by BGF | Apr 1, 2019 | News
Algorithms are purposed to create computing tools to assist us efficiently, but, today, they are increasingly replacing humans in making critical decisions in many areas of life. Hence arise the questions: are they honest, do they have politics, or does it all depend on how they are used? Dr. Mark MacCarthy, a Senior Fellow of Public Policy at Georgetown University, recently published an article expressing his viewpoint on the issue of Ethical Character of Algorithms.
“Fairness in algorithms is a nuanced issue”, he wrote. For example, the COMPAS algorithm, which computes a score predicting whether someone will reoffend if released from prison, is regarded differently by different groups. One side argues that COMPAS unfairly results in African-Americans being incorrectly labeled as twice higher risk than whites. The other side defends the score because “its accuracy rate—that is, the rate at which their predictions of recidivism are correct—is the same for both African-Americans and whites at about 60 percent”. Obviously, there are different stands on this controversial political issue in using the algorithm. “The algorithm inevitably has an ethical character”, concluded Dr. MacCarthy.
Another issue raised is the use (or abuse) of prediction value in algorithms. When criminals are being sentenced, traditionally it is understood as a punishment. With the help of algorithms, like the COMPAS algorithm above mentioned, the decision becomes more about whether it is safe to release them. In other words, because of algorithms, we have changed the character of decision making. The article by Dr. MacCarthy also discussed the effect of personalization on the future of news. As more and more young people get their news from social media, news curating algorithms may have intrinsic political effects, hence profound consequences for our democracy.
There is an ethical character in algorithms and it is important that we recognize it. This very complex issue calls for actions from the government and policy makers. The AI World Society (AIWS) has published the AIWS Ethics and Practices Index which measures the extent to which a government’s AI activities respects human values and contributes to the constructive use of AI.
by BGF | Apr 1, 2019 | News
A new study just published this week on PLOS (Public Library of Science) ONE has come out to suggest that we can develop machine learning systems that are better than human experts in predicting the risk of early death.
The team of health care data scientists and doctors at the University of Nottingham (UK) has developed such a system, which is applied to a middle-aged population, and found the prediction accuracy very promising. The impact of this development is significant because it could greatly improve preventative healthcare in the future.
“AI will play a vital part in the development of future tools capable of delivering personalised medicine, tailoring risk management to individual patients, ” predicted the researchers at Nottingham.
There is room for improvement though. The authors of the study would like to explore other large databases and populations, as well as other common machine learning algorithms.
The AI World Society (AIWS) highly values the contribution of the Nottingham team. Though it is difficult to anticipate how AI will change humanity, it’s believed that we have great scientists and scholars who are continuously working and preparing us for whatever is coming.
by BGF | Apr 1, 2019 | News
Scientists at Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Toyota Research Institute have found how to accurately predict the useful lifespan of lithium-ion batteries, used in devices from mobile phones to electric cars.
Combining comprehensive experimental data and artificial intelligence revealed the key for accurately predicting the useful life of lithium-ion batteries before their capacities start to wane. After the researchers trained their machine learning model with a few hundred million data points of batteries charging and discharging, the algorithm predicted how many more cycles each battery would last, based on voltage declines and a few other factors among the early cycles.
The new method has many potential applications, for example, it can shorten the time for validating new types of batteries, which is especially important given rapid advances in materials. With the sorting technique, electric vehicle batteries determined to have short lifespans – too short for cars – could be used instead to power street lights or back up data centers. Recyclers could find cells from used EV battery packs with enough capacity left for a second life.
This breakthrough AI application could optimize battery manufacturing by shortening the manufacturing time and production cost. This important AI application is also promoted and supported by AI World Society (AIWS) to develop an advanced AI technology for optimizing production and improving the quality for a better human society.
by BGF | Apr 1, 2019 | News
NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC) is a global conference series providing training, insights, and direct access to experts on the hottest topics in Computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) today.
GTC has evolved into the industry’s largest AI show, partially because of the role GPUs (Graphic Processing Units). The parallel-processing capabilities of the GPU reduced the load time to 4 minutes, and queries can be run in real time, making the system interactive. This is significant, because data scientists are very expensive resources for companies and should be kept busy. The right infrastructure and software can maximize the productivity of data scientists.
Also at GTC, Amazon Web Services announced a partnership with NVIDIA in which businesses can leverage the ubiquity and cost benefits of the cloud to deploy AI to IoT and edge devices. The joint product lets customers develop, create, train and optimize AI models in the AWS cloud and then deploy them to Jetson powered devices such as smart cameras, manufacturing equipment using AWS IoT Greengrass.
Following to this trend, AI World Society (AIWS) also realizes the importance of AI infrastructure including GPU highly efficient processing, as well as its foundation to scale AI, machine learning and data sciences for an AI Ethics to serve the interests of humanity and world society.
by BGF | Apr 1, 2019 | News
In 2019, the first cars qualified as ADAS (Adaptive Driver Assistance System) level 3 will hit the road, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will enter ADAS level 2 cars, replacing conventional computer-vision algorithms. For infotainment, AI is already present in high-end BMW, Volvo, and Mercedes models as an option involving relatively low volumes. Moreover, embedded in-car computing remains quite inexpensive because the computing is done in the Cloud. However, as for the smart-home market, there is a willingness to bring AI to the Edge, implying the need to create powerful, more expensive computing.
AI enters the fray with speech and gesture recognition technologies. Smart-home giants Google and Amazon are now in cars with their well-known speech recognition solutions “Ok, Google!” and “Alexa”, respectively. And Google goes even further by integrating its Android operating system. In terms of gesture recognition, Sony Softkinetic plays a central role with OEMs in developing these solutions.
“Artificial intelligence shortens the path to autonomy and brings the home into the car,” comments Yohann Tschudi, PhD., Technology & Market Analyst at Yole. “AI is slowly but surely invading more and more markets, and thus the daily movements of each one.” According to Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI), AI can be an important tool to serve and strengthen our society and improve human life quality, such as smart homes and autonomous car in a near future.
