The Little Ingenuity That Could

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 of facial recognition technology. The law firm Gibson Dunn releases a 2020 Annual Review of AI and Automated Systems, which also contains a great summary of policy and regulatory developments in the last year. In research, scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia use AI to manipulate human behavior, steering participants toward particular actions. Researchers in the Netherlands demonstrate that predictive coding in recurrent neural networks naturally arises as a consequence of minimizing energy consumption. Research in Nature Communications demonstrates a multisensory neural networks that integrates information from all five human senses. The report of the week comes from CSET author Matthew Mittlelsteadt, which describes AI Verification: Mechanisms to Ensure AI Arms Control Compliance. The first book of the week comes from Moritz Hardt, on Patterns, Predictions, and Actions: A story about machine learning. And the fun site of the week takes a look at the works of painter Wassily Kandinsky, who was also a synesthete (experiencing the fusion of the senses), and offers insights into what he might have heard from looking at his paintings. The second book of the week provides some great information on Synaesthesia – Opinions and Perspectives.