Samsung unveils Galaxy Enhance-X software, uses AI to enhance photographs

 

For the individuals who are capable picture takers, Samsung has the Expert RAW programming, be that as it may, in view of the organization's enormous client base, only one out of every odd Galaxy client knows about what each dial does. For their purposes, a "Man-made intelligence photograph upscaler and wizardry proofreader," is the pristine Galaxy Enhance-X application.

As per GSM Arena, as the name infers, this isn't a camera application like Expert RAW, yet rather a manager for as of now taken pictures. These can be pictures you took with your telephone yet could have done without, or pictures you took with an old telephone or camera.

The AI-fueled calculations might hone photos, kill reflections, eliminate obscure or add some for a representation appearance, light up desolate shots or mirror HDR, and apply a Beauty mode.

The moire impact that shows up while snapping a picture of a computerized screen is killed by one entrancing component. There are different decisions that permit you to control the impact's power, and there is a sliding window that looks at the when states.

Moreover, the display stores both the first and the treated variant of the picture, permitting you to begin once again assuming that you're discontent with the result.....Read More

Facebook, Instagram ramp up removal of hate speech, bullying content

 

Facebook has eliminated 26.9 million bits of scorn discourse content in the final quarter of 2020 - up from 22.1 million in Q3 and the organization offers credit to enhancements in its mechanized frameworks that catch and cleanse such remarks.

The informal community additionally impeded 6.4 million bits of coordinated disdain content in the October-December period from its fundamental stage, up from 4 million in Q3.

Instagram likewise saw critical bounces in disdain discourse, harassing and self-hurt expulsions, as per the organization's 'Local area Standards Enforcement Report'.

Facebook brought down 6.3 million bits of tormenting and provocation content from its foundation in the final quarter of 2020 - up from 3.5 million in Q3.

"Last quarter, we shared the pervasiveness of scorn discourse on Facebook unexpectedly to show the level of times individuals see this kind of substance on our foundation. This quarter, disdain discourse pervasiveness dropped, seven to eight perspectives on scorn discourse for each 10,000 perspectives on substance," Guy Rosen, VP Integrity at Facebook, said in a blog entry late on Thursday.

Facebook said that its proactive rate for tormenting and provocation went from 26 percent in Q3 to 49 percent in Q4 on its fundamental stage, and 55 percent to 80 percent on Instagram.

"Enhancements to our AI in regions where subtlety and setting are fundamental, for example, scorn discourse or tormenting and badgering, caused us better scale our endeavors to guard individuals," Rosen educated.

The organization likewise made a move on 2.5 million bits of self destruction and self-injury content in Q4, up from 1.3 million in Q3 because of expanded commentator limit.

On Instagram, it hindered 3.4 million bits of self destruction and self-injury content, up from 1.3 million in Q3.

Review: PLAYGO BH70 AI wireless headphones are a bit out of tune

On paper, the PLAYGO BH70 is equipped for going head to head with the top tier. In any case, despite the fact that it makes a decent attempt to pack everything helpful in a couple of earphones — and I welcome the true exertion — it misses the mark on certain things that a capable pair of ears can't miss. In the accompanying passages, permit me to clarify why you ought to or shouldn't accepting these earphones, and what you ought to consider purchasing. This will be particularly helpful to individuals who don't wish to spend more than Rs 15,000 on a couple of universally handy earphones, ever.
The development
When most contraptions have grasped the excellence of energetic hues, the PLAYGO BH70 comes in two dull, unoriginal SKUs: Graphite Gray and Medallion Brown. At any rate a brilliant silver alternative would have been pleasant. For a brand called Play, it's unpleasant by any means.

Regarding solace, the cowhide cushioning on the headband and around the ear cups is decent and secures the earphones. Be that as it may, the pair has been developed around an angle plastic skeleton, which doesn't feel strong or legitimize the 300 grams weight

Artificial intelligence can spot breast cancer better than doctors: Google

Current Affairs
Man-made brainpower can spot bosom malignant growth more precisely than specialists, as indicated by an investigation by Google Health.
The innovation's perusing of mammograms diminished both bogus positives, where solid patients are erroneously determined to have the ailment, and bogus negatives, where the disease is missed, the Alphabet unit said in a blog entry. The framework diminished bogus positives by 5.7 percent in the US, as per the information from in excess of 28,000 mammograms performed there and in the UK.
Man-made consciousness is especially great at understanding outputs, regularly outflanking specialists. A year ago, Google distributed research that indicated how the innovation could be utilized to advise whether bosom disease had spread to encompassing lymph hubs, helping pathologists make increasingly exact conclusions.
Google is additionally preparing man-made consciousness to help decide if a patient is probably going to live beyond words, a huge number of information focuses to help make forecasts about results. All things considered, the organization discovered it needs to step cautiously when utilizing understanding information.
In 2017, British controllers said Alphabet's man-made reasoning unit, DeepMind, disregarded UK information security law when it tried an application that investigated open medicinal records without telling patients.

The underlying discoveries for the bosom disease study were distributed in the diary Nature. The exploration was done in organization with DeepMind just as Cancer Research UK Imperial Center, Northwestern University and Royal Surrey County Hospital.....Read More

Privacy risk: Report says India among 75 nations with AI surveillance tools

Election News
India is bit by bit opening up to the danger of mass observation and digital snooping by the state just as maverick on-screen characters, as current innovation advances into the nation in a scene of frail security laws.
A report by international strategy think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) has said India is among 75 nations on the planet with access to present day AI reconnaissance innovation—placing it in a similar rundown as China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. The investigation was distributed in September.
"Numerous administrations in the Gulf, East Asia, and South/Central Asia are obtaining progressed investigative frameworks, facial acknowledgment cameras, and advanced checking abilities," said Steven Feldstein, a Carnegie Endowment individual and the creator of the report.
These frameworks are utilized to surveil residents "to achieve a scope of arrangement goals—some legal, others that abuse human rights, and a large number of which fall into a dinky center ground," he stated, without specifying their utilization in explicit nations.
Governments in despotic and semi-totalitarian nations are more inclined to manhandle AI observation than governments in liberal popular governments, the report noted. Some totalitarian governments like those in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia are abusing AI innovation for mass observation, while others with inauspicious human rights records are utilizing it to fortify suppression.

On the innovation front, the capacities are solid. Present day frameworks can make 360-degree profiles of residents by sewing together information from road cameras, card exchanges and web based life profiles. These frameworks can snoop on private connections on the cell phone and screen constant area of the objective. As indicated by the report, the greatest provider of AI reconnaissance arrangements is China with Huawei being the greatest exporter. (See graph).....READ MORE

TikTok's chief Alex Zhu is on a mission to prove it is not a menace

International News
Like nearly everyone who runs a major tech organization nowadays, Alex Zhu, the leader of the existing apart from everything else video application TikTok, is stressed over a picture issue.
To him — and to a large number of TikTok's clients — the application is an asylum for imagination, sincere self-articulation and senseless move recordings. In the blink of an eye, TikTok has developed as the invigorating weirdo upstart of the American web based life scene, reconfiguring the way of life in its blissful, abnormal wake.
However, to certain individuals in the United States government, TikTok is a threat. What's more, one main explanation is the nationality of its proprietor, a seven-year-old Chinese web based life organization called ByteDance. The dread is that TikTok is presenting America's childhood to Communist Party teaching and sneaking their information to Beijing's servers.
The craving to fix this recognition hole is the thing that brought Mr. Zhu a week ago to a WeWork in Manhattan, where a bunch of his partners are based. Mr. Zhu, a trim 40-year-old who talks familiar if delicately highlighted English, helped found Musical.ly, a Shanghai-based lip-synchronizing application that ByteDance obtained in 2017 and collapsed into TikTok.
In a meeting — his first since steering at TikTok this year — Mr. Zhu denied, in unambiguous terms, a few key allegations. No, TikTok doesn't blue pencil recordings that disappoint China, he said. Also, no, it doesn't impart client information to China, or even with its Beijing-based parent organization. All information on TikTok clients worldwide is put away in Virginia, he stated, with a reinforcement server in Singapore.

Yet, China is a cloudy spot for organizations. Regardless of whether TikTok's strategies are sure about paper, imagine a scenario in which Chinese specialists chose they didn't care for them and compelled ByteDance...READ MORE

Amazon challenges Pentagon's $10-billion cloud deal with Microsoft

International News
Amazon has challenged the awarding of a USD 10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract to Microsoft, alleging "unmistakable bias" in the process.
The 10-year contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure program, better known as JEDI, ultimately will see all military branches sharing information in a system boosted by artificial intelligence.
"It's critical for our country that the government and its elected leaders administer procurements objectively and in a manner that is free from political influence," a spokesperson for Amazon Web Services said on Thursday.
"Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias." Amazon said it filed a notice in US court last week signaling its intent to protest the handling of the bidding process.US President Donald Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Amazon and company founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. The newspaper is among US media outlets most critical in its coverage of Trump and his administration.
The president told reporters during a news conference in July that he had asked aides to investigate the JEDI contract, citing complaints from companies that compete with Amazon.
"I'm getting tremendous complaints about the contract with the Pentagon and with Amazon. ... They're saying it wasn't competitively bid," Trump said."Some of the greatest companies in the world are complaining about it, having to do with Amazon and the Department of Defense, and I will be asking them to look at it very closely to see what's going on."

Amazon was considered the lead contender to provide technology for JEDI, with its Amazon Web Services (AWS) dominating the cloud computing arena and the company already providing classified servers for other government outfits including the CIA....READ MORE

Google is gathering health data of Americans without consent: Reports

International News
Google is reportedly gathering health information of millions of US citizens -- without informing them or their doctors -- to design an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven software, the media reported.
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, "Google is engaged with one of the US's largest health-care systems on a project to collect and crunch the detailed personal-health information of millions of people across 21 states" and at least 150 Google staffers may have access to the data.St. Louis-based faith-based healthcare organisation Ascension is sharing lab results, diagnoses and hospitalisation records -- as well as health histories complete with patient names and dates of birth -- with Google, the report claimed.
"The initiative, code-named 'Project Nightingale,' appears to be the biggest effort yet by a Silicon Valley giant to gain a toehold in the health-care industry through the handling of patients medical data," the report said.The crunching of health data is the next big frontier for tech giants as Apple to Amazon and Microsoft are aiming big to infuse data findings into their devices and solutions in the burgeoning healthcare space.
The New York Times later wrote that "dozens of Google employees" may have access to sensitive patient data and some may have downloaded that data too.As part of "Project Nightingale", Ascension uploaded patient data to Google's Cloud servers.In a blog post, Google tried to clarify its partnership with Ascension."All of Google's work with Ascension adheres to industry-wide regulations regarding patient data, and come with strict guidance on data privacy, security and usage," said Tariq Shaukat, President, Industry Products and Solutions, Google Cloud.

Google said it has a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with Ascension, which governs access to Protected Health Information (PHI) for the purpose of helping providers support patient care."To be clear: under this arrangement, Ascension's data cannot be used for any other purpose than for providing these services we're offering under the agreement, and patient data ...READ MORE

India should integrate AI with education to become world leader: Sikka

International News
Former Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, who has announced a new AI startup with $50 million fund, believes India has the potential to become a world leader in artificial intelligence but the key to this is integrating AI into the country's education system in a massive way.
India is at "an inflection point" when it comes to AI or artificial intelligence, Sikka said.Over the next 20-25 years, AI is going to be "a very, very big disruptor" for the Indian society because what one is seeing now in terms of automation and job losses because of automation is just the beginning, said Sikka, who announced his startup Vianai Systems last week.
"But on the other hand, if we are able to bring AI education, the ability to build AI systems to India at a very large scale, and I'm talking about like billion plus people, then India can really leap frog and become the world's leader in artificial intelligence, in AI skill and AI talent," Sikka told PTI in an exclusive interview.
Doing that requires working on multiple dimensions in parallel, he said.
Last month, at the request of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sikka gave a presentation before the NITI Aayog how to expand the reach of AI to the Indian society in a very big way.
Representatives of some 20 Union ministries were present during his presentation on AI and India. This, he said, required creating necessary infrastructure to bring the talent through institutions, schools and educational institutions, the ability to do AI education at a large scale.

 According to Sikka, the prime minister said he personally saw whenever classes worked into digital classrooms, he was joking that children would sometimes even forget to eat their lunch because they were so engrossed in learning. "It was very encouraging...READ MORE

Jack Ma takes on Elon Musk over future of Artificial Intelligence

Current Affairs

Jack Ma believes artificial intelligence poses no threat to humanity, but Elon Musk called that "famous last words" as the billionaire tech tycoons faced off Thursday in an occasionally animated debate on futurism in Shanghai.
The Chinese co-founder of Alibaba and the maverick industrialist behind Tesla and SpaceX frequently pulled pained expressions and raised eyebrows as they kicked off an AI conference with a dialogue that challenged attendees to keep up, veering from technology to Mars, death, and jobs.
However, the hot topic in the hour-long talk was AI, which has provoked increasing concern among scientists such as late British cosmologist Stephen Hawking who warned that it will eventually turn on and "annihilate" humanity.
"Computers may be clever, but human beings are much smarter," Ma said. "We invented the computer -- I've never seen a computer invent a human being."
While insisting that he is "not a tech guy," the e-commerce mogul added: "I think AI can help us understand humans better. I don't think it's a threat."
Musk countered: "I don't know man, that's like, famous last words." He said the "rate of advancement of computers in general is insane", sketching out a vision in which super-fast, artificially intelligent devices eventually tire of dealing with dumb, slow humans.
"The computer will just get impatient if nothing else. It will be like talking to a tree," Musk said.

 Mankind's hope lies in "going along for the ride" by harnessing some of that computing power, Musk said, as he offered an unabashed plug for his Neuralink Corporation...Read More

Instagram wants to curb online bullying with a pop-up warning

Technology News

Instagram on Monday announced new features aimed at curbing online bullying on its platform, including a warning to people as they are preparing to post abusive remarks.
"It's our responsibility to create a safe environment on Instagram," said a statement from Adam Mosseri, head of the visually focused social platform owned by Facebook."This has been an important priority for us for some time, and we are continuing to invest in better understanding and tackling this problem.
One new tool being rolled out is a warning generated by artificial intelligence to notify users their comment may be considered offensive before it is posted."This intervention gives people a chance to reflect and undo their comment and prevents the recipient from receiving the harmful comment notification," Mosseri said.
"From early tests of this feature, we have found that it encourages some people to undo their comment and share something less hurtful once they have had a chance to reflect."
Another new tool is aimed at limiting the spread of abusive comments on a user's feed.
"We've heard from young people in our community that they're reluctant to block, unfollow, or report their bully because it could escalate the situation, especially if they interact with their bully in real life," Mosseri commented.

 A new feature called "restrict" that is being tested will make posts from an offending person visible only to that person."You can choose to make a restricted person's comments visible to others by approving their comments," Mosseri added...Read More

Robots on track to wipe out a tenth of manufacturing jobs by 2030: Report

Technology News

Robots are on track to wipe out almost a tenth of the world’s manufacturing jobs with the brunt borne by lower-income areas in developed nations, Oxford Economics says.
While automation should boost the economy as a whole, it is likely to create greater inequality as employment losses are concentrated in certain industries and countries. Manufacturing could lose 20 million positions by 2030, making the sector 8.5% smaller than “if robots were not remaking the market,” according to the research firm’s report.
Job Losses Per Robot
The pockets of workers most vulnerable to automation can often be found in rural areas with a traditional, labor-intensive industrial base, Oxford Economics said. Oregon is the U.S. state most likely to be affected, while the worst-hit region in the U.K. is likely to be Cumbria.
“In many countries, such regions have often been left behind as metropolitan centers prospered, and those dynamics have generated political polarization. This highlights the importance of taking policy action to cushion the likely impact of robotization in these vulnerable areas.”-- “How Robots Change the World” by Oxford Economics

 The report highlights how the structural shift in the labor market is throwing up new challenges as an increasing array of tasks are automated. It says more than half of U.S. factory workers displaced by robots over the past two decades were absorbed into three employment categories -- transport, construction and maintenance, and office and administration work. Yet those categories are the most vulnerable to automation over the next decade.The IMF has also highlighted the risk of rising inequality, and the OECD said last year that geography was a key factor because of the clustering of certain industries.

Nordic banks are getting ready for the future with robots replacing humans

Company News

The two biggest Nordic banks have both recently beefed up their compliance units significantly. Both say the extra headcount is temporary.
Nordea Bank Abp has hundreds of employees who scrutinize billions of transactions in order to catch anything that looks potentially criminal. It’s a costly, inefficient system that Mikael Bjertrup, head of the bank’s financial crime prevention unit, plans to change. Bjertrup says that about 20 per cent of suspicious alerts are currently closed by algorithms, based on machine learning, with the rest still being handled by humans. He wants to see those numbers reversed so that algorithms handle 80 per cent.
“We’ll be fewer people in the future, but our defense will be better,” he said. “We won’t need as many as 1,500 employees in the future, as technology improves.”
The head of compliance at Danske Bank A/S, Philippe Vollot, also says headcount will probably be scaled back once “technology kicks in.”
Insatiable Demand
Compliance has emerged as an area of banking in which the demand for more headcount has so far seemed almost insatiable. The hiring binge at Nordea started in 2015 after it was fined for failing to live up to anti-money laundering requirements. More recently, laundering scandals that engulfed Danske and Swedbank AB have added to pressure on the industry to allocate much bigger resources to fighting financial crime.

 With labor accounting for roughly three-quarters of the cost of complying with anti-money laundering requirements, Nordic banks are figuring out how to replace people with artificial intelligence, algorithms and automated customer screening. They say a key frustration now is that the authorities are struggling to keep up, after banks plowed huge amounts of money into their risk controls.

National artificial intelligence unit stuck for lack of anchor department

Current Affairs

The government’s plan to set up a national artificial intelligence centre is stuck because it is unclear which department will spearhead the initiative.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said in January such a centre would be set up by July.
The then finance minister, Piyush Goyal, announced in February the centre would be developed as a hub along with centres of excellence, for which nine priority areas had been identified. However, he did not mention who would execute the larger plan.
Last month, it was reported that the NITI Aayog had circulated a Cabinet note, asking for Rs 7,500 crore for three years to set up an AI framework. Last year, four panels set up by MeitY evaluated the use of AI for citizens, such as setting up a data platform, skilling and reskilling, research and development, and examining the challenges involving legal, regulatory, ethical and cybersecurity aspects.
“Based on what the four committees gave us, we sent a proposal to implement a national programme at Rs 470-480 crore. For approval it went to expenditure (finance committee), which asked us about the difference between NITI Aayog and our estimate. We have requested them to resolve this,” said a senior official at MeitY.
The NITI Aayog released a discussion paper in June last year on the “National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence”.

 MeitY’s reports have not been made public. A senior finance ministry official who was part of the Expenditure Finance Committee meetings related to the requests made by the NITI Aayog and MeitY on the AI centre said both the departments had been told to get clarity on the matter.

China's prowess in AI is making US nervous; can it win from tech cold war?

Current Affairs

China’s growing technological prowess in areas such as artificial intelligence is making Washington very nervous. US efforts to fight back, though, could make the problem worse.

In US policy circles, suspicion of China is starting to resemble a new Red Scare. Universities are heightening scrutiny of research proposals from China and, in some cases, restricting collaboration. Chinese scientists’ visas are being delayed for conferences and exchanges. Visas for Chinese graduate students studying topics such as robotics or advanced manufacturing have been shortened to one year from five.

Last week, the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston kicked out three senior researchers of Chinese ethnicity after the US National Institutes of Health said they had potentially violated disclosure and confidentiality rules. Workers at various technology companies have been charged with stealing trade secrets in recent months.

More formal rules are coming. After President Donald Trump signed the Export Control Reform Act last year, the US put in place new policies to restrict Chinese investment in American high-tech companies. It also began a process of reexamining export controls on sensitive “emerging and foundational” technologies. That process is nearly complete: The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security is holding seminars over the next few months to help companies understand how to comply with the tighter restrictions.


 While the details are still murky, one thing is clear about the new rules: Like the old ones, they’ll apply not just to hardware shipped overseas, or even software and algorithms. They will cover individuals and ideas as well.The disclosure of proprietary information or controlled information to a foreign national, even within the US, triggers the need for an export review process...Read More