Posts

Facebook Blender

Facebook Blender – POWERFUL CHAT BOT

/in /by

Facebook have launched a brand new chatbot. It’s called Facebook Blender and it is insanely powerful and very very humanlike. It’s able to demonstrate empathy, knowledge and personality.

Facebook Blender was trained by using available public domain conversations. The conversations that were analysed? 1.5billion different human exchanges. HUGE! In a surprising stat, 49% of people prefer to interact with the chatbot compared with another human!

However, artificial intelligence experts state that using a platform such as Reddit does come with drawbacks. As Facebook Blender would sometimes respond using foul and offensive language, while at other times it would make up facts.

Though researches hope that further models of Blender would address this. A Facebook spokesperson told the BBC:

“We believe that releasing models is essential to enable full, reliable insights into their capabilities,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

Artificial Intelligence expert Dave Coplin, chief executive of consultancy The Envisioners, said that Blender was a “step in the right direction,”

“The first is just how complex it is to replicate all of the nuances of a human attribute, like the ability to hold a conversation, a skill that most three-year-olds can master,”

“The second is around the relationship with the data used to train the model and the results generated by the model.

“As great a platform as Reddit is, training algorithms based on the conversations you find there is going to get you a lot of chaff amongst the wheat.”

Facebook also compared Blender’s performance with the latest version of Meena, Google’s version of a chatbot. It showed 2 sets of conversations, one made with Blender the other Meena. These conversations included different conversations such as movies or veganism. Facebook said that 67% of respondents thought Blender sounded more humanlike than Meena.

“We achieved this milestone through a new chatbot recipe that includes improved decoding techniques, novel blending of skills, and a model with 9.4 billion parameters, which is 3.6x more than the largest existing system.

“This is the first chatbot to blend a diverse set of conversational skills together in one system.”

“Building a truly intelligent dialogue agent that can chat like a human remains one of the largest open challenges in AI today.”

Facebook Blender Example Conversations

Facebook Blender

 

Facebook Blender

 

(BBC)

Get involved with Facebook Blender here and here!

Keep up to date with everything How To Kill An Hour by signing up to our newsletter by clicking here!

Let us know what you think of the show by clicking here!

Click here to subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see more amazing ways to kill time!

Follow us on Twitch by clicking here!

Hey Siri, Get Me A Big Mac – Fast Food AI

/in /by

You will soon be able to ask an AI patron what burger you’d like at McDonalds. McDonalds have announced that they are buying the voice tech startup Apprente. Why? So they can automate their drive-thru menu. *cue old people moaning that it will cost jobs!* Fast Food AI is on the way!

The Mountain View based company specialise in buidling voice agents which can take orders in a variety of languages and accents. McDonalds have been testing the tech in a number of locations and they hope it will make for “faster, simpler and more accurate order taking” via it’s drive-thrus.

McD Tech Labs

Apprente will be a part of the McD Tech Labs. Which are a new restaurant tech group. The team will become the groups founding members and co-founder Itamar Arel will serve as it’s vice-president.

“McDonald’s commitment to innovation has long inspired our team. It was quite clear from our various engagements that McDonald’s is leading the industry with technology”

“Apprente was borne out of an opportunity to use technology to solve challenging real world problems and we’re thrilled to now apply this to creating personalized experiences for customers and crew.”

Itamar Arel, Ph.D, co-founder of Apprente and Vice President of McD Tech Labs.

There is potential to expand Apprente’s tech into other areas like mobile and kiosk ordering. McDonalds purchase of Apprente is it’s third of 2019. After it acquired Dynamic Yield earlier this year in April. A personalised data startup, which customises it’s drive-thru menus by the weather, time of day, restaurant traffic and trending menu items. They also bought a minority stake in Plexure a New Zealand mobile app tech company. Fast Food AI looks incredible helpful, though at the cost of some jobs, will it create more at other areas of the company?

(Engadget)

Keep up to date with everything How To Kill An Hour by signing up to our newsletter by clicking here!

Let us know what you think of the show by clicking here!

Click here to subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see more amazing ways to kill time!

Follow us on Twitch by clicking here!

AI

AI could have common sense? We’re Doomed.

/in /by

Ready to be scared by AI? Well you may just be about to be scared silly.

Virtual assistants and chatbots aren’t the most intelligent beings around at the moment. That’s because they lack the common sense that us humans have. Most of us anyway. These types of machine learning programmes rely on specific situations that they’ve encountered previously. Thus they react accordingly to the data you input.

However, this may be about to change. Researchers at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) have come up with a brand new test. This test is called Arc Reasoning Challenge (ARC). This test will determine whether artificial intelligence has the ability to ‘learn’ common sense. By testing it’s understanding of the way that our world operates.

The easiest way to explain why machines don’t have common sense is as follows. Human’s see a problem or are faced with a problem. Humans then use common sense to fill in the gaps of any problems that they are faced and then act on that problem accordingly. Machines only act on the data that’s put in to them. They can’t see a problem, pull information from their memory and then solve it. They have to be told ‘this is the way to solve this problem’ ‘solve it’ (execute programme)

AI Test

The researchers will throw basic multiple choice questions at the machines. These questions will put their general knowledge to the test. One of the questions is “Which item below is not made from a material grown in nature?” The answers are ‘cotton shirt, wooden chair, plastic spoon, grass basket’ If researchers from the Allen Institute can make the machine pull information from previously learned data. This will prove that the system can grasp common sense. Which no other AI technology can do.

So, what does this say about the future of AI if it can learn? What will it be taught is right and wrong? Will we see a Terminator?

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

To keep up to date with all things How To Kill An Hour, sign up to our newsletter by clicking here!

 

Episode 272 Supercharged Jet Sub!

/in /by
Read more
Siri

Will we see whisper Siri soon?

/in /by

Apple have filed a patent for a “a digital assistant that is capable of detecting a whispered speech input and providing a whispered speech response.” Basically Siri that whispers back to you if you whisper to it. This may be Apple’s attempt at making it’s AI assistants to become more ‘human.’ As a result less awkward to use in public situations.

In the patent, Apple explained in which a whispering Siri will help you out when you need it the most. The situations that Apple listed where Libraries and in an office cubicle. While, Apple also noted that a whispering Siri is intended to protect a users privacy.

The way that an iPhone or Apple watch would be able to detect if a users talking quietly or whispering to it. Would be detecting the amplitude and frequency patterns of a users voice. As a result, Apple want to make Siri actually whisper back to you. Not just turn the volume down on your device. Think about it, when someone whispers something to you, you don’t speak back normally. Subconsciously you make the decision to match the other person’s voice pattern.

Just a patent

It’s also very important to note not all patents become reality.

Hexa Robot

/in /by

HEXA

Check out the super cool HEXA robot by Vincross!Music Credit: Mate Lyons – Instrumental Hip Hop soundcloud.com/lyonsss/instrumental-hip-hop

Posted by How To Kill an Hour on Wednesday, 23 August 2017

HEXA is a brand new 6 legged highly maneuverable compact robot that comes complete with a ton of sensors, when companioned with the MIND robotics OS/SDK it allows users, even if they aren’t complete computing whizz’s, they can create interesting robotic functions with HEXA.The robots optical and spatial sensors allow it to watch and learn the world around it, it even includes a 720p camera with night vision, and accelerometer, distance measuring sensors and an infrared transmitter.

By using the MIND eco-system, you can build a ton of different techniques for your HEXA robot to understand such as learning the location of your hand and responding to specific hand gestures or even using HEXA to survey buildings from the ground in hard to reach places.

To learn more about HEXA please click here!

 

XTND

/in , /by

The XTND is an electronic skateboard unlike anything we have ever seen here at How To Kill An Hour, as well as being electronic it is a smart electric skateboard that comes fully equipped with AI:

  • Tracks your route learning the area and suggests a faster route for you
  • Learns your riding style and creates unique settings to adjust itself to you the rider
  • The more you ride the board the better the board gets at improving how to suit to you
  • Auto lights that turn on when visibility is poor
  • Detects when your about to fall off and slows the board down accordingly

I don’t know about you but this sounds really cool!

To support their Kickstarter and pre-order please click here!

Fake Obama created using AI tool to make phoney speeches

/in , /by

Faking it with Obama

The University of Washington researchers have developed new technology that once paired up with AI can create some serious output.

Firstly they produced a photorealistic former US President Barack Obama, then then Artificial intelligence was used to precisely model how Mr Obama moves his mouth when he speaks.

Their technique allows them to put any words into their synthetic Barack Obama’s mouth.

Episode 247 – Boosted Boards

/in /by
Read more

How smart will AI become?

/in , /by

Andrew Ng has likened Artificial Intelligence to be as important to us as electricity in the years to come, as crazy as that sounds, our ancestors probably thought the same as electricity.

Our work life will be different and AI will be far more competitive than any human, it will require us to sharpen up our mental skills!

Whilst experts believe that we will still be required to do jobs that are very important and carry a lot of weight to it, just because robots/AI don’t have the same emotional attachment/engagement than that of a human. Whilst the challenge for us would be because we as humans like to seek confirmation and things that confirm what we think of ourselves. Thus holding us back. To over come this would require us to take the things w take for granted like thinking and listening to a new level.

Thus in time, our definition of “smart” (good grades) will begin to change. Smart will become the people who make the least amount of mistakes in life.

AI is incredible in that sense as we cannot do things quicker/recall information/produce alternative occurrences of an event than a super computer or any time of AI, it’s just too good.

A new definition of smart will promote a new way of thinking, it won’t be what you know, but it will be how good your skills are. Quantity of knowledge replaced by quality. Thus, in turn, forcing us to get better at cognitive and emotional skills. Adjusting after mistakes, learn emotional intelligence, letting go of the ego. Making us perceive reality a lot easier and not what we want it to be. Embracing what it means to be human, in turn, living alongside smart technology.