When asked to design a robot that can walk, an AI told researchers to check out this blob thing.
Category: robotics/AI – Page 876
Researchers Tested AI Watermarks—and Broke All of Them
Feizi and his coauthors looked at how easy it is for bad actors to evade watermarking attempts. (He calls it “washing out” the watermark.) In addition to demonstrating how attackers might remove watermarks, the study shows how it’s possible to add watermarks to human-generated images, triggering false positives. Released online this week, the preprint paper has yet to be peer-reviewed, but Feizi has been a leading figure in AI detection, so it’s worth paying attention to, even at this early stage.
It’s timely research. Watermarking has emerged as one of the more promising strategies to identify AI-generated images and text. Just as physical watermarks are embedded on paper money and stamps to prove authenticity, digital watermarks are meant to trace the origins of images and text online, helping people spot deepfaked videos and bot-authored books. With the US presidential elections on the horizon in 2024, concerns over manipulated media are high—and some people are already getting fooled. Former US president Donald Trump, for instance, shared a fake video of Anderson Cooper on his Truth Social platform; Cooper’s voice had been AI-cloned.
This summer, OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and several other major AI players pledged to develop watermarking technology to combat misinformation. In late August, Google’s DeepMind released a beta version of its new watermarking tool, SynthID. The hope is that these tools will flag AI content as it’s being generated, in the same way that physical watermarking authenticates dollars as they’re being printed.
Even the CIA is developing an AI chatbot
“The CIA and other US intelligence agencies will soon have an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT. The program, revealed on Tuesday by Bloomberg, will train on publicly available data and provide sources alongside its answers so agents can confirm their validity. The aim is for US spies to more easily sift through ever-growing troves of information, although the exact nature of what constitutes “public data” could spark some thorny privacy issues.
“We’ve gone from newspapers and radio, to newspapers and television, to newspapers and cable television, to basic internet, to big data, and it just keeps going,” Randy Nixon, the CIA’s director of Open Source Enterprise, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “We have to find the needles in the needle field.” Nixon’s division plans to distribute the AI tool to US intelligence agencies “soon.””.
The CIA confirmed that it’s developing an AI chatbot for all 18 US intelligence agencies to quickly parse troves of ‘publicly available’ data.
ChatGPT + Real Drone
In this video accompaniment to our paper “ChatGPT for Robotics: Design Principles and Model Abilities”, we demonstrate how ChatGPT can help a user control a real drone with only language instructions.
ChatGPT provided an extremely intuitive interface between the user and the robot, writing robot code based on ambiguous and ill-defined instructions, and asking clarification questions when necessary. The model was also able to write complex code structures for drone navigation (circular and lawnmower inspection) based solely on the prompt’s base APIs.
Nike And Apple #1 Brands Among Teens—How AI Can Help Predict The Future Of Fashion And Technology
Core inflation remains elevated in advanced economies, with economists calling for tighter monetary policies in order to improve price and financial stability for sustained economic growth. With inflation only slowly moving towards sustainable targets, investors can leverage insights into teen spending patterns, behaviors, and advancements in technology to identify broader economic and market trends.
In a recent Piper Sandler Taking Stock With Teens survey that analyzed discretionary spending patterns, fashion trends, technology, and brand and media preferences, inflation was determined to be the number two social concern among teens, pointing to initial signs of a slowdown in teen spending.
“Inflation reached its highest mindshare in terms of political and social issues, right behind the environment,” said Edward Yruma, senior research analyst.
People can now generate AI images in the Google search engine
AI feature only available in the US.
Google announced Thursday that it’s adding another generative AI feature to its Search engine. Google is giving users the ability to create images using textual prompts. For now, it’s only available to users in the United States who have opted for Google’s experimental Search Generative Engine (SGE), which integrates generative AI into the world’s most visited website.
A user could type in “hands holding flowers with a view of mountains in the background,” the search engine would spew up to four images in the results. Because Google doesn’t want users to… More.
Google.
The company unveiled SGE at the I/O 2023 and will be rolled out to other countries soon, said Google.
New AI algorithm promises defense against cyberattacks on robots
The researchers tested their algorithm on a replica of a US Army combat ground vehicle and found it was 99% effective in preventing a malicious attack.
Australian researchers have developed an artificial intelligence algorithm to detect and stop a cyberattack on a military robot in seconds.
The research was conducted by Professor Anthony Finn from the University of South Australia (UniSA) and Dr Fendy Santoso from Charles Sturt University in collaboration with the US Army Futures Command. They simulated a MitM attack on a GVT-BOT ground vehicle and trained its operating system to respond to it, according to the press release.
According to Professor Finn, an autonomous systems researcher at UniSA, the robot operating system (ROS) is prone to cyberattacks because it is highly networked. He explained that Industry 4, characterized by advancements in robotics, automation, and the Internet of Things, requires robots to work together, where sensors, actuators, and controllers communicate and share information via cloud services. He added that this makes them very vulnerable to cyberattacks. He also said that computing power is increasing exponentially every few years, enabling them to develop and implement sophisticated AI algorithms to protect systems from digital threats.
This AI tool can predict virus mutations before they occur
It can be used in the development of vaccines and treatments.
Now, scientists at Harvard Medical School and the University of Oxford have produced an AI tool that can achieve that called EVEscape.
What if we could predict virus mutations before they actually took place? We could prepare for their arrival and perhaps even conceive of vaccines in time to protect populations.
This is according to a press release by the institutions published on Wednesday.
Google’s Green Light: AI for smarter and greener traffic lights
Google’s Green Light initiative uses AI and Google Maps to optimize traffic lights and reduce emissions.
Traffic jams are not only frustrating but also harmful to the environment. According to a study, road transportation accounts for a large share of global and urban greenhouse gas emissions, and the situation is worse at city intersections, where pollution can be 29 times higher than on open roads. The main reason is vehicles’ frequent stopping and starting, which consumes more fuel and emits more carbon dioxide.
But what if we could use artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize traffic lights and reduce these emissions? That is the idea behind Green Light, a Google Research initiative that… More.
XH4D/iStock.
Meet Spot, the robot dog that is helping map radiation
Radiation mapping has evolved over the past decade, but there are still areas researchers would like to improve.
Scientists at the Berkeley Lab in the US are training a four-legged robot to detect and map radiation in any environment. This could revolutionize nuclear safety, security, and emergency response.
Thor Swift/Berkeley Lab.
Boston Dynamics’ Spot