Category: AI

Hyper-Smelling AI

Posted on by esimantiras

This Hyper-Smelling AI Can Sniff Out Counterfeit Sneakers—and That’s Only the Beginning

source: fastcompany.com  |  image: pexels.com

 

Osmo, an AI startup focused on mapping scent, has an ambitious plan to use its sensor tech to find everything from fake shoes to tumors growing inside your body.

I want a tricorder,” Alex Wiltschko tells me on a Zoom call. Wiltschko, the founder of the AI company Osmo, is referring to the handheld device used by the Enterprise’s crew in its exploration across the universe. In Stark Trek, the tricorder can tell crew members everything they need to know about an object simply by holding it nearby.

One could say that Wiltschko and his team have created an alpha version of the fantasy device. His team has developed a backpack-sized machine equipped with a smelling sensor that uses artificial intelligence to identify counterfeit products by analyzing their chemical composition. Osmo has recently partnered with sneaker resale platforms to show that the high-tech sniff test is capable of identifying fakes with a high degree of accuracy. 

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MOLECULES

Everything in the world has a smell, from clothes to cars to your body. Those scents are volatile molecules, or chemistry that “flies” off those objects and reaches our nostrils to tell us things. You experience this consciously and clearly when something is new to your nose, like smelling a new car or a pair of sneakers. Continue reading “Hyper-Smelling AI” →

Winning the AI Race

Posted on by esimantiras

Winning the AI Race

source: axios.com (contributed by FAN, Bill Amshey)  |  image: unsplash.com

 

The Biden administration’s AI directive is a green light to the Pentagon, intelligence agencies and their eager suppliers.

  • The documents enshrine the technology as a defense imperative. Expect greater investment, including in energy and workforce, with check-ins along the way.
  • It also validates the high-risk, high-reward work of early movers.

Why it matters: This signals a more a hands-off approach, which should help allay private-sector worries about cumbersome guardrails.

What they’re saying: If the U.S. fails to deploy AI more extensively and at a quicker pace than its adversaries, advantages earned over decades in land, air, sea, space and cyber could be erased, national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned Thursday.

  • “Even if we have the best AI models, but our competitors are faster to deploy, we could see them seize the advantage in using AI capabilities against our people, our forces and our partners and allies,” he said at the National Defense University.
  • “We could have the best team but lose because we didn’t put it on the field.”

What we’re hearing: Defense industrial base players are generally pleased.

  • Contractors already embrace a software first, hardware second approach.
  • The White House messaging clarifies what’s fair game — and what’s out of bounds. Guidance should boost experimentation and adoption.

The bottom line: There are few “precedents for a document such as this one, which seeks to comprehensively state U.S. national security interests and strategy toward a transformative technology,” Gregory Allen, director of the Wadhwani AI Center at CSIS, told me.

  • “NSC-68, which defined U.S. early nuclear strategy, comes to mind.”

Deploying Deepfake Detection

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Deploying Deepfake Detection

source: cnet.com  |  image: pexels.com

 

Deepfake video, photo and audio programs have benefited from the same AI boost as other software programs, which is … worrisome, to say the least. But security software company McAfee is hoping AI can play a role in solving the problem. The company unveiled the McAfee Deepfake Detector this week, and folks with Lenovo’s new Copilot-Plus PCs will be the first to get the chance to try out the tool. It scans audio in videos you come across online to alert you to potential deepfakes, but it won’t work if the sound is off. It also can’t determine if photos are deepfakes.

I don’t mind admitting that deepfakes are one of the consequences of AI that keep me up at night. We’ve seen a lot of AI-generated content used for jokes and memes — remember that one of the pope in a puffy white coat? — but it can also be used maliciously, such as to spread political disinformation. So, for my two cents, any effort to take a closer look at questionable material online is a good one.

The rise of Perplexity AI

Posted on by esimantiras

The rise of Perplexity AI, the buzzy new web search engine

source: zapier.com  |  image: wikipedia.com

 

Perplexity’s answer engine is altering the way we interact with the internet and might even one day challenge Google’s search dominance.

Perplexity calls itself a “Swiss Army Knife for information discovery and curiosity,” but it’s essentially an AI-powered search engine. Think of it as a mashup of ChatGPT and Google Search—though it’s not a direct replacement for either. Really, it’s the direction Google is trying to go with Gemini—but less chaotically implemented. 

It works like a chatbot: you ask questions, and it answers them. But it’s also able to seamlessly pull in information from recent articles. It indexes the web every day, so you can ask it about recent news, game scores, and other typical search queries. 

But Perplexity is also a kind of search engine. Instead of presenting you with a list of websites that match your query, Perplexity gives you a short summary answer along with the references it used to create it. In some cases, the summary will be all you need. In others, you’ll want to dive into the different sources.

While Perplexity can’t yet replace a traditional search engine, it’s surprisingly functional and effective if you work within its limits. Here’s what you need to know about it. Continue reading “The rise of Perplexity AI” →

AI’s new power: Persuasion

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AI’s new power: Persuasion

source: axios.com | image: pexels.com

 

AI startup Anthropic says its language models have steadily and rapidly improved their “persuasiveness,” Axios’ Ryan Heath writes.

  • Why it matters: Persuasion can foster disinformation and push people to act against their own interests, according to new research the company posted yesterday.

There’s relatively little research on how the latest models compare to humans when it comes to their persuasiveness — a skill with widespread social, commercial and political applications.

  • The researchers found that the most capable Anthropic model, Claude 3 Opus, “produces arguments that don’t statistically differ” from arguments written by humans.

 

RESEARCH

Measuring the Persuasiveness of Language Models

While people have long questioned whether AI models may, at some point, become as persuasive as humans in changing people’s minds, there has been limited empirical research into the relationship between model scale and the degree of persuasiveness across model outputs. To address this, we developed a basic method to measure persuasiveness, and used it to compare a variety of Anthropic models across three different generations (Claude 1, 2, and 3), and two classes of models (compact models that are smaller, faster, and more cost-effective, and frontier models that are larger and more capable). Continue reading “AI’s new power: Persuasion” →

Is the ‘Dead Internet’ theory suddenly coming true?

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Is the ‘Dead Internet’ theory suddenly coming true?

This could be a sign

source: fastcompany.com  |  image: pexels.com

No, not shrimp Jesus—though that’s noteworthy, too. We’re talking about what TikTok could be planning with AI influencers.

 

There’s been a popular theory floating around conspiracy circles for about seven or eight years now. It’s called the “Dead Internet” theory, and its main argument is that the organic, human-created content that powered the early web in the 1990s and 2000s has been usurped by artificially created content, which now dominates what people see online. Hence, the internet is “dead” because the content most of us consume is no longer created by living beings (humans).

But there’s another component to the theory—and this is where the conspiracy part comes into play. The Dead Internet theory states that this move from human-created content to artificially generated content was purposeful, spearheaded by governments and corporations in order to exploit control over the public’s perception. 

Continue reading “Is the ‘Dead Internet’ theory suddenly coming true?” →

AI could be as consequential to the economy as electricity

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AI could be as consequential to the economy as electricity

source: cnn.com (contributed by FAN, Bill Amshey)  |  image: pexels.com

 

Jamie Dimon believes artificial intelligence will have a huge impact on global business this year.

Dimon, one of the world’s most influential business leaders, said in his annual shareholder letter Monday that while he doesn’t yet know the full effect AI will have on business, the economy or society, he knows its influence will be significant.

“We are completely convinced the consequences will be extraordinary and possibly as transformational as some of the major technological inventions of the past several hundred years: Think the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, computing and the Internet, among others,” the JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO wrote in the letter.

The AI explosion has already transformed workplaces across the world and nearly 40% of global employment could be disrupted by AI, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Continue reading “AI could be as consequential to the economy as electricity” →

How to Protect Yourself (and Your Loved Ones) From AI Scam Calls

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How to Protect Yourself (and Your Loved Ones) From AI Scam Calls

 

source: wired.com  |  image: pexels.com

 
AI tools are getting better at cloning people’s voices, and scammers are using these new capabilities to commit fraud. Avoid getting swindled by following these expert tips.

YOU ANSWER A random call from a family member, and they breathlessly explain how there’s been a horrible car accident. They need you to send money right now, or they’ll go to jail. You can hear the desperation in their voice as they plead for an immediate cash transfer. While it sure sounds like them, and the call came from their number, you feel like something’s off. So, you decide to hang up and call them right back. When your family member picks up your call, they say there hasn’t been a car crash, and that they have no idea what you’re talking about.

Congratulations, you just successfully avoided an artificial intelligence scam call. Continue reading “How to Protect Yourself (and Your Loved Ones) From AI Scam Calls” →

AI robot wars heat up

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AI robot wars heat up

source: axios.com (submitted by FAN, Bill Amshey)  | image: pexels.com

 

Walking, dexterous robots are gradually making the leap from the science lab to the workplace with more sophisticated AI-driven software, Axios’ Jennifer A. Kingson writes.

  • Why it matters: There’s intense competition among humanoid robot manufacturers to get their products into the production lines of companies like Amazon and BMW.

Zoom in: An OpenAI-powered robot from a company called Figure was filmed using “common sense” to pick up an apple and hand it to a person who asked: “Can I have something to eat?”

  • The wild demonstration video for Figure 01, released yesterday, also showed the robot explaining in plain English why it acted in the way it did: “So I gave you the apple because it’s the only uh edible item I could provide you with from the table.”

Figure garnered a massive investment from Jeff Bezos and OpenAI. It’s currently staffing a BMW production line.

  • A robot from Agility — a Figure competitor — is being tested by Amazon and GXO Logistics, which recently deployed it at a Spanx warehouse in Georgia.

Humanizing a popular holiday with AI

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Humanizing a popular holiday with AI

source: https://www.armstrongeconomics.com, contributed by FAN, Steve Jones  |  image: armstrongeconomics.com

 

In his submission, Steve writes “This video is rather interesting from the technology point of view as well as how people are viewed from their image.    I think the impact of a first impression , body language, and  eye contact are more important now-a-days than a handshake.    Similarly the smile gesture and body language is just as important as appearance.”

This short video will undoubtedly “wow!” you…and probably make you want to view it at least a couple of times.  It’s AI at its finest and worthy of a look-see!  Click on the image below.  It’ll take you to the source site where the video resides!