Forbidden sign over security cameras, handprint and face recognition system
AI & Society

The Coming Crackdown: The 2021 draft version of the European Union's AI Act

The European Union proposed sweeping restrictions on AI technologies and applications. The executive arm of the 27-nation EU published draft rules that aim to regulate, and in some cases ban, a range of AI systems.
Timeline for biomedical AI projects
AI & Society

Boosting Biomedicine: The NIH's Bridge2AI program will fund new health datasets.

The U.S. government aims to turbocharge biomedical AI research. The National Institutes of Health, which invests $41.7 billion annually in medical research, announced a program called Bridge to Artificial Intelligence (Bridge2AI) to promote machine learning in human biology and medicine.
Voice recognition tool "Bleep" working
AI & Society

Haters Gonna [Mute]: Gamers can mute offensive language with AI.

A new tool aims to let video gamers control how much vitriol they receive from fellow players. Intel announced a voice recognition tool called Bleep that the company claims can moderate voice chat automatically, allowing users to silence offensive language.
X-ray technique reproducing a painting that had been hidden beneath one of Pablo Picasso’s works
AI & Society

Crouching Beggar, Hidden Painting: How Oxia Palus used AI to recreate a lost Picasso painting.

Neural networks for image generation don’t just create new art — they can help recreate works that have been lost for ages. Oxia Palus, a UK startup dedicated to resurrecting lost art through AI.
Model identifying erroneous labels in popular datasets
AI & Society

Labeling Errors Everywhere: Many deep learning datasets contain mislabeled data.

Key machine learning datasets are riddled with mistakes. Several benchmark datasets are shot through with incorrect labels. On average, 3.4 percent of examples in 10 commonly used datasets are mislabeled and the detrimental impact of such errors rises with model size.
CogView home website
AI & Society

Large Language Models for Chinese: A brief overview of the Wu Dao NLP models.

Researchers unveiled competition for the reigning large language model GPT-3. Four models collectively called Wu Dao were described by Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, a research collective funded by the Chinese government, according to Synced Review.
Blurred human faces in different pictures
AI & Society

De-Facing ImageNet: Researchers blur all faces in ImageNet.

ImageNet now comes with privacy protection.What’s new: The team that manages the machine learning community’s go-to image dataset blurred all the human faces pictured in it and tested how models trained on the modified images on a variety of image recognition tasks.
Digital audio workstation playing a mixed record
AI & Society

New Life for Old Songs: AI pulled voices and instrument samples from music recordings.

Neural networks can tease apart the different sounds in musical. Companies and hobbyists are using deep learning to separate voices and instruments in commercial recordings, Wired reported.
Person driving a Tesla car
AI & Society

Tesla Safety Under Investigation: Feds investigate Tesla's Full Self Driving and Autopilot.

U.S. authorities are investigating Tesla’s self-driving technology. Federal regulators launched a probe of nearly two dozen accidents, some of them fatal, that involved Tesla vehicles equipped for self-driving.
Graph showing key AI characteristics
AI & Society

On Her Majesty’s Secret Algorithm: How the UKs GCHQ will use AI to augment intelligence ops.

The UK’s electronic surveillance agency published its plan to use AI. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) outlined its intention to use machine learning to combat security threats, human trafficking, and disinformation — and to do so ethically — in a new report.
Star Trek actor William Shatner recording his own deepfake images
AI & Society

Star Trek And The Videobot Generation: William Shatner creates his own deepfake.

A digital doppelgänger of Star Trek’s original star will let fans chat with him — possibly well beyond his lifetime. AI startup StoryFile built a lifelike videobot of actor William Shatner, best known for playing Captain James T. Kirk on Star Trek.
Neighborhood being monitored by AI-powered cameras
AI & Society

Partners in Surveillance: How police use public cameras to track license plates.

Police are increasingly able to track motor vehicles throughout the U.S. using a network of AI-powered cameras — many owned by civilians. Flock, which sells automatic license plate readers is encouraging enforcers to use its network to monitor cars and trucks outside their jurisdiction.
Commercial about The Trevor Lifeline
AI & Society

Chatbots Against Depression: The Trevor Project used GPT-2 to train crisis counselors.

A language model is helping crisis-intervention volunteers practice their suicide-prevention skills. The Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization that operates a 24-hour hotline for LGBTQ youth, uses a “crisis contact simulator” to train its staff in how to talk with troubled teenagers.
Square brackets with lines disappearing inside
AI & Society

Spotlight on Unreproducible Results: Papers Without Code collects unreproducible AI research.

A new website calls out AI research that may not lend itself to being reproduced. Papers Without Code maintains a directory of AI systems that researchers tried but failed to reproduce.
Facebook like and dislike buttons
AI & Society

Social Engagement vs. Social Good: The builder of Facebook's algorithm talks bias.

Facebook’s management obstructed the architect of its recommendation algorithms from mitigating their negative social impact. The social network focused on reining in algorithmic bias against particular groups of users at the expense of efforts to reduce disinformation.

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