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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,454

The 2018 Good Tech Awards

It’s true that this was a horrible year for many of the tech industry’s biggest companies. Amazon held a nationwide beauty pageant for its new headquarters, raising hopes that the company would help transform a struggling city, then picked the two places that needed it the least. Executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter got hauled before Congress to apologize for * gestures wildly in all directions*. One of Uber’s self-driving cars killed someone. And then there was Elon Musk.

But the tech sector is more than its giants.

Last year, I handed out “good tech” awards to a handful of companies, nonprofit organizations and people who used technology to help others in real, tangible ways. The goal was to shine a spotlight on a few less-heralded projects that may not get front-page headlines or billions of dollars in funding, but are actually trying to fulfill the tech industry’s stated goal of improving the world.

An Interview with Dr. Leonid Peshkin

In this interview, Dr. Leonid Peshkin offers insights on aging, the pitfalls of excessive optimism, and the role of machine learning in studying age-related disease.

Determined but not complacent, grounded but hopeful, Dr. Leonid Peshkin is one of the scientists working on understanding aging so that it may one day be treated like we treat any other ailment.

As he revealed in an interview with the Boston Globe in mid-2018, the idea of having to lose oneself and one’s loved ones to aging never made any sense to him, and ever since he was a child, he has been preoccupied with aging and the fear that it might take away his father, who was almost 60 when Leon was 10 and, sadly, passed away in July 2018 at the age of 96.

Dr. Peshkin, a 48-year-old from Moscow, Russia, possesses a master’s degree in applied mathematics and a Ph.D. in machine learning. He currently works at the Systems Biology Department at Harvard Medical School; his primary interests are embryology, evolution, and aging, which he has studied for over a decade.

This Facial Recognition App Remembers Names so You Don’t Have To

SocialRecall says it deletes obsolete user data on the event version of the app, and that data for the other version is only stored on a user’s phone.

But privacy experts are still concerned that the app represents a mainstream rollout of technology that could have profound implications for the future of public spaces — and that it’s difficult to adequately inform users about the long-term risks of a technology that’s still so new.

“The cost to everyone whom you are surveilling with this app is very, very high,” New York University law professor Jason Schultz told Scientific American, “and I don’t think it respects the consent politics involved with capturing people’s images.”

Will Mimicking The Nervous System Advance Artificial Intelligence?

Frequently reported advances in artificial intelligence make some people curious, and others nervous. While some people picture their next smart appliance purchase being an AI robot, others wonder if an AI robot will take their job. The truth is, neither of those scenarios will be a reality anytime soon.

There’s a misunderstanding about artificial intelligence (AI), and it’s a big deal. True AI doesn’t exist yet, and it’s not a likely near future, either. Despite analysis of science fiction movies and scientific reports that claim otherwise.

People get excited when new breakthroughs in machine learning are publicized, like the CNBC interview with a robot named Sophia. Sophia’s ability to answer the interviewer’s questions and stay on point is jaw-dropping for many. The truth is, Sophia isn’t any closer to true AI than the last robot. She’s programmed to provide better responses, and her lifelike appearance makes her impressive, but even Sophia isn’t demonstrating true AI. She’s not autonomous, and can’t make her own decisions.

60 Cybersecurity Predictions For 2019

Just like last year, this year’s 60 predictions reveal the state-of-mind of key participants in the cybersecurity industry (on the defense team, of course) and cover all that’s hot today. Topics include the use and misuse of data; artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning as a double-edge sword helping both attackers and defenders; whether we are going to finally “get over privacy” or see our data finally being treated as a private and protected asset; how the cloud changes everything and how connected and moving devices add numerous security risks; the emerging global cyber war conducted by terrorists, criminals, and countries; and the changing skills and landscape of cybersecurity.

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