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Amazon Launches re:MARS Event Focusing on AI, as Second Stage To Invite-only MARS (geekwire.com)
Amazon's annual invitation-only event on machine learning, automation, robotics and space -- known as Mars -- has become a high-tech highlight for insiders, featuring billionaire founder and CEO Jeff Bezos riding a giant robot or walking a robot dog. From a report: Now a wider circle of tech leaders can get in on a spin-off experience called re:MARS, which is due to make its debut June 4-7 at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. The event will shine a spotlight on the leading lights and cutting-edge advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, Amazon said today in a blog posting.
"We're at the beginning of a golden age of AI. Recent advancements have already led to invention that previously lived in the realm of science fiction -- and we've only scratched the surface of what's possible," Bezos said. "AI is an enabling technology that can improve products and services across all industries. We're excited to create re:MARS, bringing together leaders and builders from diverse areas to share learnings and spark new ideas for future innovation."
"We're at the beginning of a golden age of AI. Recent advancements have already led to invention that previously lived in the realm of science fiction -- and we've only scratched the surface of what's possible," Bezos said. "AI is an enabling technology that can improve products and services across all industries. We're excited to create re:MARS, bringing together leaders and builders from diverse areas to share learnings and spark new ideas for future innovation."
All I know is that when I login to Amazon, it suggests things to me THAT I HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT. How stupid is that? Yeah, I just bought a soldering iron, why would I want to buy another of the exact model? I can understand if it started to suggest things like solder, or an Arduino, or a book on electronics, but it invariably suggests what I already bought. But yeah, AI is right around the corner.
I'd like anyone in the know to name 3 things that AI is successfully doing today somewhere in or around our daily lives. Activities that require thinking or reasoning ability and that were once performed by humans, but no longer.
NLP (Natural Language Processing): Be it a Voice Assistant(Alexa, Siri) or Voice Prompts while calling customer service.
Automatic Assistance in Cars: Be it Tesla's automation; or more generic automatic braking assist and lane following. It is still sensor input being evaluated for dangers and a computer taking an action that a human would, but usually faster.
Advertisements (Deep Learning): Someone I know walked into a store recently, didn't buy anything, and got a physical mailing the next week thanking them for their visit. The data sharing between phone companies, location services, stores and advertisers is a vast network of interconnectedn-ess that is arguably an AI system.
Computer vision: Camera face identification/tracking and then focusing on that face; Facebook/Snapchat silly face filters; Facebook face identification and name tagging.
What I learned while getting a degree in Cognitive Science, is that AI is a moving target. What you consider mundane computer assistance today, was the future of AI of a decade ago. It seems like we are never there, but AI is everywhere. Granted, it is domain-specific AI, and not General AI(consciousness), but it is still technically the field of Artificial Intelligence. The goal is to replicate aspects of the human mind, which is advancing rapidly, as seen in the above list.
I'd like anyone in the know to name 3 things that AI is successfully doing today somewhere in or around our daily lives. Activities that require thinking or reasoning ability and that were once performed by humans, but no longer.
Once it's happening everybody just says it's an algorithm. For example look at the face/eye tracking in modern cameras, if know I'd struggle a lot of if somebody asked me to write that function. Same with speech recognition, it has other uses too but it's rarely a simple end user product. I know a system that flags certain data for manual processing/review, they of course have hard coded rules too but they also run a more general algorithm that looks for outliers and unusual combinations. I suppose in the first iteration you could call it a simple clustering algorithm, but it's also dynamic with respect to the input as cleared flags means to give more latitude in that direction while confirmed flags tighten it. The bubbles of "acceptable" data flows kinda like in a lava lamp, changing over time.
I know there's lots of businesses trying to automate processing that way, it's not so much that it handles everything... but it handles all the basic processing that used to be outside "normal" algorithms where you'd constantly run around trying to tweak the business logic and eventually just get lost. I know automated loan approvals go like this, if you're looking a lot like other profitable customers there's literally nobody in the loop anymore. We're still struggling with decision making systems that have to take active, unassisted action like driving a car but they're drawing a lot of insight out of what used to be just static. It still lacks depth but they're mixing basic neural nets with semantic models, memory, training from examples and they're making progress. But it looks like robotics is pretty hard in general.
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