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Eye-catching advances in some AI fields are not real
Artificial intelligence (AI) just seems to get smarter and smarter. Each iPhone learns your face, voice, and habits better than the last, and the threats AI poses to privacy and jobs continue to grow. The surge reflects faster chips, more data, and better algorithms. But some of the improvement comes from tweaks rather than the core innovations their inventors claim -- and some of the gains may not exist at all, says Davis Blalock, a computer science graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Blalock and his colleagues compared dozens of approaches to improving neural networks -- software architectures that loosely mimic the brain. "Fifty papers in," he says, "it became clear that it wasn't obvious what the state of the art even was." The researchers evaluated 81 pruning algorithms, programs that make neural networks more efficient by trimming unneeded connections. All claimed superiority in slightly different ways. But they were rarely compared properly -- and when the researchers tried to evaluate them side by side, there was no clear evidence of performance improvements over a 10-year period. The result, presented in March at the Machine Learning and Systems conference, surprised Blalock's Ph.D. adviser, MIT computer scientist John Guttag, who says the uneven comparisons themselves may explain the stagnation. "It's the old saw, right?" Guttag said. "If you can't measure something, it's hard to make it better."
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The foundation of democracy is not voting, it is a well educated and informed public.
Or in the words of Gunter Pauli: "0.1% of world population could qualify as scientist. I favor society where the wisdom of people prevails, experts provide technical input with humility. If 0.1% decides for 99.9% then we have given up democracy. Then we need vaccines against fear mongering not against viruses. 😔"
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Here are some of the companies bringing food and groceries to homes in China
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How Baidu’s AI produces news videos using just a URL
AI for news production is one of the areas that has drawn contrasting opinions. In 2018, an AI anchor developed by China's Xinhua news agency made its debut. Earlier this month, the agency released an improved version that mimics human voices and gestures. There's been advancement in AI with text-based news with algorithms writing great headlines. Baidu has developed a new AI model called Vidpress that brings video and text together by creating a clip based on articles.
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Swarm probes weakening of Earth’s magnetic field (ESA)
In an area stretching from Africa to South America, Earth’s magnetic field is gradually weakening. This strange behaviour has geophysicists puzzled and is causing technical disturbances in satellites orbiting Earth. Scientists are using data from ESA’s Swarm constellation to improve our understanding of this area known as the ‘South Atlantic Anomaly.’
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The Diet enacted a bill Wednesday to create "super cities" where artificial intelligence, big data and other technologies are utilized to resolve social problems. The bill revising the national strategic special zone law. The revision stipulates procedures to speed up the changing of regulations in various fields to facilitate the creating of such smart cities. The government hopes to utilize cutting-edge technologies to address issues such as depopulation and the aging of society.
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Kurt Blome - a comic book biological warfare villain
Kurt Blome (1894, 1969) was a high-ranking Nazi scientist before and during World War II. He was the Deputy Reich Health Leader (Reichsgesundheitsführer) and Plenipotentiary for Cancer Research in the Reich Research Council. In his autobiography Arzt im Kampf (A Physician's Struggle), he equated medical and military power in their battle for life and death. Blome was tried at the Doctors' Trial in 1947 on charges of practicing euthanasia and conducting experiments on humans. In 1951, he was hired by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps under Project 63, one of the successors to Operation Paperclip, to work on chemical warfare. His file neglected to mention Nuremberg.
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How this AI-powered auto-completer is helping developers write 25% less code
The Israel-based startup was found in 2015 by Dror Weiss and Eran Yahav. Codota’s free-to-use autocomplete plug-in supports major languages such as Java, Python, Javascript, PHP, and Rust across major IDEs such as Eclipse and Android Studio. Yahav told me that Codota differs from other code completion AIs as it’s able to predict the next token completion by leaning on an AI-based code ‘dictionary.’
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Dogs Obey Commands Given by Social Robots
Results of the experiments showed that the dogs paid significantly more attention to the robot than the speaker, and were significantly more likely to follow a sit command from the robot
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Booz Allen Hamilton wins massive Pentagon artificial intelligence contract
Booz Allen Hamilton won a five-year, $800 million task order to provide artificial intelligence services to the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC). Under the contract award, announced by the General Services Administration and the JAIC on May 18, Booz Allen Hamilton will provide a “wide mix of technical services and products” to support the JAIC, a DoD entity dedicated to advancing the use of artificial intelligence across the department.
The Pentagon’s Joint AI Center wants to be like Silicon Valley
It was a busy week for defense-focused AI: DarwinAI signed a partnership with Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor, to work on explainable AI solutions. Robotics company Sphero, maker of the BB-8 droid from Star Wars, spun out Company Six, which will focus on military and emergency medical applications. And Google Cloud was awarded a Pentagon contract for its multi-cloud solution Anthos this week, even though the $10 billion JEDI contract between AWS and Microsoft Azure is still tied up in courts.
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Led By Asia, Global Plant-Based Meat Market To Hit US$21 Billion By 2025
A new report says that the global vegan meat market will grow to US$21 billion by as soon as 2025. The study finds that the majority of the growth will come from the Asian market, citing preference for tofu and tempeh plant proteins as a key reason, as well as the steadily increasing demand for environmentally friendly alternatives.
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Millions of periodical cicadas to emerge in parts of US (BBC)
A 17-year periodical cicada up close After spending 17 years underground, millions of cicadas will be emerging in parts of the United States. Periodical cicadas are expected to come out in early summer across southwest Virginia, parts of North Carolina, and in West Virginia. The last time the cicadas emerged in many of those regions was in 2003 and 2004, though some areas saw an emergence in 2013. As many as 1.5 million of the insects can emerge per acre of land. While they are some of the longest-lived insects in the world, periodical cicadas spend almost their entire lives underground as what entomologists call "nymphs".
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Criminal complaint filed against Abe over dinner party (asahi)
Legal experts filed a criminal complaint against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on May 21 over a dinner reception held for his supporters before a cherry blossom viewing party in 2018. The complaint, signed by 662 lawyers and scholars, was submitted to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office and accuses Abe and two leaders of his support group of violating the Public Offices Election Law and the Political Fund Control Law.
Japan prosecutor Hiromu Kurokawa quits over lockdown mahjong claim (thetimes)
A top Japanese prosecutor has tendered his resignation after reports that he visited the home of a journalist in Tokyo to gamble on mahjong amid the coronavirus lockdown. Hiromu Kurokawa, 63, head of the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office, gambled with a group of reporters for several hours on May 1 and 13, according to the weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun.
Former Jesuit superior general Adolfo Nicolás has died in Tokyo (America Jesuit Review)
Adolfo Nicolás, S.J., the 30th superior general of the Society of Jesus, died in Tokyo, Japan, on May 20. He was 84 years old. “With sorrow, but at the same time full of gratitude, I wish to inform you that today...the Lord called to Himself Father Adolfo Nicolás, our former Superior General,” Arturo Sosa, S.J., the current superior general, said in a message to the Society. Father Nicolás served the mission of the Society of Jesus in a variety of ministries. He was an academic who taught theology in Japan and was also the director of the East Asian Pastoral Institute at the Ateneo de Manila in the Philippines.
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“Only the simplest & purest commodities are traded on markets, most value creation has nothing to do markets - it is largely generated by networks not markets. Thereby our value creation economy needs to be regulated to accelerate open networks not the illusion of markets.” (via)
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Court in Switzerland: Companies must pay share of rent for employees working from home
Switzerland’s top court has ruled that employers are required to contribute to employees’ rent payments if they are expected to work from home.
