Police use of Clearview AI’s facial recognition increased 26% after Capitol raid

Clearview AI reports that police use of the company’s highly-controversial facial recognition system jumped 26 percent following the raid on the Capitol.

The facial recognition system relies on scraping the data of people from across the web without their explicit consent, a practice which has naturally raised some eyebrows—including the ACLU’s which called it a “nightmare scenario” for privacy.

Around three billion images are said to have been scraped for...

11 January 2021 | Face Recognition

OpenAI’s latest neural network creates images from written descriptions

OpenAI has debuted its latest jaw-dropping innovation, an image-generating neural network called DALL·E.

DALL·E is a 12-billion parameter version of GPT-3 which is trained to generate images from text descriptions.

“We find that DALL·E is able to create plausible images for a great variety of sentences that explore the compositional structure of language,“ OpenAI explains.

Generated images can range from drawings, to objects, and even manipulated...

6 January 2021 | Neural Network

Google is telling its scientists to give AI a ‘positive’ spin

Google has reportedly been telling its scientists to give AI a “positive” spin in research papers.

Documents obtained by Reuters suggest that, in at least three cases, Google’s researchers were requested to refrain from being critical of AI technology.

A “sensitive topics” review was established by Google earlier this year to catch papers which cast a negative light on AI ahead of their publication.

Google asks its scientists to consult with legal,...

24 December 2020 | Ethics

Facebook is developing a news-summarising AI called TL;DR

Facebook is developing an AI called TL;DR which summarises news into shorter snippets.

Anyone who’s spent much time on the web will know what TL;DR stands for⁠—but, for everyone else, it’s an acronym for “Too Long, Didn’t Read”.

It’s an understandable sentiment we’ve all felt at some point. People lead busy lives. Some outlets now even specialise in short, at-a-glance news.

The problem is, it’s hard to get the full picture of a story in just...

16 December 2020 | Facebook

EU human rights agency issues report on AI ethical considerations

The European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) has issued a report on AI which delves into the ethical considerations which must be made about the technology.

FRA’s report is titled Getting The Future Right and opens with some of the ways AI is already making lives better—such as helping with cancer diagnosis, and even predicting where burglaries are likely to take place.

“The possibilities seem endless,” writes Michael O’Flaherty, Director of the FRA,...

14 December 2020 | Adoption

Former NHS surgeon creates AI ‘virtual patient’ for remote training

A former NHS surgeon has created an AI-powered “virtual patient” which helps to keep skills sharp during a time when most in-person training is on hold.

Dr Alex Young is a trained orthopaedic and trauma surgeon who founded Virti and set out to use emerging technologies to provide immersive training for both new healthcare professionals and experienced ones looking to hone their skills.

COVID-19 has put most in-person training on hold to minimise transmission risks....

11 December 2020 | Healthcare

Google fires ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru after critical email

A leading figure in ethical AI development has been fired by Google after criticising the company.

Timnit Gebru is considered a pioneer in the field and researched the risks and inequalities found in large language models.

Gebru claims she was fired by Google over an unpublished paper and sending an email critical of the company’s practices.

The paper questions whether language models can be too big, who benefits from them, and whether they can increase...

4 December 2020 | Ethics

CDEI launches a ‘roadmap’ for tackling algorithmic bias

A review from the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) has led to the creation of a “roadmap” for tackling algorithmic bias.

The analysis was commissioned by the UK government in October 2018 and will receive a formal response.

Algorithms bring substantial benefits to businesses and individuals able to use them effectively. However, increasing evidence suggests biases are – often unconsciously – making their way into algorithms and creating an uneven...

27 November 2020 | Adoption

Salesforce-backed AI project SharkEye aims to protect beachgoers

Salesforce is backing an AI project called SharkEye which aims to save the lives of beachgoers from one of the sea’s deadliest predators.

Shark attacks are, fortunately, quite rare. However, they do happen and most cases are either fatal or cause life-changing injuries.

Just last week, a fatal shark attack in Australia marked the eighth of the year—an almost 100-year record for the highest annual death toll. Once rare sightings in Southern California beaches are now...

24 November 2020 | Applications

AI helps patients to get more rest while reducing staff workload

A team from Feinstein Institutes for Research thinks AI could be key to helping patients get more rest while reducing the burden on healthcare staff.

Everyone knows how important adequate sleep is for recovery. However, patients in pain – or just insomniacs like me – can struggle to get the sleep they need.

"Rest is a critical element to a patient's care, and it has been well-documented that disrupted sleep is a common complaint that could delay discharge and...

17 November 2020 | Healthcare