Dina Temple-Raston of NPR published a fascinating investigation regarding the Microsoft Exchange attack earlier in 2021.
Officials believe that the breach was in the service of something bigger: China’s artificial intelligence ambitions. The Beijing leadership aims to lead the world in a technology that allows computers to perform tasks that traditionally required human intelligence — such as finding patterns and recognizing speech or faces.
IBM revealed its new Telum processor at the Hot Chips semiconductor conference. It claims it can detect fraud in real time.
IBM says this could lead to “a potentially new era of prevention of fraud at scale.” Although credit card fraud is the most direct application, Telum’s onboard A.I. accelerator can handle other workloads as well. Using machine learning, it can conduct risk analysis, detect money laundering, and handle loan processing, among other things.
Over the weekend, u/ryandeanrocks shared an AI text generator via the r/Shortcuts subreddit. It’s an open source version of GPT-3. Of course, how good the output it produces depends upon the input, but I’ve seen it spit out some decent things. Here’s an example; I pasted the first sentence of this piece, and here is part of the output: “You’ll notice that if you type something and then choose to send it to someone, that the chat box in the corner will turn green. In theory, that’s the easiest way to see if someone is typing something out and waiting to send it, but it can take awhile to see the difference. With real-time chatting, it’s almost instantaneous.“
This is straight out of a sci-fi novel. Researchers created a proof-of-concept technique that let them hide malware inside of an AI’s neurons to avoid detection.
According to the paper, in this approach the malware is “disassembled” when embedded into the network’s neurons, and assembled into functioning malware by a malicious receiver program that can also be used to download the poisoned model via an update. The malware can still be stopped if the target device verifies the model before launching it, according to the paper. It can also be detected using “traditional methods” like static and dynamic analysis.
A company called Fractl used artificial intelligence tools to create a game called Candy Shop Slaughter, commissioned by OnlineRoulette.com.
Facebook and Michigan State University are working on a deepfake detection system that can reverse-engineer the fakes.
Bryan Chaffin is joined by Jeff Gamet to speculate about the future of smarthomes and artificial intelligence, looking towards a future when these technologies work smoothly and have a real impact on how we live.
Apple has hired Samy Bengio, a specialist in artificial intelligence from Google expected to join Apple’s team under John Giannandrea.
Artist Diemut Strebe built a praying robot “to explore the possibilities of an approximation to celestial and numinous entities by performing a potentially never-ending chain of religious routines and devotional attempts for communication through a self-learning software.” The production is a collaboration with Regina Barzilay, Tianxiao Shen, Enrico Santus, all MIT CSAIL, Amazon Polly, Bill and Will Sturgeon, Elchanan Mossel, MIT, Stefan Strauss, Chris Fitch, Brian Kane, Keith Welsh, Webster University, Matthew Azevedo. “Wretched sinner unit! The path to robot heaven lies here… in the Good Book 3.0.” ―Lionel Preacherbot
Writing for The New Yorker, Ted Chiang believes that the concept of a technological singularity, in which computers / AI would be able to make themselves ever smarter, is similar to an ontological argument. In other words, it probably won’t happen.
How much can you optimize for generality? To what extent can you simultaneously optimize a system for every possible situation, including situations never encountered before? Presumably, some improvement is possible, but the idea of an intelligence explosion implies that there is essentially no limit to the extent of optimization that can be achieved.
Known for products like Aurora HDR and Luminar, Skylum has launched its latest photo editor called Luminar AI.
DoNotPay is a machine learning service that provides a variety of services like canceling free trials, appealing parking tickets, and more.
Apple has acquired Vilynx Inc., a company based on Barcelona that specialized in AI and computer vision technology for videos.
AI Dungeon is a text-based adventure game where the adventures are generated on-the-fly by machine learning. This means there are a near-infinite amount of adventures you can play. It’s available on the web and as an app for Android and iOS. There are two worlds you can play in: Xaxas (shown above) and Kedar (shown below). Xaxas is a world of peace and prosperity. It is a land in which all races live together in harmony. Kedar is a world of dragons, demons, and monsters. But there are other variations of AI Dungeon, like choosing a theme, playing multiplayer, or not choosing a world.
A report on Friday says that China would rather TikTok be shut down instead of being sold to a U.S. company.
However, Chinese officials believe a forced sale would make both ByteDance and China appear weak in the face of pressure from Washington, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation.
ByteDance said in a statement to Reuters that the Chinese government had never suggested to it that it should shut down TikTok in the United States or in any other markets.
Here’s what I think this means. China is all about the AI, and based on reports its algorithms seem to be more advanced than even invasive Facebook. China doesn’t want the U.S. to know just how more advanced it’s algorithms are. Read: China export ban of such technology.
Apple has launched an AI/ML residency program that invites experts to build machine learning and AI powered products and experiences.
Secure Thoughts worked with security researcher Jeremiah Fowler to uncover how Cense AI leaked 2.5 million medical records, which included names, insurance records, medical diagnosis notes, and a lot more.
The records were labeled as staging data and we can only speculate that this was a storage repository intended to hold the data temporarily while it is loaded into the AI Bot or Cense’s management system. As soon as I could validate the data, I sent a responsible disclosure notice. Shortly after my notification was sent to Cense I saw that public access to the database was restricted.
1: Burn this company down. 2: Sounds like most of the data are from patients in New York.
A company called Hybri is creating virtual AI companions that live in augmented and virtual reality. But a feature that may prove to be controversial is letting users scan a photo of a real person to superimpose on the avatars.
But the creepiest feature of Hybri is its Photoscan, which allows you to add a real person’s face to the avatar. That means your unrequited love or celebrity crush could soon become your virtual partner — whether they want to or not.
It sounds like a cool idea to me, but it probably won’t pass the App Store review team.
Apple has acquired machine learning startup Inductiv, Inc to improve Siri, machine learning, and Apple’s data science endeavors.
Apple has acquired an AI startup called Voysis, which could be used to enhance Siri’s commerce capabilities.
The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is exploring methods to use machine learning to create the next JPEG image codec.
In a recent meeting held in Sydney, the group released a call for evidence to explore AI-based methods to find a new image compression codec. The program, aptly named JPEG AI, was launched last year; with a special group to study neural-network-based image codecs.
Bryan Chaffin and John Kheit discuss the difference between artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, including the state of both today. They also talk about their new Macs— John got a new 28-core Mac Pro, while Bryan has a new iMac—and whether or not they like their new purchases. The cap the show by catching up on The Curse of Oak Island TV show on History.
Animal rights group PETA wants to replace famous groundhog Punxsutawney Phil with an animatronic AI.
The way the group sees it, not only would an AI be better at estimating when the winter will end, but it would also attract an entirely new generation of visitors to the western Pennsylvanian town. “Today’s young people are born into a world of terabytes, and to them, watching a nocturnal rodent being pulled from a fake hole isn’t even worthy of a text message,” Newkirk said. “Ignoring the nation’s fast-changing demographics might well prove the end of Groundhog Day.”
Shortly after acquiring AI company Xnor.ai, Apple canceled its contract with Project Maven that would use algorithms to analyze military drone imagery.
