Access Artificial Intelligence

Source: Forbes

Imagine artificially intelligent software that can scan and analyze your online profile. Then imagine it creating a score — a risk rating — that’s searchable by future employers. It’s scary, and now reality.

Predictim, a software startup out of U.C. Berkeley, sorts through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media feeds to https://www.predictim.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; cursor: pointer; color: rgb(0, 56, 145); text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">help parents find a suitable babysitter. It’s one part good intentions mixed with two parts dystopian futurism.

Source:  nytimes.com

Robot Calls at best annoying disturbances and at worst costly financial scams — are getting worse. Though automated calls have long plagued consumers, the volume has skyrocketed in recent years, reaching an estimated 3.4 billion in April.

Lawmakers are working on legislation to curb abuses, and federal regulators have issued new rules allowing phone companies to block calls. But it’s difficult to trace the calls, let alone stop them.

In the meantime, take heart that you’re not the only one being targeted. Here are some steps you can take to try to keep the calls at bay.

• Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them

An unfamiliar number appears on your cell phone. It’s from your area code, so you answer it, thinking it might be important.

Source CNET.Com

Once limited, Alexa Routines can now control your home and stream music on a schedule.

A few months ago, Amazon rolled out one of the larger feature updates for Alexaspeakers to date: Routines. This lets you automate lights and other connected devices on a schedule, or lump multiple commands into one. "Alexa, good night" could be programmed to turn off smart bulbs around the house, lock the door, set a specific temperature and more, for example. Routines further cement Alexa as the brains of the smart home.

Routines came with a couple caveats though. First, you could only control smart bulbs and a handful of other devices. (They've since been updated to support more.) The bigger drawback, though, was the lack of music streaming.

Music alarms were a step in the right direction. But not being able to say, "Alexa, set the mood" and having the lights dim and calm music play felt like a huge missed opportunity.

Flippy, a burger-flipping robot, has begun work at a restaurant in Pasadena, Los Angeles. It is the first of dozens of locations for the system, which is destined to replace human fast-food workers. The BBC's North America technology reporter Dave Lee saw it in action.

Source: Arjun Kharpal | @ArjunKharpal

• Artificial intelligence could be "billions of times smarter" than humans and people may need to merge with computers to survive, a futurist told CNBC on Tuesday.
• Ian Pearson, a futurist at Futurizon, said there will need to be a link between AI and a human brain.
• Elon Musk said last year that humans must merge with machines to not be irrelevant in the age of AI.

Artificial intelligence could be "billions of times smarter" than humans and people may need to merge with computers to survive, a futurist told CNBC on Tuesday.

Speaking on a panel hosted by CNBC at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Futurizon's Ian Pearson's comments mirrored ideas put forward by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

"The fact is that AI can go further than humans, it could be billions of times smarter than humans at this point," Pearson said. "So we really do need to make sure that we have some means of keeping up.

The way to protect against that is to link that AI to your brain so you have the same IQ… as the computer. I don't actually think it's safe, just like Elon Musk… to develop these superhuman computers until we have a direct link to the human brain… and then don't get way ahead."

Today, smartphones that use machine learning depend on cloud servers, which limits how information is processed. Having a built-in artificial intelligence processing unit, however, could change that and increase a device's computing power.

AI BUILT IN

Almost every major player in the smartphone industry now says that their devices use the power of artificial intelligence (AI), or more specifically, machine learning algorithms. Few devices, however, run their own AI software. That might soon change: thanks to a processor dedicated to machine learning for mobile phones and other smart-home devices, AI smartphones could one day be standard.

British chip design firm ARM, the company behind virtually every chip in today’s smartphones, now wants to put the power of AI into every mobile device. Currently, devices that run AI algorithms depend on servers in the cloud. It’s a rather limited set up, with online connectivity affecting how information is sent back and forth.

Source: Bernard Marr, Forbes

Discussions of artificial intelligence (AI) have created a certain amount of unease by those who fear it will quickly evolve from being a benefit to human society to taking over. Even Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have warned of AI’s threats. However, we’re not all operating from the same definition of the term and while the foundation is generally the same, the focus of artificial intelligence shifts depending on the entity that provides the definition.

Let’s look at 6 definitions of artificial intelligence and see how some of the industry’s leaders are focusing their AI research efforts.

John McCarthy first coined the term artificial intelligence in 1956 when he invited a group of researchers from a variety of disciplines including language simulation, neuron nets, complexity theory and more to a summer workshop called the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence to discuss what would ultimately become the field of AI. At that time, the researchers came together to clarify and develop the concepts around “thinking machines” which up to this point had been quite divergent.

McCarthy is said to have picked the name artificial intelligence for its neutrality; to avoid highlighting one of the tracks being pursued at the time for the field of “thinking machines” that included cybernetics, automata theory and complex information processing. The proposal for the conference said, “The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.”