Category: Technology

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Nothing seemed strange about the new teaching assistant, Jill Watson, who briefed students on assignments and due dates in Professor Ashok Goel’s Artificial Intelligence class at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her answers were brief but informative, and it wasn’t until the end of the semester that students learned that Jill wasn’t a “she” at all, let alone a human. Jill was a chatbot built by Goel to offload his eight other human TAs.

“We thought that if an AI TA would automatically answer routine questions that usually have clear answers, the (human) teaching staff could win the students over to the more open questions,” Goel told Digital Trends. “It wasn’t until later that we were motivated by the goal of building human-like KI-TAs so that students couldn’t easily tell the difference between human and KI-TAs. Now we are interested in developing KI-TAs that will improve student engagement, retention, performance and learning. “

AI will change both the face and the function of education.

AI is quickly integrating into every aspect of our lives and like the students in Goel’s class, we are not always aware when we are dealing with it. However, the impact of AI on education will become apparent in the years to come as these systems make their way into classrooms everywhere.

Like computers and the internet, AI will change both the face and function – the what, why and how – of education. Many students are taught by bots instead of teachers. Intelligent systems advise, teach and grade tasks. In the meantime, the courses themselves will change radically as educators prepare students for a job market where millions of roles have been machine-automated.

AI-powered education may sound like something from the distant future, but it is already a topic of interest to both academics and businesses. AI-powered educational toys have flooded the market in recent years, many of them through crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, where they often exceed their financial goals.

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Professor Einstein, for example, teaches science kids with goofy facial expressions and a German robotic lilt. The company’s Kickstarter campaign, developed by Hanson Robotics and supported by Watson from IBM, raised nearly $ 113,000. Meanwhile, the startup Elemental Path is offering CogniToys, a range of educational intelligent dinosaurs designed to play games, have conversations, and help kids learn to spell. Their Kickstarter campaign raised a whopping $ 275,000 from backers in 2015.

“Big things are on the agenda for AI-powered educational toys,” Danny Friedman, director of curriculum and experience at Elemental Path, told Digital Trends. “I use them in every classroom as a complementary learning tool that is not only built into a teacher’s curriculum, but also tied to a student’s personalized data such as preferred learning methods and areas of interest. I also put them in every home, not just to answer questions, but also to encourage pro-social interactions. AI-powered toys will be just as ubiquitous in households as the cell phone. “

“Big things are on the agenda for AI-powered educational toys.”

A student’s engagement with AI only increases as they progress through the school system. Educational AI toys are being replaced by tutors, whose job it is to identify weak points and enable additional training.

Teachers are relieved of the simple task of grading papers in subjects ranging from natural sciences to social sciences. Systems like Wolfram Alpha can already answer complex math equations and questions in a language that is informative and accessible. Integrating such an engine into an automated rating system – especially with quantitative problems – would be a breeze. The educators will be happy to be able to focus on the more personal aspects of the education.

“When it comes to AI in teaching and learning, many of the more routine academic tasks (and those that are least rewarding for faculty) such as B. the grading of tasks can be automated, “write the researchers Mark Dodgson, director of the technology and innovation management center. University of Queensland Business School and David Gann, Vice President of Imperial College, in a report on AI and higher education for the World Economic Forum.

Pepper, a multipurpose human robot design from Softbank, is the first humanoid robot to be used in Japanese households.

Once a student reaches high school, she may well be entering freshman next to what AI education experts on a Pearson report refer to as a “Lifelong Learning Companion”. For the past nine years, this digital companion would have accompanied her in class, helped her with her homework and learned with her.

The learning partner – who may manifest as a robotic T-Rex, or more likely something more subtle like a smartphone application – even acted as a student on occasion, so the human student could teach them what they learned and deepen their knowledge.

“This companion would be accessible to the entire student [his or her education]”Wayne Holmes, co-author of the Pearson report and lecturer at the Open University’s Institute of Educational Technology, told Digital Trends.” It could always indicate that they are doing or helping them with work that is difficult for them It will also provide information for the teacher to engage. The idea is that over time the tutor can create this profile of the individual that can be used to assist them in their further development. “

These digital learning partners should support rather than replace teachers, emphasized Holmes. In fact, he expects educators to have their own AI assistants to make their jobs easier and more effective.

These digital learning partners are designed to support rather than replace teachers.

“Teachers would have their own companion, they would be their own AI teaching assistant,” he said, adding that a student’s companion and a teacher’s AI assistant would “communicate so that the teaching assistant knows what is going on with the profile of the individual student is going on and would be able to interact with it. “

When a student enrolls in a university, she will be, if you will, the product of two “heads”: the AI ​​in her brain and the AI ​​she developed as a learning partner. And at the university itself, AI will be everywhere – as TAs in the classroom, as support in the enrollment office, and even as academic advisors. This year the Technische Universität Berlin used a chatbot called Alex to help students plan their course calendar.

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“I think the advantages of the chatbot system lie in the completeness and availability of the information,” said Thilo Michael, currently a doctoral student at TU Berlin, who designed the system as part of his master’s degree. “The chatbot tries to translate students’ questions into searchable queries just like a human advisor would, but has all the information available at once. Human advisors would have to search various online systems and might even provide incomplete information. “

Michael emphasized that the system is not intended to replace people. “The system is able to answer pragmatic questions about the courses and majors available, but it cannot answer questions on a broader level,” he said. “I think the system could very well be used in combination with advice to have the best of both worlds.”

Outside of traditional learning institutions, AI has the potential to make education accessible to more people. In developing regions where there are few teachers, a robust AI system can be used to teach students with minimal or no involvement of a human educator.

The XPrize Foundation, which develops Moonshot competitions to promote “Radical Breakthroughs for the Good of Humanity,” provides the team that will create the best basic learning application that can replace a teacher for children with access to a tablet but not a human currently US $ 10 million to educators. In June, XPrize selected eleven semi-finalists from nearly 200 teams to compete in the Global Learning competition. It is likely that the winning system will be assisted by the AI ​​to offer more personalized and dynamic lessons.

Still, there is no shortage of ethical issues that need to be addressed before AI is fully implemented in education, something Holmes and his colleagues are quick to recognize. For one, educators need to take into account the privacy and confidentiality of the data collected, especially when that data relates to children. For example, who does the information belong to? And who will have access to it?

“There is no obvious answer to this problem, but it is an issue that needs to be addressed,” said Holmes.

And before psychologists educate a generation with AI tutors, they should understand its developmental implications. Do students become addicted to technology? And what happens if the system works incorrectly or fails? Similar difficult questions, but those that are worth answering for the future of our greatest resource – the minds of the next generation of humanity.

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Every now and then an idea comes up that is so good that you wonder why it took so long for someone to think about it. IBM’s AI fact sheets are one of those ideas.

AI fact sheets are similar to heavily packaged nutritional labels for food. They contain information about the development, capabilities, benchmark performance, and much more of an AI model.

Big Blue today announced plans to “commercialize key automated documentation capabilities from IBM Research’s AI Factsheets methodology in Watson Studio in Cloud Pak for Data during 2021”.

In other words, companies and developers using Watson Studio in Cloud Pak for Data will soon have access to an automated AI fact sheets tool to generate transparency and information reports. The tool automatically generates most, if not all, of the information in the AI ​​fact sheet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4d3kEVsu-s

Via IBM:

The FactSheet project aims to build confidence in AI by increasing transparency, improving understanding of how AI is created and deployed, and empowering governance to control how AI is created and deployed . Increased transparency provides information for AI consumers to better understand how the AI ​​models a program component that is generated through learning patterns in training data to make predictions about new data, e.g. B. a loan application. or service an executable program that is provided behind an API and makes it possible to respond to program requests from other programs or services has been created. In this way, a consumer of the model can determine whether it is suitable for his situation.

Take quickly: We love this idea. While it’s a little more complex than we can describe in this article (research report here), the bottom line is that anything that standardizes transparency in machine learning models is a good thing.

This is part of the IBM “AI Governance” initiative and new AI advisory services. The company also announced some interesting new Watson features.

Today we announced Watson Discovery’s new reading comprehension feature in beta. It can identify precise answers to natural language questions from a wide variety of complex corporate documents. https://t.co/Hunb0jPtBr #ai #ml #nlp

– Fredrik Tunvall (@tunvall) December 9, 2020

Final thoughts: We’ve heard a lot about the “black box” over the years, but the truth is that the black box doesn’t hide much. The real problem with AI in large business is that there is no standard to explain what an AI model does specifically and how well it can do it.

Realistically, the model with the best marketing team is likely to beat the best model if no one can objectively explain which one is best for a particular application.

AI Fact Sheets is a blueprint for an industry standard to address these issues head on.

Published on December 9, 2020 – 19:26 UTC

In a recent video, Brett Kavanaugh speaks to members of the U.S. Congress. “It’s time to correct the record,” he begins. Over the next few minutes, the Supreme Court Justice admits it is possible he committed sexual assault and expresses remorse at the way he responded to Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations on his testimony. “I take responsibility for that and apologize.”

The thing is, this scene isn’t real. The footage is covered, and Kavanaugh never actually said those things.

In reality, Kavanaugh denied and ignored the allegations and played the victim. The video described above is from a series of fake clips envisioning a future where divisive public figures like Kavanaugh, Alex Jones and Mark Zuckerberg take responsibility for their past transgressions.

The series, titled Deep Reckonings, is an brainchild of Stephanie Lepp – an artist who wants to create positive change in the world by using deepfake technology to help people see and imagine better versions of themselves.

It’s a tall and somewhat abstract project, but Lepp is not alone in her endeavors. She is part of a growing league of developers who want to use deepfake technology to do good.

Deepfake it ’till you make it

Deepfakes have had a controversial journey so far. The technology has been used extensively for nefarious purposes such as pornography creation and disinformation campaigns, putting it under scrutiny by both governments and tech companies who fear the technology’s weapon.

“Given that the vast majority of deepfakes are shameful in nature, it’s understandable that we focused on their weapon,” says Lepp. “However, this focus prevented us from realizing their prosocial potential. In particular, deepfakes can be used for education, health, and social change purposes. “

Stephanie Lepp

She argues that, much like virtual reality has been used to help patients recover from brain injury by interacting with virtual memories, deepfakes can be used for psychological healing in trauma victims. For example, imagine a scenario where doctors could write deepfakes of an addict’s sober future self and use it to encourage them on the path to recovery.

The concept is at least theoretically sound. Jonathan Gratch, director of virtual human research at the Institute of Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California, found that seeing yourself in VR can be very motivating, and that the same concept can easily be applied to deep footage. He suggests that if a patient’s face were subtly mixed into his doctor’s face, the patient would be more likely to follow the doctor’s advice.

More than memes and misinformation

Despite the fact that negative uses of deepfakes tend to get more attention, positive uses like Lepp’s are on the rise. Over the past few years, the technology has established itself in storytelling, prosocial projects, and more.

For example, the ALS Association’s Revoice project enables amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients who have lost their ability to speak to continue using their voice. As? By using deepfakes, personalized synthetic vocal tracks can be created that can be played with a soundboard if necessary.

In a separate project from the nonprofit anti-malarial organization Malaria Must Die, celebrity athlete David Beckham delivered a message in nine different languages ​​(and voices) thanks to deeply faked audio and video matching his lips with the words.

In a particularly eye-catching campaign in early 2020, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Advanced Virtuality attempted to educate the public about misinformation by submitting a deepfake of former US President Richard M. Nixon, who penned it in 1969 for the fall of the Apollo Emergency speech made 11 crew members unable to return from the moon.

These types of public announcements and awareness campaigns are just the tip of the iceberg. Deepfake tools have also helped simplify processes in the entertainment industry that would otherwise require high-end equipment and time-consuming resources, such as: B. Aging, voice cloning, and more. For example, every face in a recent music video by The Strokes was fake, so the band’s 40-year-old members could look like they were 20.

Ohad Fried, lecturer in computer science at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, says that thanks to deepfakes, “what used to take years of artist time can now be achieved by independent small studios. This is always good news for the variety and quality of the media we consume. “

Tilt the scales

However, the potential of deepfake technology to cause harm, especially as it becomes more accessible, remains a cause for concern. Aviv Ovadya, founder of the Thoughtful Technology Project, agrees that the ability to create synthetic media “can have numerous positive effects on storytelling, on people with disabilities, and on more seamless communication between languages.” At the same time, however, he warns that there is still a lot of room for damage once technology goes mainstream and that a lot of work needs to be done to minimize those risks.

“Even these positive use cases can inadvertently lead to real and significant damage,” he told Digital Trends. “Excerpts from works of art that try to create empathy can also be taken out of context and misused.”

“The aim should be to develop this technology in such a way that these negative effects are kept as low as possible.”

Experts have repeatedly sounded the horn to divert more resources into detection programs and official ethical guidelines – although legal encroachment could affect freedom of expression. But no one is quite sure in which direction deepfakes will ultimately go. As with any new technology, there will come a point where deepfakes strike an equilibrium and the responsibility lies with tech companies, policymakers, and developers to ensure that the scales remain on the good side.

Ovadya also suggests limiting the accessibility of deepfake tools to the masses until researchers can “complete some of the fortifications we need to protect our society from the potential negative effects. The goal should be to develop this technology in such a way that these negative effects are at least reduced as much as possible. “

For now, Lepp will be spending her time focusing on her next deepfake protagonist: Donald Trump and his concession speech.

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Bitcoin is in the news today more than ever. Thanks to skyrocketing prices and roller coaster rides, everyone and their dogs are keen to learn how to buy and sell Bitcoin.

As the most popular form of cryptocurrency (and the blockchain technology that powers it) is Bitcoin now recognized worldwide and has a growing number of uses. However, if you want to take advantage of this, the first thing you need to know is how to buy bitcoin and what to do with it when you have bitcoin.

Would you like to mine Bitcoin instead? It is not advisable, but it is still possible. Here is how.

Step 1: Find a Reliable Bitcoin Wallet

Bitcoin is stored in digital “wallets” until you are ready to spend it or exchange it for another currency. Wallets vary in terms of features, platforms they accept, and level of security. So it’s important to choose one that works for you – although you should probably stay away from the one evangelized by John McAfee.

For those who are just starting out, it is best to use the wallet that is automatically provided to you on our recommended Coinbase exchange. However, it is also a good idea to set up a wallet that is not connected to a crypto exchange to ensure that you can access your Bitcoin instantly, even if there is overwhelming traffic or the website closes.

Here are our recommended options:

Exodus: Exodus is an all-in-one offline application with support for multiple cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. It’s free to use, has built-in shape change trading, and includes some simple graphing tools that you can use to visualize your cryptocurrency portfolio.

Mycelium: This is a popular mobile wallet known to be compatible with more advanced technologies like Trezor hardware wallets (for maximum security) and Tor.

Bitcoin Core: Bitcoin Core is a free, open source option that acts as a Bitcoin node. They do an excellent job of verifying payments and only accept payments from valid blockchains.

To take a look at some of our favorite wallets, here is a more in-depth guide to the best Bitcoin wallets.

Note: While an online wallet is great for your first Bitcoin purchase, if you are confronted with a lot of valuable cryptocurrencies due to trading or appreciation, keep it in an offline “cold storage” wallet for maximum protection.

Step 2: choose the right bitcoin trader

The best place to make your first Bitcoin purchase is with an exchange. There are a lot of exchanges with varying levels of performance. Some are less trustworthy than others, and some can be very limited. Therefore, it is important to choose the correct exchange first. We recommend using Coinbase, though it doesn’t hurt to check out the competition using a Bitcoin exchange comparison site.

Signing up for a Coinbase account is easy, but you’ll need to show some ID. This could include sending a copy of your photo ID and possibly sending a live image of your face via webcam. It is imperative to follow these rules as they allow the websites to know the rules that your customers are aware of.

While Coinbase alone allows you to buy and sell Bitcoin, it’s also worth signing up to the linked exchange platform Coinbase Pro, which gives you better control over your purchases.

If you prefer a more direct route when buying Bitcoin, you can use a peer-to-peer service like LocalBitcoin or BitQuick. They offer a wider range of payment options and allow you to buy Bitcoin directly from a seller without the intermediary. If you want to use these and trade in person, you should meet in a safe place.

Step 3: Choose your payment method

Exchanges accept a variety of payment options, although one should beware of scam sites. Coinbase allows both bank account and credit or debit card transfers for payments, although a payment solution must be linked to your account before you can make a trade. Coinbase recently added PayPal as an option for transferring Bitcoin, although there are certain restrictions.

Note: Bitcoin ATMs allow you to exchange Bitcoin for cash in compatible wallets. These ATMs are available in a limited number of cities and offer an alternative to withdrawing money through an exchange. Again, most exchanges and online wallets won’t handle cash directly.

Step 4: buy bitcoin and keep it in your wallet

The exchanges tell you how many (or how much) Bitcoin you can buy for certain sums of money. However, due to its volatility, Bitcoin prices can vary dramatically depending on the exchange and moment to moment. That means you’ll likely buy a fraction of a bitcoin even if you have a lot of money to burn. There is nothing wrong with that, and for most people, this is the route they will go as few but the rich can afford to buy multiple bitcoins at once.

To make your first trade, enter the amount of Bitcoin you want to buy in the space provided and click the Buy button. Coinbase or Coinbase Pro is a standard market buy order where Bitcoin is bought at the best market price. Alternatively, you can place a limit order that allows you to set a price that you are willing to pay for a certain amount. A trade will only take place if this amount is displayed at that price.

Once you have made your purchase, your newly acquired Bitcoin will be transferred to your Coinbase wallet for safekeeping. You should then seek the option of transferring those funds to the address of the Bitcoin wallet you created. You have to pay a small fee to remove the money from the exchange, but that’s an essential part of Bitcoin transfers. Fortunately, the cost of such transfers is much lower than in the past.

Just a note: Bitcoin transfers can be made sporadically. When buying bitcoin funds, unlike other forex trades, the transaction must be recorded and confirmed on the blockchain. The transfer process can take a while (approximately an hour or two), especially during busy trading hours. It is a good idea to plan your transfers accordingly before boarding.

Step 5: get ready to use it

Whether you want to sell your Bitcoin (hopefully for a profit) or use it to buy goods or services, you can always do so. Bitcoin’s value fluctuates widely, so it is important that you plan your endgame early. Prepare now by setting up a seller account on an exchange or finding out how to use it to buy what you want before the time to buy. That way, you won’t panic about completing your transactions at a specific time.

We have compiled a list of compatible online stores to give you an idea of ​​where to spend your Bitcoin. Do your research by reading reviews and fine print before buying or exchanging bitcoin.

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There are still a few weeks left in 2020, and if there was ever a guarantee it wouldn’t go down without a fight, it’s the barrage of sad scientific stories this week. Do you like aliens, dogs, or do you think that one day scientists will find evidence of something bigger than ourselves? Buckle up cause the news is all bad.

Let’s start with the big scheme and work our way into it. Can’t be much bigger than “God”, and that’s exactly what the astrophysicist Michale Hippke wanted to find out about the cosmic microwave background in her preprint research report entitled “In search of a message in the angular power spectrum”. “

As you may have guessed from the title, Hippke’s work focuses on recognizing whether a readable message is hidden in the microwave radiation that forms the background of our cosmos.

Per Hippke’s article:

The Creator of the Universe could put a message on the most cosmic of all billboards, the cosmic one

Sky with Microwave Background (CMB). It was suggested by Hsu & Zee (2006) to look for such a message in the CMB angular power spectrum.

I process the temperature measurements from the Planck and WMAP satellites and extract the binary bit stream. I estimate the information content of a potential message in the stream to be around 1,000 bits. The universality of the message can be limited by the observer-dependent location in space and the finite observation time on the order of 100 billion years after the Big Bang.

The newspaper is fascinating and worth reading, but because it’s 2020, I’m just going to spoil the end for you now. According to the paper, Hippke did not find it if there is a creator who left us a message:

I cannot find a meaningful message in the actual bitstream.

H / t: LiveScience.

It goes from bad to worse. Some of our most popular science papers here at TNW are about aliens, so I know this is going to break some hearts. You know all the planets around Proxima Centauri that astrophysicists and other scientists have excitedly said are in a so-called “habitable zone”?

Yeah … not so much. It turns out that the habitable zone is anything but. A team of astronomers, led by Andrew Zic of the University of Sydney, recently determined that planets in this area are likely to be exposed to conditions far too harsh to support any kind of life as we know it.

The problem, according to a recent article published in the Astrophyics Journal, is that solar flares from the star would cause seriously problematic space weather.

According to a report by Phys.Org, Zic claims:

Our research shows that this makes the planets very vulnerable to dangerous ionizing radiation, which could effectively sterilize the planets.

While there could of course still be some unknown form of radiation loving life, we can probably dispel any thoughts that this particular habitable zone is inhabited by something like us.

And finally, it breaks my heart to tell you this, but your dog has no damn idea what the hell you’re talking about. A study by researchers at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest claims that dogs really are not able to understand as many words as we believe.

As the university put it in a press release on EurekAlert:

Dogs can distinguish between human speech sounds (e.g., “d”, “o”, and “g”), and there are similarities in the neuronal processing of words between dogs and humans. However, most dogs can only learn a few words during their lifetime, even if they live in a human family and are surrounded by human language.

GPS can guide you across the city or across the country and navigate dusty back roads as easily as six-lane highways. But as anyone who accidentally drove into a lake can tell you, GPS isn’t perfect. For example, it cannot keep you in a certain lane or dodge nearby cars or steer you through an exit. That’s why John Deere built a better system.

Yes, this John Deere.

You see, the GPS system most people know about was developed in the 1970s, and for what it is, it is truly remarkable. A network of 24 satellites that have been working more or less continuously for 27 years? Orbit the globe from the cold expanse of space – watch endlessly and lend a polite hand? Free? Wonderful. But it was designed to replace paper maps, which rarely measure to the centimeter. Autonomous cars don’t just need to know you’re on Highway 61, they need to know exactly where you are (at 75 mph, no less). Autonomous drones and tractors for agriculture have sparked a rural renaissance called precision farming – and it takes precision to work.

To increase this level of detail – and to revise the system in general – researchers have worked to replace the existing satellite fleet with a new iteration called GPS III. Last week, SpaceX took a step forward when it finally launched a fourth satellite into its star bed. It’s a long process: Lockheed Martin published a brief history of their GPS upgrade efforts in 2012, and we’re just getting started. The whole thing is slated for completion in 2023, at a cost of nearly $ 6 billion.

Can the private sector do better? To get some insight into what could replace GPS, we spoke to two companies that run the fee and are developing alternatives.

How Deere Made a Better GPS

Before we point out its shortcomings, let’s keep in mind that GPS is a fantastic system. Indeed, it is difficult to grapple with the ambition and audacity of the existing satellite constellation. Imagine the challenges behind introducing a precision antenna that cost a few hundred million dollars and is shaped more or less like a Mister Softee ice cream van. To complete the deed, the military hits her on a missile that burns 2,700 pounds of liquid oxygen per second, ejects her into space at Mach 1 … and then carefully releases her into orbit about 13,000 miles away. Remember, the diameter of the earth itself is only 7,900 miles.

Now imagine the algorithms and calculations required to keep them in precise orbit, never hitting the other satellites, constantly transmitting, batteries never failing, clocks that barely get out of sync when the Months turn into years and you will get the point. It’s an enormous achievement. However, it is not enough.

John Deere

In theory, GPS is accurate to within 3 feet, but in reality it’s closer to 15 feet or so – good enough to get you to the grocery store, but barely accurate. For example, if you’ve planted two heirloom tomatoes and some cucumbers in your garden, it’s easy to grow your tiny crop without knowing where to water. When you’re planting hundreds of acres, tiny telemetry errors can ruin you.

“The old days of work all day and maybe dad is ready and coming home to the son or daughter? That’s pretty much done, ”Al Savage, StarFire Network Manager at John Deere, told Digital Trends. “What farmers want is more yield. Accuracy with row planting, spraying, etc so you don’t run over your crop. “

According to NASA (yes, this NASA), when a farmer traverses a field and pulls a seeder, plow, or other equipment behind a tractor, the rows generated overlap by about 10 percent. This means that a significant portion of the field is receiving twice as much seeds, fertilizers and pesticides and the work is taking longer than necessary. Today’s tractors use digital positioning systems like your car, but require an entirely different level of accuracy. With the help of the space agency, John Deere built a better system.

John Deere

“Differential GPS is what they call it,” said Savage. To get the detailed positional data that modern farmers need, Deere built a number of ground based reference locations around the world to collect a second set of positional data, a large amount of data that the company transmits, and warehouses in two main data centers. This information is transmitted to a number of geostationary satellites operated by Inmarsat (John Deere rents space on them), and then sent back to the company’s StarFire receivers using local tractors – a round trip that takes longer than the globe, but takes about as long as a single breath.

“You speak of 12, 13,000 miles, and in some cases 20,000 miles. And it happens in five seconds, so you can imagine how fast it is and how much data is flowing, ”said Savage. The time it takes for a signal to travel from GPS satellites to Earth, combined with clocks in orbit that are easily out of sync and signal noise from electrically charged particles in our atmosphere, makes existing GPS data inaccurate. By networking the satellite data with data from its terrestrial network, Deere can triangulate the location much more precisely.

“When you spray, you want to be precise and precise. This saves you herbicides, fungicides, pesticides and sprays, ”explains Savage.

How 5G finds a way

If you read any technology site these days, you’ve heard the hype surrounding 5G. The fast new cellular network offers a number of advantages, the most important of which is speed. Qualcomm has demonstrated maximum download speeds of around 4.5 gigabits per second and average data transfer speeds of around 1.4 gigabits per second. That’s fast enough to download a two-hour movie in about 17 seconds, versus about 6 minutes for a current 4G connection. In other words, new 5G phones are around 1,000 times faster than the phone you currently have in your pocket.

But 5G is more than just phones: Qualcomm believes that with 5G, tomorrow’s cars will talk to each other and you will all oversee them all by yourself. To do this, Qualcomm’s chips do more than just transfer data faster. They support CV2X communication (Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything), which enables direct communication between cars and other intelligent objects in the infrastructure of a city.

A little discussed part of Qualcomm’s automotive plans includes building a system to eliminate the 3 to 15 foot precision problem of GPS. For this purpose, the company relied on its existing patent portfolio. It merges data from existing satellites of the Global Navigation Satellite System (including GPS, Europe’s Galileo, Russia’s GLONASS, etc.) with something called VEPP or Vision Enhanced Precisioning. Essentially, Qualcomm plans to use images from existing video cameras to pinpoint the exact location of a car.

“The cost of this is not astronomical,” Nakul Duggal, senior vice president of product management at Qualcomm, told Digital Trends. “You basically need a standard camera like today … everything else is something you already activate the telematics unit for.”

An illustration shows VEPP data in combination with conventional GPS data. Qualcomm

But here’s the thing: CV2X has been a dream among tech companies for years, and while promising, it also poses challenges. For one, there’s the problem of finding the bandwidth: regulators reserved some of the spectrum at 5.9 GHz for vehicle-to-vehicle chatter, but the regulatory effort to get the project going literally went nowhere. Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), wrote last month: “The 5.9 GHz spectrum has been idle for far too long. For the past two decades, the people of America have been waiting for this premium mid-band spectrum to be used, and the wait is over. “

No, Americans didn’t ask for it despite Pai’s excitement. Few people think twice about the frequency distribution between breakfast and bed. However, the FCC’s move last month to modernize the 5.9 GHz band is good news for C2VX. Still, 5G has a long way to go in cars.

In addition, the sluggish 5G timeline has been edited. The first 5G modems could appear in new vehicles in 2022, and advanced models are unlikely to arrive until 2025, according to Light Reading. The roadside infrastructure for communicating with these modems to enable self-driving is not expected to become commercially available until 2025. Meanwhile, John Deere’s StarFire system is already working on 5G, Savage said along with GPS, Russia’s GLONASS, QZSS, IRNN and others. If 5G is widespread, it will help fill a number of gaps.

“5G will be very helpful when it comes to farmers in rural areas at higher latitudes – in the EU, in the Netherlands. I think 5G will help. Anything hilly, where the vehicle’s stance, the unevenness of the terrain where you can’t really see the south end for satellite coverage, 5G will really help too, “said Savage.

Here’s one point to highlight: GPS III, 5G, and StarFire are not necessarily competing technologies. No single company or technology will, and does not have to, dominate this area and make the others obsolete. It’s important to note that 5G will improve, not replace, John Deere’s Starfire system. GPS III will work with – and not against – 5G to keep autonomous cars on course. They are all different paths that lead to the same goal: Better positioning for everyone and everything, regardless of the application.

See you? Avoid the lakes and keep both hands on the steering wheel. Because a new GPS is just up the road – but we can only get there that fast.

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In 2019, Bloom & Wild, a mailbox flower delivery company, announced to its customers that they could opt out of marketing on Mother’s Day. This followed some customers asking that emails be paused in advance, which for some can be a sensitive holiday.

The response was mostly positive. Since then the Thoughtful marketing move has evolved and 130 companies have signed up. Marketers share their ideas on how to be more empathetic.

Empathy is becoming increasingly important for individuals, communities and organizations. Two years ago, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Empathy is one of the most important sources of innovation.

At TNW2020, Jacob Andreou, Vice President of Product at Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, hosted a panel entitled “Leading With Empathy.” During the interview, Andreou said empathy is key to building an organization and communicating with customers: “Empathy is the key to the future of marketing and business as a whole. I believe in leading with empathy and building companies with an empathy imperative. “

Empathy and innovation are linked

Empathy, which is closely tied to innovation, comes as no surprise. It’s the act of putting yourself in someone else’s metaphorical shoes and understanding what they’re feeling and why. When looking at something from a different perspective, an innovator needs to understand how the thing can be made better or what new product should be created.

However, in the world of technology, things can go wrong. A lack of empathy with innovation can lead to the consequences for some end users of a new product being overlooked. The conclusion of a report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology found that many facial recognition algorithms were used by 99 developers misidentified faces 10 to 100 times more likely to be of African and Asian ancestry than faces of European ancestry.

If these shortcomings are revealed, it is important that they are corrected as soon as possible. Snapchat did that. Andreou and his team realized that the new “Best Friends” feature was publicly showing the friendship level that users were designating with each other and removed the feature.

While it added time on the platform, it also increased stress and anxiety, which is neither good for the company nor for the user.

Empathize and adapt

Sensitive innovations are also about optimizing existing functions in order to integrate products with a broader range of experience.

One example is Clue, an ovulation and period tracking app that tracks other activities like sleep, stress, and sexual activity. In the past, the symbols for protected sex and unprotected sex were a lying male silhouette wearing a tie and the same figure, but without a tie. Then the symbols changed to a pair of boots and a pair of flip flops.

Clue CEO and Founder Ida Tin told TNW: “We understand that the former may have excluded the experience of some of our users. We always try to be hyperculturally aware. “Clue’s awareness that people who have periods and use the app may have sex lives unrelated to men led to an innovative improvement that made the product more inclusive.

Pinterest is another company that is customized to meet the needs of its users. ‘Pinners’ who document quotes and pictures in areas from DIY to interior design and get inspired. Annie Ta, head of Inclusive Product, said the team spoke to experts about how to gain experiences that can inspire people no matter how they are feeling.

Ta told TNW, “This has resulted in our team building a more compassionate search experience,” a collection of emotional wellbeing activities that allow users to improve their mood. Prompts about these activities appear when users search for topics that imply a bad mood, such as: B. “Fear of work”. The initiative thus corresponds to the value of the platform of “putting the winners first”.

Follow the “imperative for empathy”

With that in mind, Snap also states that the needs of Snapchatters are of paramount importance. For the social media giant, the possibility of bringing empathy into innovation is to follow the “empathy imperative”.

During his TNW2020 talk, Andreou explained that the empathy imperative is a template for building, with the needs, preferences and safety of real people in the foreground. He said part of the imperative of empathy is building trust: “That trust goes hand in hand with predictability, and a predictable product that behaves as expected in the hands of your users is a well-designed product.”

Andreou said this is why there is no way to re-share content within Snapchat: “If any piece of content upsets you, you can’t get it out to all of your followers, which increases its impact. That is exactly what brand security means. “

The empathy imperative also follows four guiding principles:

1. The first is always Honor your core product value. “At Snap, our core product value is about being the fastest way to communicate. We focused on helping people feel the depth of friendship and developed the “Best Friends” feature. But it got users to guess themselves and the feature has detracted from core product value. Ultimately, we removed the feature. “
2. The second is to emulate the way the Walt Disney Company does things. “Disney actually teaches companies in classes, and the most important thing they focus on is teaching the four keys. Safety, courtesy, keeping storytelling alive, and efficiency and convenience. But they are not all created equal and safety should never be sacrificed. At Disney, families need to feel safe and secure. The same is true when you’re building technology. “
3. The third is closed be the “right kind” of global taking into account the differences between populations. “If you take technology and products that were developed for the US into other markets, you will fail. A sensitive product always feels like it’s a few blocks away, anywhere in the world. “Snap found out about this in 2015 when it entered the Indian market without understanding the realities of the national internet infrastructure and deterred new users by falsely showing them connectivity error messages.
4. The last principle is to innovate openly and promote competition. Andreou said, “If you build for the long term, you probably have a strong and decent product and business. You can afford others to be on your tail. Focus on good innovations and expect these great ideas to spread beyond the walls of your company. “

Empathy is here to stay

The greater awareness and cultural impact of empathy has resonated with many, and it looks like it’s not going to go away anytime soon. Increasingly, companies and industry leaders are taking on missions in accordance with Snap’s guiding principles.

Belinda Parmar, Founder and CEO of The Empathy Business, underlined Snap’s third principle when she told TNW that the main driver of empathy is belonging. With so many of us who feel disconnected: “We have to feel and create a sense of belonging to one another.”

Clue, Pinterest and Snapchat show the importance of making your customers feel included, heard, seen and welcomed in order to create a sense of belonging to a space they want to get involved in.

Finally, Andreou added that listening was a one-way street. “The winds change. They move every industry towards more transparency, responsibility and empathy. It is powered by a young, loudly activated generation who wholeheartedly question the old ways of doing business. ”

This article is brought to you by Snap.

Genevieve Poblano / Digital Trends

In the past five years, SpaceX has embarked on a mind-boggling project: the Starlink satellite constellation. The big plan is to put more than 12,000 satellites (or more) into low-earth orbit and place them in an undulating, grid-like array that will allow SpaceX to deliver high-speed broadband internet to every corner of the planet.

To date, SpaceX has launched nearly 900 Starlink satellites into orbit and has even launched beta access to its fledgling satellite internet service. Internet access may not be the only trick this mega-constellation has up its sleeve, however. Researchers believe it could also be used for a secondary mission: creating a next-generation navigation system that could replace GPS.

Beyond broadband

Peter Iannucci and Todd Humphreys of the Radionavigation Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin looked into how this could be done and recently published an article on their research. Iannucci explains to Digital Trends that setting up a navigation system from scratch in low-earth orbit would be too costly, but using the Starlink satellites would be affordable.

SpaceX

“We’re talking about a system where the positioning mission doesn’t have to bear the financial burden of supporting tens of thousands of satellites because they have one main mission, which is the Internet service,” says Ianucci. “Everyone must have an internet service.”

Because these satellites are in near-earth orbit (about 350 miles from the surface of the earth) and therefore closer to the planet than traditional GPS satellites (which orbit about 12,000 miles away), they could theoretically provide a stronger signal for navigation as GPS can generate. This would help prevent the signal from being intentionally or unintentionally disturbed, which is relatively easy to do with conventional GPS. According to Ianucci, GPS signals are accidentally jammed all the time.

“GPS jamming is easily accessible even to amateurs – even casual actors can intentionally or unintentionally jam GPS,” says Ianucci. “These [low-Earth orbit] Signals could be roughly 400,000 times more immune to interference. That’s big.”

According to Ianucci, these small satellites in near-earth orbit only need a software update to achieve improved navigation. These satellites already have a rough idea of ​​where they are, which is necessary to prevent a collision, but Ianucci says the software update will do it so they’ll know where they are much more accurately.

SpaceX

“We would be pushing for software upgrades and possibly hardware upgrades that refine these positioning estimates beyond what is required for safe orbit operation,” says Ianucci.

One way to do this is to have the satellites popped by the GPS satellites higher in the atmosphere to help them find their location. Once the software is set up, receivers on the ground can pick up signals that these satellites are constantly sending and use them for navigation.

Build a better GPS

Mark Psiaki, a professor in the Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering at Virginia Tech, told Digital Trends that this navigation system would not only help us avoid interference, it would also be more accurate.

“One of the advantages of Earth orbit is just that [the satellites there] move so fast. They just scream across the sky very quickly, ”says Psiaki.

He says that if you receive signals from dozens of fast-moving satellites at the same time, you can get a more accurate picture of where you are than if you receive signals from a small number of slow-moving satellites. This will be important as we bring autonomous cars and delivery drones into the world.

“There’s a push for something called PPP or precise point positioning. Right now, simple vanilla GPS and the others have an accuracy of the order of a meter or a few meters if everything goes right, ”says Psiaki. “That’s not enough to keep a car in one lane on a freeway. You could go on the next lane or on your shoulder. If you could have precise point positioning, now we’re talking 10 centimeters. “

According to Psiaki, PPP can be made compatible with our current GPS system, but it is very complicated and takes a long time. If we were to use low-earth orbit satellites for this it would be much faster and very reliable. He says we could cut the time between turning on the receiver and running PPP from about 20 minutes to maybe a minute.

Not only would we get a stronger signal from these satellites, but we would also be able to get autonomous cars on the road faster and make sure our delivery drones don’t collide with each other or against other objects. All these researchers need is someone like Elon Musk to agree to make some software changes.

“If we can show them that the investment they are already making is paying off in these unexpected secondary ways, it will be a win for them and a huge win for us in the navigation community,” says Iannucci.

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When you visit a website, it triggers a series of modules that are programmed to make the most of your data. In many cases, this means your personal information will be put up for sale and sold to advertisers, marketing firms, and data brokers. In the last year alone, U.S. companies spent nearly $ 12 billion collecting such third-party audience data.

California’s comprehensive new data protection act, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which went into effect earlier this year, aims to counter this practice by giving Californians the right to opt out of selling their data. Companies subject to this jurisdiction must have an option on their websites that allows visitors to easily complete this non-sale request, and companies that do not face fines and official requests.

But of course nobody wants to deal with a different button or popup every time they visit a website. This is where the Global Privacy Control (GPC) initiative comes into play.

A not for sale sign for your private information

Global Privacy Control, developed by a group of privacy-focused companies and researchers, is a technical standard that acts as a global environment so you can opt out of selling your data anywhere on the internet with a flip of common switch. This tool integrates with your browser and sends a signal to CCPA compliant websites letting you know that you do not want to put your personal information up for sale.

The GPC, which is currently in beta, is not yet enforced under the CCPA law. Most recently, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra detailed a provision in this law that would ultimately allow for a global opt-out change such as global privacy control. Later, in a tweet and statement on digital trends, Becerra paid tribute to global privacy scrutiny and expressed its support.

This proposed standard is a first step towards meaningful global data protection control that makes it simple and easy for consumers to exercise their data protection rights online.
#DataPrivacy is the future and I am excited to see a wave of innovation in this area.

– Xavier Becerra (@AGBecerra) October 7, 2020

“We believe that online privacy should be easy and accessible to everyone,” Peter Dolanjski, product director at DuckDuckGo, one of the early supporters of global privacy controls, told Digital Trends. “Global Privacy Control adds an extra layer of privacy that is easy to turn on and intended to be backed by legal enforcement, from the CCPA to expanding to other jurisdictions over time.”

Success that failed Do Not Track

“Legal” is indeed the key word here. For years, data protection officers have waged a war against internet and data companies to secure basic security rights and roll back invasive online practices that commercialize people’s private information. However, with no law to back them up, most of these efforts have fallen through the cracks or have produced little results.

The decades-old Do Not Track specification epitomizes this. Since it was never required by law, in reality it actually didn’t do anything, and companies just ignored it and pursued users at will. Eventually, many tech companies like Apple just gave up the “Don’t Track” option and even removed it from their services.

Even if Do Not Track passed, it never had the technological infrastructure it needed to be truly effective. Let’s face it: how often do we read the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) warnings and acknowledgments that websites send to us? In fact, a study by DataGrail found that since the CCPA went live on January 1, 2020, only 82 “don’t sell” requests have been sent per million consumer records.

Theoretically, global data protection control does not suffer from any of these problems. It already has a legal backbone in California and is welcomed by a notable group of organizations like Mozilla, Brave, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Automattic (WordPress and Tumblr), the New York Times, and others.

Since the GPC signal runs automatically in the background, users do not have to search and toggle an option themselves. In the beta version, global data protection control was introduced on a handful of platforms. You can test them out today on DuckDuckGo, Brave, Google Chrome (thanks to the EFF add-on called Privacy Badger), and more.

Kelvin Coleman, the executive director of the National Cyber ​​Security Alliance (NCSA), believes GPC’s legal buffers will help legitimize its goals, as opposed to “Do Not Track” which was “put in place in a vacuum” .

“With CCPA and GDPR in place as precedents, organizations are forced to find their way through a minefield of compliance issues and heavy fines if they fail to handle user data. This creates a greater incentive to adopt GPC in the long term, ”said Coleman.

Not yet the silver bullet: the long, arduous way ahead of us

However, security researchers warn that it will take years for global data protection controls to be implemented on a large scale, and even then it may not be the silver bullet for outrageous online data abuse. More importantly, the GPC’s legal scope, provided it is bound by the CCPA, is limited to California. Additionally, this does not apply to data shared with nonprofits, government agencies, and companies with sales less than $ 25 million.

Sebastian Zimmeck, one of the founding members of the GPC and a professor of computer science at Wesleyan University, remains optimistic, arguing that California is currently a major use case, but the technology behind it is legally independent and can rely on different legal boundaries depend on it how other jurisdictions will develop their privacy laws in the future.

Dolanjski from DuckDuckGo adds that the consortium is also talking to “various parties in the European Union” to integrate global data protection controls into the GDPR.

The European Data Protection Supervisor, the official data protection officer of the GDPR, did not comment on whether it was investigating GPC partnerships, but said in a statement that it “welcomes privacy-oriented initiatives that can have a positive impact on a more sustainable digital economy and that encourage competition in the field of technology in a time of increasing digitization. “

Another shortcoming that could affect the GPC’s success is that it will have little impact on your online privacy if it is not activated on all of your devices every time you browse sessions. As you can see, the global data protection control signal is sent every time you visit a website. It is not universally activated in your profile.

“Our information is at risk more than ever and the GPC could be the stepping stone we need to enable a future where privacy is a legal right rather than a personal choice.”

For example, you could ask a specific site on your computer not to sell your data using GPC. However, if you go to this website again on your phone, where GPC may not be available yet, the company could abuse your private information.

Peter Snyder, a senior privacy researcher at Brave, sees the GPC as the foundation and hopes that responsible websites, businesses and advertisers use it “as part of a diverse approach to ensure that they ethically and responsibly respect the privacy of users and users”. including automatic application to all sessions if the visitor has an account with them.

Then there is the question of conflict. What if the website already has your consent to sell your private information in their privacy policy?

How the GPC adapts to the cobweb of permissions and popup websites remains to be seen as soon as more participants come on board. But Zimmeck suggests that this will depend on the law. For example, the CCPA requires companies to comply with the opt-out signal regardless of the situation and notify or contact the customer if necessary to resolve certain disputes.

Despite its shortcomings, global data protection controls seem promising and may be the best way to date to contain online data abuse. Our information is at risk more than ever, and the GPC could be the stepping stone we need to enable a future where privacy is a legal right rather than a personal choice.

“Until there is a wider collective of participating publishers, companies and websites – coupled with adequate legal enforcement – the GPC will continue to be a limited-reach ideal,” said Coleman of NCSA. “But this ideal is very promising in the face of greater acceptance.”

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Towards the end of 2020, Pornhub is starting to face music because of concerns about their failure to keep offensive content off their platform.

The website announced today that it will only allow uploads from verified users and partners, that downloads will be prohibited (excluding paid content from verified uploaders) and that moderation practices will be expanded. Further measures will follow in the new year.

The steps follow a devastating piece in the New York Times by columnist Nicholas Kristof from last week highlighting the tragedy and long-lasting trauma that haunts the people found in sexual abuse content in non-consensual content and material hosted on the platform exploited by children (CSAM).

[Read: Why AI is the future of home security]

Pornhub’s parent company, MindGeek, which is managed out of Montreal and operates more than 100 other porn sites, is also in hot water with Visa and MasterCard. The two financial services giants announced this week that they would be investigating their financial ties with the company. They said they would take action if they found evidence of illegal activity, such as stopping support for payments.

This would likely affect Pornhub’s ability to receive subscription fees as well as payments for premium content.

Pornhub receives over 3.5 billion visits every month, and 1.36 million hours of video are uploaded to the site every year. Not only is it a massive operation, but it also has a great responsibility to moderate the content that people are sharing and seeing there.

In its announcement, Pornhub talked about the processes that have already been put in place to moderate content. But, as Kristof’s story shows, mistakes in these processes slide a lot through the cracks, from footage to rape and revenge porn clips to suggested searches for content involving minors.

The tragic stories of the young people in Kristof’s play who were ostracized, homeless, and suicidal show that this type of material circulated online can all too easily destroy lives – and it does so years later. It’s time for Pornhub and other similar sites to do far better.

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