Neural Network Has Learned to Identify Tree Species

 Relates to my forestry work, could have been used to update inventories of species.

Neural Network Has Learned to Identify Tree Species

By Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Russia), February 9, 2021

An algorithm developed at Russia's Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology can identify the species of trees captured in satellite images.

Scientists at Russia's Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) have developed an algorithm that can identify tree species in satellite images.

The scientists applied a neural network to automate the identification of dominant tree species in high- and medium-resolution images.

A hierarchical classification model and additional information further augmented predictions, while enhancing the algorithm's stability to enable its practical usage.

Skoltech's Svetlana Illarionova said, "Commercial forest taxation providers and their end-users, including timber procurers and processors, as well as the forest industry entities, can use the new technology for quantitative and qualitative assessment of wood resources in leased areas. Also, our solution enables quick evaluations of underdeveloped forest areas in terms of investment appeal."

From Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Russia)

3D Scene Understanding

Intelligence allows us to quickly understand our world, here a good example, our visual world, based on sensors.   To establish context we can depend on.    Many new kinds of sensors now, and means of using them. 

In the Google AI Blog Technical 

3D Scene Understanding with TensorFlow 3D,   Thursday, February 11, 2021

Posted by Alireza Fathi, Research Scientist and Rui Huang, AI Resident, Google Research

The growing ubiquity of 3D sensors (e.g., Lidar, depth sensing cameras and radar) over the last few years has created a need for scene understanding technology that can process the data these devices capture. Such technology can enable machine learning (ML) systems that use these sensors, like autonomous cars and robots, to navigate and operate in the real world, and can create an improved augmented reality experience on mobile devices. The field of computer vision has recently begun making good progress in 3D scene understanding, including models for mobile 3D object detection, transparent object detection, and more, but entry to the field can be challenging due to the limited availability tools and resources that can be applied to 3D data.

In order to further improve 3D scene understanding and reduce barriers to entry for interested researchers, we are releasing TensorFlow 3D (TF 3D), a highly modular and efficient library that is designed to bring 3D deep learning capabilities into TensorFlow. TF 3D provides a set of popular operations, loss functions, data processing tools, models and metrics that enables the broader research community to develop, train and deploy state-of-the-art 3D scene understanding models.

TF 3D contains training and evaluation pipelines for state-of-the-art 3D semantic segmentation, 3D object detection and 3D instance segmentation, with support for distributed training. It also enables other potential applications like 3D object shape prediction, point cloud registration and point cloud densification. In addition, it offers a unified dataset specification and configuration for training and evaluation of the standard 3D scene understanding datasets. It currently supports the Waymo Open, ScanNet, and Rio datasets. However, users can freely convert other popular datasets, such as NuScenes and Kitti, into a similar format and use them in the pre-existing or custom created pipelines, and can leverage TF 3D for a wide variety of 3D deep learning research and applications, from quickly prototyping and trying new ideas to deploying a real-time inference system. ... " 

Augmented AI for Creative Invention

Have we stopped getting return from  creative investment, and can AI change that? 

‘Augmented creativity’: How AI can accelerate human invention  By Adi Gaskell   in Venturebeat. 

In 2012, economist Robert Gordon published a controversial paper in which he argued that economic growth was largely over, due in no small part to our failure to maintain the engines of innovation in recent decades.

A study from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research supported his general thesis and argued that while we’re spending even more money on creativity and innovation, our returns are flatlining. And this investment is not only in dollars, as the research revealed roughly 20 times as many people work in R&D today as did in 1930.

So what gives? Why has creating things become so difficult?  Researchers from Northwestern University attempt to answer this in a paper that shows a growing percentage of today’s creation is what’s known as recombination. Indeed, 40% of all patents in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office are not completely new works, but rather mishmashes of existing ideas bolted together.

Artificial help

Finding effective ways to combine existing ideas is by no means easy, not least because of the growing volume of published material being produced. During the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, around 23,000 papers had been published on the virus, with that number doubling every 20 days.

The data science community at Kaggle pulled together to provide an AI-powered literature review in an effort to make sense of the deluge of new material. Data points were harvested from a subset of papers and grouped into 17 categories, with papers then listed for each category. It may not be the most polished approach, but that’s due to the time constraints imposed by the pandemic.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon developed an alternate method: an AI-based approach to mining the patent and research databases for ideas that could be combined to form interesting solutions to specific problems. Their system uses analogies to help connect work from two seemingly distinct areas, which they believe makes innovation faster and a lot cheaper.  ... " 

Augmented creativity

What we’re witnessing is the emergence of something called “augmented creativity,” in which humans use AI to help them understand the deluge of data. Early prototypes highlight the important role humans can, and should, play in making sense of the suggestions proposed by the AI.

OpenAI attempted to replicate this approach with the release of a music-making tool called Jukebox. While the achievement is significant from a technological perspective, the results are unlikely to threaten the livelihoods of human musicians.

Various projects have also attempted to produce new and enticing recipes by using AI to mine food composition databases and concoct interesting combinations. For instance, Google researcher Sara Robinson recently showcased her system that produced a cake-cookie hybrid. Accenture researchers prototyped a similar recipe creation tool at their Dock facility in Dublin, but with stomach-churning results.

Vaccines by Drone

 Don't quite see what this buys you, excerpt in remote locations.

ACM TECHNEWS

Drones Could Begin Vaccine Deliveries in April, Firm Says

By The Hill, February 11, 2021

Drone delivery service Zipline said it is partnering with a leading manufacturer of COVID-19 vaccines to begin distributing shots to its global partner locations, possibly by April. Drone delivery service Zipline announced a partnership with "a leading manufacturer of Covid-19 vaccines" to start dispatching doses to its global partner sites as soon as April.

The company has built a system for transporting medical supplies that must be stored at low temperatures, including all leading Covid-19 vaccines. Zipline also said its aerial drones will be able to deliver additional supplies to remote regions that lack easy access to needed healthcare services.

Zipline's Keller Rinaudo said, "[Rural] communities face great challenges. We can help health systems bypass infrastructure and supply chain challenges through instant delivery."  ....'

Quantum Software, Hardware Seeding the Market

 Good review of what quantum players and users are looking for in the market.  Despite the early days.

Quantum Computing Hardware, Software Players Seeding the Market   By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor  

While quantum computing is seen by most as futuristic, not quite out of the research lab, German automaker BMW is putting quantum computing into practice, one of the first real world uses of the technology.  

BMW is using a Honeywell quantum computer to find more efficient ways to purchase the many components that go into its vehicles, according to a recent account in cnet. 

Honeywell recently made its quantum computers available as a service, through the use of Honeywell Quantum Credits, representing the size of a quantum computational job run on the system. The number of HQCs required to run a given computation is determined by a formula that considers the number of single- and two-qubit gates, measurement operations, and shots (circuit repetitions), according to Honeywell.  

BMW seeks to determine which components should be purchased from which supplier and at what time, to ensure the lowest cost while maintaining production schedules. One supplier might be faster and another might have a lower price for a given component, for example. The machine will optimize the choices from a range of options and sub-options.  

Julius Marcea, a BMW Group IT chief

“We are excited to investigate the transformative potential of quantum computing on the automotive industry and are committed to extending the limits of engineering performance,” said Julius Marcea, a BMW Group IT chief, in a statement. 

BMW started evaluating quantum computing in 2018, according to Marcea, and the company has many ideas for its application. It could improve battery chemistry in electric vehicles, and calculate the best places to install charging stations, and address a range of requirements in design and manufacturing, from cost and safety to aerodynamics and durability.   .... " 

Artificial Emotional Intelligence

Fascinating thoughts on emotional intelligence.   Given how much I trust all the ads pushing 5G I see, scary too.  

Artificial emotional intelligence: A safer, smarter future with 5G and emotion recognition   by Incheon National University

With 5G communication technology and new AI-based systems such as emotion recognition systems, smart cities are all set to become a reality; but these systems need to be honed and security issues need to be ironed out before the smart reality can be realized. Credit: macrovector on Freepik

With the advent of 5G communication technology and its integration with AI, we are looking at the dawn of a new era in which people, machines, objects, and devices are connected like never before. This smart era will be characterized by smart facilities and services such as self-driving cars, smart UAVs, and intelligent healthcare. This will be the aftermath of a technological revolution.

But the flip side of such technological revolution is that AI itself can be used to attack or threaten the security of 5G-enabled systems which, in turn, can greatly compromise their reliability. It is, therefore, imperative to investigate such potential security threats and explore countermeasures before a smart world is realized.

In a recent study published in IEEE Network, a team of researchers led by Prof. Hyunbum Kim from Incheon National University, Korea, address such issues in relation to an AI-based, 5G-integrated virtual emotion recognition system called 5G-I-VEmoSYS, which detects human emotions using wireless signals and body movement. "Emotions are a critical characteristic of human beings and separate humans from machines, defining daily human activity. However, some emotions can also disrupt the normal functioning of a society and put people's lives in danger, such as those of an unstable driver. Emotion detection technology thus has great potential for recognizing any disruptive emotion and in tandem with 5G and beyond-5G communication, warning others of potential dangers," explains Prof. Kim. "For instance, in the case of the unstable driver, the AI enabled driver system of the car can inform the nearest network towers, from where nearby pedestrians can be informed via their personal smart devices."   ... " 

Disinfection Robotics in Retail

Another example of robotics addressing problems of today.

Ahold Delhaize’s RBS pilots UV disinfection robots

Ava Robotics technology aids COVID-19 cleaning in two distribution centers

Russell Redman 1 | Jan 08, 2021 

Ahold Delhaize USA’s Retail Business Services (RBS) arm is testing ultraviolet disinfection robots in two distribution centers to support stepped-up cleaning procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

From Cambridge, Mass.-based Ava Robotics, the UV disinfection robots are now being used in a pilot at Ahold Delhaize’s affiliated DCs in Schodack, N.Y., and Dunn, N.C. In announcing the initiative on Friday, Ava said Ahold Delhaize is the first grocery retailer to employ the technology .... " 

The Risks and Challenges of the Global COVID-19-vaccine Rollout

Good piece by McKinsey.    Note the interactive piece to explore the related complexities. 

The risks and challenges of the global COVID-19-vaccine rollout

McKinsey:  January 26, 2021 | Article

The COVID-19 vaccines of the BioNTech and Pfizer partnership (Pfizer–BioNTech) and Moderna have received Emergency Use Authorization in Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries. Many frontline workers and priority population segments have received their first doses. Vaccines from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and several other global manufacturers are also arriving (or are expected to arrive soon) and are being distributed for administration around the world. This monumental global effort has shattered the record for vaccine development: the fastest previous vaccine project, Merck’s mumps vaccine, was four and a half years in development (1963–67).

In certain places, the COVID-19-vaccine effort has hit a few speed bumps; stockpiles have accumulated, and deployment to vulnerable countries and at-risk groups has been slower than expected. Nonetheless, experts have expressed confidence that safe and highly efficacious vaccines are reaching the market, and we are beginning to see “the light at the end of the tunnel” of this devastating pandemic. The epidemiological end to the COVID-19 pandemic seemed like an optimistic dream a few short months ago, but, with the development, approval, and rollout of several vaccines, it is now practically realizable in much of the world.

To arrive at the postpandemic era, in which populations experience herd immunity, vast numbers of dedicated individuals will need to continue working intensely in the months and years ahead. In this article, we consider elements of this enormous undertaking, the risks that are inherent, and potential means of further accelerating vaccination.

A common operating model of COVID-19-vaccine delivery, shown in the interactive, demonstrates the complexity of the task at hand. Essentially, the interactive is a qualitative risk map, showing the many stages of vaccine deployment and highlighting areas of potential failure as one party interacts with another. A breakdown at any point in the deployment process can set off a cascade, shutting down the entire system.  ... '

India Analyzing Data Goals and Gaps with AI

Notable use  of AI and other pattern recognition approaches: What data do we have, its ability, to achieve certain levels of understanding of our economy.   Then what data, quality of data, and metadata is needed at what cost, to further tune that understanding?   Note out past looks at the 'data as an asset', for more explorations of this.   Gaps analysis to achieve goals.  With risks considered along the way.   Note the mention of real-time data. 

AI Is India's Solution to Fix Data Gaps   By Bloomberg Quint, February 11, 2021  in   ACM

India is turning from man to machines to improve the quality and speed of its economic data.

India's Ministry of Statistics is accelerating artificial intelligence (AI) usage for collecting, analyzing, and disclosing data to better monitor the economy, including an initiative with the World Bank employing an information portal that collates real-time data.

The Ministry's Kshatrapati Shivaji said, "There's a growing need for more and more data, faster data, and also more refined data products," and end-to-end computerization "will enhance the quality, credibility, and timeliness of data."

He added that AI will see extensive use, and help to overcome staffing limitations.

Shivaji said, "Because of automation and technology-intensive applications, the capability and productivity of staff is getting enhanced substantially. Wherever there is a component where we're able to squeeze the time with the help of technology, we're trying to do that."

From Bloomberg Quint in ACM

Scale of Autonomous Truck Startup

 Considerable launch, had several people contact me re a recent post agreeing that this will promote the implementation of analytical improvements in supply chains.   Providing more solutions.  Still waiting for these to be generally on the road, and more data on their safety...  

Autonomous truck startup Plus raises $200M to accelerate global commercialization   By Duncan Riley in Silicon Angle   See Plus.ai

Autonomous truck startup Plus announced today it has raised $200 million in new funding to accelerate the global commercialization and deployment of its automated trucking system.

That will include the development of a sales and support network to help fleets integrate its automated trucking system and scale up deployments in the U.S. and China. The Series B round was led by Guotai Junan International, CPE and Wanxiang International Investment, with existing investor Full Truck Alliance also participating.

Founded in 2016 and previously known as Plus.ai, Plus is developing technology to enable large-scale commercialization of autonomous transport. Specializing in full-stack self-driving technology to enable autonomous fleets, Plus works closely with original equipment    ... "

The State of Virtual Reality Hardware

Well done piece, suggesting we will soon be there for general usage wearable screens for our eyes to give the illusion of three dimensional immersive experiences. Saw examples in industry in the 80s,  is it ready?  Leading to 'smart glasses', or even embeddable devices.  

The State of Virtual Reality Hardware,  By Logan Kugler in   Communications of the ACM, February 2021, Vol. 64 No. 2, Pages 15-16   10.1145/3441290

For decades, virtual reality (VR) has seemed like a futuristic dream that is just around the corner, but never reaches its full potential. This time, however, might really be different. Recent advances in the power of VR hardware, notably the headsets and processors used to produce realistic VR experiences, suggest that VR is finally powerful enough and cheap enough to go mainstream.

VR broadly refers to immersing yourself in a three-dimensional (3D) digital world using sophisticated hardware and software. While a video game is experienced through a screen, VR often is experienced through a headset that shuts out the external world and transports you to a virtual one. It can also be experienced through room-sized systems that use special projectors and glasses to create VR experiences.

Historically, VR has relied on clunky headsets, expensive computers, and complicated peripheral hardware to produce immersive experiences. VR in various forms has been commercially available since the 1990s, but the technology has been widely criticized as too expensive, too complicated, or too imperfect to produce powerful, affordable virtual experiences that inspire consumers to open out their wallets.

That is beginning to change. Today, powerful commercial VR headsets are sold by Sony, Facebook, HTC, and other major technology players. Sophisticated augmented reality (AR) devices (like your smartphone and Google Glass) are available from the likes of Google, Apple, and Microsoft. The market for VR is growing accordingly, with research firm Marketsand-Markets forecasting industry growth to reach $20.9 billion in 2025, from $6.1 billion in 2020.

Why is VR (finally) having its day in the sun?

It all comes down to better hardware. VR heavyweights now are able to produce headsets that are cheaper and more powerful than models from just a few years ago. As a result, consumer demand for headsets is rising, driving more innovation and investment in VR hardware. Companies are even researching entirely new techniques and designs to make the next generation of VR hardware so light and powerful that it transforms one's daily life.

"Over time, we would like a device that is nearly the size of your reading glasses or sunglasses, but performs all of the functions of your smartphone, tablet, PC, and even TV, and enables new, 3D (three-dimensional) and spatial functions," says Siddharth Saxena, founder and CEO of Oblix VR, a VR software startup.

That day might not be far off.  .... " 

Infants as a Model for Perceiving Language

Classic kind of approach, , can we have systems learn knowledge  like language?  Have followed the idea for many years. 

Scientists Develop Computational Approach to Understand How Infants Perceive Language  By News-Medical Life Sciences, February 5, 2021

Cognitive scientists and computational linguists have developed a quantitative modeling framework based on large-scale simulation of infants' language learning process.  A multi-institutional team of cognitive scientists and computational linguists has developed a quantitative modeling framework based on large-scale simulation of infants' language learning process.

The approach uses machine learning to enable the systematic linkage of learning mechanisms to testable predictions about infants' attunement to native language. The researchers trained a clustering algorithm on realistic speech input to model infants' language learning process; they fed the program spectrogram-like auditory features sampled at regular intervals obtained from naturalistic speech recordings in American English and Japanese.

This resulted in a candidate model for infants' early phonetic knowledge, which the team queried about observed differences in how Japanese- and English-learning infants discriminate speech sounds, as well as vowel- and consonant-like phonetic categories. The model yielded positive and negative outcomes for these respective queries, suggesting current literature on early phonetic learning requires a dramatic rethink.... ' 

Human Buildings Outweigh Life on Earth

An interesting Malthusian kind of statistic, but not sure what it really means we should do about it.  

Human ‘stuff’ now outweighs all life on Earth    By Erik Stokstad  , in Science Mag. 

It’s not just your storage unit that’s packed to the gills. According to a new study, the mass of all our stuff—buildings, roads, cars, and everything else we manufacture—now exceeds the weight of all living things on the planet. And the amount of new material added every week equals the total weight of Earth’s nearly 8 billion people.

“If you weren’t convinced before that humans are dominating the planet, then you should be convinced now,” says Timon McPhearson, an urban ecologist at the New School who was not involved with the research. “This is an eye-catching comparison,” adds Fridolin Krausmann, a social ecologist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, who also was not involved in the work. ... " 

Considering Robot Consciousness

OK, we are far from this, still sci fi. but worth a thought.  So we will be ready then.  

If a Robot Is Conscious, Is It OK to Turn It Off? The Moral Implications of Building True AI  By Anand Vaidya

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Measure of a Man,” Data, an android crew member of the Enterprise, is to be dismantled for research purposes unless Captain Picard can argue that Data deserves the same rights as a human being. Naturally the question arises: What is the basis upon which something has rights? What gives an entity moral standing?

The philosopher Peter Singer argues that creatures that can feel pain or suffer have a claim to moral standing. He argues that nonhuman animals have moral standing, since they can feel pain and suffer. Limiting it to people would be a form of speciesism, something akin to racism and sexism.

Without endorsing Singer’s line of reasoning, we might wonder if it can be extended further to an android robot like Data. It would require that Data can either feel pain or suffer. And how you answer that depends on how you understand consciousness and intelligence.  ... " 

SolarWinds Hacking Overviewed

Considerable look at the problem and many links to current work in progress. 

Tracking the Hackers

By David Geer    Commissioned by CACM Staff

U.S. government agencies were among those affected by the Solarwinds hack.

A nine-month SolarWinds breach and multiple network occupations by nation-state hackers is the seed pod for a broad, deep string of global security breaches yet to appear or reach disclosure. The details are disheartening to the cybersecurity community and customers everywhere.

On December 8, 2020, FireEye reported that nation-state hackers stole its Red Team assessment tools. FireEye uses the tools to assess its customers' network vulnerabilities. The cybersecurity firm discovered the theft resulted from a breach of SolarWinds' Orion Platform of infrastructure monitoring products. FireEye was a customer of fellow cybersecurity company SolarWinds. FireEye reported the hack to SolarWinds, which published details of the breach on December 13. Microsoft and FireEye traced the attack to the Russian S.V.R.-affiliated hacker group Cozy Bear, also known as APT29.

According to Jeff Horne, CSO of Ordr, an Internet of Things (IoT) security firm, APT29 added the Sunburst Trojan backdoor to the SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll file in the Orion Platform products source code repository as part of a supply-chain attack. From there, says Horne, SolarWinds built, tested, and digitally signed its software update before deploying it from its update server.  ... " 

Weakness Imperils Encryption

 Click through to access Bloomberg.   Regarding use of quantum computing.   Following up on details.

A Swiss Company Says It Found Weakness That Imperils Encryption

By Ryan Gallagher  in Bloomberg

February 7, 2021, 2:00 AM EST

 Discovery upends thinking on ‘what constitutes unbreakable’   Scientists want to see the data before declaring breakthrough ...'

In Livemint:  3 min read .  

Bloomberg

Security experts have long worried that advances in quantum computing could eventually make it easier to break encryption that protects the privacy of people’s data. That’s because these sophisticated machines can perform calculations at speeds impossible for conventional computers, potentially enabling them to crack codes previously thought indecipherable.

Security experts have long worried that advances in quantum computing could eventually make it easier to break encryption that protects the privacy of people’s data. That’s because these sophisticated machines can perform calculations at speeds impossible for conventional computers, potentially enabling them to crack codes previously thought indecipherable.

Now, a Swiss technology company says it has made a breakthrough by using quantum computers to uncover vulnerabilities in commonly used encryption. The company believes it’s found a security weakness that could jeopardize the confidentiality of the world’s internet data, banking transactions and emails. .... " 

3 

On Zero Trust

 Elements of Zero Trust

Closing the Cloud Permissions Gap to Achieve Zero Trust: An AWS Risk Assessment  by Sarah on January 26, 2021   Author: Raj Mallempati, COO of CloudKnox

Whether it is to adapt to remote work, improve innovation, or build agile teams, organizations continue to prioritize digital transformation for myriad reasons. And, while there are many business benefits to digital transformation strategies—from boosted productivity to tools that unlock new functions—there are also significant cloud infrastructure security risks that enterprises must mitigate to benefit from their investments fully.

An organization must also carefully balance this emphasis on digital transformation with Zero Trust. A major pillar of the Zero Trust model is the ability to limit excessive user entitlements. Yet, in the cloud, this is very difficult to accomplish when cloud service providers are adding new services and permissions, developing at such a fast pace and attempting to understand the complexity of thousands of permissions daily.

A major cloud security risk, as an example, is associated with the human and non-human identities operating within organizations’ hybrid and multi-cloud environments. In fact, through extensive research and analysis evaluating organizations using Amazon Web Service (AWS), CloudKnox Security Research Labs has discovered a significant delta between permissions granted and permissions used in these environments. This delta is called the Cloud Permissions Gap, and it is a contributing factor to the rise of both accidental and malicious insider threats impacting enterprises of all sizes. Here, attackers are able to exploit an identity with elevated permissions and access across the organization’s critical cloud infrastructure while the organization is unable to implement and manage Zero Trust policies.

Since the Cloud Permissions Gap is challenging to navigate and poses an immediate threat, CloudKnox takes a deeper look into the AWS risk assessment for cloud permissions management to outline where the risks are and offer best practices to mitigate them.

What is the Cloud Permission Gap, and why is it dangerous?

The Cloud Permissions Gap exists across any organization that has adopted public cloud or hybrid cloud infrastructures, making the organization incredibly vulnerable to both accidental and malicious threats. How does this happen, and why is it universally prevalent? Although identities should only have the permissions they need for their specific job functions, a CloudKnox assessment of more than 150 global enterprises uncovered that more than 95% of all identities accessing their organizations’ AWS infrastructure are using less than 2% of their permissions granted. Even worse, 40% of all AWS roles were reported as inactive or over permissioned.   ... " 

CEO Warns of Use of Algorithms

A warning, but they and we use algorithms in so many things,  and Apple of course for all the right purposes.

Apple CEO Sounds Warning of Algorithms Pushing Society Towards Catastrophe    By ZDNet 

January 29, 2021

Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company believes the best measure of technology is how it improves lives.  Apple CEO Tim Cook has said it is time to face the consequences of having algorithms push users towards more engagement at any cost.

Speaking at the Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection conference on Thursday, Cook said too many companies are asking what they can get away with .... 

"At a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement -- the longer the better -- and all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible," he said.

"What are the consequences of seeing thousands of users join extremist groups, and then perpetuating an algorithm that recommends even more?"

From ZDNet

Personalized Medicine with Brain Stimulation

Considerable claim here, 

A New Realm of Personalized Medicine with Brain Stimulation

Ben Paul | February 1, 2021

Researchers’ “skeleton key” can unlock a brain.

Machine-learning models developed by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) and New York University can predict the impact of electrical stimulation on an individual's brain activity across multiple brain regions. The research paves the way for the use of personalized brain stimulation to treat certain neurological and mental disorders. The researchers created a novel electrical stimulation wave to map brain activity; machine learning models learn the map from brain data collected during stimulation. Said USC's Maryam Shanechi, "Our wave, which changes its amplitude and frequency randomly in time, allowed us to see and predict how the brain responded to a wide range of stimulation doses." ... 

Walking Inside Samples

Worked on something similar, positioned for looking at product designs.   Wlaking through thigs can give you ideas about design. 

Software Allows Scientists to 'Walk Inside' Samples

Australian National University  February 3, 2021

The new Drishti software developed by researchers at Australian National University (ANU) lets scientists visualize data in three dimensions and generate lifelike models of objects like fossil samples so they can "zoom in" on smaller details without damaging the original sample. ANU's Yuzhi Hu said, "After we scan the sample, we then have a set of 3D data which can be digitally dissected effectively using our new tool.” The ANU team said the software could be particularly useful for scientific communication and education. ANU's Ajay Limaye said Drishti's current applications include digitally duplicating a mummy sample. The Drishti software is free and available online... '

Algorithms for Vaccine Distribution

Completely Non technical introduction to modeling distribution algorithms.  A very supply chain problem.

Where Do Vaccine Doses Go, Who Gets Them? The Algorithms Decide

The New York Times, Natasha Singer, February 7, 2021

Trump administration officials last year formulated a Covid-19 vaccine distribution plan that has an algorithm divide shots nationwide based on each state's adult population, after which states would allocate doses to local hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics. However, public health experts said the algorithm has compounded states' burden, requiring multiple delivery plans for weekly Moderna and Pfizer vaccine quotas, even if different shipments are going to the same facilities. Algorithmic formulas generally follow U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance that prioritizes frontline healthcare workers, nursing home residents, seniors, and those with major health risks for inoculation. Yet vaccine access is widely uneven because federal agencies, states, local health departments, and medical centers each follow different allocation formulas, based on various ethical and political considerations. Rutgers Law School's Ellen P. Goodman said algorithms were necessary for efficient allocation, but public agencies and health centers should be transparent about prioritization formulas. ... '

AI Mapping Bacteria

 Intrigued by the idea of mapping some complex, yet still varying topography.   The morphology and how that can be used to understand its functional characteristics.  

AI to Map Our Intestinal Bacteria   University of Copenhagen (Denmark)  January 12, 2021

Researchers at Denmark's University of Copenhagen (UCPH) are applying artificial intelligence (AI) to the exploration of human intestinal bacteria and its relationship to disease. UCPH's Simon Rasmussen and colleagues developed an algorithm that uses AI to complete the DNA strings of the approximately 1 billion bacteria found in feces. Said Rasmussen, "If we are able to reconstruct their DNA, it will give us an idea of the types of bacteria we are dealing with, what they are capable of, and what they actually do. It is not the complete picture, but it is a huge step forward." ... ' 

Spelling in the MS AI Research Blog

 Had not thought the idea of capturing spellings in multiple languages was important, but this piece makes the point.

Microsoft details Speller100, an AI system that checks spelling in over 100 languages Kyle Wiggers  @Kyle_L_Wiggers, February 8, 2021 9:05 AM

In a post on its AI research blog, Microsoft today detailed a new language system, Speller100, that the company claims is one of the most comprehensive ever made in terms of language coverage and accuracy. Comprising a number of machine learning models that can understand speech in over 100 languages collectively, Speller100 now powers spelling correction on Bing.

As Microsoft notes, for a language with very little web presence, it’s challenging to collect an adequate amount of data to train a model. Moreover, models can’t rely solely on training data to learn the spelling of a language. At its core, spelling correction is about building both an error and a language model, and not all errors are the same. For example, non-word errors occurs when a word isn’t in the vocabulary for a given language, while real-word errors occur when the word exists but doesn’t fit in a larger context.  ... "

See:  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/speller/ 

Alexa in India

Apparently quite popular in  India. I did a quick survey of contacts in Germany and could not get much response. Will look more deeply.   Anyone with a pointer to other country stats?

Amazon Highlights Alexa’s Popularity to Celebrate Three Years in India By  Eric Hal Schwartz in Voicebot

Amazon is celebrating Alexa’s third anniversary in India by showcasing how popular the voice assistant is. The tech giant pulled together some notable numbers around Alexa ahead of a major 24-hour sale on Alexa-enabled devices in the country on Feb. 15. The stats show appreciation of Alexa in Indis continues to rise, with interactions up 67% in 2020, among other indicators.

INDIA LOVES ALEXA

Amazon’s decision to celebrate Alexa’s place in India is not surprising, as the voice assistant is central to a lot of the company’s greater efforts in the country. Just five months ago, the company celebrated the first anniversary of Alexa learning Hindi, the introduction of Alexa to the country was always going to get its own celebration. Though it didn’t warrant a new video, Amazon did put together some charts to show off the voice assistant’s spread and people’s love for it in India. That isn’t just an abstract love, either. Amazon claimed that Indians told Alexa I love you 19,000 times a day, a 1,200% increase from 2019, with marriage proposals coming 6,000 times a day.   ... "

Inhalio: Cloud Based Digital Scent

Brought back to my attention.   We had worked in the understanding and delivery of scent systems in retail through our future store innovation center.  Met with a company called Inhalio.  Just revisited their work in this area, here are extracts of their site. Impressive updates. 

About Inhalio

Inhalio is a global leader in cloud-based digital scent technology and digital scent as a service. The Inhalio Digital Scent 3.0 Platform is transformative to personal wellness and well-being by diffusing scents that sanitize airborne viruses, eliminate malodors, and create mood-mapped experiences. We focus on the science of scent using a data-centric process of precise scent infusion, molecular dry-air diffusion, and detailed customer insights. Inhalio recently acquired Exhalia, a recognized leader in scent infusion systems. Automotive and Mobility, Rideshare, Connected Home, Hospitality and Retail industries are making significant investments to embed scent diffusion and management systems into their products and services to enhance consumer experiences, promote wellness and well-being, and further brand loyalty.

All elements of the Inhalio Digital Scent 3.0 Platform are built on a data-centric and cloud-based architecture to deliver a highly scalable Digital Scent as as Service solution. As the world’s first connected platform for scent, the Inhalio Digital Scent 3.0 platform is a multi-patented, multi-scent delivery system and architecture that includes three core components Scent Infusion, Scent Diffusion, and Cloud Insights.

Unlike stand-alone or oil-based systems, the Inhalio platform is a cloud connected and controlled solution with precision multi-scent delivery, intelligent scent cartridge control and management, pure and healthier dry-air diffusion, with advanced consumer insights reporting capabilities and cartridge reorder management. The Intelligent Scent 3.0 platform leads in sustainability with our Eco-Friendly initiative and is licensed for embedded product integration in large scale deployments, as well as a ready-to-order aftermarket solutions.  ... " 

Top Vision Papers via KDNuggets

 Great often inspirational, leading edge AI stuff.  Technical details.  From KDNuggets.  Most have good embedded video explanations.

The top 10 computer vision papers in 2020 with video demos, articles, code, and paper reference. By Louis (What's AI) Bouchard, Montrealer, explaining AI stuff on YouTube and Medium

Given with everything that happened in the world this year, we still had the chance to see a lot of amazing research come out. Especially in the field of artificial intelligence and more precisely computer vision. More, many important aspects were highlighted this year, like the ethical aspects, important biases, and much more. Artificial intelligence and our understanding of the human brain and its link to AI is constantly evolving, showing promising applications in the soon future, which I will definitely cover.

Here are my top 10 of the most interesting research papers of the year in computer vision, in case you missed any of them. In short, it is basically a curated list of the latest breakthroughs in AI and CV with a clear video explanation, link to a more in-depth article, and code (if applicable). Enjoy the read, and let me know if I missed any important papers in the comments, or by contacting me directly on LinkedIn!

The complete reference to each paper is listed at the end of this article.  ... "

Jobs Created from AI

An argument like all leading emergent tech will create more jobs than it destroys.

AI Will Create Millions More Jobs Than It Will Destroy. Here’s How

By Byron Reese -Jan 01, 2019  in the Singularity Web

In the past few years, artificial intelligence has advanced so quickly that it now seems hardly a month goes by without a newsworthy AI breakthrough. In areas as wide-ranging as speech translation, medical diagnosis, and gameplay, we have seen computers outperform humans in startling ways.

This has sparked a discussion about how AI will impact employment. Some fear that as AI improves, it will supplant workers, creating an ever-growing pool of unemployable humans who cannot compete economically with machines.

This concern, while understandable, is unfounded. In fact, AI will be the greatest job engine the world has ever seen.

New Technology Isn’t a New Phenomenon

On the one hand, those who predict massive job loss from AI can be excused. It is easier to see existing jobs disrupted by new technology than to envision what new jobs the technology will enable.

But on the other hand, radical technological advances aren’t a new phenomenon. Technology has progressed nonstop for 250 years, and in the US unemployment has stayed between 5 to 10 percent for almost all that time, even when radical new technologies like steam power and electricity came on the scene. ... " 

Exploring the Quantum World

Exploring the Quantum World:  An index to Ars Technica's,   a multi part view of the science behind Quantum.  By physicist Miguel F. Morales Prof at U of Washington.    While non-mathematical, it is long with lots of little experiments/demonstrations/images along the way.     These are well worth doing if you want to get some insight about the idea.   Worth skimming at least.  Have now had conversations about quantum entanglement with a number of people. Fundamentally it is quite spooky.  

See also for a quick fairly intuitive video demo:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcqZHYo7ONs  

How Healthcare Changed

And have been in the middle of it.   Innovation is growing.   Good overview piece:

How Healthcare Changed in 2020

By Katherine Boyarsky | January 7, 2021 Owl Labs

In 2020, the way the world functioned changed. With stay-at-home orders leading to an explosion in telecommuting, telehealth, and virtual collaboration, healthcare had a major consideration during this transition: security. How do you keep patient data secure in a virtual world? Additionally, how do you connect Covid patients in isolation rooms with both care teams and their families? Luckily, technology found its way into every aspect of healthcare, bringing innovation into a historically traditional industry. 

One thing’s for sure, 2020 fundamentally changed the way that we offer healthcare around the world, for the better

Telehealth Protected Providers and Expanded Access

The growth in telehealth during 2020 was staggering. An already existing option in some areas with small pockets of users prior to 2020, telehealth is the ability to meet with providers for appointments using video conferencing. In March of 2020, telehealth visits were up 154% from the previous year due to COVID-19. The CDC mentions the benefits of telehealth, including “expanding access to care, reducing disease exposure for staff and patients, preserving scarce supplies of personal protective equipment, and reducing patient demand on facilities.” 

With secure apps like Teladoc, patients can meet with doctors for check ups, therapy sessions, regular visits, and more. Patients can message with providers using apps like MyChart and access their records, have a virtual visit, schedule appointments, and more. 

Telehealth provides the exciting opportunity for people to see specialists and meet with doctors in areas where they otherwise would not have access to these specialty teams and services. ... " 

Qualcomm Chip Research

Smaller, faster chips to learn and deliver.

Qualcomm research could lower the barriers to visual AI everywhere, By Jack Gold in Venturebeat

Demand is growing for AI solutions that process images from cameras and other photo sensors. These solutions have applications in security, autonomous vehicles, healthcare, smart cities, and many other areas, but the more advanced they become, the more computationally intensive they get. So creating more efficient AI computational devices is a necessity for advancing the field.

Chip maker Qualcomm held a series of briefings late last month that point to a solution on this front. The company discussed an R&D project it has undertaken to reduce the amount of compute necessary to do visual AI, and thus create chips that are smaller, more cost effective, and use less power. ... "

Where did Those Images come From?

Worked on an image recognition problem that could have used this approach to determine where certain images where coming from, either to validate them, or to determine which needed to be removed after attribution.   Only reflects images that have posted through flicker, which is limiting, but indicative.  Potential cleansing and risk analysis step. 

Here's a Way to Learn If Facial Recognition Systems Used Your Photos  By The New York Times, February 5, 2021

Part of a mosaic of about 50,000 images from the MegaFace dataset, which includes over 3.5 million.

A new online tool lets people search many image collections to see if their old photos were used to train facial recognition systems.

The Exposing.AI online tool lets people search image collections for old photos of themselves, in order to learn if such images were used to train facial recognition systems. The tool matches images from the Flickr online photo-sharing service, locating photos if users already have a way of pointing to them online, for example via an Internet address.

People can search only for images posted to Flickr, using a Flickr username, tag, or Internet address that can identify those pictures. The New York Times was able to use the tool to find photos that Exposing.AI indicated were used in facial recognition datasets.

From The New York Times   View Full Article - May Require Paid Subscription

Biomimicking Learning by DragonFly

Like the idea of biomimicry for certain adaptive robotic abilities,  here an example at a fairly low level.  Technical.

Bio-Inspired Robotics: Learning From Dragonflies  By Kiel University (Germany),  January 28, 2021

Scientists at Germany's Kiel University (CAU) have decrypted the biomechanical function of the labial mask of dragonfly larvae, leading to a bio-inspired robot modeled after the same operating principle.

CAU's Sebastian Büsse said, "What is ideal about robotics is that it functions in two directions: we learn something about biology and develop something that can be applied in technology." The CAU team first deciphered the labial mask's operating principle, describing a synchronized dual-catapult system and visualizing its movements via three-dimensional (3D) animation to test this hypothesis.

Büsse said system improvements derived from these observations could be applied to enhance the performance of agile robots. CAU's Stanislav N. Gorb said the 3D-printed robot subsequently produced by the researchers "has provided us with more detailed insight into the operating principle of the  ... "

Virtual Reality to Assess Cognitive Abilities

 Heard of this kind of approach somewhere.   Either for determining brain and tactile health, or to use after specialized training, to assess abilities.   

Researchers create virtual reality cognitive assessment

by Center for BrainHealth in TechXplore

Virtual reality isn't just for gaming. Researchers can use virtual reality, or VR, to assess participants' attention, memory and problem-solving abilities in real world settings. By using VR technology to examine how folks complete daily tasks, like making a grocery list, researchers can better help clinical populations that struggle with executive functioning to manage their everyday lives. ... " 

Password Autofill for Security

Starting to see this more generally provided by browsers, here is one from MS.  Which should lead to better passwords, if  we assume the  MS site remains secure.  Being free and multi platform is important.  Still requires acceptance and 'training'  by potential users.. 

Microsoft launches a cross-platform password autofill feature  Its Authenticator app will give you access to your passwords on iOS and Android.

By Mariella Moon, M. Moon|02.06.21, @mariella_moon  in Engadget

Microsoft has rolled out a big update for its Authenticator app, which gives it the capability to automatically fill log ins with your usernames and passwords. The tech giant has launched a new autofill feature that works across devices and platforms, and it’s bringing it to iOS and Android devices through its Authenticator app. .... '

Predicting Asymptomatic Carriers

 Would appear to be very big thing if it works significantly, as it suggests below. 

AI Predicts Asymptomatic Carriers of Covid-19

IEEE Spectrum, Emily Waltz,  February 2, 2021

Researchers at technology company Synergies Intelligent Systems and Germany's Universität Hamburg have developed a machine learning algorithm that can identify which people in a moving crowd are most likely asymptomatic carriers of Covid-19. The continuous learning and inference of individual probability (CLIIP) algorithm bases its predictions on global positioning system (GPS)-tracked movement of people in a city, and known cases of infection. CLIIP's accuracy relies on people using a GPS-based smartphone application that tracks their location to within a meter (3.2 feet), and logging their positive viral test results. Synergies' Michael Chang said, "With this type of technology, we can quarantine a very small fraction of people—just 3% to 5%—and pretty effectively reduce the effect of the disease."

AI Mapping Moods

We took at cut at the basic idea to determine changes in moods that might indicate purchases.  And also mapping to actual behavior.   Note pharmaceutical use implications.

Can AI Map Our Moods?

By Stanford University, February 4, 2021, in ACM

Machine-learning models can map a persons mood swings and volatility from week to week, according to a new study.

Researchers from Stanford University and the University of Michigan developed a machine learning model that can infer a person's mood from their Facebook posts.

The model was trained using public Facebook postings of close to 3,000 volunteers from an earlier study, then tested on a different set of posts from 640 Facebook users who posted an average of 17 times weekly over 28 weeks. This dataset of 18,000 person-weeks, the largest ever compiled on weekly emotional dynamics, has been made public.

The patterns revealed by the model aligned with the predictions based on classical in-person psychological studies.

Said Stanford's Johannes Eichstaedt, "If this kind of approach is used ethically and legally, with strict privacy protection, we could someday have ways to computationally understand the mind. It could help with diagnosis and pharmaceutical evaluation. It could also help us track the psychological impact of traumatic societal events, such as the Covid pandemic."

From Stanford University

Sensing the Household

Talk about potential  invasions of privacy ....  note the use of multiple sensors and analyses

Household Radar Can See Through Walls and Knows How You’re Feeling

Modern wireless tech isn’t just for communications. It can also sense a person’s breathing and heart rate, even gauge emotions   By Fadel Adib in IEEE Spectrum

When I was a boy, I secretly hoped I would discover latent within me some amazing superpower—say, X-ray vision or the ability to read people’s minds. Lots of kids have such dreams. But even my fertile young brain couldn’t imagine that one day I would help transform such superpowers into reality. Nor could I conceive of the possibility that I would demonstrate these abilities to the president of the United States. And yet two decades later, that’s exactly what happened.

There was, of course, no magic or science fiction involved, just new algorithms and clever engineering, using wireless technology that senses the reflections of radio waves emanating from a nearby transmitter. The approach my MIT colleagues and I are pursuing relies on inexpensive equipment that is easy to install—no more difficult than setting up a Wi-Fi router. ... '

Some Details of SpaceX Starlink

 Some interesting details of the progress and details of the effort.   Will the earth soon be wrapped with a coating of sensors and transceivers?  Following. 

SpaceX filing reveals Starlink internet service has over 10,000 users

In October, Starlink began a public beta test of its $99 per month service.

By Richard Lawler in Engadget ... '

Perfect Product Launch

 Simplified, but useful look at product at product launch

Three Fundamentals to a Strong Product Launch 

February 1, 2021, Scott McPhaden, SCB Contributor and Drew Andrews, SCB Contributor

Bringing the perfect product to market in a timely fashion isn’t easy: Gone are the days of the one-size-fits-all, methodical approach. Today, companies want product development that’s fast, flexible and predictable — and ever-growing numbers of competitors around the world are ready to snap up any customers who aren’t completely satisfied. 

Businesses can’t afford to waste time or resources on unprofitable ideas, and must eliminate barriers that lead to unpredictable results. A flexible yet consistent process to develop new products can help. Ask yourself: Are you building what the market wants and will buy? Does your team have too much or too little creative flexibility? Are you able to measure your organization’s performance?   ... " 

Detecting Cancer Cells

A Computational means of differentiating cells.

Computational Tool Reliably Differentiates Between Cancer, Normal Cells From Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing Data     By The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, January 28, 2021

Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have developed a computational tool to reliably distinguish between cancerous and normal cells in tumor samples. Scientists can use the CopyKAT (copy number karyotyping of aneuploid tumors) tool to more easily analyze gene-expression data from large single-cell RNA-sequencing experiments.

MD Anderson's Nicholas Navin noted that CopyKAT mines the data to uncover abnormal chromosome numbers typical of most cancers, and identifies distinct subpopulations, or clones, within the cancer cells. Said Navin, "By applying this tool to several datasets, we showed that we could unambiguously identify, with about 99% accuracy, tumor cells versus the other immune or stromal cells present in a mixed tumor sample."

Added former MD Anderson researcher Ruli Gao, "We hope this tool will be useful to the research community to make the most of their single-cell RNA-sequencing data and to drive new discoveries in cancer."

From The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Drones Tracking Smells

 We did lots of work examining smells, and sought means to detect and track them. Here an update in the space. Could have used tested for forestry and agriculture  application.    See many posts on digital smell her over a number of years.

Smellicopter Drone Uses Live Moth Antenna to Track Scents

Robots are no match for the sensors insects are born with, but that doesn’t matter if we can just steal them   By Evan Ackerman  in IEEE Spectrum Robotics ...

AI and Tacit Knowledge

Useful, mostly non-technical paper on the topic.  We learned much about this when we trained with explicit rules.  How do we effectively leverage the statement:  'we know more than we can tell"?

Polanyi's Revenge and AI's New Romance with Tacit Knowledge  By Subbarao Kambhampati    Communications of the ACM, February 2021, Vol. 64 No. 2, Pages 31-32  10.1145/3446369

In his 2019 Turing Award Lecture, Geoff Hinton talks about two approaches to make computers intelligent. One he dubs—tongue firmly in cheek—"Intelligent Design" (or giving task-specific knowledge to the computers) and the other, his favored one, "Learning" where we only provide examples to the computers and let them learn. Hinton's not-so-subtle message is that the "deep learning revolution" shows the only true way is the second.

Hinton is of course reinforcing the AI Zeitgeist, if only in a doctrinal form. Artificial intelligence technology has captured popular imagination of late, thanks in large part to the impressive feats in perceptual intelligence—including learning to recognize images, voice, and rudimentary language—and bringing fruits of those advances to everyone via their smartphones and personal digital accessories. Most of these advances did indeed come from "learning" approaches, but it is important to understand the advances have come in spheres of knowledge that are "tacit"—although we can recognize faces and objects, we have no way of articulating this knowledge explicitly. The "intelligent design" approach fails for these tasks because we really do not have conscious theories for such tacit knowledge tasks. But, what of tasks and domains—especially those we designed—for which we do have explicit knowledge? Is it forbidden to give that knowledge to AI systems?

(Robot Image)  "Human, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot learn, data to learn the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

The polymath Polanyi bemoaned the paradoxical fact that human civilization focuses on acquiring and codifying "explicit" knowledge, even though a significant part of human knowledge is "tacit" and cannot be exchanged through explicit verbal instructions. His "we can know more than we can tell" dictum has often been seen as a pithy summary of the main stumbling block for early AI efforts especially in perception.

Polanyi's paradox explains to a certain extent why AI systems wound up developing in a direction that is almost the reverse of the way human babies do. Babies demonstrate aspects of perceptual intelligence (recognizing faces, voices and words), physical manipulation (of putting everything into their mouths), emotional intelligence, and social intelligence, long before they show signs of expertise in cognitive tasks requiring reasoning skills. In contrast, AI systems have demonstrated reasoning abilities—be they expert systems or chess—long before they were able to show any competence in the other tacit facets of intelligence including perception.

In a sense, AI went from getting computers to do tasks for which we (humans) have explicit knowledge, to getting computers to learn to do tasks for which we only have tacit knowledge. The recent revolution in perceptual intelligence happened only after labeled data (such as cats, faces, voices, text corpora, and so forth) became plentiful, thanks to the Internet and the World Wide Web, allowing machines to look for patterns when humans are not quite able to give them explicit know-how. .... '

Deep Learning Searches for Covid-19 Treatments

Treatments using deep learning, based on human gene interactions with drugs.

Computer Model Makes Strides in Search for Covid-19 Treatments

Ohio State News, Emily Caldwell, February 1, 2021

A deep learning computer model developed by Ohio State University (OSU) computer scientists to predict human genes' interaction with drugs has identified at least 10 compounds as potential Covid-19 treatments. The DeepCE model taps the L1000 repository of human cell-line data concerning how gene expression changes in response to medications, and the DrugBank dataset on chemical structures and other details of roughly 11,000 approved and investigational drugs. The investigators applied DeepCE's gene expression prediction matrix to the genetic data in early Covid-19 papers and additional government information. Said OSU's Ping Zhang, "We can predict gene expression values for new chemicals not from one cell to one cell, but automatically predict the role of a drug on different cell lines and different genes."

Adapting Liquid ML Networks

Adapting ML networks over time is an important idea.  How much better will this be than simply recreating the networks with new data?  Automating maintenance would make sure it is done.  And note too the claim of 'exploring degrees of complexity' ... what is the value of that towards better or more resilient solutions?   Scaling down towards richer solutions?

'Liquid' ML System Adapts to Changing Conditions

MIT News, Daniel Ackerman, January 28, 2021

A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, and the Vienna University of Technology in Austria has developed flexible algorithms, also known as "liquid" networks, that continually alter underlying equations to adapt to new data inputs. Unlike most neural networks, whose behaviors are fixed after training, a liquid network can adapt to the variability of real-world systems and is more resilient to unexpected or noisy data. Said MIT's Ramin Hasani, "Just changing the representation of a neuron, you can really explore some degrees of complexity you couldn't explore otherwise. The model itself is richer in terms of expressivity." The network outperformed other state-of-the-art time series algorithms by a few percentage points in predicting future values in datasets. Said Hasani, "Everyone talks about scaling up their network. We want to scale down, to have fewer but richer nodes." ... 

History of the VPN

Intriguing history, now finally becoming universal.  Saw it first in the enterprise. 

Everything VPN is New Again in ACM Queue

The 24-year-old security model has found a second wind.

David Crawshaw  in 

The VPN (virtual private network) is 24 years old. The concept—cryptographically secure tunnels used as virtual wires for networking—was created for a radically different Internet from the one we know today. As the Internet grew and changed, so did VPN users and applications. The VPN had an awkward adolescence in the Internet of the 2000s, interacting poorly with other widely popular abstractions such as multiuser operating systems. In the past decade the Internet has changed again, and this new Internet offers new uses for VPNs. The development of a radically new protocol, WireGuard, provides a technology on which to build these new VPNs.

This article is a narrative history of the VPN. All narratives necessarily generalize and cannot capture every nuance, but it is a good-faith effort to (critically) celebrate some of the recent technical history of networking and to capture the mood and attitudes of software engineers and network administrators toward the VPN.  ... " 

IBM and Quantum Computing

 IBM seeing the future of quantum computing.

IBM unveils ambitious plan for quantum computing software  By Jeremy Kahn in Fortune

The company wants to make it easier for programmers to use the new technology without having to understand the physics behind it.

IBM has unveiled an ambitious plan to speed widespread adoption of quantum computing by introducing simpler programming tools within the next five years.

The new software development plan, announced Thursday, is a complement to a quantum computing hardware “road map” the company announced in September.

IBM is among a number of companies racing to develop quantum computers, machines that harness the bizarre properties of quantum physics to perform calculations. This enables them to, at least in theory, perform calculations that even today’s largest conventional supercomputers can’t solve in a reasonable time period, as well as to significantly lessen the amount of time it takes to perform other hard computing tasks.   .... " 

Microsoft Releases Speech Services

Useful capability for speech production from Azure/AI

Microsoft opens limited access to its neural text-to-speech AI in Engadget

AT&T and Warner Bros. used the tech to create an interactive version of Bugs Bunny.

Microsoft is opening up limited access to a text-to-speech AI called Custom Neural Voice, which allows developers to create custom synthetic voices. The tech is part of an Azure AI service called Speech. Companies can use the tech for things like voice-powered smart assistants and devices, chatbots, online learning and reading audiobooks or news. They’ll have to apply for access and gain approval from Microsoft before they can harness Custom Neural Voice. ... 

Convert audio to text, perform speech translation and text-to-speech with the unified Speech services

Kris Holt, K. Holt|02.03.21  @krisholt in Engadget

Speech Services. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/speech-services/

Counting Google Searches for Boredom and Loneliness

Whew, most interesting ... or a more general privacy invasion that can be leveraged?

How Google Searches Reveal the Hidden Cost of Lockdown

University of Warwick (U.K.), January 27, 2021

Researchers at the U.K.'s University of Warwick, Canada's University of Ottawa, and France's Paris School of Economics and Aix-Marseille University found that Google Trends data from 10 countries across Europe and the U.S. between January 2019 and April 2020 demonstrated the impact of pandemic lockdowns on mental health. The researchers observed a sharp increase in the number of people searching on Google for terms related to boredom, loneliness, and worry at the beginning of the first lockdown. Said the University of Warwick’s Nick Powdthavee, "Our findings indicate that people’s mental health may have been severely affected by the pandemic and lockdown.” Powdthavee added, “It may be necessary to make sure support is provided to help those struggling most with lockdown.”

Work From Anywhere Here to Stay

Mentioned this previously, Irving Wladawsky provides more links and backgrounds.

Is Work-from-Anywhere Here to Stay?  (many links in the below are shown by clicking through)

Remote work has been around for a few decades, but took off in the mid-late 1990s with the explosive growth of the Internet.  There were predictions that the Internet would lead to the decline of cities, because technology was making location less relevant to our work and personal lives.  Why would anyone choose to live in an expensive, stressful metropolitan area and endure a long daily commute?  However, instead of declining, superstar cities continued to attract talented, ambitious knowledge workers, and to generate the greatest levels of economy activity and innovation.

But, even before the pandemic, “a movement was brewing within knowledge-work organizations,” wrote Harvard professor Prithwiray (Raj) Choudhury in a recent Harvard Business Review article, Our Work-from-Anywhere Future.  “Personal technology and digital connectivity had advanced so far and so fast that people had begun to ask, ‘Do we really need to be together, in an office, to do our work?’”

More on Solarwinds Malware

Schneier provides more 'Solarwinds' News this morning,  lots of links to other analyses and opinions. Including some suggestions for addressing these kinds of threats, but as yet untested.   Includes analyses by big targets/players in security, like Microsoft and Google.   Worth following for updates. 

Autonomous Vehicles as Criminal Drug Mules

I recall this coming up in innovation meetings a number of years ago.  And of course the vehicles involved will be automatically tracked and usage charged to someone-thing that can be recorded.  But expect that to be cleansed as needed.  Be wary.  Very good and detailed discussion below.   Expect any and all approaches to emerge: 

AI Autonomous Cars As Drug Mules For Narco Dealers Is A Bad Prescription

Lance Eliot Writes:

" .... I was asked by some readers whether we might ultimately have Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) that will be employed for criminal trafficking acts, doing so by removing the human element involved in driving or otherwise guiding a craft that contains an illicit drug shipment.

Sadly, yes, this can be expected and to some degree is already underway, including the nefarious use of autonomous submersibles, autonomous water surface craft such as sailboats and motorized ships, autonomous drones that fly in the air, and of course the use of ground-based autonomous transportation such as self-driving cars.

Not only will a particular mode of AV be used, such as in the air, in the water, or on the ground, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be devious efforts combining those avenues, a trifecta as it were.   ... " 

Rearchers Can Now Achieve 'Quantum Advantage'

Intriguing claim.  Based on my knowledge of quantum physics this may lead to some very counter intuitive results.   Especially for 'combinatorial', or many-many answered problems.  Probably first in crypto.  Get ready. 

Researchers Can Now Achieve 'Quantum Advantage'

University of Copenhagen, December 9, 2020

Researchers at Denmark's University of Copenhagen (UCPH) and Germany's University of Bochum have created a nanochip that could be used to build a quantum simulator. The nanochip can generate sufficient photons encoded with quantum data to scale up the technology, which could realize "quantum advantage" and allow a quantum device to solve a given computational task faster than the most powerful supercomputer. UCPH's Ravitej Uppu said the nanochip constitutes "the fundamental building block" of quantum advantage. UCPH’s Peter Lodahl said, "We now possess the tool that makes it possible to build a quantum simulator that can outperform a classical computer. This is a major breakthrough and the first step into uncharted territory in the world of quantum physics.”  

GameStop and Retail

Interesting points made with commentary. Agree its mostly about the ability to manipulate stocks in general.  Does not seem to have a broader retail effect.  

What does GameStop’s wild stock ride mean for retail?   by Tom Ryan  in Retailwire

GameStop, like many retailers struggling in recent years due to digital disruption, has become the poster child of a short-squeeze battle pitting amateur retail traders against Wall Street short-sellers.

Day traders on Reddit joined together to drive the video game retailer’s stock price up over the last two weeks in an effort to capitalize on hedge fund short-sellers betting GameStop would follow the path of Blockbuster.

From just under $20 a share on Jan. 12, shares of GameStop skyrocketed as high as $483 last Thursday, Jan. 28. That day, the stock trading app, Robinhood, and other online brokerages clamped down and curbed trades. GameStop crashed to $112.25 but recovered to close at $325.00 on Friday as some restrictions were removed. Institutional investors have lost billions in a matter of days as they were forced to liquidate their positions. ... " 

On Historical Robots

Not really directly useful, but I like thinking about history as it predicts the future.   Da Vinci is a good, and very early example.  

Superb Historical Robots

By Herbert Bruderer  in the CACM,  January 19, 2021

Robots of all kinds are in widespread use today. They are often humanoid machines. However, the definition of a robot is unclear, as is the distinction from automata. Already Heron of Alexandria (1st century) created such devices. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) also designed a wealth of drawings of sophisticated objects, see Leonardo da Vinci's Robot Lion and Leonardo's Self-driving Car. There were also fake automatons, e.g. the chess-playing Turk by Wolfgang von Kempelen (1770).

In the 18th century, automaton figures experienced their heyday. Some of these creations are still fully functional and are regularly demonstrated. This development began primarily with Jacques Vaucanson. His three machines, duck, flute player, and drummer (1738), are unfortunately not preserved. In 1745, he had also manufactured an automatic tape controlled loom. Numerous automated figures were damaged or destroyed in fires, including the draughtsman-writer of Henri Maillardet (Franklin Institute, Philadelphia).

The three musical, drawing, and writing automata (see Figs. 1 and 2) in the Musée d'art et d'histoire, Neuchâtel (Switzerland, MahN) from 1774 are considered to be the most beautiful automaton figures in the world. Makers of these masterpieces are Pierre Jaquet-Droz, Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz, and Jean-Frederic Leschot.   ... " 

IBM Cuts its Blockchain Team

 Quite a considerable twist.  Big move since their work with HyperLedger we followed

IBM Blockchain Is a Shell of Its Former Self After Revenue Misses, Job Cuts: Sources by Ian Allison, in CoinDesk

“There is not really going to be a blockchain team any longer,” said a person familiar with the situation. IBM has cut its blockchain team down to almost nothing, according to four people familiar with the situation. 

Job losses at IBM (NYSE: IBM) escalated as the company failed to meet its revenue targets for the once-fêted technology by 90% this year, according to one of the sources.

“IBM is doing a major reorganization,” said a source at a startup that has been interviewing former IBM blockchain staffers. “There is not really going to be a blockchain team any longer. Most of the blockchain people at IBM have left.”   ... "

Dynamics Spot Gets Long Distance Control

400 sold and apparently a better way to control it from a distance.  Continuing to follow the possibilities involved.  No further autonomy claimed of what I understand is tele-operation. 

Boston Dynamics' robot dog Spot gets long distance remote control  By Zoe Kleinman  BBC

The Boston Dynamics robot Spot can now be fully remote-controlled from anywhere in the world, using a web browser-based platform called Scout. Previously, Spot was controlled via a bespoke tablet, which meant the operator had to be nearby, said the firm's vice president Michael Perry.

Boston Dynamics said it had sold 400 Spot robots in the last year. They are being used in construction, deep underground mines, nuclear power plants and offshore oil rigs. Despite relatively limited sales to date, the company's new owner believes there is huge potential for the business.

Two months ago, Hyundai bought an 80% controlling share of Boston Dynamics from Softbank, in a deal which valued the robotics firm at $1.1bn (£810m).  Google's parent Alphabet had sold the enterprise to Softbank in 2017 for the much lower reported sum of about $100m.  ... "

A video of Spot "sitting" itself down onto a charging dock, using a skipping rope, opening doors, moving objects and climbing stairs was released to mark the latest development.   ... " 

A Review of the Semantic Web Field:

Been along follower of semantic Webs, that is webs that aim to capture and readily make usable human, corporate and systems knowledge.   It forms the background of things like a knowledge graph.   Been involved now in several attempts to mine and store the knowledge of parts of corporate knowledge and including related process knowledge.   Even a example of RPA linked process.    I have to say that none of these efforts was completely successful.   That is ending up as a ongoing way to create, store and test substantial knowledge in context.  Have talked about this frequently here.  Still we learned much.   But why not?    Still a student of the practice. Reading this piece, hopefully to better understand why.  Will try to revisit the journey here.   - FAD

A Review of the Semantic Web Field,  By Pascal Hitzler

Communications of the ACM, February 2021, Vol. 64 No. 2, Pages 76-83  10.1145/3397512

Let us begin this review by defining the subject matter. The term Semantic Web as used in this article is a field of research rather than a concrete artifact—in a similar way, say, Artificial Intelligence denotes a field of research rather than a concrete artifact. A concrete artifact, which may deserve to be called "The Semantic Web" may or may not come into existence someday, and indeed some members of the research field may argue that part of it has already been built. Sometimes the term Semantic Web technologies is used to describe the set of methods and tools arising out of the field in an attempt to avoid terminological confusion. We will come back to all this in the article in some way; however, the focus here is to review the research field.

This review will be rather subjective, as the field is very diverse not only in methods and goals being researched and applied, but also because the field is home to a large number of different but interconnected subcommunities, each of which would probably produce a rather different narrative of the history and the current state of the art of the field. I therefore do not strive to achieve the impossible task of presenting something close to a consensus—such a thing still seems elusive. However, I do point out here, and sometimes within the narrative, that there are a good number of alternative perspectives.

The review is also very selective, because Semantic Web is a rich field of diverse research and applications, borrowing from many disciplines within or adjacent to computer science. In a brief review like this one cannot possibly be exhaustive or give due credit to all important individual contributions. I do hope I have captured what many would consider key areas of the Semantic Web field. For the reader interested in obtaining a more detailed overview, I recommend perusing the major publication outlets in the field: The Semantic Web journal,a the Journal of Web Semantics,b and the proceedings of the annual International Semantic Web Conference.c This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I believe it to be uncontroversial that these are the most central publication venues for the field.

Now that we understand that Semantic Web is a field of research, what is it about? Answers to this question are again necessarily subjective as there is no clear consensus on this in the field.

One perspective is that the field is all about the long-term goal of creating The Semantic Web (as an artifact) together with all the necessary tools and methods required for creation, maintenance, and application. In this particular narrative, The Semantic Web is usually envisioned as an enhancement of the current World Wide Web with machine-understandable information (as opposed to most of the current Web, which is mostly targeted at human consumption), together with services—intelligent agents—utilizing this information. This perspective can be traced back to a 2001 Scientific American article,1 which arguably marks the birth of the field. Provision of machine understandable information in this case is done by endowing data with expressive metadata for the data. In the Semantic Web, this metadata is generally in the form of ontologies, or at least a formal language with a logic-based semantics that admits reasoning over the meaning of the data. (Formal metadata is discussed later.) This, together with the understanding that intelligent agents would utilize the information, perceives the Semantic Web field as having a significant overlap with the field of Artificial Intelligence. Indeed, for most of the major artificial intelligence conferences held in the last 20 years ran explicit "Semantic Web" tracks.  ... " 

Let's Not Dumb Down the History of Computer Science

Followed Donald Knuth for years, read much of his writing, always an inciteful commenter on the details of computer science.  Reading this now.

Let's Not Dumb Down the History of Computer Science   By Donald E. Knuth, Len Shustek

Communications of the ACM, February 2021, Vol. 64 No. 2, Pages 33-35

10.1145/3442377

Editor's note: On May 7, 2014, Don Knuth delivered that year's Kailath Lecturea at Stanford University to a packed auditorium. In it he decried the absence of technical content from the histories of computer science being written, and he made an impassioned plea for historians of computer science to get back on track, as the historians of mathematics have always been.

Both the video and, now, the verbatim transcriptc of that talk are online. In the January 2015 issue of Communications,d historian Thomas Haigh analyzed and responded to the talk, concluding that "work of the particular kind preferred by Knuth will flourish only if his colleagues in computer science are willing to produce, reward, or commission it."

This Viewpoint, which we thank Communications Senior Editor Moshe Vardi for suggesting, is a condensed and highly edited transcript of the original talk that has provoked so much discussion. .. " 

Anti-Patterns in Regulation

 Thoughtful piece in ACM where the notion of 'anti-pattern' is discussed, where regulation (or norms or practice)  run contrary in purpose to their original intent in design.   An specifically how the GDPR,  the European privacy law, can run contrary to modern cloud scale systems. An element of the goals of practice vs regulation or other forms of compliance.  Considerable look at the idea, largely non technical.  Anyone dealing with GDPR and other regulation  should understand the idea and implications.

GDPR Anti-Patterns  By Supreeth Shastri, Melissa Wasserman, Vijay Chidambaram

Communications of the ACM, February 2021, Vol. 64 No. 2, Pages 59-65  10.1145/3378061

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)26 is a European privacy law introduced to offer new rights and protections to people concerning their personal data. While at-scale monetization of personal data has existed since the dot-com era, a systemic disregard for privacy and protection of personal data is a recent phenomenon. For example, in 2017, we learned about Equifax's negligence17 in following the security protocols, which exposed the financial records of 145 million people; Yahoo!'s delayed confession21 that three years ago, a theft had exposed all three billion of its user records; Facebook's admission33 that their APIs allowed illegal harvesting of user data, which in turn influenced the U.S. and U.K. democratic processes.

Thus, GDPR was enacted to prevent a widespread and systemic abuse of personal data. At its core, GDPR declares the privacy and protection of personal data as a fundamental right. Accordingly, it grants new rights to people, and assigns companies that collect their personal data, new responsibilities. Any company dealing with the personal data of European people is legally bound to comply with all the regulations of GDPR, or risk facing hefty financial penalties. For example, in January 2019, Google was fined6 €50M for lacking a customer's consent in personalizing advertisements across their different services.  ... " 

Google and Ford Sign Deal to Put Android into Car, onto Plant Floor

Perhaps unexpected partnership.  Recall we recently mentioned that Ford was the leader in Self Driving Car patents.  We worked with Ford and they were impressive in analytics/data analytics utilization.  The mention of in car Android method should also spread the use of voice and AI more widely un cars.  

Google Snags Ford Cloud Partnership in Coup Over Microsoft

Deal includes Google license fees for every Ford and Lincoln car sold starting in 2023

By Nico Grant, February 1, 2021, 11:00 AM   in Bloomberg

Google signed a six-year deal with Ford Motor Co. that will bring Android technology to the automaker’s cars and cloud services to its factory floor, in a triumph for the internet giant over rival Microsoft Corp.

Google Cloud Platform will be Ford’s “preferred cloud provider” and the partners will form an innovation team called Team Upshift to jointly work on future projects, the companies said Monday in a statement. Ford dashboard infotainment screens will be powered by an Android operating system starting in 2023 and the automaker will adopt Google’s artificial intelligence and data-analytics technology.

The companies did not disclose the value of their deal, but Google will receive revenue from cloud services as well as a Google apps and services licensing fee for every Ford and Lincoln vehicle sold starting in 2023.

Thomas Kurian, chief executive officer of Google Cloud, is trying to sell the Alphabet Inc. company’s computing and storage services through broad strategic partnerships. Fresh off a multiyear alliance with Deutsche Bank AG announced in December, Google has snagged Ford, a longtime Microsoft client. Google will need to continue accumulating these types of customer wins to catch cloud market leaders Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft.  .... " 

Odoo ERP System

Odoo Python based ERP system, with free and subscription based versions.    

Odoo is a suite of business management software tools including CRM, e-commerce, billing, accounting, manufacturing, warehouse, project management, and inventory management to name a few. The Community version is a libre software, licensed under the GNU LGPLv3. Wikipedia ... 

Operating system: Linux, Unix-like, OS X, Windows, iOS, Android

Stable release: 14.0 / October 2, 2020; 3 months ago

Preview release: master

Initial release date: February 2005

Programming languages: Python, JavaScript, XML

Default port: 8069 odoo.com .... 

Google Cloud Workflow

 Brought to my attention and review, follow link for free trial:

Google Cloud Workflows

Orchestrate and automate Google Cloud and HTTP-based API services with serverless workflows.

Try Google Cloud free  ... 

Orchestrate Google Cloud and HTTP-based API services into serverless workflows

Automate complex processes,  Fully managed service requires no infrastructure or capacity planning.  Fast scalability supports scaling down to zero and pay-per-use pricing model ....