Google Drones Down, Loon Balloons Up
January 16, 2017
I read “Alphabet Grounds Titan Solar-Powered Drones, Shifts to Project Loon Instead.” Whatever is going on at Google seems to make life tough for those involved in high school science projects. Bummer. Drones down. Balloons still aloft.
The write up explains:
One of X’s most hopeful initiatives involves providing universal internet access via sky-based wireless routers. One of them, Project Loon, uses high-altitude balloons to loft the routers in the air, and that project is still on track. Another, dubbed Titan and using fixed-wing solar-powered drones, isn’t so lucky…
I learned:
Titan made high-altitude, solar-powered drones that can stay in the air for extended periods of time and could likely serve a variety of purposes for Alphabet. The idea at the time seemed to be to combine the Titan drones with Project Loon balloons to provide internet access to underserved areas of the globe, but it appears that idea has been abandoned.
Alphabet Google needs to find a way to deal with the Alexafication of search. Ad revenue could be the next thing coming down. Will Loon balloons keep the company’s Yahoo-inspired online ad contraption aloft?
Stephen E Arnold, January 16, 2017
Palantir Technologies: Less War with Gotham?
November 9, 2016
I read “Peter Thiel Explains Why His Company’s Defense Contracts Could Lead to Less War.” I noted that the write up appeared in the Washington Post, a favorite of Jeff Bezos I believe. The write up referenced a refrain which I have heard before:
Washington “insiders” currently leading the government have “squandered” money, time and human lives on international conflicts.
What I highlighted as an interesting passage was this one:
a spokesman for Thiel explained that the technology allows the military to have a more targeted response to threats, which could render unnecessary the wide-scale conflicts that Thiel sharply criticized.
I also put a star by this statement from the write up:
“If we can pinpoint real security threats, we can defend ourselves without resorting to the crude tactic of invading other countries,” Thiel said in a statement sent to The Post.
The write up pointed out that Palantir booked about $350 million in business between 2007 and 2016 and added:
The total value of the contracts awarded to Palantir is actually higher. Many contracts are paid in a series of installments as work is completed or funds are allocated, meaning the total value of the contract may be reflected over several years. In May, for example, Palantir was awarded a contract worth $222.1 million from the Defense Department to provide software and technical support to the U.S. Special Operations Command. The initial amount paid was $5 million with the remainder to come in installments over four years.
I was surprised at the Washington Post’s write up. No ads for Alexa and no Beltway snarkiness. That too was interesting to me. And I don’t have a dog in the fight. For those with dogs in the fight, there may be some billability worries ahead. I wonder if the traffic jam at 355 and Quince Orchard will now abate when IBM folks do their daily commute.
Stephen E Arnold, November 9, 2016
Microsoft Can Understand Human Conversation Like a Human
October 31, 2016
I read “Microsoft Speech Recognition Technology Now Understands a Conversation As Well As a Person.” My wife’s Amazon Alexa does okay with her commands. I noted this passage in the write up:
This marks the first time that human parity has been reported for conversational speech.
Okay, I will inform my wife that Alexa is not able to do the speech recognition thing. She gave up on Microsoft Windows, laughed at the Windows phone I gave her, and bought a Mac laptop. She seems okay with what her iPhone 6 can do, but I will try again to explain that Microsoft really, really has solved a hard problem.
The write up points out:
In a paper published this week the Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research group said its speech recognition system had attained “human parity” and made fewer errors than a human professional transcriptionist.
Oh, not a product or a service she can test yet. The innovation is embodied in a paper. Is this content marketing or public relations? I suppose I could ask Cortana if we had a machine running that particular Microsoft invention. Windows 10 left us some time ago. Sorry.
The error rate of about six percent seems okay until you think about six words in 100 being incorrect. Some situatio0ns pivot on a single word, don’t they?
I will wait for the new system to be hooked up to Microsoft Tay. I remember Tay. The system learned some of the less savory aspects of language before the demonstration was sent back to the lab. The interaction of speech recognition and Tay will be something I want to test.
Maybe my wife will have a change of heart with regards to Apple and Amazon products.
Stephen E Arnold, October 31, 2016
Artificial Intelligence: Time to Surf, Folks
October 17, 2016
I read a remarkable article in Fortune Magazine: “Google Artificial Intelligence Guru Says AI Won’t Kill Jobs.” I had a Dilbert moment mixed with a glimpse of bizarro world.
The main point of the write up is that smart software is the next big thing. Unlike other big things such as outsourcing work from the US to other countries with lower cost labor, work will not be “killed.” Strong word.
I highlighted this statement from the prognosticating write up:
humanity is still “many decades away from encountering that sort of labor replacement at scale.” Instead, the technology is best used to help humans with work-related tasks rather than replace them outright.
Sounds great. Zooming to the subject of Google, the write up reported:
Google has “developed techniques to safely deploy these systems in a controllable way,” countering fears that A.I. systems are left to run on their own accord.
I assume that’s the reason a consortium of folks are going to gather together to figure out how to make artificial intelligence work just right.
I spoke with a person who drives a truck for a living. He was interested in robot driven trucks. He said, “There won’t be much demand for guys like me, right?”
I reassured him. The truth is that “guys like him” are definitely going to lose their jobs. The same full time equivalent compression will operate in law firms, health care delivery, and dozens of other areas where labor is one or the if not the biggest expense. Leasing a system able to work without taking vacations, calling in sick, or demanding a pension will be embraced. Cost control, not work for humans, is the driving factor.
Online may benefit. Think of those folks who lose their jobs and the free time they have. These people will be able to surf the Web, talk to Alexa, and binge watch.
Informationization (a word I first heard in the early 1990s at a conference in Japan) means disruption. Work processes will change. There will be more online consumers. I am not sure what these folks will do for a living.
Unlike the individuals who work in certain types of companies, the guys like the trucker, the legal researcher, the librarian, etc. are going to have plenty of time to be social on Facebook.
Fortune Magazine seems to buy into the baloney that “A.I. will help humans with their jobs, not replace them.” How’s that working out in traditional publishing?
Stephen E Arnold, October 17, 2016
Smart Software: The White House and Its Artificial Intelligence Lean Back
October 13, 2016
I am not sure how influential White House reports are. But I scanned “Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence” looking for what’s ahead. I did not notice any reference to the Sillycon Valley outfits and some cohorts getting together to chat about keeping artificial intelligence docile like digital bunny rabbits. I did not see a reference to IBM Watson’s WOW conference (If you don’t know about this, check out the five day event here. For $2,395 you will be so much smarter.) Nor did the report inject any factoids about Deep Mind and the London underground tunnel into my flawed gray matter.
You can, for now, download a copy of the report from this link. US government content can move around, so keep in mind that you may have to do some searching if the link does not work. Hopefully your research will be less of a challenge than looking for some Library of Congress reports.
For me, the take away is that standards are needed. Perhaps the folks from IBM, Facebook, and Google plus some smart academic outfits have already volunteered to provide wizards to work on the standards? How will those standards apply to companies operating in nation states other than the US? Will smart software advance more rapidly than the work on standards? Will companies deploying “non standard” smart software make changes to match the standards? The report does not address these issues and it is a nice write up which contains footnotes too like a high school research paper.
Alexa, play Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.”
Stephen E Arnold, October 13, 2016
Dark Web for Sci-Tech Content without the Big Fees
October 11, 2016
Publishers are not happy. Sci-Hub, a Dark Web portal provides free access to 58 million academic papers and articles that usually are sold through costly subscriptions and pay walls in the real world.
In an article that appeared on ExpressVPN titled 9 Must-See .onion Sites from the Depths of the Dark Web, the author says that –
This (Sci-Hub) gives underfunded scientific institutions, as well as individuals, unprecedented access to the world’s collective knowledge, something certain to boost humankind’s search for an end to diseases, droughts, and hunger.
Sci-Hub is brainchild of Alexandra Elbakyan a Kazak girl who wanted free access to academic literature without having to worry about money.
According to Science Magazine, everybody from students, scholars, researchers to underfunded universities are accessing the pirated academic literature.
How will publishers respond? We assume there will be meetings, legal actions, more meetings, hand waving, and attempts to convince Ms. Elbakyan to do her online system the old fashioned way: Charge universities as much as humanly possible. If these procedures fail, Ms. Elbakyan may want to be accompanied by former Kazak Olympic wrestlers and at least one legal eagle as she wends her way through life.
Vishal Ingole, October 11, 2016
IBM Watson Is Just More of Everything Except Revenue
October 11, 2016
I read “IBM Watson’s CMO Predicts the Future of Data and AI.” I thought that the article would report what IBM Watson had to say about this question: “What is the future of data and AI, Watson?” Wrong. The article presents IBM’s current thinking about what its humanoids desperately want IBM Watson to become.
There was one startling omission in the article, but I will save that until the final paragraph of this mini report.
I noted several points of interest to me in the write up which is essentially an IBM wizard answering some slightly worn questions about the sprawling brand known as Watson. (Keep in mind that I know Watson as Lucene, home brew code, and acquired technologies.)
Point One: Watson understands human language. So Watson is like the film “2001” and HAL? No, here’s what the write up says Watson is:
It’s not speech recognition like Siri, not speech synthesis like Alexa, but actually understanding human languages…
Point Two: Why use IBM Watson and not some other smart system? Answer:
We’ve invested $6 billion in our idea, a third of that is dedicated to cognitive.
Point Three: IBM made a big deal about Twitter in 2014. IBM’s position:
Twitter specifically, is interesting.
You get the idea. Superficial generalizations about how capable IBM Watson is.
What’s the big omission? Revenue. Not a peep about how IBM Watson is going to generate sustainable revenue this quarter. What’s frightening to me is that the humanoid answers about Watson are sketchy. Since Watson did not answer the questions or address the topics in the title of the source article, I conclude that IBM Watson’s answers are even more sketchy.
I love that multi billion investment, however. Now about the financial payoff. Watson, any answers?
Stephen E Arnold, October 11, 2016
Creativity: Implications for Search
October 10, 2016
“Computer Scientists Discover 14 key Components of Creativity” tries to reveal what differentiates the creative person from the average individual. Let’s look at the attributes of creativity:
- Active involvement and persistence. Yes, this is two attributes packaged as one
- Dealing with uncertainty
- Domain competence
- General intellectual ability
- Generation of results
- Independence and freedom. Another two’fer.
- Intention and emotional involvement. The bundling approach seems semi-creative. Maybe a cop out?
- Originality
- Progression and development. Again!
- Social interaction and communication. Obviously a pattern of creating one “new” idea by sticking two things together.
- Spontaneity/subconscious processing. Again two to make one.
- Thinking and evaluation. Isn’t evaluating a component of thinking?
- Value.
- Variety, Divergence as well as Experimentation. Now three attributes combine to produce one attribute. Does this overlap with other components.
Reflecting on this list, my hunch is that a bit more creativity in making the attributes clear might be needed. The list is interesting, but it lack—how shall I phrase it—creativity.
How does this apply to search?
For old school Boolean systems like ip.com, one has to know what one is looking for before the search system is of much help. Thus, the system can only respond to inputs from a human. The more creative the human, the less likely the cut and paste snippets function will be. Other systems with this less than creative approach include other Boolean systems and Lucene.
For modern predictive systems, the creativity shifts from the human to the software. The idea is that the software will look at the user’s history, similar users’ behaviors, GPS coordinates, and other observable information and produce outputs like Alexa or Google mobile search. The human does not have to think. The creativity seems somewhat limited because when one is looking for pizza via a mobile phone, some of the attributes seem less than creative.
Search systems which try to respond to the thoughts and notions of the human user and software delivering results based on rules are elusive.
Creativity may be difficult to generate and deal with. Perhaps that is why the list of 14 attributes includes multiple word descriptions which try to get at a single notion.
Cleverness is not on the list. Why not? I find clever approaches to search more interesting than creative searches. Clever?
Stephen E Arnold, October 10, 2016
For the Paranoid at Heart: New Privacy Concerns from Columbia University and Google
September 23, 2016
The article on PhysOrg titled Location Data on Two Apps Enough to Identify Someone, Says Study illustrates the inadequacy of deleting names and personal details from big data sets. Location metadata undermines the anonymity of this data. Researchers at Columbia University and Google teamed up to establish that individuals can easily be identified simply by comparing their movements across two data sets. The article states,
What this really shows is that simply removing identifying information from large-scale data sets is not sufficient,” said Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab who was not involved in the study. “We need to move to a model of privacy-through-security. Instead of anonymizing data and making it public, there should be technical controls over who gets access to the data, how it is used, and for what purpose.
Just by bringing your phone with you, (and who doesn’t?) you create vast amounts of location metadata about yourself, often without your knowledge. As more and more apps require you to offer your location, it becomes less difficult for various companies to access the data. If you are interested in exploring how easy it is to figure out your identity based on your social media usage, visit You Are Where You Go.
Chelsea Kerwin, September 23, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden Web/Dark Web meet up on September 27, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233599645/
Read the Latest Release from…Virgil
August 18, 2016
The Vatican Library is one of the world’s greatest treasures, because it archives much of western culture’s history. It probably is on par with the legendary Library of Alexandria, beloved by Cleopatra and burned to the ground. How many people would love the opportunity to delve into the Vatican Library for a private tour? Thankfully the Vatican Library shares its treasures with the world via the Internet and now, according to Archaeology News Network, the “Vatican Library Digitises 1600 Year-Old Manuscript Containing Works Of Virgil.”
The digital version of Virgil’s work is not the only item the library plans to scan online, but it does promise donors who pledge 500 euros or more they will receive a faithful reproduction of a 1600 manuscript by the famous author. NTT DATA is working with the Vatican Library on Digita Vaticana, the digitization project. NTT DATA has worked with the library since April 2014 and plans to create digital copies of over 3,000 manuscripts to be made available to the general public.
“ ‘Our library is an important storehouse of the global culture of humankind,’ said Monsignor Cesare Pasini, Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library. ‘We are delighted the process of digital archiving will make these wonderful ancient manuscripts more widely available to the world and thereby strengthen the deep spirit of humankind’s shared universal heritage.’”
Projects like these point to the value of preserving the original work as well as making it available for research to people who might otherwise make it to the Vatican. The Vatican also limits the amount of people who can access the documents.
Whitney Grace, August 18, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden /Dark Web meet up on August 23, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233019199/
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