landscape, workers of all kinds, white or blue collar to begin with, should come readied with new, versatile and contemporary skills.

The point is, the very AI that will leave someone jobless, will also help him to re-adapt into a new job’s requirements.It will also prepare the new generations through the use of such optimal methodologies that will once more give meaning to the aging and counter-productive schooling system which has the students’ skills disengaged from the needs of the industry and which still segregates students into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Might it be that ‘bad’ students become just like that due to the system’s inability to stimulate their interest?

Artificial Intelligence Ethics, Jobs & Trust – UK Government Sets Out AI future — from cbronline.com by Ellie Burns

Excerpt:

UK government is driving the artificial intelligence agenda, pinpointing it as a future technology driving the fourth revolution and billing its importance on par with the steam engine.

The report on Artificial Intelligence by the Government Office for Science follows the recent House of Commons Committee report on Robotics and AI, setting out the opportunities and implications for the future of decision making. In a report which spans government deployment, ethics and the labour market, Digital Minister Matt Hancock provided a foreword which pushed AI as a technology which would benefit the economy and UK citizens.

MIT’s “Moral Machine” Lets You Decide Who Lives & Dies in Self-Driving Car Crashes — from futurism.com

In brief:

MIT’S 13-point exercise lets users weigh the life-and-death decisions that self-driving cars could face in the future.
Projects like the “Moral Machine” give engineers insight into how they should code complex decision-making capabilities into AI.

Wearable Tech Weaves Its Way Into Learning — from edsurge.com by Marguerite McNeal

Excerpt:

“Ethics often falls behind the technology,” says Voithofer of Ohio State. Personal data becomes more abstract when it’s combined with other datasets or reused for multiple purposes, he adds. Say a device collects and anonymizes data about a student’s emotional patterns. Later on that information might be combined with information about her test scores and could be reassociated with her. Some students might object to colleges making judgments about their academic performance from indirect measurements of their emotional states.

New era of ‘cut and paste’ humans close as man injected with genetically-edited blood – from telegraph.co.uk by Sarah Knapton

Excerpt:

A world where DNA can be rewritten to fix deadly diseases has moved a step closer after scientists announced they had genetically-edited the cells of a human for the first time using a groundbreaking technique.

A man in China was injected with modified immune cells which had been engineered to fight his lung cancer. Larger trials are scheduled to take place next year in the US and Beijing, which scientists say could open up a new era of genetic medicine.

The technique used is called Crispr, which works like tiny molecular scissors snipping away genetic code and replacing it with new instructions to build better cells.

Troubling Study Says Artificial Intelligence Can Predict Who Will Be Criminals Based on Facial Features — from theintercept.com by Sam Biddle

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming as biased as we are — from thenextweb.com by Bryan Clark

A bug in the matrix: virtual reality will change our lives. But will it also harm us? — from theguardian.stfi.re
Prejudice, harassment and hate speech have crept from the real world into the digital realm. For virtual reality to succeed, it will have to tackle this from the start

Excerpt:

Can you be sexually assaulted in virtual reality? And can anything be done to prevent it? Those are a few of the most pressing ethical questions technologists, investors and we the public will face as VR grows.

Light Bulbs Flash “SOS” in Scary Internet of Things Attack — from fortune.com by Jeff John Roberts

How Big Data Transformed Applying to College — from slate.com by Cathy O’Neil
It’s made it tougher, crueler, and ever more expensive.

Not OK, Google — from techcrunch.com by Natasha Lomas

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

The scope of Alphabet’s ambition for the Google brand is clear: It wants Google’s information organizing brain to be embedded right at the domestic center — i.e. where it’s all but impossible for consumers not to feed it with a steady stream of highly personal data. (Sure, there’s a mute button on the Google Home, but the fact you have to push a button to shut off the ear speaks volumes… )

In other words, your daily business is Google’s business.

“We’re moving from a mobile-first world to an AI-first world,” said CEO Sundar Pichai…

But what’s really not OK, Google is the seismic privacy trade-offs involved here. And the way in which Alphabet works to skate over the surface of these concerns.

What he does not say is far more interesting, i.e. that in order to offer its promise of “custom convenience” — with predictions about restaurants you might like to eat at, say, or suggestions for how bad the traffic might be on your commute to work — it is continuously harvesting and data-mining your personal information, preferences, predilections, peccadilloes, prejudices… and so on and on and on. AI never stops needing data. Not where fickle humans are concerned.

Welcome to a world without work — from by Ryan Avent
Automation and globalisation are combining to generate a world with a surfeit of labour and too little work

Excerpt:

A new age is dawning. Whether it is a wonderful one or a terrible one remains to be seen. Look around and the signs of dizzying technological progress are difficult to miss. Driverless cars and drones, not long ago the stuff of science fiction, are now oddities that can occasionally be spotted in the wild and which will soon be a commonplace in cities around the world.

From DSC:
I don’t see a world without work being good for us in the least. I think we humans need to feel that we are contributing to something. We need a purpose for living out our days here on Earth (even though they are but a vapor). We need vision…goals to works towards as we seek to use the gifts, abilities, passions, and interests that the LORD gave to us. The author of the above article would also add that work:

Is a source of personal identity
It helps give structure to our days and our lives
It offers the possibility of personal fulfillment that comes from being of use to others
Is a critical part of the glue that holds society together and smooths its operation

Over the last generation, work has become ever less effective at performing these roles. That, in turn, has placed pressure on government services and budgets, contributing to a more poisonous and less generous politics. Meanwhile, the march of technological progress continues, adding to the strain.

10 breakthrough technologies for 2016 — from technologyreview.com

Excerpts:

Immune Engineering
Genetically engineered immune cells are saving the lives of cancer patients. That may be just the start.

Precise Gene Editing in Plants
CRISPR offers an easy, exact way to alter genes to create traits such as disease resistance and drought tolerance.

Conversational Interfaces
Powerful speech technology from China’s leading Internet company makes it much easier to use a smartphone.

Reusable Rockets
Rockets typically are destroyed on their maiden voyage. But now they can make an upright landing and be refueled for another trip, setting the stage for a new era in spaceflight.

Robots That Teach Each Other
What if robots could figure out more things on their own and share that knowledge among themselves?

DNA App Store
An online store for information about your genes will make it cheap and easy to learn more about your health risks and predispositions.

SolarCity’s Gigafactory
A $750 million solar facility in Buffalo will produce a gigawatt of high-efficiency solar panels per year and make the technology far more attractive to homeowners.

Slack
A service built for the era of mobile phones and short text messages is changing the workplace.

Tesla Autopilot
The electric-vehicle maker sent its cars a software update that suddenly made autonomous driving a reality.

Power from the Air
Internet devices powered by Wi-Fi and other telecommunications signals will make small computers and sensors more pervasive

The 4 big ethical questions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution — from 3tags.org by the World Economic Forum

Excerpts:

We live in an age of transformative scientific powers, capable of changing the very nature of the human species and radically remaking the planet itself.

Advances in information technologies and artificial intelligence are combining with advances in the biological sciences; including genetics, reproductive technologies, neuroscience, synthetic biology; as well as advances in the physical sciences to create breathtaking synergies — now recognized as the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
…
Since these technologies will ultimately decide so much of our future, it is deeply irresponsible not to consider together whether and how to deploy them. Thankfully there is growing global recognition of the need for governance.

Scientists create live animals from artificial eggs in ‘remarkable’ breakthrough — from telegraph.co.uk by Sarah Knapton

Robot babies from Japan raise questions about how parents bond with AI — from singularityhub.com by Mark Robert Anderson

Excerpt:

This then leads to the ethical implications of using robots. Embracing a number of areas of research, robot ethics considers whether the use of a device within a particular field is acceptable and also whether the device itself is behaving ethically. When it comes to robot babies there are already a number of issues that are apparent. Should “parents” be allowed to choose the features of their robot, for example? How might parents be counseled when returning their robot baby? And will that baby be used again in the same form?

Amazon’s Vision of the Future Involves Cops Commanding Tiny Drone ‘Assistants’ — from gizmodo.com by Hudson Hongo

DARPA’s Autonomous Ship Is Patrolling the Seas with a Parasailing Radar — from technologyreview.com by Jamie Condliffe
Forget self-driving cars—this is the robotic technology that the military wants to use.

China’s policing robot: Cattle prod meets supercomputer — from computerworld.com by Patrick Thibodeau
China’s fastest supercomputers have some clear goals, namely development of its artificial intelligence, robotics industries and military capability, says the U.S.

Report examines China’s expansion into unmanned industrial, service, and military robotics systems

Augmented Reality Glasses Are Coming To The Battlefield — from popsci.com by Andrew Rosenblum
Marines will control a head-up display with a gun-mounted mouse

———-

Addendum on 12/2/16:

Regulation of the Internet of Things — from schneier.com by Bruce Schneier

Excerpt:

Late last month, popular websites like Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit and PayPal went down for most of a day. The distributed denial-of-service attack that caused the outages, and the vulnerabilities that made the attack possible, was as much a failure of market and policy as it was of technology. If we want to secure our increasingly computerized and connected world, we need more government involvement in the security of the “Internet of Things” and increased regulation of what are now critical and life-threatening technologies. It’s no longer a question of if, it’s a question of when.
…
An additional market failure illustrated by the Dyn attack is that neither the seller nor the buyer of those devices cares about fixing the vulnerability. The owners of those devices don’t care. They wanted a webcam — or thermostat, or refrigerator — with nice features at a good price. Even after they were recruited into this botnet, they still work fine — you can’t even tell they were used in the attack. The sellers of those devices don’t care: They’ve already moved on to selling newer and better models. There is no market solution because the insecurity primarily affects other people. It’s a form of invisible pollution.

Google Earth lets you explore the planet in virtual reality — from vrscout.com by Eric Chevalier

How virtual reality could change the way students experience education — from edtechmagazine.com by by Andrew Koke and Anthony Guest-Scott
High-impact learning experiences may become the norm, expanding access for all students.

Excerpt:

The headlines for Pokémon GO were initially shocking, but by now they’re familiar: as many as 21 million active daily users, 700,000 downloads per day, $5.7 million in-app purchases per day, $200 million earned as of August. Analysts anticipate the game will garner several billion dollars in ad revenue over the next year. By almost any measure, Pokémon GO is huge.

The technologies behind the game, augmented and virtual reality (AVR), are huge too. Many financial analysts expect the technology to generate $150 billion over the next three years, outpacing even smartphones with unprecedented growth, much of it in entertainment. But AVR is not only about entertainment. In August 2015, Teegan Lexcen was born in Florida with only half a heart and needed surgery. With current cardiac imaging software insufficient to assist with such a delicate operation on an infant, surgeons at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami turned to 3D imaging software and a $20 Google Cardboard VR set. They used a cellphone to peer into the baby’s heart, saw exactly how to improve her situation and performed the successful surgery in December 2015.

“I could see the whole heart. I could see the chest wall,” Dr. Redmond Burke told Today. “I could see all the things I was worried about in creating an operation.”

Visionary: How 4 institutions are venturing into a new mixed reality — from ecampusnews.com by Laura Devaney
Mixed reality combines virtual and augmented realities for enhanced learning experiences–and institutions are already implementing it.

Excerpt:

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock and San Diego State University are both part of a Pearson mixed reality pilot aimed at leveraging mixed reality to solve challenges in nursing education.
…
At Bryn Mawr College, a women’s liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, faculty, students, and staff are exploring various educational applications for the HoloLens mixed reality devices. They are testing Skype for HoloLens to connect students with tutors in Pearson’s 24/7 online tutoring service, Smarthinking.
…
At Canberra Grammar School in Australia, Pearson is working with teachers in a variety of disciplines to develop holograms for use in their classrooms. The University of Canberra is partnering with Pearson to provide support for the project and evaluate the impact these holograms have on teaching and learning.

ZapBox brings room-scale mixed reality to the masses — from slashgear.com by JC Torres

Excerpt:

As fantastic as technologies like augmented and mixed reality may be, experiencing them, much less creating them, requires a sizable investment, financially speaking. It is just beyond the reach of consumers as well as your garage-type indie developer. AR and VR startup Zappar, however, wants to smash that perception. With ZapBox, you can grab a kit for less than a triple-A video game to start your journey towards mixed reality fun and fame. It’s Magic Leap meets Google Cardboard. Or as Zappar itself says, making Magic Leap, magic cheap!

Shakespeare’s Tempest gets mixed reality makeover — from bbc.com by Jane Wakefield

Intel’s flying whale was the inspiration for the technology in The Tempest

Excerpts from the 9/23/16 School Library Journal Webcast:

vr-in-education-thejournal-sept2016

Table of Contents

Introduction
New Technologies: Do They Really Change Learning Strategies? — by Joe Ganci and Sherry Larson
Enhanced Realities: An Opportunity to Avoid the Mistakes of the Past — by David Kelly
Let the Use Case Drive What Gets Augmented—Not the Other Way Around — by Chad Udell
Augmented Reality: An Augmented Perspective — by Alexander Salas
Virtual Reality Will Be the Perfect Immersive Learning Environment — by Koreen Pagano
Will VR Succeed? Viewpoint from Within a Large Corporation — by John O’Hare
Will VR Succeed? Viewpoint from Running a VR Start-up — by Ishai Albert Jacob

From DSC:
I think Technical Communicators have a new pathway to pursue…check out this piece from Scope AR and Caterpillar.

Google, Facebook, & Microsoft are remaking themselves around AI [Metz]; Intelligence everywhere! Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Tech Trends for ’17; plus 11 other items involving AI, machine/deep learning

On 11/22/2016, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, Australia, career development, change, changing business models, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, emerging technologies, Facebook / Meta Platforms, Google, health, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, Microsoft, Natural Language Processing (NLP), tools, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are remaking themselves around AI — from wired.com by Cade Metz

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Alongside a former Stanford researcher—Jia Li, who more recently ran research for the social networking service Snapchat—the China-born Fei-Fei will lead a team inside Google’s cloud computing operation, building online services that any coder or company can use to build their own AI. This new Cloud Machine Learning Group is the latest example of AI not only re-shaping the technology that Google uses, but also changing how the company organizes and operates its business.

Google is not alone in this rapid re-orientation. Amazon is building a similar group cloud computing group for AI. Facebook and Twitter have created internal groups akin to Google Brain, the team responsible for infusing the search giant’s own tech with AI. And in recent weeks, Microsoft reorganized much of its operation around its existing machine learning work, creating a new AI and research group under executive vice president Harry Shum, who began his career as a computer vision researcher.

But Etzioni says this is also part of very real shift inside these companies, with AI poised to play an increasingly large role in our future. “This isn’t just window dressing,” he says.

Intelligence everywhere! Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2017 — from which-50.com

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

AI and Advanced Machine Learning
Artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced machine learning (ML) are composed of many technologies and techniques (e.g., deep learning, neural networks, natural-language processing [NLP]). The more advanced techniques move beyond traditional rule-based algorithms to create systems that understand, learn, predict, adapt and potentially operate autonomously. This is what makes smart machines appear “intelligent.”

“Applied AI and advanced machine learning give rise to a spectrum of intelligent implementations, including physical devices (robots, autonomous vehicles, consumer electronics) as well as apps and services (virtual personal assistants [VPAs], smart advisors), ” said David Cearley, vice president and Gartner Fellow. “These implementations will be delivered as a new class of obviously intelligent apps and things as well as provide embedded intelligence for a wide range of mesh devices and existing software and service solutions.”

Google’s new website lets you play with its experimental AI projects — from mashable.com by Karissa Bell

Excerpt:

Google is letting users peek into some of its most experimental artificial intelligence projects.

The company unveiled a new website Tuesday called A.I. Experiments that showcases Google’s artificial intelligence research through web apps that anyone can test out. The projects include a game that guesses what you’re drawing, a camera app that recognizes objects you put in front of it and a music app that plays “duets” with you.

Google unveils a slew of new and improved machine learning APIs — from digitaltrends.com by Kyle Wiggers

Excerpt:

On Tuesday, Google Cloud chief Diane Greene announced the formation of a new team, the Google Cloud Machine Learning group, that will manage the Mountain View, California-based company’s cloud intelligence efforts going forward.

Found in translation: More accurate, fluent sentences in Google Translate — from blog.google by Barak Turovsky

Excerpt:

In 10 years, Google Translate has gone from supporting just a few languages to 103, connecting strangers, reaching across language barriers and even helping people find love. At the start, we pioneered large-scale statistical machine translation, which uses statistical models to translate text. Today, we’re introducing the next step in making Google Translate even better: Neural Machine Translation.

Neural Machine Translation has been generating exciting research results for a few years and in September, our researchers announced Google’s version of this technique. At a high level, the Neural system translates whole sentences at a time, rather than just piece by piece. It uses this broader context to help it figure out the most relevant translation, which it then rearranges and adjusts to be more like a human speaking with proper grammar. Since it’s easier to understand each sentence, translated paragraphs and articles are a lot smoother and easier to read. And this is all possible because of end-to-end learning system built on Neural Machine Translation, which basically means that the system learns over time to create better, more natural translations.

‘Augmented Intelligence’ for Higher Ed — from insidehighered.com by Carl Straumsheim
IBM picks Blackboard and Pearson to bring the technology behind the Watson computer to colleges and universities.

Excerpts:

[IBM] is partnering with a small number of hardware and software providers to bring the same technology that won a special edition of the game show back in 2011 to K-12 institutions, colleges and continuing education providers. The partnerships and the products that might emerge from them are still in the planning stage, but the company is investing in the idea that cognitive computing — natural language processing, informational retrieval and other functions similar to the ones performed by the human brain — can help students succeed in and outside the classroom.

Chalapathy Neti, vice president of education innovation at IBM Watson, said education is undergoing the same “digital transformation” seen in the finance and health care sectors, in which more and more content is being delivered digitally.
…
IBM is steering clear of referring to its technology as “artificial intelligence,” however, as some may interpret it as replacing what humans already do.

“This is about augmenting human intelligence,” Neti said. “We never want to see these data-based systems as primary decision makers, but we want to provide them as decision assistance for a human decision maker that is an expert in conducting that process.”

What a Visit to an AI-Enabled Hospital Might Look Like — from hbr.org by R “Ray” Wang

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The combination of machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, and cognitive computing will soon change the ways that we interact with our environments. AI-driven smart services will sense what we’re doing, know what our preferences are from our past behavior, and subtly guide us through our daily lives in ways that will feel truly seamless.

Perhaps the best way to explore how such systems might work is by looking at an example: a visit to a hospital.
…
The AI loop includes seven steps:

Perception describes what’s happening now.
Notification tells you what you asked to know.
Suggestion recommends action.
Automation repeats what you always want.
Prediction informs you of what to expect.
Prevention helps you avoid bad outcomes.
Situational awareness tells you what you need to know right now.

Japanese artificial intelligence gives up on University of Tokyo admissions exam — from digitaltrends.com by Brad Jones

Excerpt:

Since 2011, Japan’s National Institute of Informatics has been working on an AI, with the end goal of having it pass the entrance exam for the University of Tokyo, according to a report from Engadget. This endeavor, dubbed the Todai Robot Project in reference to a local nickname for the school, has been abandoned.

It turns out that the AI simply cannot meet the exact requirements of the University of Tokyo. The team does not expect to reach their goal of passing the test by March 2022, so the project is being brought to an end.

“We are building not just Azure to have rich compute capability, but we are, in fact, building the world’s first AI supercomputer,” he said.

— from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spruiks power of machine learning,
smart bots and mixed reality at Sydney developers conference

Why it’s so hard to create unbiased artificial intelligence — from techcrunch.com by Ben Dickson

Excerpt:

As artificial intelligence and machine learning mature and manifest their potential to take on complicated tasks, we’ve become somewhat expectant that robots can succeed where humans have failed — namely, in putting aside personal biases when making decisions. But as recent cases have shown, like all disruptive technologies, machine learning introduces its own set of unexpected challenges and sometimes yields results that are wrong, unsavory, offensive and not aligned with the moral and ethical standards of human society.

While some of these stories might sound amusing, they do lead us to ponder the implications of a future where robots and artificial intelligence take on more critical responsibilities and will have to be held responsible for the possibly wrong decisions they make.

The Non-Technical Guide to Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence — from medium.com by Sam DeBrule

Excerpt:

This list is a primer for non-technical people who want to understand what machine learning makes possible.

To develop a deep understanding of the space, reading won’t be enough. You need to: have an understanding of the entire landscape, spot and use ML-enabled products in your daily life (Spotify recommendations), discuss artificial intelligence more regularly, and make friends with people who know more than you do about AI and ML.

News: For starters, I’ve included a link to a weekly artificial intelligence email that Avi Eisenberger and I curate (machinelearnings.co). Start here if you want to develop a better understanding of the space, but don’t have the time to actively hunt for machine learning and artificial intelligence news.

Startups: It’s nice to see what startups are doing, and not only hear about the money they are raising. I’ve included links to the websites and apps of 307+ machine intelligence companies and tools.

People: Here’s a good place to jump into the conversation. I’ve provided links to Twitter accounts (and LinkedIn profiles and personal websites in their absence) of the founders, investors, writers, operators and researchers who work in and around the machine learning space.

Events: If you enjoy getting out from behind your computer, and want to meet awesome people who are interested in artificial intelligence in real life, there is one place that’s best to do that, more on my favorite place below.

How one clothing company blends AI and human expertise — from hbr.org by H. James Wilson, Paul Daugherty, & Prashant Shukla

Excerpt:

When we think about artificial intelligence, we often imagine robots performing tasks on the warehouse or factory floor that were once exclusively the work of people. This conjures up the specter of lost jobs and upheaval for many workers. Yet, it can also seem a bit remote — something that will happen in “the future.” But the future is a lot closer than many realize. It also looks more promising than many have predicted.

Stitch Fix provides a glimpse of how some businesses are already making use of AI-based machine learning to partner with employees for more-effective solutions. A five-year-old online clothing retailer, its success in this area reveals how AI and people can work together, with each side focused on its unique strengths.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

As the White House report rightly observes, the implications of an AI-suffused world are enormous — especially for the people who work at jobs that soon will be outsourced to artificially-intelligent machines. Although the report predicts that AI ultimately will expand the U.S. economy, it also notes that “Because AI has the potential to eliminate or drive down wages of some jobs … AI-driven automation will increase the wage gap between less-educated and more-educated workers, potentially increasing economic inequality.”

Accordingly, the ability of people to access higher education continuously throughout their working lives will become increasingly important as the AI revolution takes hold. To be sure, college has always helped safeguard people from economic dislocations caused by technological change. But this time is different. First, the quality of AI is improving rapidly. On a widely-used image recognition test, for instance, the best AI result went from a 26 percent error rate in 2011 to a 3.5 percent error rate in 2015 — even better than the 5 percent human error rate.

Moreover, as the administration’s report documents, AI has already found new applications in so-called “knowledge economy” fields, such as medical diagnosis, education and scientific research. Consequently, as artificially intelligent systems come to be used in more white-collar, professional domains, even people who are highly educated by today’s standards may find their livelihoods continuously at risk by an ever-expanding cybernetic workforce.

As a result, it’s time to stop thinking of higher education as an experience that people take part in once during their young lives — or even several times as they advance up the professional ladder — and begin thinking of it as a platform for lifelong learning.

Colleges and universities need to be doing more to move beyond the array of two-year, four-year, and graduate degrees that most offer, and toward a more customizable system that enables learners to access the learning they need when they need it. This will be critical as more people seek to return to higher education repeatedly during their careers, compelled by the imperative to stay ahead of relentless technological change.

From DSC:
That last bolded paragraph is why I think the vision of easily accessible learning — using the devices that will likely be found in one’s apartment or home — will be enormously powerful and widespread in a few years. Given the exponential pace of change that we are experiencing — and will likely continue to experience for some time — people will need to reinvent themselves quickly.

Higher education needs to rethink our offerings…or someone else will.

“IBM Launches Experimental Platform for Embedding Watson into Any Device” plus 5 other items re: cognitive computing & AI

On 11/09/2016, in 21st century, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, computer science, corporate / business world, emerging technologies, Europe, Google, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, internet, platforms, programming, by Daniel Christian

IBM Launches Experimental Platform for Embedding Watson into Any Device — from finance.yahoo.com

Excerpt:

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled the experimental release of Project Intu, a new, system-agnostic platform designed to enable embodied cognition. The new platform allows developers to embed Watson functions into various end-user device form factors, offering a next generation architecture for building cognitive-enabled experiences.

Project Intu, in its experimental form, is now accessible via the Watson Developer Cloud and also available on Intu Gateway and GitHub.

IBM and Topcoder Bring Watson to More than One Million Developers — from finance.yahoo.com

Excerpt:

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — At the IBM (NYSE: IBM) Watson Developer Conference, IBM announced a partnership with Topcoder, the premier global software development community comprised of more than one million designers, developers, data scientists, and competitive programmers, to advance learning opportunities for cognitive developers who are looking to harness the power of Watson to create the next generation of artificial intelligence apps, APIs, and solutions. This partnership also benefits businesses that gain access to an increased talent pool of developers through the Topcoder Marketplace with experience in cognitive computing and Watson.

5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Shaping the Future of E-commerce — from entrepreneur.com by Sheila Eugenio
Paradoxically for a machine, AI’s greatest strength may be in creating a more personal experience for your customer. From product personalization to virtual personal shoppers.

Excerpt:

Here are three ways AI will impact e-commerce in the coming years:

Visual search.
Offline to online worlds merge.
Personalization.

IBM to invest $3 billion to groom Watson for the Internet of Things — from healthcareitnews.com by Bernie Monegain
As part of the project, Big Blue will spend $200 million on a global Watson IoT headquarters in Munich

Man living with machine: IBM’s AI-driven Watson is learning quickly, expanding to new platforms — from business.financialpost.com by Lynn Greiner

Excerpt:

Getting kids interested in STEM subjects is an ongoing challenge, and Teacher Advisor with Watson, a free tool, will help elementary school teachers match materials with student needs. In its first phase, it’s being used by 200 teachers, assisting them in creating math lessons that engage students and help them learn. The plan is to roll it out to all U.S. elementary schools by year end. As time goes on, Watson will learn from teacher feedback and improve its recommendations. There is, Rometty said, an opportunity to also build in professional development resources.

Oxford University’s lip-reading AI is more accurate than humans, but still has a way to go — from qz.com by Dave Gershgorn

Excerpt:

Even professional lip-readers can figure out only 20% to 60% of what a person is saying. Slight movements of a person’s lips at the speed of natural speech are immensely difficult to reliably understand, especially from a distance or if the lips are obscured. And lip-reading isn’t just a plot point in NCIS: It’s an essential tool to understand the world for the hearing-impaired, and if automated reliably, could help millions.

A new paper (pdf) from the University of Oxford (with funding from Alphabet’s DeepMind) details an artificial intelligence system, called LipNet, that watches video of a person speaking and matches text to the movement of their mouth with 93.4% accuracy.

“How chatbots will change the face of campus technology,” + “The Ultimate Guide to Chatbots” + other items re: bots, chatbots, AI

On 11/02/2016, in 21st century, Amazon, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, communications, emerging technologies, game-changing environment, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, Microsoft, user experience (UX), vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

How chatbots will change the face of campus technology — from by Jami Morshed

Excerpt:

In the first few months of the new semester hubbub, what if there was an assistant at the beck and call of students to help them navigate the college process? While the campus faculty and staff are likely too busy during those first few days to answer all the questions on students and parent’s minds, chatbots – akin to Siri, Cortana, and Alexa – could provide the ideal digital assistant to make not only these first few days run smoothly, but also the student’s entire time on campus.
…
From applying to college, to arriving on campus, declaring a major, signing up courses and eventually graduation, there are a multitude of ways bots can help to streamline the process, maybe as soon as next semester.
…
For example, during the application process, a bot could send push notifications to students to remind them about upcoming deadlines, missing documents, or improperly submitted data, and would be available 24/7 to answer student’s questions such as “Am I missing any documents for my application?” or “What’s the deadline for submitting the application fee?”.

The Ultimate Guide to Chatbots: Why they’re disrupting UX and best practices for building — from medium.muz by Joe Toscano

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The incredible potential of chatbots lies in the ability to individually and contextually communicate one-to-many.
…
Right now contextually communicating with bots isn’t something that’s reasonable to ask across the board but there are a few that are doing it well, and I believe this type of interaction will be the standard in the future.

While chatbots are still in their infancy in terms of creative potential, it’s still a very exciting time for creatives trying to understand the best way to use this new technology and how to build the best bot possible.
…
Stop wasting money trying to pull people into your ecosystem. Push your content where your users are already active.

Google Assistant bot ecosystem will open to all developers by end of 2016 — from venturebeat.com by Khari Johnson

Excerpt:

Developers and the rest of the world will soon be able to make bots that interact with Google Assistant and new Google devices made public, the company said today in a special presentation in San Francisco.

“The Google Assistant will be our next thriving open ecosystem,” said Scott Huffman, lead engineer of Google Assistant.

The creation of bots for Google Assistant will be possible through Actions on Google, which is due out by early December. A software development kit (SDK) that brings Google Assistant into a range of device not made by Google is due out next year.

First Computer to Match Humans in Conversational Speech Recognition — from technologyreview.com
Human-level speech recognition has been a long time coming.

Chat bots: How talking to your apps became the next big thing — from zdnet.com by Steve Ranger
Apps that can mimic human conversations are one of the hottest technologies around right now. Here’s why.

Excerpt:

Bots are applications that are designed to respond to conversational language. The aim is to create services — whether that’s the ability to order a pizza or to enter a meeting in a calendar — where the dialogue with the app is as natural and apparently unscripted as an interaction you might have with a human.

Chat bots are like narrow versions of digital assistants like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant, designed to perform specific tasks. Interest in bots has rocketed recently and developers are racing to incorporate them into services built on popular messaging apps and websites to create a form of virtual customer services.

An open letter to Microsoft and Google’s Partnership on AI [Leonhard]

On 11/01/2016, in 21st century, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, data related items, ethics, global / globalization, Google, Microsoft, morals/values, pace of change, society, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, by Daniel Christian

An open letter to Microsoft and Google’s Partnership on AI — from wired.com by Gerd Leonhard
In a world where machines may have an IQ of 50,000, what will happen to the values and ethics that underpin privacy and free will?

Excerpt:

Dear Francesca, Eric, Mustafa, Yann, Ralf, Demis and others at IBM, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Amazon.

The Partnership on AI to benefit people and society is a welcome change from the usual celebration of disruption and magic technological progress. I hope it will also usher in a more holistic discussion about the global ethics of the digital age. Your announcement also coincides with the launch of my book Technology vs. Humanity which dramatises this very same question: How will technology stay beneficial to society?

This open letter is my modest contribution to the unfolding of this new partnership. Data is the new oil – which now makes your companies the most powerful entities on the globe, way beyond oil companies and banks. The rise of ‘AI everywhere’ is certain to only accelerate this trend. Yet unlike the giants of the fossil-fuel era, there is little oversight on what exactly you can and will do with this new data-oil, and what rules you’ll need to follow once you have built that AI-in-the-sky. There appears to be very little public stewardship, while accepting responsibility for the consequences of your inventions is rather slow in surfacing.

From DSC:
We are hopefully creating the future that we want — i.e., creating the future of our dreams, not nightmares. The 14 items below show that technology is often waaay out ahead of us…and it takes time for other areas of society to catch up (such as areas that involve making policies, laws, and/or if we should even be doing these things in the first place).

Such reflections always make me ask:

Who should be involved in some of these decisions?
Who is currently getting asked to the decision-making tables for such discussions?
How does the average citizen participate in such discussions?

Readers of this blog know that I’m generally pro-technology. But with the exponential pace of technological change, we need to slow things down enough to make wise decisions.

Google AI invents its own cryptographic algorithm; no one knows how it works — from arstechnica.co.uk by Sebastian Anthony
Neural networks seem good at devising crypto methods; less good at codebreaking.

Excerpt:

Google Brain has created two artificial intelligences that evolved their own cryptographic algorithm to protect their messages from a third AI, which was trying to evolve its own method to crack the AI-generated crypto. The study was a success: the first two AIs learnt how to communicate securely from scratch.

IoT growing faster than the ability to defend it — from scientificamerican.com by Larry Greenemeier
Last week’s use of connected gadgets to attack the Web is a wake-up call for the Internet of Things, which will get a whole lot bigger this holiday season

Excerpt:

With this year’s approaching holiday gift season the rapidly growing “Internet of Things” or IoT—which was exploited to help shut down parts of the Web this past Friday—is about to get a lot bigger, and fast. Christmas and Hanukkah wish lists are sure to be filled with smartwatches, fitness trackers, home-monitoring cameras and other wi-fi–connected gadgets that connect to the internet to upload photos, videos and workout details to the cloud. Unfortunately these devices are also vulnerable to viruses and other malicious software (malware) that can be used to turn them into virtual weapons without their owners’ consent or knowledge.

Last week’s distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks—in which tens of millions of hacked devices were exploited to jam and take down internet computer servers—is an ominous sign for the Internet of Things. A DDoS is a cyber attack in which large numbers of devices are programmed to request access to the same Web site at the same time, creating data traffic bottlenecks that cut off access to the site. In this case the still-unknown attackers used malware known as “Mirai” to hack into devices whose passwords they could guess, because the owners either could not or did not change the devices’ default passwords.

How to Get Lost in Augmented Reality — from inverse.com by Tanya Basu; with thanks to Woontack Woo for this resource
There are no laws against projecting misinformation. That’s good news for pranksters, criminals, and advertisers.

Excerpt:

Augmented reality offers designers and engineers new tools and artists and new palette, but there’s a dark side to reality-plus. Because A.R. technologies will eventually allow individuals to add flourishes to the environments of others, they will also facilitate the creation of a new type of misinformation and unwanted interactions. There will be advertising (there is always advertising) and there will also be lies perpetrated with optical trickery.

Two computer scientists-turned-ethicists are seriously considering the problematic ramifications of a technology that allows for real-world pop-ups: Keith Miller at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Bo Brinkman at Miami University in Ohio. Both men are dismissive of Pokémon Go because smartphones are actually behind the times when it comes to A.R.
…
A very important question is who controls these augmentations,” Miller says. “It’s a huge responsibility to take over someone’s world — you could manipulate people. You could nudge them.”

Can we build AI without losing control over it? — from ted.com by Sam Harris

Description:

Scared of superintelligent AI? You should be, says neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris — and not just in some theoretical way. We’re going to build superhuman machines, says Harris, but we haven’t yet grappled with the problems associated with creating something that may treat us the way we treat ants.

Do no harm, don’t discriminate: official guidance issued on robot ethics — from theguardian.com
Robot deception, addiction and possibility of AIs exceeding their remits noted as hazards that manufacturers should consider

Excerpt:

Isaac Asimov gave us the basic rules of good robot behaviour: don’t harm humans, obey orders and protect yourself. Now the British Standards Institute has issued a more official version aimed at helping designers create ethically sound robots.

The document, BS8611 Robots and robotic devices, is written in the dry language of a health and safety manual, but the undesirable scenarios it highlights could be taken directly from fiction. Robot deception, robot addiction and the possibility of self-learning systems exceeding their remits are all noted as hazards that manufacturers should consider.

World’s first baby born with new “3 parent” technique — from newscientist.com by Jessica Hamzelou

Excerpt:

It’s a boy! A five-month-old boy is the first baby to be born using a new technique that incorporates DNA from three people, New Scientist can reveal. “This is great news and a huge deal,” says Dusko Ilic at King’s College London, who wasn’t involved in the work. “It’s revolutionary.”

The controversial technique, which allows parents with rare genetic mutations to have healthy babies, has only been legally approved in the UK. But the birth of the child, whose Jordanian parents were treated by a US-based team in Mexico, should fast-forward progress around the world, say embryologists.

Scientists Grow Full-Sized, Beating Human Hearts From Stem Cells — from popsci.com by Alexandra Ossola
It’s the closest we’ve come to growing transplantable hearts in the lab

Excerpt:

Of the 4,000 Americans waiting for heart transplants, only 2,500 will receive new hearts in the next year. Even for those lucky enough to get a transplant, the biggest risk is the their bodies will reject the new heart and launch a massive immune reaction against the foreign cells. To combat the problems of organ shortage and decrease the chance that a patient’s body will reject it, researchers have been working to create synthetic organs from patients’ own cells. Now a team of scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School has gotten one step closer, using adult skin cells to regenerate functional human heart tissue, according to a study published recently in the journal Circulation Research.

Achieving trust through data ethics — from sloanreview.mit.edu
Success in the digital age requires a new kind of diligence in how companies gather and use data.

Excerpt:

A few months ago, Danish researchers used data-scraping software to collect the personal information of nearly 70,000 users of a major online dating site as part of a study they were conducting. The researchers then published their results on an open scientific forum. Their report included the usernames, political leanings, drug usage, and other intimate details of each account.

A firestorm ensued. Although the data gathered and subsequently released was already publicly available, many questioned whether collecting, bundling, and broadcasting the data crossed serious ethical and legal boundaries.

In today’s digital age, data is the primary form of currency. Simply put: Data equals information equals insights equals power.

Technology is advancing at an unprecedented rate — along with data creation and collection. But where should the line be drawn? Where do basic principles come into play to consider the potential harm from data’s use?

“Data Science Ethics” course — from the University of Michigan on edX.org
Learn how to think through the ethics surrounding privacy, data sharing, and algorithmic decision-making.

About this course
As patients, we care about the privacy of our medical record; but as patients, we also wish to benefit from the analysis of data in medical records. As citizens, we want a fair trial before being punished for a crime; but as citizens, we want to stop terrorists before they attack us. As decision-makers, we value the advice we get from data-driven algorithms; but as decision-makers, we also worry about unintended bias. Many data scientists learn the tools of the trade and get down to work right away, without appreciating the possible consequences of their work.

This course focused on ethics specifically related to data science will provide you with the framework to analyze these concerns. This framework is based on ethics, which are shared values that help differentiate right from wrong. Ethics are not law, but they are usually the basis for laws.

Everyone, including data scientists, will benefit from this course. No previous knowledge is needed.

Science, Technology, and the Future of Warfare — from mwi.usma.edu by Margaret Kosal

Excerpt:

We know that emerging innovations within cutting-edge science and technology (S&T) areas carry the potential to revolutionize governmental structures, economies, and life as we know it. Yet, others have argued that such technologies could yield doomsday scenarios and that military applications of such technologies have even greater potential than nuclear weapons to radically change the balance of power. These S&T areas include robotics and autonomous unmanned system; artificial intelligence; biotechnology, including synthetic and systems biology; the cognitive neurosciences; nanotechnology, including stealth meta-materials; additive manufacturing (aka 3D printing); and the intersection of each with information and computing technologies, i.e., cyber-everything. These concepts and the underlying strategic importance were articulated at the multi-national level in NATO’s May 2010 New Strategic Concept paper: “Less predictable is the possibility that research breakthroughs will transform the technological battlefield…. The most destructive periods of history tend to be those when the means of aggression have gained the upper hand in the art of waging war.”

Low-Cost Gene Editing Could Breed a New Form of Bioterrorism — from bigthink.com by Philip Perry

Excerpt:

2012 saw the advent of gene editing technique CRISPR-Cas9. Now, just a few short years later, gene editing is becoming accessible to more of the world than its scientific institutions. This new technique is now being used in public health projects, to undermine the ability of certain mosquitoes to transmit disease, such as the Zika virus. But that initiative has had many in the field wondering whether it could be used for the opposite purpose, with malicious intent.

Back in February, U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper put out a Worldwide Threat Assessment, to alert the intelligence community of the potential risks posed by gene editing. The technology, which holds incredible promise for agriculture and medicine, was added to the list of weapons of mass destruction.

It is thought that amateur terrorists, non-state actors such as ISIS, or rouge states such as North Korea, could get their hands on it, and use this technology to create a bioweapon such as the earth has never seen, causing wanton destruction and chaos without any way to mitigate it.

What would happen if gene editing fell into the wrong hands?

Robot nurses will make shortages obsolete — from thedailybeast.com by Joelle Renstrom
By 2022, one million nurse jobs will be unfilled—leaving patients with lower quality care and longer waits. But what if robots could do the job?

Excerpt:

Japan is ahead of the curve when it comes to this trend, given that its elderly population is the highest of any country. Toyohashi University of Technology has developed Terapio, a robotic medical cart that can make hospital rounds, deliver medications and other items, and retrieve records. It follows a specific individual, such as a doctor or nurse, who can use it to record and access patient data. Terapio isn’t humanoid, but it does have expressive eyes that change shape and make it seem responsive. This type of robot will likely be one of the first to be implemented in hospitals because it has fairly minimal patient contact, works with staff, and has a benign appearance.

Established to study and formulate best practices on AI technologies, to advance the public’s understanding of AI, and to serve as an open platform for discussion and engagement about AI and its influences on people and society.

GOALS

Support Best Practices
To support research and recommend best practices in areas including ethics, fairness, and inclusivity; transparency and interoperability; privacy; collaboration between people and AI systems; and of the trustworthiness, reliability, and robustness of the technology.

Create an Open Platform for Discussion and Engagement
To provide a regular, structured platform for AI researchers and key stakeholders to communicate directly and openly with each other about relevant issues.

Advance Understanding
To advance public understanding and awareness of AI and its potential benefits and potential costs to act as a trusted and expert point of contact as questions/concerns arise from the public and others in the area of AI and to regularly update key constituents on the current state of AI progress.

IBM Watson’s latest gig: Improving cancer treatment with genomic sequencing — from techrepublic.com by Alison DeNisco
A new partnership between IBM Watson Health and Quest Diagnostics will combine Watson’s cognitive computing with genetic tumor sequencing for more precise, individualized cancer care.

Addendum on 11/1/16:

Excerpt:

Dear Francesca, Eric, Mustafa, Yann, Ralf, Demis and others at IBM, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Amazon.

Why deep learning is suddenly changing your life — from fortune.com by Roger Parloff

Excerpt:

Most obviously, the speech-recognition functions on our smartphones work much better than they used to. When we use a voice command to call our spouses, we reach them now. We aren’t connected to Amtrak or an angry ex.

In fact, we are increasingly interacting with our computers by just talking to them, whether it’s Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, or the many voice-responsive features of Google. Chinese search giant Baidu says customers have tripled their use of its speech interfaces in the past 18 months.

Machine translation and other forms of language processing have also become far more convincing, with Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Baidu unveiling new tricks every month. Google Translate now renders spoken sentences in one language into spoken sentences in another for 32 pairs of languages, while offering text translations for 103 tongues, including Cebuano, Igbo, and Zulu. Google’s Inbox app offers three ready-made replies for many incoming emails.
…
But what most people don’t realize is that all these breakthroughs are, in essence, the same breakthrough. They’ve all been made possible by a family of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques popularly known as deep learning, though most scientists still prefer to call them by their original academic designation: deep neural networks.

Even the Internet metaphor doesn’t do justice to what AI with deep learning will mean, in Ng’s view. “AI is the new electricity,” he says. “Just as 100 years ago electricity transformed industry after industry, AI will now do the same.”

Graphically speaking:

“Our sales teams are using neural nets to recommend which prospects to contact next or what kinds of product offerings to recommend.”

One way to think of what deep learning does is as “A to B mappings,” says Baidu’s Ng. “You can input an audio clip and output the transcript. That’s speech recognition.” As long as you have data to train the software, the possibilities are endless, he maintains. “You can input email, and the output could be: Is this spam or not?” Input loan applications, he says, and the output might be the likelihood a customer will repay it. Input usage patterns on a fleet of cars, and the output could advise where to send a car next.

If you’re interested in the history of computing, AI, robotics, networking, and more, then you need to know about this site

On 10/15/2016, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, Adobe, Amazon, analytics, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, communications, computer science, convergence, digital audio, digital learning, digital storytelling, digital video, e-books, e-publishing related items (EPUB and more), e-readers, education technology, Google, graphics, history, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, internet, IT in HE, mathematics, media/film, Microsoft, mobile technologies, multimedia, Near Field Communication (NFC), open courseware and systems, platforms, programming, robotics, science, simulations, tablets, technologies for your home, technology (general), telecommunications, tools, universities, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, wearables, web-based collaboration, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Check out:
computerhistory.org/timeline/

For the history of AI and robotics, see:
computerhistory.org/timeline/ai-robotics/

“Amazon is winning the race to the future” plus 9 other items re: AI, personal assistants, chatbots, & more

On 10/10/2016, in Amazon, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, emerging technologies, experimentation, Google, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, intelligent systems, interactivity, internet, machine-to-machine communications, Near Field Communication (NFC), tools, trends, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Amazon is winning the race to the future — from bizjournals.com by

Excerpt:

This is the week when artificially intelligent assistants start getting serious.

On Tuesday, Google is expected to announce the final details for Home, its connected speaker with the new Google Assistant built inside.

But first Amazon, which surprised everyone last year by practically inventing the AI-in-a-can platform, will release a new version of the Echo Dot, a cheaper and smaller model of the full-sized Echo that promises to put the company’s Alexa assistant in every room in your house.

The Echo Dot has all the capabilities of the original Echo, but at a much cheaper price, and with a compact form factor that’s designed to be tucked away. Because of its size (it looks like a hockey puck from the future), its sound quality isn’t as good as the Echo, but it can hook up to an external speaker through a standard audio cable or Bluetooth.

100 bot people to watch #BotWatch #1 — from chatbotsmagazine.com

Excerpt:

100 people to watch in the bot space, in no order.

I’ll publish a new list once a month. This one is #1 October 2016.
…
This is my personal top 100 for people to watch in the bot space.

Should We Give Chatbots Their Own Personalities? — from re-work.com by Sophie Curtis

Excerpt:

Today, we have machines that assemble cars, make candy bars, defuse bombs, and a myriad of other things. They can dispense our drinks, facilitate our bank deposits, and find the movies we want to watch with a touch of the screen.

Automation allows all kinds of amazing things, but it is all done with virtually no personality. Building a chatbot with the ability to be conversational with emotion is crucial to getting people to gain trust in the technology. And now there are plenty of tools and resources available to rapidly create and launch chatbots with the personality customers want and businesses needs.

Jordi Torras is CEO and Founder of Inbenta, a company that specializes in NLP, semantic search and chatbots to improve customer experience. We spoke to him ahead of his presentation at the Virtual Assistant Summit in San Francisco, to learn about the recent explosion of chatbots and virtual assistants, and what we can expect to see in the future.

How I built and launched my first chatbot in hours — from chatbotsmagazine.com by Max Pelzner
From idea to MVB (Minimum Viable Bot), and launched in 24 hours!

Developing a Chatbot? Do Not Make These Mistakes! — from chatbotsmagazine.com Hira Saeed

This is what an A.I.-powered future looks like — from venturebeat.com by Grayson Brulte

Excerpt:

Today, we are just beginning to scratch the surface of what is possible with artificial intelligence (A.I.) and how individuals will interact with its various forms. Every single aspect of our society — from cars to houses to products to services — will be reimagined and redesigned to incorporate A.I.

A child born in the year 2030 will not comprehend why his or her parents once had to manually turn on the lights in the living room. In the future, the smart home will seamlessly know the needs, wants, and habits of the individuals who live in the home prior to them taking an action.

Before we arrive at this future, it is helpful to take a step back and reimagine how we design cars, houses, products, and services. We are just beginning to see glimpses of this future with the Amazon Echo and Google Home smart voice assistants.

Artificial intelligence created to fold laundry for you — from geek.com by Matthew Humphries

Excerpt:

So, Seven Dreamers Laboratories, in collaboration with Panasonic and Daiwa House Industry, have created just such a machine. However, folding laundry correctly turns out to be quite a complicated task, and so an artificial intelligence was required to make it a reliable process.

Laundry folding is actually a five stage process, including:

Grabbing
Spreading
Recognizing
Folding
Sorting/Storing

The grabbing and spreading seems pretty easy, but then the machine needs to understand what type of clothing it needs to fold. That recognizing stage requires both image recognition and AI. The image recognition classifies the type of clothing, then the AI figures out which processes to use in order to start folding.

2 days of global chatbot experts at Talkabot in 12 minutes — from chatbotsmagazine.com by Alec Lazarescu

Excerpt:

During a delightful “cold spell” in Austin at the end of September, a few hundred chatbot enthusiasts joined together for the first talkabot.ai conference.

As a participant both writing about and building chatbots, I’m excited to share a mix of valuable actionable insights and strategic vision directions picked up from speakers and attendees as well as behind the scenes discussions with the organizers from Howdy.

In a very congenial and collaborative atmosphere, a number of valuable recurring themes stood out from a variety of expert speakers ranging from chatbot builders to tool makers to luminaries from adjacent industries.

Addendum:

The Alexa Prize (emphasis DSC)

The way humans interact with machines is at an inflection point and conversational artificial intelligence (AI) is at the center of the transformation. Alexa, the voice service that powers Amazon Echo, enables customers to interact with the world around them in a more intuitive way using only their voice.

The Alexa Prize is an annual competition for university students dedicated to accelerating the field of conversational AI. The inaugural competition is focused on creating a socialbot, a new Alexa skill that converses coherently and engagingly with humans on popular topics and news events. Participating teams will advance several areas of conversational AI including knowledge acquisition, natural language understanding, natural language generation, context modeling, commonsense reasoning and dialog planning. Through the innovative work of students, Alexa customers will have novel, engaging conversations. And, the immediate feedback from Alexa customers will help students improve their algorithms much faster than previously possible.
…
Amazon will award the winning team $500,000. Additionally, a prize of $1 million will be awarded to the winning team’s university if their socialbot achieves the grand challenge of conversing coherently and engagingly with humans on popular topics for 20 minutes.

Today’s announcements from Google. VR, AI, cognitive computing, & developments in HCI continue their march forward.

On 10/04/2016, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, Google, human-computer interaction (HCI), productivity / tips and tricks, tools, trends, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, by Daniel Christian

Google welcomes the future of mobile VR with its $79 Daydream View VR headset — from techcrunch.com by Lucas Matney

Excerpt:

Today at its October hardware/software/everything event, the company showed off its latest VR initiatives including a Daydream headset. The $79 Daydream View VR headset looks quite a bit different than other headsets on the market with its fabric exterior.

Clay Bavor, head of VR, said the design is meant to be more comfortable and friendly. It’s unclear whether the cloth aesthetic is a recommendation for the headset reference design as Xiaomi’s Daydream headset is similarly soft and decidedly design-centric.

The headset and the Google Daydream platform will launch in November.

Here’s the Google Pixel — from techcrunch.com by Brian Heater

Excerpt:

While the event is positioned as hardware first, this is Google we’re talking about here, and as such, the real focus is software. The company led the event with talk about its forthcoming Google Assistant AI, and as such, the Pixel will be the first handset to ship with the friendly voice helper. As the company puts it, “we’re building hardware with the Google Assistant it its core. ”

Google Home will go on sale today for $129, shipping November 4 — from techcrunch.com by Frederic Lardinois

Excerpt:

Google Home, the company’s answer to Amazon’s Echo, made its official debut at the Google I/O developer conference earlier this year. Since then, we’ve heard very little about Google’s voice-activated personal assistant. Today, at Google’s annual hardware event, the company finally provided us with more details.

Google Home will cost $129 (with a free six-month trial of YouTube red) and go on sale on Google’s online store today. It will ship on November 4.

Google’s Mario Queiroz today argued that our homes are different from other environments. So like the Echo, Google Home combines a wireless speaker with a set of microphones that listen for your voice commands. There is a mute button on the Home and four LEDs on top of the device so you know when it’s listening to you; otherwise, you won’t find any other physical buttons on it.

Google Working with Netflix, HBO & Hulu for Daydream Content— from vrfocus.com by Kevin Joyce
#madebygoogle reveals services ready and on the way to support Google Daydream

Excerpt:

Google’s #madebygoogle press conference today revealed some significant details about the company’s forthcoming plans for virtual reality (VR). Daydream is set to launch later this year, and along with the reveal of the first ‘Daydream Ready’ smartphone handset, Pixel, and Google’s own version of the head-mounted display (HMD), Daydream View, the company revealed some of the partners that will be bringing content to the device.

Google officially unveils $649 Pixel phone with unlimited storage; $129 Google Home — from cnbc.com by Anita Balakrishnan

Google Unveils ‘Home,’ Embraces Aggressive Shift To Hardware — from forbes.com by Matt Drange

Excerpt:

You can add to the seemingly never-ending list of things that Google is deeply involved in: hardware production.

On Tuesday, Google made clear that hardware is more than just a side business, aggressively expanding its offerings across a number of different categories. Headlined by the much-anticipated Google Home and a lineup of smartphones, dubbed Pixel, the announcements mark a major shift in Google’s approach to supplementing its massively profitable advertising sales business and extensive history in software development.
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Aimed squarely at Amazon’s Echo, Home is powered by more than 70 billion facts collected by Google’s knowledge graph, the company says. By saying, “OK, Google” Home quickly pulls information from other websites, such as Wikipedia, and gives contextualized answers akin to searching Google manually and clicking on a couple links. Of course, Home is integrated with Google’s other devices, so adding items to your shopping list, for example, are easily pulled up via Pixel. Home can also be programmed to read back information in your calendar, traffic updates and the weather. “If the president can get a daily briefing, why shouldn’t you?” Google’s Rishi Chandra asked when he introduced Home on Tuesday.

A comment from DC:
More and more, people are speaking to a device and expect that device to do something for them. How much longer, especially with the advent of chatbots, before people expect this of learning-related applications?

Natural language processing, cognitive computing, and artificial intelligence continue their march forward.

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