Daily Archives: July 1, 2017

It wasnt long ago that personal computers were the height of technology. While significantly smaller than the industrial-sized mainframes of the past, modern desktop PCs are still bulky objects that take up a lot of space. Laptops and notebooks are considerably more portable, but even these are becoming a hassle for the on-the-go minimalist.

If youre in that crowd, you might want to take a look at some of the latest in wearable technology.

Smartwatches are quickly becoming the preferred option for those who want to enjoy the latest in IT without having to lug around a laptop computer. Industry analysts are predicting 18 percent growth in the smartwatch market by 2021. This amount of growth, according to the experts, is a result of increasing smartwatch functionality as well as lower prices across the board.

App developers are even starting to turn away from traditional smartphones in favor of smartwatches. Researchers with the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT recently engineered a Samsung smartwatch with next-gen AI, effectively giving it the ability to provide social coaching to those who suffer from severe anxiety or Asperger syndrome.

Although the utility is currently limited to a very specific model of watch, the MIT team hopes to make the app available on other popular market options.

Kiwi, a new tech startup that specializes in AI, recently developed an app known as Cue. Designed to help users quit smoking, the tool provides a program that works over the course of time. By sensing exactly when and where you engage in the habit, Cue makes it possible to set your own goals and keep track of your progress toward quitting smoking for good.

Although the number of cigarette smokers in the U.S. is at an all-time low, the marriage of wearable tech and highly useful apps can help reduce these figures even further.

And smartwatch apps arent just for consumers. The Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport launched a trial to explore the usefulness of smartwatches within their day-to-day operations. Theyve outfitted their entire janitorial team with wearable tech that gives them instant alerts when an area needs cleaning or servicing.

The app being used, called TaskWatch, is coupled with Bluetooth sensors in the restrooms that count the overall number of guests. An automated alert is sent to the janitorial team after 150 customers have passed through. Janitors who respond to the alert will earn points that can supplement their income. The airport hopes for an official rollout of the technology in 2018.

Enterprises across the globe are forecasted to spend over $140 billion on cloud services by 2019. Representing a massive increase from the $70 billion spent in 2015, the top cloud providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are set to see substantial profits in the next few years.

As smartwatches and many other tech devices support cloud connectivity, were even seeing companies that are interested in moving entire data centers to the cloud. Not only would this make it easier for consumers to integrate wearable tech data into infrastructure like the cloud and the Internet of Things, but cloud-based data centers would also make it easier to automatically collect, track, and collate enterprise data. The collected data could be used to ensure the performance of individual staff members or entire teams, forecast timelines for future projects, and reward achievements to top-performing employees.

But there are some considerations to make before investing in the cloud, either as a business or an individual. With three different cloud platforms to choose from, including private, public, and shared options, its not always easy to find the one that best meets your needs.

Private cloud frameworks are often best suited for large-scale corporations and global enterprises. As the name implies, the files stored within the cloud are viewable only by you. The public cloud lives up to its label by making all of your files available to anybody on the cloud. Shared cloud servers let you control who has access to your data.

Youll also need to pick a cloud service provider. As mentioned earlier, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud are among the most popular options for enterprises and corporations. Services like Dropbox, iCloud, and Mega are included among the most popular providers for personal cloud storage.

Nobody can deny the progress that mobile technology has made, and its done so in a remarkably short amount of time. With smartwatches among the most popular options in wearable tech, other devices, including smart eyeglasses, are just on the horizon. Exactly what well see next in the form of wearable IT is anybodys guess, but the innovation is certainly here to stay.

Kayla Matthews is a technology and energy IT writer whose work has appeared on Motherboard, MakeUseOf and Triple Pundit.

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Wearable AI is the next hot tech trend - VentureBeat

The greatest artists of our time are considered unique, but what if artificial intelligence can be taught to create art? And what if it turns out us humans actually prefer it?

Researchers from Rutgers University, College of Charleston, and Facebooks AI Research Lab have created an algorithm that allows AI to create art that is so convincing, human experts could not distinguish the difference between AI or human-made artworks.

The researchers proposed, in a study published on arXiv,that they could expand on an already existing algorithm to generate art that creatively deviates from established styles.

If we teach the machine about art and art styles and force it to generate novel images that do not follow established styles, what would it generate? lead authorDr Ahmed Elgammal of the Art andArtificial Intelligence Lab at Rutgers wrote in a blog post. Would it generate something that is aesthetically appealing to humans? Would that be considered art?

The system they used builds on a previous technique where AIs are fed thousands of images of art and taught to recognize the different styles. Through observation, they then generate their own images.This uses two networks, a generator to create images and a discriminator to differentiate between what we would call art and what we wouldnt.

The researchers, however, madea Creative Adversarial Network (CAN) where the AI creates images that the discriminator recognizes as art, but cannot categorize into an established style, meaning the AI has managed tocreate original pieces of artwork from scratch.

The researchers fed this new network 81,449 paintings from over 1,000 artists spanning the 15th-20th centuries and covering a wide range of styles. They then got experts and members of the public to evaluate the art in anonline survey where the AIs art was placed alongside those of contemporary human artists. They chose artworks from the Abstract Expressionism era and from the Art Basel 2016 contemporary art show.

The critics had to answer questions about each image, whether it was complex or novel, whether it inspired them, and how it made them feel. The results surprised them. Not only could the human evaluators not tell which images were AI-created, in many cases they rated the AIs artwork higher than the humans.

"Human subjects thought that the generated images were art made by an artist 75 percent of the time, compared to 85 percent of the time for the Abstract Expressionist collection, and 48 percent of the time for Art Basel collection," DrElgammal wrote.

Ever since AI was created, scientists have been exploring itsability to think creatively like humans, producing poems, stories, music etc although it doesnt always go to plan (if you havent tried out the hilarious AI inspirational posters botyet, do it now).

Have we finally succeeded?

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AI Creates Art That Critics Can't Distinguish From Human-Created Work - IFLScience