Daily Archives: January 1, 2021

Key Lime

The sharp-eyed bloggers at Patently Apple spotted a fascinating new patent by Apple: a system that would add a tiny screen to every single key on a devices keyboard.

The first surface may be adjacent to the key display and may receive key label images from the key display, reads the ponderous patent-speak. The second surface may face outwardly towards a user and may receive key press input from the fingers of a user while presenting key label images for viewing.

In other words, Apple is describing a standalone or laptop keyboard in which every single key can be reconfigured to show anything switching from English characters to Cyrillic, for instance, or changing the layout from QWERTY to Dvorak on the fly.

Of course, it could probably also do a lot more. Its not hard to imagine the system opening up cool new possibilities in design or gaming.

At the same time, keyboards are a difficult piece of hardware to innovate on. They deal with constant percussive hits from users and its nearly impossible to use a computer without one. And any apps that relied on the new tech wouldnt work on any existing computers that didnt have it yet.

And Apple has run into trouble with keyboards before. A few years back, a wave of problems hit the companys fragile new MacBook Pro keyboards in an embarrassing episode that eventually led the tech giant to abandon the keyboard design entirely.

READ MORE: He spent 10 days in jail after facial recognition software led to the arrest of the wrong man, lawsuit says [NJ Advance Media]

More on algorithmic policing: Cops Arrested an Innocent Man Because Facial Recognition Told Them To

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Apple Patents Tech to Put Tiny Screen on Every Keyboard Key - Futurism

Algorithmic Policing

New Jersey police are under fire after wrongfully accusing and arresting a suspect based on nothing more than faulty facial recognition software thats since been banned in the state. Now, hes suing.

Nijeer Parks was surprised to learn in January 2019 that police in the town of Woodbridge had a warrant out for his arrest for a list of crimes including shoplifting and aggravated assault. Parks told NJ Advance Media he had never even been to that town, but when he went to the police station, cops arrested him immediately.

He later learned that police had identified him using Clearview AIs controversial facial recognition software revealing how over-reliance on flawed policing algorithms can effectively accuse innocent people of crimes.

Because there are so many issues with the softwares accuracy and the way it obtains images from social media, NJ Advance Media reported that New Jersey State Attorney General Gurbir Grewal ordered cops to stop using the tech on January 24 2020 almost a full year after Parks was arrested.

With just the facial recognition match as proof, police interrogated Parks in camera-free rooms, held him in jail for ten days, and set off a year-long legal battle that drained Parks savings until a judge finally told prosecutors not to return unless they had real, tangible evidence against him, according to NJ Advance.

Parks has now filed a civil rights lawsuit against Woodbridges police director and mayor as well as Middlesex Countys Prosecutors Office and county jail.

The mistaken identity was solely based on facial recognition software that is illegal in the state now and was always known to be faulty, his attorney Daniel Sexton told NJ Advance Media. No actual evidence supported the charges against my client. No fingerprints or DNA, no blood type.

While the technology has been banned in New Jersey hopefully preventing more of these horror stories from happening the whole ordeal reveals what happens when faulty algorithms are left to shape peoples lives without oversight.

READ MORE: He spent 10 days in jail after facial recognition software led to the arrest of the wrong man, lawsuit says [NJ Advance Media]

More on algorithmic policing: Cops Arrested an Innocent Man Because Facial Recognition Told Them To

See more here:
Lawsuit Claims Facial Recognition AI Sent the Wrong Man to Jail - Futurism

The first article I wrote for 2020 appeared on January 2. The title was Tonight Im Gonna Party Like Its 2099. The allusion to Prince aside, the article had been inspired by the thoughts of British futurist Ray Hammond. Looking ahead to 2040, one of his predictions had to do with virtual and augmented reality. Travellers would never actually have to leave home. They could experience hotels, attractions, restaurants and so on courtesy of augmented reality.

Hammond didnt see this alternative reality replacing physical travel and tourism. Quite the contrary, as it would increase the demand for the real thing, but he had inadvertently set a theme not for future decades but for the here and now, one that was lurking just around the corner of the New Year. Life was to become virtual because there was danger lurking around every corner. While hotels, restaurants, travel werent replaced, they were - for a time - simply eliminated. Futurism doesnt deal with the impossible, because scenarios are possible - more than just possible, and a scenario that any futurist worth his or her salt could contemplate was what was about to become reality.

On February 9, the Balearic health ministry confirmed that a British citizen resident in Mallorca had been admitted to Son Espases Hospital with coronavirus. He had been at a French ski resort and had contact between January 25 and 29 with a person who had tested positive for what was being referred to as the Wuhan coronavirus.

This was the second case in the whole of Spain, the first having been that of a German citizen on the island of La Gomera in the Canaries. At the time of the confirmation in Mallorca, it was being reported that 812 people had died in China as a result of coronavirus and that over 37,000 people in the whole world were infected. A few days ago, the number of cases worldwide was over 80 million. The deaths stood at almost 1.8 million.

It was not impossible but it had nevertheless seemed impossible, and at the time of that confirmation it appeared as if governments were denying the possible; denying in fact the high probability. The virus was still somehow over there. China, the worlds second economic power, had shut borders, was building hospitals at record speed, was confining citizens to their homes. Could you imagine something like that happening here? It wasnt long before there was no need for imagination.

As things were to turn out, it became clear that governments had been fully aware of the high probability. In mid-January, the Spanish government had started to prepare. The regions were being informed that health services could be transferred almost entirely. What this meant was that the Spanish government would centralise command of public health. Which is what it did on March 14. There was not just centralisation of health. The ministries of health, transport, interior and defence were now running the whole country.

The state of alarm sounded alarming because that was exactly what the situation was. It was more than alarming, it was frightening not just because of the health risk but also because governments were acting in ways that ran counter to democratic principles. Freedoms of movement and of association (in its broadest sense) were, out of paramount necessity, being denied. The state of alarm, the lockdowns, the confinements - call them what you will - were not tools that any democratic government would wish to utilise. But they had to, and there were those who damned them. The year of the impossible bred virtual existence and it also cultivated the counter-virus culture - the control by governments, the conspiracies, the New World Order, the rantings and ramblings by the close-to certifiable.

Blame had to be sought, and so blame was duly attached. China headed the list of candidates, the paranoia and xenophobia stoked by political leaders who proved to be wholly ill-suited for a crisis of such magnitude - Trump, most obviously. In Spain, a great deal of blame was heaped on the International Womens Day rallies on March 8. This, it has to be said, wasnt without some justification, even if politically the capital was ratcheted up by Vox in particular.

The Spanish government, as it was to prove only six days later, could have prevented the rallies rather than leaving decisions to its regional delegations. In Madrid, some 100,000 people took part. The health authorities claimed that this would have had only a marginal impact on transmission. Maybe they were right, but with hindsight a mistake was admitted. There were others, such as a lack of protective equipment. While there was equivocation about the use of masks; the fact that it took weeks for them to become widely available must surely have influenced advice and then order.

The year of the impossible, yet all too possible, all too real as 2020 presented us with the ultimate reality - mortality. And it wasnt virtual.

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The year of the impossible - Majorca Daily Bulletin

2020 brought changes and challenges to our daily lives, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. A recent American Psychological Association study found 65% of adults say the amount of uncertainty in the nation causes them stress.

While no one can forecast exactly how 2021 will unfold, futurist Erica Orange, a partner with consulting firm The Future Hunters, shared some predictions with "CBS This Morning."

Orange expects there to be permanent changes to industries and businesses, affecting supply chains, operations and workforces.

"It's like we're being shot through a cannon and almost overnight, global circumstances have changed dramatically and this is really setting the stage for everything that we see happening when it comes to the future of work," she said.

The Future Hunters help clients in tech, pharmaceutical and government identify trends that could affect business. One of those trends the firm is closely watching is working from home.

"Even after we get the vaccine, people are still going to be nervous about going into a physical office," said Orange. "Although at the same time, those that do have to report to a physical office, they're going to need that space to be redesigned and reinvented."

Research shows that COVID-19 is spread mainly through close contact between people. Companies and businesses in 2021 will have to keep this in mind as their employees return back to normalcy. Sophisticated technology such as self-cleaning elevator buttons could be seen in buildings in the upcoming months.

"This is going to be even more pronounced in the major cities where people are much more crammed together. We're also going to be seeing many more people relying on automation," Orange said.

Some tech giants such asTwitter have offered employees the choice to work from home indefinitely. Others are pushing back their reopening dates. Google has announced that it will keep employees home until at least September.

With empty office buildings in places such as New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Orange believes that major cities will have to adapt in more ways than in 2020.

"Just like how work is going to be completely reinvented and reimagined, we too have to reinvent and reimagine our physical cities. Transportation and infrastructure are going to go through tremendous changes," Orange said.

This also includes local coffee shops and restaurantsthat are heavily affected by foot traffic and by the revenue employees of nearby office buildings bring.

"I see a lot of these proprietors having to reinvent how it is that they reach out to workers when they aren't coming into a physical office. It's why the entire supply chain is being disrupted," she said.

The changes that the pandemic has brought is impacting the travel industry with both families and businesses seeking alternative ways to travel.

"It's going to be different and I see it playing out on both ends of the spectrum. What I mean by that is we're going to see the growth of high-tech travel and on the other end, we're going to see the growth of low-tech travel," she said.

High-tech traveling includes virtual reality and augmented reality. Experts predict that in 2021, travelers will look to technology to immerse themselves in places they cannot go.

But what experts believe is making a return to 2021 is nostalgic ways to travel. Cross-country trips with family and friends, visiting national parks and traveling via RV will likely be a popular option for the future of travel.

Orange says travelers "are kind of going back to basics and just engaging in much more simplistic acts of travel."

Read the original post:
Gazing into the future: What life, work and travel could look like in 2021 - CBS News

Art is a complex 'science' of creating various things, using different media of expression and tools. It takes years and years for an artist to completely evolve as a creator. These are terms that we nowadays use very casually. It's all because of various applications in this digitalized world that help people create any type of art with the help of AI-based algorithms. Now, some researchers from Fujitsu have published a new study in which they have shown the role of curators who create datasets to train AI models that are used by various applications to create generative art.

For their research, they surveyed different academic papers, applications that help the users create generative art with the help of AI, and various online platforms. They selected models for their research on the basis of various famous Art movements like Renaissance, cubism, futurism, impressionist art, the expressionist form of art, the post-impressionism period of art, and romanticism.

They took examples from varied genres like landscapes, war designs, and paintings, illustrations, portraits, etc. They studied the work of artists like Clementine Hunter, Mary Cassatt, Van Gogh, Gustave Dor, Gino Severini, all of them who have been famous for introducing various reforming patterns in art.

When they studied real art and compared it with the one that is reproduced by Artificial Intelligence in different applications and platforms like DeepArt and GoArt, they found out large discrepancies. During their research, they found out examples like a Cubism artwork being represented in ways that a Futuristic artwork appears, or a piece of artwork which was depicting realism by the real artist would be shown as a piece of expressionism.

So, the researchers looked into the cause of these mix-ups and imbalances, and it turned out that one important factor to blame is bias, that too, in different forms.

First off, the researchers deduced that the datasets that are used to train models for generative art are all highly reliant on the curators choices, likes, and dislikes.

Secondly, some apps were found to have trained around 45000 Renaissance portraits of white-skinned people only. Now, automatically, the apps AI generates art with white-toned people in it only, and that is the root cause of skin-tone bias.

There were many discrepancies in the labeling process also or the annotation of datasets was also found to be quite faulty. And there also, the annotators bias towards culture, beliefs, and other preferences was reflected in the labels they created. All of that inadvertently had an impact on the art that these models would generate for the lay users who wouldnt even know the faults with the actual art.

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Researchers believe that curators show bias while training AI models for algorithm-generated art - Digital Information World

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Pictured: exterior detail of the United States IRS building in Washington D.C. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress.

In fact, America has beautiful and popular non-traditional structures the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and it has crude and soulless classical buildings. Unfortunately, the authors of the order are not completely wrong when they say that some architects have ignored public feeling. The Guardian

Rowan Moore, architecture critic at The Observer, responds to last week's presidential executive order that makes classical and traditional architecture the preferred style for federal buildings.

"If architects dont want to give ammunition to the repressive thinking behind this order," Moore writes, "they have to show that there are better ways to engage the public."

See the article here:
Architects need 'better ways to engage the public': Rowan Moore on Trump's classical architecture order - Archinect