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The paradox of automation and self driving cars
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that Level 2 “self driving” cars are quite simply dangerous. The most recent incident (involving a Tesla model S which crashed in to a parked police car) has highlighted that partially automating the complex task of “driving” is potentially worse than not automating it at all (http://uk.businessinsider.com/teslas-autopilot-faces-scrutiny-after-accidents-2018-5). But the “paradox of…
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33 Industries Other Than Auto That Driverless Cars Could Turn Upside Down
The impact of self-driving cars will be felt far and wide. Aside from the obvious (insurance industry, petrol stations, professional drivers, crash repair centres), CB Insights points out that seemingly disconnected industries – like fast food, real estate, media and healthcare – are also set to be jolted from their comfort zones. Not all of…
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AI and Compute
"Improvements in compute have been a key component of AI progress" – with compute capacity used by AI doubling every 3.5 months for the last 16 years https://blog.openai.com/ai-and-compute/? https://blog.openai.com/ai-and-compute/ Since 2012, the amount of compute used in the largest AI training runs has been increasing exponentially with a 3.5 month doubling time (by comparison, Moore’s…
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How a Pioneer of Machine Learning Became One of Its Sharpest Critics
A future of truly intelligent machines requires causal reasoning, not simply "nontrivial curve fitting" (the probabilistic association of cause and effect), argues Judea Pearl. Development of true reasoning – why a given action has a certain outcome, not just that they're correlated – would allow machines to "ask counterfactual questions" – in effect, to predict…
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The Apple Watch has found a surprisingly useful home
Although Apple seems to be moving their focus for marketing the Watch towards health conscious consumers, there's a significant number of people who find wearing the device at work absolutely necessary to stay in touch. Many service industry workers are prohibited from checking phones during the workday or while on shift, but checking a watch…
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Instagram says ‘you’re all caught up’ in first time-well-spent feature
I have to admit – Instagram's switch from chronological to algorithmic content sequencing has left me feeling like i'm missing something if I stop browsing for a minute – but the main culprit for that is bad user interface design (the app instantly swings back to the top of the feed when it relaunches if…
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Look Out, Amazon, Here Comes Google
I remember years ago hearing someone describe Google's biggest rival not as another search engine, but Amazon – people "view Google as a tool to research products, while Amazon is the place they go to buy". While it seems likely that Google's Shopping Actions programme will drive business, I do not see how this will…
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Eric Schmidt thinks Elon Musk is “exactly wrong” on artificial intelligence
While I admire Elon Musk's ability to launch big idea after big idea, I have to agree with Schmidt and Zuckerberg – his concerns about AI stink of moral panic. Yes, we need to have the difficult debates around misuse and fairness, but these debates will only be triggered by continuing to explore the possibilities,…
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Navigating the risks of artificial intelligence and machine learning in low-income countries
How do you ensure your technically interesting project is truly a force for good, not merely further entrenching existing biases, stereotypes, and social problems? This great set of rules, based on experiences working on AI solutions in low-income countries, can help, regardless of where you're working: 1. Ask who's not at the table – are…
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Facebook Is Designing Its Own Chips to Help Filter Live Videos
I find it fascinating that there are companies out there large enough, and with specific enough use cases, to justify creating custom hardware to solve their problems. Facebook's recently confirmed that they're working on chips dedicated to analyzing live video, to allow them to respond more quickly to unacceptable or inappropriate content (such as suicide…