Unsealing three-hundred-year-old letters, reviving old photographs, and other AI news

We aim to inform readers not only about events in the bitcoin industry but also about developments in related technological fields — cybersecurity, and now the world of artificial intelligence (AI).

ForkLog has compiled the most important AI news from the past week.

China takes the lead in AI research

Researchers from Stanford University released the fourth annual report “AI Index,” in which they analysed key trends in the industry over the past year.

In 2020 the number of AI-related publications increased by 34.5% compared with 2019. China became the leader in the number of AI research publications and publishes more AI papers in journals than any other country, though the United States still has the most cited publications at specialist conferences.

In many respects the report confirms trends identified in earlier years: the net volume of AI research grows across a range of indicators, China continues to gain influence, and investors pour more money into AI-focused firms.

The section of the report devoted to technical achievements also confirms the main trends in AI capabilities, the largest of which is the industrialisation of computer vision. In this area there has been remarkable progress — services such as object and face recognition are now commonplace.

Another area the AI Index report struggles to quantify progress is ethics. This is a broad topic covering everything from facial recognition policy to algorithmic bias, and discussion of these issues is becoming more prominent.

Intel develops computer-vision system to track athlete performance

Intel presented a three-dimensional athlete-tracking system called 3DAT, which is intended to give players and coaches a clearer picture of their “body mechanics and problem points.”

The pilot project was deployed at EXOS in Arizona, where NFL draft hopefuls train.

“3DAT allows athletes to clearly understand what their bodies are doing during movement, so they can determine where to put in effort to become faster or better,” explained Ashton Eaton, Intel’s product development engineer and a two-time Olympic champion.

A key feature of the system is that athletes do not need to attach bulky sensors or worry about unreliable equipment placement during training. Instead, standard video footage is sent to servers where it is processed by AI algorithms.

The system tracks 22 different points on the athlete’s body and analyses their form for speed, body angles, and acceleration points. The analysis results are sent back to the coaching staff in reports with graphs intended to help players better understand their running technique and how to improve it.

Researchers uncover serious vulnerabilities in Amazon Alexa’s “skills”

A team of researchers from North Carolina State University published a report suggesting that user personal data on Amazon’s smart speakers could be at risk. According to the authors, this is possible when third-party developers create “skills” for Alexa’s voice assistant.

Researchers note that the company apparently does not vet “skills” for authenticity, allowing fakes to pose as official apps for smart-home devices.

Researchers also found that developers can use repeated words to wake the assistant. In such a case, attackers could reprogram a normal phrase, such as, “Alexa, open the Spotify app,” to initiate fraudulent action.

Additionally, the authors believe Amazon allows third-party publishers to modify their privacy policies after approval and publication in the Skills Store.

The researchers strongly urge Alexa users to log in to their Amazon account and ensure they are not using any third-party skills until the company fixes the vulnerabilities.

Honda begins selling its first autonomous car

The company Honda began selling its first commercially available passenger vehicle with level 3 autonomy — the ability to drive in many situations without human intervention, but with the expectation that the driver is always ready to take control.

The Sensing Elite system uses a combination of high‑resolution 3D maps, satellite navigation, and exterior sensors to create a 360-degree model of the surrounding environment.

According to the manufacturer, this information enables the car to recognise, predict, and make decisions, and to apply high-level control of acceleration, braking, and steering to help the driver achieve smooth, controlled driving.

The interior also features several cameras that check whether the driver is ready to take over.

If the system decides this is necessary, it will warn the driver. Failure to comply will slow the car and steer it toward the roadside.

Despite the significance of the event for the automaker, not everyone will be able to buy the new model. The autonomous car is certified for trips only in Japan; it can be rented, and only 100 units were produced.

Czech theatre stages a play written by artificial intelligence

The Prague theatre “Shvanda” became the first in the world to stage a play entirely written by AI. The production marked the 100th anniversary of the premiere of the famous play R.U.R. by Karel Čapek, who coined the word “robot.”

The project was initiated by Czech innovator Tomáš Studeník, who sought to celebrate the centenary of the invention of the robotic word. He approached computer linguist Rudolf Rose of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University. The developer generated the remaining text using an open-source language module GPT-2, created by the research company OpenAI.

“The GPT-2 model can generate English texts by reading millions of different materials from the internet, including news, books, and movie titles. It studies the structure of the given text, and then generates a similar one,” Rose explained, describing the language model’s operation.

In creating the play, the developers uploaded the main portion of the script, including character names and their main lines, and GPT-2 generated the rest.

The result of this process, which took several months, was a series of dialogues from which the Švanda Theatre selected the best for the play. The result is a story about the joys and sorrows of everyday life from the robot’s perspective.

The premiere took place on February 26, and a recording can be watched online.

ForkLog also wrote:

• The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence released a report with recommendations on how the United States can maintain its technological leadership.
• Microsoft at Ignite 2021 showed innovations of the Azure cloud platform, in particular a hardware-software platform for running AI algorithms on edge devices, a search engine for applications, and a smart speaker for conferences.
• The developer of analytics and trading tools for crypto and traditional markets, Cindicator launched the CND app on Bloomberg Terminal.
• Facebook developed a self-learning computer vision model that was trained on billions of photos from Instagram.
• A group of scientists developed a method for reading three-hundred-year-old letters using AI and a dental X-ray apparatus, without opening them.
• A genealogy company launched a service to “revive” portrait photographs of deceased relatives.

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