Google unleashes machine dreaming software

Google unleashes machine dreaming software on the public, nightmarish images flood the internet

Artificial intelligence code is open-sourced by Google developers, with internet users sharing psychedelic images under #deepdream hashtag

Google's Deep Dream software re-inteprets photos with patterns it recognises Photo: Google

Two weeks ago, Google engineers released the bizarre results of an artificial intelligence experiment, which saw photos interpreted and edited by the company's "neural network".

The "DeepDream" software, based on code used to detect faces and other patterns in images, would find such a pattern, edit the image slightly to make it look more like that pattern, and repeat. 

Over the course of multiple iterations, everyday photos would morph into psychedelic, abstract, images ranging from the beautiful to the grotesque. Many of the edited images featured animal eyes and faces, since that is what the software had been "trained" to recognise.

Although Google's algorithms can land the company it hot water - this week, it emerged that its photo software assigned black people the "gorilla" tag - it can also be used to produce art, engineers suggested.
"The techniques presented here help us understand and visualize how neural networks are able to carry out difficult classification tasks, improve network architecture, and check what the network has learned during training," engineers wrote at the time.

"It also makes us wonder whether neural networks could become a tool for artists—a new way to remix visual concepts—or perhaps even shed a little light on the roots of the creative process in general."

On Wednesday night, Google made the code for the tool public, posting it on open source site Github so that anybody can download and try it out.

The results

Internet users took to Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to publish their own images under the #deepdream hashtag.

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What Is Zero UI

What Is Zero UI? (And Why Is It Crucial To The Future Of Design?)

What does UI design look like after screens go away? Fjord's Andy Goodman explains.


For better or worse, a large amount of design work these days is visual. That makes sense, since the most essential products we interact with have screens. But as the internet of things surrounds us with devices that can hear our words, anticipate our needs, and sense our gestures, what does that mean for the future of design, especially as those screens go away?

Last week at San Francisco's SOLID Conference, Andy Goodman, group director of Fjord, shared his thoughts on what he thinks the new paradigm of design will be like when our interfaces are no longer constrained by screens, and instead turn to haptic, automated, and ambient interfaces. He calls it Zero UI. We talked to him about what it meant.

What Is Zero UI?

Zero UI isn't really a new idea. If you've ever used an Amazon Echo, changed a channel by waving at a Microsoft Kinect, or setup a Nest thermostat, you've already used a device that could be considered part of Goodman's Zero UI thinking. It's all about getting away from the touchscreen, and interfacing with the devices around us in more natural ways: haptics, computer vision, voice control, and artificial intelligence. Zero UI is the design component of all these technologies, as they pertain to what we call the internet of things.

"If you look at the history of computing, starting with the jacquard loom in 1801, humans have always had to interact with machines in a really abstract, complex way," Goodman says.
Over time, these methods have become less complex: the punch card gave way to machine code, machine code to the command line, command line to the GUI. But machines still force us to come to them on their terms, speaking their language. The next step is for machines to finally understand us on our own terms, in our own natural words, behaviors, and gestures. That's what Zero UI is all about.

How Will Zero UI Change Design?

According to Goodman, Zero UI represents a whole new dimension for designers to wrestle with. Literally. He likens the designer's leap from UI to Zero UI as similar to what happens in the novella Flatland: instead of just designing for two-dimensions—i.e. what a user is trying to do right now in a linear, predictable workflow—designers need to think about what a user is trying to do right now in any possible workflow.

Take voice control, for instance. Right now, voice control through something like Amazon Echo or Siri is relatively simple: a user asks a question ("Who was the 4th president of the United States?") or makes a statement ("Call my husband") and the device acts upon that single request. But ask Siri to "Message my husband the 4th president of the United States, then tell me who the fifth is?" and it'll barf all over itself. To build services and devices that can translate a stream-of-consciousness command like that, designers will need to think non-linearly. They'll need to be able to build a system capable of adjusting to anything on the fly.

"It's like learning to play 3-D chess," Goodman laughs. "We need to think away from linear workflows, and towards multi-dimensional thought process."

Zero UI Will Require Designers To Rely On Data And AI

Whereas interface designers right now live in apps like InDesign and Adobe Illustrator, the non-linear design problems of zero UI will require vastly different tools, and skill sets.

"We might have to design in databases, or lookup tables, or spreadsheets," Goodman says, explaining that data, not intuition, will become a designer's most valuable asset. "Designers will have to become experts in science, biology, and psychology to create these devices... stuff we don't have to think about when our designs are constrained by screens."

 
For example, let's say you have a television that can sense gestures. Depending on who is standing in front of that TV, the gestures it needs to understand to do something as simple as turn up the volume might be radically different: a 40-year-old who grew up in the age of analog interfaces might twist an imaginary dial in mid-air, while a millennial might jerk their thumb up. A zero UI stereo will need to have access to a lot of behavioral data, let alone the processing power to decode them."

"As we move away from screens, a lot of our interfaces will have to become more automatic, anticipatory, and predictive," Goodman says. A good example of this sort of device, Goodman says, is the Nest: you set its thermostat once, and then it learns to anticipate what you want based on how you interact with it from there.

What's After Zero UI?

Although Goodman is serious about the fact that screens are going to stop being the primary way we interact with the devices around us, he's the first to admit that the Zero UI name isn't meant to be taken literally. "It's really meant to be a provocation," Goodman admits. "There are always going to be user interfaces in some form of another, but this is about getting away from thinking about everything in terms of screens."

But if Goodman's right, and the entire history of computing is less a progression of mere technological advancements, and more a progression of advancements in the way we are able to communicate with machines, then what happens after we achieve Zero UI? What happens when our devices finally understand us better than we understand ourselves? Is anything we want to do with an app, gadget, or device is just a shrug, a grunt, or a caress away?

"I'm really into all that singularity stuff," Goodman laughs. "Once you get to the point that computers understand us, the next step is that computers get embedded in us, and we become the next UI."
Source : fastcodesign


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Internet Changes Customer Relationship

The Internet of Things Changes the Company-Customer Relationship

With the rise of the internet of things, our individual technology envelopes – our personal networks of smart, connected devices — are rapidly becoming more complicated as more and more devices from a growing profusion of vendors do ever more complex jobs. In fact, industry research indicates that the number of devices in these envelopes will triple over the next few years, and, absent a common set of standards, the complexity of these envelopes will only compound.

This dynamic is exacerbated by product companies’ historical service paradigm. It used to be that most of the value we derived from our devices was the result of direct physical interaction: For example, we turned a key in a door look, flipped a light switch, or twisted the dial on a thermostat. Now, however, our interaction with devices is profoundly changing – they are becoming more like interconnected services than products. Soon it will be common to drive up to one’s house – which has adjusted heating or cooling in anticipation of your arrival — and have the garage door automatically open, the security system disarm, the doors unlock and lights come on. This impending future creates a conundrum for “thing makers” as the way that services must be supported is profoundly different from the way that devices are.

The historical service paradigm for thing makers could be called “fire and forget”: I sell you a thing, perhaps a crockpot, and … no offense … I hope I never hear from you again. If you contact me for service I will ask you two questions: 1) “are you in warranty?” and 2) “is your request within the scope of what I have decided I will support?” If the answer to both is “yes,” I will serve you as inexpensively as possible using techniques such as self-help on the web, endless IVR loops (“for billing questions, press 1”) and/or offshore labor. And once I resolve your issue — no offense — I hope I never hear from you again. In a sense I’d like to “forget” that the product exists and move on to my next sale.

This service paradigm is not designed for a world in which intelligent, context-aware, learning devices are interacting with each other, with the cloud and with our smartphones while other devices are constantly being added, removed, or modified (via downloads from the cloud). This environment requires a focus on what the user is trying to do as opposed to merely whether the crockpot they purchased is operating as intended. Service in the IoT world needs to not only address devices that don’t function properly, but also support users as they attempt to buy, install, integrate and use these devices. As such it needs to be a continuous, open ended experience.

Some firms may look at this situation and see operational headaches and increased service costs. Others — the companies that will be the winners in the IoT — will see opportunity. Rather than continue dodging customers, they’ll transform their service models operationally, technically, and culturally. They’ll embrace the opportunity by applying different KPIs – such as improved customer experience, churn reduction, and increased customer lifetime value — hiring more technically oriented (and nimble) service reps and modifying the service model from one in which the company defines problems it’s willing to address to one in which the customers defines the job to be done, and the company helps them do it – indefinitely.

This transformation will not only be longitudinal (providing continuous service), but also expansive, providing a holistic approach that will earn companies a trusted adviser position. In an age when user experience is surpassing product and price as the number one brand differentiators, focusing on the user, their environment and what they’re trying to do with their technology, as opposed to how any given component in their envelope is functioning, is essential, even when that means supporting other companies’ products.

The companies that see service in an IoT world as a competitive differentiators — a brand and growth opportunity — will thrive; those that continue to view service as an episodic cost obligation will lose out.
Source : hbr



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Will A.I. drive the human race off a cliff

 Researchers see benefits, and potential dangers, from smart, aware machines

Artificial intelligence (A.I.) and machine learning have the potential to help people explore space, make our lives easier and cure deadly diseases.

PayPal to acquire money transfer service Xoom for $890M

But we need to be thinking about policies to prevent the technology from one day killing us all.

That's the general consensus from a panel discussion in Washington D.C. today sponsored by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

"When will we reach general purpose intelligence?" said Stuart Russell, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at U.C. Berkeley. "We're all working on pieces of it.... If we succeed, we'll drive the human race off the cliff, but we kind of hope we'll run out of gas before we get to the cliff. That doesn't seem like a very good plan.... Maybe we need to steer in a different direction."

Russell was one of the five speakers on the panel today that took on questions about A.I. and fears that the technology could one day become smarter than humans and run amok.

Just within the last year, high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk and the world's most renowned physicist Stephen Hawking have both publicly warned about the rise of smart machines.

Hawking, who wrote A Brief History of Time, said in May that robots with artificial intelligence could outpace humans within the next 100 years. Late last year, he was even more blunt: "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."

Musk, CEO of SpaceX as well as CEO of electric car maker Tesla Motors, also got a lot of attention last October when he said A.I. threatens humans. "With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon," Musk said during an MIT symposium at which he also called A.I. humanity's biggest existential threat. "In all those stories with the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, ...he's sure he can control the demon. It doesn't work out."

With movies like The Terminator and the TV series Battlestar Galactica, many people think of super intelligent, super powerful and human-hating robots when they think about A.I. Many researchers, though, point out that A.I. and machine learning are already used for Google Maps, Apple's Siri and Google's self-driving cars.

As for fully autonomous robots, that could be 50 years in the future -- and self-aware robots could be twice as far out, though it's impossible at this point to predict how technology will evolve.

"Our current A.I. systems are very limited in scope," said Manuela Veloso, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, speaking on today's panel. "If we have robots that play soccer very well by 2050, they will only know how to play soccer. They won't know how to scramble eggs or speak languages or even walk down the corridor and turn left or right."
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Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said people are being "overly optimistic" about how soon scientists will build autonomous, self-aware systems. "I think we'll have incredibly intelligent machines but not intentionality," he said. "We won't have that for a very long, long time, so let's worry about it for a very long, long time."

Even so, Russell said scientists should be focused on, and talking about, what they are building for the future. "The arguments are fairly persuasive that there's a threat to building machines that are more capable than us," he added. "If it's a threat to the human race, it's because we make it that way. Right now, there isn't enough work to making sure it's not a threat to the human race."

There's an answer for this, according to Veloso.

"The solution is to have people become better people and use technology for good," she said. "Texting is dangerous. People text while driving, which leads to accidents, but no one says, 'Let's remove texting from cell phones.' We can weigh this danger and make policy about texting and driving to keep the benefit of the technology available to the rest of the world."

It's also important to remember the potential benefits of A.I., she added.

Veloso pointed to the CoBot robots working on campus at Carnegie Mellon. The autonomous robots move around on wheels, guide visitors to where they need to go and ferry documents or snacks to people working there.

"I don't know if Elon Musk or Stephen Hawking know about these things, but I know these are significant advances," she said. "We are reaching a point where they are going to become a benefit to people. We'll have machines that will help people in their daily lives.... We need research on safety and coexistence. Machines shouldn't be outside the scope of humankind, but inside the scope of humankind. We'll have humans, dogs, cats and robots."
Source : computerworld


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Men And Women Feel Pain Differently

Men And Women Feel Pain Differently: Understanding Why Could Lead To Gender-Based Pain Treatment

Understanding the biological pathways that cause men and women to experience pain differently could lead to personalized pain treatments. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

 Between men and women, not all pain is equal. Scientists have known this for quite some time now; women are far more sensitive to pain than men. They also suffer more from painful conditions, including migraines, arthritis, and fibromyalgia, and their brains even process pain in different regions than men’s. Why then, do women and men get the same treatment for their pain? Hoping to change this, a group of researchers recently investigated how male and female mice respond to pain, and found that it activated different types of immune cells.

After injuring both male and female mice’s feet, the researchers tested pain sensitivity in both after administering a drug that targeted immune cells known as microglia. These cells reside in the brain and spinal cord, acting as a first line of defense in the central nervous system (CNS). Considering pain instantly triggers an immune response in the CNS — one that persists in people with chronic pain — it would make sense that the drug, which was meant to suppress the microglia, would reduce pain. However, this only happened in the male mice. The researchers found that the females still experienced touch sensitivity, a common symptom of chronic pain.

Among the female mice, the researchers found a different type of immune cell was likely responsible for responding to pain: T cells, a second line of defense typically responsible for seeking out pathogens and killing them. For this reason, the microglia-suppressing drug didn’t work.

Understanding the different biological pathways for pain between males and females is crucial to developing gender-based pain treatments. Despite a higher propensity for pain, women tend to get the cold shoulder when seeing a doctor for it, oftentimes having difficulty convincing them of the severity of their pain. Consequently, they end up without the medical attention they need. The study’s researchers admitted this, too.

“If you’re doing drug development and you want to understand the biology of pain to develop new analgesics, it looks like there are two biologies to be found, not one,” Dr. Jeffrey Mogil, co-author of the study and director of the Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain at McGill University, told CBS News. “We’ve been working on one of them and that actually turns out to be the less clinically relevant one, given that the majority of chronic pain patients are actually women.”

Due to a lack of inclusion of female mice in research settings — at least until recently — it’s been unclear why women face higher rates of pain. However, it likely relates to several biological and environmental factors. Fluctuating hormonal levels throughout the menstrual cycle are one example, as lower estrogen levels increase susceptibility to migraines. Levels of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers, are also low during this time.

With more research, scientists will not only gain a better understanding of how pain differs between the sexes but other conditions as well. And with each condition, they’ll move closer to personalized medicine, tailored for the specific biologies of men and women. “This type of sex difference we might see in other domains,” Mogil said. “I think this might be the tip of the bigger iceberg.”

Source: Sorge R, Mapplebeck J, Rosen S, et al. Different immune cells mediate mechanical pain hypersensitivity in male and female mice. Nature Neuroscience. 2015.


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Should Placebos Be Used to 'Treat' Patients?

Placebos offer real therapeutic value: Although they cannot cure an illness, they can make patients feel better. So why not incorporate them into medical practice?

In a provocative essay published today (July 1) in The New England Journal of Medicine, Harvard Medical School professor Ted Kaptchuk proposes that placebos should be considered valuable components of medical care and important tools in relieving patients' symptoms — and not simply an inconvenient baseline that "real medicines" are compared to within medical studies.

A placebo — the word comes from the Latin phrase meaning "I shall please" — is a fake pill or procedure that can provide a psychological benefit because the patient thinks he or she is getting real treatment. The placebo effect is an improvement in symptoms that can be attributed to fake medicines, or even standard symbols of healing, such as a medical doctor's white coat and diploma, or a witch doctor's menacing mask.

"A significant body of research has resulted in a shift from thinking of placebos as just 'dummy' treatments to recognizing that placebo effects encompass numerous aspects of the health care experience and are central to medicine and patient care," Kaptchuk said.

And Kaptchuk would know. As director of a research program at Harvard that studies placebos, he has led much of this research. In recent years, Kaptchuk and his colleagues have demonstrated that patients' symptoms may be relieved even if they know they are taking a placebo pill; that sometimes a placebo can cause negative side effects, such as nausea; and that some placebos work better than others.

In 2012, Kaptchuk even took placebos to the genetic level and found that patients with a certain variation of a gene associated with the brain chemical dopamine were more likely to respond positively to fake acupuncture for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome. Such insights may help scientists design better drugs for certain people by ruling out certain side effects or elements of symptom relief that are psychological, rather than biochemical, in origin.

But exactly how to capitalize on the placebo effect in the doctor's office, ethically, is an open-ended question that Kaptchuk is posing to the clinicians who read The New England Journal of Medicine. [11 Surprising Facts About Placebos]

"Medicine comprises two things: the moral care of a patient … and effective therapy," Kaptchuk told Live Science. "You can't lie to patients."

Doctors need to think of clinical interventions designed to elicit placebo effects without deceptions, Kaptchuk said. This could include research into how a doctor's touch, gaze or capacity for listening can have positive effects on a patient, or how stern warnings about drug side effects could actually induce those side effects in the patient.

Or, a placebo could be ethical in situations when no cure or relief is otherwise available, Kaptchuk added.
For centuries, physicians have debated the proper role of placebos in patient care. Some have considered placebos completely harmless, while others have claimed they're damaging tools of charlatans and quacks. A steady flow of medical advances in the early 20th century relegated the placebo effect to the backwoods of clinical care.

A 1955 paper by Henry Beecher of Harvard Medical School titled "The Powerful Placebo" changed that by introducing the concept that placebos have therapeutic value that can be exploited. But then, the tide turned, again, with a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2001 by Dutch researchers, who found that most placebo studies were methodologically flawed. With a rub to Beecher, their paper was playfully titled "Is the Placebo Powerless?"

Kaptchuk has claimed in previous interviews to have learned much from the Dutch study and has since collaborated with one of the Dutch authors.

Nevertheless, there are many critics of using placebos in medical care. In a 2011 article in The Atlantic, in reaction to a study that Kaptchuk conducted on asthma, retired family physician Harriet Hall said, "Asthma can be fatal. If the patient's lung function is getting worse, but a placebo makes them feel better, they might delay treatment until it is too late."

But critics argue that placebo effects tend to be small, temporary and inconsistent, and that they have little proven positive effect on disease outcome, which should be the ultimate goal.

Kaptchuk conceded that placebo effects are modest in comparison to lifesaving surgery and powerful medications. But he noted that a placebo can enhance the effectiveness of these methods — a central point he hopes his fellow clinicians will consider.

"The New England Journal of Medicine rarely entertains studies on placebos," Kaptchuk said. "I am happy they are considering this."

Source : livescience

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