Monthly Archives: August 2017

Machine learning algorithms have successfully identified plant species in massive herbaria just by looking at the dried specimens. According to researchers, similar AI approaches could also be used identify the likes of fly larvae and plant fossils. From Nature:

There are roughly 3,000 herbaria in the world, hosting an estimated 350 million specimens only a fraction of which has been digitized. But the swelling data sets, along with advances in computing techniques, enticed computer scientist Erick Mata-Montero of the Costa Rica Institute of Technology in Cartago and botanist Pierre Bonnet of the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development in Montpellier, to see what they could make of the data.

Researchers trained... algorithms on more than 260,000 scans of herbarium sheets, encompassing more than 1,000 species. The computer program eventually identified species with nearly 80% accuracy: the correct answer was within the algorithms top 5 picks 90% of the time. That, says (Penn State paleobotanist Peter) Wilf, probably out-performs a human taxonomist by quite a bit.

Such results often worry botanists, Bonnet says, many of whom already feel that their field is undervalued. People feel this kind of technology could be something that will decrease the value of botanical expertise, he says. But this approach is only possible because it is based on the human expertise. It will never remove the human expertise. People would also still need to verify the results, he adds.

"Going deeper in the automated identification of Herbarium specimens" (BMC Evolutionary Biology)

In this TEDx Talk, science writer and umbraphile (an eclipse chaser) David Baron emphasizes the importance of witnessing a total solar eclipse firsthand (eye?) at least once in your lifetime.

Below youll find an unhurried interview with Dr. Adam Gazzaley, who runs one of the West Coasts largest neuroscience labs at UCSF. There, his team carefully crafts video games with the potential to cure a wide range of neurological ailments. A direct heir to Adams research is now up for final FDA approval as a []

On August 20 and September 5, 1977, NASA launched two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and 2, on a grand tour of the solar system and into the mysteries of interstellar space. It was an incredibly audacious mission, and its still going. My friend Timothy Ferris produced the Voyager golden record thats attached to each of the []

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Despite the push towards USB-C as the one connector to rule them all, most peripherals in the wild are still largely USB-A. Since theres little reason to upgrade all of your old flash drives, wired keyboards, and game controllers, youll need a decent hub to keep them all talking to your new computer.The MondoHub Master []

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Artificial intelligence identifies plant species by looking at them - Boing Boing

Posted August 11, 2017 11:58:38

Artificial intelligence is becoming commonplace, from your smartphone and your Amazon account to the driverless cars that will soon grace public roads in Australia.

Often, the response to this reality is one of trepidation and concern, about mass unemployment and the dominance of Big Tech. But that's not always the case.

"Art is one of the last domains in AI where there is an optimistic view on how humans and machines can work together," says Dave King, founder of Move 37, a creative AI company.

He says creativity is not a God-given thing. It's a process, and it takes practice.

"One of the most interesting aspects of creativity is that ability to combine ideas or to draw things together," he says.

"If you have an algorithm that is working for you in the way you want it to it can source and discover lots and lots of different things."

AI is already being used in a range of artistic fields. Algorithms trained on millions of pages of romance novels have been used to write poems, and the recent Robot Art Competition showed a range of paintings with brushwork so sophisticated it could have been done by a human hand.

Jon McCormack is an artist and professor of computer science at Monash University whose work incorporates algorithms.

His series Fifty Sisters (2012) featured images of futuristic-looking plants that were "algorithmically grown" from computer code. In another work, titled Eden, he created an installation featuring "virtual creatures" whose movements were influenced by gallery visitors entering the space.

McCormack says when there is concern about AI, it is understandable.

"We're naturally scared of anything where we take away something from people, particularly something as precious as being creative and art, which we associate with being the most fundamental human [trait] that thing that differentiates us from every other species on the planet," he said.

After all, as AI expert Professor Toby Walsh notes: "We have one of the most creative brains out there."

"One of the oldest jobs on the planet, being a carpenter or an artisan, we will value most [in the future] because we will like to see an object carved or touched by the human hand, not a machine."

Artists have always used tools to create their work: for Van Gogh, it was a paint brush; for Henri Cartier-Bresson, a Leica camera.

With AI, however, the question becomes one of authorship.

"I see myself as being the artist," McCormack says of his compositions. "The computer is still very primitive it doesn't have the same capabilities as a human creative, but it's capable of doing things that complement our intelligence.

King says AI currently can only bring a limited perspective to artistic practice.

"They can only draw on what they've been trained on," he says, referring to the reams of data used to create artificial intelligence. "Whereas the human condition is expansive and broad and brings a lot more depth of perspective to it."

By itself, AI can certainly generate things that look like art, McCormack says. Whether you could consider it art is a harder question.

"So much of what we think about art is humans communicating to each other," he says.

"As soon as you bring a computer into the mix, suddenly you've got a non-human entity trying to fulfil the role that used to be occupied exclusively by people."

Soon, however, it may be possible to go further; to consider the machine not just a tool, but a partner or collaborator, with its own ability to create.

"We always think of Lennon and McCartney as being the great musical creative partnership," McCormack says.

"Will we eventually see a point in time where we have a human and computer partnership that we acknowledge as being more than the sum of its parts?

"If the art was really, really good if it moved us emotionally in the way the best art does then I think we would come to start to accept art that's made by machines."

Topics: arts-and-entertainment, robots-and-artificial-intelligence, science-and-technology, australia

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Artificial intelligence and creativity: If robots can make art, what's left for us? - ABC Online

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Growing up, theres a good chance you heard the mantra go to a good school, get a good job, and make lots of money. On the surface, that seems like sound advice. After all, college graduates, on average,earn almost $1 million morein their lifetimes than those with only a high school education.

Perhaps you were encouraged to get a professional degree to land a high paying job like a doctor, dentist, lawyeror something similar.This also seems like great advice, considering a professional degree holder typically earns more than $2 million more in their lifetimes than the average college graduate.

But that was then, and this now.

Related: The Future of Productivity: AI and Machine Learning

Thanks to rapid advances in robotics, automation and artificial intelligence, jobs are falling to machines left and right. And its not just blue-collar jobs that are being taken over by automation. It's white-collar professions as well. According to an Oxford study, 47 percentof U.S. jobs could fall to automation in the next 20 years.

The safe, high paying jobs of the past are starting to look much less secure going forward. If youre currently in one of the following professions, or going to school to get into these fields, you should think twice before continuing.

If Wall Street is known for anything, its known for crazy high salaries and bonuses. For those who have wanted to get rich quickly post-college, there have been few better industries than finance. Alas, finance is one of the industries with the highest risk of automation.

Bridgewater Associates, the worlds largest hedge fund, announced late last year that it was going to be cutting staff in favor of more automation. Its getting harder to compete with AI driven hedge funds like Sentient and high-frequency traders in general, and an impressive swath of financial management services are now being handled by robo-advisors like Betterment and Wealthfront, both of which are growing rapidly.

In fact, according to Angel List, there are more than 15,000 finance startups right now working to actively disrupt finance, many of them utilizing artificial intelligence and other forms of automation. If youre in this field or planning to enter it, you might want to reconsider.

So, if not finance, then what? If youre good with numbers and detail-oriented, you should consider getting into data science. Data scientist salaries are rising rapidly, and theyre considered the new rock stars of the tech world. Of course, you could always try getting into venture capital to ride the massive transitional wave thats coming, but being a VC isnt all its cracked up to be either. Either way, traditional finance jobs are on the way out.

Related: How AI Machines Coudl Save Wall Street Brokers' Jobs

The work that doctors do is tremendously important, and on average, theyre very well paid for it. That said, there are numerous areas of medicine that are ripe for automation and improved efficiencies. One key example would be medical imaging and the fields of radiology, pathology and dermatology.

Using AI, IBMs Watson is now considered at least on-par with a professional radiologist in terms of ability to analyze an image and diagnose a patient, and it can do the analysis much faster while considering vastly larger amounts of information than any human could ever hope to. This is fantastic news for the people who need a diagnoses, but not so great for medical imaging jobs. If youre already in the field, or working to get into it, you could consider transitioning into some aspect of computer vision, be it research or training. If you cant beat the machines, you can always help to make them better.

There are numerous other technologies, such as telemedicine and mobile medical devices, that will also heavily disrupt this field going forward. And while there will still be a strong need for certain medical skills going forward, youll need to be highly selective in what you choose.

Ahh, lawyers. The world could probably use far fewer lawyers, and the machines are well on their way to making that a reality. While you can still make a pretty penny as a lawyer, depending on your specialty, its worth noting that lawyers spend a lot of time gathering and parsing data, creating or reviewing legal documentsand numerous other mundane tasks. For most lawyers, its far from a glamorous profession.

Much of this grunt work has already been automated, and there are more than 1,500 startups out there trying to streamline the legal world even further. While this wont immediately eliminate all legal jobs, it means that it will take far fewer lawyers -- and especially paralegals --to handle the same level of work.

Because lawyers tend to pay excellent attention to detail, and are highly versed in logic, a good alternative field would be programming. Programming languages are built around logicand require every bit as much attention to detail as any contract. Best of all, there are a ton of courses online that can help you learn, including some from top-tier universities like Stanford, MITand even Harvard.

And of course, programmers are incredibly well paid and in high demand virtually everywhere. Here are a few of the most in-demand programming languages to help you along if you decide to make the switch.

Related: Advancing Automation Means Humans Need to Embrace Lifelong Learning

There have been numerous times throughout history when a large number of old jobs have gone away, only to be replaced by new jobs as new technologies came along. Sometimes the transition from old to new is protracted enough to make a semi-smooth transition possible. That may or may not be the case this time around.

Sam McRoberts is the CEO ofVUDU Marketing, and the author ofScrew the Zoo. He has delved deep into the worlds of philosophy, cognitive psychology and neuroscience to better help his clients achieve their goals. When he isn't...

Excerpt from:

Artificial Intelligence Is Likely to Make a Career in Finance, Medicine or Law a Lot Less Lucrative - Entrepreneur

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis waves as he walks to his vehicle after speaking at the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental in Mountain View, Aug. 10, 2017.

Jeff Chiu/AP

Defense Secretary James Mattis has a lot on his mind these days. North Korea , obviously. China's expanding claims on the South China sea. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. And, closer to home, the Pentagon lagging behind the tech industry in leveraging artificial intelligence.

Mattis admitted to that concern Thursday during the Silicon Valley leg of a West Coast tour that includes visits to Amazon and Google . When WIRED asked Mattis if the US had ambitions to harness recent progress in AI for military purposes like those recently espoused by China, he said his department needed to do more with the technology.

It's got to be better integrated by the Department of Defense, because I see many of the greatest advances out here on the West Coast in private industry, Mattis said.

Mattis, speaking in Mountain View, a stones throw from Googles campus, hopes the tech industry will help the Pentagon catch up. He was visiting the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, an organization within the DoD started by his predecessor Ashton Carter in 2015 to make it easier for smaller tech companies to partner with the Department of Defense and the military. DIUx has so far sunk $100 million into 45 contracts, including with companies developing small autonomous drones that could explore buildings during military raids, and a tooth-mounted headset and microphone.

Mattis said Thursday he wanted to see the organization increase the infusion of tech industry savvy into his department. Theres no doubt in my mind DIUx will continue to exist; it will grow in its influence on the Department of Defense, he said.

The Pentagon has a long record of researching and deploying artificial intelligence and automation technology. But AI is rapidly progressing, and the most significant developments have come out of the commercial and academic spheres.

Over the past five years, leading tech companies and their lavishly funded AI labs have sucked up ideas and talent from universities. They're now in a race to spin up the best new products and experimental projects. Google, for example, has recently used machine learning research to power up its automatic translation and cut data-center cooling bills. Waymo, Alphabet's autonomous-car company, uses AI in developing the technology in its self-driving vehicles.

Making smart use of artificial intelligence looks to be crucial to military advancement and dominance. Just last month, Chinas State Council released a detailed strategy for artificial intelligence across the economy and in its military. China's strategic interest in AI led DIUx to prepare an internal report this year suggesting scrutiny and restrictions on Chinese investment in Silicon Valley companies. Texas senior senator John Cornyn has proposed legislation that could enable that policy.

Issie Lapowsky

Meet the Nerds Coding Their Way Through the Afghanistan War

Nicholas Thompson

The Pentagon Looks to Videogames for the Future of War

Matt Simon

The DoD Brings on Tech's Brightest Mindsand Problems

A recent Harvard report commissioned by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that AI-based technologies, like autonomous vehicles, are poised to make advance militaries much more powerfuland possibly cause a transformation similar in scale to the advent of nuclear weapons. But the US does not have a public, high-level national or defense strategy for artificial intelligence in the same way as Chinaperhaps owing mostly to differences of political style.

On Thursday, Mattis professed confidence that his department would figure out how to make more with AI, without offering specifics. The bottom line is well get better at integrating advances in AI that are being taken here in the Valley into the US military, he said.

There is another bottom line to consider. The Trump administrations proposed budget would increase funding for DIUx, which might help fulfill Mattis' dreams of an AI acceleration. It also expands support to Pentagon research agency DARPA , which has many AI-related projects. But the White Houses budget proposal also includes cuts to the National Science Foundation, an agency that has long supported AI research, including work on artificial neural networks, the very technique that now has companiesand nationssuddenly so interested in the field's potential.

Original post:

Defense Secretary James Mattis Envies Silicon Valley's AI Ascent - WIRED