Opex AI Roundup — March 2019
by Gabriella Runnels and Macon McLean
The Opex AI Roundup provides you with our take on the coolest and most interesting Artificial Intelligence (AI) news and developments each month. Stay tuned and feel free to comment with any stories you think we missed!
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The Future is… Complicated
The unceasing torrent of news related to machine learning and related technological advances makes it easy to feel like the future is increasingly uncertain. It’s hard to predict what the logical societal consequences of a given technological breakthrough might be, even for a development as grounded (pun intended) and well-defined as autonomous vehicles. A paradigm shift as all-encompassing as AI (in this context, think of AI as AGI, or artificial general intelligence) is comparatively formless, making the social implications even more difficult to foresee. The mere notion of artificial intelligence has invited all kinds of speculation from futurists since the age of Asimov (and possibly before), and as we get closer and closer to realizing many of these once-fantastical dreams, prognosticators’ excitement and caution both seem more and more justified. This piece by The Atlantic’s Nicholas Christakis walks readers through some of the potential societal effects of AI.
Hungry for Data
In our youth, many of us were taught the difference between the foods that are good for you and the foods that aren’t, often directed to a food group pyramid that was first hierarchical, and then not. However, some researchers now believe that following a truly healthy diet might not be so one-size-fits-all.
Each and every one of us has unique exercise habits, allergies and illnesses, and genetic inclinations. It seems reasonable to think that the “optimal diet” might actually be specific to each of us, given the many differences in our tastes, bodies, and day-to-day experiences. New applications of artificial intelligence agree that, when it comes to diet, what’s best for you might not necessarily be best for me. However, as an enormous amount of data is needed to create a truly individualized personal profile — data on everything from gut bacteria to family medical history — conclusive findings may be quite a ways away.
Because Millimeter-Wave Electromagnetic Scanning Wasn’t Enough
Facial recognition will now be used at many major airports across the United States for all passengers aboard international flights, regardless of their citizenship, per an executive order signed in February 2017. The plan for this project apparently does not include any prohibitions on airlines’ use of this data, giving them free reign to utilize gathered passenger facial information for any other purpose. With facial recognition technology still in its infancy, and occasionally suffering from high-profile gaffes that disproportionately harm people of color, as well as limited case law or other legal guidance for collection and usage of such data, government officials are likely to face scrutiny from privacy groups and other concerned parties who deem the implementation to be hasty and insufficiently examined.
In Defense of A.I.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the arm of the Department of Defense that develops new technologies for the US military. Over the last few years, DARPA has invested some serious capital in AI projects. A specific subset of these projects have a lofty goal: to create machines that will be able to think, react, and reason in ways similar to human beings, such that they can be “trusted, collaborative partners” to their human counterparts. Although it seems like science fiction, with $2 billion allocated to this project, DARPA has the resources to make significant strides. In this article, Defense Sciences Office Director Valerie Browning discusses the Pentagon’s plans for developing AI, as well as some of the biggest challenges standing in their way.
ConservA.I.tion Efforts
If you’ve been a conscious, news-aware individual at any point in the last two decades, you won’t be surprised to hear that Earth is suffering from a massive loss of biodiversity, with many prominent and lesser-known species vanishing into the ether with alarming frequency. However, as a conscious, news-aware individual, you might have seen these headlines so often over the last twenty years that it feels like this trend (and similar macro-scale environmental shifts) is an ineluctable force, so indomitable as to be beyond human correction efforts.
Thankfully, that’s far from the truth. AI is helping us advance several conservation efforts in unexpected ways. Many groups are helping with large dataset creation for wildlife image recognition, inexpensive sensor construction, species threat prediction models, tree identification via satellite imagery, and other crucial undertakings with the aim of preserving our natural world.
That’s it for this month! In case you missed it, here’s last month’s roundup with even more cool AI news. Check back in April for more of the most interesting developments in the AI community (from our point of view, of course).
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