📱 Siri Move Over

AND: Memory Machines

In today’s Tracker:

Sip and scroll: 3 mins

  • 🧪 Research highlights: Waterloo Engineers Teach Robots to Locate Lost Items

  • 🚨 Industry news: AI in Apple's Orchard: OpenAI Launches ChatGPT App for iOS!

  • ⚖️ Policy and regulation: Charting AI's Course: UK Gov Summons AI Leaders for Risk-Benefit Powwow

  • 🌐 AI and society: Robots Can Win at Chess, but Can They Unlock a Door? – AI's New Era

  • 🧰 Tool of the day: PoplarML: The Tree-mendous AI Tool for Deploying Models

  • 🧠 Let’s get smart with AI: Leave No Stone Unturned: The Power-Packed Story of Brute Force Search

🔎 Waterloo Engineers Teach Robots to Locate Lost Items

The University of Waterloo engineers have developed a new technology that enables robots to assist dementia patients in locating commonly misplaced items, such as medication or spectacles.

The innovative system employs artificial intelligence to endow companion robots with episodic memory, allowing them to monitor and recall the location of specific objects.

Using a Fetch mobile manipulator robot equipped with a camera, the team implemented an object-detection algorithm to identify, track, and record objects within the robot's field of view.

Then, a user-friendly interface was designed to allow users to select items for tracking, searchable via a mobile app or computer.

Preliminary tests indicate a high level of accuracy, and while the system may be intimidating for some dementia patients, it is simple to operate for caregivers.

The team presented their findings at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction in 2023, and they intend to conduct additional tests with non-disabled individuals and dementia patients.

📱 AI in Apple's Orchard: OpenAI Launches ChatGPT App for iOS!

OpenAI has released an official iOS application for ChatGPT, enabling users to access the AI chatbot from their mobile devices. Before this, the App Store was full of unofficial services.

The new app, which is presently exclusive to US users, is free, ad-free, and voice-enabled.

Like its desktop counterpart, the app offers a conversational AI assistant to answer questions and assist users with various tasks.

It synchronizes history across devices and is incorporated with Whisper, an open-source speech recognition system developed by OpenAI.

The application also provides ChatGPT Plus, premium subscribers with early access to GPT -4's capabilities and new features. 

A version for Android appears to be in the works. The introduction of the ChatGPT mobile application, with its ad-free, instantaneous response capability, could potentially disrupt current phone-based search and information retrieval practices.

🏛️ Charting AI's Course: UK Gov Summons AI Leaders for Risk-Benefit Powwow

The government of the United Kingdom is planning a meeting with the leaders of leading artificial intelligence companies, including OpenAI, DeepMind, and Anthropic, to debate the risks and benefits of AI technology management.

Although the arrangements are not finalized, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may be present.

This initiative is part of the United Kingdom's efforts to responsibly navigate the rapid advancement of AI technology, preventing its use for detrimental purposes.

Minister of Technology Paul Scully emphasized the need for the international community to establish standards and ground rules for artificial intelligence (AI) and insisted on the significance to practitioners, industry leaders, and academic and ethical input in forming these regulations.

♟️ Robots Can Win at Chess, but Can They Unlock a Door? – AI's New Era

According to panelists at a Council on Foreign Relations science and technology lecture, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are advancing rapidly, surpassing previous limitations and demonstrating new capabilities.

Despite their optimism, they acknowledged that there were still obstacles to overcome, such as the difficulty of imitating human dexterity and spatial awareness. Interestingly, the experts emphasized that the most pressing issues are policy-related, not technological.

In contrast to the development in China and Europe, they were concerned about the United States aging infrastructure, immigration policies, and inadequate research investment.

In addition to identifying the healthcare and education industries as ripe for disruption, the panelists stressed the need to combat incumbent advantages.

Despite acknowledging these obstacles, the panel remained optimistic regarding the future of technology and AI, predicting that the continuous increase in computational power would result in astounding innovations.

Nonetheless, they exhibited less optimism regarding policymaking, economic inequality, and the deteriorating global security landscape.

🤖 PoplarML: The Tree-mendous AI Tool for Deploying Models

PoplarML is a Graphcore artificial intelligence platform that enables the implementation of scalable, ready-for-production machine learning systems with minimal technical effort. Its goal is to simplify and improve the machine learning model implementation process.

Learn more about the tool here.

🔎 Leave No Stone Unturned: The Power-Packed Story of Brute Force Search

Brute force search, or exhaustive search, is a straightforward approach to problem-solving in which all possible solutions are meticulously enumerated until the desired solution is found or all possibilities have been exhausted. The term "brute force" refers to the absence of heuristics, advanced algorithms, or clever shortcuts in this approach to problem-solving; instead, it relies solely on computing power to attempt every possible solution until one is found.

-Liesl Yearsley, chief executive officer, Akin.com

We should be thinking about the values these systems will hold. How will they make decisions if their decision-making is better than ours? Where does that come from? Do we want to give them human values? The same values that also gave us slavery, sexism, and racism — some of the more appalling values we hold?

-Henry Ford

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is a success.

Credit: I_am_pork

  • 🎨InstantArt - is an AI-generated art platform that produces high-quality images for artists, designers, and producers using steady diffusion technology.

  • 🎞️WatchNow - is an artificial intelligence-powered tool that helps users find their next film or show based on their previous viewing behavior.

  • 💻MeetGeek - an AI meeting assistant that automates and simplifies the process of organizing and conducting meetings through natural language processing.

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