Assistant Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Mechanics, Structure and Manufacturing job with UNITED ARAB EMIRATES UNIVERSITY | 289276…

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Job Description

The Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the United Arab Emirates University invites applicants for a faculty position in the areas of Materials Engineering/ Aircraft structure / Design Engineering / Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering. Qualified candidates at all levels will be considered at a rank commensurate with academic accomplishments. Candidates are expected to have a strong commitment to teaching excellence and student advising at the undergraduate and graduate levels, a demonstrable research capability that will enable the candidate to develop and sustain an internally and/or externally funded research program in his/her area of expertise, publish his/her research findings in refereed journals, and actively engage in promoting the growth of the UAE University. The application package should include a cover letter, a detailed CV, a brief description of current/future research activities, teaching philosophy, and courses taught. English is the language of instruction and communication. Screening of applications will continue until the position is filled.

Minimum Qualification

Preferred Qualification

Ph. D in related fields from an internationally recognized University and proven record of publication in top-ranked journals and relevant teaching experience at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Experience in aerospace materials is preferred.

Division College of Engineering - (COE)Department Mechanical & Aerospace Eng.-(COE)Job Close Date open until filledJob Category Academic - Faculty

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Assistant Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Mechanics, Structure and Manufacturing job with UNITED ARAB EMIRATES UNIVERSITY | 289276...

Rajnath Singh meets executives of US aerospace giants Boeing and Raytheon – The Indian Express

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Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has met senior executives of American aerospace and defence majors Boeing and Raytheon and asked them to take advantage of policy initiatives in India to steadily march from Make in India towards Make for the World.

Singh along with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar arrived in the US capital on Sunday to attend the India-US 2+2 ministerial dialogue in Washington on Monday the first under the Biden administration.

Raksha Mantri Shri @rajnathsingh met with the US aerospace & defence majors Boeing and Raytheon after reaching Washington DC. He exhorted the companies to take advantage of policy initiatives in India to steadily march from Make in India towards Make for the World, the Defence Ministry tweeted on Monday.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin will host Jaishankar and Singh for the 2+2 ministerial on Monday.

To be held under the shadow of the Ukrainian crisis, the 2+2 ministerial is reflective of the significance the two governments attach to this bilateral strategic relationship.

In fact, President Biden has signalled to elevate the 2+2 ministerial by himself having a virtual meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the White House on Monday.

The two Indian ministers along with their American counterparts are slated to participate in the virtual meeting from the White House.

The 2+2 ministerial along with the respective delegations would take place at the State Department on Monday afternoon.

The 2+2 Dialogue would enable both sides to undertake a comprehensive review of cross-cutting issues in the India-US bilateral agenda related to foreign policy, defence and security with the objective of providing strategic guidance and vision for further consolidating the relationship, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a press release on Thursday.

The 2+2 Dialogue will also provide an opportunity to exchange views about important regional and global developments and how we can work together to address issues of common interest and concern, it said.

The 2+2 Ministerial is an important opportunity to advance our shared objectives across the breadth of the US-India Strategic Partnership, the State Department said last week.

It is also a chance to highlight the growing Major Defence Partnership between the United States and India, it said on the importance of the meeting.

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Rajnath Singh meets executives of US aerospace giants Boeing and Raytheon - The Indian Express

Global Aerospace And Defense Connectors Market 2022 Outlook and Study of Top Players as Amphenol Corporation, Bel Fuse Inc., Carlisle Interconnect…

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The research released by Market Research Place named Global Aerospace & Defense Connectors Market from 2022 to 2028 provides a comprehensive analysis of the industry, including product description, market segmentation based on different factors, and the current player situation. And for the projected timeframe of 2022-2028, the research evaluates the potential and current market conditions, providing insights and updates about the related segments operating in the global Aerospace & Defense Connectors market.

The research gives business customers an in-depth analysis of the global Aerospace & Defense Connectors market, including a study of market dynamics, market size, market price, and market growth over the projected period on an annual basis. This document contains a detailed prospective study of the company. It displays vital data and manufacturing status and might be a valuable source of guidance for organizations and companies. Moreover, it provides a comprehensive overview of the major players.

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The product may be segmented into the following market segments based on its type:

Market segmentation by use, segmented into

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The market study then forecasts global Aerospace & Defense Connectors market development trends for 2022-2028. This also contains details of strategic partnerships. SWOT analysis, investment analysis phase, and net income analysis are also included in this study.

The market trends are forecasted in this study. Additionally, the market analysis provides an insight into the global Aerospace & Defense Connectors market based on several variables, including geographic scope, market segmentation, growth drivers, and market restraints.

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Global Aerospace And Defense Connectors Market 2022 Outlook and Study of Top Players as Amphenol Corporation, Bel Fuse Inc., Carlisle Interconnect...

Shades State Park Is An Otherworldly Destination In West-Central Indiana – Only In Your State

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Posted in Indiana Nature April 12, 2022by Tori Jane

Snuggled about 17 miles outside of Crawfordsville, Indiana, is a little state park that if you ask us does NOT get the attention it deserves. You might recognize it; weve covered hiking trails at this particular state park a few times before. But the park itself is absolutely worthy of a look, too, and once you see these photos well you just might find yourself needing to pay a visit to Shades State Park in Indiana.

During these uncertain times, please keep safety in mind and consider adding destinations to your bucket list to visit at a later date.

Indiana isn't exactly known for its rainforest vibes - it is, after all, one of the states that makes up the American Midwest - but Shades State Park is a place that feels like a rainforest SO much more than it feels like Indiana.

You'll feel like you've traveled to some mysterious, far-away destination somewhere in, say, Middle Earth, as opposed to Waveland, Indiana.

Be sure to wear your good hiking boots, though, especially if you do end up coming after a rain event; the trails can be quite muddy at times, and you'll need to cross some streams and ravines a few times depending on which trail you choose.

You'll meander within small gorges created by a winding ravine. You'll climb ladders, and scale boulders. You'll feel like you're somewhere exotic and wild.

More than 15 million visitors enjoy Indiana's state parks every year, but only a small portion of those folks ever come to Shades. Maybe it's because the park was once known as "Shades of Death" park, because that's the only reason we can think of as to why folks wouldn't be clambering to come see this paradise within our own backyards.

But, we digress. Shades State Park in Indiana is the ultimate warm-weather getaway destination if you prefer to tolerate fewer crowds than more popular state parks will attract.

Be sure to explore many more of Indianas hiking trails while youre here and if you live here, well, theres just no excuse: you gotta get out and enjoy this amazing state for all its got.

What are your favorite state parks to visit in Indiana? Tell us about your picks in the comments!

Address: 7751 S 890 W, Waveland, IN 47989, USA

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Shades State Park Is An Otherworldly Destination In West-Central Indiana - Only In Your State

The Cubs need stars at Wrigley Field, where Marcus Stroman and Seiya Suzuki are making a strong first impression – The Athletic

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On the night the Cubs finalized Marcus Stromans three-year, $71 million contract, president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer called Seiya Suzukis agent, Joel Wolfe, with a reminder before Major League Baseball imposed a lockout: Dont forget about us. We will be waiting for you on the other side.

While Stromans decision-making process appeared to be rushed, the Cubs used the unstructured time to reassess their scouting and R&D evaluations of Suzuki and focus on the personal touches in the next phases of their recruiting efforts. Like Suzuki, Stroman had mentally prepared to sign after the lockout until the Cubs saw they were running out of options for their rotation and realized they couldnt afford to be so patient and passive. Stroman needed to board a red-eye flight from Los Angeles International Airport to reach Chicago in time to close the deal before the Dec. 2 transactions freeze.

Staggering those signings and shutting down the industry for 99 days created zero momentum for the Cubs business operations department and MLB as a whole. The Cubs announced 35,112 as their Opening Day attendance and that number dropped to 30,369 and 32,858 for the seasons first weekend at Wrigley Field. Casual fans must be wondering: Who are these guys? Nine Cubs made their first appearance on an Opening Day roster, and 11 of those 28 active players were not with the club last season.

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The Cubs need stars at Wrigley Field, where Marcus Stroman and Seiya Suzuki are making a strong first impression - The Athletic

Is China Winning the AI Race? by Eric Schmidt & Graham Allison – Project Syndicate

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The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the capabilities of the United States and China to deploy artificial intelligence in solving real-world problems. While America's performance hasn't exactly inspired confidence, it maintains some important competitive advantages.

CAMBRIDGE COVID-19 has become a severe stress test for countries around the world. From supply-chain management and health-care capacity to regulatory reform and economic stimulus, the pandemic has mercilessly punished governments that did not or could not adapt quickly.

The virus has also pulled back the curtain on one of this centurys most important contests: the rivalry between the United States and China for supremacy in artificial intelligence (AI). The scene that has been revealed should alarm Americans. China is not just on a trajectory to overtake the US; it is already surpassing US capabilities where it matters most.

Most Americans assume that their countrys lead in advanced technologies is unassailable. And many in the US national-security community insist that China can never be more than a near-peer competitor in AI. In fact, China is already a full-spectrum peer competitor in terms of both commercial and national-security AI applications. China is not just trying to master AI; it is mastering AI.

The pandemic has offered a revealing early test of each countrys ability to mobilize AI at scale in response to a national-security threat. In the US, President Donald Trumps administration claims that it deployed cutting-edge technology as part of its declared war on the coronavirus. But, for the most part, AI-related technologies have been used mainly as buzzwords.

Not so in China. To stop the spread of the virus, China locked down the entire population of Hubei province 60 million people. That is more than the number of residents in every state on the US East Coast from Florida to Maine. China maintained this massive cordon sanitaire by using AI-enhanced algorithms to track residents movements and scale up testing capabilities while massive new health-care facilities were being built.

The COVID-19 outbreak coincided with the Chinese New Year, a high-travel period. But top Chinese tech companies responded quickly by creating apps with health status codes to track citizens movements and determine whether individuals needed to be quarantined. AI then played a critical role in helping Chinese authorities enforce quarantines and perform extensive contract tracing. Owing to Chinas large-scale datasets, the authorities in Beijing succeeded where the government in Washington, DC, failed.

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Over the past decade, Chinas advantages in size, data collection, and strategic determination have allowed it to close the gap with Americas AI industry. Chinas edge begins with its population of 1.4 billion, which affords an unparalleled pool of talent, the largest domestic market in the world, and a massive volume of data collected by companies and government in a political system that always places security before privacy. Because a primary asset in applying AI is the quantity of high-quality data, China has emerged as the Saudi Arabia of the twenty-first centurys most valuable commodity.

In the context of the pandemic, Chinas ability and willingness to deploy these technologies for strategic value has strengthened its hard power. Like it or not, real wars in the future will be AI-driven. As Joseph Dunford, then the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it in 2018, Whoever has the competitive advantage in artificial intelligence and can field systems informed by artificial intelligence, could very well have an overall competitive advantage.

Is China destined to win the AI race? With a population four times the size of the US, there is no question that it will have the largest domestic market for AI applications, as well as many times more data and computer scientists. And because Chinas government has made AI mastery a first-order priority, it is understandable why some in the US would be pessimistic.

Nonetheless, we believe that the US can still compete and win in this critical domain but only if Americans wake up to the challenge. The first step is to recognize that the US faces a serious competitor in a contest that will help to decide the future. The US cannot hope to be the biggest, but it can be the smartest. In pursuing the most advanced technologies, it is arguably the brightest 0.0001% of individuals who make the decisive difference. While China can mobilize 1.5 billion Chinese speakers, the US can recruit and leverage talent from all 7.7 billion people on Earth, because it is an open, democratic society.

Moreover, while competing vigorously to sustain the US lead in AI, we also must acknowledge the necessity of cooperation in areas where neither the US nor China can secure its own minimum vital national interests without the others help. COVID-19 is a case in point. The pandemic threatens all countries national interests, and neither the US nor China can resolve it alone. In developing and widely deploying a vaccine, some degree of cooperation is essential, and it is worth considering whether a similar principle applies to the unconstrained development of AI.

The idea that countries could compete ruthlessly and cooperate intensely at the same time may sound like a contradiction. But in the world of business, this is par for the course. Apple and Samsung are intense competitors in the global smartphone market, and yet Samsung is also the largest supplier of iPhone parts. Even if AI and other cutting-edge technologies suggest a zero-sum competition between the US and China, coexistence is still possible. It may be uncomfortable, but it is better than co-destruction.

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Is China Winning the AI Race? by Eric Schmidt & Graham Allison - Project Syndicate

After Go, developers are now building AI to beat us at soccer – CNET

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AI beat us at chess, and now they're looking to defeat us in soccer too.

Look out, Messi. After Google's AlphaGo artificial intelligence bested our best Go player, South Korea is now setting its sights on making AI that can play soccer.

Hosted by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST), the AI World Cup will see university students across South Korea developing AI programs to compete in a series of online games, reportedThe Korea Times. The prelims will begin in November.

"The football matches will be conducted in a five on five tournament," a KAIST spokesperson told the publication on Tuesday. "Each of the five AI-programmed players in such positions as striker, defender and goalkeeper will compete with their counterparts."

That's not all though, as competing students will also build AI experts that can provide post-game analysis.

It's not the first time researchers are putting their tech developments to the test using soccer. The first Robot World Cup soccer games (or RoboCup), an annual international robotics competition that aims to advance robotics and AI research, put competitive soccer-playing robots in the field a decade ago. But soccer isn't the only thing that tech can do -- in the same year, IBM's computer, Deep Blue, defeated Garry Kasparov in a game of chess.

While the competition is only limited to university students in South Korea this time, it will be opened to international teams "in the first half of 2018," Kim Jong-hwan, president of the AI World Cup committee said in the statement.

Tech Enabled: CNET chronicles tech's role in providing new kinds of accessibility.

Batteries Not Included: The CNET team reminds us why tech is cool.

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After Go, developers are now building AI to beat us at soccer - CNET

How to build any AI-driven smart service – ZDNet

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CXOs: Participate in Constellation's digital transformation survey by Aug.18, 2017 and receive a summary of the results.

The combination of machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, and cognitive computing will change the ways that humans and machines interact. AI-driven smart services will sense one's surroundings, learn one's preferences are from past behavior, and subtly guide people and machines through their daily lives in ways that will truly feel frictionless. This quest to deliver AI-driven smart services across all industries and business processes will usher the most significant shift in computing and business this decade and beyond.

Organizations can expect AI-driven smart services to impact future of work flows, IoT services, customer experience journeys, and synchronous ledgers (blockchain). Success requires the establishment of AI outcomes (see Figure 1). Once the outcomes are established, organizations can craft AI-driven smart services that orchestrate, automate, and deliver mass personalization at scale.

The disruptive nature of AI comes from the speed, precision, and capacity of augmenting humanity. When AI is defined through seven outcomes, the business value of AI projects gain meaning and can easily show business value through a spectrum of outcomes:

Because AI-driven smart services require offloading the decision-making responsibility to atomic driven smart services, the foundation of any AI-driven smart service is trust. Below an explanation of how the five key components of an AI-driven smart service orchestrate trust.

Fears of robots taking over the world have been overblown. Successful AI-driven smart services will augment human intelligence just as machines augmented physical capabilities. AI driven smart services play a key role in defining business models for synchronous ledger technologies (blockchain), Internet of Things, customer experience, and future of work by reducing errors, improving decision-making speed, identifying demand signals, predicting outcomes, and preventing "disasters".

Are you a CXO designing an AI-driven smart service? Participate in Constellation's digital transformation survey by Aug. 18, 2017 and receive a summary of the results.

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How to build any AI-driven smart service - ZDNet

University of Kansas Medical Center to Deploy OMNIQ’s Artificial Intelligence Cloud Based Access Control Parking and Security System – GlobeNewswire

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SALT LAKE CITY, June 10, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OMNIQ, Inc. (OTCQB:OMQS) (OMNIQor the Company), announces that it has received an order to for its new PERCSTM cloud-based permitting, citation, access control and parking collection system from the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Based on OMNIQs AI-Machine Vision technology for License Plate and Vehicle Recognition, PERCSTM improves safety, increases revenue, improves parking operations and provides a wide range of benefits, including: seamless account management for users and administrators, increased efficiency and time management for operators and enforcement officers, as well as enhanced revenue generation and elevated customer satisfaction levels. The system incorporates parking access and revenue enforcement capabilities within a single cloud-based platform, using Machine Vision Vehicle Recognition technology, so that the administrator can manage access control parking and track revenue from one web portal, using a dashboard for the monitoring of all activity and transactions for visitors and transient parkers. PERCSTM enables the virtual management of permitting, citations, occupancy and access control, enhancing efficiencies and safety for customers including municipalities, universities, medical centers and public parking operations across the U.S.

Shai Lustgarten, CEO of OMNIQ commented: Were pleased that KUMC has selected our PERCSTM platform to improve the efficiencies and safety of its facility access and parking operations. Our Machine Vision technology enables the virtual management of permitting and enforcement, access control and automated parking, which allows operators to actively monitor and collect revenue from their parking structures while reducing overhead expenses. Likewise, the adoption of our state-of-the-art technology allows security officers to more effectively enforce access control, check permits, and issue citations. Our Machine Vision technology has been implemented for public safety on school campuses, parking management and control as well as in sensitive areas for homeland security purposes.

Mr. Lustgarten concluded, It is always gratifying to win a new customer and we are especially pleased to continue the momentum weve been experiencing, as evidenced by our recently announced contract for PERCSTM deployment with the city of San Mateo, California and the selection of our Quest Shield solution by the Talmudic Academy in Baltimore. There is growing recognition in the public safety/smart city and automated parking verticals around the value of AI-Machine Vision based technology, and we believe we are well positioned to capitalize on the interest and opportunitieswere seeing for our technology and solutions.

About OMNIQ, Corp.OMNIQ Corp. (OMQS) provides computerized and machine vision image processing solutions that use patented and proprietary AI technology to deliver data collection, real time surveillance and monitoring for supply chain management, homeland security, public safety, traffic & parking management and access control applications. The technology and services provided by the Company help clients move people, assets and data safely and securely through airports, warehouses, schools, national borders, and many other applications and environments.

OMNIQs customers include government agencies and leading Fortune 500 companies from several sectors, including manufacturing, retail, distribution, food and beverage, transportation and logistics, healthcare, and oil, gas, and chemicals. Since 2014, annual revenues have grown to more than $50 million from clients in the USA and abroad.

The Company currently addresses several billion-dollar markets, including the Global Safe City market, forecast to grow to $29 billion by 2022, and the Ticketless Safe Parking market, forecast to grow to $5.2 billion by 2023.

Information about Forward-Looking StatementsSafe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements in this press release relating to plans, strategies, economic performance and trends, projections of results of specific activities or investments, and other statements that are not descriptions of historical facts may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

This release contains forward-looking statements that include information relating to future events and future financial and operating performance. The words anticipate, may, would, will, expect, estimate, can, believe, potential and similar expressions and variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements should not be read as a guarantee of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of the times at, or by, which that performance or those results will be achieved. Forward-looking statements are based on information available at the time they are made and/or managements good faith belief as of that time with respect to future events, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed in or suggested by the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause these differences include, but are not limited to: fluctuations in demand for the Companys products particularly during the current health crisis , the introduction of new products, the Companys ability to maintain customer and strategic business relationships, the impact of competitive products and pricing, growth in targeted markets, the adequacy of the Companys liquidity and financial strength to support its growth, the Companys ability to manage credit and debt structures from vendors, debt holders and secured lenders, the Companys ability to successfully integrate its acquisitions, and other information that may be detailed from time-to-time in OMNIQ Corp.s filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Examples of such forward looking statements in this release include, among others, statements regarding revenue growth, driving sales, operational and financial initiatives, cost reduction and profitability, and simplification of operations. For a more detailed description of the risk factors and uncertainties affecting OMNIQ Corp., please refer to the Companys recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings, which are available at http://www.sec.gov. OMNIQ Corp. undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless otherwise required by law.

Investor Contact: John Nesbett/Jen BelodeauIMS Investor Relations203.972.9200jnesbett@institutionalms.com

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University of Kansas Medical Center to Deploy OMNIQ's Artificial Intelligence Cloud Based Access Control Parking and Security System - GlobeNewswire

Emotion recognition technology should be banned, says an AI research institute – MIT Technology Review

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Theres little scientific basis to emotion recognition technology, so it should be banned from use in decisions that affect peoples lives, says research institute AI Now in its annual report.

A booming market: Despite the lack of evidence that machines can work out how were feeling, emotion recognition is estimated to be at least a $20 billion market, and its growing rapidly. The technology is currently being used to assess job applicants and people suspected of crimes, and its being tested for further applications, such as in VR headsets to deduce gamers emotional states.

Further problems: Theres also evidence emotion recognition can amplify race and gender disparities. Regulators should step in to heavily restrict its use, and until then, AI companies should stop deploying it, AI Now said. Specifically, it cited a recent study by the Association for Psychological Science, whichspent two years reviewing more than 1,000 papers on emotion detection and concluded its very hard to use facial expressions alone to accurately tell how someone is feeling.

Other concerns: In its report, AI Now called for governments and businesses to stop using facial recognition technology for sensitive applications until the risks have been studied properly, and attacked the AI industry for its systemic racism, misogyny, and lack of diversity. It also called for mandatory disclosure of the AIs industry environmental impact.

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Emotion recognition technology should be banned, says an AI research institute - MIT Technology Review

How the Army Is Really Using AI – AI Daily

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It has always been controversial for the army to implement artificial Intelligence within their task force (particularly with the use of drones) because ethics of it, however artificial intelligence is being implemented within the army in other less controversial ways forget the movie Terminator, artificial intelligence is performing many tedious and manual tasks that would use a lot of time and resources and providing assistance to recognition and conversation systems to predictive analytics pattern matching and autonomous systems.

The army leverage artificial intelligence by (for a more detail example) predicting when vehicle parts may need to be replaced which saves a lot of time, money and increase operational safety. Some programs that leverage data using machine learning include Project Maven that retrieves data from drones and aids to automate some of the work that analysts do again saving time and money. As you can see artificial intelligence is being used to improve the armys efficiency.

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How the Army Is Really Using AI - AI Daily

AI Wants to Be Your Personal Stylist – PCMag

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Artificial intelligence is helping people find their style on their phones, in stores, and even in their very own closets.

A smart stylist is like a good therapist: it takes a keen observer of the human condition to do the job right, and the results can be life-changing. But stylists are expensivewhich is where artificial intelligence comes in.

Fashion AI is subtle enough that shoppers are likely to bump into a dressed-up algorithm without knowing it. Sometimes it's a soft sell on an e-commerce site, other times it's trying to suss out how shoppers feel about items using in-store facial recognition. Amazon is even deploying Alexa to customers' closets via the Look camera, which will critique your outfit choices.

Technology has long been chipping away at the rarefied, exclusive fashion industry, from bloggers replacing fashion editors in front rows and social media stars getting backstage access at shows to street-style stars outshining supermodels and earning hefty incomes on Instagram.

Now the industry needs all the help it can get, as shoppers ditch department store credit cards for Amazon Prime memberships. Here's how AI might help you experience fashion online, at home, on your phone, and in stores.

Since consumers are rarely without their mobile phones, you would think business would be booming for online fashion retailers. But as The Washington Post reports, it can be difficult to compete for shoppers' eyeballs.

Despite some setbacks, subscription-box services saw a 3,000 percent increase in site visits from 2013 to 2016. Stitch Fix, for example, calls itself "your online personal stylist"; customers fill out a style questionnaire so that its stylists can build a wardrobe for shoppers. The Ask an Expert Stylist feature also delivers fast responses to style dilemmas.

The information customers send to Stitch Fix, howeverincluding personal notesfirst gets dissected by AI. A team of people then use the data to select items, Harvard Business Review reports. The AI learns from the choices made by stylists, but it also monitors the stylists themselves, judging whether their recommendations are well-received by customers and figuring out what information and how much is needed for stylists to make quick and effective style choices. One measure of Stitch Fix's success will be its closely watched steps toward an IPO.

Similarly, Propulse works to identify the qualities shoppers are drawn to as they browse items on fashion retailer sites like Frank and Oak. The company was founded by Eric Brassard, who formerly worked in database marketing at Saks, and his platform adapts results to the cut, colors, and patterns that customers prefer.

"If you have history because you shop that shop, assuming that it's a real store and you bought a few things, we create a personalized page with products you've never seen that match the taste of what you browsed and what you bought," Brassard says.

For sales associates who are new to the field or a store, Propulse has an in-store component that lets them input customer preferences and matches those with products.

A hovering salesperson might not be the only one monitoring your in-store activity. Cloverleaf's AI system, dubbed shelfPoint, scans customers via sensors that assess the age, gender, ethnicity, and emotional response of shoppers and then communicates targeted sales messages at them through an LCD.

ShelfPoint is found mostly in grocery stores, but Cloverleaf CEO Gordon Davidson says the company has had discussions with retailers that sell groceries and apparel in their stores. It's also a good way to collect data without requiring shoppers to download an app, take a survey, or otherwise interact with a gadget, Davidson says.

The future of shelfPoint partly lies in turning the information it gathers into recommendations for shoppers. "Now what we're looking at is, how do we start providing more benefit to the shopper? It knows that I'm picking up blue jeans as an example and it may come up and say, 'Hey, have you considered a new brown belt?'" Davidson suggests.

Davidson isn't ready to give up on physical stores. "In reality, when you look at the research Gartner came up with earlier this year, 80 percent of sales still happen in brick-and-mortar, especially in the fashion side of things," he said. "Brick-and-mortar are still going to be around some time."

It's one thing to get advice when you're shopping online or browsing in a store. But when you wake up, get dressed, and face that mood where nothing looks right, there's nothing like a second opinion to set you straight so you can walk out the door. The Amazon Echo Look is just that. The camera-centric version of the Echo's main feature is Style Check. It uses AI and stylists to choose between two outfits based on trends and what it finds flattering on you.

Amazon will not divulge what information goes into the algorithm behind Style Check but the artificial intelligence doesn't work solo. Style Check also uses fashion specialists on its own staff who have backgrounds in fashion, retail, editorial, and styling. An Amazon spokesperson said they focus on fit, color, styling, and current trends. Though Style Check customers can expect a response in about a minute, every verdict includes input from a human stylist. But there are some tasks that the Echo Look handles without a human co-worker.

The Echo Look goes above and beyond what an in-store stylist would do for you and goes full celebrity stylist in two ways: it creates a lookbook of what you've worn and it takes flattering full-length photos that are super shareable. This means that not only is technology coming for the job of stylists, but Instagram husbands better watch out, too.

Chandra is senior features writer at PCMag.com. She got her tech journalism start at CMP/United Business Media, beginning at Electronic Buyers' News, then making her way over to TechWeb and VARBusiness.com. Chandra's happy to make a living writing, something she didn't think she could do and why she chose to major in political science at Barnard College. For her tech tweets, it's ChanSteele. More

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AI Wants to Be Your Personal Stylist - PCMag

How AI may become a game-changer for the Indian legal industry – Business Standard

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fast becoming the new buzzword amidst the Indian legal sector. The adoption of AI technology has already gained marked prominence in the global legal market and Indian firms, too, are looking into this potential treasure trove of innovative assistance to aid in their own activities in the coming days.

Michio Kaku, noted physicist, theorist and futurist once said that the job market in the future will consist of those activities that robots cannot perform. Taking heed of this premonition, Indias top legal service providers seem to be moving past the traditional model of technological insularity and setting their sights on riding the AI wave.

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, one of the leading law firms in the country, has been the first to make a public announcement, stating their intention to adopt AI technology for certain legal process activities. In an agreement with Kira Systems, a Canada based technology company, the firm intends on using the Kira machine-learning software for greater automation of its due diligence and transactional practices, which they say will usher in a new era of efficiency and accuracy for the benefit of their clients.

The application of AI in the legal sector is a growing global trend and allows lawyers to devote their time and skill towards more specialised tasks. The system is proven to be fast and accurate, allowing a firm to move up the value chain and attain greater international competitiveness, says Cyril Shroff, managing partner, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas.

The use of software has been prevalent in first tier firms in India for some time already. Organisations such as Nishith Desai Associates already engage data management, knowledge management and bandwidth management systems, in addition to a variety of public and in-house applications. The eventual adoption of dedicated AI platforms will incorporate this use of technology to more data intensive tasks such as analytics, contract review, document scrutiny and regulatory compliance in the near future. The implementations of these adaptive systems are also pitted to provide greater efficiency and risk mitigation, while also providing large time based advantages.

Globally, the advent of AI systems for the legal sector came as a furtherance of the Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) model to reduce costs of high volume-low value activities and cater to the changing needs of society. With the demand for lower costs in process driven activities and a move away from the high rate, billable hours and partner tribute model of legal services, the focus shifted towards investing into the previously ignored areas of innovation and technology.

AI platforms are now being used internationally in a multitude of legal tasks such as automated challenges to car parking tickets, which apart from time and hassle, would also require a party to incur larger legal fees than the cost of the infraction itself.

DoNotPay is one such service in New York and London, which provides such a service free of cost and has managed to achieve a 64 per cent success rate.

Apart from these and the wide variety of transactional usages mentioned, AI systems like IBM Watson and Kira are also being used in other complex legal matters and for litigations involving US federal patent cases with great success. In recent times, the technology has also been implemented in judgment predictions and risk assessments.

There is also large potential for the applicability of AI in cross-border contract drafting, negotiations and decision-making exercises undertaken by law firms and their clients. AI also has the potential to impact the retail legal market dramatically, by proving greater reach and lowering of costs, which in turn will significantly better access to justice issues and in turn benefit millions of individuals.

While most legal professionals agree that AI does possess certain definite advantages, some are still sceptical of its applicability to more complex tasks requiring value addition. Many have highlighted that AI platforms require a comprehensive database, which is still in its nascent stages in the Indian judicial scenario. The integration of continually developing information is another area of concern.

The assimilation of constantly evolving data such as regulatory updates or judicial precedents into an AI platform poses a challenge. Feeding in large volumes of information into the system is also a time intensive process. But as the software is used, it gets smarter and more efficient, notes Huzefa Tavawalla, head, International Commercial Law Practice, Nishith Desai Associates.

According to Sitesh Mukherjee, partner, Trilegal, AI is slowly permeating into the Indian legal market, particularly with regard to tasks such as due diligence, but its applicability in other avenues will still take time to gain acceptance.

Critique aside, the adoption of AI technology in the Indian legal sphere in the near future is merely a question of degree rather than probability. And, this assimilation of AI will certainly enhance process management and eventually change the role of legal professionals in our swiftly evolving business environment.

The commercial applicability of AI software in the legal industry is just 12 to 18 months old. With the increasing use of technology in law firms, we can expect to see greater adoption of these kinds of platforms in days to come, says Shroff.

Though a recent Deloitte study says that AI is expected to automate around 1,14,000 legal jobs in the UK by 2020, its impact on the requirement of Indian legal professionals should be far from alarming. Rather, it is expected that in times to come, these industry players will increasingly work alongside AI platforms to provide greater human resource utility and better legal solutions for society as a whole.

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How AI may become a game-changer for the Indian legal industry - Business Standard

CFPB Explains How AI Interacts with Adverse Action of FCRA – ESR NEWS

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Written By ESR News Blog Editor Thomas Ahearn

On July 7, 2020, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) a government agency that helps businesses comply with federal consumer financial law published a blog addressing industry concerns about how the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) interacts with the existing regulatory framework, specifically the adverse action notice requirements in the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) that regulates background checks.

The CFPB helps ensure that consumer financial products and services operate transparently and efficiently. Financial institutions are starting to deploy AI across a range of functions, including as virtual assistants that can fulfill customer requests, in models to detect fraud or other potential illegal activity, or as compliance monitoring tools. One additional area where AI may have a profound impact is in credit underwriting, the blog stated.

One area of innovation the CFPB is monitoring in consumer financial products and services is AI, particularly a subset of AI called Machine Learning (ML). However, industry uncertainty about how AI fits into the existing regulatory framework may be slowing its adoption, especially for credit underwriting. One important issue is how complex AI models address the adverse action notice requirements in the FCRA, according to the blog.

FCRA also includes adverse action notice requirements. For example, when adverse action is based in whole or in part on a credit score obtained from a consumer reporting agency (CRA), creditors must disclose key factors that adversely affected the score, the name and contact information of the CRA, and additional content. These notice provisions serve important anti-discrimination, educational, and accuracy purposes, the blog stated.

There may be questions about how institutions can comply with these requirements if the reasons driving an AI decision are based on complex interrelationships. Industry continues to develop tools to accurately explain complex AI decisions These developments hold great promise to enhance the explainability of AI and facilitate use of AI for credit underwriting compatible with adverse action notice requirements, the blog concluded.

In the wake of the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008, Congress established the CFPB, an independent regulatory agency tasked with ensuring that consumer debt products are safe and transparent, as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Congress transferred the administration of 18 existing federal statutes to the CFPB, including the FCRA. The CFPB enforces the FCRA.

Employers using automated hiring platforms powered by AI in the belief that they are less biased and discriminatory than processes performed by humans will discover using AI technology in background screening will remain a work in progress even though it has potential, according to the ESR Top Ten Background Check Trends for 2020 compiled by leading global background check firm Employment Screening Resources (ESR).

AI has potential with screening, but is unlikely to be used as quickly as predicted. Between the myriad of federal, state, and local laws regulating screening, as well as discrimination and privacy concerns, the reality is going to be much different than many people predict from a purely technological viewpoint, explained Attorney Lester Rosen, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Employment Screening Resources (ESR).

Background checks impact the highly regulated area of employment that requires accuracy specific to the individual. Technology helps to some degree, but each individual is entitled to an individualized assessment, and the law and court cases weigh heavily against the mass processing and categorizing of people for employment, said Rosen, the author of The Safe Hiring Manual, a comprehensive guide to background checks.

Employment Screening Resources (ESR) a leading global background check provider offers fast, accurate, and affordable background checks that comply with FCRA regulations that are enforced by the CFPB. In November 2019, ESR was named as one of the top pre-employment screening services for enterprise-level businesses by HRO Today Magazines Bakers Dozen. To learn more about ESR, visit http://www.esrcheck.com.

NOTE: Employment Screening Resources (ESR) does not provide or offer legal services or legal advice of any kind or nature. Any information on this website is for educational purposes only.

2020 Employment Screening Resources (ESR) Making copies of or using any part of the ESR News Blog or ESR website for any purpose other than your own personal use is prohibited unless written authorization is first obtained from ESR.

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CFPB Explains How AI Interacts with Adverse Action of FCRA - ESR NEWS

Google brings its AI-powered SmartReply feature to YouTube – TechCrunch

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Googles SmartReply, the four-year-old, A.I.-based technology that helps suggest responses to messages in Gmail, Androids Messages, Play Developer Consoleand elsewhere, is now being made available to YouTube Creators. Google announced today the launch of an updated version of SmartReply built for YouTube, which will allow creators to more easily and quickly interact with their fans in the comments.

The feature is being rolled out to YouTube Studio, the online dashboard creators use to manage their YouTube presence, check their stats, grow their channels and engage fans. From YouTube Studios comments section, creators can filter, view and respond to comments from across their channels.

For creators with a large YouTube following, responding to comments can be a time-consuming process. Thats where SmartReply aims to help.

Image Credits: Google

Instead of manually typing out all their responses, creators will be able to instead click one of the suggested replies to respond to comments their viewers post. For example, if a fan says something about wanting to see whats coming next, the SmartReply feature may suggest a response like Thank you! or More to come!

Unlike the SmartReply feature built for email, where the technology has to process words and short phrases, the version of SmartReply designed for YouTube has to also be able to handle a more diverse set of content like emoji, ASCII art or language switching, the company notes. YouTube commenters also often post using abbreviated words, slang and inconsistent use of punctuation. This made it more challenging to implement the system on YouTube.

Image Credits: Google

Google detailed how it overcame these and other technical challenges in a post on its Google AI Blog, published today.

In addition, Google said it wanted a system where SmartReply only made suggestions when its highly likely the creator would want to reply to the comment and when the feature is able to suggest a sensible response. This required training the system to identify which comments should trigger the feature.

At launch, SmartReply is being made available for both English and Spanish comments and its the first cross-lingual and character byte-based version of the technology, Google says.

Because of the approach SmartReply is now using, the company believes it will be able to make the feature available to many more languages in the future.

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Google brings its AI-powered SmartReply feature to YouTube - TechCrunch

Narrow AI: Not as Weak as It Sounds – G2

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If you use a smartphone, you probably have come across narrow AI.

It's the level of artificial intelligence we currently have access to, and probably the only one we will have for a few years or decades more.

But don't be deceived by the term narrow. Although this AI has a limited set of abilities and merely tries to mimic the human brain, it's pretty adept when it comes to performing the single task it's designed to do.

It makes self-driving cars a reality, recommends the products you're more likely to buy and movies you'll be interested in watching, and even keeps your email inbox free of spam messages.

Narrow AI is defined as a type of artificial intelligence system capable of handling single or limited tasks, like playing chess, facial recognition, analyzing big data, or acting as a virtual assistant. It is also known as artificial narrow intelligence (ANI) or weak AI and focuses on performing one narrow task at a time.

Narrow AI systems can analyze and interpret data with remarkable accuracy and better timing than humans. It can help us make better data-driven decisions, and more importantly, relieve us from numerous monotonous tasks.

Although this type of machine intelligence lacks consciousness or the ability to reason, it strives to improve all aspects of human life with automation and is an indispensable, ingenious technology of the 21st century.

of company representatives feel that investing in artificial intelligence can bring more competitive advantages over their rivals.

Source: Statista

Simply put, ANI operates within a pre-defined range and can't think for itself. It performs just the specific tasks it's designed to do and never attempts to achieve anything beyond them. But this won't be the case when AI technologies progress and we create machines with human-level intelligence.

Artificial general intelligence, or general AI, is an AI system capable of learning, comprehending, and functioning just like human beings. Such an AI agent will have artificial consciousness (the state of being aware of and responsive to ones surroundings) and be able to solve unfamiliar problems.

General AI is also known as full AI or strong AI and will have human intelligence. However, we're years away from creating such artificial intelligence systems, and their estimated time of arrival ranges from decades to centuries, depending on the AI researcher you ask.

One of the most significant differences between narrow AI and general AI is that the former lacks consciousness or the ability to reason. Additionally, general AI has a wide range of cognitive abilities (brain-based skills which are essential for communicating, acquiring knowledge, and reasoning) similar to humans while weak AI has none.

The core components of narrow AI, such as machine learning, natural language processing, artificial neural networks, and deep learning, would still be leveraged by AGI, but probably their advanced versions or along with soon-to-be discovered technologies.

AGI systems can perform virtually any intellectual task humans could ever do. As mentioned earlier, they can think and act like humans and can most likely beat us at our own game as they don't feel tiredness or emotions like fear or sadness unless they're programmed to do so.

Narrow artificial intelligence systems like Siri, Google Assistant, or Cortana will stutter if you ask questions such as "how would the universe end?" or "what is the meaning of life?" unless there's an article on the internet that explains the same. These virtual assistants could be seen as well-performing natural language processing robots as they process our speech and input them into a search engine.

However, a strong AI would be able to come up with plausible answers, just like humans, and can put their imagination into play. They could even ask questions we've never heard before, and would probably have the ability to lie. This also means that during the tests for assessing an AI like the Turing Test, the machine could intentionally act dumb to not reveal its intelligence.

General AI could also be our key to achieving artificial super intelligence (ASI), which is the third and ultimate level of AI and could surpass human intelligence and decision-making abilities by a million times. Achieving ASI let alone AGI is viewed as an existential threat by many, including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking.

But there's little to no reason to be worried right now as we're years away from achieving either, and some experts claim we might never achieve them. That's because it's virtually impossible to model the human brain, which is critical for attaining features of the human mind, including consciousness and sentience.

However, it would be entirely pessimistic and naive to think that there's not even the slightest chance as the pace of technological progress is tremendous, and we're unlocking and utilizing new technologies like quantum computing.

It's easier to spot narrow AI examples as the technology has impacted almost all spheres of human life. Here are a few of the real-world applications of narrow AI that you probably have come across, especially if you're hooked on the internet.

Hours rarely pass without you interacting with your smartphone's voice assistant. As you might have guessed, voice assistants like Siri and Google Assistant are the most common examples of narrow AI.

However, they aren't the best examples as the majority of their tasks are speech recognition-related.

Driven by machine learning and AI technologies, IBM Watson is a question-answering machine used extensively in the healthcare industry. When doctors may take weeks or months to look through documents, Watson can do the same in seconds. Interestingly, Watson was initially developed to answer questions on the television show Jeopardy!.

Watson can also assist companies with risk and fraud management and significantly lowering business costs. It can also help in identifying areas of a business requiring process improvement by analyzing vast amounts of unstructured data sets.

AlphaGo is an AI-based computer program developed by DeepMind an artificial intelligence company acquired by Google in 2014. It's the first computer program to beat a professional human Go player and was initially a research project aimed at testing the competence of a neural network at Go.

AlphaGo has numerous advanced versions, including AlphaStar and AlphaZero the latter being succeeded by an advanced version called MuZero, which can learn without being taught the rules. Creating AI systems that can improve without much training or assistance from humans is critical for achieving AGI, and so, AlphaGo is a huge win for the AI community.

AlphaGo uses deep learning and artificial neural networks to identify the best moves with the highest winning percentages. In terms of competitiveness, AlphaZero is incredibly superior to the earlier versions of AlphaGo and is currently one of the world's top players in Go and chess.

Narrow artificial intelligence makes it possible for self-driving cars to navigate through traffic, sense obstacles in a lane, and make sure passengers and pedestrians are safe. The enormous volumes of data generated by the cameras, sensors, and GPS fitted on the vehicle are analyzed and processed with the help of ANI.

More precisely, weak AI enables self-driving cars to see, hear, and think. But do note that self-driving cars aren't made possible by a single ANI rather through a collection of ANI systems. Although fully autonomous vehicles are still in their infancy, we're only a couple of years away from being driven around by drivers who don't get tired.

One of the biggest reasons you feel the urge to check out Netflix or YouTube is their recommendation systems. Such a system is powered by AI algorithms and suggests the shows and videos with impressive accuracy to keep you engaged and entertained.

The system continually learns from your responses to each piece of recommended content. In a way, these algorithms understand your preferences more than anyone else, including yourself.

Chatbots are software applications powered by narrow AI. They're capable of simulating conversations with humans and can give customers the impression that a company's customer support is online 24/7.

Chatbots learn more as they communicate with customers and can solve basic issues without requiring human assistance.

Narrow AI robots aren't the ones you could talk with for hours on end, nor can they perform tasks beyond their scope. But they can outperform humans at the specific tasks they're designed to do and can eliminate numerous tedious tasks. Narrow AI is where we are right now, and strong AI is our next destination.

Want to know more about how artificial intelligence is being utilized to make the internet a better place? Then check out the role of AI in checking plagiarism.

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Narrow AI: Not as Weak as It Sounds - G2

Is AI the new spokesperson for your business? – Computer Business Review

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If AI is rolled out to rapidly and irresponsibly its benefits could actually cause far reaching consequences for millions.

AI has been named as one of the most importantemerging trendsin business technology for 2017 in a report by Accenture, but are we ready for it?

The report, Technology Vision, is a yearly look atthe biggest trends in business for the coming year. The 2017 iteration has named AI as one of the principle changes that will shape the landscape in business for years to come.

AI itself has become increasingly more prevalent in the world and as we move closer towards self driving cars and responsive voice commands for our smart homes, its importance cannot be understated. The more integrated artificial intelligence becomes in our daily lives, the more businesses should strive to adopt it into their operations, though they should be mindful of its potential consequences.

Accenture believe thatAI has the potential to become a spokesperson for a business, even becoming more recognisable than the brand itself. As AI replaces interfaces and reshapes interactions with customers it will become a representative of businesses image as a whole.

Amazon Echo is a great example. Now used in more than 3 million homes, the Smart Speaker utilises an AI known as Alexa in an effort to streamline home living. The device is capable of enhancing customer experiences by giving access to weather and traffic reports as well as offering the ability to order much of Amazons listings just by talking to it.

Paul Daugherty, Accenture chief technology & innovation officer said: As technology transforms the way we work and live, it raises important societal challenges and creates new opportunities. Ultimately, people are in control of creating the changes that will affect our lives, and were optimistic that responsive and responsible leaders will ensure the positive impact of new technologies.

The Technology Vision Survey of over 5,000 IT and business executives revealed that over 79% believe that AI will help accelerate technology adoption, with a further 85% stating that they would be making extensive investments into the technology over the next three years.

Current examples of AI being utilised outside of consumer applications include the Rhizabot, an AI program which can translate complex business analysis questions, alleviating the need to create simplified and easily translatable phrases that may not be sufficient. In agriculture also, farmers have been using AI crop management tools that allow machines to learn how best to tend crops, whether through increased water and fertiliser supply or removing sprouts that will hinder the growth of others.

Accenture estimates that in 5 years customers will be less impressed with brands and place much more stock in how well the AI interface functions. In 7 years most interfaces will have moved beyond screens and become integrated into daily tasks, and in 10 years they predict that AI assistants will be so intertwined with day to day tasks that they will maintain constant productivity through outlets such as creating video summaries immediately aftermeetings.

However, this rapid integration and expansion of AI throughout the business world could have a serious domino effect. For instance, if certain positions can be phased out in favour of increasingly more advanced AI, it has the potential to create serious economic inequality. Because theAIrequires no compensation for its time, the potential profit for its service will be disseminated throughout a smaller number of people.

Recently, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, suggested that should robots supplant humans in the workplace they should be taxed as a human would.

In an interview with Quartz, Gates said:Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, Social Security tax, all those things. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, youd think that wed tax the robot at a similar level.

The billionaire philanthropist believes that the income tax made from robots could be used to support social systems and train others in more skilled labour in response to growing automation.

As more and more tasks become automated it seems inevitable that an AI could eventually be used to replace a customer service line, or a call centre. Amazons Alexa is just one of many AIs that use continual physical interactions and cloud learning to improve its own speech patterns and usability constantly. During initial tests Alexas response time was three seconds, too long for a sufficient conversation, since then Amazon has managed to reduce that time to under 1.5 seconds.

Will we see rapid growth in unemployment if Artificial Intelligence is rolled out irresponsibly? If self driving technology can ever be applied to heavy goods vehicles it could very well put millions of truck drivers out of work worldwide.

Emma McGuigan at Accenture said that lorry drivers are a long way from being replaced, so that is not an immediate concern. She believes that AI will cause a disruption in the business world, but that disruption will be a net positive. Accenture introduced AI into its India business but rather than leave many unemployed it actually allowed 20,000 people to be redeployed to other tasks where a human touch is necessary,

She said: I dont think the pace of AI will affect work, I think it will actually increase it.

For many the concept of integrated Artificial Intelligence seems to be a question of when and not if, so as the business world moves forward its important to ensurethat this technology is implemented in a safe and secure way that maximises benefit for businesses, employee, and consumer alike.

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Is AI the new spokesperson for your business? - Computer Business Review

What Chess Can Teach Us About the Future of AI and War – War on the Rocks

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This article was submitted in response to the call for ideas issued by the co-chairs of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, Eric Schmidt and Robert Work. It addresses the first question (part a.), which asks how will artificial intelligence affect the character and/or the nature of war.

***

Will artificial intelligence (AI) change warfare? Its hard to say. AI itself is not new the first AI neural network was designed in 1943. But AI as a critical factor in competitions is relatively novel and, as a result, theres not much data to draw from. However, the data that does exist is striking. Perhaps the most interesting examples are in the world of chess. The game has been teaching military strategists the ways of war for hundreds of years and has been a testbed for AI development for decades.

Military officials have been paying attention. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work famously used freestyle (or Centaur) chess to promote the third offset strategy, where humans and computers work together, combining human strategy and computer speed to eliminate blunders while allowing humans to focus on the big picture. Since then, AI and supercomputers have continued to reshape how chess is played. Technology has helped to level the playing field the side with the weaker starting position is no longer at such a disadvantage. Likewise, intimidation from the threat of superhuman computers has occasionally led to some unorthodox behaviors, even in human-only matches.

The experience of AI in the chess world should be instructive for defense strategists. As AI enters combat, it will first be used just in training and in identifying mistakes before they are made. Next, improvements will make it a legitimate teammate, and if it advances to superhuman ability in even narrow domains of warfighting, as it has in chess then it could steer combat in directions that are unpredictable for both humans and machines.

What Does Chess Say About AI-Human Interaction?

Will AI replace soldiers in war? The experience of using AI and machine learning in chess suggests not. Even though the best chess today is played by computers alone, humans remain the focus of the chess world. The world computer chess championship at the International Conference on Machine Learning in Stockholm attracted a crowd of only three when I strolled by last year. In contrast, the human championship was streamed around the globe to millions. In human-only chess though, AI features heavily in the planning process, the results of which are called prep. Militaries are anticipating a similar planning role for AI, and even automated systems without humans rely on a planning process to provide prep for the machines. The shift toward AI for that process will affect how wars are fought.

To start, computers are likely to have an equalizing effect on combat as they have had in chess. The difference in ability among the top competitors in chess has grown smaller, and the advantage of moving first has become less advantageous. That was evident in last years human-only chess championship where competitors had the closest ratings ever in a championship, and the best-of-12 match had 12 straight draws for the first time. There have been more draws than wins in every championship since 2005, and though it is not exactly known why, many believe it is due to the influence of superhuman computers aiding underdogs, teaching defensive play, or simply perfecting the game.

AI is likely to level the military playing field because progress is being driven by commercial industry and academia which will likely disseminate their developments more widely than militaries. That does not guarantee all militaries will benefit equally. Perhaps some countries could have better computers or will be able to pay for more of them, or have superior data to train with. But the open nature of computing resources makes cutting-edge technology available to all, even if that is not the only reason for equalization.

AI Favors the Underdog and Increases Uncertainty

AI seems to confer a distinct benefit to the underdog. In chess, black goes second and is at a significant disadvantage as a result. Fabiano Caruana, a well-known American chess player, claimed that computers are benefiting black. He added that computer analysis helps reveal many playable variations and moves that were once considered dubious or unplayable. In a military context, the ways to exert an advantage can be relatively obvious, but AI planning tools could be adept at searching and evaluating the large space of possible courses of action for the weaker side. This would be an unwelcome change for the United States, which has benefited from many years of military superiority.

Other theories exist for explaining the underdogs improvement in chess. It may be that computers are simply driving chess toward its optimum outcome, which some argue is a tie. In war it could instead be that perfect play leads to victory rather than a draw. Unlike chess, the competitors are not constrained to the same pieces or set of moves. Then again, in a limited war where mass destruction is off the table, both sides aim to impose their will while restricting their own pieces and moves. If perfect play in managing escalation does lead to stalemate, then AI-enhanced planning or decision-making could drive toward that outcome.

However, superhuman computers do not always drive humans toward perfect play and can in fact drive them away from it. This happened in a bizarre turn in last years chess world championship, held in London. The Queens Gambit Declined, one of the most famous openings that players memorize, was used to kick off the second of the 12 games in the London match, but on the tenth move, the challenger, Caruana, playing as black, didnt choose either of the standard next moves in the progression. During planning, his computers helped him find a move that past centuries had all but ignored. When the champion Magnus Carlsen, who is now the highest-rated player in history, was asked how he felt upon seeing the move, he recounted being so worried that his actual response cant be reproduced here.

It is not so much that Caruana had found a new move that was stronger than the standard options. In fact, it may have even been weaker. But it rattled Carlsen because, as he said, The difference now is that Im facing not only the analytical team of Fabiano himself and his helpers but also his computer help. That makes the situation quite a bit different. Carlsen suddenly found himself in a theater without the aid of electrical devices, having only his analytical might against what had become essentially a superhuman computer opponent.

His response might presage things to come in warfare. The strongest moves available to Carlsen were ones that the computer would have certainly analyzed and his challenger would have prepared for. Therefore, Carlsens best options were either ones that were certainly safe or ones that were strange enough that they would not have been studied by the computer.

When asked afterward if he had considered a relatively obvious option that he didnt chose seven moves later in the game, Carlsen joked that Yeah, I have some instincts I figured that [Caruana] was still in prep and that was the perfect combination. Fear of the computer drove the champion, arguably historys best chess player, to forego a move that appeared to be the perfect combination in favor of a safer defensive position, a wise move if Caruana was in fact still in prep.

In war, there will be many options for avoiding the superhuman computing abilities of an adversary. A combatant without the aid of advanced technology may choose to withdraw or retreat upon observing the adversary doing something unexpected. Alternatively, the out-computed combatant might drive the conflict toward unforeseen situations where data is limited or does not exist, so as to nullify the role of the computer. That increases uncertainty for everyone involved.

How Will the U.S. Military Fare in a Future AI World?

The advantage may not always go the competitor with the most conventional capabilities or even the one that has made the most computing investment. Imagine the United States fighting against an adversary that can jam or otherwise interfere with communications to those supercomputers. Warfighters may find themselves, like Carlsen, in a theater without the aid of their powerful AI, up against the full analytical might of the adversary and their team of computers. Any unexpected action taken by the adversary at that point (e.g., repositioning their ground troops or launching missile strikes against unlikely locations) would be cause for panic. The natural assumption would be that adversary computers found a superior course of action that had accounted for the most likely American responses many moves into the future. The best options then, from the U.S. perspective, become those that are either extremely cautious, or those that are so unpredictable that they would not have been accounted for by either side.

AI-enabled computers might be an equalizer to help underdogs find new playable options. However, this isnt the only lesson that chess can teach us about the impact of AI-enabled supercomputers and war. For now, while humans still dominate strategy, there will still be times where the computer provides advantages in speed or in avoiding blunders. When the computer overmatch becomes significant and apparent, though, strange behaviors should be expected from the humans.

Ideally, humans deprived of their computer assistants would retreat or switch to safe and conservative decisions only. But the rules of war are not as strict as the rules of chess. If an enemy turns out to be someone aided by feckless computers, instead of superhuman computers aided by feckless humans, it may be wise to anticipate more inventive perhaps even reckless human behavior.

Andrew Lohn is a senior information scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. His research topics have included military applications of AI and machine learning. He is also co-author of How Might Artificial Intelligence Affect the Risk of Nuclear War? (RAND, 2018).

Image: U.S. Marine Corps (Photo by Lance Cpl. Scott Jenkins)

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The Catholic Church proposes AI regulations that protect people – The Verge

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Vatican officials are calling for stricter ethical standards on the development of artificial intelligence, with tech giants IBM and Microsoft being the first companies to sign its new initiative.

The Rome Call for AI Ethics lays out six broad principles: transparency, inclusion, responsibility, impartiality, reliability, and security and privacy. These principles say that technology should protect people, particularly the weak and underprivileged. They also urge policymakers across the world to create new forms of regulation on advanced technologies that have a higher risk of impacting human rights, which includes facial recognition.

AI is incredibly promising technology that can help us make the world smarter, healthier, and more prosperous, IBM vice president John Kelly III said after the initiatives signing. But only if it is shaped at the outset by human interests and values.

The Vatican wants to ensure that companies are not using AI as a means to collect data without the consent of individuals and then using that data for commercial or political benefit. In one recent example, it was shown that thousands of federal government agencies and private companies were using software owned by face recognition company Clearview AI, which scraped facial data without peoples knowledge. The companys database, which features more than 3 billion images pulled from various online sites, is being used by law enforcement to catch persons of interest.

The document also says that a duty of explanation must be established and that AI-based algorithms should provide individuals with information on how these algorithms came to their decisions to ensure that there is no bias. Last year, US lawmakers introduced a bill that would do just that and allow the Federal Trade Commission to create rules that would force these companies to evaluate automated systems containing highly sensitive information.

Vatican officials hope to increase the number of signatories for its AI ethics initiative in the coming months. They also hope to collaborate with universities across the globe to promote more scientific research into ethical AI guidelines.

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Scientists Create a 3D Chip Capable of Making AI Systems Work – Inverse

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Imagine a world where A.I. is all around you. You get in your self-driving car to go to the doctors office, where a slew of tests are analyzed by machines that can diagnose your ailments with 99 percent accuracy. They give you a personalized prescription based on your individual biology, and then you go have a lunch of a cheeseburger and salad, one catering to your tastes and the other to your needs. Maybe you cheat and get fries with the cheeseburger, anyway.

For machines to accomplish that kind of work, they need the type of hardware that can handle the massive amount of data required. Thats where researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University come in, as they recently developed a new type of three-dimensional chip made from different nanotechnologies that essentially puts the main two functions of chips under one roof. The chip streamlines the process and makes it easier for systems built from this chip to function as prescribed for A.I. systems.

Conventional chips basically come in two different flavors those for data storage, and those for processing, and they need to be linked in order to make the system run. In a paper published this month in the journal Nature, the research team outlines a new design for a chip that cobbles together both these functions.

The new chip is made of carbon nanotubes (sheets of 2D graphene morphed into nanocylinders) and resistive random-access memory (RRAM) cells, which charge the resistance of solid dielectric materials.

It might sound a bit complex, but what it basically means is that the RRAM and carbon nanotubes are stacked vertically over one another, creating a 3D architecture that lets a single chip fulfill multiple functions. This is beyond the capabilities of silicon-based chips.

Computers made with such a design could handle incredible amounts of bandwidth the type were likely going to need in complex computing structures that use A.I. and autonomous systems. Any machine learning applications would likely get a boost from a such a chip.

The technology could not only improve traditional computing, but it also opens up a whole new range of applications that we can target, said lead author Mark Shulaker in a statement. My students are now investigating how we can produce chips that do more than just computing.

The team is far away from demonstrating how the chip could be viably used in real world devices. But the fact that A.I. is still a work in progress gives the team plenty of time to figure out a sustainable way to manufacture and implement this chip in industrial and commercial applications.

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Scientists Create a 3D Chip Capable of Making AI Systems Work - Inverse