Cloud Hosting

AI startup Respeecher re-created James Earl Jones Darth Vader voice for the Disney+ series Obi Wan Kenobi.

On May 17, as bodies lined up in the rain outside the Cannes Film Festival Palais for the chance to watch a short film directed byPedro Almodvar, an auteur known most of all for his humanism, a different kind of gathering was underway below the theater. Inside the March, a panel of technologists convened to tell an audience of film professionals how they might deploy artificial intelligence for creating scripts, characters, videos, voices and graphics.

The ideas discussed at the Cannes Next panel AI Apocalypse or Revolution? Rethinking Creativity, Content and Cinema in the Age of Artificial Intelligence make the scene of the Almodvar crowd seem almost poignant, like seeing a species blissfully ignorant of their own coming extinction, dinosaurs contentedly chewing on their dinners 10 minutes before the asteroid hits.

The only people who should be afraid are the ones who arent going to use these tools, said panelistAnder Saar, a futurist and strategy consultant for Red Bull Media House, the media arm of the parent company of Red Bull energy drinks. Fifty to 70 percent of a film budget goes to labor. If we can make that more efficient, we can do much bigger films at bigger budgets, or do more films.

The panel also includedHovhannes Avoyan, the CEO of Picsart, an image-editing developer powered by AI, andAnna Bulakh, head of ethics and partnerships at Respeecher, an AI startup that makes technology that allows one person to speak using the voice of another person. The audience of about 150 people was full of AI early adopters through a show of hands, about 75 percent said they had an account for ChatGPT, the AI language processing tool.

The panelists had more technologies for them to try. Bulakhs company re-createdJames Earl Jones Darth Vader voice as it sounded in 1977 for the 2022 Disney+ seriesObi-Wan Kenobi, andVince Lombardis voice for a 2021 NFL ad that aired during the Super Bowl. Bulakh drew a distinction between Respeechers work and AI that is created to manipulate, otherwise known as deepfakes. We dont allow you to re-create someones voice without permission, and we as a company are pushing for this as a best practice worldwide, Bulakh said. She also spoke about how productions already use Respeechers tools as a form of insurance when actors cant use their voices, and about how actors could potentially grow their revenue streams using AI.

Avoyan said he created his company for his daughter, an artist, and his intention is, he said, democratizing creativity. Its a tool, he said. Dont be afraid. It will help you in your job.

The optimistic conversation unfolding beside the French Riviera felt light years away from the WGA strike taking place in Hollywood, in which writers and studios are at odds over the use of AI, with studios considering such ideas as having human writers punch up drafts of AI-generated scripts, or using AI to create new scripts based on a writers previous work. During contract negotiations, the AMPTP refused union requests for protection from AI use, offering instead, annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology. The March talk also felt far from the warnings of a growing chorus of experts likeEric Horvitz, chief scientific officer at Microsoft, and AI pioneerGeoffrey Hinton, who resigned from his job at Google this month in order to speak freely about AIs risks, which he says include the potential for deliberate misuse, mass unemployment and human extinction.

Are these kinds of worries just moral panic? mused the moderator and head of Cannes NextSten Kristian-Saluveer. That seemed to be the panelists view. Saar dismissed the concerns, comparing the changes AI will bring to adaptations brought by the automobile or the calculator. When calculators came, it didnt mean we dont know how to do math, he said.

One of the panel buzz phrases was hyper-personalized IP, meaning that well all create our own individual entertainment using AI tools. Saar shared a video from a company he is advising, in which a childs drawings came to life and surrounded her on video screens. The characters in the future will be created by the kids themselves, he says. Avoyan said the line between creator and audience will narrow in such a way that we will all just be making our own movies. You dont even need a distribution house, he said.

A German producer and self-described AI enthusiast in the audience said, If the cost of the means of production goes to zero, the amount of produced material is going up exponentially. We all still only have 24 hours. Who or what, the producer wanted to know, would be the gatekeepers for content in this new era? Well, the algorithm, of course. A lot of creators are blaming the algorithm for not getting views, saying the algorithm is burying my video, Saar said. The reality is most of the content is just not good and doesnt deserve an audience.

What wasnt discussed at the panel was what might be lost in a future that looks like this. Will a generation raised on watching videos created from their own drawings, or from an algorithms determination of what kinds of images they will like, take a chance on discovering something new? Will they line up in the rain with people from all over the world to watch a movie made by someone else?

Link:
Cannes Diary: Will Artificial Intelligence Democratize Creativity or Lead to Certain Doom? - Hollywood Reporter

Q. Everyone's talking about artificial intelligence, and how it may replace people in various jobs. Will artificial intelligence replace my doctor?

A. Not in my lifetime, fortunately! And the good news is that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve your doctor's decisions, and to thereby improve your health if we are careful about how it is developed and used.

AI is a mathematical process that tries to make sense out of massive amounts of information. So it requires two things: the ability to perform mathematical computations rapidly, and huge amounts of information stored in an electronic form words, numbers, and pictures.

When computers and AI were first developed in the 1950s, some visionaries described how they could theoretically help improve decisions about diagnosis and treatment. But computers then were not nearly fast enough to do the computations required. Even more important, almost none of the information the computers would have to analyze was stored in electronic form. It was all on paper. Doctors' notes about a patient's symptoms and physical examination were written (not always legibly) on paper. Test results were written on paper and pasted in a patient's paper medical record. As computers got better, they started to relieve doctors and other health professionals from some tedious tasks like helping to analyze images electrocardiograms (ECGs), blood samples, x-rays, and Pap smears.

Today, computers are literally millions of times more powerful than when they were first developed. More important, huge amounts of medical information now are in electronic form: medical records of millions of people, the results of medical research, and the growing knowledge about how the body works. That makes feasible the use of AI in medicine.

Already, computers and AI have made powerful medical research breakthroughs, like predicting the shape of most human proteins. In the future, I predict that computers and AI will listen to conversations between doctor and patient and then suggest tests or treatments the doctor should consider; highlight possible diagnoses based on a patient's symptoms, after comparing that patient's symptoms to those of millions of other people with various diseases; and draft a note for the medical record, so the doctor doesn't have to spend time typing at a computer keyboard and can spend more time with the patient.

All of this will not happen immediately or without missteps: doctors and computer scientists will need to carefully evaluate and guide the development of new AI tools in medicine. If the suggestions AI provides to doctors prove to be inaccurate or incomplete, that "help" will be rejected. And if AI then does not get better, and fast, it will lose credibility. Powerful technologies can be powerful forces for good, and for mischief.

More:
Will artificial intelligence replace doctors? - Harvard Health

Leading Artificial Intelligence [AI] researcher Geoffrey Hinton recently quit Google, citing concerns about the risks of artificial intelligence. He voiced his concerns that the tech might soon outperform the human brains information capacity. He termed some threats posed by these chatbots as quite scary.

Hinton argued that chatbots can learn on their own and share their expertise. This means that any new knowledge acquired by one copy is automatically distributed to the entire group. This enables chatbots to collect knowledge far beyond the capacity of any individual.

Let us dig deeper into these concerns and understand how much of these concerns are shared by the online world.

There is a general understanding that AI will most likely become super intelligent in the next few decades. But in its current state, AI is merely a tool. It has no ability to think. Any chatbot today just translates large amounts of data into numbers and returns the required figures. It can handle complex and ill-formed problems in disciplines such as image recognition, state space searches, model construction, and natural language processing in a reasonably consistent manner.

At the moment, an AI that interprets your language cannot predict your movements. These would be two distinct programs. Artificial intelligence, as of now, does not involve general cognitive processes. We are so far from a refined AI model as depicted in science fiction that we dont even know what developing a highly intelligent AI entails.

At present, our existing AI models handle specific issues in specific circumstances. They are essentially just sophisticated statistical models. Although this technology is extremely effective, there is no reason to believe that we are developing a powerful general-purpose AI model.

However, a lot of money is being poured these days towards coming closer to a general-purpose AI, both in academia and in industry, but it doesnt exist yet.

The AI of today is incapable of resolving moral quandaries. Moral issues are not rational; they are subjective and unique to the person who discusses the issue. If AI is told to kill all persons of X demography in a certain place while causing no harm to members of Y population, it will do so without hesitation.

The problem with this approach is that it ignores the sole thing that limits our own intellect, the environment. The universes intricacy is incomprehensible. Just because we have a very specialized AI system does not imply that the AI is a specialist in everything.

There is an implicit assumption that morality is something we lose track of as we get smarter. But that is far from the case. Indeed, ethics is a common wisdom among us, though ever-evolving. It is a method of dealing with the complexities of universal problems.

AI now has huge economic incentives for development, with billions of dollars in research being spent across a wide range of applications by both private and public organizations. This way, we can say that ruling out quick progress in the next few decades would be foolish.

However, most industries are currently focused on compartmentalized AI, which involves combining numerous separate AIs that each does a certain task very well.

The development of AI is frequently viewed as both a threat and an opportunity for humans, depending on a variety of circumstances.

On the one hand, there are concerns about the possible hazards of AI. These include employment displacement, privacy and security concerns, algorithm biases, and the concentration of power in the hands of a few individuals/organizations. These risks, if not appropriately handled, might have severe effects for people, society, and humanitys general well-being.

Even so, one cannot discount AIs benefits. It can increase productivity, generate innovation, advance healthcare and science, and address difficult social concerns. AI has the potential to boost human talents, automate monotonous chores, and allow us to make more informed judgements. It provides opportunities for progress in a variety of industries, including education, transportation, agriculture, and others.

The aim is to create and deploy AI in a responsible and ethical manner. We can maximize the good impact of AI while minimizing possible hazards by addressing concerns such as transparency, accountability, justice, and prejudice. It requires collaboration among researchers, policymakers, and industry leaders to ensure that AI is developed and used in ways that align with human values and benefit society.

More here:
AI: Good or bad? All your artificial intelligence fears, addressed - AMBCrypto News

What GAO Found

Artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving at a rapid pace and the federal government cannot afford to be reactive to its complexities, risks, and societal consequences. Federal guidance has focused on ensuring AI is responsible, equitable, traceable, reliable, and governable. Third-party assessments and audits are important to achieving these goals. However, a critical mass of workforce expertise is needed to enable federal agencies to accelerate the delivery and adoption of AI.

Participants in an October 2021 roundtable convened by GAO discussed agencies' needs for digital services staff, the types of work that a more technical workforce could execute in areas such as artificial intelligence, and challenges associated with current hiring methods. They noted such staff would require a variety of digital and government-related skills. Participants also discussed challenges associated with existing policies, infrastructure, laws, and regulations that may hinder agency recruitment and retention of digital services staff.

During a September 2020 Comptroller General Forum on AI, experts discussed approaches to ensure federal workers have the skills and expertise needed for AI implementation. Experts also discussed how principles and frameworks on the use of AI can be operationalized into practices for managers and supervisors of these systems, as well as third-party assessors. Following the forum, GAO developed an AI Accountability Framework of key practices to help ensure responsible AI use by federal agencies and other entities involved in AI systems. The Framework is organized around four complementary principles: governance, data, performance, and monitoring.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Accountability Framework

To help managers ensure accountability and the responsible use of AI in government programs and processes, GAO has developed an AI Accountability Framework. Separately, GAO has identified mission-critical gaps in federal workforce skills and expertise in science and technology as high-risk areas since 2001.

This testimony summarizes two related reportsGAO-22-105388 and GAO-21-519SP. The first report addresses the digital skills needed to modernize the federal government. The second report describes discussions by experts on the types of risks and challenges in applying AI systems in the public sector.

To develop the June 2021 AI Framework, GAO convened a Comptroller General Forum in September 2020 with AI experts from across the federal government, industry, and nonprofit sectors. The Framework was informed by an extensive literature review, and the key practices were independently validated by program officials and subject matter experts.

For the November 2021 report on digital workforce skills, GAO convened a roundtable discussion in October 2021 comprised of chief technology officers, chief data officers, and chief information officers, among others. Participants discussed ways to develop a dedicated talent pool to help meet the federal government's needs for digital expertise.

For more information, contact Taka Ariga at (202) 512-6888 or arigat@gao.gov.

Continue reading here:
Artificial Intelligence: Key Practices to Help Ensure Accountability in ... - Government Accountability Office