Mediaboss Marketing

(CNN) Instagram is testing new ways to verify its youngest users ages, including by using artificial intelligence that analyzes a photo and estimates how old the user is.

Meta-owned Instagramsaidin a blog post on Thursday that AI is one of three new methods its testing to verify users ages on the photo-sharing site. Users will be required to use one of the options to verify their age if they edit their birth date on Instagram from under age 18 to over 18.

Instagram is testing these options first with its users in the United States. Italready requires usersto state their age when they start using the service, andemploys AI in other waysto determine if users are kids or adults.

The move is part of anongoing pushto make sure the photo-sharing apps youngest users see content that is age-appropriate. It comes less than a year after disclosures from a Facebook whistleblower raised concerns about the platformsimpact on younger users. Last year, Instagram came under fire when documents leaked by thewhistleblower, Frances Haugen, showed it was aware of how the social media site can damage mental health and body image, particularly among teenage girls.

The technology comes from a London-based company calledYoti. An animatedvideothat Instagram posted to its blog gives a sense for how Yotis AI age-estimation works: A user is directed to take a video selfie on their smartphone (Yoti said this step serves as a way to make sure a real person is in the resulting image), and Instagram shares an image from that selfie with the company. Yotis AI first detects that there is a face in the picture and then scrutinizes its facial features to determine the persons age.

Julie Dawson, Yotis chief policy and regulatory officer, told CNN Business that its AI was trained with a dataset made up of images of peoples faces along with the year and month that person was born. (Documentationthe company released in May to explain its technology said it was trained on millions of diverse facial images.)

When a new face comes along, it does a pixel-level analysis of that face and then spits out a number the age estimation with a confidence value, Dawson said. Once the estimation is completed, Yoti and Instagram delete the selfie video and the still image taken from it.

Verifying a users age can be a vexing problem for tech companies, in part because plenty of users may not have a government-issued photo ID card that can be checked.

Karl Ricanek, a professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and director of the schools Face Aging Group Research Lab, thinks Yotis technology is a good application of AI.

Its a worthwhile endeavor to try and protect kids, he said.

Yet while such technology could be helpful to Instagram, a number of factors can make it tricky to accurately estimate age from a picture, Ricanek said, including puberty which changes a persons facial structure as well as skin tone and gender.

Therecent documentationfrom Yoti indicates its technology is, on average, slightly less accurate at estimating the ages of kids who are between 13 to 17 and have darker skin tones than those with lighter skin tones. According to Yotis data, its age estimate was off, on average, by 1.91 years for females ages 13 to 17 whose skin tones were categorized as the two darkest shades on the Fitzpatrick scale a six-shade scale thats commonly used by tech companies to classify colors of skin versus an average error of 1.41 years for females in the same age group whose skin tones were the two lightest shades on the scale.

For kids between the ages of 13 to 17, the technologys estimate of how old they are was off by 1.56 years, on average, according to the document. (For teenagers overall, the average error rate is 1.52 years.)

What that means, in practice, is that there will be a lot of errors, said Luke Stark, an assistant professor at Western University in Ontario, Canada, who studies the ethical and social implications of AI. Were still taking about a mean absolute error, either way, of a year to a year and a half, he said.

Several CNN employees all adults over the age of 25 tried anonline demoof Yotis age-estimation technology. The demo differs from the experience Instagram users will have in that it takes a selfie, rather than a short video, and the result is an age-range estimation, rather than a specific age estimation, Yotis chief marketing officer, Chris Field, said.

The results varied: For a couple of reporters, the estimated age range was right on target, but for others it was off by many years. For instance, it estimated one editor was between the ages of 17 and 21, when theyre actually in their mid-30s.

Among other issues, Stark is also concerned that the technology will contribute to so-called surveillance creep.

Its certainly problematic, because it conditions people to assume theyre going to be surveilled and assessed, he said.

See the original post:
Instagram is testing artificial intelligence that verifies your age with a selfie scan - WWAY NewsChannel 3

MarqVisions technology comes at a time when the global counterfeit market is exploding, as it is projected to grow another 50% this year to reach nearly $3 trillion in 2023.

LOS ANGELES and PARIS (PRWEB) June 27, 2022

MarqVision, a next-generation, AI-powered IP protection platform, today announced that it is the recipient of a coveted 2022 Innovation Award from LVMH Mot Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH). The company was recognized in the Data and Artificial Intelligence Special Mention category at this years Viva Technology show in Paris, which took place June 15-18. As a winner, MarqVision has been invited to join the LVMH accelerator program, La Maison des Startups, at the Station F incubator.

For the past six years, the LVMH Innovation Awards program has been one of the highlights of the Viva Technology show, which has itself become a key event for the worlds innovation ecosystem. Through its participation, LVMH recognizes the need to support entrepreneurial spirit and innovation in order to build a better future for everyone. It also demonstrates how its own success is due in part to the ongoing dialogue between its 75 Maisons and the world of startups, a constant source of creativity.

MarqVisions technology comes at a time when the global counterfeit market is exploding, as it is projected to grow another 50% this year to reach nearly $3 trillion in 2023. The companys technology enables efficient removal of counterfeits end-to-end by automating the traditional anti-counterfeiting process. Its proprietary AI models detect counterfeits with 95%+ accuracy and remove counterfeit sales at scale.

MarqVision was one of more than 950 startups to apply for the 2022 Innovation Awards, and applications were received from 75 countries. A total of 21 startups from 10 different countries were selected as finalists, notably reflecting their ability to enhance the customer experience through different dimensions.

It is such an honor to receive an Innovation Award in the Data & Artificial Intelligence category, considering the amazing companies that participated this year, said DK Lee, co-founder and CBO of MarqVision. We are thrilled that MarqVision has been singled-out for developing first-of-its-kind technology to address the massive global counterfeit problem and theft of intellectual property. Our platform uniquely exists to protect human creativity and innovation in todays digital world, which is perfectly aligned with LVMHs vision for the Innovation Awards.Three of the LVMH Maisons have already selected MarqVision as their brand protection provider.

At LVMH, Innovation is our lifeblood. Its what allows us to continually increase the desirability of our Maisons products and services. The finalists of the 2022 Innovation Award will bring us their capacity to nourish the encounter between luxury and technology even more as their entrepreneurial spirit joins and inspires our own, says Bernard Arnault, CEO and Chairman, LVMH.

About the LVMH Innovation AwardThe LVMH Innovation Award was introduced in 2017 to recognize promising start-ups from around the world. The award affirms the importance of new ideas resonating with the groups core values of excellence, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurial spirit. Each year, hundreds of startups submit to be chosen as finalists and be invited to be part of the LVMH Lab during the Viva Technology Show in Paris which brings together the game changers driving the digital transformation around the world.

About MarqVisionMarqVision helps global brands identify and remove counterfeits from more than 1,500 online marketplaces across the world. Counterfeiting is a massive and growing threat worldwide, and MarqVision is on a mission to protect creativity and innovation with technology that allows brands to automatically monitor and protect their IPs. Harnessing image recognition and natural language processing, this AI-powered SaaS makes it faster than ever before to take down counterfeits. Founded in 2020 by Harvard Law graduates and backed by Softbank and Y Combinator, MarqVision is bringing forth the next evolution of brand protection for businesses everywhere. Learn more: http://www.marqvision.com.

Share article on social media or email:

Read the original:
MarqVision Wins Prestigious LVMH 2022 Innovation Award for Data and Artificial Intelligence - PR Web

GILBERT, Ariz. (PRWEB) June 27, 2022

Seasoned author Norbert Weissinger has released his newest science fiction novel. Bardolomy tells the story of Draedon Ekho, a freighter pilot searching among the stars for a new home after Earth succumbs to war, flooding, and storms.

Draedon finds himself in a world unlike any place he has been before, where he is welcomed by a friendly race of evolved humans engineered by an A.I. Due to its two suns, the planet has a dangerous climate full of storms, torrential rain, solar flares and searing heat which forces the population into underground hibernation for years at a time. Draedon is faced with the challenge of repairing his ship to leave the planet or transforming himself to live among the natives and their terrible secret to survival.

I found inspiration in Territorial Imperative by Robert Ardrey and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, Weissinger said those books influenced aspects of building my own world for Bardolomy

Weissinger also explores the ideas and ethics behind what it means to relinquish control to an A.I., and questions its ability to acquire ethics.

"An A.I. may be able to prevent wars by modifying our behavior, but at what cost if it cannot develop suitable ethics?" Weissinger asks, "If an A.I. achieved success, when would it know to stop, since it is essentially immortal? Would it continue its tinkering with the human genome, turning our species into a menagerie? If humans cannot agree on ethical standards, how can they impart ethics to a robot?"

Combining philosophical speculation with a gritty survival tale, Bardolomy is designed to take the reader on an escapist ride into the future and a man's search for identity in an age of manufactured humans.

BardolomyBy Norbert Weissinger ISBN: 978-1-6655-5077-2 (softcover); 978-1-6655-5078-9 (electronic) Available at AuthorHouse, Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the authorNorbert Weissinger was born in Germany and grew up in the U.S., where he studied biology and computer programming. He is the author of Bottom Time, a non-fiction account of his commercial diving experiences, and 1001 Word Rebuses, a word puzzle book. He has many interests, including chess, tennis, travel and reading and writing science fiction. You might find him in Thailand part of the year, or on a good hiking trail. He is married and lives in Arizona. This is his second science fiction novel. For more information, please visit https://www.norbertweissinger.com/.

###

General Inquiries: LAVIDGE PhoenixAshley Fletcherafletcher@lavidge.com

Share article on social media or email:

See original here:
Author Examines the Dangers of Artificial Intelligence Powered Genetic Modification - PR Web

Enlarge / "It's a cookbook?!"

Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Back in the 1950s, in the earliest days of what we now call artificial intelligence, there was a debate over what to name the field. Herbert Simon, co-developer of both the logic theory machine and the General Problem Solver, argued that the field should have the much more anodyne name of complex information processing. This certainly doesnt inspire the awe that artificial intelligence does, nor does it convey the idea that machines can think like humans.

However, "complex information processing" is a much better description of what artificial intelligence actually is: parsing complicated data sets and attempting to make inferences from the pile. Some modern examples of AI include speech recognition (in the form of virtual assistants like Siri or Alexa) and systems that determine what's in a photograph or recommend what to buy or watch next. None of these examples are comparable to human intelligence, but theyshow we can do remarkable things with enough information processing.

Whether we refer to this field as "complex information processing" or "artificial intelligence" (or the more ominously Skynet-sounding "machine learning") is irrelevant. Immense amounts of work and human ingenuity have gone into building some absolutely incredible applications. As an example, look atGPT-3, a deep-learning model for natural languages that can generate text that is indistinguishable from text written by a person (yet can also go hilariously wrong). It's backed by a neural network model that uses more than 170 billion parameters to model human language.

Built on top of GPT-3 is the tool named Dall-E,which will produce an image of any fantastical thing a user requests. The updated 2022 version of the tool, Dall-E 2, lets you go even further, as it can understand styles and concepts that are quite abstract.For instance, asking Dall-E to visualize an astronaut riding a horse in the style of Andy Warhol will produce a number of images such as this:

Dall-E 2 does not perform a Google search to find a similar image; it creates a picture based on its internal model. This is a new image built from nothing but math.

Not all applications of AI are as groundbreaking as these. AI and machine learning are finding uses in nearly every industry. Machine learning is quickly becoming a must-have in many industries, powering everything from recommendation engines in the retail sector to pipeline safety in the oil and gas industry and diagnosis and patient privacy in the health care industry. Not every company has the resources to create tools like Dall-E from scratch, so there's a lot of demand for affordable, attainable toolsets.The challenge of filling that demand has parallels to the early days of business computing, when computers and computer programs were quickly becoming the technology businesses needed.While not everyone needs to develop the next programming language or operating system, many companies want to leverage the power of these new fields of study, and they need similar tools to help them.

Continue reading here:
How to get started with machine learning and AI - Ars Technica

When you picture a hospital radiologist, you might think of a specialist who sits in a dark room and spends hours poring over X-rays to make diagnoses. Contrast that with your dentist, who in addition to interpreting X-rays must also perform surgery, manage staff, communicate with patients, and run their business. When dentists analyze X-rays, they do so in bright rooms and on computers that arent specialized for radiology, often with the patient sitting right next to them.

Is it any wonder, then, that dentists given the same X-ray might propose different treatments?

Dentists are doing a great job given all the things they have to deal with, says Wardah Inam SM 13, PhD 16.

Inam is the co-founder of Overjet, a company using artificial intelligence to analyze and annotate X-rays for dentists and insurance providers. Overjet seeks to take the subjectivity out of X-ray interpretations to improve patient care.

Its about moving toward more precision medicine, where we have the right treatments at the right time, says Inam, who co-founded the company with Alexander Jelicich 13. Thats where technology can help. Once we quantify the disease, we can make it very easy to recommend the right treatment.

Overjet has been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration to detect and outline cavities and to quantify bone levels to aid in the diagnosis of periodontal disease, a common but preventable gum infection that causes the jawbone and other tissues supporting the teeth to deteriorate.

In addition to helping dentists detect and treat diseases, Overjets software is also designed to help dentists show patients the problems theyre seeing and explain why theyre recommending certain treatments.

The company has already analyzed tens of millions of X-rays, is used by dental practices nationwide, and is currently working with insurance companies that represent more than 75 million patients in the U.S. Inam is hoping the data Overjet is analyzing can be used to further streamline operations while improving care for patients.

Our mission at Overjet is to improve oral health by creating a future that is clinically precise, efficient, and patient-centric, says Inam.

Its been a whirlwind journey for Inam, who knew nothing about the dental industry until a bad experience piqued her interest in 2018.

Getting to the root of the problem

Inam came to MIT in 2010, first for her masters and then her PhD in electrical engineering and computer science, and says she caught the bug for entrepreneurship early on.

For me, MIT was a sandbox where you could learn different things and find out what you like and what you don't like, Inam says. Plus, if you are curious about a problem, you can really dive into it.

While taking entrepreneurship classes at the Sloan School of Management, Inam eventually started a number of new ventures with classmates.

I didn't know I wanted to start a company when I came to MIT, Inam says. I knew I wanted to solve important problems. I went through this journey of deciding between academia and industry, but I like to see things happen faster and I like to make an impact in my lifetime, and that's what drew me to entrepreneurship.

During her postdoc in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Inam and a group of researchers applied machine learning to wireless signals to create biomedical sensors that could track a persons movements, detect falls, and monitor respiratory rate.

She didnt get interested in dentistry until after leaving MIT, when she changed dentists and received an entirely new treatment plan. Confused by the change, she asked for her X-rays and asked other dentists to have a look, only to receive still another variation in diagnosis and treatment recommendations.

At that point, Inam decided to dive into dentistry for herself, reading books on the subject, watching YouTube videos, and eventually interviewing dentists. Before she knew it, she was spending more time learning about dentistry than she was at her job.

The same week Inam quit her job, she learned about MITs Hacking Medicine competition and decided to participate. Thats where she started building her team and getting connections. Overjets first funding came from the Media Lab-affiliated investment group the E14 Fund.

The E14 fund wrote the first check, and I don't think we would've existed if it wasn't for them taking a chance on us, she says.

Inam learned that a big reason for variation in treatment recommendations among dentists is the sheer number of potential treatment options for each disease. A cavity, for instance, can be treated with a filling, a crown, a root canal, a bridge, and more.

When it comes to periodontal disease, dentists must make millimeter-level assessments to determine disease severity and progression. The extent and progression of the disease determines the best treatment.

I felt technology could play a big role in not only enhancing the diagnosis but also to communicate with the patients more effectively so they understand and don't have to go through the confusing process I did of wondering who's right, Inam says.

Overjet began as a tool to help insurance companies streamline dental claims before the company began integrating its tool directly into dentists offices. Every day, some of the largest dental organizations nationwide are using Overjet, including Guardian Insurance, Delta Dental, Dental Care Alliance, and Jefferson Dental and Orthodontics.

Today, as a dental X-ray is imported into a computer, Overjets software analyzes and annotates the images automatically. By the time the image appears on the computer screen, it has information on the type of X-ray taken, how a tooth may be impacted, the exact level of bone loss with color overlays, the location and severity of cavities, and more.

The analysis gives dentists more information to talk to patients about treatment options.

Now the dentist or hygienist just has to synthesize that information, and they use the software to communicate with you, Inam says. So, they'll show you the X-rays with Overjet's annotations and say, 'You have 4 millimeters of bone loss, it's in red, that's higher than the 3 millimeters you had last time you came, so I'm recommending this treatment.

Overjet also incorporates historical information about each patient, tracking bone loss on every tooth and helping dentists detect cases where disease is progressing more quickly.

Weve seen cases where a cancer patient with dry mouth goes from nothing to something extremely bad in six months between visits, so those patients should probably come to the dentist more often, Inam says. Its all about using data to change how we practice care, think about plans, and offer services to different types of patients.

The operating system of dentistry

Overjets FDA clearances account for two highly prevalent diseases. They also put the company in a position to conduct industry-level analysis and help dental practices compare themselves to peers.

We use the same tech to help practices understand clinical performance and improve operations, Inam says. We can look at every patient at every practice and identify how practices can use the software to improve the care they're providing.

Moving forward, Inam sees Overjet playing an integral role in virtually every aspect of dental operations.

These radiographs have been digitized for a while, but they've never been utilized because the computers couldn't read them, Inam says. Overjet is turning unstructured data into data that we can analyze. Right now, we're building the basic infrastructure. Eventually we want to grow the platform to improve any service the practice can provide, basically becoming the operating system of the practice to help providers do their job more effectively.

Follow this link:
Taking the guesswork out of dental care with artificial intelligence - MIT News