Researchers clever new filter protects your likeness from being DeepFaked
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF DeepFakes will be with us for the rest of eternity, and they’ll get easier to create, so in the future you may need ways to protect yourself. Interested in the Exponential Future? Join our XPotential Community, connect, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. Send me a photo of yourself...
Researchers say this AI can judge your personality from selfies alone
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Today lots of things are based on companies ability to assess your circumstances and personality, and now they have a new tool to play with. Interested in the Exponential Future? Connect, download a free E-Book, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. Being able to judge a persons personality...
The US military’s new Jetson laser can identify you from just your heartbeat
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The number of technologies we can use to accurately identify and classify people are growing at a staggering rate. Interested in the Exponential Future? Connect, download a free E-Book, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. The US military could soon spot you in a crowd, not by your...
First of a kind attack as criminals clone a CEO’s voice and con UK energy firm out of $243,000
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As AI’s get better at creating fake content, or synthetic content, this type of attack will be the start of a new worrying trend. Interested in the Exponential Future? Connect, download a free E-Book, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. After Google’s Duplex demonstration last year it’s clear...
Researchers have created an online AI that hides you from facial recognition
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF In the future the one thing none of us will have, it seems, is privacy – online or offline – but researchers are fighting back in new ways. Interested in the Exponential Future? Connect, download a free E-Book, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. What Artificial Intelligence (AI)...
New Facebook AI de-identifies you in videos to protect you from facial recognition tech
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Privacy is becoming a battleground, and just as we can use AI to identify people we can also use it to anonymise people. Interested in the Exponential Future? Connect, download a free E-Book, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. It might sound counter intuitive and perhaps slightly self-destructive,...
World first after researchers create an AI made of glass
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As our knowledge of neural networks improves it turns out we can give almost everything “intelligence.” Interested in the Exponential Future? Connect, download a free E-Book, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. Recently, I talked about a team of researchers in the US that had managed to 3D...
Researchers successfully weaponise AI to create a “Biometric master key”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As criminals continue to weaponise artificial intelligence they are inevitably going to find new ways to exploit weaknesses in existing security systems. Just like any lock can be picked if you have the right key any biometric scanner can be fooled. For years now...
The founder of China’s largest online retailer envisions a “100% robotic workforce”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There are particular industries and companies that lend themselves for full automation, and E-Commerce is just one of them. “I hope my company would be 100% automation someday … no human beings anymore, 100% operated by AI and robots.” That’s Richard Liu’s audacious goal,...
China’s massive and unparalleled “AI in education” experiment has begun
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There’s no doubt that China’s AI in education initiative will bring a wide range of benefits and improve educational outcomes, but questions remain about the best way to deploy it. Last year China unveiled their ambitious plan to become the world leader in Artificial Intelligence...
Researchers use duelling AI’s to defeat facial recognition technology
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As both our online, as well as our offline privacy, continue to be eroded, scientists are using AI to fight back. Most of us probably don’t like the idea of some stranger finding out who we are, and then where we live, or what...
AI recruiters are using advanced surveillance like tech to interview job seekers
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The same technologies that are helping us catch and profile criminals, or surveil civilians at scale, AI, biometrics, machine vision and so on, are also helping companies find, interview, analyse and categorise job seekers faster and more effectively than ever. Companies, like RBS and...
This AI reads your mind to recreate the faces you’re thinking of
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to read someone’s mind leads down two roads. It can either be used as part of a dystopian state apparatus, or to help catch criminals and help people who can’t communicate communicate. It’s frustrating to have a clear mental image of something...
Your next smartphone could have sonar
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF With biometrics becoming an increasingly important way of authenticating people some of todays technologies still leave much to be desired, as a result teams around the world are continually looking to push the boundaries. VoiceGesture is an app that could make phones far more...
AI starts reading sentences directly from people’s brains
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As AI becomes increasingly adept at helping unlock the secrets of the brain it’s also becoming more adept at helping decode and visualise complex thoughts onto TV’s and other devices. The capabilities and accuracy of Artificial Intelligence (AI) “mind reading” systems, as they are increasing...
Baidu’s AI can clone anyone’s voice in under a minute
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to clone people’s voices, and mimic them, opens up a range of well meaning opportunities, but it also paves the way for fake news chaos and everything in between… In the near future, just as it is today, fake news will become...
Hitachi’s newest surveillance AI can follow you through a crowd
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF You might not care too much about your privacy today, but what about your children’s privacy tomorrow? The technologies to track and analyse our every thought and move have already been assembled, the next step is deployment. Not only can a new Artificial Intelligence...
DeepMind unveils the world’s first test to assess dangerous AI’s and algorithms
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI is being strapped into everything from self-driving cars and autonomous weapons systems and until now we had no way to assess how dangerous, or how much of a threat, those AI’s could become. Earlier this year a group of world experts convened to...
China’s surveillance network found a BBC reporter in under 7 minutes
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As nation states roll out increasingly advanced and sophisticated surveillance networks, how we use them and the agenda of those who control them become increasingly important to understand. It took Chinese authorities just seven minutes to locate and apprehend BBC reporter John Sudworth using its...
Researchers claim new ultrasonic fingerprint scanner is unhackable
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Biometric security systems are an improvement on passwords but they’re easy to hack, now a new ultrasonic fingerprint scanner hopes to make them even more secure. As many of you have probably figured out by now the fingerprint recognition system on your phones, laptops...
