Adi Gaskell | The Blog Pros

January 27, 2020

Do We Really Want Passengers In Autonomous Vehicles Playing Games?

...Is this a good idea?

The last year or so has seen a growing number of studies exploring the various issues around the attention of passengers in driverless vehicles. The concern is that should the passenger have to regain control, that they will be unable of doing so safely.

Adding growing means of distraction may not seem the most sensible suggestion, therefore, but that's what research from the University of Waterloo proposes via a new system that would allow multiplayer games to be played between occupants of autonomous vehicles.

December 26, 2019

How AI Can Help Us Predict Whether Antidepressants Will Work

How AI Can Help Us Predict Whether Antidepressants Will Work

One of the more peculiar aspects of psychiatry is why antidepressants only appear to help some people and others not all. Indeed, it’s not entirely known why they help those who do appear to benefit, but a couple of studies from the University of Texas Southwestern aims to recruit the help of AI to find out.

Both studies aimed to explore the brain activity of volunteers during various emotional states, with the participants generally split between a healthy control group and people suffering from depression who were either given a placebo or antidepressants.

December 24, 2019

The Search for AI Talent Is Being Hampered by Visa Processes

The Search for AI Talent

I wrote recently about the challenges small businesses face in recruiting the engineering talent they require to build the kind of high-tech ventures that will advance society. Complex and expensive visa processes often mean that the best talent goes to larger organizations that can support them through the immigration maze.

It’s a scenario that new research from Georgetown University finds replicated in the battle for AI talent. The report highlights how restrictive immigration policies are hampering the ability of American firms to recruit and retain the kind of AI talent they need.

December 19, 2019

The Next Generation of AI-Driven Fact Checkers

As the volume of misinformation continues to rise, the ability to fact check what we consume is more important than ever. A couple of papers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory highlight the latest developments in the field.

The first paper showcased the limitations of many of the fake news detectors on the market today, both in terms of detecting falsely generated text, but also in falsely condemning human authored works as fake.

December 13, 2019

The Next Evolution in Artificial Learning

The Next Evolution in Artificial Learning

The seemingly inevitable march towards machines generating human-like intelligence has been a staple of science fiction for a generation, but it remains something that is a dot on the horizon. A new paper from Michigan State University reminds us of the work that still needs to be done, whilst also proposing a way for machine intelligence to evolve as natural organisms have.

“We know that all organisms are capable of some form of learning, we just weren’t sure how those abilities first evolved. Now we can watch these major evolutionary events unfold before us in a virtual world,” the authors explain. “Understanding how learning behavior evolved helps us figure out how it works and provides insights into other fields such as neuroscience, education, psychology, animal behavior, and even AI. It also supplies clues to how our brains work and could even lead to robots that learn from experiences as effectively as humans do.”

October 21, 2019

The Questions That Reveal How Machines Think

How do machines think?

The Turing Test famously aims to test the abilities of artificial intelligence by tasking humans with uncovering when they’re talking to a person and when they’re talking to a machine. It tests the ability of AI to understand human language sufficiently to be able to hold natural seeming conversations.

As anyone who has tried to have a conversation with an AI-powered chatbot or virtual assistant can attest, there remains some way to go before technology can master this most human of abilities. New research from the University of Maryland aims to help AI progress by identifying some 1,200 questions that, while pretty easy for humans to answer, have traditionally stumped the best technology available today.

September 30, 2019

Do People Empathize With Robots When They Walk in Their Shoes?

Walking in robots' shoes

As we engage more closely with robots and other automated technology, the ability to work effectively together is key. Central to this is likely to be the ability to understand one another, and a recent study from the University of Trento invokes the age-old maxim that true understanding comes when you walk a mile in someone’s shoes.

You may also like: Working Next to Robots

The research explored whether ‘beaming’ a human inside a robot, it affects the overall attitude of that person towards the robot. Interestingly, that is precisely what appeared to happen, with participants appearing to better identify with the robot they had been ‘beamed’ inside of.

September 23, 2019

How AI Can Spot Fake Smiles

Do you think this adorable dog is fake smiling?

There are supposedly several telltale signs that someone is faking a smile, such as the lack of wrinkles around the eyes. Yet spotting one in the heat of the moment is somewhat easier said than done. A new study from the University of Bradford set out to see if AI could do a better job.

The software developed by the team analyzed a range of photos and videos to spot the movement of the smile across each person’s face in order to detect whether it was genuine or not. As the experts suggest, the software thought the most significant movements were around the eyes.

September 5, 2019

Is the Business World Really Serious About Upskilling?

We live in peculiar times whereby organizations frequently grumble about skills shortages, individuals struggle to adapt to the changing needs of the labor market, and policymakers fret about people being left behind by the pace of technological change. It’s an environment in which one would imagine investment in upskilling would be booming, and yet with employee tenure slumping, the opposite appears to be the case, especially for small to medium-size enterprises (SME) that make up the bulk of the workforce.

A blank page to sharpen new skills.

A recent from Adecco set out to get a better understanding of the skills landscape and explore how society can get better at helping people to get the skills they need to thrive, especially if they work in the SME sector.

August 30, 2019

Using AI to Advance Science

AI could be cooking in 2019

On a recent trip to Accenture’s Dock facility in Dublin, they showcased an AI-based tool to recommend new recipes after having crunched through thousands of existing recipes to come up with potential new flavors. Though the work is interesting, perhaps such an approach is far more interesting when applied to innovation itself.

A growing proportion of innovation today is what’s known as recombinative, and sees existing ideas and concepts applied in fresh and creative ways. Researchers are increasingly deploying AI-based tools to help devise some of these possible roads to explore.

August 29, 2019

Smart Glass and the Future of Artificial Vision

Smart glass is being for facial recognition on cell phones.

Facial recognition technology is advancing at a tremendous pace, with the glass that is literally the face of modern systems at the heart of this progression. A recently published paper from the University of Wisconsin-Madison highlights the progress being made in the field, with their ‘smart’ glass able to recognize images without requiring either sensors or a power source.

“We’re using optics to condense the normal setup of cameras, sensors and deep neural networks into a single piece of thin glass,” the researchers explain.

August 26, 2019

The Vegebot That Can Harvest Lettuce

On the surface, agriculture doesn’t appear the most tech-savvy of industries, yet it is one in which considerable innovation is unfolding. Nowhere is this more so than in the advance of robotics that are able to perform a wide range of tasks involved in managing, harvesting and growing crops.

The latest example comes from a recent study from the University of Cambridge, in which a VegeBot device is highlighted that can successfully recognize and harvest iceberg lettuce using machine learning.

August 23, 2019

Using AI to Provide Better Screening for Alzheimer’s

It’s estimated that 44 million people around the world are living with some form of Alzheimer’s or dementia, but despite the tremendous implications of the disease, just 16% undergo regular cognitive assessments.

Assessment and screening tools are widespread, but concerns around their reliability exist. Even online tools such as MemTrax have issues, with the complexity of the condition presenting a considerable challenge for accurate diagnoses.

August 16, 2019

Using AI and Street View to Manage Road Infrastructure

Predictive maintenance is an increasingly common sight in industrial facilities around the world, but the ability for AI to detect when machinery is about to fail relies upon a steady stream of data. One would imagine the data provided by Google Street View might not be up to the job therefore, but new research from RMIT suggests otherwise.

The authors propose using data from Google Street View to spot when road furniture needs replacing. The authors highlight the often manual and laborious task of monitoring street furniture and traffic infrastructure.

August 16, 2019

The Cognitive Diversity That Makes for the Best Teams

The optimum construction of teams is something that has vexed managers for many years, and whilst many studies have been undertaken to look into matters, it’s perhaps fair to say that no real conclusion has been arrived at. A new study from Carnegie Mellon doesn’t provide this conclusion either but it is no less interesting for that.

The research explores the kind of cognitive mix that the authors believe delivers the best results for the team. They argue that just the right amount of diversity is required to secure the benefits of different opinions whilst retaining the homogeneity required to have a cohesive unit.

August 13, 2019

New Guide for Using AI in the Public Sector

Recently, Liberal Democrat leadership hopeful Jo Swinson urged parliament to ensure that any development of AI is done with ethics front and center. A new guide for the UK government has been created to help ensure that AI deployments in the public sector do follow such a path.

The guidance was created by the Office for Artificial Intelligence (OAI) and the Government Digital Service (GDS), with contributions from the likes of The Alan Turing Institute.