Monthly Archives: August 2017

WannaCry Ransomware ‘Hero’ Arrested in Las Vegas on Hacking Charges – Casino.Org News

Posted: August 5, 2017 at 6:21 am

News Legal WannaCry Ransomware Hero Arrested in Las Vegas on Hacking Charges

Marcus Hutchins, the man who was hailed this past May as a hero for stopping the spread of WannaCry ransomware, will be in a Las Vegas courtroom on Friday afternoon, facing Department of Justice (DOJ) charges. Hutchins stands accused of being a co-conspirator in the creation of another malware system aimed at hacking bank accounts, which the DOJ alleges occurred for a year, between July of 2014 and 2015.

Marcus Hutchins, a computer security expert credited with stopping the WannaCry virus in May, was arrested Wednesday at McCarran Airport on charges he tried to distribute another type of malware. He will enter a plea in a Las Vegas courtroom on Friday afternoon. (Image: Bloomberg)

He was arrested in Las Vegas on Wednesday at McCarran International airport by FBI agents, as he waited to head back home to Britain after attending two global security conferences that ran in late July.

The 23-year-old is being charged with six counts, all involving his alleged involvement with the formation and propagation of Trojan Kronos, a software program that was aimed at infecting bank accounts. The bug is capable of stealing banking logins and other financial information.

Hutchins was charged along with another as-yet unnamed person, who the Justice Department accuses of uploading and selling the malware, but at least one cyber criminal defense attorney doesnt think the DOJ has a very compelling case.

Talking to the UKs Telegraph, American attorney Tor Ekeland described the situation this way:

By [arresting Hutchins], theyve made the internet less safe because nobody in their right mind is likely to help the US Government stop attacks now. Theyve sent a really bad message that even if you help stop a major malware attack and save people millions of dollars you could be arrested because someone you supposedly associated with supposedly sold malware for $2,000.

Ekeland added that while Hutchins could face as much as 40 years in prison for his actions, he doesnt think its likely.

I doubt it, it would be a bizarre outcome. Is it possible? It sure is, he noted to the Telegraph.

Hutchins was in the US attending conferences Black Hat and Def Con, two conventions for people interested in computer security. Seminars highlight any and all issues of interest to security and surveillance professionals, including, of course, cyber hacking, which has become the modern-day equivalent of the 18th centurys highwaymen.

Word of Hutchins arrest went viral and most who know him by his Twitter handle of @MalwareTechBlog were shocked, posting their disbelief via their own tweets on the social media site.

Andrew Mabbitt, founder of cyber firm Fidus Information Security, said on Twitterthat he and others were trying to find him a lawyer and would be starting an online crowdfunding account.

I refuse to believe the charges against @MalwareTechBlog, Mabbittsaid. He spent his career stopping malware, not writing it.

But a DOJ presser on the matter described a two-year investigation that had gathered evidence against Hutchins, including a tweet that he put out in July 13, 2014 soliciting others for a copy of the Kronos virus.

Could this Tweet by Hutchins from 2014 be his death knell? The DOJ says it is damning, but others claim it means nothing malicious. (Image: Twitter)

The indictment charges him with six counts, including one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud and abuse, three counts of distributing and advertising an electronic communication interception device, one count of endeavoring to intercept electronic communications, and one count of attempting to access a computer without authorization.

Depending on Hutchins plea on Friday, he could remain in Las Vegas or be transferred to Wisconsin, which was where the DOJ made the charges, according to Ekeland. If the latter, the attorney (who is not representing Hutchins as we go to press) says it could take anywhere from a few months to as long as three years to come to trial. He adds that he doubts Hutchins will be allowed to post bail, given his foreign national status and the potential for flight risk.

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Late Choi Jin Shil’s Daughter Reveals Shocking Story About Abusive Grandmother – soompi

Posted: at 6:21 am

The late Choi Jin Shils daughter, Choi Joon Hee, uploaded a shocking post to Facebook on August 5. She revealed that she had been suffering abuse at the hands of her grandmother since her mothers death and requested help.

The full post reads as follows:

Soompi.Display.News.English.300x250.BTF Soompi.Mobile.English.300x250.ATF

Hello everyone, I am the late Choi Jin Shils daughter, Choi Joon Hee. The reason why I am uploading this today is to reveal what has really been going on in my seemingly good life.

I am currently in 8th grade. I thought my life fellinto shambles when my mom passed away but, in reality, it started going south when I was in 4th grade.

I thought that after my moms passing, I would live in misery. But I was the same as other elementary schoolers; I went to school everyday and watched Spongebob.

The only family I had left was my maternal grandmother, my brother, my grandaunt, and my paternal family. Something that I want to clarify first and foremost is that I was not living with my maternal grandmother (to be referred from now on as grandmother), but with my grandaunt.

My grandaunt is not directly related to me by blood, but raised me since I was born. However, my grandmother always favored my brother over me. My grandaunt was someone who cared about me and lived for only me for 15 years. My grandmother always disliked my grandaunt for some reason. I am not entirely sure why but, from what I heard, I think it is because she thought that my grandaunt was raising me for my inheritance. After 11 years of living together, my grandmother suddenly stopped letting my grandaunt see me starting fromwhen I was in 4th grade.

I was too young at the time, so I thought after 5 days, after 10 days, she would return. I had to sayfarewell tomy most beloved family members at 11 years of age, and a few days later, my grandmother stubbornly said, I cant bear to see you with that ***, so I told her to leave the house. Shes destroying your character. This was the first time I became severely depressed. I dug my face into my pillow so I wouldnt be heard by my grandmother and cried every night. I missed my grandaunt so much so I put her clothes, glasses, perfume, and socks on a big teddy bear and hugged it to sleep. However, my grandmother ruthlessly tossed that teddy bear on the floor and yelled at me. I was so scared and wondered what my grandaunt and I did wrong.

A few days later, I was so mentally shattered. Mustering all of the courage that I had, I secretly contacted my grandaunt via Kakaotalk. Luckily, she answered and just said that she was sorry for not being able to protect me. She told me that we could only meet again after I became a legal adult.

One day after taking a nap in the living room, my cell phone disappeared.

A few minutes later, my grandmother said, Do you think just because you have a passcode, I cant figure out what it is? I know youre contacting your grandaunt. From then on, she started routinely checking my phone. Whenever she was even the tiniest bit suspicious, she would take it away and not give it back to me.

A few weeks later, my chorus teacher, who knew of my situation, contacted my grandaunt and she came to visit me at my school. I had to pretend to be happy, but I really felt like crying.

I dont know how she found out, but my grandmother figured out a few days later that my grandaunt came to my school to visit me. My grandmother then proceeded to contact my teachers to make sure I did not meet with my grandaunt. My teachers knew what was happening, but couldnt do anything about it. This was the first time the word suicide crossed my mind.

My depression worsened in 5th grade. My grandmothers yelling and violence became more and more severe, and I naturally started todepend on my friends more. I started liking someone, so that helped me survive through this time. However, my grandmother said that I was crazy for guys and, after a very heated argument, started beating me with a clothes hanger. She then bit my hand and I still have a scar from that on my right hand.

Every day seemed like hell. I thought that dying would be more comfortable than this life. I wrote a will and tried to self-harm in every way that I could think of. I cut my wrist, strangled myself with a shower head, but I failed every time. I think there was at least a little will to live in me.

A few days later, my grandmother discovered the will and yelled at me for writing one. In that moment, I thought that my grandmother maybe cared about me to some degree. But, in reality, she yelled and hit me for not including her in the will.

When my brother, my grandmother, and I went to a trip to Northern Europe, my grandmother called me to her room and told me that my mom should not have given birth to me. She hit me with clothes hangers and strangled me.

What is even more absurd is that she would try to cover up her actionsby saying that she had to discipline me because I didnt listen to her at the time. Its like a violent bully at school trying to defend their actions by saying it was all a joke.

My grandmother then told me that she could not raise me anymore and gave me two choices. It was to go to the United States or to go to my grandaunt. She told me that if I went to my grandaunt, she will not give me any living expenses. I truly wanted to go to my grandaunt but, for my future, I chose to go to the States.

I received an achievement award for my mom some time later and prepared for my life abroad. I remember filming MBCs documentary Love at the time as well. I had to pretend to be happy, which was so difficult.

With little time left before my departure to the States, I met with Aunt [Hong] Jin Kyung and ate at Silla Hotel. I secretly gave her every sign that I could to tell her I didnt really want to go. She sided with me and expressed that it would be better if I stayed in Korea. Afterwards, my grandmother cursed and said, What is she to butt into other peoples lives?

Aunt [Lee] Young Ja then told some reporters in order to figure out a way to help me. My paternal relatives said that they will not take care of me because I dont even share the same last name.

When I moved to the United States, I thought I was going to stay at a family friends house but it was more like I was being adopted. What was more serious was that the family that I was staying with was not stable. I cant reveal much details about this but, since I was in a foreign country, I was even more scared.

I continued filming for the documentary in the States. I then realized that the school I was going to attend was run by a cult religion. I was so scared and was worried whether I was able to adjust to my new life.

I really thought there was no way I could proceed so I asked my grandmother if there was any way I could move back to Korea. She surprisingly complied and I returned to Korea.

However, misery didnt just end here.

After returning to Korea, I was blamed for everything. I wanted to reenter the elementary school that I attended before I left but it turned out that I had been expelled from the school, instead of transferred out.

I couldnt even go to school for a couple of months because of this. My grandmother wanted to send me to the international school that my brother was attending. I was mentally exhausted from studying a lot already, but the burden of having to prepare for admission into an international school addedeven greater pressure.

Every day was exhausting and tiring.

One Sunday morning, after sleeping late the night before from studying, my grandmother started accusing me of being a thief. She was preparing to go to church that morning, and realized that her eyeliner went missing. She accused me of being a thief from a young age and hurt me.

For the time being, I will write this much. This is August 5, 2017, 1:55 a.m. KST. Our entire house is a mess to the point wherethe police came to find us. I think I would feel so wrongedif I were to die without revealing this truth. Thank you for reading this long post. Please save me.

Many are currently sending words of encouragement to Choi Joon Hee on various SNS sites. Choi Jun Hee has since deleted the post from her social media account.

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A new way for therapists to get inside heads: virtual reality – SFGate

Posted: at 6:21 am

Dawn Jewell recently treated a patient haunted by a car crash. The patient had developed acute anxiety over the cross streets where the crash occurred, unable to drive a route that carried so many painful memories.

So Jewell, a psychologist in Colorado, treated the patient through a technique called exposure therapy, providing emotional guidance as they revisited the intersection together.

But they did not physically return to the site. They revisited it through virtual reality.

Jewell is among a handful of psychologists testing a new service from a Palo Alto startup called Limbix that offers exposure therapy through Daydream View, the Google headset that works in tandem with a smartphone.

It provides exposure in a way that patients feel safe, she said. We can go to a location together, and the patient can tell me what theyre feeling and what theyre thinking.

The service re-creates outdoor locations by tapping into another Google product, Street View, a vast online database of photos that delivers panoramic scenes of roadways and other locations around the world. Using these virtual street scenes, Jewell has treated a second patient who struggled with anxiety after being injured by another person outside a local building.

The service is also designed to provide treatment in other ways, like taking patients to the top of a virtual skyscraper so they can face a fear of heights or to a virtual bar so they can address an alcohol addiction.

Backed by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, Limbix is less than 1 year old. The creators of its new service, including its chief executive and co-founder, Benjamin Lewis, worked in the seminal virtual reality efforts at Google and Facebook.

The hardware and software they are working with is still very young, but Limbix builds on more than two decades of research and clinical trials involving virtual reality and exposure therapy. At a time when much-hyped headsets like the Daydream and Facebooks Oculus are still struggling to find a wide audience in the world of gaming let alone other markets psychology is an area where technology and medical experts believe this technology can be a benefit.

As far back as the mid-1990s, clinical trials showed that this kind of technology could help treat phobias and other conditions, like post-traumatic stress disorder.

Traditionally, psychologists have treated such conditions by helping patients imagine they are facing a fear, mentally creating a situation where they can address their anxieties. Virtual reality takes this a step further.

We feel pretty confident that exposure therapy using VR can supplement what a patients imagination alone can do, said Skip Rizzo, a clinical psychologist at the University of Southern California who has explored such technology for 20 years.

Barbara Rothbaum helped pioneer the practice at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, and her work spawned a company called Virtually Better, which has long offered virtual reality exposure therapy tools to some doctors and hospitals through an older breed of headset. According to one clinical trial she helped build, virtual reality was just as effective as trips to airports in treating the fear of flying, with 90 percent of patients eventually conquering their anxieties.

Such technology has also been effective in treating post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans. Unlike treatments built solely on imagination, Rothbaum said, virtual reality can force patients to face their past traumas.

PTSD is a disorder of avoidance. People dont want to think about it, she said. We need them to be engaged emotionally, and with virtual reality, its harder for them to avoid that.

Now, headsets like Googles Daydream, which works in tandem with common smartphones, and Facebooks Oculus, the self-contained $400 headset that sparked the recent resurgence in virtual reality technologies, could bring this kind of therapy to a much wider audience.

Virtually Better built its technology for virtual reality hardware that sold for several thousands of dollars. Today, Limbix and other companies, including a Spanish startup called Psious, can offer services that are far less expensive. Now Limbix is beginning to offer its tools to psychologists and other therapists outside its initial test. The service is free for now, with the company planning to sell more advanced tools at some point.

After testing the Limbix offering, Jewell said it allowed patients to face their anxieties in more controlled ways than they otherwise could. At the same time, such a tool can truly give patients the feeling that they are being transported to a different locations at least in some cases.

Standing atop a virtual skyscraper, for instance, can cause anxiety even in those who are relatively comfortable with heights. Experts warn that a service like the one offered by Limbix requires the guiding hand of trained psychologists while still in development.

Limbix combines technical and medical expertise. One key employee, Scott Satkin, is a robotics and artificial intelligence researcher who worked on the Daydream project at Google. Limbix also works with its own psychologist, Sean Sullivan, who continues to run a therapy practice in San Francisco.

Sullivan is using the new service to treat patients, including a young man who recently developed a fear of flying, something that causes anxiety simply when he talks about it. Using the service alongside Sullivan, the young man, who asked that his name be withheld for privacy reasons, spent several sessions visiting a virtual airport and, eventually, flying on a virtual plane.

In some ways, the young man said, the service is still less than perfect. Like the Street View scenes Jewell uses in treating her patients, some of this virtual reality is static, built from still images. But like the rest of the virtual reality market, these tools are still evolving toward more realistic scenes.

And even in its current form, the service can be convincing. The young man recently took a flight across the country here in the real world.

Cade Metz is a New York Times writer.

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Virtual Reality Toons Steal the Spotlight at SIGGRAPH – Animation Magazine

Posted: at 6:21 am

Rainbow Crow

Virtual Reality Toons Steal the Spotlight at SIGGRAPH

Working in VR is like jumping out of a plane, said acclaimed animation director Jorge Gutierrez (The Book of Life, El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera). Then, when you pull the parachute, rats come out! That was one of the many wise and hilarious insights shared by Gutierrez and several other animation directors who are working with the Virtual Reality format at this past weeks SIGGRAPH Confab in Los Angeles.

The Virtual Reality Theater, which was booked solid each day and had eager fans lining up early in the morning to score tickets, proved to be one of the highlights of the popular event. Among the cutting-edge projects selected for this program were Eugene Chungs Ardens Wake (Penrose Studios), Tyler Hurds Chocolate (Gentle Manhands), Saschka Unselds Dear Angelica (Oculus Story Studio), Eric Darnells Rainbow Crow (Baobab Studios), Jorge Gutierrezs Son of Jaguar (Google ATAP), Scot Stafford and Chromospheres Sonaria (Google ATAP), and Dan Efergans We Wait (Aardman Animations).

On Wednesday (August 2), four of the programs talented directors discussed the challenges and rewards of creating animated content in the brave, new world of VR animation. Working in this new format is all about speaking a new language, which were making up as we go along, said Chung, director and founder of Penrose Studio. Its as if youre trying to speak Swahili, but you only know how to speak French. Of course, its even harder, because Swahili exists, but were just inventing this new [VR] language.

Darnell, a DreamWorks veteran whose many feature credits include Antz and the Madagascar movies, praised the new possibilities of the medium. When you go to a movie or a play, its a very passive experience, compared to gaming, where youre the main character in the entire universe, said the director of Baobab Studios Rainbow Crow project. VR is more like real life. You get invested in the immersion that it brings to the world. You can still be the main character in your life story, but there could be bigger things happening around you. We can create this experience where the interactivity is fueled less by winning but more about empathy and caring for the characters, so you want to help them. I hope that we can start to approach that kind of inspired interactivity, which is closer to real life.

Trials and Errors

The experimental nature of the relatively new medium is both a blessing and a curse. On the technical side, you need to get all that data through the tiny pipeline of real-time rendering. Its a real challenge, especially when you are pushing very complex rigs and very complicated, subtle animation capabilities, explained Darnell. On Rainbow Crow, we had a monumental engineering challenge and effort, which took our scientists months to develop, because we are trying to create a storybook quality to make all the surfaces feel soft and connected.

Opening new venues for exploration is also one of the biggest benefits of the medium.

Chocolate is a music video that allows you to participate in it in a limited capacity, said the shorts director Hurd. It makes you feel like youre immersed. What I learned from the previous short I did is that the audience wants to explore, they dont want to sit and watch something passively. What I took from that is that you shouldnt make them focus too much. Let them explore and do whatever they want. Give them rewards for exploring and offer them fun moments. It is all about trying to stir this joyful feeling out of the viewer as much as possible.

Gutierrez, who is putting the finishing touches on his short Son of Jaguar, pointed out that when he first starting working in VR, he felt that the art has to come before the user experience. I thought if the audience isnt looking at the right place, then f*** you, audience, he joked. Obviously, that wasnt the right approach, and we all started learning. The way I approached it was to look to the past. Think of it as a play, and you get to have the best seat in the house We were told dont move the camera, dont cut it a certain way, but we said f*** that! Lets do what were not supposed to do. Sure enough, some of the things we did were too crazy and people got really upset, so we learned from those mistakes.

Whats amazing about this medium is that you do these things, and you get instant reactions. Instant vomit makes you realize that maybe you shouldnt do something. We wanted to make everything feel organic. Its like you get extra dessert if you do it right!

Both Darnell and Chung mentioned the importance of reviewing all the details of a project in the VR format. You can look at something in Maya, and you think that the characters are all in the right positions, said Darnell. Then you get the VR headsets and realize the characters are actually ten feet away from you. Its really impossible to know what you are getting until you get it all done. Working with conventional storyboards for VR helps you much less than it does for traditional films. As the industry grows, we can build bigger tool kits and find new ways to grow. I dont even know how long an audience will tolerate being in these headsets. So, keeping them short makes sense for us right now.

As always, Gutierrez got a big laugh from the crowd with another one of his perfect and hilarious analogies. We have about 30 people working in Son of Jaguar right now, he said. Were still not done. I feel like the baby is coming out, but the baby is wearing golf shoes and kicking hard and theres blood everywhere. The mom may not make it, but the baby is going to be beautiful!

Heres Gutierrez talking about Son of Jaguar at Annecy:

Behind the Scenes of Baobab Studios Rainbow Crow

Maestro by Penrose Studios

Tyler Hurd on making Chocolate

Son of Jaguar

Rainbow Crow

Ardens Wake

Chocolate

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New AI languages should be the least of our concerns – VentureBeat

Posted: at 6:20 am

Over the past couple of weeks, youve likely seen one of your Facebook friends sharing an article about how a pair of AI-driven Facebook chatbots invented their own language in a deviation from what they were originally programmed to do. The gist is this: Facebook created twin AI chat programs to converse with each other (and learn from each other), and they eventually stopped communicating in English and began communicating in a non-English language they invented.

The headlines reporting about this range from dramatized to exploitative, such as the Telegraphs Facebook shuts down robots after they invent their own language, making it sound like these chatbots were conspiring against humanity or posing some other existential threat. A quick look at any comment feed will show you users responding with fear, excitement, and amusement, with lines like And so it begins or references to the works of Isaac Asimov.

But as Facebooks AI Dhruv Batra noted on Monday, AIs have been inventing new ways of communicating with each other for decades, so the news was, in fact, not news. Batra also explained that, contrary to the headlines, the experiment wasnt shut down but simply altered to tweak the linguistic exchange.

Furthermore, there has been no attempt to hide details of the experiment. Everything is out in the open, with all details publicly available on GitHub, allowing other coders replicate the scenario.

The bottom line is this: New robot languages should be the least of our concerns when it comes to AI.

Tech-minded influencers like Elon Musk and Bill Gates have donated significant time and money to explain AI is a threat and figure out new ways to advance it ethically.

These are some of the main areas where we should be focusing our attention:

Weapons. Military drones are already in operation, and autonomous weaponry has been described as the third revolution in warfare. Automated intelligent weaponry puts fewer soldiers in harms way and is far less expensive than other advanced technologies like fighter jets or nuclear materials. For example, current Reaper drones cost about $13 million, compared to $100 million for a fighter jet. In the future, theyll become far cheaper and ubiquitously available in unregulated (and that means incredibly powerful) mobile weapons that anyone can program to kill and destroy (unless we proactively impose security measures).

Control. What may be most important isnt the AI itself, but whos controlling it. Were dealing with forces that have the power to reshape our world, and if theyre monopolized by greedy corporations, power-hungry nations, or even well-intentioned individuals who simply dont know what theyre doing, the technology could easily be abused or misused. Thats why several Silicon Valley influencers and AI researchers have come together to form OpenAI, an initiative to make AI available to the entire world, not just one group of people. The initiative hasnt been cheap, with one top AI researcher reportedly being offered two to three times his market value (which is already more than a starting NFL quarterback).

Growth. The other problem with AI is the pace of its growth, when uncontrolled by limiting parameters. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) has the power to improve exponentially, since it will hypothetically be able to improve itself, and at some point it will surpass the intelligence of its creators. The agricultural age lasted millennia, the industrial age lasted centuries, the information age has lasted decades, and now the age of AI may last mere years; technology growth accelerates rather than progressing linearly, and now were at a point where any further acceleration will leave us woefully unprepared to deal with the consequences (if we take a reactive, rather than a proactive stance). We havent been able to create superintelligence yet, but we already have the processing power in place the Tianhe-2 in China is capable of 34 quadrillion computations per second (cps), far more than the human brain (at 10 quadrillion cps). If we want to wield this computational power responsibly, we need to have a foundation in place to deal with its unrestricted growth. That means understanding the ethics of AI development, how limitations could work, and having safeguards in place in case something goes awry.

There are some legitimate and serious existential concerns about how AI is being used and how it may develop in the future. However, its irresponsible to overly personify the systems being tested or allow headlines to shape our perspectives. Chatbots inventing a new language isnt threatening; its natural, and our attention belongs elsewhere.

Tony Tie is senior search marketer at Expedia. He has previously worked with a number of Fortune 500 companies to improve their online presence. He is also a marketing and entrepreneurship lecturer at various universities.

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Teenage Whiz Kid Invents an AI System to Diagnose Her Grandfather’s Eye Disease – IEEE Spectrum

Posted: at 6:20 am

When 16-year-old Kavya Kopparapu wasnt attending conferences, giving speeches, presiding over her schools bioinformatics society, organizing a research symposium, playing piano, and running a non-profit, she worried about what to do with all her free time.

It was June 2016, the summer after her junior year in high school, and Kopparapu was looking for a new project that would use her computer science skills. Her thoughts quickly turned to her grandfather, who lives in a small city on Indias eastern coast.

In 2013 he began showing symptoms of diabetic retinopathy, a complication of diabetes that damages blood vessels in the retina and can lead to blindness. Eventually he was diagnosed and treated, but not before his vision deteriorated. Still, he was lucky: Although treatments such as medication and surgery can stop or even reverse eye damage if the disease is caught early, most patients never receive care.

Kopparapu knows the statistics by heart: Of 415 million diabetics worldwide, one-third will develop retinopathy. Fifty percent will be undiagnosed. Of patients with severe forms, half will go blind in five years. Most will be poor.

The lack of diagnosis is the biggest challenge, Kopparapu says. In India, there are programs that send doctors into villages and slums, but there are a lot of patients and only so many ophthalmologists. What if there were a cheap, easy way for local clinicians to find new cases and refer them to a hospital?

That was the genesis of Eyeagnosis, a smartphone app plus 3D-printed lens that seeks to change the diagnostic procedure from a 2-hour exam requiring a multi-thousand-dollar retinal imager to a quick photo snap with a phone.

Kopparapu and her teamincluding her 15-year-old brother, Neeyanth, and her high school classmate Justin Zhangtrained an artificial intelligence system to recognize signs of diabetic retinopathy in photos of eyes and offer a preliminary diagnosis. She presented the system at the OReilly Artificial Intelligence conference, in New York City, last month.

The device is ideal for making screening much more efficient and available to a broader population, says J. Fielding Hejtmancik, an expert in visual diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Other research groups, including Googleand Peek Vision, have recently announced similar systems, but Hejtmancik is impressed with the students ingenuity. These kids have put things together in a very nice way thats a bit cheaper and simpler than most [systems designed by researchers]who, by the way, all have advanced degrees!

Kopparapu has always had a scientific mind. Growing up in Herndon, Virginia, she and her brotherbuilt Knex creations, watched MythBusters and Cosmos, and read Scientific American together over breakfast. But she didnt get hooked on computers until she attended a programming workshop run by the National Center for Women and Information Technology. I went home and taught myself Java, HTML, Python, C, she says. My mom had to tear me away from the computer. Id forget to eat.

In high school, she took classes on computer science, then computer vision, then artificial intelligencebut she was troubled to realized that in each class, she was one of only a few girls. She resolved to start an organization to empower girls to pursue computer science. I dont think the problem is a lack of passion, she says. Its more I dont feel like Im good enough. She founded the Girls Computing League, wooed sponsors such as Amazon Web Services and the president of Harvey Mudd College, and now puts on coding workshops for underprivileged kids.

Eyeagnosis began as most endeavors do these days. I googled a lot, Kopparapu says. She also sent a lot of emailsto ophthalmologists, computational pathologists, biochemists, epidemiologists, neuroscientists, physicists, and experts in machine learning. Then she put together a plan.

First her team worked on the diagnostic AI, choosing to use a machine-learning architecture known as a convolutional neural network (CNN). Neural nets are behind the recent explosion in artificial intelligence, including advances in speech recognition, machine translation, and image captioning. They acquire these skills by parsing vast sets of data (millions of photos of cats, say) and looking for patterns of similarity.

CNNs are especially good at classifying images, so its no coincidence that their design resembles the brains visual system. Information passes through hierarchical layers of neurons called nodes; with each layer, the network recognizes ever more abstract features: Pixels become edges become shapes become objects. Its kind of funny that were using a system based on how the retinal system works to diagnose a retinal disease, Kopparapu says.

Rather than build a network from scratch, she chose an off-the-shelf model developed by Microsoft researchers called ResNet-50. But in order to teach the system to recognize an eye disease, she needed training data.

She found that data in the NIHs EyeGene database, which included 34,000 retinal scans. Many of these images, taken under various conditions with different types of cameras, were blurry or poorly exposed. But that was actually a good thing, Kopporapu says. Its very representative of the real-world conditions youd get with using a smartphone.

By August 2016, her team had trained ResNet-50 to spot diabetic retinopathy with the accuracy of a human pathologist. By October, she had made arrangements with Aditya Jyot Eye Hospital, in Mumbai, to test the Eyeagnosis app, which not only detects disease but also highlights blood vessels and microaneurysms in an imagea process that normally involves injecting a fluorescent dye into patients blood. Were trying to make it as easy as possible for an ophthalmologist to look at all that info and say Heres my final diagnosis.

In November, she shipped her first 3D-printed prototype for the systems lens to the hospital. When fitted onto a smartphone, the lens focuses the phones diffuse, off-centered flash to best illuminate a retina. The complete Eyeagnosis system has already been tried on five patients at the hospital, and in each case it made an accurate diagnosis.

Hejtmancik, the NIH expert, notes that theres a long road to clinical adoption. What shes going to need is a lot of clinical data showing that [Eyeagnosis] is reliable under a variety of situations: in eye hospitals, in the countryside, in clinics out in the boonies of India, he says.

Still, Hejtmancik thinks the system has real commercial potential. The only problem, he says, is that its so cheap that big companies might not see the potential for a profit margin. But that affordability is exactly what you want in medical care, in my opinion, he says.

IEEE Spectrums biomedical engineering blog, featuring the wearable sensors, big data analytics, and implanted devices that enable new ventures in personalized medicine.

Sign up for The Human OS newsletter and get biweekly news about how technology is making healthcare smarter.

An artificial intelligence program correctly identifies 355 more patients who developed cardiovascular disease 1May

Algorithms spot heart failure, lung cancer, and drug candidates sooner 5Apr

Ray Kurzweil, Rodney Brooks, and others weigh in on the future of artificial intelligence 31May

Smartphone-based diagnostic tools with an artificial intelligence upgrade could save millions of lives 27Apr

The ear-worn sensor's current version continuously measures core body temperature and acts as a hearing aid 27Jul

Researchers build the most complex RNA-based computer in living bacterial cells 26Jul

Technique for organizing DNA molecules closer together on chip boosts processing speeds 24Jul

Gold nanomesh sensors last for a week on the skin without causing inflammation 20Jul

A machine-learning algorithm picked up differences in brain connections in kids as young as six months old 7Jun

John Rogers's stick-on sensors could keep neonates comfortable 22May

Ford is experimenting with car features that could help drivers with diabetes, heart problems, and more 19May

EEG readings of brain activity could help study pain relief treatments for babies who cannot speak 3May

MITs WiGait wall sensor can unobtrusively monitor people for many health conditions based on their walking patterns 1May

Engineered cells implanted in diabetic mice produce insulin on demand 26Apr

Final Frontier Medical Devices takes home $2.6 million for mobile diagnostic device 14Apr

This lab-on-a-glove puts weapons detection on the user's fingertips 30Mar

Cows and people are the large animals that most dominate the environment 29Mar

Harvard's home testing kit for male fertility would just need your smartphone and semen sample 23Mar

These artificial intelligence systems could smarten up intensive care units 7Mar

This sleek yet rugged sensor measures better and lasts longer 27Feb

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Teenage Whiz Kid Invents an AI System to Diagnose Her Grandfather's Eye Disease - IEEE Spectrum

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Artificial Intelligence and Internal Audit – HuffPost

Posted: at 6:20 am

Auditing is about analyzing, being able to collect information around the audited subject and understanding its connections to other relevant subjects or areas. Going forward, auditors will not only uncover issues and errors, but will also provide solutions. This means that the reports from internal audits will not only list errors and process flaws, but also potential solutions to issues in collaboration with the experts from the audited area...

In most cases, the issues addressed by the auditors are known to the audited area, but in the day-to-day context of business activities, these issues are mostly not considered as urgent. In the future audit needs to adopt its approach to generate a benefit for the audited area too. The most important task of an internal auditor is to be able to analyze the collected information, while the question part of an audit can be done by a junior auditor. By repeatedly asking why?, an auditor can collect large amounts of information which helps to understand the entire landscape around a subject. It enables the auditor to evaluate the facts and make assessments.

When I was working as an internal auditor, I was involved in a project that was searching for an early warning system using available technology. We were tasked to ask simple questions and to evaluate the collected facts about a particular subject. In contrast to Eliza which became famous decades ago for being a revolutionary IT solution, the operating system featured in the movie HER did not provide a revolutionary new insight into the latest AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology.

Humans can differentiate between a conversation with a human and a conversation with a robot. Furthermore, they are able to make jokes, write poetry or recognise a lie by a persons voice or mimic. Can AI such as Eliza take over the activity of internal auditing? As mentioned, by asking the simplest questions, almost everybody can access information. How intelligent must AI become in order to be able to act as an internal auditing system, and what would be the role of humans in this process? I think that by even having simple artificial interaction software in place, the interview part, as well as the structuring of the collected information, can be taken over by a computer. The collected information can help clarify subjects and to draw conclusions about the problem.

Here is an example of how a simple question can be asked to collect all needed information about a particular issue: The issue is that I get up early in the morning.

AI: Why? Answer: Because I like the early morning energy and silence.

AI: Why do you like silence? Answer: Because, if its quiet, I get into a different state of mind with little effort.

AI: Why do you need a different state of mind? Answer: Because in a different state of mind I can see ordinary things from a new perspective.

AI: Why do you need a new perspective? Answer: Because different perspectives can reveal new solutions to problems.

AI: Why? Answer: Because new solutions will give me the ability to better solve outstanding issues.

AI: Why? Answer: Because by better solving my issues I have a better day .

In practice, questions can be chosen in a way that the person being interviewed does not discover that the questions are asked without the answers being listened to.

After the financial crisis, the area that would benefit the most from the introduction of AI into its processes is internal audit. This way, existing resources can be used in a more efficient way and it would be possible to audit more areas in shorter period of time. In the future, internal audit will use software like Eliza to interview experts from all areas almost monthly and will be able to collect information by setting up an early warning system for reporting by searching for critical words.

Areas with the most critical words will be audited with the most urgency. The interview can also include hidden checks to ensure that the person understands the answers being given and validates the truth. This will help to control more efficiently, without any additional resources. Furthermore, issues can be found more quickly, potential losses can be detected much earlier and before they cause damage to the organization...

Source: Banks of the Future, by Ella Thuiner; Published by Springer, 2015

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Artificial Intelligence and Internal Audit - HuffPost

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Can artificial intelligence help create jobs? – RCR Wireless News

Posted: at 6:20 am

The fourth industrial revolution

As artificial intelligence is deployed in the realm of customer service, telecom companies are showing increased interest in a number of these tools. Like previous industrial revolutions, many worry whether these technological innovations are weeding out human jobs. What many do not consider is the kinds of jobs A.I. can create.

But what exactly is A.I.? To begin with, its more than automation. Automation refers to computers or programs capable of performing repetitive, human tasks, but that doesnt mean automation itself is intelligent. By contrast, A.I. is an effort to enable computers to perform tasks that demand the ability to reason, solve problems, perceive and understand language.

There are three key positions advancements in A.I. could open: trainers, explainers and sustainers. Trainers teach A.I. algorithms how to mirror human behavior, and keep language processing and translating errors down to a minimum. Explainers serve as the middlemen between technologies and industry leaders, communicating the intricacies of A.I. algorithms to nontechnical staff. And managers uphold A.I. systems to legal and ethical norms.

As the maturity of A.I. moves out of academia, which its still kind of on the edge of, and to commercially hardened software and capability, I think youll see some these data science roles that you hear everybody hiring morph into their ability to adapt the products that are in the market to their specialty needs, explained JC Ramey, CEO of DeviceBits. And so that will create higher tech jobs, and most of those should be domestic based on where we see a lot of the hiring for the data science groups that we work with.

In terms of higher-tech jobs, chatbots, for instance, are answering basic tier-one calls at off-shore call centers instead of live agents. Technical questions are forwarded to tier 2 where the customer can talk to a person. This may eliminate several off-shore jobs for tier 1 calls, but it could provide companies with the means to invest in more tier-2 jobs. Ramey said he believes many of these jobs could be based in the U.S.

Technocrats have long pointed how automation can help workers take on more fulfilling tasks. But A.I. extends beyond automation. According to a survey of 352 A.I. researchers, there is a 50% chance A.I. will outperform all human tasks in 45 years, and that all human jobs will be automated in 120 years. The real question isnt whether A.I. can create jobs, but whether it can outmatch the numbers of jobs it takes.

I think this retooling will scare a lot of people and that there are some people who will not be able to make the shift, said Ramey, but the machinery and ecosystem that its creating at the same time creates a completely different market of jobs than whats available today.

The fruits of A.I. are discussed more than its limitations. Facebook, for instance, had to put efforts to build a chatbot for Messenger on hold after its bots hit a 70% failure rate. No budding technology is without glitches. However, the acceptable failure rate for these projects has yet to be clearly defined, which can help inform whether a technology is worth a long-term investment.

I think knowledge engineering is the biggest level of limitation, said Ramey. Today, people think it is the silver bullet. I think everyone who is thinking a bot is an A.I., but the reality is the knowledge engineering that has to happen underneath to give that bot a starting point, and how do you train that bot overtime, is still the big gap, and that is the limitation that we see as a big opportunity in the market-to-sell.

Risks versus benefits aside, several tech giants like Apple, Facebook, Google and IBM believe A.I. has a future worth investing in. The telecom ecosystem will likely absorb A.I. tools as it becomes more complex. I think we will look back in ten years and realize A.I. created a whole new sector for us and gave us another bump like the dot com boom did, said Ramey.

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Can artificial intelligence help create jobs? - RCR Wireless News

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Podcast Ep. 175: Alternative Medicine Isn’t Medicine – Patheos (blog)

Posted: at 6:19 am

In our latest podcast, Jessica and I discussed the past week in politics and atheism. (We now have timestamps for each story!)

We discussed:

BYU-Idaho asked a student why she dropped out so she told them the truth. (0:42)

The Mayor of Knoxville (TN) finally admitted a Bible sign hanging in the police department was illegal. (5:30)

The White House Bible Study is bad enough, but the instructor is worse. (13:42)

Donald Trumps Religious Right lawyer cant stop lying for him. (17:56)

An NFL player thinks dinosaurs arent real and fossils are fake. (23:23)

The Activist Mommy has a lot of advice on how to beat your children properly. (26:33)

Bastyr University, a naturopathic school, says a former student is defaming them online. She says shes just sharing what she learned there. (37:24)

Atheists are asking the Supreme Court to rule on prayers at school board meetings. (52:11)

Rod Dreher is frustrated by Christians who support Trump, but hes part of the problem. (59:50)

Ark Encounter has a new silly excuse for why attendance is low. (1:06:17)

Wed love to hear your thoughts on the podcast. If you have any suggestions for people we should chat with, please leave them in the comments, too.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Google Play, stream all the episodes on SoundCloud or Stitcher, or just listen to the whole thing below. Our RSS feed is here. And if you like what youre hearing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon and leaving us a positive rating!

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Friday Night Inc welcomes Krypted brand to its stable – Proactive Investors UK

Posted: at 6:19 am

Friday Night Inc () said its subsidiary, Alternative Medicine Association (AMA) is to start manufacturing and distributing products under the well-known Krypted vaping brand.

With most popular cannabis brands now wanting a presence in the critical Las Vegas market, AMA is attracting new brand-expansion conversations daily, and Krypted is the fourth brand to be added to Nevada-focused AMA's exclusive manufacturing and distribution network.

The Krypted team will be in Las Vegas next week for the kick-off meeting and to prepare for the initial production run, Friday Night revealed.

AMA has already obtained state approval for their logo and product names and the first sales should occur by 15 September.

Terms include making AMA the exclusive manufacturer & distributor in Nevada for an initial term of three years, renewable annually after that, with a 15% production royalty.

Krypted, a big name in the California vaping scene, is providing AMA with all packaging and marketing support.

Intriguingly, Friday Night said AMA would launch an apparel and merchandise brand on 15 August, so if you've ever wanted to wear a pair of AMA-branded socks, now's your chance.

AMA said it has recruited an industry lifestyle branding and marketing veteran to rebrand and establish a comprehensive lifestyle approach that will expand and maximize AMA's presence within the Vegas market.

Friday Night sees AMA as a lifestyle and a global brand that will transcend into multiple business verticals that support AMA's core business.

Meanwhile, Friday Night revealed that demand for recreational cannabis continues to increase.

We look forward to our next fiscal year that began on August 1st, 2017, and the new challenges and rewards this year will bring us. With everything going on, we are confident that we will continue to outperform," said Mark Zobrist, the chief executive of AMA.

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Friday Night Inc welcomes Krypted brand to its stable - Proactive Investors UK

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