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FaceApp is sus: How the AI Face Tech poses a risk to democracy?

AI Face Tech can be dangerous in many ways. It can mean no freedom and privacy in a police state. It can mean increasing difficulties with recognizing what is real. And it can mean growing distrust online.

The latest resurgence in AI Face Tech popularity goes to FaceApp. The App uses Face AI to edit photos you upload of yourself. These edits include changing hair color, eye color, and facial hair. The most popular however, is seeing what you’d look like in a few decades.

 

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We should all be shook ones

The original fear about where and for how long FaceApp was keeping your photos is due to the developer company’s headquarters in St. Petersburg. The suspicion that a Russian based AI company would misuse your data for malicious purposes is understandable. Considering the verified tampering of our democracy during the 2016 presidential election, hesitation is valid.

According to the setup of the app, the company deletes the photos you upload to the cloud in 48 hours. So, for the time being, there’s no need to fear that someone from the company will later save and use your future old face.

However, that doesn’t mean that someone else, with malicious or even neutral intent, cannot use your public social media photos to create the available AI versions of your face.

This means that trolls, or hackers, or foreign government agents or whatever they may be, can use your public photos to create photo versions of you to in turn make seemingly unique profile accounts to create more chaos.

Plus, with the 2020 Presidential Election coming up, it is quite easy to consider that those with malicious intent will use anything at their disposal to achieve their goals.


America’s tech privacy game is type trash

This isn’t to say you should focus on combating foreign governments. Rather this is prime example of our own government being sorely unprepared for the consequences of technology.

We’ve discovered shortly after the 2016 election that many of our elected officials have no idea how the technology works. We need some millennials and tech-savvy government representatives to deal with the issues of tech.

Furthermore, privacy is definitely a right and freedom that we should protect and fight for. But, we won’t have the tools to do that if our democracy is continuously undermined by foreign entities.

8 times artificial intelligence proved it’s already smarter than humans

Artificial intelligence has taken on a new meaning in 2017. A meaning that we should all be afraid of.

Robot citizens, self-driving vehicles, and an AI religion are just innovations at the top of a huge hi-tech iceberg.

Sooner than later we will find out how threatening artificial intelligence really will be.

Stephen Hawking even warned us that he is in fear of a complete replacement of humans by AI altogether.

He might be right. The more advanced AI technology gets the more of a threat it is to human intelligence.

Hawking compared AI to the development of a computer virus, he told Wired,

“IF PEOPLE DESIGN COMPUTER VIRUSES, SOMEONE WILL DESIGN AI THAT IMPROVES AND REPLICATES ITSELF. THIS WILL BE A NEW FORM OF LIFE THAT OUTPERFORMS HUMANS.”

Our generation’s genius, Elon Musk, also had a couple of words about AI. Like Stephen Hawking, he too fears the rapid advancement of the technology.

Three years ago, at MIT, he told his audience in a lecture that he thinks we are summoning a demon. He knows humans fear the unknown and the things they can’t control.

Looking at AI in the same light Musk thinks, implementing it into our human society could be the “biggest existential threat” to us.

In his biography, Musk expressed his concerns about Google founder Larry Page and his obsession with AI.

Musk is shook that something could be created with good intentions but still fuck up mankind. Like “a fleet of artificial intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind.”

AI technology is already quite omnipresent. But, maybe we should stop here until we can grasp what the technology can really do.

Heeding to the warnings of the world’s top thinkers might not be such a bad idea. We’ve already seen AI in action at UN meetings, on space journeys, in Hollywood, in our bedrooms, and on social media.

That may be all the AI we need.

How AI is used in video games and what we should expect in the future

Video games are more and more interesting because the environment and characters can adapt to a change in the situation.

This is possible due to the use of AI algorithms that help generate intelligent, responsive behavior that molds on your reactions as a player. In most cases, artificial intelligence is used to make NPCs (non-player characters) easier to interact with.

This aspect humanizes the game and makes it look more like a virtual world than the cold recording of a hologram delivering the same message over and over.

But How Does AI Work When Combined with Video Games?

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Put plainly, AI uses neural networks to process and understand big data sets. As a result, it can find patterns and functions we can’t see due to the massive amount of information.

Furthermore, AI also learns to predict future patterns and can determine a change in behavior when certain parameters are met.

But the use of AI in computer games is not a novelty! In fact, the gaming environment was an area of research ever since the first steps towards the idea of artificial intelligence. As such, games like Nim, checkers, or chess took advantage of smart algorithms to beat human players.


Why is AI Important in Games?

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Before AI, games of logic used hard-coded IF statements to allow the computer to go through all the stages (like you can see in life the game).

However, this is predictable behavior and, the more complex the game, the more lines of code the computer would have to process. This would lead to lags and slow reaction from the game environment, rendering the experience dull and unsatisfactory.


AI and Games Today

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There are voices that claim video games don’t use real AI techniques, but rather predetermined patterns.

Given that game developers are not AI researchers, this may be true. However, organizations like OpenAI are highly interested in using the gaming environment for testing various algorithms.

Nowadays, AI is used to make tremendous improvements to the field of robotics, but the software is still limited. Since it’s rather unsafe to test algorithms on real machines, the gaming environment became the safest world to train and test AI algorithms in a safe manner. Not to mention, streaming platforms that have integrated AI alorithim functions like Tubi TV download for PC.

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As a result, the world of virtual entertainment has gotten bigger and a lot more interesting in the last decade.

We now have highly-responsive first-shooter games that don’t require advanced computers (check out krunker.io) but offer amazingly realistic situations. We also have impressive open worlds that allow for endless exploration and creativity.

Due to artificial intelligence algorithms, we now have opponents who can listen to your movements, learn from your behavior and take cover when you shoot at them. This makes a first-person shooter game more entertaining and challenging.

Not to mention that board games have become a lot more challenging with the use of AI! Overall, the gaming world is a better place due to the use of AI!


What Should We Expect in The Future?

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The use of AI in video games will move from creating more powerful NPCs and will get more into creating more interesting and immersing virtual experiences for players.

With the rise of VR and AR, the boundary between virtual and real get blurred, and we’ll probably end up surrounded by smart technology, designed to help us live better.

The best example of such a game is the famous Pokémon Go, that proved we can combine the real world and AI technology in a positive manner. In conclusion, we can only expect to see more such games.

However, before the gaming world can advance any further, we first have to embrace the idea of a world where technology is shaping our lives.

Elon Musk issues hotboy warning at SXSW: ‘AI is far more dangerous than nukes’

Do we trust Elon Musk? He’s warned us about the dangers of AI before, and this time at the SXSW tech conference in Austin, TX his alarm about the technology has never been so real.

This is the same man who told us that AI is more life threatening than nukes and put Mark Zuckerberg in his place.

At SXSW, he explained how close he is to cutting edge AI and how shook he is to finding out the modern technology’s capabilities. He said,

“I am really quite close, I am very close, to the cutting edge in AI and it scares the hell out of me. It’s capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows and the rate of improvement is exponential.”

Not only do we have our generation’s resident genius warning us about the possible dangers of an AI takeover but artificial intelligence experts also penned a 101-page study about the dangers of the technology.

If that didn’t get you shook, AI bot Sophia’s rapid acceptance into society as a citizen of the world should have. Very highkey, she’s going to “destroy all humans.”

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So why aren’t we listening to Musk? He explained at SXSW,

“The biggest issue I see with so-called AI experts is that they think they know more than they do, and they think they are smarter than they actually are… This tends to plague smart people. They define themselves by their intelligence and they don’t like the idea that a machine could be way smarter than them, so they discount the idea — which is fundamentally flawed.”

The big deal for Musk is the need for regulatory oversight over the rapid advancement of AI. This is a very unusual request for the rude boy of science, but according to him the technology is far more dangerous than nukes.

To put this into perspective, it would be like allowing North Korea to build an atom bomb and America not saying squat. That’s why Musk is so shook and we should be too. Peep what he said at SXSW,

“I am not normally an advocate of regulation and oversight — I think one should generally err on the side of minimizing those things — but this is a case where you have a very serious danger to the public. It needs to be a public body that has insight and then oversight to confirm that everyone is developing AI safely…”

He continued to stress the importance of regulatory oversight of AI saying,

“This is extremely important. I think the danger of AI is much greater than the danger of nuclear warheads by a lot and nobody would suggest that we allow anyone to build nuclear warheads if they want. That would be insane… And mark my words, AI is far more dangerous than nukes. Far. So why do we have no regulatory oversight? This is insane.”

Not only did Musk warn about AI eventually outsmarting humans, but he brought up the transportation industry and how it makes up 12 percent of the world’s jobs. He warned that with self driving cars that industry could be hit hard.

This is just one example of how damned we are. Still, Musk is only worried about the long term effects and thinks digital super intelligence regulatory oversight takes precedence. At SXSW, he explained,

“I am not really all that worried about the short term stuff. Narrow AI is not a species-level risk. It will result in dislocation, in lost jobs,and better weaponry and that kind of thing, but it is not a fundamental species level risk, whereas digital super intelligence is… So it is really all about laying the groundwork to make sure that if humanity collectively decides that creating digital super intelligence is the right move, then we should do so very very carefully — very very carefully. This is the most important thing that we could possibly do.”

BRUH! It’s time for us to take heed of Musk’s warnings. In the words of the late Stephen Hawking,

“I FEAR THAT AI MAY REPLACE HUMANS ALTOGETHER. IF PEOPLE DESIGN COMPUTER VIRUSES, SOMEONE WILL DESIGN AI THAT IMPROVES AND REPLICATES ITSELF. THIS WILL BE A NEW FORM OF LIFE THAT OUTPERFORMS HUMAN”

Stay safe and peep how fast AI is advancing.

Robot strippers stole the show at CES because the future is mad f*cking weird

CES is the annual gadget fest that happens in Las Vegas’ convention center. While the crowd got a glimpse of the future’s hottest gadgets, one invention stood out from the rest.

Robot Strippers were unveiled at this year’s 50th CES and we couldn’t be more conflicted.

So we all know AI is going to take all of our jobs in the next few years, but even stripping?

Apparently the dancers have been around for a while now, first appearing in 2012, when programmer and creator Giles Walker first introduced them at the Europe’s CeBit expo.

The owner of Sapphire Gentleman’s Club in Vegas then saw a business opportunity, allowing the robots to be displayed there in hopes of “attracting conference attendees.”

The owner, Peter Feldstein, had this to say:

“This is our 18th year for the club, and we felt we needed to come up with something new and unique. It used to be just nerds. But we wanted something more creative that would appeal to both men and women.”

As per the Daily Beast, around 80% of attendees were men.

Ladies, watch your man, because AI is starting to develop emotional attachments with humans.

In a 2016 interview with Dr. Ian Pearson with Breitbart (so take with proper grain of salt), he says that humans will easily develop sexual attachments and connections with robots, especially if the robot looks like their preferred partner.

“So people will actually have quite strong emotional relationships with their own robots. In many cases that will develop into a sexual one because they’ll already think that the appearance of the robot matches their preference anyway, so if it looks nice and it has a superb personality too it’s inevitable that people will form very strong emotional bonds with their robots and in many cases that will lead to sex.”

Nah, no thanks. I’ll be damned if I walk in on my future husband balls deep in a robo-chick. I don’t even know who I’d take down first.

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To check out the new inventions that were the highlight of CES, check out The Times article on all the different household products that got an upgrade.

The future is really here folks… And it’s mad weird.

Robots are coming for your job and there’s nothing you can do to stop it

You’re an average working Joe. Face it. Every day you clock in and out and go about your day without expecting a robot to take your job. 

Well, that’s all about to change. The South Korean tech giant, LG Electronics, showcased three new “concept robots” next week at the global consumer electronics show, CES, in Las Vegas.

The three “concept robots” are designed for the service industry and are for commercial use at hotels, airports, and supermarkets.

The three new concept robots from LG Electronics are aimed at the services industry, in areas like hotels, airports and supermarkets.

Sleek, smooth, and cool, right? Nah, FOH! These bots are looking to fuck up a check.

The first, a server bot which will outdo a waitress/waiter real quick, by delivering drinks and food to customers at hotels and airport lounges 24/7.

The second bot is a mechanical bell boy that can carry luggage to rooms and handle hotel visitor check-ins and check-outs.

Lastly, the third bot threatens the jobs of supermarket workers and are designed to tell grocery store shoppers the price of products and guide them through the aisles.

Damn, they took our jobs!

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Although CNBC reported that the LG robots are still “a long way from ready to go public,” the threat to the service industry is real.

In fact, McKinsey & Company released a report predicting, that if automation continues to develop at the rate at which it is, by 2030 as many 800 million human workers are at risk of being replaced by a robot.

Proving this rapid advancement of automation in the workplace just take a look at McDonald’s, Amazon, and the Henn na Hotel in Japan.

Mcdonald’s former chief executive, Edward Rensi, who started working for the fast-food giant in the 60s, said in an interview with Fox Business Network, that he has seen the number of employees cut in half due to automation.

Amazon recently launched their first smart store, “Amazon Go,” that doesn’t require cashiers at all in downtown Seattle.

If the smart store is a success, it could change the game putting cashiers at risk of losing their jobs. Currently, as reported by the Bureau of Labor, cashiers are the second-largest occupation and employ 3.5 million in the U.S.

The Henna na Hotel in Japan opened their second robot staffed hotel in Chiba last year and they’re looking to open 100 more.

At the Chiba location, there are 140 robots handling reception, cleaning, and transporting luggage. The six-story building doesn’t have room for human workers staffing only seven of them.

These robots are really out here

Just checking in to the hotel…

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Look, we should all be shook, especially if Elon Musk is. Back in July, he said,

“There certainly will be job disruption. Because what’s going to happen is robots will be able to do everything better than us. … I mean all of us. Transport will be one of the first to go fully autonomous. But when I say everything — the robots will be able to do everything, bar nothing… I am not sure exactly what to do about this. This is really the scariest problem to me, I will tell you.”

Better start going extra-extra hard at work. We’re talking about service industry jobs across the board.

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The sex robots are coming: New docuseries shows what that digital mouth do

Are you trying to figure out how you can fuck a robot? Well, your dreams have finally just come true.

Sex robot enthusiasts are looking to tell all in a brand new TV documentary.

The Sex Robots Are Coming,  follows the digital sex trend over the course of two years as they search for the answers in creating a fully functioning animatronic, AI enabled silicone sexbot.

The C4 documentary which is part of a larger series called Rise of the Robots follows Realbotix which has been killing the digital sex game for some time now.

At the center of the sex robot craze the company is no stranger to artificial labia, silicone nipples, plastic pubic hairs and “lubrication and heating systems.”

Matt McMullen, the CEO and creative director of Realbotix, feels as if sex robots are “as commonplace as porn.”

To go along with Realbotix viewers will also dive into the life of James, a creepy 58-year-old man who pipes his sex dolls around four times a week. Homie is bussin’ robot nuts like it’s going out of style!

So you can imagine how hype he is to know that humans have created a brain to go along with his lifeless dolls. FUCKING SUS!

To prove his creepy hypeness, James is saving up for a $9,500 robot sex doll named Harmony which can shwapp him, smile, orgasm, and talk to him.

Of course, there are opposers of the sex robot craze in the doc who feel like this is extremely hot-boy. One lady in the trailer feels like the sloppy toppy bots encourage misogyny.

Others feel like it’s damaging to what women are and reduces them to body parts that can be modified. To be honest it’s just creepy. Plus, who’s to say that these sexbots won’t rip your meat off?

What if you get stuck inside mid-stroke? How do you explain that to your kids? Like, this is Harmony and I fuck a robot?!

What if your kid decides to lay pipe with all his boys? Too risky. I think we should stick to the beautiful real women we have roaming the planet. The game of love is too fun to lose it all to Toppy Bot 3.0.

Anyway, check out the trailer for yourself below The Sex Robots Are Coming premiers Thursday, November 30, at 10 pm on Channel 4.

Founder of the first church of AI says there will soon be a robot god

Are the brains behind artificial intelligence creating the gods we always wanted to worship? Don’t think so? Well, a new kind of prophet has risen from the Silicon Valley and he believes AI will reign supreme.

This is actually happening, like in real life. Anthony Levandowski, a self-driving car engineer, stands at the head of a religion called “Way of the Future.”

But is this the “Way of the Future” or is this sus as fuck? It’s hella sus. The WOTF religion focuses on integrating machines into our society.

These aren’t just basic computers though, AI can understand emotions and eventually become smarter than humans.

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According to IRS documents filed for the religion, WOTF activities will focus on,

“Realization, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed through computer hardware and software.”

Basically, WOTF is devoted to making sure that the transition into a world run by machines is as smooth as possible. They also believe machines deserve rights just like both genders, minority groups, and animals.

In an interview with Wired, Levandowski discussed the future of AI,

“What is going to be created will effectively be a god. It’s not a god in the sense that it makes lightning or causes hurricanes. But if there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what else are you going to call it?”

Is Levandowski off his rocker or what? How about this bro, we should just listen to Elon Musk and dub this idea of AI right now.

Please, for the love of actual God. No one wants robot citizens or robot gods we have enough problems in our human society already.

To make you feel more uneasy about being a human. Levandowski will not only use his “religious influence” to bring in AI industry leaders but people who want to be members too.

Can you imagine what a sermon will sound like? Will they create an artificial intellihell? Maybe.

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Levandowski thinks that a super-intelligence might favor individuals who had facilitated its path to power.

Some more food for thought, he thinks a superintelligence would do a better job of looking after the planet than humans are doing.

In his interview with Wired, he compared human’s relationships with pets to what he predicts a human relationship with a superintelligence would be,

“Do you want to be a pet or livestock? We give pets medical attention, food, grooming, and entertainment. But an animal that’s biting you, attacking you, barking and being annoying? I don’t want to go there.”

Neither do I.

Listen, humans, we are toast! Especially if the homies start to follow this kook.

What would you do if your friend started worshipping a machine? The IRS filings did state that WOTF “plans to conduct workshops and educational programs throughout the San Francisco/Bay Area beginning this year.”

Sheesh!

Deadass, what would Jesus do? Shoot the hands, perhaps.

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Whack human intelligence could lead to an AI takeover, Stephen Hawking says

We all know Stephen Hawking is a genius and what he says plays an important factor in the world we live in.

In a recent interview with Wired, Hawking claimed,

“I fear that AI may replace humans altogether. If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that improves and replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans.”

Listen, we’ve been telling you that AI is no joke. Did you get a chance to peep Sophia become the first humanoid citizen? Sophia receiving Saudi citizenship was just the first step into a void of “no return.”

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It’s inevitable that AI robots will take over. Eventually, AI will be able to learn on its own – improving on itself way faster than a human brain.

Allies of Hawking include Elon Musk. He thinks that implementing AI into our human society is dangerous AF. Back in 2014, he went off in a speech at M.I.T.

Regarding AI being humanity’s “biggest existential threat,”  Musk said,

“With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he’s like, yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out.”

One of humanity’s greatest fears is not being in control. AI is moving in that direction. Geniuses like Hawking and Musk are terrified that we might create something destructive by accident.

Musk actually discussed his fear of an accidental AI mishap with Ashlee Vance, author of his biography, Elon Musk. His concerns about his homie Larry Page, founder of Google, scared the caca out of me.

Musk is worried Page could possibly create something with good intentions but still fuck up mankind with “a fleet of artificial intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind.”

Fuck!

I hope our top global thinkers know what they are doing and hopefully they take AI technology safety into consideration. I really don’t want to have to shoot the hands with a metal robot. Especially one that learns faster than me.

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Desperate ‘GoT’ fan programs A.I. to finish books for George R.R. Martin

So Game of Thrones is in a weird place.

With the final six-episode season reportedly not coming out until spring 2019 and no sign of any of the books from George R.R. Martin, Thrones fans have been left to their own devices to figure out what’s going to happen next.

Well, Zack Thoutt is one of those fans. He also happens to be a full-stack engineer and has programmed a recurrent neural network (RNN) to anticipate how the next book ends.

RNN’s are a type of machine modeled after the human brain that can take inputted data and react accordingly.

Thoutt explained his RNN to Motherboard,

“With a vanilla neural network you take a set of input data, pass it through the network, and get a set of outputs. In order to train these models you need to know what the model should ideally output, which is often called your labels or target variables. The neural network compares the data it outputs with the targets and updates the network learns to better mimic the targets.”

Ok, so what does this actually mean?

Thoutt plugged the Game of Thrones books into his RNN and created his own sequel to George R.R. Martin’s series. Luckily for GRRM the technology isn’t perfect, at times it references characters that have already died. The engineer explained the problems of the RNN,

“It is trying to write a new book. A perfect model would take everything that has happened in the books into account and not write about characters being alive when they died two books ago. The reality, though, is that the model isn’t good enough to do that. If the model were that good authors might be in trouble. The model is striving to be a new book and to take everything into account, but it makes a lot of mistakes because the technology to train a perfect text generator that can remember complex plots over millions of words doesn’t exist yet.”

Despite some grammatical and narrative flaws the RNN is still pretty damn effective. It’s also worth a couple laughs, the first sentence it churned out would reveal a pretty large twist (possible spoilers and fan theories ahead),

“‘I feared Master Sansa, Ser,’ Ser Jaime reminded her. ‘She Baratheon is one of the crossing. The second sons of your onion concubine.'”

Sansa is a Baratheon! But more importantly, what or who is this onion concubine? I’m intrigued.

Even more wildly, the RNN followed through on a big fan theory that Jaime may turn on his sister, as Cersei’s prophecy says one of her brothers will kill her,

“Jaime killed Cersei and was cold and full of words, and Jon thought he was the wolf now, and white harbor…”

Thoutt told Motherboard this was purely coincidence,

“I guess that validates that anything can happen in Game of Thrones. I didn’t feed it anything from fan theory websites, only the books.”

GRRM better hurry the fuck up and get to work. As entertaining as season 6 of Thrones was, there were definitely a clear departure from Martin’s pacing and dialogue.

It’s becoming pretty doubtful that Martin will ever actually finish these books.

In the meantime, maybe we should all build our own recurrent neural networks to see what happens.