Insights September 13th, 2017

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In the EXPONENTIAL MINDS’ Artificial Intelligence Bulletin – Apple’s AI Chip we see Apple’s Neural Engine, Hackers weaponizing AI, big data and innovation, politics detection, and our ol’ pal Vladimir Putin.

Everything you need to know about Apple’s AI chip

Apple’s Neural Engine will process tasks like its new FaceID facial recognition, understanding voice commands for Siri, and image-processing.
This isn’t just a smartphone trend either. Google built an AI chip called a Tensor Processing Unit that will soon be available to users of its cloud business. Microsoft is developing similar cloud technology and also has a custom chip in its HoloLens. Last fall, Intel acquired a company called Movidius to build AI chips that are focused on image processing.
Read more at Quartz

Hackers Have Already Started to Weaponize Artificial Intelligence

Last year, two data scientists from security firm ZeroFOX conducted an experiment to see who was better at getting Twitter users to click on malicious links, humans or an artificial intelligence. The researchers taught an AI to study the behavior of social network users, and then design and implement its own phishing bait. In tests, the artificial hacker was substantially better than its human competitors, composing and distributing more phishing tweets than humans, and with a substantially better conversion rate.
The AI, named SNAP_R, sent simulated spear-phishing tweets to over 800 users at a rate of 6.75 tweets per minute, luring 275 victims. By contrast, Forbesstaff writer Thomas Fox-Brewster, who participated in the experiment, was only able to pump out 1.075 tweets a minute, making just 129 attempts and luring in just 49 users.
Read more at Gizmodo

Artificial Intelligence And Big Data: Good For Innovation?

Artificial intelligence is firmly embedded throughout the economy. Financial services firms use it to provide investment advice to customers, automakers are using it in vehicle autopilot systems, technology companies are using it to create virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri, and retailers are using artificial intelligence (AI) together with customers’ prior sales histories, to predict potential purchases in the future, to name but a few examples. The potential of AI to boost economic growth has been discussed in numerous forums, including by Accenture, the Council on Foreign Relations, the McKinsey Global Institute, the World Economic Forum, and President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, among others.
The most dramatic advances in AI are coming from a data-intensive technique known as machine learning. Machine learning requires lots of data to create, test and “train” the AI. Thus, as AI is becoming more important to the economy, so too is data. The Economist highlighted the important role of data in a recent cover story in which it stated “the world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data.” In this sense, both the ability to obtain data about customers, together with the ability to program AI to analyze the data, have become important tools businesses use to compete against each other, and against potential entrants.

Read more at Forbes

Face-reading AI will be able to detect your politics and IQ, professor says

Voters have a right to keep their political beliefs private. But according to some researchers, it won’t be long before a computer program can accurately guess whether people are liberal or conservative in an instant. All that will be needed are photos of their faces.
Michal Kosinski – the Stanford University professor who went viral last week for research suggesting that artificial intelligence (AI) can detect whether people are gay or straight based on photos – said sexual orientation was just one of many characteristics that algorithms would be able to predict through facial recognition.
Using photos, AI will be able to identify people’s political views, whether they have high IQs, whether they are predisposed to criminal behavior, whether they have specific personality traits and many other private, personal details that could carry huge social consequences, he said.
Read more at The Guardian

Putin: Whoever Rules AI Rules the World

Russian President Vladimir Putin last week poked the nest of anxieties over the use of artificial intelligence to gain power in a video address to students at 16,000 selected schools.

“Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia but for all humankind,” he said. “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”
Russia isn’t alone in viewing AI as the next big thing in military arsenals. Both the United States and China see AI as a key to success in armed conflicts of the future
Read more at TechNewsWorld

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