The greatest attention of people continues to collect the achievements of robotics. Such curiosity gives impetus to the development and appearance of functionally new robots more and more often.
Until recently, there were no such people capable of moving on uneven surfaces and performing acrobatic stunts . Now it is already a reality, as well as assistant robots, robotic vacuum cleaners, etc.
In view of the latest news from MIT , the robot they developed, it is possible to walk, play ball with it - everything is like with a real favorite pet. Will these robots be in demand? - We'll see. “Why do I need this robot dog?” You thought, perhaps. They just have not seen how she does a somersault .
On the topic of robots, each of us has something to say. They have long been introduced into everyday life.
In my opinion, one of the indicators of the clearly set future is artificial intelligence and machine learning. AI can already automate many processes in various sectors of the economy, thereby increasing the profits of companies. Can predict the likelihood of a health problem. Sosem recently it was not yet possible to replace the face with another, in any video. A complete face change throughout the film is incredible ... it was. Now it’s quite real, and even quite high quality, so that you don’t doubt for a second that it was so in the original.
Video communication will probably be unpredictable in the near future, as you can’t determine for sure whether in FaceTime you are being called by a real person or the picture on the other side is just the result of someone’s efforts, given that it is possible to make a replacement in real time . And in general, it is unlikely that this business will not be optimized for everyone in the foreseeable future.
At least in China there is already a market for Deepfake services:
Baidu Tieba (one of the most popular forums in China) has a thread with the service “Face swap + female celebrity's surname”. Just, you will be asked to transfer at least 20 photos of a person’s face (from different angles, and the more, the better) whose face you would like to transplant into a porn video (!) And pay via WeChat Pay or Alipay (~ 36 rubles).
The same market is in the local Avito, the Xianyu application, but there it is already more expensive - ~ 183 rubles per minute for the video. Such fakes are made with one click with any person who published photos of their faces on the Internet (!) (Now remember the profile whose face appears in every second post, close-up on a selfie and imagine what, thanks to these data, you can now do it, considering that every year the quality of photos of users grows, as a result of which, the face is visible up to every wrinkle. Incredibly valuable content for attackers).
Advertising, along with the development of technology, also does not stand still. Advertising integration is more and more in films, cartoons, series. But what was recently invented was impossible to imagine until today.
Using the neural network algorithm developed by one team in Asia (and then successfully implementing it ), you can integrate advertising into any banner passing a bus or a coffee cup flickering in your favorite series or movie. At the same time, for each country, or maybe city, (or an even more divided unit of the target audience) it will be possible to substitute its advertising. And you will no longer be able to “skip” it the way it will be the same film in a movie theater or on the Internet. Fortunately, the fight against annoying advertising on the Internet (and beyond) also does not stand still.
Moment of nostalgia
Remember, earlier it was enough to expect only one commercial before watching a series / movie on the Internet? Already not to remember, probably ... Now, 2 commercials are standard. And how soon will there be 3 clips? Although there are still those who have one advertisement, but here it depends more on the demand for the site. There are definitely those where there is no advertising at all.
It’s good that there are ad blockers for such cases.
Here's some more time, and a California startup will introduce a new device - an ad blocker on the street , in the form of ordinary glasses, but with the peculiarity of turning LCD and LED TVs into black screens. Glasses will perform their task thanks to horizontally polarized filters that block radiation. Unfortunately for victims of marketing, they are not yet able to cope with the smartphone display and OLED matrix, but the developers promise to fix it.
It would be funny if the developer of such a device was the same person who came up with ads on the Internet through pop-ups. I would clean my karma clean (joke). Ethan Zuckerman previously apologized for his script-brainchild.
Lyrical digression
It’s not news to anyone that we are being watched and analyzed by behavior on the Internet, as well as outside it (cameras located around the city that recognize faces. But not about that now. Perhaps in the next publication. The topic is interesting, it makes people cognitive dissonance, in the interpretation of security - contradictions).
Are they listening? They are listening.
Speech analytics systems have recently achieved simply unimaginable results. One of the proofs of this is the recent disturbances in the network about the home robot assistant from the creators of one well-known technology giant who collected all the speech information of his hosts. Yes, supposedly under the pretext of assessing the quality of the device and its further improvement. It seems quite logical. Only they did not warn their clients about this. And knowing that fact, perhaps the buyer once again considered whether to keep such a thing at home. Anyway, this leads to a number of thoughts. And how many corporations are still silent about their hidden motives?
The subtitles in the video on Youtube are the very long-lasting future. The downloaded video, in which your words about a certain survivor of life experience, the service digitizes and repeats exactly (~ 80%) without errors, as it was said. Yes, and translates into dozens of different languages. This simple algorithm - is it not like the way our words are transmitted every day to the servers of different companies interested in such content using the gadgets and laptops used, and also digitize, but not at all for subtitles. Indeed, such data have an application, as practice shows.
Such systems are already used to provide services to founders who have call centers and similar organizations, to be able to assess the quality of service by managers of their clients, and other sources and goals, where more than one educational and entertaining content is pulsating. Here is teeming with business, the most real and promising. Each director certainly wants to keep abreast of the quality of the product information that his company sells. For this, staff conversations on keywords are monitored, giving out their status, with notes on the degree of importance. The motive is clear - “instruction on the right track”, to increase sales efficiency. Cash turnover in the provision of speech analytics itself cannot but rejoice, at a high level. The service is in demand. Immense data centers are collected for data storage and transmission.
“ For quality control, a call can be recorded ” - A phrase with which everyone has long been reconciled, on both sides of the handset.
Are they listening exactly?
It's time to come to terms. We use smartphones that are near us almost all day, all the time. We constantly express our wishes or intentions aloud, voice our actions or indignations, criticism (subjective assessment) to our friends / acquaintances / colleagues. Microphones in devices capture them, servers store, log and filter them. For keywords and phrases “I want ...”, for sure the text or audio is recorded, sent to special data centers. On the side, the information received is processed by those for whom it is valuable for advertising or other purposes. Based on this data, it is possible to present entire structures and data arrays, based on the studies of which it is quite possible to build advertising campaigns for us in “Zuckenberg tapes” (FB, Isntagram) or Google advertising. And all this on all our gadgets at the same time, connected simply to the same IP address. And tomorrow, perhaps, all of this will be operated by AI, if this does not happen already.
Did the shampoo in the tape that I recently recalled out loud give out a programmed AI algorithm?
How quickly such systems
Reality is now a definitively coming future. Planned or not. But when did this happen? Possibly movie stars are already signing NDA contracts with well-known companies that have used such technology as Deepfake.
What if some well-known actors or bloggers already sell their rights to their faces, and corporations then create “art” with their creative staff, in the same ad there’s a 30-second video clip, during which you won’t have time to think about what the video doesn’t a real star topping the audience’s charts, but just a quality installation. Can't imagine? Digital presenter Elena will help .
Cases of “interest in a person,” namely, obtaining rights to him, have been officially recorded recently. In one London-based engineering company - Geomiq, who announced the order of one of their customers , who is looking for the perfect face needed for a robot (!). He must be a friend to the elderly. Demand for it will definitely be, given the tendency to place their elderly parents in special institutions.
Returning to the AI Capabilities in Our Future
It will not be difficult now to take an audio track recording the voice of a well-known politician, or a video blogger, because audio content (monologues) from such persons on the network is enough, then train the neural network based on these data, voice any text. Substitute the face, having completely recreated facial expressions and intonation. We will not start to trifle, even dancing is already possible to copy and transfer to the generated video . I wonder what content can follow such technologies? Few possible options were voiced in this video from one Russian company that demonstrated the capabilities of its neural network - speech synthesis.
AI can talk endlessly
A few months ago, Musk announced his new technology in the framework of Neuralink , (an embedded chip in the brain (so far only rat), which is the main link in transmitting information directly, without any buttons or additional devices). This is incredibly useful for increasing human productivity and improving people in general. Indeed, now technologies based on the human-machine system cannot be sufficiently developed, as long as we have to press buttons / keys to get the desired result from the iron assistants.
What opportunities do I see with such a system.
Imagine you are listening to music on AirPods and want to switch the track. With the help of such an “interface of the future”, you just need to think about it, and then the neural network and the possibility of “pairing” will do everything for you.
Or so again: For example, you never knew how to swim or drive a car - now it will be possible . It is enough to load the finished dataset on your brain and the acquired skills can already be put into practice, here and now. Download promises to be lightning fast. I think no one doubts that it will be so in the future, no matter how fantastic it sounds. Before Tesla (the car), no one, for sure, could have imagined about such a powerful and functional autopilot-electric car. And the Mask company has been improving its creation of the future for several years in a row, updating the OS, adding new and useful functionality. (While writing this material, Ilona has already introduced the world to its pickup truck - Tesla CYBRTRCK )
Like a couple of years ago no one suspected, it is obvious that autopilots will drive taxis around Moscow, without drivers, through narrow streets, with unrealistic traffic congestion. And about the delivery of packages by drones? It remains to wait and watch. Or participate in the development, of course.
Note of dystopia
What if attackers have access to your thoughts as well as your smartphone -> the web browser cache that advertisers now have. Bypassing a certain “firewall”, they will be able to get a history of your downloads to the brain, and your search on the network. Taught on the schemes of interaction with the DNS will go to their own place for the sake of profit. After all, now taking you to a fake site instead of the present is a solvable task. But I want to think positively and believe that there will be a counteraction for every action, and it will continue to be, like GDPR stealing personal data. Or Facebook with the algorithm of "de-identification" of persons using a neural network to determine deepfakes.
The future is here. And every minute the future becomes present
Gradually realized things that could have been imagined before only in science fiction. Like a memory card , with Blade Runner from Microsoft. That's all, such a thing is already present, and just yesterday it was still the “future."
As well as the "invisible" material , which hides objects and people (!) Standing at a certain distance behind it.
Previously, they could only dream of such a thing. Sociophobes, for example, wanting to hide from the whole World. Or scammers, with ambitions to rob banks without consequences. Each of us at least once wanted to imagine such an invisible hat or cloak, but they could only fantasize. At the moment, the material is already patented by Vancouver scientists. Potential uses include “police shields that are not visible behind them.”
For some, such news can cause interest, for others it may be alarming. Such a “future” may seem intimidating to some. AI, machine learning - created to help people, and this is obvious. According to Mask, due to the introduction of AI in our lives, the average duration of humanity will increase to 100-120 years. The data were not taken from the air, but from studies that have already shown an increase in the average life expectancy of a person in the World today.
But of course, there will always be those who are not used to acting out of good intentions in life (or because of other characteristics, for example, mental ones) and such technologies in their hands can still bring an unfriendly result. It is pointless to express personal concerns about this; each of us creates his own story and participates in it.
I have never been a fan of uploading my personal data, close-up faces in social networks. All because I probably felt a certain responsibility to myself, in the long run, for maintaining confidentiality on the network. Who knows what life will lead us to, and what positions will need to be occupied, what interests will have to be represented, what conflicts to solve and what tools and downloaded data can be used against ourselves.
Summarizing
Definitely, for the future of AI. More and more interest is caused by artificial intelligence among developers and scientists. As an example from recent news, John Carmack, whose creations did not leave indifferent any gamer who had a love for already old-school shooters.
A game developer at one of the largest VR content and gadget companies has announced his departure from Oculus, saying that he will now deal with “strong artificial intelligence”! Feel this phrase. For greater effect, read with intonation and accents on every word in this phrase. This can also be followed by some food for thought. Why AI? The answer is somewhere on the surface. Carmack has repeatedly made the future with his own hands. In the 90s, he himself programmed cult games, creating the genre of 3D shooters. Each game was a breakthrough that propelled the entire industry. Let's see what this time the engineer will present to us. Most likely, he already has a certain plan, since he made such a wonderful decision.
In conclusion, I want to emphasize the meaning of all these lines: to find like-minded people who will help to figure it out, our reality is real or still virtual. Does AI mean love?