industryterm:autonomous systems

Google employees are lining up to trash Google’s AI ethics council - MIT Technology Review
▻https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613253/googles-ai-council-faces-blowback-over-a-conservative-member

https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/gettyimages-828896290.jpg?cx=200&cy=113&cw=1600&ch=900&sw=1200

un élément intéressant et à prendre en compte : les deux personnes visées sont également les deux seules femmes de ce comité d’experts. Choisies stratégiquement par Google pour faire jouer l’avantage genre, ou cibles plus évidentes des protestataires parce que femmes ?

En tout cas, la place que la Heritage Foundation (droite dure et néo-management) prend dans l’espace mental des Etats-Unis, notamment dans le domaine technologique, est à suivre de près.

Almost a thousand Google staff, academic researchers, and other tech industry figures have signed a letter protesting the makeup of an independent council that Google created to guide the ethics of its AI projects.
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The search giant announced the creation of the council last week at EmTech Digital, MIT Technology Review’s event in San Francisco. Known as the Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC), it has eight members including economists, philosophers, policymakers, and technologists with expertise in issues like algorithmic bias. It is meant to hold four meetings a year, starting this month, and write reports designed to provide feedback on projects at the company that use artificial intelligence.

But two of those members proved controversial. One, Dyan Gibbens, is CEO of Trumbull, a company that develops autonomous systems for the defense industry—a contentious choice given that thousands of Google employees protested the company’s decision to supply the US Air Force with AI for drone imaging. The greatest outrage, though, has come over the inclusion of Kay Coles James, president of the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that opposes regulating carbon emissions, takes a hard line on immigration, and has argued against the protection of LGBTQ rights.

One member of the council, Alessandro Acquisti, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in digital privacy issues, announced on March 30th that he wouldn’t be taking up the role. “While I’m devoted to research grappling with key ethical issues of fairness, rights & inclusion in AI, I don’t believe this is the right forum for me to engage in this important work," he tweeted.

The creation of ATEAC—and the inclusion of Gibbens and James—may in fact have been designed to appease Google’s right-wing critics. At roughly the same time the council was announced, Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, was meeting with President Donald Trump. Trump later tweeted: “He stated strongly that he is totally committed to the U.S. Military, not the Chinese Military. [We] also discussed political fairness and various things that Google can do for our Country. Meeting ended very well!”

But one Google employee involved with drafting the protest letter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that James is more than just a conservative voice on the council. “She is a reactionary who denies trans people exist, who endorses radically anti-immigrant positions, and endorses anti-climate-change, anti-science positions.”

Some noted AI algorithms can reinforce biases already seen in society; some have been shown to misidentify transgender people, for example. In that context, “the fact that [James] was included is pretty shocking,” the employee said. “These technologies are shaping our social institutions, our lives, and access to resources. When AI fails, it doesn’t fail for rich white men working at tech companies. It fails for exactly the populations that the Heritage Foundation’s policies are already aiming to harm.”

Messages posted to a Google internal communications platform criticized the appointment of James especially. According to one post, earlier reported by the Verge and confirmed by the employee, James “doesn’t deserve a Google-legitimized platform, and certainly doesn’t belong in any conversation about how Google tech should be applied to the world.”

As of 5:30 pm US Eastern time today the public letter, posted to Medium, had been signed by 855 Google employees and 143 other people, including a number of prominent academics. “Not only are James’ views counter to Google’s stated values,” the letter states, “but they are directly counter to the project of ensuring that the development and application of AI prioritizes justice over profit. Such a project should instead place representatives from vulnerable communities at the center of decision-making.”

#Google #Intelligence_artificielle #Ethique #Politique_USA

Urban Planning Guru Says Driverless Cars Won’t Fix Congestion - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/technology/driverless-cars-congestion.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/10/28/business/25CALTHORPE03/25CALTHORPE03-facebookJumbo.jpg

Mr. Calthorpe is a Berkeley-based urban planner who is one of the creators of New Urbanism, which promotes mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods. His designs emphasize the proximity of housing, shopping and public space.

He is not opposed to autonomous vehicles. Mr. Calthorpe’s quarrel is with the idea that the widespread adoption of personally owned self-driving cars will solve transportation problems. In fact, he worries it will lead to more urban congestion and suburban sprawl.

“One thing is certain: Zero- or single-occupant vehicles,” even ones that can drive themselves, “are a bad thing,” he and the transportation planner Jerry Walters wrote in an article last year in Urban Land, an urban planning journal. “They cause congestion, eat up energy, exacerbate sprawl and emit more carbon per passenger-mile.”

“The key distinction is the number of people per vehicle,” said Mr. Walters, a principal at Fehr & Peers, a transportation consultancy in Walnut Creek. “Without pretty radically increasing the number of people per vehicle, autonomous systems will increase total miles traveled.”

He used his software to show that by changing just commercial zoning to permit higher density along El Camino Real — the 45-mile boulevard that stretches through the heart of Silicon Valley from San Francisco to San Jose — it would be possible add more than a quarter-million housing units.

The Valley’s housing crisis can be explained in data that shows that since 2010, the region has added 11 jobs for every new home built; the median home price has reached $934,000; and rents have gone up 60 percent since 2012. One of the consequences of the growing imbalance between housing and jobs is the increasing traffic and congestion, according to an Urban Footprint report.

To avoid congestion, the plan requires efficient mass transit. Mr. Calthorpe has proposed an alternative — autonomous rapid transit, or ART — using fleets of self-driving vans in reserved lanes on main arteries like El Camino Real. Those lanes would allow the vehicles to travel faster and require a lower level of autonomous technology. And the vans could travel separately or be connected together.

Mr. Calthorpe’s plan is an evolution of the concept of “transit-oriented development” he pioneered while teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, in the late 1980s. It focuses on designing urban communities that encourage people to live near transit services and decrease their dependence on driving.

“You have to redesign the street itself,” he said. “You need to add autonomous transit, and you need to get rid of parallel parking and put in bikeways and better sidewalks.”

#Mobilité #Automobile #Communs_urbains

#ridesharing means Flying Cars are Here to Stay
▻https://hackernoon.com/ridesharing-means-flying-cars-are-here-to-stay-8983f1396e29?source=rss--

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*5tBRMeW4ETfbBYUrrolzrw.png

RideSharing is the economic powerhouse driving autonomous vehicles to take flight.Lyft’s self driving car and Lilium JetThe RideSharing model changed everything we knew about mobility. Packed metro rides and graffiti covered busses transformed for many into hailing a cab. As the driver begins to become less important, and billions of dollars go into autonomous systems, the car itself is evolving. Many people today talk about how the end goal is self driving cars, but the technology will quickly surpass self driving and take flight.Lulium JetI sat at the Launch of Ola Play in Bangalore, India. I was the only foreigner, half crazed and sleep deprived. Ola had just announced the first in-car computing platform custom designed for RideSharing. With only an hours sleep, I watched history (...)

#urban-planning #vtol #urbanization #self-driving-cars

Beginning Artificial Intelligence with the Raspberry Pi

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41jsXf2IjYL.jpg

Gain a gentle introduction to the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) using the Raspberry Pi as the computing platform. Most of the major AI topics will be explored, including expert systems, machine learning both shallow and deep, fuzzy logic control, and more!

AI in action will be demonstrated using the Python language on the Raspberry Pi. The Prolog language will also be introduced and used to demonstrate fundamental AI concepts. In addition, the Wolfram language will be used as part of the deep machine learning demonstrations.

A series of projects will walk you through how to implement AI concepts with the Raspberry Pi. Minimal expense is needed for the projects as only a few sensors and actuators will be required. Beginners and hobbyists can jump right in to creating AI projects with the Raspberry PI using this book.

What You’ll Learn
What AI is and―as importantly―what it is not
Inference and expert systems
Machine learning both shallow and deep
Fuzzy logic and how to apply to an actual control system
When AI might be appropriate to include in a system
Constraints and limitations of the Raspberry Pi AI implementation

Who This Book Is For
Hobbyists, makers, engineers involved in designing autonomous systems and wanting to gain an education in fundamental AI concepts, and non-technical readers who want to understand what AI is and how it might affect their lives.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
Chapter 2: Basic AI Concepts
Chapter 3: Expert System Demonstrations
Chapter 4: Games
Chapter 5: Fuzzy Logic System
Chapter 6: Machine Learning
Chapter 7: Machine Learning: Artificial Neural Networks
Chapter 8: Machine Learning: Deep Learning
Chapter 9: Machine Learning: Practical ANN Demonstrations
Chapter 10: Evolutionary Computing
Chapter 11: Behavior-Based Robotics
Appendix A: Build Instructions for the Alfie Robot Car

▻https://www.amazon.fr/Beginning-Artificial-Intelligence-Raspberry-Pi/dp/1484227425

#book #livre
#AI #IA #artificial_intelligence #intelligence_artificielle
#Raspberry_Pi #Python

Intel’s $15 Billion Mobileye Buyout Puts It in the Autonomous Car Driver’s Seat - MIT Technology Review
▻https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603850/intels-15-billion-mobileye-buyout-puts-it-in-the-autonomous-car-drivers-seat/?set=603851
▻https://d267cvn3rvuq91.cloudfront.net/i/images/mobileye.jpg?cx=196&cy=53&cw=1600&ch=900&sw=1200

Many car manufacturers already use Mobileye’s hardware to power their autonomous systems, giving the company a position of power throughout the industry. Intel will now hope to combine that with its own chip-making chops to capture a sizable chunk of the autonomous car market just as it takes off. If it can do that, it will become a formidable competitor to chip makers like Nvidia and Qualcomm, who are already in the robotic car space.

#automobile #économie_numérique

Who will have the AI edge? | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
▻http://thebulletin.org/who-will-have-ai-edge10497

[Mary] Cummings argues that companies like Google and Facebook could outpace militaries when it comes to the science of artificial intelligence, which in turn could lead to potentially dangerous technologies going into use before they have been properly tested.

#IA #silicon_army #voiture_autopilotée #armement