Faking out the Deepfake
We have some exciting upcoming events!
Germany Startup Forum - Feb 23rd 2021
The Power of Networks - Mar 2nd - Mar 23rd 2021
Thank you to all who joined us to meet with New Zealand start-ups on Tuesday. And special thanks to Mark Bregman and Nancy Kleinrock for putting the event together.
By inserting adversarial examples of faces into every frame of a deepfake video, researchers at UCSD (field trip to Calit2, San Diego, Feb 2009) can successfully deceive machine learning-based systems designed to detect counterfeit material (Sirer Irmak, Los Angeles, Mar 2018). The attack is even robust to compression and decompression. The arms race continues (Doug Emlen, Washington, D.C., Sep 2016).
https://eml.iiconferences.com/e/81142/news-release-3216/5qmbcd/637367527?h=KLmwJUAQhOEOYI64KJ43Vi3cTdhbHF40LALINujZkgE
Although hardly as sophisticated or successful as Stuxnet (Carey Nachenberg, San Jose, Feb 2012), the as-yet-unattributed cyberattack on the water system of a small Florida community demonstrates that critical infrastructure is vulnerable. (Steve Grobman, San Francisco, May 2016)
www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/lye-poisoning-attack-florida-shows-cybersecurity-gaps-water-systems-n1257173
To encourage their workforces to become vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, some large retail chains like TTIV member organization Kroger, Dollar General, and Aldi are paying employees—whether in cash or time off—to sit for the shot.
www.npr.org/2021/02/05/964660657/kroger-offers-100-bonus-to-employees-who-get-vaccinated
In the meantime, those of us still isolating while awaiting our turn to be vaccinated might find solace in HuggieBot. Originally built on the Willow Garage PR2 platform, this human-sized robot offered up hugs on demand. (Maja Matarić, Los Angeles, Mar 2018; Sonia Chernova, Brooklyn, Jul 2016; Steve Cousins, San Francisco, Dec 2015)
www.techxplore.com/news/2021-02-huggiebot-soft-human-size-robot-users.html
University of Colorado-Boulder researchers are paving the way for battery-less wearable electronics with a stretchy, beny, self-healing thermoelectric generator to convert the body’s heat into electricity. (Akram Boukai, San Francisco, May 2016)
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210210142049.htm
If two twisted layers are good, why not three? That’s the question Harvard researchers asked—and answered—in the context of graphene’s superconductivity property. A coauthor avers, “Realizing strong coupling superconductivity in a simple and tunable system such as trilayer could pave the way to finally develop a theoretical understanding of strongly coupled superconductors to help realize the goal of a high-temperature, maybe even room-temperature, superconductor.” (Qing Cao, San Francisco, Dec 2016)
https://eml.iiconferences.com/e/81142/layer-graphene-superconductor-/5qmbcg/637367527?h=KLmwJUAQhOEOYI64KJ43Vi3cTdhbHF40LALINujZkgE
A new report, “Emerging uses of technology for development: A new intelligence paradigm,” lays out four intelligences—data intelligence, artificial intelligence, collective intelligence, and embodied intelligence—to consider when evaluating the value that emerging technologies can offer toward achieving the United Nations sustainable development goals. (Lofti Belkhir, Washington, D.C., Sep 2018)
www.techxplore.com/news/2021-02-emerging-technology-sustainable-doneresponsibly.html
Is yours a family that got a pandemic puppy but now has insufficient human bandwidth to train it? Well, Nvidia has an AI for you! Researchers trained the Who’s a Good Boy system to distinguish between dogs laying down, sitting, and standing. A machine running it dispenses a treat when a pooch appropriately performs a vocalized command.
www.venturebeat.com/2021/02/11/nvidia-researchers-train-ai-to-reward-dogs-for-responding-to-commands/
An AI-plus-IoT-plus-5G-enabled-smart-city-based emotion-detecting alert system developed by researchers at Incheon National University. Although the name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, 5G-I-VEmoSYS detects and distinguishes among a variety of human emotions—joy, pleasure, a neutral state, sadness, and anger—by applying machine learning to the differential reflection of wireless signals from the target individual. Additional components of the three-part system provide temporal and spatial mapping of emotions through a population. The researchers see this not as Orwellian (Hassan Elahi, Toronto, Apr 2008; Barry Steinhardt, Toronto, Apr 2008; David Brin, Washington, D.C., Sep 1998) but rather as privacy protecting, since individual faces are not visually conveyed, and as a constructive tool for threat detection and crime prevention (Jeremy Heffner, Brooklyn, Jul 2016). We report; you decide.
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-02/inu-aei021021.php
There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of Science and Literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.--George Washington (Happy President’s Day to those in the United States celebrating a three-day weekend!)