May 2019 show notes
For more about me, see: https://ralphbond.wixsite.com/aboutme
Story 1: Most people now think AI poses a threat to the human race: study claims
Source: UK’s Daily Mail Story by Annie Palmer
The number of people who fear artificial intelligence is on the rise.
A new poll [story posted April 25] of 1,004 registered voters in the U.S. found that 57 percent of them believe AI is a ‘threat to the human race.’
The findings demonstrate the increasing skepticism around AI, which has made its way into many of the devices we use today, from cars to cellphones.
The survey was conducted from April 17th to 18th by political analyst and pollster Scott Rasmussen and market research firm HarrisX.
In addition to the 57 percent who believe AI is a threat, approximately 43 percent disagree and believe it’s not something to be worried about.
Of the 57 percent who consider it a threat, some 16 percent of them doubled down even further and indicated they believe it’s a ‘very serious threat.’
Rasmussen noted that the number of respondents who consider AI a threat has risen three percentage points since November.
‘Younger voters are a bit more concerned about A.I. than voters over 50,’ Rasmussen claims.
‘Republicans are a bit more concerned than Democrats and Independent voters.’
The study also showed that voters are unsure about the effects of AI on the economy, with 47 percent of respondents indicating they didn’t know if its impact would be good or bad.
The results come as Americans remain fearful of what roles AI will take on in the home and the workplace.
A 2017 Pew Research study revealed that 70 percent of Americans are unsure or have concerns about the rise of robots and AI.
Tech giants have repeatedly highlighted the potential for these technologies to make our lives easier and improve efficiency among corporations, among other benefits.
But that optimism doesn’t appear to have trickled down to average Americans.
‘Ordinary Americans are very wary and concerned about the growing trend in automation and place a lot of value in human decision-making,’ Aaron Smith, who led the survey of over 4,000 adult Americans.
‘They are not incredibly excited about machines taking over those responsibilities.’
Not everyone in Silicon Valley is especially welcoming toward AI’s advancements.
Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk has emerged as one of AI’s most vocal critics, repeatedly warning that AI could hurt humans in the future.
‘I have exposure to the most cutting-edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it,’ Musk said in 2017.
‘I keep sounding the alarm bell but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal.’
While criticism around AI abounds, many experts caution that we are extremely far off from developing AI that’s more powerful than the human brain, meaning the technology isn’t a threat to humans as it exists currently.
My note – for more on Elon Musk and AI, see: https://www.livescience.com/59826-elon-musk-wants-ai-regulated.html
Story 2: Boy becomes world’s youngest person with a bionic arm
Source: UK’s Daily Mail [via MSN] Story by Harry Howard
Link: https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBWnrWb?m=en-us&ocid=News
My note: check out the video embedded in the story
An eight-year-old boy is the world’s youngest person to be fitted with a bionic ‘hero arm’ – and celebrated by eating his favorite burger with two hands for the first time.
Freddie Cook, from Bracknell, Berkshire, was given his new arm days before his eighth birthday and was thrilled to be able to pick up the burger at his birthday party.
The arm is the first medically approved prosthesis in Britain which allows for precise and delicate movements that other prosthetic hands cannot do.
The device weighs less than a bag of sugar and has enabled active Freddie – who was born without a right hand – to be able to grip the handlebars of his favorite scooter and climb with his friends.
He has even enjoyed playing with a toy with his pet dog Lacie.
Last week, he carried both his book bag and lunchbox out of the school gates – shouting to his mother, Suzy Cook, ‘Look what I can do now mum!’
Suzy, 42, said the device has completely changed the life of her son.
She said: ‘It is brilliant. Freddie has become much more conscious about his hand recently so this is incredible, he really wanted to be able to eat a burger just like all of his friends.
‘As soon as he put on the arm he realized what to do, it was immediate. It will change his life.’
Freddie has been described as a ‘tech pioneer’ by Open Bionics – the company who create the ‘hero arms’ – as the world’s youngest user of a multi-grip bionic arm.
When Freddie was born Suzy was told by private doctors it would be ‘over 20 years’ before technology became available which could replicate the movements of fingers.
However, Freddie’s dream was fitted with the bionic limb on March 28 – two days before his eighth birthday.
The budding youngster had tried a prosthetic hand in the past but Suzy described it as ‘doll-like’ with no movement.
My note: Be sure to check out the rest of the article
Story 3: These squishy robots are designed to survive falls, save lives
Source: NBC News Story by Tom Metcalfe
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=VjygLujXwEQ
From mowing lawns and cleaning windows to lending a hand to astronauts aboard the International Space Station, robots are being designed to do an ever-expanding set of tasks.
Now, engineers in California have come up with a lightweight robot designed to be literally dropped into disaster zones, where it can gather potentially life-saving information about conditions on the ground.
The hardy little bot, about two feet across, carries video cameras and electronic sensors within a ball-shaped lattice of rods and cables that cushion the sensitive gear from sharp blows — like smacking into the ground after falling from a great height.
The idea is that the shape-shifting device can be deployed from aircraft flying over areas hit by earthquakes, wildfires or spills of hazardous chemicals and then beam the information to first-responders, so they know exactly what they’ll face before they go in. Currently, that sort of information tends to be gathered by first responders themselves.
“We think that it can save lives” said Alice Agogino, a professor of engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and CEO of Squishy Robotics, a Berkeley-based company she founded in 2017 to commercialize the technology.
Agogino said the two-pound robot had been tested by dropping it from a height of 600 feet — and that it survived the fall without sustaining any damage. The device should be able to survive falls from even greater heights, she added.
The company is also developing a mobile version of the squishy robot that can move along the ground, propelled by small electric motors that shift the rods and cables to change the bot’s center of gravity.
“It’s not going to be fast, and we are not designed for speed,” Agogino said. “But the advantage is it can go over rough terrain. It can shift its shape to go between boulders and rocks,” using what she called a “punctuated rolling motion.”
Agogino said she was inspired to create the squishy robot while working with researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, on a robotic probe to explore Saturn’s moon Titan. The researchers were working to build a robot tough enough to be dropped onto Titan’s surface from an orbiting spacecraft.
“I could just see all these applications on planet Earth,” Agogino said, adding that the original concept is still being developed for space exploration.
Squishy robots are now being field-tested by fire departments in Los Angeles and in Texas, according to Agogino, with the first commercial version possibly available by the end of this year.
Greg Price, a division director for the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, D.C., expressed enthusiasm for the squishy robot technology, saying it could enhance the “situation awareness” of first responders headed to disaster zones.
“Situation awareness is paramount,” said Price, who heads up the department’s science and technology program for first responders. “If you have chemical sensors, or whatever the sensors are that you are looking for, or a camera for situation awareness … that can save lives, absolutely.”
My note: stories 4, 5 and 6 are related to high tech trends and the construction industry
Story 4: 7 trends that will shape commercial construction in 2019
Source: Constructiondive
Story by Kim Slowey, Laurie Cowin, Joe Beeton and Kathleen Brown
***Be sure to check out the full article, I’ll highlight a few of the trends
Technology supplementing, not replacing, human workers
Rather than fear automation, Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost encouraged attendees of Autodesk University 2017 to think about where automation can take the industry. This past November, he followed up in his keynote address, noting that automation will give professionals the opportunity to create better and more meaningful work by taking away redundant and repetitive tasks.
“[Automation] increases the importance of our expertise and creativity,” Anagnost said.
But will automation take jobs away from construction workers? Although automation could displace up to 2.7 million construction workers by 2057, according to a report from the Midwest Economic Policy Institute, the study’s co-authors told Construction Dive that “as long as 100% of the task cannot be automated, there will still be a need for human labor.”
Construction Robotics’ semi-automated mason robot, for example, is designed to work alongside a human, as is its Material Unit Lift Enhancer. The company always starts by considering where someone is doing redundant work and could benefit from a machine taking the physical strain out of the work or increasing production speed.
Autodesk also shared its predictions about artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning with Construction Dive, indicating that “AI and machine learning will be broadly applied in construction to reduce risk and improve project performance across the project lifecycle. “AI will also be applied to identify change risk and predict and prevent those changes earlier in the project lifecycle. In the year ahead, we will more regularly see AI and machine learning on the jobsite, and, as a result, more firms will realize its benefits to the construction workflow, saving companies time, money and, most importantly, increasing workers’ safety.”
Stephen Muck, chairman and CEO of Brayman Construction Corp., as well as co-founder and president of Advanced Construction Robotics, the firm behind Tybot the rebar-tying robot, said robotics could supplement construction in numerous ways, including extending workers’ careers by allowing a robot to perform more physically demanding tasks. Muck also thinks that robots will become more common in construction because they can draw younger technically savvy people into the industry.
More drones taking flight
In the not-so-distant past, aerial photos of jobsites were taken from airplanes for a hefty fee. Since drones came onto the scene as an alternative, they’ve rapidly advanced to the point that contractors can access swaths of data with relatively affordable off-the-shelf models or third-party services.
Commercial drone use in construction surged 239% year over year, the fastest growth of any sector, according to a May report from DroneDeploy. And as use of the technology expands, so do its use cases. No longer just tools for capturing photos from above, drones and accompanying software are equipped with mapping, volumetrics analysis, thermal heat imaging and other capabilities, with more likely to come.
Contractors depend on a steady stream of data to adapt their project plans and best target budget and timeline goals. Drone technology can help by gathering and analyzing information that human workers either couldn’t collect or wouldn’t notice. When linked to certain software programs, drones can measure the amount of dirt in a pile and give the contractor an idea of how many truckloads are needed, for example, or identify heat loss from a building so leaks can be addressed before rework is needed.
Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration is slowly but surely breaking down barriers to commercial drone use, allowing more construction companies to explore their options for using the technology or even developing in-house capabilities. Part 107 rules, introduced in 2016, simplified requirements for pilot certification, among other provisions.
This year, the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) opened up 99% of U.S. airspace to drones and reduced flight approval times from about 90 days to just seconds. Rules for operating drones beyond line of sight, currently illegal for commercial users, seems to be the next deregulation on the docket as more drones take to the skies.
Story 5: The Worksite of Tomorrow in Construction and Engineering
Source: Oracle
Story my son-in-law Brian Busby shared with me, he works for Mortenson Construction
Summary: Digital transformation is shaping the worksite of tomorrow as IoT, 5G, drones, AI, modeling, autonomous vehicles—and whatever comes next—enable better and smarter ways of working, via the cloud. Explore the worksite of tomorrow, today.
Story 6: Construction Giant Skanska Sweden Has Big Plans to Go Completely Digital by 2023
Source: Autodesk’s Redshift story by Blake Snow
Link: https://autode.sk/2Lp2NUu
Skanska, the world’s fifth-largest construction firm, is getting future-ready by setting ambitious goals to become a more competitive and sustainable organization. Using its Skanska Sweden division as a pilot program, the firm is rolling out initiatives to reduce construction costs by 20%; cut construction time by 25%; and improve the division’s overall health, safety, environmental record, and social responsibility by 2023. And it plans to get there by implementing the latest and greatest digital technology, with the intent to create a domino effect in its divisions around the globe.
Henrik Ljungberg, Skanska Sweden’s digital innovation manager, says the next four years will be a marathon, not a sprint, focused on the digital infrastructure needed for future success. “It’s more about setting up the technical capabilities required to make our fast-approaching deadline possible,” he says. “We don’t have any projects delivering on our goals just yet, but we’re putting ourselves in the right place to succeed.”
Two Initiatives, One Destination
Pivoting an organization of this scale involves fundamental cultural and technological shifts. For Skanska Sweden, that meant launching two new organizational programs: DigiHub and the Digital Construction Platform (DCP).
DigiHub is a development initiative promoting research and innovation—think of it as a kind of innovation center. Within it, the company can test new products and services on a smaller scale before they are implemented throughout the organization. For example, Skanska is exploring new technology initiated by the DigiHub in its design of the Sthlm New Creative Business Spaces mixed-use complex in Stockholm.
The bulk of the company’s digitization, however, is taking place on its DCP, which will better connect coworkers, partners, subcontractors, and customers through updated technologies and coordinate the large amounts of data used in building projects. Skanska plans to incorporate machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, carbon-footprint tracking, and real-time tracking of jobsite equipment on this platform.
In short, the DCP is a single source of truth that will save time, reduce errors, and prevent change orders on-site. In the near future, it will be the place to collect data (drawings, models, quality issues, and checklists) from past projects, analyze them, and then use the results to benchmark and improve current project performance
***be sure to read the full article
Story 7: Researchers invent a way to generate electricity from snowfall
Source: Gizmodo Story by Andrew Liszewski
Link: https://gizmodo.com/winters-are-only-going-to-get-worse-so-researchers-inv-1834076615
Photo: Getty
The farther you get from the equator, the less effective solar panels become at reliably generating power all year round. And it’s not just the shorter spans of sunlight during the winter months that are a problem; even a light dusting of snow can render solar panels ineffective. As a result of global warming, winters are only going to get more severe, but there’s at least one silver lining as researchers from UCLA have come up with a way to harness electricity from all that snow.
The technology they developed is called a snow-based triboelectric nanogenerator (or snow TENG, for short) which generates energy from the exchange of electrons. If you’ve ever received a nasty shock when touching a metal door handle, you’ve already experienced the science at work here.
As it falls towards earth, snowflakes are positively charged and ready to give up electrons. In a way, it’s almost free energy ready for the taking, so after testing countless materials with an opposite charge, the UCLA researchers (working with collaborators from the University of Toronto, McMaster University, and the University of Connecticut) found that the negative charge of silicone made it most effective for harvesting electrons when it came into contact with snowflakes.
Details about the device they created were shared in a paper published in the Nano Energy journal, but it can be 3D-printed on the cheap given how accessible silicone is—for five bucks you can buy a spray can of it at the hardware store as a lubricant. In addition to silicone, a non-metal electrode is used, which results in the triboelectric generator being flexible, stretchable, and extremely durable.
Its creators believe it could be integrated into solar panel arrays so that when blanketed with snow in the winter months, they could continue to generate power. But the triboelectric generator has other potential uses too. Since it doesn’t require batteries or charging, it could be used to create cheap, self-powered weather stations that could report back snowy conditions and how much has accumulated. It could also improve activity trackers used by athletes competing in winter sports, allowing the movements of individual skis to be tracked and recorded which would provide valuable insights for athletes as they train to perfect their form.
Story 8: ‘First’ 3D print of heart with human tissue, vessels unveiled
Source: Dawn.com Story credited to AFP
Link: https://www.dawn.com/news/1476293
Scientists in Israel unveiled a 3D print of a heart with human tissue and vessels on Monday [story posted April 15], calling it a first and a “major medical breakthrough” that advances possibilities for transplants.
While it remains a far way off, scientists hope one day to be able to produce hearts suitable for transplant into humans as well as patches to regenerate defective hearts.
The heart produced by researchers at Tel Aviv University is about the size of a rabbit’s.
It marked “the first time anyone anywhere has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart replete with cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers,” said Tal Dvir, who led the project.
“People have managed to 3D-print the structure of a heart in the past, but not with cells or with blood vessels,” he said.
But the scientists said many challenges remain before fully working 3D printed hearts will be available for transplant into patients.
Journalists were shown a 3D print of a heart about the size of a cherry at Tel Aviv University on Monday as the researchers announced their findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Science.
Researchers must now teach the printed hearts “to behave” like real ones.
The cells are currently able to contract, but do not yet have the ability to pump. Then they plan to transplant them into animal models, hopefully in about a year, said Dvir.
“Maybe, in 10 years, there will be organ printers in the finest hospitals around the world, and these procedures will be conducted routinely,” he said.
But he said hospitals would likely start with simpler organs than hearts.
Producing ‘ink’
In its statement announcing the research, Tel Aviv University called it a “major medical breakthrough.” A biopsy of fatty tissue was taken from patients that was used in the development of the “ink” for the 3D print.
First, patient-specific cardiac patches were created followed by the entire heart, the statement said.
Using the patient’s own tissue is important to eliminate the risk of an implant provoking an immune response and being rejected, Dvir said.
Challenges that remain include how to expand the cells to have enough tissue to recreate a human-sized heart, he said.
Current 3D printers are also limited by the size of their resolution and another challenge will be figuring out how to print all small blood vessels.
3D printing has opened up possibilities in numerous fields, provoking both promise and controversy. The technology has developed to include 3D prints of everything from homes to guns.
Story 9: An AI used art to control monkeys’ brain cells – Such tailored regulation of neural activity could lead to new types of neuroscience experiments
Source: Science News Story by Maria Temming
Link: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/artificial-intelligence-art-monkey-neurons?tgt=nr
New artwork created by artificial intelligence does weird things to the primate brain.
When shown to macaques, AI-generated images purposefully caused nerve cells in the monkeys’ brains to fire more than pictures of real-world objects.
My note: Macaque is a medium-sized, chiefly forest-dwelling Old World monkey which has a long face and cheek pouches for holding food.
The AI could also design patterns that activated specific neurons while suppressing others, researchers report in the May 3 Science.
This unprecedented control over neural activity using images may lead to new kinds of neuroscience experiments or treatments for mental disorders. The AI’s ability to play the primate brain like a fiddle also offers insight into how closely AIs can emulate brain function.
The AI responsible for the new mind-bending images is an artificial neural network — a computer model composed of virtual neurons — modeled after the ventral stream. This is a neural pathway in the brain involved in vision (SN Online: 8/12/09). The AI learned to “see” by studying a library of about 1.3 million labeled images. Researchers then instructed the AI to design pictures that would affect specific ventral stream neurons in the brain.
Viewing any image triggers some kind of neural activity in a brain. But neuroscientist Kohitij Kar of MIT and colleagues wanted to see whether the AI’s deliberately designed images could induce specific neural responses of the team’s choosing. The researchers showed these images to three macaques fitted with neuron-monitoring microelectrodes.
In one experiment, the AI aimed to create patterns that would activate neurons at a specific site in the ventral stream as much as possible, regardless of how it affected other neurons. In 40 of the 59 neural sites tested, AI-made pictures caused neurons to fire more than any image of a real-world object, such as a bear, a car or a face. The AI’s images generally caused neurons to fire 39 percent more than their maximum response to real-world images. Even when the monkeys were shown patterns previously designed by researchers specifically to trigger ventral stream neurons, the AI designs made these neurons fire at higher rates.
In another test, the AI crafted patterns meant to make the neurons at one target site go wild, while minimizing the activity of others. For 25 of 33 sites, AI-created images isolated neural activity to the target site significantly better than real-world images. Although this manipulation is not yet perfect, future AIs with more sophisticated designs and more training data may wield finer control, says study coauthor Pouya Bashivan, a computational neuroscientist at MIT.
“This is magnificent technical progress,” says Arash Afraz, a neuroscientist at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., not involved in the study.
My note: be sure to read the rest of the article
Story 10: AI generates non-stop stream of death metal
Source: Engadget Story by Jon Fingas
Link: https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/21/ai-generated-death-metal-stream/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000618
AarStudio via Getty Images
Check out YouTube audio track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNNmBtNcccE
There’s a limit to the volume of death metal humans can reproduce — their fingers and vocal chords can only handle so much. Thanks to technology, however, you’ll never have to go short.
CJ Carr and Zack Zukowski recently launched a YouTube channel that streams a never-ending barrage of death metal generated by AI. Their Dadabots project uses a recurrent neural network to identify patterns in the music, predict the most common elements and reproduce them.
The result isn’t entirely natural, if simply because it’s not limited by the constraints of the human body. There are no real pauses. However, it certainly sounds the part — you’ll find plenty of hyper-fast drums, guitar thrashing and guttural growling. In a chat with Motherboard, Carr noted that death metal’s rapid-fire pace is ideal for this as it creates more consistent output than you’d get with other, slower genres.
You’re not about to see robots replacing death metal musicians on stage. That’s not to say this is the end of the line. Carr and Zukowski hope to add audience interaction with Dadabots, so there might be a day when you can steer the AI’s output and satisfy your exact tastes in heavy-sounding tunes.
Story 11: AI robot paints its own moonscapes in traditional Chinese style
Source: Reuters Reporting by George Sargent; Editing by Alexandra Hudson
Link: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tech-robot-art-idUSKCN1RS1MU
See video here: https://www.reuters.tv/v/PF67/2019/04/18/insight-the-ai-robot-with-unique-artistic-flair
LONDON (Reuters) – A Hong Kong artist has created an artificial intelligence (AI) robot which creates its own paintings.
Victor Wong took three years to build and program the robot called A.I Gemini and teach it artistic techniques.
Randomness has been written into its algorithm, meaning Wong does not know what it will paint before it begins.
The project is called ‘Far Side of the Moon’. The robot’s AI was fed NASA 3D images of the moon and imagery taken by China’s Chang’e-4 lunar rover. It captured images of the dark side of the moon in January.
A.I Gemini takes an average of 50 hours to create a blend of landscapes on traditional, fresh xuan paper made from bark and rice straw. The average price for a piece on sale in London is £10,000 ($13,000).
Wong designed the robot to use the ancient Chinese art of shuimo to create its paintings, using mainly black ink and water.
Wong said it felt good to display the work and have people praise it. Asked if work created by robot can be art, Wong added: “I think so, at this moment.”