Tag: AI

Family in USA finds Amazon’s Alexa has a mind of her own

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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A Portland, Oregon, family has learned what happens when Amazon.com Inc’s  popular voice assistant Alexa is lost in translation.

Amazon on Thursday described an “unlikely… string of events” that made Alexa send an audio recording of the family to one of their contacts randomly. The episode underscored how Alexa can misinterpret conversation as a wake-up call and command.

A local news outlet, KIRO 7, reported that a woman with Amazon devices across her home received a call two weeks ago from her husband’s employee, who said Alexa had recorded the family’s conversation about hardwood floors and sent it to him.

“I felt invaded,” the woman, only identified as Danielle, said in the report. “A total privacy invasion. Immediately I said, ‘I’m never plugging that device in again, because I can’t trust it.'”

Alexa, which comes with Echo speakers and other gadgets, starts recording after it hears its name or another “wake word” selected by users. This means that an utterance quite like Alexa, even from a TV commercial, can activate a device.

That’s what happened in the incident, Amazon said.

“Subsequent conversation was heard as a ‘send message’ request,” the company said in a statement. “At which point, Alexa said out loud ‘To whom?’ At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer’s contact list.”

Amazon added, “We are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.”

Assuring customers of Alexa’s security is crucial to Amazon, which has ambitions for Alexa to be ubiquitous – whether dimming the lights for customers or placing orders for them with the world’s largest online retailer.

University researchers from Berkeley and Georgetown found in a 2016 paper that sounds unintelligible to humans can set off voice assistants in general, which raised concerns of exploitation by attackers. Amazon did not immediately comment on the matter, but it previously told The New York Times that it has taken steps to keep its devices secure.

Millions of Amazon customers have shopped with Alexa. Customers bought tens of millions of Alexa devices last holiday season alone, the company has said.

That makes the incident reported Thursday a rare one. But faulty hearing is not.

“Background noise from our television is making it think we said Alexa,” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said of his personal experience. “It happens all the time.”

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Indian AI startup to assist Dubai Police in maintaining law and order

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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India-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup Staqu on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to assist the Dubai Police with its AI-powered predictive policing technology.

In an attempt at monitoring and reducing the crime rates, Dubai Police intents to integrate AI with its current programmes and database to enable quicker response time in emergency situations with adequate technology that can extract the information and connect with the problem in real-time.

“We are humbled to be selected by Dubai Police in its strive for reducing crimes in the city. We started Staqu three years ago, with the vision of solving real-world problems with the help of AI. We are grateful to the Dubai Police for showing faith in us,” Atul Rai, Co-Founder, and CEO of Staqu said in a statement.

Staqu has a proprietary, advance hybrid AI technology which amalgamates different neural network models to process image speech and text to extract meaningful information that aid in decision-making.

Dubai Police is aiming for a 25 percent reduction in violent crimes by 2021 and it intends on integrating AI with its current programmes and databases, in order to provide analytics and statistics that would support the decision-making process and enabling quicker response time in emergency situations.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

India working on unmanned tanks, vessels, robotic weaponry for future wars

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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In an ambitious defence project, the Indian government has started work on incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the operational preparedness of the armed forces in a significant way that would include equipping them with unmanned tanks, vessels, aerial vehicles and robotic weaponry.

The move is part of a broader policy initiative to prepare the Army, Navy and the Air Force for next generation warfare and comes amid rising Chinese investments in developing critical applications of AI for its military.

Secretary Defence Production Ajay Kumar said the government had decided to introduce AI in all the three forces as it would be a “big area” considering the requirements of future warfare.

He said a high-powered task force headed by Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran was finalising the specifics and framework of the project, which would be implemented in a “partnership model” between the armed forces and the private sector.

“It is India’s preparation for next generation warfare. This (AI) is where the future is going to be. We need to prepare ourselves for the next generation warfare which will be more and more technology driven, more and more automated and robotised,” he told PTI.

Like many other world powers, India had also started work on the application of AI to boost the capabilities of its armed forces, Kumar said, adding that unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned naval vessels, unmanned tanks and automatic robotic rifles as weapon systems will have an extensive use in future wars.

“We need to create capabilities for all these platforms,” he said.

Military sources said the project would also include production of a range of unmanned platforms for the three services.

They said the forces were strongly pushing for extensive applications of AI in their operational preparedness on a par with leading global military powers.

The sources said the application of AI in the surveillance of India’s borders with China and Pakistan could significantly ease the pressure on armed forces personnel guarding the sensitive frontiers.

China has been pouring in billions of dollars into AI research and machine learning. Last year, it unveiled an ambitious plan to make the country the AI innovation centre of the world by 2030.

The US, Britain, France and the European Union are also investing significantly in AI, an area of computer science devoted to the creation of intelligent machines.

The US has been carrying out successful operations targeting terrorist hideouts in Afghanistan and Northwest Pakistan using unmanned drones which operate with the help of artificial intelligence.

“AI is going to be a very big concept in the coming years. Major countries of the world are now working on strategies to see how AI can be used for defence forces. We are also moving ahead. What is unique about this initiative is that we have industry and defence forces working jointly,” Kumar said.

He said the recommendations of the task force were likely to come in by June and then the government would take the project forward.

“India has a fairly strong IT industry base and that is going to be our biggest strength in terms of developing AI capabilities,” said Kumar, who has been playing a key role in pushing forward the project.

Kumar said a framework was being finalised under which industry and defence forces could work together to create a strong base for AI in defence systems.

“We need to work on a partnership model which should be different from a buyer- seller proposition while fully leveraging capabilities of the industry,” he said, adding state-run Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) would be a major player in the project.

Kumar said there was an enormous potential for the use of AI in the civilian sphere as well and the task force was also looking into it.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Traditional sectors aggressively hiring digital talent to meet challenges

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Indian companies operating in traditional sectors are aggressively hiring technology talent.

According to The Economic Times report, firms operating in agriculture, petroleum, pharmaceutical, transportation and legal sectors are doing the aggressive hiring to survive in the competitive market.

As per the report, companies like Mahindra & Mahindra, Vedanta and Cipla have stepped up their efforts to hire those trained in advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT) and robotics.

“As the technology keeps changing at a very fast pace and with new innovations coming up in this arena, it is important for us to be ahead of the curve…thus the pace of hiring of digital talent is greater than that of the overall hiring,” Mahindra & Mahindra’s  Prince Augustin was quoted saying in the report.

As per the report, the demand is set to rise in near future with technology gaining more prominence and transforming into a key factor from its previous role in the background.

The demand is so high that often young and fresh talents are used to fill in the required demands.

“We are able to get younger minds that have high learnability towards changing platforms and algorithms, which result in creative solutions to complex problems…. Fresh graduates with niche specialisations like deep learning and AI for business, etc., are another stream of talent pool,” Augustin was quoted saying.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

AI could smoothen your interactions with mobile service providers

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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If you get frustrated at the very thought of connecting with your mobile service provider for the time it takes to complete an interaction, there is hope. A new Ericsson report on Monday said that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation have the potential to solve such issues with minimal effort.

Currently, it takes customers on average 2.2 attempts and 4.1 days to successfully complete an interaction with their mobile service providers, said the Ericsson “Consumer and IndustryLab” report.

For the study, titled “Zero Touch Customer Experience”, responses from approximately 7,000 online interviews with smartphone users aged 16 years and over across the globe were analysed.

The results showed that consumers expect telecom service providers to match leading digital consumer experiences.

More than half (56%) of the smartphone users expect operators to anticipate their needs even before they realise what they are, it said.

The new zero-touch methods, such as those used in voice-enabled home assistant devices such as Amazon Alexa, can do away with need of typing, clicking and swiping on our devices.

This is setting consumer expectations for interactions with companies, including telecom service providers, the report said.

“The zero-touch customer experience report shows that zero-touch experiences are now an expectation of their customers,” Pernilla Jonsson, Head of Ericsson Consumer and IndustryLab, said in a statement.

Today, smartphone users interact with operators across multiple touch points — from discovering offerings and signing up to services, to requesting support for ending a contract.

Consumers believe telecom service providers treat these touchpoints like they are isolated interactions.

The report highlights that mobile service providers can leapfrog to a zero-touch customer experience future by harnessing the power of AI and analytics.

Enabled by AI, telecom service providers could use data from earlier interactions and consumer behaviour to predict what consumers need before they even contact them for support.

“Telecom service providers could leapfrog one-click and move from multiple-click to zero-touch by deploying future technologies in their customer offerings,” Jonsson said.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

White House hosts AI summit with tech firms

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Top U.S. tech executives and researchers are planning to press the Trump administration to invest in artificial intelligence and craft policies they hope will strengthen the economy without displacing jobs.

The White House is hosting the “Artificial Intelligence for American Industry” event Thursday. Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft are among dozens of tech firms attending. Top universities are also pitching for investment in basic research.

The meeting comes as some technology experts have criticized President Donald Trump and his administration for not paying enough attention to science and technology. They worry that the U.S. could fall behind.

Dean Garfield, CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council, says it’s been disappointing not to have more of a national movement around AI. But he says it’s “better late than never.”

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

How Google aims to simplify your life with AI

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Google put the spotlight on its artificial intelligence smarts at its annual developers conference Tuesday, announcing new consumer features aimed at simplifying your life.

Many of the updates have a practical bent, designed to ease tasks such as composing emails, making lists, navigating city streets and lessening the digital distractions that have increasingly addled people’s lives as a result of previous tech industry innovations.

One of the biggest crowd-pleasers for the thousands of software developers who gathered at the outdoor conference was an augmented reality feature on Google Maps that helps people get walking directions. Users will be able to follow arrows — or possibly a cartoon-like creature — that appear on a camera view showing the actual street in front of them.

Some new features for Android phones also aim to improve people’s digital well-being, including a new “shush” mode that automatically puts a phone in “do not disturb” mode if you flip it face down on a table. And a “wind down” mode will fade the screen to grey at a designated time to help you disconnect before bed.

The company’s digital concierge, known only as the Google Assistant, is getting new voices — including one based on that of musician John Legend — later this year. It will also encourage kids to be polite by thanking them when they say please, similar to a feature Amazon is bringing to its Alexa voice assistant.

The assistant may also soon be talking with ordinary people at businesses for tasks such as restaurant reservations, although the feature is still in development.

“Hi, I’m calling to book a hair appointment for a client,” said a realistic-sounding automated voice in a demo from the conference stage. The AI assistant deployed pauses and “ums” and “mmm-hmms” to sound more human in conversation with real people.

Google said it will roll out the technology, called Duplex, as an experiment in coming weeks. “We really want to work hard to get this right,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who kicked off the conference, known as Google I/O.

Other changes are more immediate. Gmail is getting an autocomplete feature that uses machine learning to offer suggestions for finishing half-completed sentences. For example, “I haven’t seen you” might be autocompleted to “I haven’t seen you in a while and I hope you’re doing well.” You can accept the completion by hitting the tab key.

The Google Photos app aims to get smarter about suggesting who you might want to share photos with. Whenever it recognizes a photo of one of your Google contacts, it can suggest sharing the photo with that person. It will also convert photos to PDFs and automatically add color to black-and-white photos or make part of a color photo black and white. The changes are coming in the next two months.

The search giant aims to make its assistant and other services so useful that people can’t live without them — or the search results that drive its advertising business. But it also wants to play up the social benefits of AI and how it’s being used to improve health care, preserve the environment and make scientific discoveries.

Pichai didn’t emphasize the privacy and data security concerns that have put companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google in the crosshairs of regulators. But he did say the company “can’t just be wide eyed about the innovations technology creates.”

“We know the path ahead needs to be navigated carefully and deliberately,” he said. “Our core mission is to make information more useful, accessible and beneficial to all of society.”

Google’s latest version of its Android phone software, for now known as Android P, will offer other smart features. It will teach the battery to adapt to how you use apps in order to conserve energy. Phones using Android P will also learn how to set your screen brightness by studying your manual adjustments, a change from automatic adjustments based on ambient light levels.

But not everyone will see the new Android features soon — if at all. Android P won’t be released until later this year, and even then, phone manufacturers and carriers frequently limit Android updates to their newest phones. Owners of Google’s own Pixel phones will get the updates most quickly.

Samsung is getting snubbed on some of these new features, at least for now. It has been challenging Google more frequently by launching that services duplicate what Google already offers on Android.

For instance, Samsung users won’t have access to an early “beta” version of Android P. Samsung’s camera app also won’t get a built-in Lens feature that lets Google offer information after taking a photo of a building or sign. Samsung has been developing its own similar feature called Bixby Vision.

It wasn’t immediately clear which company made the call to withhold the features announced Tuesday.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Google showcases AI advances at its big conference

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Google is again putting artificial intelligence in the spotlight at its annual developers conference Tuesday.

The company opened its I/O event with literal bells and whistles at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California — showing off what it’s like to experiment with artificially intelligent synthesizers and inviting thousands of people to participate in an AI drawing game.

The demonstrations warmed up the crowd ahead of a keynote by CEO Sundar Pichai, who made announcements about the company’s latest AI-powered services.

The company is introducing an autocomplete feature in its Gmail email service that uses machine learning to offer suggested ways to finish sentences users start typing. For example, “I haven’t seen you” might be autocompleted to “I haven’t seen you in a while and I hope you’re doing well.” Users can accept the completion by hitting tab.

For its photos service, Google is starting a new service called “Suggested Actions.” If it recognises a photo of someone who is a Google contact, it can suggest sending it to the person. It can also convert photos to PDFs and automatically add colour to black-and-white photos or make part of a colour photo black and white. The changes are coming in the next two months.

The company’s digital concierge, known only as the Google Assistant, is gaining new abilities to handle tasks such as making restaurant reservations without human hand-holding.

Google may also unveil updates to its Android mobile operating system, enable better AI-powered navigation suggestions in Google Maps, and push further into augmented reality technology, which overlays a view of the real world with digital images.

The search giant aims to make its assistant so useful that people can’t live without it — or the search results that drive its advertising business. But it also wants to play up the social benefits of AI, and plans to showcase how it’s being used to improve health care, preserve the environment and make scientific discoveries.

Pichai didn’t emphasise the privacy and data security concerns that have put companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google in the crosshairs of regulators. But he did say company “can’t just be wide eyed about the innovations technology creates.”

“We know the path ahead needs to be navigated carefully and deliberately,” he said. “Our core mission is to make information more useful, accessible and beneficial to all of society.”

The company is also expected to unveil a new app for news that combines elements of its Google Play Newsstand app and YouTube.

It’s too early in the year for Google to showcase any new hardware, which it tends to do ahead of the Christmas shopping season. Last week, however, it said its partner Lenovo will sell a $400 stand-alone virtual reality headset that doesn’t require inserting a smartphone. (Facebook last week announced a competing $199 device called the Oculus Go.)

Google also last week updated actions that its assistant can perform on smartwatches powered by its Wear OS software. For instance, it can tell you about your day if you’re wearing headphones instead of making you read your calendar.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Artificial Intelligence will create an ‘immortal dictator’ to wipe out humans, says Musk

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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If not regulated or controlled soon, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will become an “immortal dictator” and there will be no escape for humans, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has warned.

In a new documentary on AI, Musk said: “At least when there’s an evil dictator, that human is going to die. But for an AI there would be no death. It would live forever, and then you’d have an immortal dictator, from which we could never escape”.

“If AI has a goal and humanity just happens to be in the way, it will destroy humanity as a matter of course without even thinking about it. No hard feelings,” Musk told Chris Paine, the director of the new documentary titled “Do You Trust This Computer?”

Paine had earlier interviewed Musk for the documentary titled “Who Killed The Electric Car?”).

Musk has always been a critic of AI and asked for stiff regulations to curb the technology.

In a recent tweet, Musk said that people should be more concerned with AI than the risk posed by North Korea.

“If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea,” Musk tweeted.

Musk has also quit the board of OpenAI, a non-profit AI research company he co-founded that aims to promote and develop friendly AI that benefits the humanity.

In 2014, Musk said AI was humanity’s biggest existential threat later adding that the United Nations needed to act to prevent a killer robot arms race.

Musk has been speaking frequently on AI and has called its progress the “biggest risk we face as a civilisation”.

“AI is a rare case where we need to be proactive in regulation instead of reactive because if we’re reactive in AI regulation it’s too late,” he said.

In a recent verbal spat with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who is a big advocate for the AI technology, Musk said: “I’ve talked to Mark about this (AI). His understanding of the subject is limited”.

Zuckerberg replied: “I think people who are naysayers and try to drum up these doomsday scenarios — I just, I don’t understand it. It’s really negative and in some ways I actually think it is pretty irresponsible”

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow