WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

WHY IT MATTERS: cameras are everywhere - phones, streets, home, office - and AI enables new capabilities that can present massive surveillance possibilities as well as personal protection and real-time data. This very well done video - as is the case with most VOX videos - should give you a good rundown of the plus and minuses...

WHY IT MATTERS: face recognition using AI has been around for a few years. It used to require large computers in the cloud. Not anymore. This changes everything.

1) privacy: it will become more and more difficult to protect your privacy in the future. I have written about this before, specifically when the Google glasses came out 3 years ago. It is a concept that is interpreted differently in countries and cultures - such as China vs USA.

2) China: is investing heavily to win the AI war with the US. So we should expect every product - from glasses to door bells to cell phones to cars - to have face recognition built into the device in the very near future. At the CES2018 show, I saw a number of companies that offer face recognition chips ready to be embedded at low price into any consumer device. So it *will* happen. More on China in a later post...

3) protection: people will naturally want to protect themselves. We should start to see face masks that are designed to fool face recognition hardware as has been shown to be possible recently.

More reading:

- google glasses face recognition: http://fmcs.digital/blog/kodak-cameras-banned-in-the-1880s-over-loss-of/ 

- CES security cameras: http://plus.lapresse.ca/screens/9ee3fba2-dd87-42c4-ae7c-b2478b752ec3%7C_0.html (in french)

- fooling face recognition: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ne43pz/ai-fooling-glasses-could-be-good-enough-to-trick-facial-recognition-at-airports 

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

The video is short and provides very good explanation of how the AI can pass the University entrance exam without understanding a thing. Nevertheless, I find this amazing because once AI learns something, or acquires a skill, *every* other AI can benefit from it. As opposed to humans who *individually* have to learn new things for themselves. Thus, we can expect AI to learn at an exponential rate and become truly "intelligent" very rapidly. This example should be a wake up call for all of us.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

The ultimate test for a machine to determine if it is human is the Turing test where a computer can hold a conversation and you cannot tell whether it is a human or a machine behind the screen. These apps are bringing us closer to that possibility...

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Fake news is difficult to debunk because we are trained to believe what we read has been vetted and checked for validity. Images and videos are even worse because, until now, it was difficult to alter them in any meaningful way. Technologies like this may change that forever. Watch out for elections 202 in the USA.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Humans may not be so smart after all if it takes a few simple neural nets to start to create new languages and communicate. The article is just a teaser, if you want to know more you have to go the the Facebook research group blog to read the full thing.

https://research.fb.com/category/facebook-ai-research-fair/

https://code.facebook.com/posts/1686672014972296/deal-or-no-deal-training-ai-bots-to-negotiate/

https://code.facebook.com/posts/266433647155520/parlai-a-new-software-platform-for-dialog-research/

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

This is an annual bag of goodies.

Highlight #1: retail stores are closing at record pace while Amazon opens stores. This is such a huge trend because it transforms stores from a mini-warehouse into something else: a destination for experience, service, and training. Think Apple store with the highest sales per square foot, genius bar, classes and a showroom. Amazon has pushed its Amazon GO, no lines, no registers concept and it is rolling it out slowly. This is just the beginning...

Perfect Sunday morning reading which is guaranteed to make you reflect and ponder for the next weeks. The article is a typical New Yorker one, very well researched and written. So captivating that it got me to start reading the book which appears to be as captivating and surprisingly easy to read and understand. I love those finds and have the feeling this book will be the best complement to "Singularity is Near" and "On Intelligence" that I wrote about in the past.

- book "singularity is near": http://fmcs.digital/blog/singularity-is-near-an-essential-read-to-understand-why-technology-evolves-so-fast/ 

- book "on intelligence": http://fmcs.digital/blog/on-intelligence-mustread-to-understand-frontal-cortex-architecture-what-makes-us-intelligent/ 

- article "Why the future does not need us": http://fmcs.digital/blog/why-the-future-doesnt-need-us-a-reminder-that-ai-may-have-a-bad-side-via-wired/ 

- related posts: http://www.scoop.it/t/digital-transformation-of-businesses/?tag=Singularity+is+Near 

AI and Big Data are being applied to identity verification by a startup that has received 25M in funding and is poaching employees from Google.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

AI and other techniques will provide enhance capabilities to deter theft and privacy violations. They will become essential tools in digital transformation of businesses. For example, UBER is using Onfido to verify that people are who they claim they are, thus making their service better able to curb credit card theft, and protect drivers by ensuring their passengers can be tracked is they behave inappropriately.