World tech news
This week we published a guest blog written by Matthew James Bailey that describes a ‘Three World Split‘ in artificial intelligence (AI) mindset.
The ‘three worlds’ he refers to are the European Union (EU), United States (US), and China. Each of which is developing distinct territorial AI regulation and policy. The European Union (EU) has taken the firmest stance on the risks and problems that AI can cause by outlining stronger and clearer regulations for the use of Artificial Intelligence technologies. China and the US seem resolved to harness the power of AI to benefit their citizens and economy. Perhaps this is why Kate Crawford believes we must shift our focus from AI ethics to AI power. In her new book, Kate says we need to raise awareness of AI’s political and physical impact on our world.
This is, however, not the whole story. It was announced this week that a consortium that includes researchers from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the National University of Taiwan (NTU), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered how to create chips more minor than 1-nanometer (nm). “The news follows IBM’s announcement earlier this month of its 2nm chip, which, according to IBM, will have 45% higher performance and use 75% less energy than today’s 7nm node chips.” Experts believe that commercializing the breakthrough will take at least a decade, but once deployed, these chips will have a wide application of uses in artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, disease prediction, and other new technology applications. Perhaps most crucially, they will reduce the environmental impact of computer processing. With this in mind, at MKAI, we seek to develop a pragmatic understanding of the anatomy of AI systems.
We don’t need to wait years to see significant advances in AI systems, though. Facebook wasn’t satisfied with using an image recognition system only and has created an AI that can learn speech without learning from human transcriptions. Since MKAI is an inclusive community of diverse thinkers shaping the future of Artificial Intelligence, news like this excites us because this could connect even more people into the community through the ability to bring automatic translations to more countries. You can read more about MKAI’s mission here.
Community news
This week the MKAI community conversed about what AI regulation is needed. A trigger for this line of conversation was the news that DeepMind, a Google business unit, had unsuccessfully tried to win AI autonomy from a parent. Meanwhile, Google was busy making several announcements, including a new look coming to Android, many features coming to its Google Workspace productivity suite, and even a new AI that talked as if it were Pluto. If you haven’t caught up with the latest news from Google I/O keynote, you can watch them here.
What has drawn our attention is Google’s preview of the Project Starline, a next-gen 3D video chat booth sounds pretty cool. Indeed, after nearly a year and a half of depending on video calls for private and business purposes, we ponder whether we may go deeper into tech instead of returning to reality.
Back to regulation, the influence of complex computer algorithms in a wide range of public and private lives continues to increase. A new movie explores how we can remake digital privacy and explainability, raising the questions of whether you can take an algorithm to court?
Protopia or escape from reality into a virtual world
What’s more, how can we be sure that artificial intelligence won’t destroy civilization as we know it today? The answer may lay in the fact that we’ll be seeing a completely different scenario. We may witness history replaying in front of our eyes. Only (artificial) intelligence can create intelligence. Therefore, we might witness the second beginning of our civilization, or how our culture started out, from point zero.
We have already discussed the utopian and dystopian approaches in the previous weekly digest, and perhaps we just can’t afford to avoid the difficult task of collectively deciding what a “good future” means for us, collectively and as a species, and how AI can help us form it together.
Still, if things get pretty complicated here, we can always escape to another planet. At least, the architecture on Red Planet is pretty fancy. Even though we don’t know what the future brings, it’s pretty exciting to see futuristic ideas enter our reality, as they’ve been there the whole time.
Big Tech (and a pinch of Data Monetization)
Rome wasn’t built in one night, neither did we give away our precious data during a couple of hours. It’s a more complex process that takes quite some time. However, we don’t understand how the exact data is being used by Data Big Tech companies. Of course, there are many industry-wide challenges that these giants are facing, such as data scraping. Suppose we don’t educate ourselves on data collection. In that case, we won’t understand how some of them may try to normalize mass-scraping personal data and giving away our information just like that. That’s how they earn, and, according to their announcements, they aren’t touched by facing criticism as long as their business model brings them revenue.
Surprise, surprise, all of these Big Tech guys are using the most powerful tools, including AI. Therefore new machine learning techniques maximize the effectiveness of their intentions. As Meredith Whittaker, a former Google engineer, said – “You never see these companies picking ethics over revenue. These are companies that are governed by shareholder capitalism.”
That’s why we want to speak about how Big Tech is dealing with ethical problems.
Focus on AI-driven data monetization
We wish to discuss whether the technology market considers the harm associated with current data monetization methods, whether we believe these methods ethical, and whether an update to digital human rights is needed. Finally, we seek to know how and when these methods will change.
See you all on the 27th May, 3 PM to 4:30 PM BST for MKAI’s 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝗟𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗣𝗮𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗗𝗲𝗯𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗼𝗻 ‘𝗥𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.’ Set your reminders through this link: https://lnkd.in/g3G7ynb
Right after the LinkedIn Live, we invite you to join us on 27th May at 5 PM BST as MKAI hosts the 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀, an MKAI Inclusive AI Forum on 𝗥𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.
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Open-source code exchange
We’re presenting you this week’s project from Jeetendra Shakya on TFOD (Factory Workers) – Using SSD Mobile Net. It will detect Person/Helmet/No Helmet/Visible Jacket/No Visible Jacket. This project identifies whether a person wearing a Helmet/No Helmet/Visible Jacket/No Visible Jacket was created with around 200 images manually labeled and trained to get the best output.
She’s using SDD Mobile Net to train this model with 200000 steps and manages to achieve 99% accuracy. Here is a link for the GitHub repository with all TFOD files.
Community success
Richard Foster-Fletcher gave an outstanding presentation about Tech for Good to the Social Impact Clubs at Imperial and Oxford Said Business Schools. He emphasized how Big (centralized) Tech will give you complete control over your data and meta-data. And it won’t mean a damn thing for personal digital privacy. The reason, he stated, is that new hardware, such as personal IoT devices, connected cars, and Virtual Reality headsets, have been designed from the ground up to invisibly harvest personal information based on behaviors, gaze, and preferences. This type of data is not governed by GDPR or other laws. In a sentence, Big Tech doesn’t need our data or meta-data anymore; they have access to far more revealing data that will guide their product and advertising strategies.
Our pleasure to share that an Independent board member, audit committee chair, Markus Krebsz, is the latest to attain recognition with a Certificate in Risk Governance.
Markus is a published author and leader in our profession who commits his time and creativity to advance work in the risk management and corporate governance space.
More exciting news to come from Markus in the following weeks, so keep up the great work! Congratulations!
From MKAI, with love.
In this week’s digest, we’ll end with a poem by our dear Ana Maria Irueste-Montes Ph.D.
Insensible loses
The disappearance of life in each breath is picked and blessed by the earth
For it feeds on its energy.
As I look in the mirror, I capture a different image than the yesterday years
The layers of my skin have become thinner and more fragile
That does not frighten me, it is the price I am willing to pay for life
What frightens me more is the erosion of my being, that has occurred with the internet
As my freedom disappears ever so imperceptible every day
A Patriots act of a government that robs me of my identity
The googles, Yahoos, Facebooks, Amazons and others which narrow my choices
Sell me my “preferences” and take away diversity
Just showing me a selection, be it books, clothing and/ or politics that they chose because it fits my “profile”
Even words have mutated, so that their meaning appears less threatening
We speak of loss of privacy instead of loss of freedom
The ever more intrusive loss of freedom is an insensible loss
That I grieve, that angers me
That I will fight to take back
I will work to regain, and to hold on
For it is one of the most precious and prized possessions of men
Freedom
See you next week.
A.
