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VideoVerse was incepted to create exciting content with artificial intelligence technology and to make video editing democratic and accessible. The company's journey began in 2016 when Saket Dandotia, Alok Patil and Vinayak Shrivastav teamed up.

The trio wanted to create a technology that would disrupt the content industry. The solution they came up with was Magnifi, which along with Sytck and Illusto make up the ecosystem of VideoVerse.

"We truly believe that technology should help all content creators maximize their investments by not only telling better stories but also garnering a wider reach, seamless transition and efficient working solutions. We are constantly innovating to best suit consumer needs and industry demands," said Meghna Krishna, CRO, VideoVerse.

The company conducted market surveys and focused research on narrowing down the exact challenges it was solving for. The vision was to build a platform that allowed for accommodations and fine-tuning needed to suit every aspect of the production process as well as client requirements. The company created its platform by harnessing the power of AI and ML. It worked towards ensuring the application was precise and efficient. Sports was the first genre VideoVerse forayed into and the team researched over 30 key sports and parameters that could be meta-tagged to generate bite-sized videos.

"The urgent need for a technology solution to support the post-production processes and the demand for a solution that addressed every specific pain point in scaling content production became clear to us," added Krishna

Krishna believes that startups are the way forward for groundbreaking ideas and technologies to find a place in the enterprise world. There is tremendous scope for innovation and every new solution or idea only helps strengthen the community.

According to Forbes India, video creation and consumption space are growing at 24 per cent per annum and approximately 60 per cent of the internet users in India consume videos online.

Artificial Intelligence was a very new technology during VideoVerse's initial days which made it tougher to convince clients and investors. However, the company has raised $46.8 million in its recent Series B funding.

"There was a lot of ambiguity around the impact of AI and often the change from traditional methods to new age technology faces natural resistance. The challenge on hand was augmenting the existing awareness and educating end-users while ensuring that we had a seamless solution that did not disrupt the workflow," commented Krishna.

Videoverse and its distinct cloud-agnostic products use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology to revolutionize how content is refined and consumed. As far as specific stacks go:

For Magnifi, the key technologies used are face and image recognition, vision models, optical character recognition, audio detection and NLP. Styck and Illusto both use full-stack applications (MERN [Mongo, Express, React, Node]).

"Easy access to video editing platforms that offer state-of-the-art, next-generation solutions is the need of the hour. Being cloud-agnostic and powered by AI and ML all our platforms have a great user interface that allows anyone to master the art of video creation. There is a growing need for social-optimized content and our products are geared towards providing that with one-click solutions," added Krishna.

The company's focus is to strengthen the team, further enhance the product features and offer a complete holistic solution to its clients for all their video editing needs. VideoVerse has offices in the U.S., Europe, Israel, and India and is expanding to new markets like Singapore and the Middle East.

See original here:
Editing Videos On the Cloud Using Artificial Intelligence - Entrepreneur

In 2019, guards on the borders of Greece, Hungary, and Latvia began testing an artificial-intelligence-powered lie detector. The system, called iBorderCtrl, analyzed facial movements to attempt to spot signs a person was lying to a border agent. The trial was propelled by nearly $5 million in European Union research funding, and almost 20 years of research at Manchester Metropolitan University, in the UK.

The trial sparked controversy. Polygraphs and other technologies built to detect lies from physical attributes have been widely declared unreliable by psychologists. Soon, errors were reported from iBorderCtrl, too. Media reports indicated that its lie-prediction algorithm didnt work, and the projects own website acknowledged that the technology may imply risks for fundamental human rights.

This month, Silent Talker, a company spun out of Manchester Met that made the technology underlying iBorderCtrl, dissolved. But thats not the end of the story. Lawyers, activists, and lawmakers are pushing for a European Union law to regulate AI, which would ban systems that claim to detect human deception in migrationciting iBorderCtrl as an example of what can go wrong. Former Silent Talker executives could not be reached for comment.

A ban on AI lie detectors at borders is one of thousands of amendments to the AI Act being considered by officials from EU nations and members of the European Parliament. The legislation is intended to protect EU citizens fundamental rights, like the right to live free from discrimination or to declare asylum. It labels some use cases of AI high-risk, some low-risk, and slaps an outright ban on others. Those lobbying to change the AI Act include human rights groups, trade unions, and companies like Google and Microsoft, which want the AI Act to draw a distinction between those who make general-purpose AI systems, and those who deploy them for specific uses.

Last month, advocacy groups including European Digital Rights and the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants called for the act to ban the use of AI polygraphs that measure things like eye movement, tone of voice, or facial expression at borders. Statewatch, a civil liberties nonprofit, released an analysis warning that the AI Act as written would allow use of systems like iBorderCtrl, adding to Europes existing publicly funded border AI ecosystem. The analysis calculated that over the past two decades, roughly half of the 341 million ($356 million) in funding for use of AI at the border, such as profiling migrants, went to private companies.

The use of AI lie detectors on borders effectively creates new immigration policy through technology, says Petra Molnar, associate director of the nonprofit Refugee Law Lab, labeling everyone as suspicious. You have to prove that you are a refugee, and you're assumed to be a liar unless proven otherwise, she says. That logic underpins everything. It underpins AI lie detectors, and it underpins more surveillance and pushback at borders.

Molnar, an immigration lawyer, says people often avoid eye contact with border or migration officials for innocuous reasonssuch as culture, religion, or traumabut doing so is sometimes misread as a signal a person is hiding something. Humans often struggle with cross-cultural communication or speaking to people who experienced trauma, she says, so why would people believe a machine can do better?

Read more from the original source:
The Fight Over Which Uses of Artificial Intelligence Europe Should Outlaw - WIRED

In the high-tech fast-changing world, the nature of work also keeps changing. In the last few decades computers, robots and automation have changed the nature and roles of almost every job. Automation and artificial intelligence are spurring a new revolution, transforming jobs in every industry from IT to manufacturing.

According to some studies, about one fourth of the jobs are at risk of being automated across the globe. This trend sometimes makes people nervous about job security.

Increased adoption and evolution of Automation & Artificial Intelligence brings along skepticism of a large number of roles and skills displacement. Instead, automation and AI should be used to evolve job roles and help make human workers more effective, Arjun Jolly, Principal, Athena Executive Search & Consulting said.

Here are some skills and professions that cant be easily replaced by automation.Jobs involving high levels of human interaction, strategic interpretation, critical decision making, niche skills or subject matter expertise won't be replaced by automation anytime soon. For instance - Lawyers, Leadership roles, Medical Professionals, Healthcare practitioners, IT & HR Professionals. We can automate almost every part of the contract workflow process, but will still continue to rely on human intervention to put arguments, establish social relations in the negotiation phase, and find nuances in the data, rather than relying on data and algorithms outright, Arjun Jolly said.

Human Resource, Customer relationship management: While alexa or siri are great at following your every direction, but they cant really understand how youre feeling. Even the most advanced technology will never be able to comprehend our emotions and respond in the way that a human can. Whether its a team leader helping employees through a difficult time, account managers working with clients, or hiring managers looking for the perfect candidate, you need empathy to get those jobs done.

Roles that involve building relationships with clients, customers or patients can never be replaced by automation.

Automation will continue to take on more operational functions like payroll, filtering of job applications etc. But the human touch will always remain when it comes to HR. Similarly, even in the healthcare sector, automation and technology are playing an important role. But these need to work alongside humans doctors, surgeons, nurses, healthcare workers for diagnosis and treatment, Rupali Kaul, Operational Head-West, Marching Sheep said.

"Besides this, Psychologists, caregivers, most engineers, human resource managers, marketing strategists, and lawyers are some roles that cannot be replaced by AI anytime in the near future, Nilesh Jahagirdar, VP Marketing, [x]cube LABS said.

Strategic, Critical ThinkingAutomation can remove or simplify the process of implementing tasks but it cant provide an overarching strategy that makes each task relevant. Even as the world moves towards digitization and automation, the ability to understand the context and complexities before offering solutions remains irreplaceable.

Automation can help implement tasks but its a long way from providing a strategy that makes each task relevant that fits in the bigger picture. Regardless of industry, roles that require strategic thinking will always be done by humans.

"So, jobs like solutions architect, designers, professionals providing hospitality services, and consultants having the ability to integrate systems and processes, would remain much in demand, IMHO. In essence, skills with the ability to provide superlative customer experiences would be the skills of the future, Ruchika Godha, COO, Advaiya said.

Creativity Most intelligent computers or robot cant paint like Picaso and create music like Mozart. Nobody can explain why some humans are more creative than others. So, its safe to say its near impossible for computers to replicate the spark of creativity that has led to the worlds most amazing feats.

"Automation is programmed and cannot replicate creativity which is spontaneous and requires imagination, dreaming and collective inspiration something humans are best at Rupali Kaul, Operational Head-West, Marching Sheep said.

Nilesh Jahagirdar, VP Marketing, [x]cube LABS said, While digital technologies such as AI/ML are making quite a few routine jobs redundant, there are some which cant quite be replaced owing to the complexities involved and the fact that AI evolution is not just as magical as people think it is. At its current state, its only repetitive tasks that follow the same rules over and over which can be done by AI. Psychologists, caregivers, most engineers, human resource managers, marketing strategists, and lawyers are some roles that cannot be replaced by AI anytime in the near future.

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Skills or jobs that won't be replaced by Automation, Artificial Intelligence in the future - Economic Times

YEREVAN I met Vladimir Suvorov, the founder of Van Der Bot, at the Armenia Art Fair of Contemporary Art, held in the end of May. What he presented was beyond imagination a contemporary robot artist named Van Der Bot, who creates art. Thinking with artificial intelligence, painting with robohand and interacting as a human, it combines modern technologies with classical artistic tools, making physical works reflecting a current age.

Suvorov is an engineer by profession, a businessman and technology expert, who has patents under his name and articles. He worked for US EMC company (now Dell-EMC) and was a lead researcher in AI lab in Russia. Vladimir, from St. Petersburg, has Armenian roots, who has long wanted to visit Yerevan and now lives with his family here.

Vladimir, it was interesting to see Van Der Bot, and observe how its arm uses oil paints and brushes to turn any photo into a piece of art. But the question is: why?

Actually this is a very common question. There are many people who think of themselves as artists. We even found data that says 38 percent of people think they are artists, but only 1.5 percent of them can paint. So with our robot we want to fill that gap. To be an artist or to start painting you dont need anything, but to show this to your friends and colleagues and get their admiration, you definitely need some skills. Our typical costumer is a businessman, a self-established person. He has a job, a family, everything in his life, but he thinks he wants to create something and to leave a mark in history. But he cannot paint. Of course, he can go to some art classes and study, but that takes lots of time. So he sees in our robot a way to express himself to go into the business with art, gather his friends around that work, use the robot for the education of children. This is something people want to bring into culture. Someone said: you are selling a dream. You are buying a Tesla not because you want the car to go, but to buy something really great. This is the same. Some people say that this cannot be considered art. In that case I remind them about photography. You click the button, and the device gives you a result, which can (or cannot) be a piece of art. We give a picture to our robot, that he turns into a painting. Another field is the music. We hear the music with electronic synthesizer, electronic guitar, and you hear the music from the acoustics, not just from the instrument. This is the technology that comes into the transmission. Can you say that this is not the music that human produced? We do not substitute the human, we give the instrument to the human to express himself, like the art is more about the concept, what you want to express, but not about the skill. You may have a great dream, but not skills to transfer it. So we are just giving an instrument to express his idea. And third example I can bring-the human should distinguish any object or text made by robot versus something done by a human. Here we tested even the painting. We brought professional artists and asked them to draw a triangle. And then the robot drew the same. Many people failed to guess what was painted by a human and what by the robot. Of course the triangle is a simple object, but we can take our painting to other artists and ask if they can draw like this or ask who did that. So it is the context you bring.

Many famous artists have assistants. Do you think your robot can act as painters assistant?

Excerpt from:
Vladimir Suvorov: 'Artificial Intelligence Will Have its Place in Art.' - The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

Social scientists at the University of Chicago have developed an algorithm that can forecast crime in urban areas up to a week in advance, Bloomberg reportedon Thursday.

Over the past few years, there has been a steep rise in the use of algorithms around us. From predicting weather to driving cars, making shopping recommendations, and finding cures for diseases, algorithms are at work everywhere. It would hardly be a surprise if they were not used to fighting crimes.

Prior to the Olympics, Tokyo Police were looking to implement artificial intelligence (A.I.) based technology to predict crimes before they could take place. If it sounds like we are living in a Minority Report-like future already, the fact is that we already are and have been for almost a decade now.

According to the Bloomberg report, the Chicago Police Department implemented the Crime and Victimization Risk Model way back in 2012 with the help of some academic researchers. The model used factors like age and arrest history to prepare a list of potential attackers and their victims and even assigned a score to listed individuals to help law enforcement agencies confer urgency to tracking the predicted perpetrator as well as their victim.

The concept might sound interesting, but the actual application was dodgy. As investigations later showed, almost half of the alleged perpetrators on the list had never been charged for illegal possession of arms, while others had not been charged with serious offenses before. A Technology Review report in 2019 detailed how risk assessment algorithms that determined whether an individual should be sent to jail or not were trained on historically biased data.

So, when researchers at the University of Chicago, led by assistant professor Ishanu Chattopadhyay, tried to build their algorithm, they wanted to avoid past mistakes.

The algorithm divides a city into 1,000 square feet tiles and uses the historical data on violent and property crimes to predict future events. The researchers told Bloomberg that their model is different from other such algorithmic predictions since the other look at crime as emerging from hotspots and spreading to other areas.

However, such approaches, the researchers argue, miss the complex social environment of cities and are also biased by the surveillance used by the state for law enforcement. Instead, the algorithm used analyses previous crime reports taking into account many other factors, and then forecasted crime likelihood in Chicago with 90 percent accuracy. The model was also used to predict crimes in eight different cities in the U.S., which included big names like Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Philadelphia, and worked well in those scenarios as well, Bloomberg said in its report.

The algorithm and science details were published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

Abstract

Policing efforts to thwart crime typically rely on criminal infraction reports, which implicitly manifest a complex relationship between crime, policing and society. As a result, crime prediction and predictive policing have stirred controversy, with the latest artificial intelligence-based algorithms producing limited insight into the social system of crime. Here we show that, while predictive models may enhance state power through criminal surveillance, they also enable surveillance of the state by tracing systemic biases in crime enforcement. We introduce a stochastic inference algorithm that forecasts crime by learning spatio-temporal dependencies from event reports, with a mean area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of ~90% in Chicago for crimes predicted per week within ~1,000ft. Such predictions enable us to study perturbations of crime patterns that suggest that the response to increased crime is biased by neighbourhood socio-economic status, draining policy resources from socio-economically disadvantaged areas, as demonstrated in eight major US cities.

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Artificial Intelligence: Researchers develop algorithm to predict crime a week in advance - Interesting Engineering