The latter movie, about the potential threat posed by artificial intelligence, comes with a thumbs-up from Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla who has long voiced serious concerns about AI.
Musk is one of the prominent interviewees in “Do You Trust This Computer?” — which was made by Chris Paine, the filmmaker behind “Who Killed the Electric Car?” Paine’s new 78-minute documentary had its premiere on April 5.
An automated guided vehicle trundles packages inside an Amazon fulfillment center in Dupont, Wash. Automation is expected to affect a wide range of occupations. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)
That raw figure may not sound as dire as some of the previous numbers cited for the effect of automation and artificial intelligence on employment, and that’s what’s been grabbing the headlines over the past couple of days. But a close reading of the report, published last month, shouldn’t lead anyone to brush off the issue — as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin did last year.
The authors of the study, Ljubica Nedelkoska and Glenda Quintini, say the level of automation risk varies widely from country to country. Slovakia comes in on the high side (33 percent), while the projected risk is only 6 percent in Norway.
The high-risk percentage for the U.S. is 10 percent, which is significantly lower than the 47 percent that was cited in a provocative 2013 study by Oxford researchers. But even 10 percent translates to about 15 million U.S. jobs.
Facebook already has a significant presence in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)
Facebook has made a high-profile hire as part of a plan to expand its AI research team in Seattle — adding to an already-fierce competition for talent in the artificial intelligence field.
Zettlemoyer is considered a rising star in the AI field, and was among the researchers featured last November in a New York Times article about the bidding war for artificial intelligence talent. He left AI2 last week and began at Facebook this week.
His move comes as the Allen Institute, created by Paul Allen, looks to ramp up its own hiring in a tight market for AI talent with help from an additional $125 million in funding from the Microsoft co-founder.
Artefact Group CEO Rob Girling moderates a panel on the social effects of automation. The panelists include Google Research’s Dan Liebling, Uber’s Caleb Weaver, Microsoft Research’s Ece Kamar, Microsoft veteran Cesar Keller and Avanade’s Aaron Reich. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
It’s a thrilling time for technology, with innovations in artificial intelligence and robotics propelling society ever faster forward. But is it too fast?
Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Todd Young, R-Ind., discuss the policy implications of artificial intelligence. (Washington Post via Twitter)
It’s high time for government officials to get up to speed on the promise and potential pitfalls of artificial intelligence, two U.S. senators leading the charge said today.
“I think we’re entering an age where artificial intelligence is going to provide great benefits,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said during an AI conference presented in Washington, D.C., as part of The Washington Post’s Transformers program.
Cantwell compared the state of the AI field to the state of the internet or the drone industry during the early days, when policymakers weren’t completely sure how those technologies were going to be used.
Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., acknowledged that members of Congress aren’t sufficiently equipped to deal with all of the issues raised by AI. “I like a measure of humility from our legislators,” he said.
To remedy that gap, Cantwell and Young are among the sponsors of a bill known as the FUTURE of AI Act. (The title is an acronym standing for “Fundamentally Understanding The Usability and Realistic Evolution of Artificial Intelligence.”)
Which object would fit through the doorway? The elephant vs. basketball choice is an example of the common-sense questions that pose a challenge for artificial intelligence programs. (AI2 Illustration)
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s new $125 million initiative to give artificial intelligence programs more common sense has another goal that’s closer to home: making AI safer for humans.
That’s the way Oren Etzioni, the CEO of the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, explained it in an exclusive interview with GeekWire about Project Alexandria.
Team members at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence celebrate the launch of Semantic Scholar during an impromptu meeting at the institute’s Seattle headquarters. (AI2 Photo via Glassdoor)
Is technical expertise the key to success in the fast-moving world of artificial intelligence market? Or is it entrepreneurship?
Top-notch engineers with a yen to build a startup can get the best of both worlds through a newly created CTO residency program at Seattle’s Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, or AI2.
“Google has DeepMind, Facebook has FAIR, Microsoft has Microsoft Research AI,” Jacob Colker, managing director of the AI2 Incubator, told GeekWire. “But AI2 is one of the few places where entrepreneurs and early-stage startups can access the same kind of talent that’s available to the big guys.”
This sequence of images shows how a drawing bot gradually creates an image of a bird with a yellow body, black wings and a short beak. (Tao Xu et al. via Microsoft)
Want to order up a drawing? Say you want a picture of a bird with a yellow crown and black rings around its eyes. Or a still life showing swirls of pasta with broccoli, carrots and onions.
Now there’s a bot for that.
Researchers have enlisted artificial intelligence tools, including computer vision and natural language processing, to program a “drawing bot” that can create a picture from the ground up, based merely on a descriptive caption.
Amazon is getting ready to expand the range of features available in third-party skills for its Alexa AI voice assistant. (Amazon via YouTube)
G’day, Alexa: Amazon’s digital voice assistant is getting an Australian accent for its Down Under debut this week, but there’s more in store for users around the world.
Thanks to SSML, or speech synthesis markup language, Alexa developers can already make an Amazon Echo or other voice-controlled device whisper, or speak faster or slower, or speak with a super-cheery voice. And Alexa’s users can change her speaking style to British English, or German, or Japanese.
Like Google’s AI assistant, Alexa can now associate voices with specific people: Users can follow the instructions in the Alexa mobile app to train devices so that they distinguish your voice from others.
Outside developers will be getting access to that feature, known as the Your Voice API. That means voice identification could soon be popping up in third-party skills, said Nikko Strom, a senior principal scientist at Amazon and founding member of the Alexa team.
Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, asks attendees at the AI NextCon conference in Bellevue, Wash., to raise their hands if they think artificial intelligence will someday pose a threat to humanity. Some put their hands up. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
“Allen AI makes a lot of sense for us, because they have the best researchers in AI,” ClusterOne co-founder and CEO Mohsen Hejrati told GeekWire. “They are investors and incubators, but more importantly, they are great partners in research … the best partners we could get.”
First word of the team-up came today from Oren Etzioni, the institute’s CEO, during the AI NextCon conference in Bellevue, Wash.
“Today, we’re just announcing for the first time that a company called ClusterOne, which was founded by some ex-Google folks in California — they’re moving to Seattle, joining our incubator,” Etzioni told the crowd.
