Author Archives: Chorfi Mayssa

Microsoft’s Seeing AI – The Talking Camera for The Blind

Reading Time: 2 minutes

With a clever wordplay on “seeing eye”; Microsoft revolutionizes accessibility with their app Seeing AI which makes the visually impaireds’ life a lot easier. The app is not just a basic text to speech app, it offers many ground-breaking features that can truly change lives: it can read documents or handwritten text aloud, it can recognize products from their barcode, recognize and locate the faces of people you’re with, as well as facial characteristics, approximate age, emotion, describe sceneries or colors around you, as well as identify currency bills if you’re paying in cash. Point is, if you’re visually challenged, your approach to day to day tasks will never be the same. As Microsoft themselves introduced it:

”Seeing AI is a Microsoft research project that brings together the power of the cloud and AI to deliver an intelligent app, designed to help you navigate your day. It turns the visual world into an audible experience.”

The app is also available in English, Dutch, French, German, Japanese and Spanish with more languages to come in the future. The only minor hiccup with this app, in my opinion, is the fact that it is only available for iPhone users though I hope that eventually, it’ll also be available on Android. After all, the Android operating system is currently the most popular mobile operating system in the world.
We can witness firsthand in the following video how Seeing AI impacts a blind person’s life in more ways than one. Not only does it make it easier when it comes to practical matters like reading and dealing with money, but it also helps him socially: It plays a role in bringing him closer to his family and friends and gives him access to social media interactions in a way that he never experienced before.

The app is also available in English, Dutch, French, German, Japanese and Spanish with more languages to come in the future. The only minor hiccup with this app, in my opinion, is the fact that it is only available for iPhone users though I hope that eventually, it’ll also be available on Android. After all, the Android operating system is currently the most popular mobile operating system in the world.

New Dating App Matches Users Based On DNA

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Dating apps are the go-to nowadays whether you’re looking for love, a fling or just trying to meet new people. When we’re sorting through those people the things we tend to take into consideration before swiping right include age, proximity, physical attractiveness, common interests, etc. The one thing everyone seems to overlook when trying to meet their match, and that Harvard geneticist George Church has put front and center in his new dating app is DNA compatibility; all in an effort to eradicate hereditary diseases.

The app has not yet been developed, but theoretically, its purpose is to prevent two people from matching if they had similar genetic mutations that could result in rare, hereditary diseases. Although it may sound like such an app would make your dating pool a lot smaller, Church insists that his idea offers users more choices rather than limit them. He said: “Rather than restricting people’s options for their health and their families, we’re expanding them.”

The geneticist has immense hope for the future of his app and makes big claims about it that seem a tad unrealistic in my opinion. In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” he claimed that his app could be the key to the elimination of all genetic diseases. He was asked by the interviewer if he was suggesting that if everyone has their genome sequenced and the correct matches are made, that all of these diseases could be eliminated. “Right,” Church replied.

Some concerns that were sparked by the idea of this app include whether or not it would promote more stigma against disabled and chronically sick people, trans people or certain races. Church retorted that it would only restrict matches that would result in offspring afflicted with “illnesses that cause very premature deaths, often with pain and a lot of medical costs”.

He also said it would probably rule out only 5% of a person’s potential matches, which is a contradiction to his previous claims of “expanding people’s options”.

I’m not quite who this app’s target audience is, because as far as I know most people do not have their genome sequenced; nor are they willing to consider their DNA compatibility when picking a partner. After all, two carriers of a recessive gene for a genetic disease still have a chance of having a healthy child, and the average person would be willing to take that risk in order to have a family with the one they love.

References:
1-https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/dec/16/dating-app-genetic-matching-not-eugenics-scientist-says
2-https://futurism.com/dating-app-match-users-dna
3-https://in.mashable.com/science/9317/we-might-soon-have-a-dating-app-that-would-match-users-based-on-dna
Tagged , ,

Pet Cloning – Cute or Creepy?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I believe we’ve all heard about first-ever cloned mammal: Dolly the sheep and the controversy it generated back in the day. Less than a decade later, a Californian company by the name of “Genetic Savings and Clone” was already offering commercial cloning services for peoples’ deceased pets, an extravagant endeavor with a price tag to match. So if you’ve recently lost a beloved pet (mainly a cat or a dog) and have around 50,000$ (per attempt) to spare; this might be the article for you.

Pet cloning is nowadays more readily available and cheaper than ever and naturally, a number of celebrities started taking advantages of those services including Barbara Streisand and her two clones of her late dog Samantha and Simon Cowell who is spending a whopping 180,000£ on pet cloning so he never has to live a day without his Yorkshire terriers by his side.

 

This unusual procedure basically consists of an embryo being cultivated from the cell of the animal (particularly cells from its mouth and stomach), before being implanted into the surrogate mother’s uterus. Each attempt takes about two months and this process is not fool-proof. It’s actually estimated to be successful about a third of the time, which makes the price tag all the more unsettling. It also comes with some negative side effects which are the main reason some people might consider pet cloning inhumane. According to Alan Beck, an animal ecology professor at Purdue University:

“All cloned animals have shorter life spans and many more health problems than non-cloned animals. Many, many animals are used [in the cloning process]. So you have this big population of unrecognized industry of a dog population that are surgically manipulated and kept in cages, like any kind of commercial or research area, but it’s not inspected and there’s no guarantee they’re well taken care of.”

Another side effect that seems to be the most bothersome to people who go through getting their pets cloned is that the clone, although it’s a carbon copy of the original, is not guaranteed to behave the same way or have the same memories. Which is why a Chinese company, the Sinogene Biotechnology Company, is considering taking this procedure a step further and using artificial intelligence to transfer the memories of a pet to its clone.  According to Sinogene’s general manager: “To make the cloned animal share the same memories with the original, the company is considering the use of artificial intelligence or man-machine interface technology to store them or even pass the memories to cloned animals.”

Only time can tell whether or not that is a realistically possible endeavor, but it’s a definite sign that the market for pet clones is set to expand significantly. This is outrageous in my opinion, considering how many people are willing to spend so much money and resources on recreating their dead pets while equally loveable and very much still alive pets waste away in shelters.

This also makes human cloning seem somewhat more plausible, which raises a whole other set of ethical dilemmas that I believe humanity is not ready to face yet.

References:

1-https://futurism.com/cloned-pets-memories-china-cat

2-https://futurism.com/the-byte/pet-cloning-cheaper-appalling

3-http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1161960.shtml

 

Tagged , ,

Microchips Are Getting Under The Skin of Swedes

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Our reality is starting to look more and more like a dystopian sci-fi novel by the day, and Sweden seems to be well ahead of the curve when it comes to that.

The Scandinavian country started implanting its residents with microchips that enable them to pay with a swipe of the hand (without credit cards or cash),  replace their national ID, enter offices or buildings (instead of keys and key cards), substitute gym cards and bus tickets, as well as monitor their health.

The cutting-edge technology has risen to popularity among Swedes, as thousands of them hopped on the microchipping train, even organizing and attending « Implant Parties » to have the insert done.

Although former tattooist and body piercer turned microchipping pioneer Jowan Österlund maintains that the technology and procedure are completely safe, it is deemed invasive enough and futuristic enough to cause concern.

Libberton, a British Sweden-based scientist, expressed his concerns, especially when it comes to the safety of the data the microchips can collect.

“People have shown they’re happy to give up privacy for convenience,” he stated. ” The chip is very convenient, so should we accept our data being shared very widely before we know the risks? ”

To gain a better understanding of said ‘risks’, we have to delve into how the technology actually works.

The microchips are about the size of a grain of rice and are deposited into the back of the hand, mostly above the thumb, through a syringe.

Using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology (also used in virtual collar plates for pets), when the small device is activated by a reader within a few centimeter’s distance, data is exchanged between the microchip and the reader through electromagnetic waves.

The implants themselves cannot read information, they are only able to generate it, which is why they are considered ‘passive’.

However, unlike other devices that generate the same type of data (Key cards, smartphones… etc), people who get the microchip implanted cannot easily separate themselves from it.

References:

1-https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6306569/Thousands-Swedes-getting-microchip-IDs-inserted-hands.html

2-https://nypost.com/2019/07/14/swedish-people-are-getting-chip-implants-to-replace-cash-credit-cards/

3-https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/sweden-sees-microchip-implant-revolution-190221190206244.html

 

Tagged , ,