Andy and Dave discuss the latest in AI news, including a report that systematically examined 62 studies on COVID-19 ML methods (from a pool o 2200+ studies), and found that none of the models were of potential clinical use due to methodological flaws or underlying biases. MIT and Amazon identify pervasive label errors in popular ML datasets (such as MNIST, CIFAR, Imagenet) and demonstrate that models may learn systematic patterns of label error in order to improve their accuracy. DARPA’s Air Com...
Apr 09, 2021•36 min•Season 4Ep. 25
Andy and Dave discuss the latest in AI news, including a letter from the National Transportation Safety Board that asks the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to regulate more strictly autonomous vehicles and driver assistance technologies; of note, the letter also uses Tesla as an example, stating that the company is using its customers to beta test its full self-driving technology on public roads. KMPG surveys business leaders on a variety of AI-related topics and finds that, among...
Apr 02, 2021•37 min
Andy and Dave discuss the latest in AI news, including the release of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Unmanned Campaign Framework, which describes the desired approach to developing and deploying unmanned systems. Google employees demand stronger laws to protect AI researchers, in the wake of the firings of Gebru and Mitchell. Hour One debuted technology that creates fully digital and photorealistic AI personas for the purposes of content creation, such as welcome receptionist or information desk...
Mar 26, 2021•33 min
Andy and Dave discuss the latest in AI news, including an announcement from Facebook AI that it achieved state of the art computer vision performance with its SEER model, by learning from one billion (with a ‘b’) random, unlabeled, and uncurated public Instagram images, reaching 84% top-1 accuracy on 13k images from ImageNet. DARPA launches a new Perceptually-enabled Task Guidance (PTG) to help humans perform complex tasks (such as through augmented reality); the effort will include both fundame...
Mar 19, 2021•33 min
Andy and Dave discuss the latest AI news, which includes lots of new reports, starting with the release of the final report of the National Security Commission on AI, with over 750 pages that outlines steps the U.S. must take to use AI responsibly for national security and defense. The Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) releases its fourth and most comprehensive report of its AI index, which covers global R&D, technical performance, education, and other topics in AI. P...
Mar 12, 2021•35 min
Andy and Dave discuss the latest AI news including, Mars landing of the Perseverance and its AI-related capabilities, along with its mini-helicopter, Ingenuity. Researchers from Liverpool use machine learning to predict which mammalian hosts can generate novel coronaviruses. Researchers from Estonia and France create artificial human genomes using generative neural networks. A coalition of over 40 organizations have written a letter to ask that President Biden ban the federal use of and funding ...
Mar 05, 2021•38 min
In AI news, researchers from the University of Copenhagen develop a machine learning model that estimates the chances of risk of death due to COVID at various stages of a hospital stay, including a 80 percent accuracy whether a patient with COVID will require a respirator. The Joint AI Center has a double-announcement, with the Tradewind Initiative, which seeks to develop an acquisition ecosystem to speed the delivery of AI capabilities, and with Blanket Purchase Agreements for AI testing and ev...
Feb 26, 2021•37 min
In news, Andy and Dave discuss a machine learning algorithm from Synergies Intelligent System and Universität Hamburg that can identify people in a moving crowd who are mostly likely asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19. US lawmakers have introduced the Public Health Emergency Privacy Act, to boost privacy protections for COVID-19 technology such as tracing apps and vaccine scheduling apps. A team led by researchers from Oxford have introduced new reporting guidelines to bridge a gap in development...
Feb 19, 2021•35 min
In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss research from Texas &AM, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and SNY Binghamton, which demonstrates an automatic system for monitoring the physical distance and face mask wearing of construction workers; demonstrating how surveillance is rapidly becoming a widely available commodity technology. In regular news, the National Security Commission on AI releases its draft final report, which makes sweeping recommendations on AI as a constellation of technologies....
Feb 12, 2021•36 min
Listener Survey In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss a machine learning transformer model from Facebook AI and the NYU School of Medicine that uses x-rays to determine whether a COVID patient might need more intensive care. A for-pay report from Synced provides a survey of China’s AI efforts in response to COVID-19. In regular AI news, European Parliament members adopt guidelines for military and non-military uses of AI. Meanwhile, the UK Competition and Markets Authority cautions tha...
Feb 05, 2021•37 min
Listener Survey In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss research that uses NLP to predict mutations in a virus that would allow it to avoid detection by antibodies. In regular AI news, the US Food and Drug Administration publishes an Action Plan for AI and ML, with more to follow. The White House launches the National AI Initiative Office, which will work with the private sector and academia on AI initiatives. The AI Now institute has launched an effort for “A New AI Lexicon,” in which i...
Jan 29, 2021•40 min
In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss an editorial in The Lancet Digital Health, which examines whether preliminary models add clinical value to health-care systems. In regular AI news, an Italian court rules that the European food delivery app Deliveroo used a “discriminatory” algorithm, potentially opening the door for liability even with unintentional algorithmic discrimination. A study from Google, OpenAI, Apple, Stanford, Berkeley, and Northeastern shows that large language models...
Jan 22, 2021•44 min
In COVID-related news, Andy and Dave discuss a commercial AI model from Biocogniv that predicts COVID-19 infection using only blood tests, with a 95% sensitivity and a 49% specificity. In a story that highlights the general challenge with algorithms, Stanford reported challenges in using a rules-based algorithm to determine priority of vaccine distribution, when it omitted front-line doctors from initial distribution. In non-COVID AI news, Vincent Boucher and Gary Marcus organize a second “AI De...
Jan 15, 2021•36 min
Just in time for the holidays, Andy and Dave look back and some of the more memorial AI-related stories from 2020. They begin with the passing of mathematician John Conway, creator of The Game of Life, who died in April at 82 from complications due to COVID-19; Andy and Dave will talk more about The Game of Life in next week’s podcast. With an example of how not to use AI, in July, the International Baccalaureate Educational Foundation turned to machine learning algorithms to predict student gra...
Jan 08, 2021•39 min
In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss the results of the C3.ai COVID-19 challenge. In regular AI news, the US Air Force announces an AI, ARTUm, controlling a military plane for the first time. A Nature publication shows the AI collaboration links between institutions based on the last 5 years. The IBM T.J. Watson Research Center publishes research on 4-bit training of deep neural networks to accelerate the process. Researchers at Oregon State University publish advances with a new type...
Jan 01, 2021•35 min
Andy and Dave discuss the recent announcement that the U.S. Department of Defense announces that it will adopt the Defense Innovation Board’s detailed principles for using AI. The European Commission releases its white paper on AI. The University of Buffalo’s AI Institute receives a grant to study gamers’ brains in order to build AI military robots. Microsoft announces Turing-NLG, a 17-billion parameter language model. MIT’s CSAIL demonstrates TextFooler, which makes synonym-like substitutions o...
Dec 25, 2020•44 min
In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss a report from MIT that identifies gaps in coverage from COVID vaccines, and uses machine learning to identify peptide additions to increase their efficacy. The GAO and the National Academy of Medicine release a combined report on AI in health care. Nature provides access to a large collection of open datasets related to COVID research and information. In non-COVID-related AI news, President Trump signs an executive order on the governmental develop...
Dec 18, 2020•39 min
In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss a Facebook model that provides county-level forecasts on the spread of COVID-19. IN non-COVID AI news, DeepMind’s AlphaFold 2 won the 14th biennial Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP), scoring above 90 on a global distance test for around two-thirds of the test proteins. Partnership on AI establishes The AI Incident Database (AIID) to provide an open-access resource on failures of AI systems, currently containing over 1,000 publicall...
Dec 11, 2020•33 min
In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss research from MIT, BIM, and Harvard Medical School, which uses machine learning on Reddit posts to track the pandemic’s impact on mental health. And the UK and is planning to use AI to spot dangerous side effects in COVID vaccinations. In non-COVID AI news, Andy and Dave take a look at how the AI-based poll predictions faired in the 2020 US election. The White House issues guidance for federal agencies on AI applications. The University of Copenhag...
Dec 04, 2020•33 min
Andy and Dave welcome Arthur Holland Michel to the podcast for a discussion on predictability and understandability in military AI. Arthur is an Associate Researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and author of the book Eyes in the Sky: the Secret Rise of Gorgon Stare and How It Will Watch Us All. Arthur recently published The Black Box, Unlocked: Predictability and Understandability in Milita...
Nov 20, 2020•36 min
In COVID-related AI news, MIT researchers have published a machine learning algorithm that can diagnose COVID-19 by the sounds of a person’s forced cough. And the US Veterans Affairs Department rolls out a machine learning tool to predict mortality rates of COVID-19 patients. In non-COVID news, the JAIC releases the Department of Defense’s AI Education Strategy, which contains a detailed description of requirements, required instruction, and competencies. DoD also releases a new electromagnetic ...
Nov 13, 2020•34 min
Sam Bendett joins Andy and Dave to discuss the latest developments and happenings in Russia's research into artificial intelligence and autonomy capabilities. They discuss Russia's national strategy and the challenges that have occurred in programmatic implementation due to COVID impacts. They also discuss the status of higher education in Russia and the standing of various institutions, as well as their relationship and interaction with the global community of researchers. They cover a variety ...
Nov 06, 2020•27 min
In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss the COVID-19 Grand Challenge from C3.ai. In non-COVID AI news, the Department of Defense releases its Data Strategy. The Defense Science Board publishes a report on Counter Autonomy. The National Security Commission on AI releases its 3rd Quarter interim report and recommendations. The Center for Security and Emerging Technology releases a report on Building Trust through Testing. And the US Patent and Trademark Office publishes the responses to it...
Oct 30, 2020•32 min
Andy and Dave have a chat with Chad Jenkins, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan, Director of the Laboratory for Perception, RObotics, and Grounded REasoning SystemS (PROGRESS), and newest member of CNA's Board of Trustees. They discuss Chad's background and his current research at Michigan, which includes interactive robot systems and human-robot interaction. And then they discuss a variety of topics ranging from movement primitives, neural networks and f...
Oct 23, 2020•36 min
The bipartisan Future of Defense Task Force releases its 2020 report, which includes the suggestion of using the Manhattan Project as a model to develop AI technologies. Facebook AI releases Dynabench as a way to dynamically benchmark the performance of machine learning algorithms. Amsterdam and Helsinki launch AI registers that explain how they use algorithms, in an effort to increase transparency. In research, the Allen Institute of AI, University of Washington, and University of North Carolin...
Oct 16, 2020•36 min
In COVID-related AI news, Youyang Gu provides world- and county-level COVID-19 predictions using machine learning, along with a rolling examination of accuracy. In regular AI news, a military coalition of 13 countries meets to discuss the use of and ethics of AI. Orcan Intelligence provides a deeper look into Europeans’ concerns about AI technologies. Ben Lee and the Library of Congress unveil the full open version of the Newspaper Navigator, which provides access to 1.56 million photographs fro...
Oct 09, 2020•26 min
Andy and Dave kick off Season 4.0 of AI with AI with a discussion on social media bots. CNA colleagues Meg McBride and Kasey Stricklin join to discuss the results of their recent research efforts, in which they explored the national security implications of social media bots. They describe the types of activities that social media bots engage in (distributing, amplifying, distorting, hijacking, flooding, and fracturing), how these activities might evolve in the near future, the legal frameworks ...
Oct 02, 2020•19 min
In COVID-related AI news, another concerning report, this time in Nature Medicine, found “serious concerns” with 20,000 studies on AI systems in clinical trials, with many reporting only the best-case scenarios; in response, an international consortium has developed CONSORT-AI, reporting guidelines for clinical trials involving AI. In Nature, an open dataset provides a collection and overview of governmental interventions in response to COVID-19. In regular AI news, the DoD wraps up its 2020 AI ...
Sep 25, 2020•37 min
In COVID-related AI news, a report from Cambridge University and University of Manchester examines recent studies on using chest x-rays and CTs scans to detect and diagnose COVID, and finds that only 29 of 168 studies had reproducible results; the report further found that all of the studies had high or unclear risk of bias, such that none of the studies had value for use in clinics. CSET provides an overview of how China has used AI in its COVID-19 response. In non-COVID AI news, a GAO report f...
Sep 18, 2020•37 min
In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss an effort from Google and Harvard to provide county-level forecasts on COVID-19 for hospitals and first responders. The National Library of Medicine, National Center of Biotechnology Information, and NIH provide COVID-19 literature analysis with interesting data analytic and visualization tools. In regular AI news, Elon Musk demonstrates the latest iteration of Neuralink, complete with pig implantees. The UK attempted a prediction system for Most S...
Sep 11, 2020•42 min
