Ai With Ai

Andy and Dave discuss the latest in AI news, including a report that systematically examined 62 studies on COVID-19 ML methods (from a pool o 2200+ studies), and found that none of the models were of potential clinical use due to methodological flaws or underlying biases. MIT and Amazon identify pervasive label errors in popular ML datasets (such as MNIST, CIFAR, Imagenet) and demonstrate that models may learn systematic patterns of label error in order to improve their accuracy. DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution program upgrades its virtual program to include new weapons systems and multiple aircraft, with live Phase 2 tests on schedule for later in 2021. Researchers at the University of Waterloo and Northeastern University publish research working toward self-walking robotic exoskeletons. British researchers add a buccinators (cheek) muscle to robotic busts to better synchronize speech and mouth movements. Russian Promobot is developing hyper-realistic skin for humanoid robots. And Anderson Cooper takes a tour o

Andy and Dave discuss the latest in AI news, including a letter from the National Transportation Safety Board that asks the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to regulate more strictly autonomous vehicles and driver assistance technologies; of note, the letter also uses Tesla as an example, stating that the company is using its customers to beta test its full self-driving technology on public roads. KMPG surveys business leaders on a variety of AI-related topics and finds that, among other things, many more leaders have the perception that AI tech is moving out too quickly. Researchers at Aston University announce a three-year study to explore the utility of human brain stem cells grown on a microchip, a so-called Neu-ChiP. Researchers from Norway and Australia unveil DyRET, a quadruped robot that can adapt its morphology (such as growing taller or shorter) as it encounters different environments. And Japanese researchers describe a decoded neurofeedback (DecNef) method, which uses fMRI to visuali

Andy and Dave discuss the latest in AI news, including the release of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Unmanned Campaign Framework, which describes the desired approach to developing and deploying unmanned systems. Google employees demand stronger laws to protect AI researchers, in the wake of the firings of Gebru and Mitchell. Hour One debuted technology that creates fully digital and photorealistic AI personas for the purposes of content creation, such as welcome receptionist or information desk. Pennsylvania state law now allows for autonomous delivery robots to use sidewalks and operate on roads. The U.S. Army announces the availability of a training set for facial recognition that also includes thermal camera images, which it will make available for “valid scientific research.”  In research, Facebook AI demonstrates an algorithm capable of human-level performance in Diplomacy (no-press), using an equilibrium search to reason about what the other players are reasoning; the algorithm achieved a rank of 23 ou

Andy and Dave discuss the latest in AI news, including an announcement from Facebook AI that it achieved state of the art computer vision performance with its SEER model, by learning from one billion (with a ‘b’) random, unlabeled, and uncurated public Instagram images, reaching 84% top-1 accuracy on 13k images from ImageNet. DARPA launches a new Perceptually-enabled Task Guidance (PTG) to help humans perform complex tasks (such as through augmented reality); the effort will include both fundamental research as well as integrated demonstrations. DARPA also announces research teams from its Semantic Forensics (SemaFor) effort at probing media manipulations. Chris Ume, a Belgian visual effects artist, releases four deepfake videos of Tom Cruise, using two NVIDIA GPUs, two months training time, and further days of processing and tweaking for each clip. Researchers at the University of Washington, Berkeley, and Google Research use the StyleGAN2 framework to create “time-travel photography,” which peels away the l

Andy and Dave discuss the latest AI news, which includes lots of new reports, starting with the release of the final report of the National Security Commission on AI, with over 750 pages that outlines steps the U.S. must take to use AI responsibly for national security and defense. The Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) releases its fourth and most comprehensive report of its AI index, which covers global R&D, technical performance, education, and other topics in AI. Peter Layton at the Defence Research Centre in Australia publishes Fighting AI Battles: Operational Concepts for Future AI-Enabled Wars, with a look at war at sea, land, and air. Drone Wars in the UK and the Centre for War Studies in Denmark release Meaning-Less Human Control: Lessons from Air Defence Systems on Meaningful Human Control for the Debate of AWS, examining automation and autonomy in 28 air defense systems used around the world. And the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity publishes a report on Cybersecur

Andy and Dave discuss the latest AI news including, Mars landing of the Perseverance and its AI-related capabilities, along with its mini-helicopter, Ingenuity. Researchers from Liverpool use machine learning to predict which mammalian hosts can generate novel coronaviruses. Researchers from Estonia and France create artificial human genomes using generative neural networks. A coalition of over 40 organizations have written a letter to ask that President Biden ban the federal use of and funding of facial recognition technology. The law firm Gibson Dunn releases a 2020 Annual Review of AI and Automated Systems, which also contains a great summary of policy and regulatory developments in the last year. In research, scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia use AI to manipulate human behavior, steering participants toward particular actions. Researchers in the Netherlands demonstrate that predictive coding in recurrent neural networks naturally arises as a conseq

In AI news, researchers from the University of Copenhagen develop a machine learning model that estimates the chances of risk of death due to COVID at various stages of a hospital stay, including a 80 percent accuracy whether a patient with COVID will require a respirator. The Joint AI Center has a double-announcement, with the Tradewind Initiative, which seeks to develop an acquisition ecosystem to speed the delivery of AI capabilities, and with Blanket Purchase Agreements for AI testing and evaluation services. Kaggle publishes a survey on the 2020 State of Data Science and ML, which examines information from ~2000 data scientists about their jobs and their experiences. PeopleTec releases an “Overhead MNIST,” a dataset containing benchmark satellite imagery for 10 categories (parking lots, cars, plans, storage tanks, and others). Epic’s Unreal Engine introduces the MetaHuman Creator for release later this year, which purports to create ultra-realistic visuals for virtual human characters; Andy uses the mome

In news, Andy and Dave discuss a machine learning algorithm from Synergies Intelligent System and Universität Hamburg that can identify people in a moving crowd who are mostly likely asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19. US lawmakers have introduced the Public Health Emergency Privacy Act, to boost privacy protections for COVID-19 technology such as tracing apps and vaccine scheduling apps. A team led by researchers from Oxford have introduced new reporting guidelines to bridge a gap in development to implementation when using clinical AI technologies, dubbed DECIDE-AI. Over 30 authors from a wide swath of organizations have proposed a “living benchmark” to evaluate progress in natural language generation, which they call GEM (Generation, Evaluation, and Metrics). And the combination we saw coming, research from Queen Mary University demonstrate a deep learning framework for detection of emotion using wireless signals. Researchers at the University of Virginia claim to detect physiological responses to racial bi

In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss research from Texas &AM, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and SNY Binghamton, which demonstrates an automatic system for monitoring the physical distance and face mask wearing of construction workers; demonstrating how surveillance is rapidly becoming a widely available commodity technology. In regular news, the National Security Commission on AI releases its draft final report, which makes sweeping recommendations on AI as a constellation of technologies. The nominee for Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks, mentions AI and the JAIC at several points during her testimony. The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation releases a report on “Who Is Winning the AI Race,” using 30 different metrics to assess nations’ progress in AI. Amnesty International launches a campaign against facial recognition, dubbed “Ban the Scan.” And Scatter Lab pulls its Korean chatbot Lee Luda, after it started responding with racist and sexist comments to user inputs. In three

Listener Survey In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss a machine learning transformer model from Facebook AI and the NYU School of Medicine that uses x-rays to determine whether a COVID patient might need more intensive care. A for-pay report from Synced provides a survey of China’s AI efforts in response to COVID-19. In regular AI news, European Parliament members adopt guidelines for military and non-military uses of AI. Meanwhile, the UK Competition and Markets Authority cautions that algorithms can damage online competition and should face regulatory scrutiny. Researchers at NOIRLab use machine learning to identify just over 1200 potential new gravitational lenses. Researchers at Harvard use fish-inspired robots to demonstrate coordinated swarm movements without any outside control. Nature provides reflections from various authors on AI. And the AI Newsletter compiles a list of the 100 most influential people in AI. In research topics, researchers at Cornell demonstrate a curriculum strategy to

Listener Survey In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss research that uses NLP to predict mutations in a virus that would allow it to avoid detection by antibodies. In regular AI news, the US Food and Drug Administration publishes an Action Plan for AI and ML, with more to follow. The White House launches the National AI Initiative Office, which will work with the private sector and academia on AI initiatives. The AI Now institute has launched an effort for “A New AI Lexicon,” in which it invites contributors to provide perspectives and narratives for describing new vocabulary that adequately reflects demands and concerns related to AI technology. And the Federal Reserve is asking for comments about the use of AI/ML in banking, as it considers increasing oversight of the technologies. In research, Michal Kosinski at Stanford University publishes in Nature Reports how facial recognition technology can identify a person’s political orientation (to 72% accuracy); Andy and Dave spend some extra time disc

In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss an editorial in The Lancet Digital Health, which examines whether preliminary models add clinical value to health-care systems. In regular AI news, an Italian court rules that the European food delivery app Deliveroo used a “discriminatory” algorithm, potentially opening the door for liability even with unintentional algorithmic discrimination. A study from Google, OpenAI, Apple, Stanford, Berkeley, and Northeastern shows that large language models trained on public data can expose personal information, by making it possible to extract specific pieces of training data. In research, OpenAI combines the mini-GPT algorithm DALL-E with an image-to-text algorithm CLIP, to create an extremely powerful and flexible generative model, capable of generating high-quality images based on text instructions. The report of the week comes from the Connections 2020 Conference proceedings, which examined Representing AI in Wargames. The survey of the week looks at neural network

In COVID-related news, Andy and Dave discuss a commercial AI model from Biocogniv that predicts COVID-19 infection using only blood tests, with a 95% sensitivity and a 49% specificity. In a story that highlights the general challenge with algorithms, Stanford reported challenges in using a rules-based algorithm to determine priority of vaccine distribution, when it omitted front-line doctors from initial distribution. In non-COVID AI news, Vincent Boucher and Gary Marcus organize a second “AI Debate” on the topic of Moving AI Forward: An Interdisciplinary Approach, which included Daniel Kahneman, Christof Koch, Judea Pearl, Fei-Fei Li, Margaret Mitchel, and many others. Reuters reports that Google’s PR, policy, and legal teams have been editing AI research papers in order to give them a more positive tone, and to reduce discussions of the potential drawbacks of the technology. And Microsoft patents a “chat bot technology” that would seek to reincarnate deceased people. In research, Google announces MuZero, wh

Just in time for the holidays, Andy and Dave look back and some of the more memorial AI-related stories from 2020. They begin with the passing of mathematician John Conway, creator of The Game of Life, who died in April at 82 from complications due to COVID-19; Andy and Dave will talk more about The Game of Life in next week’s podcast. With an example of how not to use AI, in July, the International Baccalaureate Educational Foundation turned to machine learning algorithms to predict student grades, due to COVID-related cancelations of actual testing, much to the frustration of numerous students and parents. Also in July, over 1400 mathematicians signed and delivered a letter to the American Mathematical Society, urging researchers to stop working on predictive-policing algorithms. In September, Elon Musk demonstrated the latest iteration of Neuralink, complete with pig implantees. And finally, Andy and Dave examine the GPT family algorithms with a discussion on GPT-2 and GPT-3. Click here to visit our websit

In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss the results of the C3.ai COVID-19 challenge. In regular AI news, the US Air Force announces an AI, ARTUm, controlling a military plane for the first time. A Nature publication shows the AI collaboration links between institutions based on the last 5 years. The IBM T.J. Watson Research Center publishes research on 4-bit training of deep neural networks to accelerate the process. Researchers at Oregon State University publish advances with a new type of optical sensor that can naturally detect moving objects. And the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Crane along with ONR announce a prize challenge for AI in Small Unit Maneuver (AISUM). In meta-research, researchers create a graph-based toolkit for analysis and comparison of games. Other research examines the fossil records to discover patterns in Earth’s biological mass extinction events. In the book of the week, the US Army War College Class of 2020 publishes an Estimation of Technological Convergence. György Buzsá

Andy and Dave discuss the recent announcement that the U.S. Department of Defense announces that it will adopt the Defense Innovation Board’s detailed principles for using AI. The European Commission releases its white paper on AI. The University of Buffalo’s AI Institute receives a grant to study gamers’ brains in order to build AI military robots. Microsoft announces Turing-NLG, a 17-billion parameter language model. MIT’s CSAIL demonstrates TextFooler, which makes synonym-like substitutions of words, the results of which can severely degrade the accuracy of NLP classifiers. Researchers from McAfee show simple tricks to fool Tesla’s Mobileye EyeQ3 camera. And Andy and Dave conclude with a discussion with Professor Josh Bongard, from the University of Vermont, on his recent “xenobots” research.  

In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss a report from MIT that identifies gaps in coverage from COVID vaccines, and uses machine learning to identify peptide additions to increase their efficacy. The GAO and the National Academy of Medicine release a combined report on AI in health care. Nature provides access to a large collection of open datasets related to COVID research and information. In non-COVID-related AI news, President Trump signs an executive order on the governmental development of AI, which includes a requirement for OMB to produce a roadmap by the end of May 2021. The FY21 National Defense Authorization Act boots the JAIC’s role and performance, to include a funding stream for acquisition authority. The ML-Reproducibility Challenge 2020 kicks off, with submissions due by 29 January 2021. Researchers in China announce the creation of a photonic quantum computer that achieves quantum supremacy in conducting Gaussian boson sampling. The Bjarke Ingles Group unveils its plans to create an “A

In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss a Facebook model that provides county-level forecasts on the spread of COVID-19. IN non-COVID AI news, DeepMind’s AlphaFold 2 won the 14th biennial Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP), scoring above 90 on a global distance test for around two-thirds of the test proteins. Partnership on AI establishes The AI Incident Database (AIID) to provide an open-access resource on failures of AI systems, currently containing over 1,000 publically available “incident reports.” CSET publishes a report on ‘”Cool Projects” or “Expanding the Efficiency of the Murderous American War Machine?”’ which examines the perspectives of US AI industry professional toward working on Department of Defense funded AI projects. The UN, in conjunction with Trend Micro Research and the European Cybercrime Centre, releases a report on Malicious Uses and Abuses of AI, which highlights the potential physical impacts of hackers on autonomous- and AI-related technologies. And LtGen Mic

In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss research from MIT, BIM, and Harvard Medical School, which uses machine learning on Reddit posts to track the pandemic’s impact on mental health. And the UK and is planning to use AI to spot dangerous side effects in COVID vaccinations. In non-COVID AI news, Andy and Dave take a look at how the AI-based poll predictions faired in the 2020 US election. The White House issues guidance for federal agencies on AI applications. The University of Copenhagen makes Carbontracker available, which provides an estimate of the energy consumption for training deep learning algorithms. DARPA selects 5 teams to head to the next phase of its Air Combat Evolution competition. And the 34th Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) plans for virtual proceedings in early December. In research, 40 authors from Google publish findings on the challenges of deploying an AI system into the real world, such as unexpectedly poor behavior, which they attribute to underspecification. T

Andy and Dave welcome Arthur Holland Michel to the podcast for a discussion on predictability and understandability in military AI. Arthur is an Associate Researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and author of the book Eyes in the Sky: the Secret Rise of Gorgon Stare and How It Will Watch Us All. Arthur recently published The Black Box, Unlocked: Predictability and Understandability in Military AI, and the three discuss the inherent challenges of artificial intelligence and the challenges of creating definitions to enable meaningful global discussion on AI. Click here to visit our website and explore the links mentioned in the episode.