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15 February 2023
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Microsoft and Solar Manufacturer

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The South Korean company Hanwha and the American corporation Microsoft have agreed to cooperate in the field of solar energy. Microsoft is entering into “electricity purchase agreements” with energy suppliers to encourage the development of new solar and wind energy projects. This was done in order to try to achieve the set goals in the field of clean energy. The deal was struck due to supply chain issues and allegations of workplace abuse, which made it more difficult to introduce solar power across the US.

It is planned that solar energy heavyweight Cells will provide developers cooperating with Microsoft with more than 2.5 gigawatts of solar panels and additional services. According to Microsoft, this should be enough to power about 400,000 homes.

Microsoft aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than half by around 2030. That is, by the end of the decade, Microsoft plans to fully receive energy from zero-carbon sources in the areas where they work. There are also plans to counteract the already existing pollution by trying to remove it from the atmosphere.

Since 2012, Microsoft has technically purchased enough clean energy to match its electricity consumption. But this does not mean and does not guarantee that the company’s activities are really carried out on renewable energy sources on a permanent basis.

 Complicating the situation is that the solar industry is facing serious problems in the supply chain — especially in the United States. Solar energy production is concentrated in China, which supplies about 80 percent of the world’s solar panels. This concentration makes the solar energy supply chain more vulnerable to bottlenecks, and the main one recently has been accusations of forced labor in the autonomous region of China. The US blocked more than 1,000 shipments of solar energy parts between June and October last year after banning imports from the area. These trade barriers have significantly slowed the development of solar installations in the United States.

Cooperation with the South Korean manufacturer is part of Microsoft’s strategy to switch to the use of exclusively renewable energy sources in all its divisions by 2025 and achieve climate neutrality by 2030.

The issue of climate problems is really very important and worries people in recent years. So I wonder what the results of such an agreement and cooperation will be.

Sources:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/26/23572495/microsoft-qcells-strategic-alliance-renewable-energy-solar-panels#:~:text=Microsoft%20just%20forged%20a%20strategic,solar%20energy%20across%20the%20US.

https://news.microsoft.com/2023/01/25/microsoft-and-qcells-announce-strategic-alliance-to-curb-carbon-emissions-and-power-the-clean-energy-economy/

https://vervetimes.com/microsoft-strikes-strategic-alliance-with-solar-manufacturer/amp/

8 February 2023
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AI, Apps

Another novelty in the field of artificial intelligence

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Microsoft has introduced the artificial intelligence VALLE, which is able to simulate any human voice based on an example lasting only three seconds. At the same time, the voice is imitated very reliably, preserving both the timbre and the emotional coloring of the original.

Unlike other text conversion methods, which often synthesize speech by manipulating waveforms, Microsoft’s development mainly analyzes exactly how a person sounds, breaks this information into separate “tokens” and uses training data to compare their “knowledge” about how this voice will sound if the AI pronounces other phrases. VALL-E is trained on recordings of 60 thousand hours of conversations of more than 7 thousand speakers, which is about 100 times more than in existing systems.

The most interesting thing is that it takes VALL-E only a few seconds to clone a voice, and besides, the similarity of emotional timbre and background noise. Moreover, the fact that the model is still quite new, but already has a huge advantage over others. And, of course, further improvements are expected to lead to even more human-like speech.

Google showed its AI Duplex, which can also speak almost indistinguishably from a human, back in 2018, but the essence of Microsoft’s development is not in the AI itself, namely in its ability to imitate different voices.

As in the case with all the other different AI models there is concern about the misuse of Vall-E. For example, to imitate the voices of public figures, politicians, or stars. Criminals will also be able to obtain confidential data if they make a person believe that he is talking to family, friends, or officials. Some security systems also use voice identification.

However, VALL-E developers and researchers claim that such risks can be reduced using a different model. It is possible to develop a model that will be able to determine whether the audio was generated by the VALL-E or not. However, how it will look at the moment of a telephone conversation, for example, is not entirely clear.

But so far this development is not open for public use and we ourselves cannot try out VALL-E. We cannot make sure how well the model imitates intonation and changes in the emotionality of speech, and how quickly everything works. But at the same time we have the opportunity to listen to the already generated text from VALL-E.

Sources:

https://www.business-standard.com/article/technology/microsoft-s-new-ai-tool-vall-e-can-replicate-any-voice-in-just-3-seconds-123011000696_1.html

Microsoft’s New AI Can Simulate Anyone’s Voice From a 3-Second Sample

https://valle-demo.github.io/

7 February 2023
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AI, Devices

Robots from 2023

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Robots in our time are no longer considered something supernova and amazing. However, all the same, progress in their development is taking place, and quite large-scale. Previously. These were stupid machines that were controlled by people and had a very narrow range of capabilities.

Fortunately, or not, over the past 5-10 tears, the field of robotics has advanced a lot. And the company Nvidia has made a significant contribution to the development. At the International Consumer Electronics show this year, all the top robots had Nvidia brains. And all such robots are created for completely different areas of our lives.

For example, a baby stroller GluxKind “Ella” with artificial intelligence. It can rock the baby on its own, help with descents and ascents uphill, and has many sensors to monitor the environment. Such sensors allow the stroller to move independently, so if there is no child in the stroller, then you do not have to carry it, since it can follow you by itself, while avoiding obstacles. And of course, the stroller can be connected to the phone and tracked using GPS.

A delivery robot from Neubility was also introduced. This unmanned robot has joined the ranks of delivery robots. It was developed larger and more reliable than many of those that are already in the market. Since many delivery robots are hacked or used for other purposes. In theory, on-board cameras should record those who harm the robot, but it is unclear hoe long it will take until people leave it alone. So, the company is considering more secure options for the robot to work. For instance, golf courses, hospitals, resorts. In my opinion, it is really difficult to lead such delivery robots into real life due to the fact that there are a lot of external unpredictable factors. However, in hospitals and in some quite protected places, such innovations can be very useful.

Another interesting development was presented. Control tower for autonomous parking.

Seoul Robotics has taken a different path towards the commercialization of autonomous vehicles. Instead of developing and embedding the entire autonomous driving system, including sensors, into the vehicle, Seoul is turning to the surrounding infrastructure.

Seoul Robotics claims that its LV5 CTRL TWR helps provide information about the environment and selects the safest path for the vehicle. This approach can be much cheaper than introducing this technology into every car. It could also help provide fewer catastrophic problems and allow older cars to interact better with newer autonomous vehicles, while providing a viable low-cost upgrade for those who wanted the latest cars that are not currently autonomous to work as if they were.

Sources:

The Hottest Robots at CES Had Nvidia Brains

https://www.zdnet.com/article/best-robots-ai-ces-2023/

https://www.zdnet.com/article/best-robots-ai-ces-2023/

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2 January 2023
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Is the introduction of e-fuel the future?

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E-fuels are fuels in gas or liquid form that are produced from renewable sources (for example, solar or wind energy) or decarbonized electricity. This raw material distinguishes them from biofuels, which are mainly produced from biomass.

Due to the reduction of harmful emissions associated with combustion engines, e-fuel plays a key role in decarbonization strategies. By studying the entire production cycle, carbon emissions are much lower than those of oil-based fuels.

How are they produced? First of all, it all depends on what form the final product will be in, liquid or gaseous:

  • gas e-fuels: renewable hydrogen and e-methane, which can later be liquefied to produce liquid H2 .
  • liquid e-fuels: for example, e-methanol and e-crude oil (synthetic crude oil)  from which e-diesel fuel is obtained.
  • gas or liquid form: synthetic ammonia.

The advantage of e-fuel is that it uses the same infrastructure as fossil analogues such as gasoline, diesel fuel, kerosene or natural gas. According to some studies, by 2070, electronic kerosene will satisfy about 40% of aviation’s energy needs. There are various initiatives around the world that are aimed at the production of environmentally friendly electronic fuel. And here is one of the latest news on the automotive market.

Porsche, together with some partners, have started the production of climate-neutral “electronic fuel”, which ideally will replace gasoline in cars with an internal combustion engine in the future. Porsche plans to initially use this fuel in motorsport, and in subsequent years to use it for other purposes. Of course, eventually, the company plans to sell fuel to oil and other companies so that this fuel is distributed among consumers.  

The companies claim that they provide almost neutral operation of gas engines with CO2 content. The vehicle will still need to use oil to lubricate the engine. At the pilot stage, Porsche expects to produce about 130,000 liters of electronic fuel. And by the middle of the decade, in about 2 years, it is planned to increase this figure to about 550 million liters. Initially, the construction of a plant in Chile was announced by Porsche at the end of 2020, when the automaker announced that it would invest $ 24 million in the development of the plant and electronic fuel.Partners include Chilean operating company Highly Innovative Fuels, Siemens’ renewable energy unit and others.

However, it would still be very difficult and too expensive to completely replace traditional fossil fuels at the moment. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2021, about 134.83 billion gallons (about 500 billion liters) of finished gasoline were consumed in the United States, which averages about 369 million gallons per day.

But at the same time, the production of such fuel would allow Porsche and other companies to continue to produce cars, such as Porsche 911 sports car with a traditional engine along with a new electric model or instead of it. Although electric cars can boast outstanding performance characteristics.

Sources:

https://www.motortrend.com/features/porsche-supercup-efuel-direct-air-carbon-capture

https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/tech/porsche-synthetic-fuels/

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/20/porsche-starts-production-of-e-fuel-that-could-provide-gas-alternative.html

21 December 2022
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AI

New groundbreaking technology ?

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ChatGPT, a new chatbot that’s quickly become the latest fad in tech. The technology was developed by San Francisco-based OpenAI, a research company led by Sam Altman and backed by Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Khosla Ventures.

ChatGPT debuted in late November and has quickly turned into a viral sensation, with people tweeting questions, such as “Are NFTs dead,” and requests like, “Tell a funny joke about the tax risks of international remote work.” They include a screenshot of ChatGPT’s response, which often — but not always — makes sense. I tried it myself and talked to this bot. And his answers are generally quite realistic. But at the same time, if you ask the bot to compare and choose something better, you will get an answer like this :

“It is not appropriate for me to make a determination as to which brand is “better,” as this is a subjective decision that depends on an individual’s preferences, needs, and priorities.“

And here’s what the ChatGPT can tell us about itself

“I am a language model, which means that I have been trained on a large dataset of text and can generate human-like responses to a wide range of questions and prompts. I do not have my own personal experiences or physical presence, and I exist only as a set of algorithms running on a computer. My primary function is to assist users like you by providing information and answering questions to the best of my ability. I am here to help and do not have any personal opinions or feelings. Is there anything else you would like to know?

You can ask me any question within the scope of my knowledge and training. Some examples of the types of questions I can help with include:

  • General knowledge questions
  • Questions about language and vocabulary
  • Questions about history, science, and other academic subjects
  • Questions about technology and computing
  • Questions about culture, arts, and entertainment

If you’re not sure what to ask, you can try asking me something about a topic that you’re interested in, or you can ask for suggestions on a specific topic. I’ll do my best to provide accurate and helpful information.”

It is also important to remember that this is a fairly new technology, it has limitations. For example, ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible, but at the same time meaningless answers. It is difficult to fix this problem, because: there is currently no source of truth during training, or training the model to be more careful forces her to reject questions that it can answer correctly, also supervised training misleads the model, because the ideal answer depends on what the model knows, and not on what the user knows. ChatGPT is also sensitive to water phrasing changes or repeated attempts to enter the same thing. For instance, with one formulation of the question the model may answer that it does not know the answer, but with a paraphrase it can answer correctly. In such cases, ideally, the model could ask clarifying questions when the user enters a question that is not entirely clear. But so far this does not happen and the bot just guesses what the user meant. So no matter how interesting the technology is and most likely very promising for the future, especially for search engines, it cannot be trusted 100% yet. Since AI can also generate something incorrectly.

However, in a year, this turned into a failure for the technology sector, with mass layoffs, wrecked stock prices and crypto catastrophes dominating the headlines, ChatGPT has served as a reminder that innovation is still happening.

And in the end, here’s a little joke from the bot:

Why was the math book sad?

Because it had too many problems…

I hope this joke brimgs a smile to your face.

Sources:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/why-were-all-obsessed-with-chatgpt-a-mind-blowing-ai-chatbot/

https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/13/chatgpt-is-a-new-ai-chatbot-that-can-answer-questions-and-write-essays.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/13/google-execs-warn-of-reputational-risk-with-chatgbt-like-tool.html

10 December 2022
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AI, Devices

Flexible electronic skin can be a reality?

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The skin is the largest organ in the human body. Our skin is in constant contact with the environment and under some influence, undergoes various actions. Through it and thousands of nerve endings, people can feel temperature, touch, pressure and pain. This is all a view from an ordinary person, but not a scientist. People who are engaged in science and explore the skin, see much more and deeper.

Electronic Second Skins Are the Wearables of the Future | WIRED UK

The skin is not only a sensory organ, but also a material. It is flexible, but also stretchable, self-healing and biodegradable. There will be different applications for the electronic second skin in the future, as well as any new technological development in our time… for example, for people who wear prosthetics, touch would improve the quality of life at times, allowing them to distinguish soft from hard and notice sharp or scalding hot before they can cause any damage.

In March 2022, Stanford scientists published a proof of the principle of operation of a light-emitting polymer. Researchers have demonstrated that this device can be worn on the knuckle of a finger and stretch 2 times its length and change shape, while not tearing it. So far, this device can only show a static image with a low resolution, but this is already a good enough step into the future, so to speak, which will allow us to reach the goal, namely, wearable electronics on the body that displays vital signs.

The Silicon Valley startup Pyrams is developing a soft tape, like a second skin, that can be wrapped around the wrist and it can measure, for example, blood pressure, temperature or glucose levels.

The second skin, created by advanced electronics, can allow for the expansion of the application of electronics in areas such as healthcare, sports and military fields by communicating with our human body as artificial human parts. At the same time , of course , there are a lot of BUT…Before the second skin can be fully realized in life, several obstacles must be overcome: the chemical stability of materials must be improved, the electronic characteristics of the device must be improved, electronics must be standardized. and the development of methods for integrating technologies of all components.

In general, the idea of developing a second skin is quite real in the future and many steps and discoveries towards this have already been made, as research and promotion of humanity in the world of technology and artificial intelligence show.

Sources:

https://www.wired.com/story/electronic-second-skins/

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/advs.201900186

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6548954/

19 November 2022
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AI, Security

Another source of stalking?

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PimEyes is a search system that works with images. Any user can upload any photo and the system will find all the photos of a person that have ever been uploaded to the Internet. The user can search for more than just their face all over the web because there is nothing stopping them from looking for someone else.

The company advertises its effectiveness in face recognition on its web page: “In the results, we show not only photos similar to the ones you uploaded to the search bar, but also photos in which you appear on a different background, with other people, or even with a different haircut.” But when you use the service for free, the background of the original photo is blurred and there is no way to go to the site where the photo is posted.

PimEyes is a free service but offers a paid level for deeper face search. Moreover, with a paid subscription to the service the user will have the opportunity to visit the site from where the photo was found. With the unplanned use of the service, there is no such possibility, and moreover, the background of the original photo is blurred.

“PimEyes is not designed to spy on others and is not intended for that purpose,” the statement said. However, a paid subscription to the service allows the user to follow links to any site from which the photo was found, after which, by collecting information related to the images – such as the background of the photo, people nearby, the text of a blog post or a photo on a person’s work site – the stalker can determine where the person in question works or the signs of the area where they live. However, PimEyes says that its data protection department tracks suspicious activity, such as if a male user repeatedly searches for female faces or a user uploads a photo of a child.

But in fact, such a system is unlikely to be able to protect from persecution although many people today upload photos or videos to their own social networks, and thus share information about their personal lives. However, for those people who really do not publish and are opposed to posting personal information on the Internet, this service can be detrimental.

But there is also a useful function for this service, it allows people to opt out of having their image appear in the results. To do this, user should go to the PimEyes website and fill out the opt-out request form.

Facial recognition technology is an innovation whose commercialization is questionable. PimEyes is aware of the contradictory nature of its business – the company claims it does not store data and that all results are generated on publicly available sites. “PimEyes simply provides a tool, and the user is obligated to use it responsibly,” the company writes on its blog.

 What’s more, the company claims there are positive examples of the tool’s use, stating to the BBC that it:

● helps investigative journalists.

● negotiated with law enforcement to help fight crimes against children, human trafficking and terrorism.

● has helped women and girls remove thousands of images related to pornography without their consent.

In sum , this service is quite controversial and requires attention.

Sources:

https://www.the-sun.com/tech/5462751/creepy-ai-face-search-engine-sparks-stalking-fears/

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63544169

https://pimeyes.com/en

24 October 2022
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Portrait in 10 seconds or artists’ nightmare

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The number of available artificial intelligence text to image generators is rising rapidly, giving the public an array of new tools to create digital imagery.

One of the first tools, DALL·E studied the relationship between images and the text used to describe them. It uses a process called “diffusion”, which starts with a pattern of random dots and gradually changes this pattern towards the image when it recognizes certain aspects of this image. The original DALL-E was introduced in January 2021, and the tool, with its ability to turn any text description into a unique image, impressed not only experts in the field of artificial intelligence, but also the public. Since that time, other systems have already been developed that are capable of processing text into pictures. Access to other systems, such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, earlier was much easier for the average user. But now, since July 2022, access is open to all users.

Anyone can use this AI art generator – that’s the risk.

Studying the experience of real use is an important part of the responsible development and implementation of artificial intelligence. The company started with a preview of DALL·E 2 for a limited number of trusted users. As developers learned more about the capabilities and limitations of the technology and gained confidence in security systems, new users were gradually added and DALL·E became available in beta in July 2022.

The DALL-E 2 creators Content Policy does not allow users to create violent or political content. DALL-E output data passes through various filters that prevent the generation of images containing violence, pornography, as well as real faces and bodies of people.

A text-to-image program named Stable Diffusion that offers open-source, unfiltered image generation, that’s free to use for anyone with a decent computer and a little technical knowhow. It’s been embraced by the AI art community and decried by many traditional artists; it’s been picked apart, exalted, and worried over. Experts note that the ability of text—to-image conversion systems to create naked bodies without consent and realistic images of people is potentially dangerous – this is an excuse for propaganda, disinformation and much more. There are also bias issues. Since these systems are trained on images that are available on the Internet, they can reproduce unequal aspects of society. For example, if a few months ago the system was asked to draw a portrait of the CEO, it most likely gave out an image of a white man. But at the moment, with constant updates and training of the system, this should not happen.

OpenAI allows users of the AI art generator DALL-E program to edit images with human faces. Previously, this feature was unavailable due to concerns of misuse, but after improving filters to remove images containing sexual, political and violent content, access to this feature was opened. It will allow users to edit images in various ways. For example, you can upload a photo and create variations of the image, or edit certain functions, such as changing clothes. This feature will undoubtedly be useful to many users of the creative industries, from photographers to cinematographers.

The revolution in art is not something new, but this one, as some believe, may be final.

Some artists already feared that a new generation of artificial intelligence image generators could take their work away and spend the years spent learning their craft for free.

“This thing wants our work, it actively opposes artists,” wrote California-based film and game conceptual artist RJ Palmer in a tweet that was liked by more than 25,000 users.

In tweets, he stressed how well the results of artificial intelligence systems can imitate living artists. In one case he investigated, artificial intelligence even tried to reproduce artists’ signatures. However, I believe that no matter how accurate the generated picture is, a person will still appreciate something created by human hands more. And no matter how banal it may sound, there is much more value in the works made by the artist’s hands than in the generated picture on the web. After all, this is an individuality that, if artificial intelligence can acquire, it will take a very long time.

A variant of Klimt’s painting “The kiss” from DALL-E 2

So, we cannot escape from progress in our world, no matter what fears there are, because everything is improving, and the society gets along with these innovations…

Sources:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/28/23376328/ai-art-image-generator-dall-e-access-waitlist-scrapped

https://openai.com/dall-e-2/#demos

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62788725.amp

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/artificial-intelligence-images-dall-e/