platforms

AI chatbot apps to infiltrate businesses sooner than you think — from searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com by Bridget Botelho
Artificial intelligence chatbots aren’t the norm yet, but within the next five years, there’s a good chance the sales person emailing you won’t be a person at all.

Excerpt:

In fact, artificial intelligence has come so far so fast in recent years, Gartner predicts it will be pervasive in all new products by 2020, with technologies including natural language capabilities, deep neural networks and conversational capabilities.

Other analysts share that expectation. Technologies that encompass the umbrella term artificial intelligence — including image recognition, machine learning, AI chatbots and speech recognition — will soon be ubiquitous in business applications as developers gain access to it through platforms such as the IBM Watson Conversation API and the Google Cloud Natural Language API.

3 corporate departments that chatbots will disrupt — from venturebeat.com by Natalie Lambert

Excerpt:

Customer Service
Human Resources
Marketing

Facebook Messenger’s 11,000 chatbots are much more interactive — from androidcentral.com by Harish Jonnalagadda

Excerpt:

Facebook introduced chatbots on Messenger three months ago, and the search giant has shared today that over 11,000 bots are active on the messaging service. The Messenger Platform has picked up an update that adds a slew of new features to bots, such as a persistent menu that lists a bot’s commands, quick replies, ability to respond with GIFs, audio, video, and other files, and a rating system to provide feedback to bot developers.

Chatbots are coming to take over the world — from telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com

Excerpts:

In another example, many businesses use interactive voice response (IVR) telephony systems, which have limited functionalities and often provide a poor user experience. Chatbots can replace these applications in future where the user will interact naturally to get relevant information without following certain steps or waiting for a logical sequence to occur.
…
Chatbots are a good starting point, but the future lies in more advanced versions of audio and video bots. Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google with its voice assistance, are working in the same direction to achieve it. Bot ecosystems will become even more relevant in the phase of IoT mass adoption and improvement of input/output (I/O) technology.

With big players investing heavily in AI, Chatbots are likely to be an increasing feature of social media and other communications platforms.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Chatbots But Were Afraid to Ask — from businessinsider.com by Andrew Meola

Excerpt:

Chatbots are software programs that use messaging platforms as the interface to perform a wide variety of tasks—everything from scheduling a meeting to reporting the weather, to helping a customer buy a sweater.

Because texting is the heart of the mobile experience for smartphone users, chatbots are a natural way to turn something users are very familiar with into a rewarding service or marketing opportunity.

And when you consider that the top 4 messaging apps reach over 3 billion global users (MORE than the top 4 social networks), you can see that the opportunity is huge.

Microsoft taught a computer to make ‘chit chat’ — and now 40 million people love it — from businessinsider.com by Matt Weinberger

Excerpt:

The Xiaoice chat bot — pronounced “Shao-ice” and translated as “little Bing” — born as an experiment by Microsoft Research in 2014, reaches 40 million followers in China, who often literally talk with her for hours.

At her most active, Xiaoice is holding down as many 23 conversations a session, says Microsoft Research NExT leader Dr. Peter Lee. It’s even evolved to become a nice little sideline business for Microsoft, thanks to a partnership with Chinese e-retailer JD.com that lets users buy products by talking to Xiaoice.

The reason Xiaoice is so successful is she was born of a different kind of philosophical experiment: Instead of building a chat bot that was useful, Microsoft simply tried to make it fun to talk to.

Is the provision of dual cameras in Apple’s new iPhone 7 laying the foundation for mainstream AR?

On 09/10/2016, in Apple, Augmented Reality (AR), digital photography, digital storytelling, digital video, Mixed Reality (MR), photography, platforms, tools, vendors, by Daniel Christian

From Apple:

iPhone 7 Plus doesn’t have just one entirely new camera system — it has two. The same 12MP wide-angle camera that’s on iPhone 7 works with a 12MP telephoto camera that can get even closer. That means you can get higher-quality zoom from farther away. And with an all-new depth-of-field effect (coming soon), portrait shots will look better than ever. Say hello to the world’s best photo op.
…
Depth-of-field effect.
Depth of field allows you to keep faces sharp while creating a blurred effect in the background. When you take a shot with iPhone 7 Plus, the dual-camera system uses both cameras and advanced machine learning to make your subject sharp while creating the same out-of-focus blur in the background — known as the bokeh effect — previously reserved for DSLR cameras. So no matter what’s behind your subject, it’s easy to create a great portrait.

Dual camera smartphones – the missing link that will bring augmented reality into the mainstream — from theconversation.com

Excerpt:

Smartphones boasting “dual cameras” are becoming more common, and news that they will feature on the just-announced iPhone 7 Plus indicates the arrival into the mainstream. But while dual cameras may stem from efforts to improve picture quality, it has the potential to lead us down much more interesting paths: the real story may be that Apple is using dual cameras to position itself for the augmented reality world ushered in by the Pokemon Go phenomenon.
…
The iPhone uses machine learning algorithms to scan objects within a scene, building up a real-time 3D depth map of the terrain and objects. Currently, the iPhone uses this to separate the background from the foreground in order to selectively focus on foreground objects. This effect of blurring out background details, known as bokeh, is a feature of DLSRs and not readily available on smaller cameras such as those in smartphones. The depth map allows the iPhone to simulate a variable aperture which provides the ability to display areas of the image out of focus. While an enviable addition for smartphone camera users, this is a gimmick compared to what the depth map can really do.

What Apple has is the first step toward a device like Microsoft’s HoloLens, an augmented reality head-mounted display currently in development.

Software that provides similar analysis of people’s poses and location within a scene for dual camera smartphones would provide a virtual window onto the real world. Using hand gesture recognition, users could naturally interact with a mixed reality world, with the phone’s accelerometer and GPS data detecting and driving changes to how that world is presented and updated.

Apple has not arrived here by accident. In addition to acquiring Linx, Apple also purchased augmented reality pioneer Metaio in 2015, suggesting a game plan to develop a mixed reality platform.

Dual camera smartphones: here’s why you should want one — from t3.com by Joseph Carey
The iPhone 7 Plus is meant to feature dual cameras, but why are two cameras better than one?

Excerpt:

One sensor for the main image and one for the detail – dual cameras never usually have two of the same sensor.

Today’s announcements from Apple

On 09/07/2016, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, Apple, Augmented Reality (AR), collaboration, health, platforms, tools, vendors, wearables, by Daniel Christian

Here are the big announcements from Apple’s September 2016 event — from amp.imore.com

iPhone 7
Apple Watch Series 2
Apple AirPods
iOS 10
watchOS 3
iWork: Apple announced an update to its iWork productivity suite across iPhone, iPad, and Mac that allows for real-time collaboration within Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.
Super Mario Run

What Apple’s Dual Camera iPhone Means For Augmented Reality — from vrscout.com

Excerpt:

Although there weren’t drastic changes made to the physical design of the iPhone (minus that old thing called a headphone jack), Apple’s unveiling of a dual-lens camera points to a world where millions of consumers could one day put a powerful augmented reality device in their pocket.

Apple kills headphone jack (1878 – 2016). RIP. — from techcrunch.com

Apple Unveils Waterproof iPhone 7 with Dual Cameras — from interestingengineering.com

iPhone 7 FAQ: Everything you need to know!— from amp.imore.com

Apple adds real-time collaboration to iWork –– from engadget.com
Apple is taking on Google Docs in the education market. (From DSC: I’d like to think so, but we’ll see.)

After 500 Million Downloads, ‘Pokemon Go’ Is Coming To Apple Watch — from uploadvr.com

Excerpt:

A brief demonstration of the game was featured on-stage. The watch edition of the game will place a bigger focus on player fitness, tracking the calories you burn in play sessions along with distance.

Apple Watch bands FAQ: Everything you need to know! — from amp.imore.com

Hmmm…Self-paced eLearning in steep decline according to this August 2016 report from ambientinsight.com

On 08/31/2016, in business, change, CMS/LMS, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, elearning, global / globalization, platforms, training / L&D, trends, vendors, by Daniel Christian

The 2016-2021 Worldwide Self-paced eLearning Market: The Global eLearning Market is in Steep Decline — from ambientinsight.com

Excerpt:

The Perfect Storm of Market Inhibitors
There are five major convergent inhibitors driving the global revenues for self-paced eLearning downward:

Intense commoditization
The eLearning product lifecycle is in the final stage and suppliers are diversifying their product catalogs beyond eLearning
The collapse of the global LMS market
Profound degree of product substitution
The leapfrog effect in mobile-only countries

None of these inhibitors are reversible. Combined, they are driving the global eLearning market into steep declines in revenue. Any one of these inhibitors would dampen the demand for eLearning, but the presence of all five creates very unfavorable market conditions for suppliers.

AmbientInsight-Decline-SelfPacedELearning-2016

The first truly awesome chatbot is a talking T. Rex [Brownlee] #edtech #chatbots #AI #HCI

On 08/26/2016, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, 3D, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, attention, Augmented Reality (AR), bots, computer science, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, interactivity, K-12 related, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, love of learning, multimedia, platforms, play, user experience (UX), Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, youth, by Daniel Christian

The first truly awesome chatbot is a talking T. Rex — from fastcodesign.com by John Brownlee
National Geographic uses a virtual Tyrannosaur to teach kids about dinosaurs—and succeeds where other chatbots fail.

Excerpt:

As some have declared chatbots to be the “next webpage,” brands have scrambled to develop their own talkative bots, letting you do everything from order a pizza to rewrite your resume. The truth is, though, that a lot of these chatbots are actually quite stupid, and tend to have a hard time understanding natural human language. Sooner or later, users get frustrated bashing their heads up against the wall of a dim-witted bot’s AI.

So how do you design around a chatbot’s walnut-sized brain? If you’re National Geographic Kids UK, you set your chatbot to the task of pretending to be a Tyrannosaurus rex, a Cretaceous-era apex predator that really had a walnut-sized brain (at least comparatively speaking).

She’s called Tina the T. rex, and by making it fun to learn about dinosaurs, she suggests that education — rather than advertising or shopping — might be the real calling of chatbots.

Also relevant/see:

Honeybot would teach kids using “3D augmented reality” — from newatlas.com by Aaron Heinrich

Why every college campus needs a chatbot — from venturebeat.com by John Brandon

Excerpts:

Dropping a child off at college is a stressful experience. I should know — I dropped off one last week and another today. It’s confusing because everything is so new, your child (who is actually a young adult, how did that happen?) is anxious, and you usually have to settle up on your finances.

This situation happens to be ideal for a chatbot, because the administrative staff is way too busy to handle questions in person or by phone. There might be someone directing you in the parking lot, but not everyone standing around in the student center knows how to submit FAFSA data.
…
One of the main reasons for thinking of this is that I would have used one myself today. It’s a situation where you want immediate, quick information without having to explain all of the background information. You just need the campus map or the schedule for the day — that’s it. You don’t want any extra frills.

From DSC:
My question is:

Will Instructional Designers, Technical Communicators, e-Learning Designers, Trainers, (and other positions as as well) going to have to know how to build chatbots in the future? Our job descriptions could be changing soon. Or will this kind of thing require more programming-related skills? Perhaps more firms like the one below could impact that situation…

Ed Tech & AI: How Education Chatbots [could] Revolutionize Personalized Learning [Walker]

On 08/22/2016, in 21st century, adult learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, education, education technology, emerging technologies, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), hybrid learning, ideas, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, love of learning, microlearning, more voice more choice more control, motivation, online tutoring, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, training / L&D, TVs, ubiquitous learning, universities, virtual tutoring, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Education Technology And Artificial Intelligence: How Education Chatbots [could] Revolutionize Personalized Learning — from parentherald.com by Kristine Walker

From DSC:
I inserted a [could] in the title, as I don’t think we’re there yet. That said, I don’t see chatbots, personal assistants, and the use of AI going away any time soon. This should be on our radars from here on out. Chatbots could easily be assigned some heavy lifting duties within K-20 education as well as in the corporate world; but even then, we’ll still need excellent teachers, professors, and trainers/subject matter experts out there. I don’t see anyone being replaced at this point.

Excerpt:

As the equity gap in American education continues, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has been urging educators, investors and tech companies to be more open in investing time and money in artificial intelligence-driven education technology programs. The reason? Gates believed that these AI-based EdTech platforms could personalize and revolutionize school learning experience while eliminating the equity gap.

Also see:

Are ‘Motivation Bots’ Part of the Future of Education? — from educationworld.com

The Motivation, Revision and Announcement bots each perform respective functions that are intended to help students master exams.

The Motivation bot, for instance, “keeps students motivated with reminders, social support, and other means,” while the Revision bot “helps students to best understand ways to improve their work” and the Announcement bot “tells students how much studying they need to do based on the amount of time available.”

Somewhat related:

Deep Learning Is Still A No-Show In Gartner 2016 Hype Cycle For Emerging Technologies — from .forbes.com by Gil Press

Excerpt:

Machine learning is best defined as the transition from feeding the computer with programs containing specific instructions in the forms of step-by-step rules or algorithms to feeding the computer with algorithms that can “learn” from data and can make inferences “on their own.” The computer is “trained” by data which is labeled or classified based on previous outcomes, and its software algorithms “learn” how to predict the classification of new data that is not labeled or classified. For example, after a period of training in which the computer is presented with spam and non-spam email messages, a good machine learning program will successfully identify, (i.e., predict,) which email message is spam and which is not without human intervention. In addition to spam filtering, machine learning has been applied successfully to problems such as hand-writing recognition, machine translation, fraud detection, and product recommendations.

The next battleground: The 4th Era of Personal Computing — from stevebrownfuturist.com by Steve Brown

Excerpt:

I believe we are moving into the fourth era of personal computing. The first era was characterized by the emergence of the PC. The second by the web and the browser, and the third by mobile and apps.

The fourth personal computing platform will be a combination of IOT, wearable and AR-based clients using speech and gesture, connected over 4G/5G networks to PA, CaaS and social networking platforms that draw upon a new class of cloud-based AI to deliver highly personalized access to information and services.

So what does the fourth era of personal computing look like? It’s a world of smart objects, smart spaces, voice control, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence.

Gartner reveals the top 3 emerging technologies from 2016 — from information-age.com by Nicholas Ismail
Technology is advancing at such a rapid rate that businesses are almost being forced to embrace emerging technologies in order to stay competitive

Excerpt:

Emerging technologies are fast becoming the tools with the highest priority for organisations facing rapidly accelerating digital business innovation.

Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2016 has selected three distinct technology trends – out of 2,000 – that organisations should track and begin to implement in order to stay competitive.

Their selection was based on what technologies will have the most impact and lead to the most competitive advantage, while establishing when these big technologies are going to mature (early stage or saturating).

Gartner’s research director Mike Walker said the hype cycle specifically focuses on the set of technologies that are showing promise in delivering a high degree of competitive advantage over the next five to ten years.

Information Age spoke to Mike Walker to gain a further insight into these three technologies, and their future business applications.

Smart machine technologies will be the most disruptive class of technologies over the next 10 years, including smart robots, autonomous cars and smart workspaces

The future of financial infrastructure: An ambitious look at how blockchain can reshape financial services — from weforum.org

Key findings include:

Distributed ledger technology (blockchain) has the potential to drive simplicity and efficiency by establishing new financial services infrastructure and processes
Distributed ledger technology will form the foundation of next generation financial services infrastructure in conjunction with other existing and emerging technologies
Similar to technological advances in the past, new financial services infrastructure will transform and question traditional orthodoxies in today’s business models
The most impactful distributed ledger technology applications will require deep collaboration between incumbents, innovators, and regulators, adding complexity and delaying implementation

The report is centered on use cases, considering how distributed ledger technology could benefit each scenario. How will blockchain transform the future of financial services?

Ernst & Young’s report anticipates blockchain to reach critical mass in 3-5 years — from coinspeaker.com by Tatsiana Yablonskaya
Ernst and Young explains that financial industry is far from being the only one that can benefit from the blockchain technology.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Ernst & Young, leading consulting firm, one of the “Big Four” audit firms and the third largest professional services firm in the world, has made some predictions about the future of the blockchain technology and its significance in various industry sectors in the recent report.

The attention of multiple financial companies has been focused on the blockchain lately. This unique technology is well adaptable to the increasing requirements of secure bookkeeping and automation in various industries.

The EY report predicts that blockchain will reach critical mass in financial services in 3-5 years, with other industries following quickly. “One reason the blockchain reaction is racing toward critical mass faster than previous disruptive technologies is that it is arriving in the midst of the digital transformation already sweeping through most sectors of the global economy. Consequently, despite the obstacles still to be overcome, businesspeople and governments are preconditioned to recognize blockchain’s potential. Tech companies have already established much of the digital infrastructure required to realize blockchain business visions.”

From DSC:
Applying this technology towards the world of learning…

I wonder how blockchain might impact credentialing for lifelong learning, and will it be integrated into services available via tvOS-based applications? This type of cloud-based offering/service could likely be a piece of our future learning ecosystems. Innovative, forward-thinking institutions should put this on their radar now, and start working on such efforts.

Ethics Part VII | The need for ethics, morals, policies, & serious reflection about what kind of future we want has never been greater!

On 08/08/2016, in 21st century, 3D, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, emerging technologies, ethics, Facebook / Meta Platforms, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, Google, Microsoft, morals/values, platforms, relationships, robotics, society, the downsides of how people use tech, web design and production, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
The articles below demonstrate why the need for ethics, morals, policies, & serious reflection about what kind of future we want has never been greater!

What Ethics Should Guide the Use of Robots in Policing? — from nytimes.com

11 Police Robots Patrolling Around the World — from wired.com

Police use of robot to kill Dallas shooting suspect is new, but not without precursors — from techcrunch.com

What skills will human workers need when robots take over? A new algorithm would let the machines decide — from qz.com

The impact on jobs | Automation and anxiety | Will smarter machines cause mass unemployment? — from economist.com

VRTO Spearheads Code of Ethics on Human Augmentation — from vrfocus.com
A code of ethics is being developed for both VR and AR industries.

Google and Microsoft Want Every Company to Scrutinize You with AI — from technologyreview.com by Tom Simonite
The tech giants are eager to rent out their AI breakthroughs to other companies.

U.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to ‘Enhance’ Human Abilities — from pewinternet.org by Cary Funk, Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Podrebarac Sciupac
Americans are more worried than enthusiastic about using gene editing, brain chip implants and synthetic blood to change human capabilities

Human Enhancement — from pewinternet.org by David Masci
The Scientific and Ethical Dimensions of Striving for Perfection

Robolliance focuses on autonomous robotics for security and survelliance — from robohub.org by Kassie Perlongo

Company Unveils Plans to Grow War Drones from Chemicals — from interestingengineering.com

The Army’s Self-Driving Trucks Hit the Highway to Prepare for Battle — from wired.com

Russian robots will soon replace human soldiers — from interestingengineering.com

Unmanned combat robots beginning to appear — from therobotreport.com

Law-abiding robots? What should the legal status of robots be? — from robohub.org by Anders Sandberg

Excerpt:

News media are reporting that the EU is considering turning robots into electronic persons with rights and apparently industry spokespeople are concerned that Brussels’ overzealousness could hinder innovation.

The report is far more sedate. It is a draft report, not a bill, with a mixed bag of recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics in the European Parliament. It will be years before anything is decided.

Nevertheless, it is interesting reading when considering how society should adapt to increasingly capable autonomous machines: what should the legal and moral status of robots be? How do we distribute responsibility?

A remarkable opening
The report begins its general principles with an eyebrow-raising paragraph:

whereas, until such time, if ever, that robots become or are made self-aware, Asimov’s Laws must be regarded as being directed at the designers, producers and operators of robots, since those laws cannot be converted into machine code;

It is remarkable because first it alludes to self-aware robots, presumably moral agents – a pretty extreme and currently distant possibility – then brings up Isaac Asimov’s famous but fictional laws of robotics and makes a simultaneously insightful and wrong-headed claim.

Robots are getting a sense of self-doubt — from popsci.com by Dave Gershgorn
Introspection is the key to growth

Excerpt:

That murmur is self-doubt, and its presence helps keep us alive. But robots don’t have this instinct—just look at the DARPA Robotics Challenge. But for robots and drones to exist in the real world, they need to realize their limits. We can’t have a robot flailing around in the darkness, or trying to bust through walls. In a new paper, researchers at Carnegie Mellon are working on giving robots introspection, or a sense of self-doubt. By predicting the likelihood of their own failure through artificial intelligence, robots could become a lot more thoughtful, and safer as well.

Scientists Create Successful Biohybrid Being Using 3-D Printing and Genetic Engineering — from inc.com by Lisa Calhoun
Scientists genetically engineered and 3-D-printed a biohybrid being, opening the door further for lifelike robots and artificial intelligence

Excerpt:

If you met this lab-created critter over your beach vacation, you’d swear you saw a baby ray. In fact, the tiny, flexible swimmer is the product of a team of diverse scientists. They have built the most successful artificial animal yet. This disruptive technology opens the door much wider for lifelike robots and artificial intelligence.

From DSC:
I don’t think I’d use the term disruptive here — though that may turn out to be the case. The word disruptive doesn’t come close to carrying/relaying the weight and seriousness of this kind of activity; nor does it point out where this kind of thing could lead to.

Pokemon Go’s digital popularity is also warping real life — from finance.yahoo.com by Ryan Nakashima and David Hamilton

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Todd Richmond, a director at the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California, says a big debate is brewing over who controls digital assets associated with real world property.

“This is the problem with technology adoption — we don’t have time to slowly dip our toe in the water,” he says. “Tenants have had no say, no input, and now they’re part of it.”

From DSC:
I greatly appreciate what Pokémon Go has been able to achieve and although I haven’t played it, I think it’s great (great for AR, great for peoples’ health, great for the future of play, etc.)! So there are many positives to it. But the highlighted portion above is not something we want to have to say occurred with artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, some types of genetic engineering, corporations tracking/using your personal medical information or data, the development of biased algorithms, etc.

Right now, artificial intelligence is the only thing that matters: Look around you — from forbes.com by Enrique Dans

Excerpts:

If there’s one thing the world’s most valuable companies agree on, it’s that their future success hinges on artificial intelligence.
…
In short, CEO Sundar Pichai wants to put artificial intelligence everywhere, and Google is marshaling its army of programmers into the task of remaking itself as a machine learning company from top to bottom.
…
Microsoft won’t be left behind this time. In a great interview a few days ago, its CEO, Satya Nadella says he intends to overtake Google in the machine learning race, arguing that the company’s future depends on it, and outlining a vision in which human and machine intelligence work together to solve humanity’s problems. In other words, real value is created when robots work for people, not when they replace them.
…
And Facebook? The vision of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, of the company’s future, is one in which artificial intelligence is all around us, carrying out or helping to carry out just about any task you can think of…

The links I have included in this column have been carefully chosen as recommended reading to support my firm conviction that machine learning and artificial intelligence are the keys to just about every aspect of life in the very near future: every sector, every business.

10 jobs that A.I. and chatbots are poised to eventually replace — from venturebeat.com by Felicia Schneiderhan

Excerpt:

If you’re a web designer, you’ve been warned.

Now there is an A.I. that can do your job. Customers can direct exactly how their new website should look. Fancy something more colorful? You got it. Less quirky and more professional? Done. This A.I. is still in a limited beta but it is coming. It’s called The Grid and it came out of nowhere. It makes you feel like you are interacting with a human counterpart. And it works.

Artificial intelligence has arrived. Time to sharpen up those resumes.

Augmented Humans: Next Great Frontier, or Battleground? — from nextgov.com by John Breeden

Excerpt:

It seems like, in general, technology always races ahead of the moral implications of using it. This seems to be true of everything from atomic power to sequencing genomes. Scientists often create something because they can, because there is a perceived need for it, or even by accident as a result of research. Only then does the public catch up and start to form an opinion on the issue.
…

Which brings us to the science of augmenting humans with technology, a process that has so far escaped the public scrutiny and opposition found with other radical sciences. Scientists are not taking any chances, with several yearly conferences already in place as a forum for scientists, futurists and others to discuss the process of human augmentation and the moral implications of the new science.

That said, it seems like those who would normally oppose something like this have remained largely silent.

Google Created Its Own Laws of Robotics — from fastcodesign.com by John Brownlee
Building robots that don’t harm humans is an incredibly complex challenge. Here are the rules guiding design at Google.

Google identifies five problems with artificial intelligence safety — from which-50.com

DARPA is giving $2 million to the person who creates an AI hacker — from futurism.com

Imagination in the Augmented-Reality Age — from theatlantic.com by Georgia Perry
Pokémon Go may have reached the zenith of its popularity, but the game has far-reaching implications for the future of play.

Excerpt:

For young people today, however, it’s a different story. “They hardly play. If they do play it’s some TV script. Very prescribed,” Levin said. “Even if they have friends over, it’s often playing video games.”

That was before Pokémon Go, though.

The augmented-reality (AR) game that—since its release on July 6, attracted 21 million users and became one of the most successful mobile apps ever—has been praised for promoting exercise, facilitating social interactions, sparking new interest in local landmarks, and more. Education writers and experts have weighed in on its implications for teaching kids everything from social skills to geography to the point that such coverage has become cliché. And while it seems clear at this point that the game is a fad that has peaked—it’s been losing active players for over a week—one of the game’s biggest triumphs has, arguably, been the hope it’s generated about the future of play. While electronic games have traditionally caused kids to retreat to couches, here is one that did precisely the opposite.

What Pokémon Go is, however, is one of the first iterations of what will undeniably be many more AR games. If done right, some say the technology Go introduced to the world could bring back the kind of outdoor, creative, and social forms of play that used to be the mainstay of childhood. Augmented reality, it stands to reason, could revitalize the role of imagination in kids’ learning and development.

Campus Technology 2016: Revolution is in the air — from edtechmagazine.com by Amy Burroughs
Georgia Tech educator and author forecasts that technology may be the answer to higher education’s ‘triple threat.’

Excerpts:

In his keynote address at Campus Technology 2016, educator and author Richard DeMillo predicted that technology will be the key to resolving the toughest challenges facing higher education. In his speech, “A Revolution in Higher Education: Tales from Unlikely Allies,” DeMillo said that this revolution may be quiet, but it is happening, as more educators and leaders embrace innovation.
…
One problem, he said, is that the model of education that has dominated until now — small classrooms built around lecture-based pedagogy — is too expensive to be sustainable. Technology, however, now makes it possible to deliver education that is equally effective, yet less costly and less exclusionary (think MOOCs, online learning and emerging capabilities such as artificial intelligence). All this prompts a revolutionary rethinking of time-tested assumptions, he said.

What persists, he said, is his belief that higher education, for all its greatness, is not immune from the influence of politics, business, sociology and the economy.

Entrepreneurs & VCs out there, take note. How much longer before the functionalities found in tools like Bluescape & Mural are available via tvOS-based devices?

On 08/04/2016, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, adult learning, Bring your own device (BYOD), collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, convergence, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, engineering, entrepreneurship, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, interactivity, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, lifelong learning, multimedia, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, project-based learning, real-world assignments, social learning / networks, technologies for your home, telepresence, television, tools, training / L&D, TVs, ubiquitous learning, universities, user experience (UX), using teams, vendors, videoconferencing, virtual K-12 schools, virtual tutoring, visualizing information, web-based collaboration, webinars, workplace, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
How much longer before the functionalities that are found in tools like Bluescape & Mural are available via tvOS-based devices? Entrepreneurs and VCs out there, take note. Given:

the growth of freelancing and people working from home and/or out on the road
the need for people to collaborate over a distance
the growth of online learning
the growth of active/collaborative learning spaces in K-12 and higher ed
the need for lifelong learning

…this could be a lucrative market. Also, it would be meaningful work…knowing that you are helping people learn and earn.

In Memory: Seymour Papert — from media.mit.edu; with thanks to Mr. Joe Byerwalter for this resource

Excerpt:

Seymour Papert, whose ideas and inventions transformed how millions of children around the world create and learn, died Sunday, July 31, 2016 at his home in East Blue Hill, Maine. He was 88.

Papert’s career traversed a trio of influential movements: child development, artificial intelligence, and educational technologies. Based on his insights into children’s thinking and learning, Papert recognized that computers could be used not just to deliver information and instruction, but also to empower children to experiment, explore, and express themselves. The central tenet of his Constructionist theory of learning is that people build knowledge most effectively when they are actively engaged in constructing things in the world. As early as 1968, Papert introduced the idea that computer programming and debugging can provide children a way to think about their own thinking and learn about their own learning.

Also see:

AI and Computer Learning Lion Seymour Papert Dies at 88 — from fortune.com by Barb Darrow
Excerpt:
Seymour Papert, the MIT professor who helped blaze the trail for artificial intelligence and computer-aided education for children at a time when no one saw the potential for using these massive machines for such purposes, died Sunday at the age of 88 in East Blue Hill, Maine.

“In this particular art class they were all carving soap,” he continued, “but what each student carved came from wherever fancy is bred, and the project was not done and dropped but continued for many weeks. It allowed time to think, to dream, to gaze, to get a new idea and try it and drop it or persist, time to talk, to see other people’s work and their reaction to yours — not unlike mathematics as it is for the mathematician, but quite unlike math as it is in junior high school.”

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Seymour Papert, 88, Dies; Saw Education’s Future in Computers — from nytimes.com by Glenn Rifkin
Excerpt:
Seymour Papert, a visionary educator and mathematician who well before the advent of the personal computer foresaw children using computers as instruments for learning and enhancing creativity, died on Sunday at his home in Blue Hill, Me. He was 88.

He added, “In the past, education adapted the mind to a very restricted set of available media; in the future, it will adapt media to serve the needs and tastes of each individual mind.”

Learning Ecosystems

Is the provision of dual cameras in Apple’s new iPhone 7 laying the foundation for mainstream AR?

Today’s announcements from Apple

Hmmm…Self-paced eLearning in steep decline according to this August 2016 report from ambientinsight.com

An ambitious look at how blockchain can reshape financial services; also, could blockchain & tvOS-based apps be a piece of our future learning ecosystems?

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