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https://www.synopsys.com/automotive/what-is-autonomous-car.html

Moral Dilemma That Self-Driving Cars and Our Society Face Today

Reading Time: 3 minutes

What Are Self-Driving Cars and How Do They Work?

An autonomous car is a vehicle capable of sensing its environment and operating without any human involvement by using a combination of different cameras, sensors, radar and undoubtedly artificial intelligence (AI). That means that a driverless car can go anywhere a traditional car goes and do everything that an experienced human driver does.

What is the most obvious advantage of implementing such technologies into our everyday lives? The first thing that comes to mind is eradicating human error. The Department of Transport estimated that last year 42,000 people died from traffic crashes in the US alone. Worldwide, 1.3 million people die every year in traffic accidents. If there was a way we could eliminate 90 percent of those accidents, would you support it? Of course you would. This is what driverless car technology promises to achieve by eliminating the main source of accidents – human error.

However, is our society ready for that considering the moral dilemma issues?

Human decision making is influenced by an incredibly large number of factors. Driving experience, moral principles, life experience, psychological and physical condition at the time of the accident, and so on. This reveals that moral choices are not universal. Moreover, in the set of traffic rules we are accustomed to, we can clearly observe a division of responsibility between the car manufacturer and its driver.

Now let me ask you a couple of questions…

How, then, should we train artificial intelligence to make decisions if we do not have a clear algorithm of the right choices? Who should take responsibility for the decisions which were made? Driver, programmer, manufacturer?

Let me try to present a moral dilemma with a practical example of a dead-end situation.

Try to imagine yourself in a self-driving car in the year 2029. You are sitting at the back watching some series on Netflix. All of a sudden, the car experiences mechanical failure and is unable to stop. If the car continues, it will crash into a bunch of pedestrians crossing the street, but the car may swerve, hitting one bystander, killing them to save the pedestrians. What if instead the car could swerve into a wall, crashing and killing you, the passenger, in order to save those pedestrians? What should the car do, who should decide and who should take the responsibility of the cars actions?

Should the car take its course even if that’s going to harm more people or take the action which will minimize total harm by killing one single human being?

This situation can be considered from different perspectives. From the point of view of an ordinary pedestrian, sacrificing the passenger would definitely be the right decision, but manufacturers of such technologies will definitely choose the option of minimizing total harm by killing a bystander, not a passenger. The reason is pretty obvious. Would you still be interested in buying such a car after this kind of an accident? I don’t think so. That means that this choice may lead to a decrease in market demand or to its complete absence.

Despite the fact that we do not have the right solution, we must understand that technological progress is impossible without errors, mistakes and some sort of sacrifices. At the moment, any solution may seem unacceptable and terrible, but in order to achieve progress and complete security in this area we will have to take the risk in order to improve traffic safety in the future.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/auto-accident/car-accident-deaths/

26 October 2022

2. VR w medycynie. Nadchodzi rewolucja? (chip.pl)

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VR technology

Reading Time: 2 minutes

The virtual reality concept was created in the mid-1950s with a device called sensorama. Since then VR became one of the technologies with the highest potential growth. Most forecasts believe that the Metaverse by the end of the decade will be worth between 6-13 trillion dollars. No wonder tech giants are following this trend. The most interesting usage of this technology is in the Metaverse.

What the Metaverse is?

It is a concept developed by Neal Stephenson in his novel “Snow Crash” 1992. Matthew Ball defines it as “A massively-scaled and interoperable network of real-time-rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence while supporting the continuity of data.” But what does it mean? It is a virtual world with the ability to link independently-operated simulations and give us cyberspace where everyone is coexisting.

How do we use VR/AR technology nowadays?

The biggest part of the market uses this technology for entertainment purposes- mostly video games, but this technology has much more to offer. Surgeons are trained using simulations of complex operations and this method is more efficient than traditional one- scientists from Harvard University have done the research and the result of it showed that surgeons trained in VR technology had a 230% growth in efficiency. U.S and British militaries are using Unreal Engine for simulation training of active combat. Even cities are being designed with graphics-based computing. This technology is opening a huge amount of opportunities and I am curious about what it will look like in the next ten years.

What do you think about this piece of technology?

Sources:

Top 5 Virtual Reality Trends of 2022: The Future of VR – Program-Ace

3.Virtual Reality, the technology of the future – Iberdrola

Tagged metaverse, technology, Virtual Reality

26 October 2022

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HOW DRONES BECAME AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE WAR

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or unmanned aircraft systems well known to us as “drones”. These generally small devices are basically flying machines remotely controlled by people or programmed robots to fly autonomously using software in its embedded systems connected with onboard sensors and a global positioning system (GPS). They are most often associated with industries such as defence, Military Warfare and in many others related to war. At the beginning they were mostly used for intelligence gathering, anti-aircraft target practice and as weapons platforms. These days drones are both valuable to civilians and military units and their popularity is increasing because of their utility, fast production and growing affordability which is very relevant in hostilities.

Imaginative and smart use of drones by Ukraine

Using of drones has considerably changed defence and counterinsurgency operations around the world. For a long time drones are delivered for wars, for example Turkish drones had extremely important impact on war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2020.It’s important to mention that these drones were powerful, massive, expensive and not that easy to produce. Contrary to them, the Ukrainian army focused on the production of cheap, plastic, equipped airplanes with devices that can drop objects such as grenades and bombs. Most of these drones were manufactured in workshops throughout Ukraine by people with their own hands. This process wasn’t very demanding and certainly provides enormous advantages. Despite having powerful military drones, majority of bulk of its drone fleet consists of these drones intended for smaller activities such us spoting artillery targets or dropping anti-tank munitions. It created posibility to overcome Russia’s advantage in artillery and tanks.

Russia’s ‘kamikaze’ drone attacking Ukraine

Russia was first suspected by Ukraine of using a drone well known as the Iranian-made Shahed-136 in order to attack civilians. It’s really dangerous machine constructed to follow the target until it is instructed to attack and it’s hard to detect. These drones have been spotted in many places in Ukraine. They are significantly cheaper than cruise missiles, which makes them profitable. Ukrainian armies have managed to intercept a large part of these drones, but they are difficult to intercept and are more difficult to defeat by air defense.

How drones are being used and who is supplying them?

CURIOSITIES AND FACTS REFERING TO THE VIDEO :

Russia is buying shahed military drones from Iran
Us Is supplying drones to Ukraine
Elon Musk ‘SpaceX is providing starlink satellite communication system to Ukraine
DJI has now stopped its supply of drones to Russia and Ukraine
Global drones academy was training the troops

Summing up…

In summary, the development of drone-related technology is extremely important these days and provides great opportunities, whether in a war or in everyday life. Certainly, companies specializing in this field will have a significant impact on the functioning of our world .Hopefully in the right direction..

What do you think?

Sources:

1.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-62225830

2.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/10/world/europe/ukraine-drones.html

3.https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62048403

Tagged drones, Ukraine, war

Will Websites Make You Pay To Reject Their Cookies? (gizmodo.com)

Security

Outrageous demands posed by websites could soon be a global problem.

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Cookie files have been a controversy for a while now. On one hand, they allow for a better user experience, on the other hand, accepting them is a way of giving up on your internet privacy. It is almost impossible to avoid having a cookies notification pop up when you browse various websites.

I am sure we have all had an instance when we were prompted with an agreement to give our precious data away, the site simultaneously becomes unaccessible to us until we either agree or try our luck elsewhere. I think we all agree that this is a very greedy approach when it comes to our data and none of us likes being monitored or spied on. Unfortunately, the worst is yet to come. Recently it has come to my attention that certain EU websites initiated a new policy where to see the contents without agreeing to their cookie files you will have to pay money. So far, this occurrence was noted only in Germany with the price of free browsing costing us 4.99€ a month. Sites like: T-Online, Bild, and Die Welt, are just a handful of examples. “It’s a win-win for the websites. They get paid with data or they get paid with money,” said Cristiana Santos, an assistant professor of privacy and data protection law at Utrecht University. This totals about 75€ a year for non-invasive browsing.

Overall this will not change much for average users who do not value their data nevertheless it creates a dark vision of the internet where no information is free anymore and everything has a cost. That leaves us either paying the fee or chipping in for a VPN. And what is your opinion about this? Comment down below 🙂

Source:

Tagged cyber-security, internet

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/ai-art-generators-future/671568/

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Art by AI

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Art has always been a huge part of our lives. Even hundreds of years ago, artists were highly positioned people in society. They were respected and believed to be smarter than the rest. When it comes to art, I think paintings are the most intriguing part of it. I think many people share my opinion, because to this day they are sold for unimaginable amounts of money. What is more, the most visited museums in the world are the ones with works by artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Rembrandt, Monet, and Picasso. These painters are one of the best to ever live, because they put great effort into transferring emotions into their paintings. So is it possible to make an amazing piece without using any emotional intelligence? Some think it is, but for me, it will never be comparable to real artists’ work.

Not a pretty picture: Award-winning, AI-generated artwork angers artists

AI is becoming day by day a more significant part of our lives. We can experience it in so many everyday life situations, for example, when using voice assistance or image recognition for face to unlock your smartphone. But could you imagine that you can create your own AI art? That’s because of machines like DALL·E Mini.

DALL·E Mini has been rebranded as Craiyon and everybody can use it now for free. The company behind this concept is called Hugging Face, they are mostly known for being hosts of many open-source AI projects. They focus on creating an AI community that works together for a brighter future. They rebranded DALL·E Mini in June, because of the request of OpenAI. Using this tool, everyone can generate images from just a bunch of text. You just simply have to insert some text and you get nine images in return. The tool has become a meme generator overnight as people started having fun with their content. Many of the images are on social media like Twitter and Reddit. Check it for yourself, I promise it will be worth it. What is most interesting, Craiyon can generate up to 50 000 images per day. Moreover, Crayon’s database contains 30 000 000 million training images.

But there is quite a lot of controversy surrounding AI paintings. Firstly, artists may feel that AI is ripping off their work. Many artists think that AI deprives them of proper credit. The best example is Greg Rutkowski, who noticed that many people have been recently posting work very similar to his. This is starting to make sense when you discover that nearly 100 000 images have been created by just simply inserting his name into AI programs. I think he has every right to feel ripped off his work because it is on the verge of plagiarism. In my opinion, AI images should be regulated by laws to avoid situations like this.

What is more, many people believe that AI can never replace the human touch that artists have when it comes to capturing different moods or emotions. If I am being honest, I am one of them. I totally agree that AI images will never be as good as the ones made by humans.

Last but not least, many people try to monetize their AI images. I think it is not very ethical, because they aren’t selling their own work, but the work of a computer program. This is some sort of a grey area when it comes to commercial law, but I think this topic should be sorted out as soon as possible and actions like this should be fined and prohibited.

The Atlantic and nature.com both state that AI art is a great invention that will change our world for the better. But I don’t agree with this point of view. In my opinion, AI art is art for lazy people because it doesn’t require any artistic processes. This is why we are starting to question what art really is nowadays. If anyone can become an artist without skills or some sort of training then creating art is not special anymore or as special as it used to be. What do you think?

References:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03209-2

https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2022/10/21/dalle-mini-and-the-future-of-artificial-intelligence-art/?sh=48a2046e7d78

AI eye checks can predict heart disease risk in less than minute, finds study | Heart disease | The Guardian

AI, Devices

AI in medicine: the device with the help of the retina of the eye can predict the risk of heart disease

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Artificial intelligence has made our lives much easier since its inception. In the real world, everything is so connected with new technologies that it is simply impossible to imagine life without AI. And without any doubt, the contribution of technology to the field of medicine is the most important.

So, the issue of my talk, as it is easy to guess by the heading, is the contribution of AI to medicine.

A specially developed device in the future will be able to detect and predict the risks of heart disease. According to the British Journal of Ophthalmology, it soon will be quite possible to produce special cardiovascular screenings. In just 1 minute patients will be able to learn about the risks of heart disease. There will be no need to conduct any additional blood tests and similar frauds. Everything will be reduced to the greatest efficiency and the minimum time. This is how artificial intelligence works!

Personally, I think it’s a very cool idea. Firstly, nowadays cardiovascular diseases are very common. This is a real problem not only for older people. In addition, that’s a common fact that after the Covid-19 many people began to have heart problems. It turns out that there have become more issues concerning health.

The task of scientists is to save human lives. In many cases, medical care for late detection of the disease is already ineffective. And nothing can be done! In addition, high-quality medical care is an expensive thing. As a result, poor people do not get the necessary medical examinations. A very good thing about this new tool is that the inventors talk about its cheapness. I believe that quality medicine should be available to all segments of society, regardless of wealth.

The tool studies the blood vessels that are located in the retina of the eye. The tool takes into account various changes, makes all kinds of measurements. It turns out that blood vessels in retina and heart are closely connected, which provides a special opportunity to determine the state of the heart and even predict all sorts of risks through the retina.

Of course, this is very convenient. Any analyses require time, specified conditions, reagents or equipment. It seems to me that using this software will require less resources and human’s participation.

After all, I think it’s a wonderful invention. So far, of course, this is just an idea, confirmed by several studies. It will be quite difficult to transfer the code to real medicine. But still, artificial intelligence plays for the benefit of humanity and this is wonderful.

Sources:

AI can identify heart disease from an eye scan | University of Leeds

Tagged Artificial Intelligence, devices, medicine

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Xi Jinping’s “limitless” presidency. What does it mean for the future of the world economy?

Reading Time: < 1 minute

On the 22nd of October, the Chinese Communist Party meeting ended. Thus starting Xi Jinping’s unprecedented 3rd cadency in the position of the President of the People’s Republic of China. Unprecedented because of the term limit, which was established in the early 1990s by the CCP, to “prevent rival groups, or one individual leader, from becoming too influential”^[1]. Xi got rid of these limits, which made it possible for him to be the President of the PRC for another cadency. But what does it mean for the future of the world economy?

I believe it means, Xi Jinping will lead China to gaining more influence in the worlds economy by investing more and more in Africa. African population growth rate has been skyrocketing, and analyst predict that “By 2050, a quarter of the world’s people will be African”^[2]. On the example of China itself, population growth, means economical growth. Thats why Xi Jinping has been investing over $23 billion in Africa, building Infrastructure^[3]. China is already Africa’s biggest trade partner. The total Chinese-African trade value hit $254 Billion in 2021 growing by 35% in relation to 2020^[4]. It is hard to predict how much will this trade value grow in the future, but based on the predicted growth of Africas economy, we can safely say that probably by a lot.

Sources:

[1] Lin, Andy, et al. “All the Emperor’s Men.” Financial Times, 2022, ig.ft.com/xi-jinping-emperors-men/. Accessed 2022.

[2]Paice, Edward. “By 2050, a Quarter of the World’s People Will Be African – This Will Shape Our Future.” The Guardian, 2022, www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/20/by-2050-a-quarter-of-the-worlds-people-will-be-african-this-will-shape-our-future.

[3] McDonnell, Tim. “China Has Invested More in Africa than the Other Top Eight Lenders Combined.” Quartz, 2022, qz.com/africa/2125769/china-has-invested-23-billion-in-africas-infrastructure/.

[4] Mureithi, Carlos. “Trade between Africa and China Reached an All-Time High in 2021.” Quartz, 2022, qz.com/africa/2123474/china-africa-trade-reached-an-all-time-high-in-2021/.

AI, Business, Devices, Security

Can AI robots influence our day to day lives?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Emerging AI technologies are changing our lives already. They proved to be useful in various industries. Their main purpose is to increase the efficiency of work in companies and decrease the margin of error in human work, which is a big problem many of them have to face daily.

Speech recognition is one of the most popular examples of AI technologies. It significantly improved the way we write articles, papers or simply look things up online and shortened the time of doing research. Nearly every iPhone user knows how to use this virtual assistant or at least what it is. It can be helpful in various aspects of life: navigation, smart home, everyday tasks, research, music, podcasts and so on. Moreover, Apple’s privacy policy states that it “keeps users’ information private and secure — whatever he asks Siri is not associated with his Apple ID. The power of the Apple Neural Engine ensures that the audio of users requests never leaves his iPhone or iPad unless he chooses to share it.”

Another extremely useful solution provided by the AI technologies is face recognition. It is used mainly by phone companies as a another, “fun” way in which customer can unlock their device. Although it proved to be quite essential in social media too. What has face recognition to do with social media, you might ask. The answer is actually quite simple. Millions of Instagram, TikTok and Facebook influencers became famous mainly because of their videos with funny, scary or beautifying filters. That might sound a little bit immature or childish, but that industry generates in fact millions of dollars monthly.

A few years ago, a team from UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University started working on a stumble-proof robot that would adapt to challenging, difficult terrain in real time. “The system was trained entirely in simulation, in a virtual version of the real world where the robot’s small brain (everything runs locally on the on-board limited compute unit) learned to maximize forward motion with minimum energy and avoid falling by immediately observing and responding to data coming in from its (virtual) joints, accelerometers and other physical sensors.”(Devin Coldewey, TechCrunch, July 9, 2021). The possibilities of this technology are endless if we would be able to apply it to our daily work or research. Robots like these would be able to explore hard-to-reach areas and make human work so much easier and more efficient.

But what if one machine could have all these qualities? What if it could speak, understand human speech, recognize faces and move, while constantly readapting to the changing environment? That’s an extremely exciting perspective. Teams from “Boston Dynamics” – robotics and engineering design company from Massachusetts and automotive company owned by Elon Musk- “Tesla” are both currently working on humanoids, which would have all of the above. If the projects are successful, it could change our daily lives forever.

Atlas – because that is the name of the Boston Dynamics robot – “was initially designed for search and rescue tasks and unveiled to the public in 2013. The robot stands about 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall and weighs about 190 pounds (86 kilograms). It is battery-powered and hydraulically actuated with 28 degrees of freedom. […] It can adapt behaviors based on what it sees. That means engineers do not have to pre-program jumping motions for all the platforms and gaps the robot might encounter.” (Leslie Katz, CNET.com, “See Boston Dynamics Atlas robots work a parkour course like it’s nothing”). Tesla’s robot – “Optimus”, although not that impressive in terms of athletics, looks much more humanlike.

Robots with all the human abilities would be able to replace people in many industries. Moreover, since their work and actions are repetitive, there would be less mistakes and misunderstandings than in human work.

24 October 2022