Tech & Science

Navigating the AI Hype

Scott Bennet

Published

December 19, 2018

Welcome to Navigating the AI Hype. This will be a timely article that curates events in AI to tabulate AI’s journey as this unprecedented phenomenon makes its way into our lives: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. We will acknowledge successes in AI as well as those that still require further progress. We will also highlight areas where human conscience will need to dictate policy and regulation as ethical standards will be built in lockstep with technology as it evolves. Finally, we will highlight references and resources for anyone wanting to dive in further into Artificial Intelligence. Enjoy!

The Good:

Smart farming: How IoT, robotics, and AI are tackling one of the biggest problems of the century

“The world’s human population currently stands at around 7.6 billion and is projected to reach 11.2 billion by 2100. We will therefore need a food production and distribution system that can accommodate another 3.6 billion people” What is precision agriculture? How will it contribute to sustainable systems?

The Amazing Ways How Unilever Uses Artificial Intelligence To Recruit & Train Thousands Of Employees

Will slowly removing the human component negate the effectiveness in function that relies on experience and intuition from face-to-face interaction?

Read more.

Google Hits Pause On Selling Facial Recognition Tech Over Abuse Fears

Perhaps the will of the employees are making Google rethink how they deploy technologies.

Microsoft’s facial recognition service now less bad for nonwhites.

Microsoft is realizing, after earlier failed attempts, the importance of perfecting the tech to mitigate individual harms.

The Bad:

Surveillance fears grow after Taylor Swift uses face recognition tech on fans

Where there is a threat to personal safety, will putting surveillance technology in the hands of the individual become a trend? More importantly, how will this play into growing privacy fears?

Facebook has filed patents to predict our future locations

How to perpetuate an a mobile ad model: “Facebook has a related patent application for “Predicting Locations and Movements of Users Based on Historical Locations for Users of an Online System” that details how location data from multiple people would be used to suss out location and movement trends and to model location chains” .

Central Londoners to be subjected to facial recognition test this week

Has Microsoft’s (the Good) Facial recognition technology been effective in this test? More importantly, how is the public perception on surveillance technology?

The Ugly:

Amazon ‘technical error’ exposes undisclosed number of customer names and emails

Amazon isn’t saying how many customers had their names and email addresses exposed due to a data leak caused by an unexplained technical error.

North Texas Hospital Data Breach Exposes Patient Payment Info

Upon investigation, the hospital found that the exposed information may have been accessed between Sept. 22-29, but that there was no evidence that the information was disclosed or used by bad actors.