NLSIU announces free certificate course in AI and Human Rights

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November 29, 2022

NLSIU free certificate course AI Human Rights

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU) is offering a free online/hybrid certificate course in AI and Human Rights to foster a greater understanding of the AI age’s challenges faced by human rights in India. The course will be conducted in collaboration with the German Consulate, Bangalore, between December 2022 and January 2023.

The course will begin with a two-week introductory module consisting of online classes on December 3. The second module will cover the evolution of conflicts between human rights and AI in India and prospective resolution approaches. In the third module, participants will attend an in-person workshop on the NLSIU campus in Bengaluru, which will be conducted on January 7 and 8, 2023.

During the course, participants will be pitched to understand the conflicts and interactions between AI and human rights in India. They will also focus on the tools to resolve tensions between the two. The participants will be selected from the applicants who register on aiandhr.nls.ac.in.

Since global values concerning human rights are being questioned in novel ways because of increasing AI adoption, the course will examine the impact of the same within India’s economic, legal, social, and cultural contexts.

The course will bring together a diverse set of professionals from across the tech sector, from both larger corporations and startups, including healthcare professionals, doctoral researchers, and academics working on AI from different perspectives.

AI to be used to ensure foolproof security at Mahakumbh 2025

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Sahil Pawar

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November 29, 2022

Artificial intelligence (AI) will be used to ensure foolproof security at Mahakumbh 2025, which will be held in Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj district. Drones and closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras will also be used.

Prayagraj police officials have sent a proposal of ₹400 crores for equipment and other security arrangements for the mega religious fair, said officials acquainted with the matter. The district police is ensuring tight security of pilgrims along with the VIPs and foreign tourists who are expected to arrive in large numbers to Mahakumbh-2025, they said.

Shailesh Kumar Pandey, SSP, Prayagraj, said they would upgrade the Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) and install hi-tech CCTV cameras in high numbers.

“The high-quality cameras will enable security personnels to identify and trace suspects. Moreover, AI technology will be used to keep an eye on every part of Mahakumbh Mela,” he added.

“Policemen on duty will also be strictly monitored. Every cop will be provided with a radio frequency identification (RFID) card through which the control room will know their exact location and whether they are on their duty points or not,” he said.

Sony acquires Beyond Sports to foray into sports metaverse

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Sahil Pawar

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November 28, 2022

Sony recently closed the acquisition of Beyond Sports, a 3D animation and imaging company that possesses tech to transform accurate information from a sports match into a representation in the metaverse.

Along with the technology of Hawk-Eye Innovations (another company owned by the conglomerate), this purchase will allow the company to produce real-time content relating to basketball, baseball, tennis, and football matches.

Hawk-Eye Innovations, acquired in 2011, produces tech that allows pinpointing the ball’s position at any time and has been used by the National Hockey League (NHL) and National Football League (NFL).

Combining the technology from these two companies might allow Sony to create a digital representation of a court or a field featuring realistic ball and player movement.

Sony has already ventured into NFT (non-fungible token) technology and metaverse, filing a set of patents to use NFTs to track the history and ownership of in-game assets. Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida has also stated that Sony’s priority is to create a metaverse around entertainment with the help of all of the brand’s tools.

Jio to launch an Indian short video app ‘Platform’

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Sahil Pawar

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November 28, 2022

Jio Platforms Limited, Rolling Stones India, and Creativeland Asia have partnered to launch ‘Platform,’ an Indian short video app for entertainers to introduce a rival to Meta’s reels feature. This app is expected to work precisely the same way how Facebook’s and Instagram’s reels do.

The app is aimed at entertainers, having an ecosystem built for steady monetization and organic growth. The Platform app will be all about musicians, dancers, comedians, fashion designers, creators, singers, actors, and everyone who wants to be a cultural influencer.

The first 100 founding members will join through invite-only. They will be provided with a golden tick verification on their profiles. These original members will then further invite new artist members who will sign up through referral programs. As per sources, the app is expected to go live next year in January and has already started testing the beta version.

The upcoming Platform app would likely allow the creators to grow through reputation and rankings organically instead of using paid algorithms used by Meta. This will eventually result in monetizing creators’ talent and a regular revenue stream.

The ranking of the content creators will be depicted by red, blue, and silver tick verifications. The app will also get a ‘Book Now’ feature for all creators. This will let people and organizers interact with the creators and book them for events, collaborations, and more.

London researchers develop a new visual speech recognition model

By

Manjiri Gaikwad

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November 28, 2022

Researchers from Imperial College, London, develop a new deep learning model to detect visual speech recognition tasks in multiple languages. The new model outperforms some previously proposed models trained on larger datasets.

A Ph.D. graduate, Pingchuan Ma, from Imperial College London, with his friends, realized that many visual speech recognition projects only deal with the English language. His objective was to recognize speech in other languages except for the English language from the lip movements of speakers and then compare it with other models trained to recognize English speech.

The new model created by the Imperial College researchers is similar to the speech recognition models in the past. But, some of its hyperparameters are optimized, the dataset is augmented, and additional loss functions are used. Therefore, by carefully designing the new deep-learning model, Ma and his colleagues achieved state-of-the-art performances in visual speech recognition.

However, some of the deep learning models in the past have achieved greater performance on visual speech recognition tasks. Still, they were primarily trained to detect speech in English, as most existing training datasets only include English speech. This limits users to work in English-speaking contexts only. But the new deep learning model by the London researchers can perform in many languages and allow users to work on many speeches.

In the future, the new model can inspire other researchers to develop alternative visual speech recognition models to recognize speech from the lip movements of speakers effectively.

Tencent Music creates 1000 tracks with AI vocals mimicking human voice

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Sahil Pawar

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November 28, 2022

The China-based company Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) told Music Business Worldwide that it has created and released more than 1000 tracks with AI vocals that mimic the human voice. According to the company, a track with AI vocals has surpassed 100 million streams.

TME claimed that the track named ‘Today’ (translated to English) has become the first-ever song by an AI singer to be streamed more than 100 million times across the internet. When run through the Streaming Calculator, the 100,000,000 streams total to $348,000 (£291,801) in revenue.

In September, TME launched the Lingyin Engine, which patented voice synthesis technology. The company added that it could quickly replicate singers’ voices to create original songs of any language and style.

One of the projects from Lingyin Engine saw the development of synthetic voices in the memory of legendary artists such as the late Anita Mui and the late Teresa Teng.

This week TME also revealed that along with voice tributes, they are planning to recreate celebrities that are still alive, including Chinese actress Yang Chaoyue.

UK to fine social media companies that fail to remove harmful content

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Manjiri Gaikwad

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November 28, 2022

As per Reuters, the UK government announces to make it illegal to encourage harmful content online and will fine the social media companies that fail to remove such content online.

Promoting suicide is already illegal, but UK’s Digital, Culture, Media, and Support Ministry stated that they now want social media companies to block a broader range of content.

According to the UK government, social media companies must remove and limit users’ content that deliberately encourages people to harm themselves. Full details of the announcement, like the criminal penalties faced by people who encourage self-harm and the scale of fines faced by the tech companies, will come next month when legislative amendments are put before the parliament.

Earlier proposals were designed to ban ‘legal but harmful’ material online that drew criticism from tech companies and free speech campaigners. However, children and mental health charities are strongly supporting the new announcement.

Michelle Donelan, the Digital Secretary of Britain’s Digital, Culture, Media and Support Ministry, stated that the social media firms will no longer remain silent observers and will face fines for allowing abusive and destructive behavior on their platforms as per the law.

MeitY launches YUVAi program to address growing skills gap among youth

By

Sahil Pawar

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November 28, 2022

National e-Governance Division, Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY), Government of India has launched the ‘YUVAi- Youth for Unnati and Vikas with AI’ program to build digital readiness and address the growing skills gap among the next generation.

YUVAi aims to foster a deeper understanding of artificial intelligence, equipping school students from grades 8th to 12th across the nation with AI-based skills and empowering them to become human-centric creators and users of AI. Moreover, the program offers an applied learning experience to understand and identify how AI can tackle critical problems and lead to the country’s development.

The program will take place in three phases. In the initial phase, teachers will be chosen to identify students from their respective schools, who will then share their details with the organizing team. In the second phase, online orientation sessions will be held by experts for registered students on core AI concepts to foster an understanding of the ideation process.

Finally, students will be asked to submit ideas through a 120-second video elaborating a proposed AI-based solution for any one of the eight core themes — rural development, agriculture, smart cities, law and justice, healthcare, education, environment, and clean energy, transportation.

At last, the most innovative AI-based solutions will be declared and invited to a national showcase and felicitation ceremony.

Philips Announces its AI-powered Diagnostic Systems at RSNA 2022

By

Disha Chopra

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November 28, 2022

At RSNA (Radiological Society of North America) 2022 annual event, Philips announced its new portfolio of AI-powered diagnostic systems and informatics solutions for better patient-centric imaging services.

Radiology is a vital part of diagnosing any disease and is equally challenging. Just managing the sheer volumes of data is a significant issue. In a report commissioned by Philips, the Future Health Index 2022 report, 24% of radiology experts stated that their staff feels overwhelmed by the data.

Philips’ AI-powered solutions presented at the RSNA 2022 aim to enhance operational efficiency and overcome challenges that radiology leaders come across while managing complex workflows and data. These solutions include:

Philips Imaging Orchestrator – ROCC (Radiology Operations Command Center), a vendor-neutral multi-modality telepresence solution for advanced connections between the imaging experts at the command center and the technologists at scanning locations.
Philips Ultrasound Collaboration Live, a tele-ultrasound system accessible via Philips EPIQ, Elite, and Affiniti ultrasound systems.

Philips also unveiled its latest AI-enabled image interpretation systems with Philips Advanced Visualization Workspace at RSNA 2022 to prioritize patients based on their diagnosis. The company also introduced AI-powered MR Smart S peed to enhance speed and imaging quality via the AI reconstruction algorithm on Philips’ state-of-the-art speed engine.

Philips also plans to spotlight its Spectral CT 7500, its novel dual-detector CT system to help in disease characterization. The technology would be significantly beneficial in oncology imaging, cardiac imaging, and interventional radiology.

Mumbai to get AI face recognition cameras to curb street crimes

By

Sahil Pawar

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November 28, 2022

The Maharashtra government will be installing face recognition cameras with artificial intelligence (AI) in Mumbai to help rein in street crimes.

On Friday, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that the development comes as a part of the second phase of the Mumbai surveillance plan.

The state government, led by Fadnavis in 2014, installed CCTVs in Mumbai city within one year under the first phase. Fadnavis said the initiative was an effort to implement a suggestion mentioned in a report submitted to the state government after the 26/11 terror attack.

“Today, Mumbai is fear-free. In the past eight years, there hasn’t been any incident in Mumbai that can be called a terror attack. Also, there has been a heavy crackdown on organized crime on extortion,” he said.

According to Fadnavis, though there was an intelligence input concerning the attack, the officials failed to act due to the lack of coordination between intelligence agencies. He said a report was submitted to the government with all these findings, but the government did not address it.