In the News
Humans keep directing abuse — even racism — at robots
People treat white robots better than black robots, a recent study found. That raises the question: Is it unethical to abuse a robot? Some researchers have been wrestling with that — and figuring out ways to make us empathize more with robots.
Sponsor
The CCPA Compliance Resource Kit – Prepare Now for the January 2020 Deadline!
Learn how CCPA is different from GDPR and how to prepare with data handling best practices. Resource kit Includes new report from 451 Research, expert tips on protecting sensitive customer data, and details on key CCPA data privacy provisions. Now is the time to prepare for the January 2020 deadline! Get your CCPA Compliance Resource Kit!
In The News
Good for Google, Bad for America
It is finally becoming clear that, as with nuclear fission before it, the first users of the machine learning tools being created today will be generals rather than board game strategists.
Artificial intelligence can entrench disparities—here’s what we must do
As big data comes to cancer care, how can we ensure that it is addressing issues of equity, and that these new technologies will not further entrench disparities in cancer?
Applied use cases
Revealed: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls
Contractors working for Microsoft are listening to personal conversations of Skype users conducted through the app's translation service, according to a cache of internal documents, screenshots, and audio recordings obtained by Motherboard.
Artificial Intelligence & Human Rights: A Workshop at Data & Society
This blogpost was co-authored by Mark Latonero, PhD, Data & Society Research Lead, Data & Human Rights and Melanie Penagos, Data & Society Research Analyst, Data & Human Rights.
Ethics
Why do emerging AI guidelines emphasize “ethics” over human rights?
It’s clear that regulating the development of such disruptive technology must start now, and many initiatives are already emerging within companies and civil society to guide the “ethical” development and use of AI.
USF Launches New Center of Applied Data Ethics
In response to these risks and harms, I am helping to launch a new Center for Applied Data Ethics (CADE), housed within the University of San Francisco’s Data Institute to address issues surrounding the misuse of data through education, research, public policy and civil advocacy.
[Toronto] AI Ethics: State of AI Ethics
University of Toronto is hosting the Montreal AI Ethics Institute and the local AI ethics community at their offices.
Robotics
Watch China’s New Hybrid AI Chip Power an Autonomous Bike
Underneath its simplicity, however, is a hybrid computer chip that combines brain-inspired circuits with machine learning processes into a computing behemoth.
Introducing the Global Robotics AI Lab (GRAIL)
The Mindfire Foundation is thrilled to announce both the launch of our new website and the Global Robotics AI Lab (GRAIL).
Robot Operating System (ROS) & Gazebo, with Brian Gerkey
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Brian Gerkey, CEO of Open Robotics about ROS and Gazebo. ROS and Gazebo are both open source and are widely used in the robotics community.
Research
Bayesian Deep Learning
It will be composed of five main themes: deep generative models, variational inference using neural network recognition models, practical approximate inference techniques in Bayesian neural networks, applications of Bayesian neural networks, and information theory in deep learning.
Learning Day
Woj wrote the following guidelines for the Robotics team, but we’ve adapted these principles across each team that has adopted Learning Day.
Advances in Conversational AI
New open source data sets, algorithms, and models that improve five common weaknesses of open-domain chatbots today: consistency, specificity, empathy, knowledgeability, and multimodal understanding.