Democratic lawmakers Thursday introduced a resolution supporting what they call “guidelines for the ethical development” of artificial intelligence. Sponsored by Michigan’s Brenda Lawrence and California’s Ro Khanna, House Res.153 supports privacy of personal data, transparency, accountability and oversight of automated decision-making, and “helping to empower” the underrepresented. “To realize the full potential of AI, we must ensure that government, industry, academia, and organizations dedicated to protecting privacy, civil rights, and liberties work together to develop AI in an ethical and transparent manner,” said Lawrence, calling the resolution “the first step.” Congress must “ensure that technology is implemented with thoughtful guidance given the shifting scope of privacy protections in the digital economy,” said Khanna. BSA|The Software Alliance, Future of Life Institute, IBM and Facebook applauded. BSA said it's pleased the resolution tracked closely with its own guidelines. Co-sponsors are Florida's Darren Soto and Charlie Crist, Illinois' Daniel Lipinski and Robin Kelly, Michigan's Haley Stevens, Washington's Suzan DelBene and New York's Grace Meng, all Democrats. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Thursday tweeted that "AI technology should develop in America, with our values, interests, and priorities."
President Donald Trump’s executive order on artificial intelligence offers “little concrete guidance” for combating malicious use of AI technology against the U.S., said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., Monday evening (see 1902110054). He applauded the EO directive to open federal data sets to nonfederal entities but criticized the administration for not addressing American tech companies “working in and with adversary nations in ways that undermine civil liberties, privacy, and American leadership.” CTA CEO Gary Shapiro lauded the order, saying it’s critical for the U.S. government to expand understanding of AI, “share its findings with researchers and plan for the anticipated benefits and risks as other countries dedicate investment and research on AI.” The EO “has lofty language. But let's be honest: what matters most is funding and follow through,” FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel tweeted. Semiconductor Industry Association CEO John Neuffer welcomed the order. He suggested the administration fund “precompetitive basic research for AI-enabling semiconductor technology,” “double-down” in helping AI workforce development and open data policies, and prioritize data security. BSA|The Software Alliance Policy Director Christian Troncoso credited the administration for outlining an AI strategy "that recognizes the importance of federal R&D, promotes access to government data, and seeks to prepare the American workforce for the jobs of the future."
Nuance bowed technology that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve the conversational intelligence of virtual assistants and chatbots, the company announced at its Customer Experience Summit Tuesday. Project Pathfinder reads chat logs and transcripts of conversations between agents and customers in contact centers and automatically builds dialogue models used to create and support two-way conversations between virtual agents and consumers, it said. The technology is expected to be generally available by summer.
Amazon disputed study results about its Rekognition system in a Friday report that MIT Media Lab found the technology had much more difficulty telling the gender of female faces and darker-skinned faces in photos than similar services from IBM and Microsoft. It misclassified women as men 19 percent of the time and mistook darker-skinned women for men 31 percent of the time. Microsoft's technology mistook darker-skinned women for men 1.5 percent of the time. The results published were based on facial analysis “and not facial recognition,” an Amazon spokesperson emailed, quoting Matt Wood, a member of Amazon Web Services’ machine learning team. “Analysis can spot faces in videos or images and assign generic attributes such as wearing glasses; recognition is a different technique by which an individual face is matched to faces in videos and images.” It's impossible to draw a conclusion on the accuracy of facial recognition for any use based on results obtained using facial analysis, said Wood, noting the study didn’t use the latest version of Rekognition and results didn’t represent how a customer would use the service today. Using an updated version with similar data, “we found exactly zero false positive matches with the recommended 99% confidence threshold,” he said. Amazon continues to improve the technology.
The number of enterprises implementing artificial intelligence grew 270 percent in the past four years, said a Gartner survey report Monday. Organizations are implementing AI “in a variety of applications, but struggle with acute talent shortages,” it said. Gartner canvassed 3,000 chief information officers in 89 countries and found 37 percent work for enterprises using AI in some form or another, it said. Four years ago, only 10 percent of survey respondents said their enterprises had deployed AI or would do so shortly, it said. AI “has become an integral part of every digital strategy and is already used in a variety of applications,” it said. Common “operational use cases” for AI include fraud protection and “consumer fragmentation,” it said. More than half (54 percent) of the CIOs canvassed said “skill shortage” was the biggest AI challenge facing their organizations, it said.
In the far reaches of the Las Vegas Convention Center’s South Hall Platinum Lot, John Deere gave tractor rides at CES -- but not the type associated with an autumn hayride. The GPS-enabled 8370R gave us a 2-mile-per-hour autonomous ride, handling an S-curve pattern in a makeshift field to show how machine-guided driving could help save farmers time and costly mistakes. Test Farm Manager Marcus Hill steered the $350,000 tractor along the test pattern first, asking us to “imagine you’re in a cornfield,” saying “with these wide tires, there’s not a lot of room for error.” Hill touched course markers representing corn stalks a couple of times -- “lost profit and lost food.” In auto-track mode, the tractor relied on sensors, cameras and GPS to keep it on track. Deere engineers drove the course first to create a path for the tractor to follow on its own, something a farmer would do to map the outside of his fields, including any obstacles such as trees or waterways, Hill said. Farmers can program the tractor to not drop seeds or nutrients in an irrigation ditch, for example, where they would be wasted. A main head-up display, one of three displays in the cab, provided guidance and machine data, diagnostics and an XM Radio satellite radio receiver, while a cellular phone took data from a Bluetooth connection and then sent it to an operations center, he said. The tractor’s smarts -- artificial intelligence it added through Deere’s acquisition of Blue River Technology in 2017 -- can identify the difference between a weed and a crop plant, resulting in cost savings and safety for the crop, a type of “facial recognition for plants,” Willy Pell, director-new technology, told us. The “see-and-spray” technology, in development for two years, is due on the market in two years.
Nearly 60 percent of Americans support police using facial recognition technology to find suspects if the software is correct 100 percent of the time, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation reported Monday. Top facial recognition technology is now at least 99.8 percent accurate, the National Institute of Standards and Technology reported in November (see 1811210044). About 47 percent support the technology’s use for identifying suspects if it’s correct 90 percent of the time. About 54 percent of respondents disagreed government should strictly limit the technology “even if it means airports can’t use it to speed up security lines,” the survey found. An ITIF affiliate polled 3,151 U.S. adults online Dec. 13-16.
MicroVision will demo its interactive display engine and 3D scanning lidar sensor for connected artificial intelligence devices at ShowStoppers in Las Vegas Tuesday, it said. The company’s interactive display is said to create a more natural user experience for smart speakers connected to AI platforms by adding sight, touch and gesture to existing voice interactions. The company will demo various AI smart speakers enhanced with its multipoint touch and midair gesture capabilities. MicroVision’s 3D lidar, designed for indoor home automation, security and navigation products, allows AI-enabled applications and services to perceive environments accurately with low latency and high spatial resolution, it said.
MicroVision will use a Westgate suite at CES to showcase new artificial intelligence-enhanced devices, including an interactive display engine for smart speakers and a 3D lidar sensor for consumer applications, said the company Friday. The interactive display engine enables consumers “to create a more natural user experience for smart speakers connected to AI platforms by adding sight, touch, and gesture to existing voice interactions,” it said. Its lidar solution “enables new product offerings in indoor home automation, security and navigation by giving AI-enabled applications and services the ability to perceive environments accurately with low latency and high spatial resolution over the entire range of operation, especially in sensors of this size and cost,” it said.
Artificial intelligence, along with machine learning and its various other “components,” is a “hot topic these days,” blogged Strategy Analytics Friday. “In the media industry content providers are examining how AI can help them improve engagement, reduce churn, improve revenue, lower costs, and improve margins.” Though a “significant amount of hype” surrounds AI, “it is not without some merit,” said the research firm. “The implementation of AI on personalization can yield tangible improvements to engagement, reduce churn, and improve monetization, all of which will ultimately improve the bottom line.”