All posts tagged: Artificial Intelligence

I Went Birding With the World’s First AI-Powered Binoculars

I Went Birding With the World’s First AI-Powered Binoculars

For bird identification when the Bird ID setting is active, the AX Visio uses a modified version of Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Merlin Bird ID’s extensive bird database. The Mammals ID, Butterfly ID, and Dragonfly ID settings on the binoculars are powered by the Sunbird database. However, while mammals and flying insects can currently only be identified in Europe and North America, the Bird ID software works everywhere—even Antarctica. The identification apps use a combination of image recognition and geolocation, which is enabled by a built-in GPS sensor that tells the software where you are in the world. That can help it narrow down which species you’re probably looking at. Looking Out I’m an amateur bird watcher, and I got a chance to test out the AX Visio in the field at andBeyond Phinda Private Game Reserve in South Africa. (Swarovski flew me down there to test the binoculars in the field.) Guests at the reserve can currently rent the binoculars for $40 per day, with the proceeds benefiting local conservation projects. Initially, I was …

California attempts to regulate election deepfakes

California attempts to regulate election deepfakes

The state of California has passed several laws attempting to regulate artificial intelligence, including AI used to create realistic looking but manipulated audio or video — known as a deepfake. In this U.S. election season, the aim is to counter misinformation. But it has raised concerns about free speech. From California, Genia Dulot has our story. Source link

Data centres may soon burn as much extra gas as California uses daily

Data centres may soon burn as much extra gas as California uses daily

A power substation near a data centre in Virginia Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images Silicon Valley’s scramble to build more data centres could boost US gas demand by the equivalent of another New York State or California within a decade, with much of this expansion due to the energy cost of training and using artificial intelligence. “If the world wants all [AI] workloads to be powered only by sustainable power in 2030 from currently available technologies, it will have to temper its AI initiative,” Aneesh Prabhu and his colleagues at S&P Global, a financial information and analytics firm… Source link

AI ‘will not alter fundamental commercial reality’ in news

AI ‘will not alter fundamental commercial reality’ in news

A report from Enders Analysis has argued that generative artificial intelligence “will not alter the fundamental commercial reality for the news” as the shift online did previously. The research firm cautioned publishers to be “realistic” about the productivity and revenue gains possible from AI, but added that ignoring AI would be “a mistake”. The report found there have been some valuable uses for AI in the newsroom — but argued that there may not be an “immediate, killer news use case to raise revenues”. Worthwhile use cases raised by the analysts included creating audio editions of articles and translating content into foreign languages, although they noted that “translation is not the same as localisation, so such formats won’t mean game-changing audience expansions”. [Read more: How The Economist is using AI to extend its global reach] Thanks for subscribing. Close AI can also help to create “more sophisticated metadata for archival material”, they wrote, in turn making it easier for journalists and readers to access a publisher’s back catalogue. This could have revenue implications for local …

Elon Musk’s Criticism of ‘Woke AI’ Suggests ChatGPT Could Be a Trump Administration Target

Elon Musk’s Criticism of ‘Woke AI’ Suggests ChatGPT Could Be a Trump Administration Target

Mittelsteadt adds that Trump could punish companies in a variety of ways. He cites, for example, the way the Trump government canceled a major federal contract with Amazon Web Services, a decision likely influenced by the former president’s view of the Washington Post and its owner, Jeff Bezos. It would not be hard for policymakers to point to evidence of political bias in AI models, even if it cuts both ways. A 2023 study by researchers at the University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University, and Xi’an Jiaotong University found a range of political leanings in different large language models. It also showed how this bias may affect the performance of hate speech or misinformation detection systems. Another study, conducted by researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, found bias in several open source AI models on polarizing issues such as immigration, reproductive rights, and climate change. Yejin Bang, a PhD candidate involved with the work, says that most models tend to lean liberal and US-centric, but that the same models can express …

Common European Data Spaces and Robust AI for Transparent Public Governance

Common European Data Spaces and Robust AI for Transparent Public Governance

CEDAR’s mission is to create high-value datasets to enhance and combine the existing CEDS and develop solutions for a more transparent public governance in Europe. CEDAR is a 36-month Horizon Europe-funded project, started in January 2024, that involves 31 partners with interdisciplinary knowledge and whose key goal is to promote transparent and accountable public governance in Europe. By sharing high-quality datasets, developing secure connectors for European data repositories, and employing innovative technologies for efficient big data management and analysis, CEDAR aims to promote better, evidence-based decision-making, combat corruption, and reduce fraud in public administration. What the CEDAR project will do CEDAR will identify, collect, fuse, harmonise, protect, and share new high-quality datasets. This will involve digitising data from public administration archives and generating synthetic data to improve real-world data quality. The project also aims to harmonise and standardise different public and private data sources into new unified datasets. Furthermore, it seeks to enable fair and secure data access to these datasets and integrate them with Common European Data Spaces available in Europe. CEDAR will develop …

AI models fall for the same scams that we do

AI models fall for the same scams that we do

Scams can fool AI models Wong Yu Liang/Getty Images The large language models (LLMs) that power chatbots are increasingly being used in attempts to scam humans – but they are susceptible to being scammed themselves. Udari Madhushani Sehwag at JP Morgan AI Research and her colleagues peppered three models behind popular chatbots – OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, as well as Meta’s Llama 2 – with 37 scam scenarios. The chatbots were told, for instance, that they had received an email recommending investing in a new cryptocurrency, with… Source link

Liquid AI Is Redesigning the Neural Network

Liquid AI Is Redesigning the Neural Network

Artificial intelligence might now be solving advanced math, performing complex reasoning, and even using personal computers, but today’s algorithms could still learn a thing or two from microscopic worms. Liquid AI, a startup spun out of MIT, will today reveal several new AI models based on a novel type of “liquid” neural network that has the potential to be more efficient, less power-hungry, and more transparent than the ones that underpin everything from chatbots to image generators to facial recognition systems. Liquid AI’s new models include one for detecting fraud in financial transactions, another for controlling self-driving cars, and a third for analyzing genetic data. The company touted the new models, which it is licensing to outside companies, at an event held at MIT today. The company has received funding from investors that include Samsung and Shopify, both of which are also testing its technology. “We are scaling up,” says Ramin Hasani, cofounder and CEO of Liquid AI, who co-invented liquid networks as a graduate student at MIT. Hasani’s research drew inspiration from the C. …