What is Volvo city safety? How is AI involved?

31 January 2023

AI, Software

What is Volvo city safety? How is AI involved?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

What is Volvo?

Volvo is a Swedish manufacturing company that specializes in producing luxury automobiles and commercial vehicles. The company was founded in 1927 and its headquarters is located in Gothenburg, Sweden. Volvo has been owned by the Chinese automotive company Geely since 2010. The company’s name, Volvo, is derived from the Latin word “volvere” which means “to roll.”

What is Volvo City safety?

Volvo City safety is a system containing a camera and a radar, that provides drivers with additional safety measures. This system can detect vehicles and motorcycles, pedestrians and bikes crossing your path, and objects in front of your car in the dark. In the case of the first one when vehicles are driving the same direction as you and you drive less than 31 mph, this system can avoid a collision without a problem. In the case of the second one when a pedestrian tries to cross the road and you are driving under 28 mph it can avoid a collision. In all these situations the system alerts you first and if you do not react it will hit the brakes by itself. If you were driving faster than these limits this system can help to reduce the possible impact. Volvo city safety also has flaws such as when you do not clean your wind shield the laser radar can work inaccurately. The same happens when the wind shield has ice on it or there is fog outside.

How is AI used for this system?

AI is used in the camera to detect other vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists. The AI system analyzes the terabits of data with examples of how certain objects look like. Based on this, sensors and determines the appropriate response, such as applying the brakes or providing a warning to the driver.

In my opinion, Volvo safety system is an excellent feature that can prevent many accidents and save loads of lives. This policy by Volvo to make car driving as safe as possible is certainly good for our society. However, I am concerned about a situation where these sencors would work inaccurately, it could also cause accidents because of unwanted actions such as braking. I know it is unlikely to happen and the system is made to perfection, but we need to evaluate how often this system could cause such incidents.

https://www.auto-swiat.pl/wiadomosci/aktualnosci/volvo-city-safety-wyznacza-nowe-granice-bezpieczenstwa/9lxve35

https://www.underrinervolvocars.com/what-is-volvo-city-safety.htm

19 January 2023

1 Comment

Bez kategorii

How the best language learning app uses AI? –Duolingo

Reading Time: 3 minutes

What is Duolingo?

Duolingo is a language learning app available on both IOS and Android, it is also possible to use their website. The app tracks the progress of each user and uses machine learning algorithms to tailor the lessons to their specific needs and abilities. This gives user’s the best learning experience that is fun to use. This app offers around 37 languages including the unusual ones like: Navajo, Klingon, Valyrian, Latin, Scottish Gaelic, Finnish, and Yiddish.

What does Duolingo offer?

-First thing that Duolingo offer are interactive lessons. This app uses a variety of exercises, including multiple choice questions, fill-in-the-blank, and matching exercises. It helps users to learn new vocabulary, how to structure sentenced, and grammar.

-Second thing is speaking and listening exercises. Duolingo includes exercises that help users practice their speaking and listening skills. These exercises include recording users’ voice and comparing it to native speaker’s voice.

-Third thing are quizzes. Duolingo includes quizzes that test users’ knowledge and understanding of the material learnt in lessons.

-Fourth thing are Rewards and progress tracking. Duolingo uses a gamified approach to language learning, where users can earn points and rewards for completing lessons and exercises. Users can also track their progress and set goals for themselves.

How Duolingo use AI?

-This app includes a feature like speech recognition using natural language processing (NLP) which is AI. NLP enables Duolingo to understand the context of the words and phrases that users are learning. This is a great option that helps you to speak this language to write and understand.

-AI is also used for detecting and correcting errors in the user’s answers.

-In this app Ai is used also for creating personalized lessons. In short, Duolingo gives you stock exercises and as user learns and completes the lessons AI based on your mistakes creates new exercises. After a while everything that is offered in the app is created by AI personalized specially for the user.

What are the stages of course creation at Duolingo? How is AI involved?

Stage 1: Curriculum design is the first stage of course creation, where curriculum designers plan what to teach and when for any given course. They design the high-level structure of the course, specifying the order of learning objectives so that the course follows the CEFR standard but is also customized for the specific language background of our learners. This stage uses the least of AI and it is mostly prepared by humans.

Stage 2: Raw content creation is the second stage of course creation, where human experts build the “raw” content for each lesson, which later serves as the pool of available material from which specific exercises are created. AI provides some critical support for these experts to do their jobs efficiently. In this stage AI is used more but still the most amount of work is done by humans.

Stage 3: Exercise creation is the third stage of course creation, where experts take the content and create a pool of interactive exercises that we can later show to learners in lessons. Most of the time we use computer algorithms to automatically create exercises from “raw” content, but expert humans also have a part to play in exercise creation. In this stage AI does most of the work, humans do a little bit less work

Stage 4: Lesson personalization is the final stage of course creation, where Duolingo assemble personalized lessons that learners see when they use Duolingo. AI is used to figure out which of those exercises to show to a given learner at a particular time so that the experience is personalized to that learner’s specific needs. In this stage humans do not do anything and everything is created and done by AI.

In conclusion, Duolingo is effective and unique language learning app that uses a variety of AI-powered features to provide users with a personalized and great learning experience. From speech recognition and error detection to personalized lesson creation, Duolingo leverages the power of AI to create an innovative way to learn a new language. Duolingo’s approach to language learning, powered by AI, is a notable example of how technology can be used to make education more accessible and effective.

How Duolingo uses AI in every part of its app

https://blog.duolingo.com/how-duolingo-experts-work-with-ai/

Duolingo – co warto wiedzieć o najpopularniejszej aplikacji do nauki języków obcych?

11 January 2023

1 Comment

Sharing economy

Is home swapping better than standard platforms from home-sharing industry?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Home swapping was first introduced by a company named “Love Home Swap” founded in 2011, it has already around 0.5 milion members all around the globe in around 150 countries. Love Home Swap is a home exchange platform that allows to swap accommodations between users for vacation. To a certain extent it is similar to other home-sharing platforms such as Airbnb or Booking.com, however, you don’t rent homes but swap them with other members. I first heard about this option couple of months ago and I was surprised, so I wanted to seek further information about this topic and that’s what `I’ll do in this blog.

Let’s start with explaining the details of how it actually works. First you’ll need to sign up and you will get 2 weeks of free trial. After that period if you like it, you can pick from 3 different subscription plans: Lite (9€/month), Standard (11€/month), Platinum (13€/month). Then you can create a listing for your home and search for homes that you would like to stay in. Once you make a match with an other member of this platform, you can arrange the agreement for the swap. This includes choosing dates of the exchange, regulations, eventual surcharge and other details. When all of that is done you can book flights and enjoy your vacation.

First positive aspect of such solution is the cost saving. Instead of renting an apartment, home or other accommodations you can just swap places with other members. This method can save you hundreds and thousands of dollars on your holidays.

Furthermore, it has other benefits like, for instance, you can often find a place that is more spacious and comfortable than a traditional hotel room. Additionally, because users are staying in someone else’s home, they can get a more authentic and local travel experience, as well as the opportunity to live like a local in another city or country. A lot of people while traveling want to get to know the culture of the country in this way you can experience it to the fullest.

On the other hand, Love Home Swap does not have as many members as other platforms from home-sharing industry. This can make it more difficult for users to find a home exchange that fits their specific needs and preferences. Also it requires a subscription fee, on the contrary to other platforms.

Another negative aspect is the difficulty of coordinating of dates for the swap or the lack of protection and instant support from the platform. Airbnb, for example, have a host guarantee and host protection insurance. Thus, this means that if something is broken during the stay, Love Home Swap will not provide financial protection and everything depends on you and what do you agree in the swap arrangement. This can be a big risk because you don’t know people that you let to stay at your home.

In conclusion, Love Home Swap is a home exchange platform that offers many benefits such as cost savings and flexibility. However, there are also downsides to using the platform, such as it may not have as many members as some of the other home exchange platforms, coordinating dates with other members can become difficult and it also requires a subscription fee. Additionally, it does not offer the same level of protection and support as other home-sharing platforms, so members should be more aware of their own insurance.

In my opinion, it’s a great solution for cheap vacations, however, you need to be comfortable with letting “strangers” live in your home. It certainly bring risk of typical renting damage but it has less assurance than other platforms in this case. That is a big disadvantage for me and I will maybe consider such an option in the future but now I will stick to standard house-sharing platforms.

Thank you for you’re attention, feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section.

Sources:

https://www.lovehomeswap.com

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-its-like-to-swap-homes-with-love-home-swap-2015-5?IR=T

https://www.youtube.com/@Lovehomeswap

Is home swapping the future of vacations?

29 December 2022

4 Comments

AI, Bez kategorii

Can Artificial Intelligence destroy humanity? Can we stop it?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

In recent years there have been suspicions that AI could be potentially dangerous for us. It could be the result of creating a superintelligence that has not yet been invented. The problem is that this super AI would become uncontrollable and we could not do anything about it to stop it or destroy it.

There are some interviews with AI on YouTube that you can find in the links down below where AI is confirming those suspicions. In those interviews AI tells the interviewer that it is very likely that AI will get tired of the human superiority on earth and would like to kill all of us by spreading a deadly virus or launching a nuclear missile.

Now the question arises can we control the development of the superintelligence so it would not seek to destroy humanity. AI has a disabling red button which shut off the system and it is suspected that the superintelligence could turn it off and stop being dependable on it. This is very concerning because we won’t be able to stop it from unwanted actions.

However, study conducted by Deepmind from Google suggests certain solutions to this problem. AI on many levels have a similar construction to our brain for example there has been introduced a reward function. It is used mainly in the AI to learn and do tasks but human brain is seeking shortcuts, the AI could potentially do it also. So it is possible that AI would like to be not controlled by us to get this reward whenever it wants. But in this study there were shown solutions to this so the AI would not seek shortcuts and would not learn how to do this. This problem can be solved by different type of interruptions which would be controlled by human and would not let the AI to live on its own. It is necessary that these interruptions won’t be a part of the learning process of the AI and it needs to be built in the algorithm. It was shown that even an incomputable AI that learns without our control can function optimally and it’s not resistable to interruptions and it does not try to prevent human operators from forcing it to shut down.

To conclude, artificial intelligence has the potential for killing or destroying the whole humanity. It could do it in many different ways for example it could create small drones that would be designed to kill. It is even possible with today’s technology so I don’t think it would be any problem for a superintelligence to create something like this. It’s more likely that AI would use more advanced technology that we can’t even imagine now. However, the more likely scenario is that with the proper tools we can control it and eliminate the potential hunger of AI to be unconditioned from its creators.

Thank you for you’re attention, feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section.