…expect the arms race to continue
Aug 27, 2018
Awesome, not awesome.
#Awesome
“In 2014, Flint began getting water from Flint River rather than the Detroit water system. Mistreatment of the new water supply, combined with old lead pipes, created contaminated water for residents…Records that could be used to figure out which houses might be affected by corroded old pipes were missing or incomplete. So the city turned to AI. Using 71 different pieces of information — like the age or value of the home — Georgia Tech researchers developed an algorithm that predicted whether or not a home was connected to lead pipes… Before the software was implemented, only 20 percent of the pipes dug up needed replacement. By contrast, the list of lead pipe locations generated by the software has a 97 percent success rate. This huge jump in accuracy is saving the city enough time and money to remediate an additional 2,000 homes.” — Erin Winick, editor Learn More from MIT Technology Review >
#Not Awesome
“Parole algorithms… can bias decisions on the basis of income or (indirectly) ethnicity. Recruitment algorithms can reject candidates on the basis of mistaken identity. In some circumstances, such as policing, they might create feedback loops, sending police into areas with more crime, which causes more crime to be detected…If, as Jure suspects, machine judgement will become measurably better than human judgement for important decisions, the argument for using it will only grow stronger. And somewhere in that gap between inputs and outputs — the actual decision making part of the process itself — is something that can shape our lives in meaningful ways yet has become less and less understandable.” — Carl Miller, Author Learn More from Unbound Worlds >
What we’re reading.
1/ As AI technologies improve, bots will be able to closely mimic humans in one-to-one conversations — an advancement that state actors looking to sway elections will exploit. Learn More from MIT Technology Review >
2/ Today, people who have been “misidentified” by biased algorithmic software have no recourse. Experts and regulators must put their heads together to solve this problem unless we want to live in a dystopian future like that seen in Minority Report. Learn More from TechCrunch >
3/ Speaking of a bleak future, one artist is creating an exhibition that imagines what a world of AI-enabled mass surveillance could look like — humans tattooed with bar cods working in warehouses. Learn More from The New York Times >
4/ Neural networks aren’t a great out of the box solution for creating music since music is not a language. Learn More from SensiLab >
5/ Blowback from fatal accidents and the inability to focus on a single goal have grounded Uber’s autonomous vehicle aspirations. It will be interesting to see if a similar pattern emerges in other companies with lofty AI goals. Learn More from The New York Times >
6/ Autonomous technology will remove humans from the driver seat inside of cars, but it may create roles for humans to fill off the road — like “driver support” and “fleet response.” Learn More from The Atlantic >
7/ Researchers at Cal Berkeley make an AI algorithm that manipulates videos to make regular people look like they are dancing as well professionals. Learn More from Motherboard >
Links from the community.
“This AI is bad at drawing but will try anyways.” submitted by (@samiur1204). Learn More from AI Weirdness >
“The world’s hottest new artist: an algorithm?” by Avi Eisenberger (@aeisenberger). Learn More from The Financial Times >
Join 40,000 people who read Machine Learnings to understand how AI is shaping our world. Get our newsletter >
Leave a Reply