Kozminski Techblog

The photo-sharing platform, operated by Facebook, said that the latest test came after mixed feedback to experiments in which it removed likes, commonly used as a measure of popularity.

Instagram has run a global beta testing in which users were able to choose whether to hide the number of likes on their own or others’ posts, said a Facebook spokeswoman.

“In 2019, we began hiding the number of likes for a small group of people to see if it reduced some of the pressure of posting to Instagram,” the press office said in a statement. “Some people found it helpful, but some still wanted to see the number of likes so they could keep track of what was popular.”

Facebook is also exploring a similar experience: in response to users’ requests for more control over how they interact with content on the platform.

Last month, Instagram accidentally hid likes for a large number of users in a small test, which sparked a strong reaction. Some users saw this as an important step for users’ mental health, while others saw it as a disaster for authors collaborating with brands. Users participating in the Instagram test still be able to privately see their number of likes.

Personally, I believe that this opt-in approach is the only way Instagram can strike a balance with their community, especially given the social pressure and anxiety that can be prompted by Instagram likes. And then everybody can make their own decision. What do you say?

Will you be hiding likes on your account? Let me know in the comments.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/14/instagrams-new-test-lets-you-choose-if-you-want-to-hide-likes-facebook-test-to-follow/#:~:text=If%20you’ve%20been%20opted,%E2%80%A6%E2%80%9D%20menu%20at%20the%20top

The solutions of two Polish startups dealing with the use of artificial intelligence may contribute to faster development of solar energy. One of them was used to build the largest photovoltaic farm in Poland.

The solutions of two Polish companies – AI Clearing and Sunmetric can be (or even already are) used for photovoltaic installations of various sizes. The AI ​​technology of the first of these startups is, for example, used in the construction of the country’s largest solar power plant. It is being built on an area of ​​100 ha in the Budzew commune, in a place where a brown coal mine previously operated. The AI ​​Clearing platform analyzes data, such as photos, from drones on an ongoing basis and compares them with construction documentation, thanks to which you can quickly have access to data on the progress of construction works and their compliance with the schedule or project. This technology can be successfully used in other structures, e.g. in the construction of roads or gas pipelines.

The solution of the second startup, Sunmetric, is intended mainly for cities and municipalities. Its task is to optimize the development of smaller photovoltaic installations. It is able to provide the data necessary for installers, such as the surface of the roofs, the angle of their inclination, and the level of sunlight. The data is collected, as in the previous case, on the basis of photos that are analyzed by artificial intelligence and help in the development of photovoltaic systems.

Robot legs called Cassie have become one of the new R&D project of Boston Dynamic next to spot, atlas and other fantastic creations. Two-legged robot learned a range of movement from scratch including crouching with a load

Despite the multiple simulations in virtual environments the transfer the models into the real world is a bit tricky, small differences of for example friction can trip over the robot due to the lacking data from simulation. when a robot tries to apply what it has learned. A heavy two-legged robot can lose balance and fall if its movements are even a tiny bit off.

In this case Boston dynamics applied double simulation where the Cassie learned from the virtual and real environment. The data collected from the real world was transferred to environment called SimMechanics that mirrors real-world physics with high degree of accuracy

The real Cassie was able to walk using the model learned in simulation without any extra fine-tuning. It could walk across rough and slippery terrain, carry unexpected loads, and recover from being pushed. During testing, Cassie also damaged two motors in its right leg but was able to adjust its movements to compensate.

Refference:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/04/08/1022176/boston-dynamics-cassie-robot-walk-reinforcement-learning-ai/

Last week Chinese car manufacturer company IM Motors announced a launch of a new product – an air-cleaning electric vehicle. The startup is backed by tech-giant Alibaba. 

The new “Airo” concept is based on an idea to produce a car that would clean the air during riding. The company plans to sell this type of car in 2023. Moreover, the car was designed for self-driving, inside the seats are put infant each other with the table between. The space inside the car can also be used as a bedroom. 

When the designer was asked about the design of the car, he answered “designed to simultaneously address the global space shortage, Airo is also a multi-functional room with extra space for dining, working, gaming or even sleeping.”

The plan is ambitious. The company has to create a technology that would enable a full self-driving mode without the need for human supervising. Also, the cleaning-air technology might be challenging. The time will show whether it is only an ambitious, unrealistic project or whether it is the world-transforming idea that will shape the future. 

Bibliography:

https://www.autocarpro.in/news-international/aircleaning-electric-car-to-go-into-production-in-2023-79045

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/im-motors-airo-new-routemaster-designer-creates-air-cleaning-ev

SpaceX launched 60 Starlink satellites to orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Wednesday night time.

The Falcon 9 rocket launched from the Area Launch at 12 a.m. ET and minutes later the rocket’s first stage landed on a drone ship named “Simply Learn the Directions” off the coast of Florida, Area.com reported.

The satellites deployed round 180 miles above the Earth, based on Spaceflightnow.com, which reported SpaceX has now launched greater than 1,500 satellites into orbit, the launch marked the corporate’s Twenty fifth batch of broadband satellites blasted into house.

Final week, SpaceX launched 4 astronauts from Cape Canaveral headed for the Worldwide Area Station. It was the corporate’s third flight crew in lower than a year.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/science/spacex-launches-25th-batch-of-starlink-broadband-satellites-into-orbit-from-cape-canaveral-wednesday-night

Up until now, 36 states and 4 territories have legalised marijuana for medical usages throughout the US. The CBD industry has been growing at a fast pace with gross sales growing from USD 0.5 billion in 2018 to a predicted USD 1.9 billion by 2022. That would be a large 280% growth in gross sales.

Supply: Statista

With USD 2.8 billion in valuation in 2020, the CBD market is expected to develop at a compound annual progress price (CAGR) of 21.2% from 2021 to 2028. The never stopping legalisation of medical CBD and the growing consciousness relating to it, is opening up alternatives for the industry. Additionally, main innovators within the scientific, biotech, and pharmaceutical sectors are on the lookout for methods to be a part of early market growth.

The Need of AI

AI improved many industries, and CBD isn’t any different from them. From monitoring of planting and harvesting plants, categorising strains and calculating the supply chains and growing advertising, AI could improve many aspects of the cannabinol business.

Implementation

During last years, many producers have introduced AI and machine-learning solutions for their internal processes, mostly focusing on decision making of choosing the right seeds and monitoring environmental situations for optimal progress of the crops. With extra developments in know-how, we’d quickly see robots doing human work and extra importantly with extra accuracy. AI-driven farm bots aren’t a science fiction imaginary thought anymore – they’re an actual factor right this moment.

Robots, at the moment moment, can map out the optimal spacing wanted for correct plant progress, determine and take away the low-quality seeds, and likewise measure values of farms for optimising yield. AI-enabled drones with cameras can calculate the expansion price of the crops by taking and analysing real-time photos. Even harvesting may be automated.

Production and packaging can be also automated, this leads to omitting human-related mistakes, saves on money, time and makes the whole business run more smoothly.

Conclusion

The demand for CBD products are growing through the years as a consequence of their potential well being advantages. Whereas CBD can be utilised for the treatment of Multiple Sclerosis, cannabinol medications are appearing as a potential cure for PTSD. Assembly these calls for is essential for good enterprise and it’s clear that synthetic intelligence helps corporations attaining the identical.

source: https://hackernoon.com/how-is-ai-disrupting-the-cannabis-tech-industry-bxv35di?supply=rss

The Ethiopian government has decided to collaborate with the cryptocurrency and blockchain development company, IOHK. The founder of the company, Charles Hoskinson, is the creator of one of the top cryptocurrencies in the world – Cardano, and the co-creator of Ethereum which is another such cryptocurrency. The partnership involves IOHK developing a new identification system for 5 million students and over 700,000 teachers with the use of blockchain.

Blockchain being a decentralized system where the users are anonymous is the main feature used for the digital verification. It will be used for storing student’s information like their personal data, score card, educational performance, behavior, etc. It will be tamper-proof, so students can’t falsify their data, and employers will be able to with confidence check a person’s educational records. Additionally, this being a decentralized system, the employer has no need for a middle-man to check for the records and instead access them right away.

Having stored all student’s data, it will then be used by the government to analyse the location and the cause of educational under-achievement. Using AI the records would also be used for analytics in order to provide the students with a personalized learning experience where the curriculum is flexible and adjusts based on a student’s needs.

This technology has much more potential and future plans. In the capital city of Ethiopia, there have already been tests of utilizing a blockchain approach to public transportation ticketing system. Additionally, it can be used in healthcare and public services. The people developing this say that the way blockchain is used will be revolutionized, thus digitizing the world further. The Minister of Education in Ethiopia says it will “make the nation’s education provision more dynamic.” The government has plans to modernize the country and make sure the people living in rural areas aren’t excluded. The transformation is meant to be implemented by 2025.

Sources:

https://news.bitcoin.com/ethiopia-links-up-with-cardano-creator-to-launch-the-countrys-biggest-blockchain-deployment-yet/

Machine learning is able to do many things as long as we have data to teach our model. Because of this, researchers are trying to make algorithms smarter and smarter and no longer need so much information to learn. Facebook as a huge collection of images is the perfect place to do research on this topic and improve algorithms. The main goal of the research is to teach the algorithm, so that the computer vision becomes self-steering, so to speak.

Semi-supervised learning is not all that easy because at the current stage of development, algorithms can fill in data gaps by extracting information only from training sets. While this is fairly easy for text analysis, it is much more difficult for images and video. This is due to the fact that text is quite repetitive. Sentence structure and words are repetitive. In contrast, objects seen in images are much more varied. Other colors, objects, and surroundings are much more difficult to recognize than text. While this is not an easy task, the investigators have shown that it is possible and produces very visible results.

The DINO system is able to learn to find interesting objects in videos depicting people, animals and objects quite well without any labelled data. It achieves this by treating the video not as a sequence of images to be analyzed one by one. By paying attention to the middle and end of the video, as well as the beginning, the agent can get a sense of things like “an object with this general shape goes from left to right.” This information is used in other knowledge, e.g. when the object on the right overlaps the first object, the system knows that they are not the same thing, they are just touching each other in those frames. This knowledge in turn can be applied to other situations. In other words, the system develops a basic sense of visual meaning and does so with very little training on new objects.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/facebook-ai-image-recognition/