The Next Web: CIA plans to replace spies with AI. “Human spies will soon be relics of the past, and the CIA knows it. Dawn Meyerriecks, the Agency’s deputy director for technology development, recently told an audience at an intelligence conference in Florida the CIA was adapting to a new landscape where its primary adversary is a machine, not a foreign agent.”
AI
Kottke: Your personality, according to IBM Watson
Kottke: Your personality, according to IBM Watson. “Watson is IBM’s AI platform. This afternoon I tried out IBM Watson’s Personality Insights Demo. The service ‘derives insights about personality characteristics from social media, enterprise data, or other digital communications’. Watson looked at my Twitter account and painted a personality portrait of me…” I tried this twice. The first time Watson said I was less likely to like hip-hop (I do) and the second time it said I was less likely to like country music (I do.) A little afraid to see which music I’m less likely to like the third time…
Neowin: Microsoft Translator now includes AI-powered translations for offline users as well
Neowin: Microsoft Translator now includes AI-powered translations for offline users as well . “Just last month, Microsoft added six new text-to-speech languages to its Translator app for Android. Today, in a major announcement, the company has revealed that its Translator app for Android, iOS, and Amazon Fire now includes a new capability that allows end-users and third-party app developers to download free AI-powered offline translation packs. In addition, Android developers will now be able to integrate online and offline AI text translations into their apps by making use of the new Translator Local Feature preview with ease.”
Help Net Security: Researchers develop algorithm to detect fake users on social networks
Help Net Security: Researchers develop algorithm to detect fake users on social networks. “Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and University of Washington researchers have developed a new generic method to detect fake accounts on most types of social networks, including Facebook and Twitter.”
New Atlas: Better-performing mapping system searches the streets
New Atlas: Better-performing mapping system searches the streets. “When it comes to making city maps based on aerial photos, manually tracing all the roads can be quite the hassle. As a result, we’re now seeing computer programs that do so automatically. Scientists at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a program of their own, that is promised to be even better at the job.”
TechCrunch: Want to fool a computer vision system? Just tweak some colors
TechCrunch: Want to fool a computer vision system? Just tweak some colors . “Research into machine learning and the interesting AI models created as a consequence are popular topics these days. But there’s a sort of shadow world of scientists working to undermine these systems — not to show they’re worthless but to shore up their weaknesses. A new paper demonstrates this by showing how vulnerable image recognition models are to the simplest color manipulations of the pictures they’re meant to identify.”
BuzzFeed: How To Spot A Deepfake Like The Barack Obama–Jordan Peele Video
BuzzFeed: How To Spot A Deepfake Like The Barack Obama–Jordan Peele Video. “Don’t be embarrassed if you were fooled, even if only briefly. Technology to trick our eyes and ears is advancing rapidly. Teams in Germany are working on Face2Face, the type of face- and voice-swapping technology used to create the video above. Software giant Adobe is creating a “Photoshop for audio” that makes it easy to edit and manipulate what someone has said, as is a Montreal startup called Lyrebird. After you’ve selectively edited someone’s words, you could take that audio and use tech developed at the University of Washington to generate a video of the very same person speaking those words, just to make it fully convincing.”
