How One Intelligent Machine Learned to Recognize Human Emotions | MIT Technology Review
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/view/545986/how-one-intelligent-machine-learned-to-recognize-human-emotions
Nobody knew how to identify people’s emotional states by looking at their brain waves. Then a machine learning algorithm stepped in.
▻https://d267cvn3rvuq91.cloudfront.net/i/images/Emotional%20states.PNG?sw=790
Data Mining Reveals How Smiling Evolved During a Century of Yearbook Photos | MIT Technology Review
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/view/543871/data-mining-reveals-how-smiling-evolved-during-a-century-of-yearbo
By mining a vast database of high-school yearbook photos, a machine-vision algorithm reveals the change in hairstyles, clothing, and even smiles over the last century.
Sauf que depuis quelques années, on doit faire la gueule sur les photos officielles…
@monolecte, finalement on en revient à l’attitude qui prévalait au début de la photographie : une expression neutre voire sérieuse , le sujet de 1910 se calquant sur la référence que constituait encore la peinture à l’époque : la production d’un visuel attestant de la position sociale.
Ce n’est que progressivement avec la diffusion généralisée de la photographie que le sujet prend une attitude spécifique (à rapprocher du « cheese » popularisé par les stars qui ont été les premières sensibilisées au « résultat de l’instantané », si j’ose dire) exprimant cette « injonction au bonheur » (@aude_v).
Quant au genre, effectivement l’apparition du sourire est plus tardive et moins marquée chez les hommes (30 à 40 ans de décalage postural).
Pour ma part tant que les dents sont rapprochées je ne considère pas que la bouche soit ouverte (la bouche ouverte c’est le rire).
Ceci dit ce glissement expressif n’est pas le premier, puisque ce comportement inné est passé de la crainte (sourire d’apaisement face au dominant chez les primates) à la sympathie ,puis à cette expression d’épanouissement social censée être attractive.
Et l’article complet est là ▻http://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.02575v1.pdf
Bien entendu, je suis d’accord sur cet aspect suggestif de la mimique labiale, indéniable.Egalement sur le constat de l’injonction faite aux femmes d’être désirables.
Et cela commence dès la petite enfance par des stimuli différenciés pour les filles et les garçons (B. Cyrulnik).
Pour l’anecdote : quand mes voisins voyant ma fille de 10 mois leur adresser cet ingénu sourire de bébé sans dent, caractéristique de cet age, se penchaient vers elle très affectueusement en disant : « elle est coquine » (a-t-on jamais dit à un bébé garçon souriant qu’il est coquin ? Non il est juste mignon.) J’ai mis un moment à comprendre pourquoi cette attitude pourtant bienveillante me mettait mal à l’aise, jusqu’à ce que je réalise que derrière le « coquine » j’entendais déjà le « salope » qui viendrait plus tard... tout naturellement.
Bref, y’a du boulot.
Un ami revenant de NY en 1989 excédé des sourires niais, me disait que la prochaine personne qui souriait il lui mettait une tarte. oups
#bonheur_marchand
Data Mining Reveals the Extent of China’s Ghost Cities
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/view/543121/data-mining-reveals-the-extent-of-chinas-ghost-cities
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/styles/view_body_embed/public/images/Ghost%20cities.png?itok=ex1G4nnq
In recent years, China has undergone a period of urban growth that is unprecedented in human history. The number of square kilometers devoted to urban living grew from 8,800 in 1984 to 41,000 in 2010. And that was just the start. China used more concrete between 2011 and 2013 than the U.S. used in the entire 20th century.
Some of this building has been misplaced. In various parts of China, developers have built so much housing so quickly that it has outstripped demand, even in the world’s most populous country. The result is the well-publicized phenomenon of ghost cities—entire urban areas that are more or less deserted.
But much of the reporting on ghost cities is anecdotal or based on unreliable measurements such as a simple count of the number of lights on at night in residential buildings. That’s a particularly inaccurate method, not least because it ignores seasonal variations caused by tourism. Many places are busy during the tourist season but empty during the off-season, and not just in China. So being unable to distinguish these from ghost cities is something of a problem.
And that raises an interesting question: how bad, really, is the problem of ghost cities in China?
Du #big_data à l’échelle chinoise : 770 millions d’individus géolocalisés heure par heure (au moins) sur 8 mois.
Méthodologie impressionnante.
Et deux études de cas :
• Kangbashi (la ville nouvelle près de #Ordos, bien connue sur ST)
• Rushan, ville balnéaire avec une occupation uniquement saisonnière
Au passage, dans l’intro, l’info qui déchire :
The amount of concrete used in China in the three years (2011-‐2013) is more than that used in U.S. in the 20th century.
Le résumé du papier (et le lien vers le pdf)
Ghost Cities Analysis Based on Positioning Data in China
▻http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.08505
Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill | MIT Technology Review
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/view/542626/why-self-driving-cars-must-be-programmed-to-kill
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/styles/view_body_embed/public/images/Ethical%20cars.png?itok=A_wye_WL
Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill
Self-driving cars are already cruising the streets. But before they can become widespread, carmakers must solve an impossible ethical dilemma of algorithmic morality.
Le problème sur Twitter avait été reformulé ainsi : « une voiture automatique doit-elle apprendre à tuer son passager pour minimiser les vicitmes ? »
Quoi qu’il en soit pour la philosophie, le problème central est surtout de faire croire a une science possible de l’éthique, qui puisse générer une idée objective afin d’être relayée par une machine.
How Machine Vision Is About to Change the Fashion World
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/view/541091/how-machine-vision-is-about-to-change-the-fashion-world
Tech’s Enduring Great-Man Myth (Putting Elon Musk and Steve Jobs on a Pedestal Misrepresents How Innovation Happens) | Amanda Schaffer, MIT Technology Review
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/review/539861/techs-enduring-great-man-myth
l’inverse du portrait habituel de l’entrepreneur mythique self-mad-man-qui-a-tout-inventé
#SpaceX is not driving the future of space exploration. It is capitalizing on a deep pool of technology and highly trained people that already existed, and it is doing so at a moment when national support for #NASA has diminished and the government is privatizing key aspects of space travel.
(...) the great-man narrative carries costs. First, it has helped to corrode the culture of #Silicon_Valley. Great-man lore helps excuse (or enable) some truly terrible behavior.
(...) If tech leaders are seen primarily as singular, lone achievers, it is easier for them to extract disproportionate wealth. It is also harder to get their companies to accept that they should return some of their profits to agencies like NASA and the National Science Foundation through higher taxes or simply less tax dodging.
And finally, technology hero worship tends to distort our visions of the future. Why should governments do the hard work of fixing and expanding California’s mass transit system when Musk says we could zip people across the state at 760 miles per hour in a “hyperloop”? Is trying to colonize Mars, at a cost in the billions of dollars, actually the right direction for future space exploration and scientific research? We should be able to determine long-term technology priorities without giving excessive weight to the particular visions of a few tech celebrities.
#disruption #silicon_army #énergie #automobile #espace #privatisation #start-ups
(ajoutons à cet article que ces “great men” ne contribuent pas à valoriser la place des femmes dans la technologie)
Why #Wikipedia + #Open_Access = Revolution
The way scientific information diffuses through the knowledge economy is changing, and the first evidence from Wikipedia shows how.
Will Advances in Technology Create a Jobless Future? | MIT Technology Review
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/538401/who-will-own-the-robots
We’re in the midst of a jobs crisis, and rapid advances in AI and other technologies may be one culprit. How can we get better at sharing the wealth that technology creates?
Whoever owns the #capital will benefit as #robots and #artificial_intelligence inevitably replace many jobs.
Deep Learning #Machine Beats Humans in IQ Test
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/view/538431/deep-learning-machine-beats-humans-in-iq-test
Computers have never been good at answering the type of verbal reasoning questions found in IQ tests. Now a deep learning machine unveiled in China is changing that.
Deep learning techniques are currently sweeping through computer science like wildfire and the revolution they are creating is still in its early stages. There’s no telling where this revolution will take us
À ce propos je viens de remarquer que Flickr classe désormais automatiquement les photos en fonction de ce que ses #algorithmes y voient : des chats, des oiseaux, des gens, des mariages (!), des arches, du sport etc.
C’est sympa mais étant donné que ce n’était pas une option à activer, ça fait un peu froid dans le dos…
@fil (flickr) Je me demande bien ce qui tourne derrière.
Récemment j’ai essayé une lib JS de reconnaissance de visages sur flickr commons, sans trop de réglages, on a déjà des choses :
Effectivement, impressionnant !
Oui, ça ressemble bien…
SmartAlbum from IQ Engines (2013)
@simplicissimus j’ai des bon ratés aussi ^^
celle là est dans « Animal:other » :
Sinon, comme je ne « tague » pas mes photos avec les gens qui sont dessus, je ne sais pas si la classification auto ne se double pas d’une identification (à la facebook).
Exclusive: Apple Pursues DNA Data | MIT Technology Review
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/news/537081/apple-has-plans-for-your-dna
Starting last year, Apple began taking steps to make its devices indispensable for “digital health.” Its latest version of the iOS operating system includes an app called Health, which has fields for more than 70 types of health data—everything from your weight to how many milligrams of manganese you eat (as yet, there’s no field for your genome). Apple also entered a partnership with IBM to develop health apps for nurses and hospitals, as well as to mine medical data.
Now Apple is closely involved in shaping initial studies that will collect DNA. One, planned by the University of California, San Francisco, would study causes of premature birth by combining gene tests with other data collected on the phones of expectant mothers. A different study would be led by Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
Like the ResearchKit apps released so far, the studies would be approved by Apple and by an institutional review board, a type of oversight body that advises researchers on studies involving volunteers.
The ResearchKit program has been spearheaded by Stephen Friend, a onetime pharmaceutical company executive and now the head of Sage Bionetworks, a nonprofit that advocates for open scientific research. Friend’s vision for a data “commons” in which study subjects are active participants in scientific research was enthusiastically embraced by Apple starting in 2013. Friend, whom Apple describes as a medical technology advisor, declined an interview request through an assistant.
Silicon Valley companies are intent on using apps and mobile devices to overrun what Friend has called the “medical-industrial complex.” The problem is that hospitals and research groups are notorious for hoarding data, in many cases because they are legally bound to do so by state and federal privacy regulations. But no law stops individuals from sharing information about themselves. Thus one reason to “empower patients,” as rhetoric has it, is that if people collect their own data, or are given control of it, it could quickly find wide use in consumer apps and technologies, as well as in science.
By playing this role in gene studies, Apple would join a short list of companies trying to excite people about what they might do with their own genetic information. Among them are the genealogy company Ancestry.com, the Open Humans Project, and 23andMe, a direct-to-consumer testing company that has collected DNA profiles of more than 900,000 people who bought its $99 spit kits.
That is one of the largest DNA data banks anywhere, but it took 23andMe nine years of constant media attention, such as appearance on Oprah, to reach those numbers. By comparison, Apple sold 60 million iPhones in just the first three months of this year, contributing to a total of about 750 million overall. That means DNA studies on the ResearchKit platform could, theoretically, have rapid and immense reach.
One study launched this year by the University of Michigan, Genes for Good, uses a Facebook app to recruit subjects and carry out detailed surveys about their health and habits. In that study, participants will be sent a spit kit and will later gain access to DNA information via a file they can download to their desktops.
So far about 4,200 people have signed up, says Gonçalo Abecasis, the geneticist running the research. Abecasis says that the project will tell people something about their ancestry but won’t try to make health predictions. “There is tension in figuring out what is okay as part of our research study and what would be okay in terms of health care,” he says. “You can imagine that a lot of people have a good idea how to interpret the DNA … but what is appropriate to disclose isn’t clear.”
How Companies and Services Like Facebook Are Shaped by the #Programming #Languages They Use
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/review/536356/toolkits-for-the-mind
Data mining reveals when a yellow taxi is cheaper than Uber
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/view/535886/data-mining-reveals-when-a-yellow-taxi-is-cheaper-than-uber
A Bitcoin-Inspired Digital Currency, Stellar, Will Power Mobile Savings Accounts for Poor Teenage Girls | MIT Technology Review
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/news/535271/bitcoin-inspired-digital-currency-to-power-mobile-savings-app
J’aimerai comprendre ce qu’il y a derrière ce laius.
Donc des jeunes filles pauvres travailleraient sur des réseaux sociaux pour gagner du temps complémentaire pour envoyer des SMS. Et cela donnerait une monnaie crytographique soutenue par la Gates Foundation et l’UNICEF... et accentuerait la centralité des entreprises de télécommunication dans la vie des gens les plus pauvres au nom de la solidarité.
Le bavardage des crypto-monnaies est de la poudre aux yeux pour justifier une nouvelle forme de travail, ce que Yann Moulier appelait le « travail des abeilles ».
Au fait, s’est-on un jour posé la question du coût écologique de la création des crypto-monnaies ? Plus ça va, plus il faut « miner » profond, donc faire tourner des machines.
En fait, nous assistons à la victoire du discours cyberlibertarien (contre l’Etat et sa monnaie) et à l’opposé d’une logique de monnaies solidaires et d’un commun des échanges via des monnaies équitables. Mais ils ont monopolisé le discours en s’appuyant sur la magie cryptographique... et acquis ainsi la complicité ou le silence des informaticiens qui s’intéressent à la méthode en oubliant les individus qui doivent servir ces nouvelles monnaies.
Quand l’homme le plus riche de la planète se penche sur le sort des jeunes filles pauvres en lui offrant un téléphone mobile, je ne sais pas pourquoi, mais j’ai une mauvaise impression. Je dois lire trop de polars suédois.
Ebola Epidemic Should End in May, Say Disease Modelers | MIT Technology Review
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/view/535151/ebola-epidemic-should-end-in-may-say-disease-modelers
Valdez and co say that the two strategies employed by the World Health Organization and others significantly reduce the rate at which the disease spreads. And this lowers the infection rate falls below the critical threshold necessary to maintain an epidemic. Their model goes on to show that the epidemic should be extinguished by mid-May this year.
China’s GMO Research Juggernaut Prepares for Climate-Changed Future | MIT Technology Review
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531721/chinas-gmo-stockpile
Even if China can increase yields by improving existing agricultural practices, as it probably can, Rozelle and other China watchers expect the country to approve GM corn at some point; the demand for corn for animal feed will become too urgent, and using the crop for animal feed is far less controversial than growing it for human consumption. Nobody knows when or to what extent China will begin deploying its GMO stockpile to feed its citizens. But few doubt that at some point, when costs rise and supply gets tighter, the government will decide it’s time to plant what it has been developing in its labs. And when that happens, given China’s centrally managed economy, farms and families can be expected to adopt the technology quickly. “Once the official attitude is changed, everything will be changed very soon,” says Huang. And in the decades to come, if one of the innumerable GMO strains sprouting in the labs of Gao and others should help get the nation through a mega-drought or pronounced heat wave, that fix might well seem museum-worthy to future curators of Chinese agricultural history.
#OGM
Soon Cars Will Know If You’re Distracted | MIT Technology Review
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533801/jaguar-demos-a-car-that-keeps-an-eye-on-its-driver
The company is using cameras and software to detect eye and facial movements so it can alert drivers who have become inattentive, either due to drowsiness or distraction. This kind of technology is set to become more common, especially as cars become more capable of driving themselves on some stretches of road.
Bruno Latour avait décrit ce phénomène qui consiste à confier à la technologie des aspects éthiques et moraux des individus (il traitait de la question de la ceinture de sécurité, on n’en est pas loin ici).
Seeing Machines’ technology uses a small infrared camera fitted to the dashboard that works with software running on the vehicle—not on a remote server—to evaluate whether the driver is looking at the road. It evaluates a person’s head position, facial expression, and blinking rate. The camera captures 60 frames per second, and the software analyzes the images to determine the driver’s alertness.
Breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence from 2014
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533686/2014-in-computing-breakthroughs-in-artificial-intelligence
The holy grail of artificial intelligence — creating software that comes close to mimicking human intelligence — remains far off. But 2014 saw major strides in machine learning software that can gain abilities from experience. Companies in sectors from biotech to computing turned to these new techniques to solve tough problems or develop new products.
The most striking research results in AI came from the field of deep learning, which involves using crude simulated neurons to process data.
The #Troll Hunters
A group of journalists and researchers wade into ugly corners of the Internet to expose racists, creeps, and hypocrites. Have they gone too far?
By Adrian Chen on December 18, 2014
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/photoessay/533426/the-troll-hunters
It is generally no longer acceptable in public life to hurl slurs at women or minorities, to rally around the idea that some humans are inherently worth less than others, or to terrorize vulnerable people. But old-school hate is having a sort of renaissance online, and in the countries thought to be furthest beyond it. The anonymity provided by the Internet fosters communities where people can feed on each other’s hate without consequence. They can easily form into mobs and terrify victims. Individual trolls can hide behind dozens of screen names to multiply their effect. And attempts to curb online hate must always contend with the long-standing ideals that imagine the Internet’s main purpose as offering unfettered space for free speech and marginalized ideas. The struggle against hate online is so urgent and difficult that the law professor Danielle Citron, in her new book Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, calls the Internet “the next battleground for civil rights.”
Geneticists Begin Tests of an #Internet for DNA
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533416/geneticists-begin-tests-of-an-internet-for-dna
A coalition of geneticists and computer programmers calling itself the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health is developing protocols for exchanging DNA information across the Internet. The researchers hope their work could be as important to medical science as HTTP, the protocol created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, was to the Web.
One of the group’s first demonstration projects is a simple search engine that combs through the DNA letters of thousands of human genomes stored at nine locations, including Google’s server farms and the University of Leicester, in the U.K. According to the group, which includes key players in the Human Genome Project, the search engine is the start of a kind of Internet of DNA that may eventually link millions of genomes together.
The technologies being developed are application program interfaces, or APIs, that let different gene databases communicate. Pooling information could speed discoveries about what genes do and help doctors diagnose rare birth defects by matching children with suspected gene mutations to others who are known to have them.
The alliance was conceived two years ago at a meeting in New York of 50 scientists who were concerned that genome data was trapped in private databases, tied down by legal consent agreements with patients, limited by privacy rules, or jealously controlled by scientists to further their own scientific work. It styles itself after the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, a body that oversees standards for the Web.
People Want Safe Communications, Not Usable Cryptography.
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/view/533456/people-want-safe-communications-not-usable-cryptography
« Real-world cryptography isn’t only about cryptography. It’s just as much about product design, and building experiences that work for the user—not requiring work from the user. It’s a cross-discipline problem that requires not only cryptographers but user-experience designers and developers, too. »(Permalink)