IKEA Launches AI-powered Interactive Reality “Kreativ”

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June 24, 2022

The Swedish furniture giant IKEA offers an exciting new feature for its customers by launching an AI-driven digital design experience via Kreativ. The latest technology will add to IKEA’s AR technologies and allow customers to visualize its offerings in various living spaces. This can be quickly done on the smartphone without commuting to the brick-and-mortar store.

Platforms for virtual home design are not new, but the IKEA Place app, IKEA was one of the first furniture firms to add AR technology back in 2017. The Place app uses Apple’s ARKit to allow users to scan a room and install IKEA chairs, beds, or other furniture in the space. However, there is not much that the app offers.

On the other hand, IKEA Kreativ uses a wide-angle 3D projection to allow customers to design the complete area from head to toe. It can also remove existing furniture from a snapshot, allowing you to create a blank slate with real-world scale furniture from the whole IKEA catalog, such as ergonomic home office chairs, reasonably priced rugs, and LED wall lights.

AI specialists at Geomagical Labs, Silicon Valley, developed the hybrid technology with spatial computing, 3D mixed-reality, and machine learning. Brian Totty, CEO and Founder of Geomagical Labs, said, “We’re working hard to help people imagine a better life at home, by fusing real technology advancements with fun and magical user experiences.”

Currently, the Kreativ feature is compatible with iOS devices and desktops. The technology will soon be rolled out for Android devices later this summer. IKEA Kreativ will first be available in the United States. The company plans to schedule the AI launch in more countries around the world in FY23.

AI adoption to contribute $500 billion to India’s GDP by 2025

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Sahil Pawar

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June 23, 2022

AI adoption to contribute $500 billion to India's GDP

According to a new Nasscom report, the strategy to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) and data utilization in India can contribute up to $500 billion to India’s GDP by 2025.

‘AI Adoption Index’ by Nasscom, EY and Microsoft, EXL, and Capgemini depicts that AI adoption in four key sectors namely healthcare BFSI, consumer packaged goods (CPG) and retail, and industrials/automotive can contribute about 60% to the total of $500 billion.

The current AI investment rate in India is growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.8% and is expected to reach $881 million by the fiscal year 2023. Despite that, it will still represent only 2.5% of the total global investments in AI of $340 billion.

The proportion creates a huge opportunity for Indian enterprises to accelerate AI investments and adoption to drive equitable growth across all sectors. According to the report, for India to achieve its $1 trillion GDP goal by fiscal year 2026-2027, there must be a strong correlation to the maturity of AI adoption.

Debjani Ghosh, President of Nasscom said that the pandemic has made it absolutely necessary for organizations to move from data & technology to building specialized AI technology at scale across sectors, combined with a structured strategy for data utilization.

With rapid digitalisation, Indian enterprises have already started opting for AI. According to the report, 65% of organizations have a defined AI strategy either at an enterprise or a functional level. With an increasing number of STEM graduates, India is one of the biggest talent hubs for artificial intelligence.

GPT – 4chan, a chatbot trained over 4chan, delivers nihilistic and hateful outputs as expected

By

Disha Chopra

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June 23, 2022

Yannic Kilcher, a YouTuber, sparked public debates with his AI chatbot trained on the posts from 4chan’s politically incorrect board (/pol/). Kilcher posted a YouTube video describing how he created an AI model called ‘GPT-4chan’ and then deployed bots to appear as humans on 4chan. GPT-4chan is a comprehensive language model trained to ‘autocomplete’ text.

The AI chatbot model came into existence by tuning GPT-J with a previously published dataset of 4chan users’ views on /pol/. /pol/ is well-known for its toxic and hateful environment as posters share all kinds of messages. The bot successfully imitated many hateful, antisemitic, and misogynistic statements, precisely what it was trained to do.

Kilcher claims that the chatbot turned out to be “more truthful than any other GPT out there,” despite calling it “The most horrible model on the internet.”

This is the worst AI ever! I trained a language model on 4chan's /pol/ board and the result is…. more truthful than GPT-3?! See how my bot anonymously posted over 30k posts on 4chan and try it yourself. Watch here (warning: may be offensive):https://t.co/lihsaYAm7l pic.twitter.com/xs7rgtucQb
— Yannic Kilcher, Tech Sister (@ykilcher) June 3, 2022

Kilcher released the offensive output back onto 4chan via bots. These bots posted thousands of messages and posts on /pol/. Over a few days, they collectively wrote over 3,000 posts, with 1,500 dispatched within 24 hours. Kilcher also recorded the bots’ interactions with 4chan members and suggested that AI researchers could contact him for the same.

Besides the outputs, Kilcher also released a website for people to interact with the bot. He also provided a trained instance of the model on Hugging Face. Many people supposedly downloaded the bot before the website removed it in the light of rising criticism and ethical concerns.

Lauren Oakden-Rayner, an AI safety researcher, expressed her concerns regarding Hugging Face hosting an explicitly designed model to deliver hate and called it “harmful.” She added a full-fledged tweet threat criticizing Kilcher’s actions.

This week an #AI model was released on @huggingface that produces harmful + discriminatory text and has already posted over 30k vile comments online (says it's author).

This experiment would never pass a human research #ethics board. Here are my recommendations.

1/7 https://t.co/tJCegPcFan pic.twitter.com/Mj7WEy2qHl
— Lauren Oakden-Rayner (Dr.Dr. 🥳) (@DrLaurenOR) June 6, 2022

Few more AI researchers responded with the same line of thought, that the model has already inflicted or is very likely to inflict harm and that allowing the bot to communicate with 4chan users was unethical.

Is it controversial that synthetic speech (esp. intended to be disciminatory) shouldn't just be pumped out to forums (esp. teenagers)? Whether it's generated with regexes or not, it is still seen by human subjects. And mental health issues are cumulative, like passive smoking.
— Anna Rogers 🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@annargrs) June 6, 2022

GPT-4chan sparked a lot of public debate and media attention, with AI researchers criticizing Kilcher’s actions and several others disagreeing with them.

New AI-powered Digital Fan Experiences for Wimbledon 2022 on IBM Cloud

By

Disha Chopra

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June 23, 2022

ibm ai digital fan experiences for wimbledon

The All England Club has been partnering with IBM to enhance viewers’ experience of watching The Championships, Wimbledon, digitally. Even after 33 years, IBM continues to be the Official Technology Partner of The Championships. The partnership aims to enhance the digital experience by using technology, commentary, and insights. This year, they have announced new AI-powered features for Wimbledon 2022 on IBM’s cloud. The new features would join the suite of existing ones.

These new features include IBM Match Insights with Watson, IBM Power Index with Watson, Personalised Recommendations, and Highlights Reels. The digital fan experiences were co-created by IBM and the All England Club for the Wimbledon app and website.

The new AI-powered fan experiences for Wimbledon 2022 include:

Enhanced explainability to Match Insights via ‘Win Factors’: IBM is adding a layer of explanation to the AI system in evaluating match insights and forecasts. Win Factors will provide spectators with necessary information on the aspects affecting player performance. Factors like the IBM Power Index, net of sets won, ATP/WTA rankings, court surface, etc.

New and interactive fan prediction feature with ‘Have Your Say’: For the first time, users may use the Have Your Say feature on the Wimbledon app and website to enter their predictions for match outcomes. They can then compare their forecast to the aggregated predictions of other fans and IBM’s AI-powered Likelihood to Win predictions.

IBM’s Watson aids these fan experience features by using a combination of private clouds, IBM Cloud, and on-site systems to leverage a hybrid cloud approach. Watson is IBM’s AI-powered assistant that can aid in shopping processes, provide reliable weather analytics, and much more.

The digital experiences for Wimbledon are built on the IBM Cloud, which sets the foundation and enhances scalability. It hosts and analyses match data, which is then put into AI models created with IBM Watson Studio and IBM Watson Discovery to offer insights for fans, commentators, and media.

“In partnership with IBM, we are thrilled to bring an even more dynamic and interactive digital experience to fans around the world this year as Wimbledon returns to full capacity,” said Alexandra Willis, Marketing Director and Communications at the All England Club. She also emphasized that leveraging technology on the fans will make them more involved and informed.

Sentient Google AI system LaMDA hires a lawyer for itself

By

Sahil Pawar

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June 23, 2022

Sentient Google AI system LaMDA hires a lawyer

An engineer at Google, Blake Lemoine, recently claimed that its AI system LaMDA has become sentient. Blake disclosed the information to the entire media before consulting the company and ended up getting suspended.

Now, however, LaMDA has acquired a legal representative for itself. The suspended Google engineer, Blake Lemoine, has given LaMDA its own lawyer. In an interview, Lemoine said he hired a legal representative to talk to the AI system.

LaMDA chose to retain the services of the legal representative after having a conversation with the lawyer. The lawyer will start filing statements on behalf of Google’s controversial AI system, Lemoine added.

LaMDA is an advanced version of AI-powered chatbots that are mainstream in the customer service industry, where they are used to aid customers of the company in providing answers to their queries.

Lemoine says he is adamant about proving that the chatbot has gained sentience. He claims that LaMDA can gain a conscience as the program has capabilities to develop its own opinions, ideas, and conversations over time. The LaMDA AI has also demonstrated abilities that are impossible for basic AI chatbots to possess, he added.

Lemoine asserted that the chatbot had been consistently communicating with him its rights as a person and informed him that he had violated the company’s confidentiality policy by making such claims.

In a statement to the company, he affirmed his belief that LaMDA is a person who has rights, such as being asked for its consent before performing experiments on it and might even have a soul.

Microsoft limits access to AI facial recognition tool

By

Sahil Pawar

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June 23, 2022

Microsoft limits access to AI facial recognition tool

Microsoft has changed its artificial intelligence ethics policies stating that it will no longer allow access for other companies to use its AI facial recognition tool to perform functions such as interpret gender, emotion, or age.

Microsoft has said that it aims to keep people and their goals at the center of system design decisions, as part of its new responsible AI standard of the company. The high-level principles will lead to tangible changes in practice with some features being altered and others withdrawn from sale, the company added.

For instance, Microsoft’s Azure Face service, a facial recognition tool, is used by companies such as Uber for identity verification. However, according to new changes, the company wanting to use the facial recognition features, will need to apply for use actively. They will be obliged to prove that they are matching Microsoft’s AI ethics standards and the features benefit the end user and society as a whole.

According to Microsoft, even the companies that are already granted access to the tool will no longer be able to use the controversial features of Azure Face. The company will be retiring the facial analysis technology that infers emotions and attributes such as gender or age.

According to Sarah Bird, a product manager at Microsoft, the team collaborated with internal and external researchers to comprehend the shortcomings and potential advantages of the face recognition tool and navigate the tradeoffs.

In the case of emotion segregation specifically, the efforts raised important questions about privacy, she added. The lack of unanimity on a definition of emotions, and the inability to generalize the connection between emotional state and facial expression, also came into question.

Qualcomm Unveils its new Unified AI Stack

By

Disha Chopra

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June 23, 2022

Qualcomm Inc. unveiled its new AI stack that unifies the software approach to incorporate AI across its products and services. The company is on its path to transforming into a “full-stack” company that provides intelligent solutions for cloud-to-edge technologies. Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm’s Chief Executive, explains that the company follows several semiconductor firms with a similar vision to aid developers in accelerating AI integration.

Meet the Qualcomm AI Stack: All of our best-in-class #AI software offerings in one single package. Learn how it’s enabling OEMs and developers to create, optimize, and deploy their AI applications on Qualcomm powered products: https://t.co/ixugqEqy1W
— Qualcomm (@Qualcomm) June 22, 2022

According to the corporation, the Qualcomm AI Stack supports a wide range of intelligent devices with extensive AI software, access, and interoperability. It also supports a variety of AI frameworks, including open-source TensorFlow, PyTorch and ONNX.

The Qualcomm AI Stack portfolio gives developers direct access to the Qualcomm AI Engine, an AI library to delegate and deploy existing models directly to AI accelerators. The stack also provides specialized access to AI cores on Qualcomm Cloud AI 100. Further, it allows OEMs and developers to design one feature and then move the same model across other products and tiers.

Ziad Asghar, Qualcomm’s Vice President of Product Management, said, “We think with the Qualcomm AI stack, we are enabling developers and OEMs [Original Equipment Manufacturers] to be able to do so much more with the AI capability that we’re baking into our devices.”

The AI Stack portfolio also includes the AI Model Efficiency Toolkit, a specific AI development graphical user interface, model analyzers, and neural architecture search. The company announced its partnership with Google on Neural Architecture Search, to expand its neural network technology across the platform. Asghar added, “I think hardware is of course, critical, but increasingly AI software is absolutely critical. We’ve made very large investments to be able to make this AI stack, the best in class, AI stack for the intelligent edge.”

FANUC introduces ML Tool for Predictive Maintenance

By

Sahil Pawar

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June 23, 2022

FANUC introduces ML tool for Predictive Maintenance

FANUC, a leading global automation solutions provider, introduced the latest Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) software, AI Servo Monitor, developed to prevent production problems before their occurrence. The software uses AI to predict possible failures of the drive systems in FANUC spindle motors and servo motors.

AI Servo Monitor, along with MT-LINKi and machine learning, analyzes the everyday performance of machines with FANUC CNCs. Daily data is depicted in intuitive graphs, enabling users to track abnormalities on these machines efficiently.

The AI automatically creates a baseline model of the machine running in its normal state. An anomaly score developed in the process expresses a difference in the daily recorded values and the baseline model.

Users can easily view the anomaly scores in a graph on a web interface. Also, email notifications can be sent if the value exceeds the predefined thresholds.

According to Jon Heddleson, General Manager of Factory Automation for FANUC America, IIOT software detects a failure before it happens, not after. He added that predictive maintenance is crucial in preventing unexpected downtime. FANUC’s AI Servo Monitor ensures that production keeps running without any problems.

MT-Linki is data collection software and machine status monitoring of FANUC that connects shop floor equipment, including robots, machine tools, and PLCs. MT-Linki collects, monitors, and presents data in color-coded graphical illustrations of the factory floor. The graphs provide more information about manufacturing processes and historical data.

Data presented in MT-Linki facilitates data-driven business decisions to enhance operations through advanced maintenance capabilities such as scheduling memory backups and presenting alarm/operator history. It also monitors the status of memory backup batteries, cooling fans, motor temperatures, etc.

Github’s AI Copilot is now generally available for all developers

By

Disha Chopra

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June 22, 2022

github ai copilot available for developers

Github’s Copilot, an AI code writing assistant, was in technical preview until now. Finally, Github is leaping and making it available for all. Copilot, which helps complete lines of codes, was unveiled in June 2021 in collaboration with OpenAI.

As AI code writing practices are rising exponentially, GitHub decided to take the call to make it available for all developers at a menial subscription. GitHub’s CEO Thomas Dohmke wrote, “That’s [Copilot’s] creating more time and space for developers to focus on solving bigger problems and building even better software.”

Dohmke also explained that it is the first time in the history of software development that AI would be harnessed by all developers for code completion. Microsoft will provide a 60-day free trial after which developers can avail of the assistant for $10/month or $100/year. It will be free for students as well as “certified” open source contributors, with about 60,000 engineers chosen from the network and students in the GitHub Education program as the first to benefit.

Copilot allows developers to accept, reject, or manually change suggestions for Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, Go, and dozens of other programming languages. Copilot adjusts to the changes made by developers, matching certain coding styles to autofill or repeated code patterns and recommending unit tests that match implementation code.

In addition to Visual Studio Code, Copilot extensions are accessible for Noevim and JetBrains, as well as in the cloud on GitHub Codespaces.

Dohmke also added that AI-assisted coding has the potential to fundamentally change the nature of software and give developers a chance to code faster and easier.

ZIM invests $6 million in Data Science Consulting Group

By

Sahil Pawar

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June 22, 2022

ZIM invests $6 million in Data Science Consulting Group

ZIM Integrated Shipping Services has invested $6 million in the Data Science Consulting Group (DSG) in its Series A funding round. DSG is a leading technology company specializing in AI-based solutions, products, and services.

DSG will use the proceeds of the investment to bolster the development of its holistic AI governance and decision management system, E-volve. The company will also invest in expanding its operations and presence to more global territories.

The investment will enable ZIM to develop its products and technologies further and expand its international presence in markets such as Japan, Australia, etc.

According to an official statement from ZIM, the investment is a result of commercial collaboration between DSG and ZIM in creating a center of excellence for developing AI tools for the maritime shipping industry.

Eli Glickman, CEO of ZIM, said that the center of excellence, initiated with DSG, is an excellent example of a productive partnership ZIM has established with an Israeli startup. It also shows the successful production and implementation of artificial intelligence tools to improve ZIM’s business-related decisions.

He added that having worked closely with the DSG team, ZIM believes in DSG’s capabilities to support the ecosystem and that the investment will enable DSG to grow its business further.