Falling Asleep While Driving: Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Software

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October

2021

5/5 (3)

Elon Musk has recently been dropping hints about the Full Self-Driving Software in his Twitter messages. For a 199 dollar subscription per month, Tesla drivers will very soon be able to get the Full Self-Driving package. The beta testing is currently ongoing, the moment many Tesla fans have been waiting on for years. The company has made a promise back in 2016, ambitiously claiming that all the new vehicles will have the hardware capability for “full self-driving” and that it would soon offer complementary software to make the cars drive autonomously. Musk has personally said that he believes people will be able to fall asleep in Teslas while they are driving.  

The videos from recent testers show that the software is able to recognize traffic signs and crossings, and also takes pedestrians and other vehicles on the road into account. But despite its name, the actual Full Self-Driving Software is not capable of allowing the car to drive completely autonomously. Another video of the testers showed that the software is still quite far from copying human driving and often makes mistakes such as driving right into objects. This could be very dangerous, this is proven as car crashes while using the AutoPilot mode have been more and more prevalent. Hence, the company emphasizes that the driver should stay alert at all times when using AutoPilot and Full Self-Driving. 

There are not only safety concerns surrounding the software, there are also ethical concerns. There are moral considerations that the programmers have to keep in mind when developing the software. A common hypothetical involves a choice between taking an action that will kill either 5 people or only 2 people. What instructions will the autonomous driving computers have pre-loaded?

In conclusion, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Software seems to be full of promises, but in reality, the safety and ethical concerns should be kept in mind for the software to be truly successful.

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How Spotify knows what you like

10

October

2021

5/5 (3)

Remember the time where we needed to download music on our computers and transfer those songs to our mp3, not being able to listen to more than 20 songs? Times have changed since then, and almost everyone now uses the app Spotify. Hundreds of millions of people around the world use Spotify to listen to their music. With over 50 million songs and podcast episodes, it is not surprisingly beating the mp3 (;

But Spotify is doing more than just giving people access to podcasts and artists and their albums; Spotify is using technology to give their users an exceptional personal experience.

For example, they brought in Discover weekly, where every monday players receive a new playlist with 50 tracks. This playlist is based on songs they like and recently listened to, but haven’t heard before. How does Spotify do this? They use a form of machine learning. One of the used techniques is Collaborative Filtering, where an algorithm compares the songs you’ve listened to with other user-created playlists with similar songs. Another technique that uses a similar algorithm, but in a different way is Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP is the ability of an algorithm to search through the web to find music related articles and blog posts. This way, the algorithm can match songs based on the way they are being discussed on the internet and new songs can be added to the discover weekly list. Additionally, they use Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to make sure also less-popular songs are considered for the playlist. With CNN Spotify matches songs based on their attributes (e.g. beats per minute, loudness).

The company also just released a new feature on the 9th of September called ‘Enhance’. With this feature Spotify adds recommended tracks to your own playlist based on the already existing tracks using similar algorithms as described above. 

All these techniques make it easier for us to discover new artists and tracks more than ever. Algorithms track what we like, then give us what they think we like. This also made me think how hard it has become to discover new types of music that differs from what we already know. I still have a record player in my room and go to record stores every once in a while to step out of this filer bubble and wander into fresh territory. How about you?

References

E. (2021, January 15). On Netflix and Spotify, algorithms hold the power. But there’s a way to get it back. Experience Magazine. https://expmag.com/2019/11/endless-loops-of-like-the-future-of-algorithmic-entertainment/

How Spotify Uses Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Machine Learning. (2021). Data Science Central. https://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/6448529:BlogPost:1041799

Tambekar, A. (2020, May 11). How Spotify Uses Machine Learning Models to Recommend You The Music You Like. GreatLearning Blog: Free Resources What Matters to Shape Your Career! https://www.mygreatlearning.com/blog/3-machine-learning-models-spotify-uses-to-recommend-music-youll-like/#:%7E:text=Convolutional%20Neural%20Networks&text=Each%20song%20is%20converted%20into%20a%20raw%20audio%20file%20as%20a%20waveform.&text=With%20these%20key%20machine%20learning,would%20have%20never%20found%20otherwise.

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VR: Is it Ethical?

10

October

2021

5/5 (2)

VR technologies are becoming more and more common in our modern marketplace. Big players such as Google, Microsoft, Oculus, Sony, and Samsung are continuously pushing the limits and applications of VR. Generally, VR market is considered very attractive for many industry players. With approximately 171 million users and a global consumer value of $4.5 billion in 2018, the VR market is expected to grow massively at an extraordinary rate. So how exactly does VR technology impact our daily life?

VR has impacted our life in many aspects, starting from entertainment, education, to even health. In entertainment, one of the most popular VR applications is the experience of a virtual theme park. This form of entertainment allows consumers to experience theme park at a lower cost. Through this example, VR offers alternative form of entertainment in a very attractive way to consumers. In other instances, VR enables students to study remotely, making education more and more accessible. Ultimately, VR provides a substantial contribution in the health industry as well, allowing virtual surgery simulation to reduce errors and injuries during real-life surgeries.   

Despite the many significant and positive contributions of VR in many aspects of our life, the negative influence of is rarely discussed. Yes, VR has negative influence too, just like any other technologies developed by humans. One of the biggest dangers that VR poses is the disconnection from the real-world. There have been many cases of people losing touch with reality due to extreme immersion within the virtual world or gaming. Some examples include multiple deaths in Korea, reported by Time Magazine, due to excessive gaming. Another incident is regarding a 3-month-old child being starved to death as the parents abandoned him for virtual gaming. Last, there is also a case of 22-year-old man that passed away due to cardiac arrest after playing video game for 50 hours straight. It can be said that VR can create a world that immerses people even deeper within the virtual world, leading to an increasing trend of excessive video gaming. Other than disconnection from the real-world, VR can also lead to many examples of physical and mental injuries. Excessive use of VR technologies can worsen the eyesight, expose people to radiation, even increasing anxiety disorder. All in all, VR indeed can be hazardous for both physical and mental health of its users. The worse of it is that there is no concrete regulation yet that is created to control the user of VR.

So yes, VR is bringing substantial contribution to humanity, and it is a future that everyone is looking forward to. However, along with the development of VR and its applications, we need to also come up with ways to control the usage of VR and reducing its hazardous effects.

References:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/07/17/the-important-risks-and-dangers-of-virtual-and-augmented-reality/?sh=5464fb723d50

https://technologyandsociety.org/virtual-reality-ethical-challenges-and-dangers/

https://reporter.rit.edu/views/dangers-giving-virtual-reality

https://www.ucf.edu/online/hospitality/news/vr-theme-parks-revolutionizing-amusement-hospitality/

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Algorithms gone wrong – Facebook’s whistleblower

10

October

2021

5/5 (2)

The future of algorithms

A lot has changed at Facebook since 2006. It went from a very simple website with a tiny amount of functions, to an intelligent platform with a lot of algorithms involved. An algorithm is a set of mathematical instructions that produce certain outputs by telling it certain inputs (comparable with the ingredients, supplies and steps for baking a cake as output). The input at Facebook is all your information, your likes, interactions, searches, friends and your posts for example. This is all used to produce the output for you and make everything personalized.

You constantly see personalized information and ads when surfing on the website. With the introduction of the News Feed, all these developments were introduced at a rapid pace. Facebook used algorithms from the start, to filter all the content its user could see. This was needed, according to Facebook, since there was too much information to view. With time passing, the algorithms evolved, determining what is presented to the users. When these algorithms work how they are supposed to work, these personalizations can help users discover content that matches their interests. Unfortunately, this is not always the case; people are exposed to toxic content and misinformation. Facebook earns money by letting people scroll and exposing them to as many ads as possible, which they accomplish with these algorithms. It is very difficult to eliminate toxic algorithms since multiple teams build various algorithms and nowadays, algorithms learn things themselves and use a tremendous amount of data as input.

Haugen, a former Facebook product manager and now-called whistleblower, has shown her critique about this topic. She thinks that these algorithms of Facebook fuel polarization, misinformation and other toxic content. A lot has to be done to improve these algorithms. I hope that with the rise of media attention to this topic, changes will be made to avoid these high risks. I think that Facebook has a lot of power and can lead easily to polarization and more distance between groups of people. What do you think?

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Art and Technology

10

October

2021

5/5 (2) The fusion of art and technology is nothing new to a modern person, because in the end who is one to decide what is art and what is not? When the technology allows us to express ourselves in a new manner, connectivity plays a pivotal role here. You are always just one step, one click behind browsing a digital library of millions and millions of art pieces. The only problem however with overabundance of information is that we become reliant on what the algorithms or reviews of other people tell us. In a world where time is limited it is impossible to see and experience everything, so we let others judge things instead of us, saving us precious time but perhaps limiting ourselves from experiencing something grandeur. It is easy with modern technology to jump on Google Arts & Culture app or any other app for that matter and go on a virtual tour across thousands of museums and historical landmarks all across the globe, but how many people actually do that? Perhaps the answer lies in the nature of the experience, it is simply not the same. But what if it was the same? What if you could experience something you can not experience when visiting it in real world? Imagine going to ballet in VR, sounds weird doesn’t it? But then imagine standing on stage with the dancers, an invisible presence completely free to walk around and admire the choreography from any angle you choose. Now imagine a contest where people have to discern which pieces of art were produced by an AI and which by real people. As we venture into abstract paintings, how do we tell what is art and what is not? One might argue that it is about the meaning of work the artist put behind the piece, however in the post-modernist world the moment the author finishes their work, this work gains a life of its own. Hence, the meaning of the work only exists from the perception of the viewer and what they derive from it. We often struggle in modern world with defining clearly things for what they are, what is art and what is kitsch. But perhaps, we don’t need to, perhaps appreciating beauty is enough for what it is.

References:

https://www.ft.com/content/2437f525-f6f7-4068-ace7-35e572e56277
https://www.christies.edu/news/2019/may/growing-relationship-between-art-technology

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How data is shaping professional football

10

October

2021

5/5 (2)

Data-driven decision making is becoming more common in sports and football is not an exception. Insights into physical and video data such as the number of high-intensity sprints, distance covered, and information about heart rates have been used by professional football clubs for a while now, therefore, many clubs know how to use this data and gain valuable information out of it. However, as technology advances, an increased amount of professional football clubs will struggle to correctly implement the data to gain useful insights. To mitigate this, clubs are starting to hire external companies or set up internal teams of data analysts. Nonetheless, as the developments around data continue to advance, it will be interesting to observe how professional football teams will handle these changes.


Current developments in football focus on live match data. With this information, managers and other staff can examine the opponent’s strategy and formulate a game plan based on what they see. Additionally, managers can analyse data from live matches to make fast and educated strategic decisions while the match is still being played. Interest in these technologies grew rapidly as clubs recognized the competitive advantage they could create with live match data. A company that was one of the first to bring the technology to the market was Metrica Sports. Founded by three football fanatics with a science background, they quickly discovered that they should work with video analysis to identify key moments in matches. By using video, the coaches can explain their tactics and provide the players with real-life examples. It became a great success as more than 80 professional football clubs have adopted the technology.

Video analysis from Metrica Sports

The reason for Metrica Sports’ success doesn’t come as a surprise. Many clubs have attempted to collect, organize and analyse data themselves, however, the majority quickly discovered that this would come with many challenges. According to former Digital Business manager at Real Madrid, Oscar Ugaz, too many clubs are investing in fancy equipment while they lack the people able to understand it. The deficiency of talent can result in the inability to collect and organise the data properly. Furthermore, translating practical questions of managers and coaches into clear cut formal problems can cause difficulty.

Nonetheless, I believe that a data-driven approach in professional football is here to stay. As new technologies continue to be developed, more opportunities will arise for managers to improve their strategies. Additionally, advances in the use of data could give clubs new opportunities in improved player scouting and the identification of individual weaknesses. However, to ensure that most of the club’s challenges are dealt with accordingly, companies should allocate the majority of their data development budget to attract talented data analysts.

Sources:

State of the football analytics industry in 2021

http://sbibarcelona.com/test/data-analytics-in-the-football-industry/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertkidd/2020/11/15/why-this-company-wants-to-change-data-and-video-analysis-in-soccer/

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The future of travel

10

October

2021

5/5 (2)

Imagine ordering a cab to Rotterdam Central, buying and scanning a train ticket to Schiphol airport, booking a plane ticket to your ideal destination with extra cabin luggage and vegan meal, reserving that seat with extra leg room because you deserve to treat yourself, booking a hotel room and building a sightseeing itinerary—all on one platform. These may all seem like separate things, but this decluttered approach to travel will soon be a thing of the past.

Online travel agents (OTA) have put their entire business models under a microscope and are actively looking for new ways to innovate in order to stand out in the highly competitive travel industry. The future of travel will make the customer journey seamless. As internet giants such as Google gain a bigger share of the market, OTA are starting to widen their offerings in order to retain more customers and be a bigger part of their journey.

From using virtual assistants to provide you with real time information on your travel journey to using AR/VR goggles for those who are travelling virtually, there are a numerous number of technologies being experimented with. Trip.com, one of the biggest OTAs in the world, used the power of live streams to sell travel packages to customers during the pandemic. This innovative approach was able to keep the travel company running in a time when the scope of travel was no where in sight.

For many years, the travel sector has operated on the same basic principles. This approach to engage more with the customer is a positive approach in my opinion. Traditionally, one would go to a travel agent to book standardized excursions that overcharged for even the most basic things. Now, your entire travel experience is in your hands because the customers have become the travel agents themselves! Where are you travelling next?

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The secret to Artificial Intelligence in smaller Businesses

10

October

2021

5/5 (2)

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are known hot topics in any industry. However, the development and usage of such techniques seem successful for a happy few mostly very large companies. Mckinsey research from 2020 has shown that ai adoption is not increasing while firms that apply ai gain performance boosts with the last year seeing a significant increase in revenue based on ai. An average increase of 5% revenue was found in firms applying ai for revenue generation or cost-reduction. However, McKinsey’s research also showed that average firms gain relatively little from ai while a few superstars gain much more.

So how can you, as a smaller firm, be one of the Superstars? Luckily, there are a couple of best practices to follow and become of the stars of Ai usage. Firstly, you need to have a dedicated AI champion at the lower level of management. Firms with such an AI champion are 2.3 times more likely to experience significant AI performance boosts. Secondly, Resource commitment for three years or more allows your champion to develop in-house AI solutions leading to a significant performance boost over outsourced AI solutions. Thirdly, firms with a higher AI performance increase use several practices for development. These are; having a road map linked to AI initiatives linked to business value, top management fully committed and aligned with AI strategy, acceptance towards risk-taking in ai implementation, and having a standard framework for Ai implementation with an understanding of the frequency of updates on ai models. Finally, as an employer or a top manager, you need to have trust your employees to develop and know where to apply the AI to create value for your firm.

Of course, the development and implementation of AI are not without risks and research from 2019 shows that the majority of firms has no active plans on how to deal with the most common risks associated with AI. As well as a majority of firms does not even recognise most of the common risks as risks. A framework to best assess the risks for your firm is the following. First, create clarity by using a structured approach to specify the critical risks by creating a cross-functional team that tiers and points out risks. Secondly, create Breadth company-wide controls for AI usage by training staff across functions to create a wide knowledge base on risk prevention. Thirdly, nuance for specific critical risks as some risks are so important they need their own controls apart from the company-wide controls. For example, if the usage of AI can be reversed at any time without any fall out then a broad approach is sufficient. However, if the usage of AI will fundamentally change the business process a more nuanced control is necessary.

References:

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From artificial intelligence to artificial consciousness

10

October

2021

5/5 (3)

*Spoiler alert: this article discusses the plot of “Free Guy”, a 2021 movie*

With movie theaters reopening, blockbuster hits such as Free Guy, starring Ryan Reynolds have been highly anticipated by fans. The movie follows Guy, a non-playable character in a videogame that follows the exact same routine each day. An NPC is a character whose actions are not directly controlled by the player, instead their actions and choices are based on a set of predetermined conditions. However, at some point Guy’s self-awareness is triggered and his actions are no longer solely dependent on these conditions. He can now make his own decisions, including some irrational ones. He essentially becomes a conscious piece of artificial intelligence (Pierce, 2021).

While the movie was received with great praise from fans, its technological accuracy might have been fairly cringeworthy to tech and game development professionals. At this point in time, technology has not yet reached a level in which artificially intelligent beings can be fully conscious and self-aware (Kelly, 2021).

The self-awareness of AI is called artificial consciousness. In recent years, more and more research has been done in this field (Chatila et al, 2018). SELFception is a project that involved three different robots in an experiment to see whether they could distinguish their own ‘bodies’ from others, which is a skill that humans develop when they are around the age of two. Being able to make this distinction is a sign of self-awareness (Wild, 2020).

The growing interest in artificial consciousness is a very interesting phenomenon, as it seems we have come full circle. Artificial intelligence was initially partially developed to remove human error and irrationality. Now, many years later we find ourselves wanting that these artificially intelligent beings become more human-like. The possibility of this happening, however, is still very far away in time. Simply because we do not know enough about human creativity, consciousness and emotions to be able to copy with actual meaning. It is interesting to think about the fact that human emotion and irrationality is something that possibly can never be taught or programmed, and even more so the question: should we even want to?

References

Chatila, R., Renaudo, E., Andries, M., Chavez-Garcia, R.-O., Luce-Vayrac, P., Gottstein, R., Alami, R., Clodic, A., Devin, S., Girard, B. and Khamassi, M. (2018). Toward Self-Aware Robots. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, [online] 5. Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2018.00088/full [Accessed 2 Dec. 2019].

Kelly, S. (2021). Free Guy: Why video game AI will always be stupid. [online] Sciencefocus.com. Available at: https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/free-guy-artificial-intelligence-npc/.

Pierce, R.J. (2021). “Free Guy” Artificial Intelligence: Can An AI Be Actually Self-Aware? [online] Tech Times. Available at: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/266396/20211008/free-guy-artificial-intelligence-is-it-possible.htm [Accessed 10 Oct. 2021].

Wild, S. (2020). Why robots are being trained in self-awareness. [online] Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/why-robots-are-being-trained-self-awareness.

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Is 3D Printing the Future of Makeup?

10

October

2021

5/5 (2)

Brands combining beauty and technology have been an increasing occurrence in recent years, with anything from augmented reality apps to try on makeup, to smart devices offering personalized experiences at scale. A company that is jumping on this trend is Mink, which introduced the world’s first-ever 3D portable makeup printer. The concept was first debuted by CEO Grace Choi at the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference back in 2014, and they have since then worked on refining the product for its official release. 

So how does the makeup printer actually work? After downloading the Mink app, the user can import any image to print- anything from a screenshot from Instagram, to a Google image, or a selfie from your camera roll. The user then gets to choose between printing the whole image or a specific color featured in the picture. Then you simply have to click ‘send to print’ and within 15 seconds the makeup is printed on a thin sheet of paper and ready to be used. To get a better idea of what this looks like, you can watch the video below: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz5N_7bsq_U&ab_channel=mink

While the idea of being able to easily print the exact shade of lipstick your favorite celebrity recently wore in a picture is exciting, it still raises some concerns. Firstly, it raises questions about copyright issues and the right to simply duplicate any makeup product at home. Dupes and knockoff products is already a well-known issue in the beauty industry, and enabling people to simply print any makeup they want at home would certainly not help this. However, the quality and ingredients of the product could of course vary significantly as only the color itself is copied. Adding to this, cosmetic chemists have expressed worries about the difficulties in making quality ingredients printable. This does not only concern how well the makeup applies or lasts, but also how you can control the safety of a product and ingredients in an ink cartridge. 

I think the idea of 3D printing makeup is really fun and offers great opportunities for creativity as well as offering a more sustainable alternative to the plastic packaging makeup typically comes in. However, the concept will still have to be developed to become widely adopted and I am curious to see how Mink performs when their product finally launches.

References:

Driver, G. (2019, June 19). The Pros And Cons Of 3D Printed Make-Up As It Becomes An At-Home Reality. ELLE. https://www.elle.com/uk/beauty/make-up/a28096868/mink-3d-printed-makeup/

Fasanella, K. (2019, June 18). The Mink, World’s First 3D Makeup Printer, Available for Pre-Order. Allure. https://www.allure.com/story/mink-3d-makeup-printer

Folk, E. (2019, September 23). How 3D Printing is Changing the Cosmetics Industry. 3DPrint.Com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing. https://3dprint.com/254128/dhow-3d-printing-is-changing-the-cosmetics-industry/

Restauri, D. (2014, September 11). A Harvard Woman Is Blowing Up The $55 Billion Beauty Industry With 3D Printed Makeup. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/deniserestauri/2014/06/30/a-harvard-woman-is-blowing-up-the-55-billion-beauty-industry-with-3d-printed-makeup/?sh=21b825617542

Sharkey, L. (2019, June 21). 3D Printing Your Own Makeup Could Be The Future Of Beauty, Thanks To One Woman. Bustle. https://www.bustle.com/p/3d-printing-your-own-makeup-could-be-the-future-of-beauty-thanks-to-one-woman-18135407

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