Effectively Organizing Information

A considerable claim to do this effectively. Out of USC ISI.  Looking for more info.

‘Information Is Powerful, But Only If We Can Organize It Right’ — New AI Potential Boon to Businesses

Greg Hardesty | January 19, 2022  in USC Viturbi

Algorithm created by USC’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI) helps e-commerce companies better organize their products and makes it easier for customers to find what they want.

E-commerce sites are in a constant struggle to prevent from drowning in an ever-growing tsunami of information about the products they sell.

How can they best keep a handle on all that information, and, on the consumer side, how can potential customers make sure they can quickly and accurately get what they’re looking for?

The answer is by creating an effective and efficient taxonomy, a fancy word for a system used to classify information in a tree-like structure – think of the classic example of a company’s organizational chart listing the bigwig at the top and the titles of the people below indicating who reports to who.

That’s easy-peasy.

But when it comes to e-commerce, things can get complicated very quickly. New versions of products come out all the time, and people sometimes use different names to describe the same products.

The ongoing challenge for mega-retailers like Walmart and Target, as well as smaller companies, is to create and maintain a taxonomy that keeps their products organized in the most efficient way and makes it easy for website visitors to navigate and find what they want. The information the big players manage is staggering: According to Google, Amazon currently sells more than 350 million products (including third-party sellers) and Walmart currently sells 75 million.

Mayank Kejriwal

MAYANK KEJRIWAL OF THE USC VITERBI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

USC Viterbi’s Mayank Kejriwal, a research assistant professor in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and a research lead at the USC Information Sciences Institute, has created an algorithm he says allows e-commerce and other web-based companies to quickly and cheaply build a taxonomy that can be easily customized to their needs.

Think of the tool this way, he said: Imagine you’re a kid. Now imagine you’re given thousands of pieces of paper with an item written on each piece, such as “baby powder,” “Coca-Cola,” “PlayStation” and “T-shirt.”

Now, suppose you’re asked to build a “tree” out of these pieces of paper so that you could easily find any item when asked.

How long would it take you to build that tree?

“Our system does it in seconds,” Kejriwal said, “and our trees are of similar quality to any that you might be able to build.”

Such lightning-fast speed can save companies money, he added.

The AI tool, Kejriwal explained, has the potential to benefit large advertising companies like Google and media companies that have to “match” product categories to customers so they can get to the right websites, as well as aggregators like eBay and Pinterest where there are many independent third-party sellers. Even if such companies build a taxonomy manually, it would be constantly changing.  .... '

Discovering effective Drug Therapy

 Chemical compound discovery and application for drug therapy. 

Scientists Can Efficiently Screen Billions of Chemical Compounds to Find Effective Drug Therapies

USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences

Darrin S. Joy, December 15, 2021

An international team of researchers led by the University of Southern California Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences has devised a method of identifying effective drugs among billions of chemical compounds, more quickly and cost-efficiently than current methods. The V-SYNTHES (Virtual Synthon Hierarchical Enumeration Screening) method works directly with synthons, the virtual chemical building blocks of the REAL (readily available for synthesis) Space library, to identify the best molecules to match up with specific protein targets. V-SYNTHES was able to mine synthon libraries to identify drug-like molecules that could selectively target cannabinoid receptors more than 5,000 times faster than standard algorithms. ... ' 

 

Greece, USC, Wharton and AgentRisk Develop COVID Risk Analysis

 Interesting approach and claims.

How Greece Let in Tourists, Kept Out COVID-19,  By University of Southern California,  September 24, 2021

A hand clad in the colors of Greece holds a test tube containing a COVID test. 

The Eva algorithm caught nearly twice as many asymptomatic infected travelers than would have been caught if Greece had relied on only travel restrictions and randomized COVID testing.

Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, wealth management advisory firm AgentRisk, and Greece's universities of Athens and Thessaly collaborated on the development of an algorithm that can identify asymptomatic COVID-19 infections in travelers.

The “Eva” algorithm utilizes real-time data to identify high-risk visitors for testing.  The researchers found the algorithm was able to identify nearly twice as many asymptomatic infected travelers to Greece than if the country had depended only on travel restrictions and randomized testing.  Eva was used to weed through data provided by tourists to develop profiles of those likely to be infected and asymptomatic.

From University of Southern California

Removing Location Tracking

Thwarting cellphone tracking.

Is Your Mobile Provider Tracking Your Location? This Technology Could Stop It.

By USC Viterbi School of Engineering, August 16, 2021A new system devised by researchers at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering (USC Viterbi) and Princeton University can thwart the tracking of cellphone users by network operators while maintaining seamless connectivity.

The Pretty Good Phone Privacy software architecture anonymizes personal identifiers sent to cell towers, effectively severing phone connectivity from authentication and billing without altering network hardware.

The system transmits an anonymous, cryptographically signed token in place of a personally identifiable signal to the tower, using a mobile virtual network operator like Cricket or Boost as a substitute or intermediary.

USC Viterbi's Barath Raghavan said, "Now the identity in a specific location is separated from the fact that there is a phone at that location."

The system also ensures that location-based services still function normally.

From USC Viterbi School of Engineering

Quantum Sensing

New concept to me, but very much emerging.   This explains it.

Quantum Sensing Takes Shape   By Samuel Greengard

Commissioned by CACM Staff, April 27, 2021

" ...By measuring movements, rotations, absorption, and numerous other physical properties, quantum sensors can peer into previously invisible places...."

From compasses and thermometers to accelerometers and LiDAR, scientists and inventors have long searched for tools that help uBy measuring movements, rotations, absorption, and numerous other physical properties, quantum sensors can peer into previously invisible places.s understand our world better. Yet these devices typically run into the same basic limitation: they can only detect signals across a relatively narrow spectrum of light, sound, motion, and gravity waves.

That's poised to change. An emerging field called quantum sensing allows scientists to peer deeper into the surrounding world by detecting quantum state changes at an atomic and sub-atomic level. This technology would allow cars to see through fog, doctors to conduct medical scans with millimeter accuracy, and scientists to identify changes in the Earth that lead to seismic events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

The technology is nothing less than revolutionary. "Quantum sensors take detection far beyond what has ever been possible," says Kai Bongs, a professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. "The field is likely to disrupt science and the economy in a major way."

Deep Sensing

The technology represents a quantum leap in sensing. Explained Jonathan L. Habif, a research assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and research lead at the University of Southern California (USC), "For hundreds of years, we've modeled light and other properties as a wave based on their physical characteristics. But we're not able to calculate the fundamental structure and limits of nature simply by measuring light, sound or magnetic performance."

Yet characteristics such as light, sound, vibration, pressure, and magnetism are more than electromagnetic waves: "They're quantum mechanical systems," Habif says. This means some characteristics, qualities, and details lie beyond the scope of classical sensors. Yet by measuring movements, rotations, absorption, and numerous other physical properties, quantum sensors can peer into these previously invisible places.

Some quantum methods involve manipulating or "squeezing" photons to produce a higher signal-to-noise ratio, which enables ultrasensitive measurements. Others enhance or alter light-matter interactions. In the latter case, "This uniquely identifies the 'useful' signal from a classical background noise," says Daniele Faccio, Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies at the University of Glasgow School of Physics & Astronomy.

"Everything you can do classically, you can do quantum-mechanically," says Federico Spedalieri, a research assistant professor at USC, "but quantum mechanics may allow you to perform some sensing tasks better." In addition, he says quantum mechanics "introduces certain measurements that have no equivalent in classical systems." For example, it would allow a LiDAR system to see through fog, and perhaps around corners. It also makes it possible to develop sensing systems that find buried objects. ... " 

When Bots Negotiate, Will Humans Deceive?

Interesting piece that approaches the meaning of 'cooperation'.   

When bots do the negotiating, humans more likely to engage in deceptive techniques  by University of Southern California

 Recently computer scientists at USC Institute of Technologies (ICT) set out to assess under what conditions humans would employ deceptive negotiating tactics. Through a series of studies, they found that whether humans would embrace a range of deceptive and sneaky techniques was dependent both on the humans' prior negotiating experience in negotiating as well as whether virtual agents where employed to negotiate on their behalf. The findings stand in contrast to prior studies and show that when humans use intermediaries in the form of virtual agents, they feel more comfortable employing more deceptive techniques than they would normally use when negotiating for themselves

Lead author of the paper on these studies, Johnathan Mell, says, "We want to understand the conditions under which people act deceptively, in some cases purely by giving them an artificial intelligence agent that can do their dirty work for them."

Nowadays, virtual agents are employed nearly everywhere, from automated bidders on sites like eBay to virtual assistants on smart phones. One day, these agents could work on our behalf to negotiate the sale of a car, argue for a raise, or even resolve a legal dispute.

Mell, who conducted the research during his doctoral studies in computer science at USC, says, "Knowing how to design experiences and artificial agents which can act like some of the most devious among us is useful in learning how to combat those techniques in real life."

The researchers are eager to understand how these virtual agents or bots might do our bidding and to understand how humans behave when deploying these agents on their behalf.  ... '

Paper is here:  https://www.jair.org/index.php/jair/article/view/11924

What do the Next 20 Years Hold for AI?

And the President of AAAI gives a short, nontechnical interview on the future of AI.  Points to a new road map on this topic, reading now.

What do the next 20 years hold for artificial intelligence?  by Caitlin Dawson, University of Southern California

Yolanda Gil, president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), discusses what it will take to move AI forward without moving safety backward.

The year is 2031. An outbreak of a highly contagious mosquito-borne virus in the U.S. has spread quickly to major cities around the world. It's all hands on deck to stop the disease from spreading–and that includes the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, which scour online news and social media for relevant data and patterns.

Working with these results, and data gathered from numerous hospitals around the world, scientists discover an interesting link to a rare neurological condition and a treatment is developed. Within days, the disease is under control. It's not hard to imagine this scenario—but whether future AI systems will be competent enough to do the job depends in large part on how we tackle AI development today.

That's according to a new 20-year Artificial Intelligence Roadmap co-authored by Yolanda Gil, a USC computer science research professor and research director at the USC Viterbi Information Sciences Institute (ISI), with computer science experts from universities across the U.S.  ... "

Motor Babbling Generates Data for Walking

Seeing some of these kinds of examples always makes me think of early AI work.  If we could design very good learners (and re-learners) we could start them like a human baby,  without knowledge,  put them in a context and just let them learn.    But there is still today much work to do to arrange the data, check it for correctness,  figure out what features are important, test it for bias, ethics  and consistency.    And much more.

A Robotic Leg, Born Without Prior Knowledge, Learns to Walk 
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
By Greta Harrison; Amy Blumenthal

Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) have developed a bio-inspired algorithm that enabled a robotic limb to learn a new walking task by itself after only five minutes of unstructured activity, and then adapt to other tasks without additional programming. This breakthrough is similar to the natural learning that happens in babies, as the robotic limb was first allowed to understand its environment in a process of free play, known as "motor babbling." The random movements of the leg that take place during motor babbling allow the robot to build an internal map of its limb and its interactions with the environment. The robots use their unique experience to develop the gait pattern that works well enough for them, producing robots with personalized movements. Said USC researcher Francisco J. Valero-Cuevas, "Because our robots can learn habits, they can learn your habits, and mimic your movement style for the tasks you need in everyday life—even as you learn a new task, or grow stronger or weaker.". ... '

Communications Between People and Smart Buildings

Every interaction between people and machines is a conversation.   And we are starting to be able to sculpt that conversation in ways that it can be most efficient and useful.   Experiments underway are numerous and broad. 

Improving Communications Between People and Smart Buildings    USC News  in ACM
By Gary Polakovic

University of Southern California researchers determined dialogue between people and smart building systems can improve with a virtual avatar representing building management, with social banter key to improving those communications. The researchers exposed several hundred participants to an office setting in virtual reality, followed by an actual office environment for a smaller cohort; participants interacted with a virtual human agent programmed to make pro-environmental requests, to see whether they cooperated. People responded better when the agent was acting on behalf of the building manager, rather than when it personified the building. Having the requests as part of a social dialogue, like small talk, instead of as a monologue, also improved cooperation. The researchers said, "Including a social dialogue may have helped to overcome the difference between person as by making the building persona more relatable." ...