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Understanding the Threat of Artificial Intelligence

Posted on April 18, 2018 by admin Posted in Programming Leave a comment

What it is: Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, constantly warns people about the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Many people see artificial intelligence as nothing more than positive progress. That’s why you see so much research occurring in the self-driving car market but artificial intelligence has long been around in other forms as well. Every time you buy a product on Amazon, Amazon’s algorithms analyze your purchase and the purchases of people buying similar products. Then Amazon can offer you other products you might be interested in. This not only increases sales, but also makes Amazon’s algorithm smarter for the next user.

Banks and credit card companies have been using artificial intelligence for years to track down credit card fraud. Email accounts use spam filters to keep you from getting overwhelmed by junk email. Casinos use facial recognition algorithms to look for professional gambrels who aren’t allowed to gamble any more. Artificial intelligence has been infiltrating every aspect of our lives to the point where getting rid of it is not practical.

The huge problem with artificial intelligence is that when we allow programs to adapt and learn on their own, humans no longer fully understand how the program works any more. As artificial intelligence grows in sophistication, it’s likely to start controlling our lives in unintended ways, which likely won’t be for the betterment of the human race. Instead of deliberately attacking people like fictional artificial intelligence computers and robots might do, real artificial intelligence can simply allow humanity to wither away through sheer neglect. Either way means it’s bad result for people.

Think of the bias already inherent in police reporting. In poor neighborhoods, police report more crimes because they record those crimes. In rich neighborhoods, police are less likely to report crimes perpetrated by rich people. So the end result is that the data skewers towards more crime in poor areas and less crime in rich areas, which can convince a program to pour more resources into poor areas to combat crime through increasingly draconian measures.

Computers simply do what they’re programmed to do, but if they can start modifying their own behavior, nobody knows how they’ll behave any more. The more we give up control to artificial intelligence, the less control we’ll have over our own destiny. That doesn’t necessarily mean the extinction of the human race, but it does mean we’ll be dependent on something we no longer control or understand.

Artificial intelligence will only get better over time. Whether it can ever get smart enough to equal human intelligence is another question, but if it does, then it will likely surpass human intelligence as well. If that happens, what will people do with computers that are smarter than they are and that nobody knows how to control?

Questions like thees are the reason why Elon Musk is concerned about the future of artificial intelligence because without controls put in place ahead of time, or even thinking about safety, artificial intelligence will likely charge ahead without any safety measures put in place at all. Thinking safety last is a prescription for disaster.

To learn more about the dangers of artificial intelligence and why we should be more concerned than we are, read “Our Final Invention,” a book Elon Musk recommends everyone read. When you realize computer scientists are charging ahead building artificial intelligence without thinking about safety issues first, you realize that everyone’s safety will be in jeopardy in the long run.

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China’s Amazing Facial Recognition Technology

Posted on April 13, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware Leave a comment

What it is: China has the world’s most advanced facial recognition technology that recently caught a suspect in a crowded concert.

How do you catch a criminal in a country as crowded as China? The Chinese government’s answer is to use facial recognition technology, which is now considered the best in the world. Recently the Chinese facial recognition technology spotted a suspect in a crowded concert of 60,000 people. Police arrested the suspect, who’s surprised that the police could locate him within the crowded concert venue.

For fighting crime, facial recognition technology can be like having millions of witnesses constantly scanning for particular suspects. The big danger is what the government decides might be a crime. Free speech? Trying to expose corruption in the government? Struggling to bring about equality and fairness? Governments can decide what’s a crime and root out troublemakers anywhere they might go in public. That essentially turns China into a massive police state.

To catch criminals is fine. Now the only question is what will China consider to be “criminals”?

Imagine how any dictator could use facial recognition technology to maintain power by tracking down and eliminating political rivals. China is not using facial recognition just to find petty criminals. They’re planning to use it to keep the population in line. While China is much freer than in the past where people can live and say whatever they wish, they cannot protest against their own government without incurring the wrath of that government. As long as the Chinese government is benevolent, everyone will be happy, but what might happen if the Chinese government suddenly turns into a harsh dictatorship?

If China’s facial recognition technology can spot a suspect in a crowd of 60,000 people, it can easily spot anyone who dares show their face in public just once. Facial recognition technology can bee used for good, but like any tool, it can also be used for evil purposes. The future has nothing to do with technology. It has everything to do with human behavior and given the history of human behavior, expect facial recognition technology to make people more oppressed than ever before.

What Happened to Siri?

Posted on March 14, 2018 by admin Posted in Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Apple was the first to introduce a voice assistant named Siri, but lately, Siri seems to have fallen behind rivals like Alexa.

Siri introduced the world to the first voice assistant that could understand spoken language and respond intelligently to it. With such a huge lead, how did Amazon’s Alexa seem to catch up and surpass Siri? The answer seems to lie with Apple’s lack of focus on Siri’s direction.

Just being first is no guarantee of maintaining that lead if you don’t know where to go. Microsoft was actually first with a tablet and smart watch, yet today their tablet efforts simply revolve around cramming Windows into a tablet form and their Microsoft Band wearable computer is officially dead. So being first means nothing if you don’t know where to go from there.

That seems to be the case with Siri. Siri has focused on understanding more languages than rival voice assistants, but that’s about it’s only advantage. Siri seems less capable of understanding and responding to spoken commands. That means Siri’s reputation has gone from the first innovative leader to a has-been in just a few years.

What appeared to hurt Siri was the lack of direction and cooperation between Siri’s team and the rest of Apple. Siri’s team apparently didn’t even learn about HomePod until 2015, which is why Siri on HomePod feels like a bolted on, less capable product than Amazon’s Alexa. Siri’s team also seemed to lack a direction to pursue and instead fumbled their lead to Alexa. If you feel that Siri isn’t as capable as its rivals, you’re not alone.

Here’s the real question. What do most people want from a voice assistant? Most likely it’s to understand simple, yet sophisticated commands as if talking to a person such as asking about the weather or the latest news. Voice assistants must constantly adapt to user demands and that means getting more natural language understanding. After all, there’s noting more frustrating than asking Siri a a question only for Siri to respond with a canned reply that shows Siri doesn’t understand basic language.

There’s still hope for Siri to catch up to Alexa. If Alexa could catch up to Siri, Siri can catch up to Alexa. The problem is that Siri’s reputation is now stained. The surest way Siri can succeed now is if its rivals stumble dramatically. Failing that, the best way for Siri to succeed is through gradual improvement that brings Siri equal and eventually past its rivals. That’s a long way to go but Apple needs to dig themselves out of this hole they created for themselves by neglecting Siri’s development.

Siri is proof that Apple can’t always succeed at everything. Apple is getting so big that the company is starting to fracture from the lack of coherent leadership. Apple is so large that even someone like Steve Jobs would likely have trouble keeping everything focused at once.

To read about Siri’s troubles, click here.

Alexa’s Strange Laughing Fits

Posted on March 8, 2018 by admin Posted in Programming, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Amazon’s Alexa devices apparently randomly laugh without any audio trigger.

Owners of Amazon’s Alexa devices have reported that the device seems to laugh for no apparent reason. Amazon said the problem comes from Alexa mistaking outside sounds for the command, “Alexa, laugh.” To fix this problem, Amazon reprogrammed Alexa to laugh only when prompted by the command, “Alexa, can you laugh?” Then Alexa will respond, “Sure, I can laugh,” followed by the actual laughter itself.

Why this command to laugh even exists is the real question. Recognizing voice commands is fine, but recognizing a trivial command to laugh seems rather pointless. Are people really going to talk to Alexa and ask it to laugh? This might be amusing initially but chances are good it’s not a command most people will ever use again, if they even use it in the first place. Voice commands should be used to focus on common questions first and trivial tasks much later, if ever.

More importantly, Alexa needs to learn to recognize different languages to broaden its appeal to more people. What might be more useful for voice assistants is language training. Part of learning to speak another language is the fear of looking stupid when interacting with native speakers. With voice assistants, you could learn French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, or any other language safely by practicing with a voice assistant until you get the pronunciation correct. Then the voice assistant could respond and you could gradually build up your confidence in a safe environment.

Right now, Alexa supports English and German. Yet many people in America speak Spanish, and people in other parts of the world don’t speak English or German, essentially blocking Alexa from those markets altogether. Voice assistants need to learn other languages and become better at responding to ordinary language. Voice assistants don’t need trivial responses to make it laugh.

Voice assistants are the future. At one time, voice recognition required that individuals train the computer to recognize their own voice by repeating several phrases. Nowadays, voice assistants can recognize anyone’s voice without any training whatsoever. The next step for voice recognition is to respond intelligently, and that means ignoring trivial responses like laughing when given a command to do so.

Amazon needs to focus on supporting more languages and making Alexa respond more realistically to all types of voice commands. The last thing Alexa needs is to respond to silly questions that aren’t useful one bit.

The Future of Cortana

Posted on January 10, 2018 by admin Posted in Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Microsoft made an agreement with Amazon to allow Cortana and Alexa to work together, but it’s in Alexa’s favor.

The world of voice-activated assistants is going to consolidate soon. Siri started the trend and Google responded with Google Assistant. Microsoft responded with Cortana and Amazon responded with Alexa. While Siri dominates on iOS and macOS and Google Assistant dominates on Android, Alexa is taking over the home speaker market while Microsoft is pushing Cortana on Windows PCs.

The problem is that PC manufacturers are starting to include Alexa on their computers. If this trend continues, then Alexa could take over the PC market and push Cortana out. After all, without Windows PCs, where else can Cortana dominate other than in the Xbox market?

Both Siri and Google Assistant live on mobile computers along with wearable computers. Siri also lives on the Macintosh so although Siri isn’t the clear leader any more, it’s still got enough of a presence to survive. The world doesn’t need so many voice-activated assistants (Samsung’s Bixby has an even more dismal uphill climb than Cortana), which means some will likely fall by the wayside and the first one to fall looks like Cortana.

The biggest strength of Siri is its dominance on Apple products and its multi-language capabilities, which far surpasses any other voice assistant. The biggest strength of Alexa is its dominance on inexpensive home speakers, but Alexa lacks a mobile and wearable computer platform. Google Assistant will be around on mobile and wearable devices, but has no home on any computer.

So expect voice assistants to keep getting smarter in different ways. Siri will continue to be the multi-language leader while Google Assistant and Alexa will likely be better at answering questions. Alexa and Cortana are in the weakest position. Cortana can’t migrate to the home speaker market but Alexa can migrate to the Windows PC market. The market will likely divide itself between Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa.

The fact that Cortana is in a weak position compared to its rivals simply reflects the much diminished influence Microsoft now exerts over the computer industry. In the old days, anything Microsoft did was enough to disrupt markets. Now Microsoft can create something as good as Cortana and the rest of the world barely notices.

Microsoft won’t go anywhere but they’ll never regain their former dominance. The future isn’t Microsoft but Apple, Google, and Amazon. In the future, expect these three companies to dominate in everything from smart homes to self-driving cars. Perhaps a new company may one day take over these one of these three companies eventually, but until that day comes, don’t expect anyone else to challenge these three companies any time soon, and that includes Microsoft.

The Smart Toothbrush

Posted on January 9, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Kolibree has introduced the Magik Toothbrush, which uses augmented reality to help children brush their teeth.

A toothbrush is essentially a tool but it’s not a very smart one. It has no idea if you’re using it properly and doesn’t provide any help in tracking your habits to see if you’re brushing all your teeth properly. That’s going to change with Kolibree’s Magik Toothbrush, designed for children but with technology hat can be applied to adults as well.

The idea behind the Magik Toothbrush is that you pair it with an iPhone or iPad. While you brush, the augmented reality app lets you see where you’ve brushed and what areas you’ve missed so far. By viewing this app, children can see what areas they need to clean next.

The app also sends data to the parents that lets them know how long their child brushed so they can modify the app to guide the child further into cleaning all areas properly. Just when you thought augmented reality and smart devices were only limited to cars or appliances, now machine intelligence is coming to your toothbrush as well.

The future of augmented reality is coming faster than you might think, and a smart toothbrush is just the beginning. With wearable computers combined with augmented reality, we’ll soon be able to capture more health-related data than ever before. Of course, the key is learning to act on that data afterwards.