3D-Printed Models Help Preserve Endangered Languages

Quite surprising work.  Can you 3D Print Languages to preserve them?  

Researchers' 3D-Printed Models Help Preserve Endangered Languages

Interesting Engineering, Nergis Firtina, February 10, 2023

Researchers at the U.K.'s University College London (UCL) have leveraged three-dimensional (3D) printing to preserve ancient and endangered languages. Their method of producing 3D-printed objects is based on language patterns and syntax, with a focus on the evidential grammatical system. The researchers concentrated on the Amazonian language Tariana, in which speakers must explain the type of evidence being transmitted, with a hierarchy ranging from direct observation to information repeated from another person. To create a 3D shape, the researchers plotted the numerical values derived from evidential on the Z axis, the number of syllables on the Y axis, and the timeline on the X axis. Said UCL's Alex Pillen, "By producing the geometry of grammar in 3D, we allow people to have an immediate intuitive relationship to these languages that are under threat — or that might disappear." .... 

Do AI systems really have their own secret language?

Vocabulary vs Language, implications for IP to be considered.

Do AI systems really have their own secret language?   by Aaron J. Snoswell,  in Techexplore

A new generation of artificial intelligence (AI) models can produce "creative" images on-demand based on a text prompt. The likes of Imagen, MidJourney, and DALL-E 2 are beginning to change the way creative content is made with implications for copyright and intellectual property.

While the output of these models is often striking, it's hard to know exactly how they produce their results. Last week, researchers in the US made the intriguing claim that the DALL-E 2 model might have invented its own secret language to talk about objects.

By prompting DALL-E 2 to create images containing text captions, then feeding the resulting (gibberish) captions back into the system, the researchers concluded DALL-E 2 thinks Vicootes means "vegetables", while Wa ch zod rea refers to "sea creatures that a whale might eat".

These claims are fascinating, and if true, could have important security and interpretability implications for this kind of large AI model. So what exactly is going on?

Does DALL-E 2 have a secret language?

DALL-E 2 probably does not have a "secret language". It might be more accurate to say it has its own vocabulary—but even then we can't know for sure.  .... ' 

Malware Developers Turn to 'Exotic' Programming Languages to Thwart Researchers

Not sure I understand this.  Could be either way.  More experts likely to know advanced methods and patterns and thus more insight in finding malware?   Or is better to have a larger number of trainees doing the work, likely to find subtle security flaws. 

 Malware Developers Turn to 'Exotic' Programming Languages to Thwart Researchers

ZDNet, Charlie Osborne, July 27, 2021

Cybersecurity service provider BlackBerry's Research & Intelligence team has found that malware developers are increasingly employing "exotic" coding languages to foil analysis. A report published by the team cited an "escalation" in the use of Go (Golang), D (DLang), Nim, and Rust to "try to evade detection by the security community, or address specific pain-points in their development process." Malware authors are experimenting with first-stage droppers and loaders written in these languages to evade detection on a target endpoint; once the malware has bypassed existing security controls that can identify more typical forms of malicious code, they are used for decoding, loading, and deploying malware. The researchers said cybercriminals’ use of exotic programming languages could impede reverse engineering, circumvent signature-based detection tools, and enhance cross-compatibility over target systems..... ' 

Amazon Launches Live Translation for Alexa

In the enterprise we looked at efficient ways to translate consumer comments.  Just tried the Alexa real-time translation mode in German - English.     Is now on all devices it seems.  Works well ...  You could do this previously, but you had to pause and say 'translate' and was process-klunky , now if you just pause it goes ahead and translates what you said.   All I heard was right on, am sure you could trip it up, but for basic understanding - very useful.  Devices with a screen will show the text and translation.  And probably has issues with humor/satire/mood.   Will compare with Google's translator method, which had worked quite well also.   They do not do Chinese, which I understand Google does well.  

Amazon launches Live Translation mode for Alexa    VentureBeat by Kyle Wiggers 

Amazon today rolled out Live Translation, a new Alexa feature that aims to assist with conversations between people who speak two different languages. Leveraging speech recognition and machine translation technology, Amazon says that Live Translation can interpret between a number of dialects in real time including English and French, Spanish, Hindi, Brazilians Portuguese, German, or Italian.

The pandemic appears to have supercharged voice app usage, which was already on an upswing. According to a study by NPR and Edison Research, the percentage of voice-enabled device owners who use commands at least once a day rose between the beginning of 2020 and the start of April. Just over a third of smart speaker owners say they listen to more music, entertainment, and news from their devices than they did before, and owners report requesting an average of 10.8 tasks per week from their assistant this year compared with 9.4 different tasks in 2019. And according to a new report from Juniper Research https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/350643/voice-assistant-usage-seen-growing-to-84-billion.html , consumers will interact with voice assistants on 8.4 billion devices by 2024 ... ' 

Make Your Google Home Bilingual

Fascinating idea I plan to try.  I am bilingual but not completely fluent.  Could it be a step towards passive language training, improvement?    Could it ultimately prod you into using multiple languages for practice?   I have a Google Home in my Smart Home and plan to give this a try.  Another element of the smart home.  Will it be able to parse your second language as you speak it, adequately?  Note the complexity of multiple forms of many languages. 

Choose from a good selection of common US languages:  English (U.S., United Kingdom., Canada, Australia, India, Singapore), French (France or Canada), German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish (Spain or Mexico).  Nice idea for Google to leverage its language capabilities.    Will be back with impressions.   Article below is nicely detailed. 

How to Make Your Google Home Bilingual in DigitalTrends

According to the Linguistic Society of America, there are around 7,000 spoken languages in the world today. In the United States alone, residents speak around 350 different languages, according to Census data, and about one in five residents speak a language other than English at home.

Some countries even have more than one national language, and many of the residents in those nations speak both official languages. It may surprise you to learn that more than half of the world’s population speaks at least two languages. As of July 2016, it’s actually more common to be bilingual in the world than it is to be an internet user.

Do you speak more than one language? Whether you’re bilingual or multilingual, you’re learning a new language, or the members of your household speak a different language than you do, it helps when your technology can do the same. Business and communication is now on a global scale, and the world is much smaller than it once was. ... "