Mini Briefs

California Utilities Hope Drones, AI Will Lower Risk of Future Wildfires

California’s latest wildfire season has brought about no dearth of apocalyptic photos, showcasing the orange world beyond residents’ doors. As California copes and fires spur evacuation orders in multiple west coast states, PG&E Corp. and other major utility companies are investigating how AI might help. In particular, they are deploying drones and using computer vision to spot potential equipment issues to mitigate the risk of damaged gear starting fires. While AI and drones are not being used to manage or combat the current fires, the utilities say these technologies do help with the regular monitoring of their systems.

AI standards launched to help tackle problem of overhyped studies

Overhyped AI studies risk not only misleading the public, but also actively harming people affected by the use of less-than-stellar AI systems. AI boasts the potential to revolutionize areas such as healthcare, but researchers have warned that there is an abundance of poor-quality research. Now, a new set of standards crafted by an international team of experts is being published in the BMJ, Nature Medicine, and Lancet Digital Health. The new standards provide a framework for designing, delivering, and reporting clinical trials in AI. Standardization for testing conditions and reporting, along with stringent criteria, will help ensure that AI systems are safe and effective for use in healthcare settings.

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News

Advances & Business

• How Adobe is using an AI chatbot to support its 22,000 remote workers - When the COVID-19 shutdown began in March throughout the United States, my team at Adobe had to face a stark reality: Business as usual was no longer an option. Suddenly, over just a single weekend, we had to shift our global workforce of over 22,000 people to working remotely.

• AI Algorithm Removes More than Half of Mammography Scans from Radiologist Worklist - Radiologists who use a commercially available artificial intelligence (AI) cancer detection tool to divide mammograms into scans that need radiologist assessment and those that do not could drop their workload by more than 50 percent, according to a newly published study.

• Doing The Hard Things: AI, Space, and Climate Science - With the near- and long-term value of advances in artificial intelligence and space exploration, along with the burning need for climate science and technologies, the stars are aligning for the re-birth of the tech innovation flywheel.

• The medical AI floodgates open, at a cost of $1000 per patient. - In surprising news this week, CMS (the Centres for Medicare & Medicaid Services) in the USA approved the first reimbursement for AI augmented medical care.

• Pentagon to pit AI against human pilots in live fighter trials - U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced Wednesday that the Pentagon intends to conduct live trials pitting tactical aircraft controlled by artificial intelligence against human pilots in 2024.

• Resonance AI Chosen as a TechCrunch Top Pick - Resonance AI (formerly Transform) has created a platform that combines viewer performance data with the most advanced machine learning available, determining what in video content engages audiences.

• AI Ruined Chess. Now, It’s Making the Game Beautiful Again - Chess has a reputation for cold logic, but Vladimir Kramnik loves the game for its beauty. Its a kind of creation, he says.

• Supporting Black Scholars in robotics - A new reading list aims to address racial inequality in academic robotics by highlighting the work of Black researchers.

• Microsoft’s updated DeepSpeed can train trillion-parameter AI models with fewer GPUs - Microsoft today released an updated version of its DeepSpeed library that introduces a new approach to training AI models containing trillions of parameters, the variables internal to the model that inform its predictions.

• Artificial intelligence is energy-hungry; How new hardware could curb its appetite - To just solve a puzzle or play a game, artificial intelligence can require software running on thousands of computers. That could be the energy that three nuclear plants produce in one hour.

• Anduril’s New Drone Offers to Inject More AI Into Warfare - This spring, a team of small drones, each resembling a small, sensor-laden helicopter, scoured a lush stretch of wilderness near Irvine, California. They spent hours circling the sky, seeking, among other things, surface-to-air missile launchers lurking in the brush.

Concerns & Hype

• Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving Capability’ Falls Short of Its Name - The features might be cutting edge, even cool, but we think buyers should be wary of shelling out $8,000 for what electric car company Tesla calls its Full Self-Driving Capability option.

• A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human? - We asked GPT-3, OpenAI’s powerful new language generator, to write an essay for us from scratch. The assignment? To convince us robots come in peace

• The Guardian’s GPT-3-generated article is everything wrong with AI media hype - The Guardian today published an article purportedly written “entirely” by GPT-3, OpenAI’s vaunted language generator. But the small print reveals the claims aren’t all that they seem.

• You can get a robot to keep your lonely grandparents company. Should you? - The ethical costs and benefits of a companion robot — during the pandemic and beyond.

• A beginner’s guide to AI: Separating the hype from the reality - An advanced artificial intelligence created by OpenAI, a company founded by genius billionaire Elon Musk, recently penned an op-ed for The Guardian that was so convincingly human many readers were astounded and frightened. And, ew. Just writing that sentence made me feel like a terrible journalist.

Analysis & Policy

• Portland officials pass strict ban on facial recognition systems - Portland, Oregon officials have passed what could be the strictest municipal ban on facial recognition in the country.

• IBM says U.S. should adopt new export controls on facial recognition systems - IBM Corp IBM.N said on Friday the U.S. Commerce Department should adopt new controls to limit the export of facial recognition systems to repressive regimes that can be used to commit human rights violations.

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