U.S. Department of Defense Adopts Ethical Principles For Artificial Intelligence

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In a statement released yesterday, the U.S. Department of Defense officially adopted a series of ethical principles surrounding military applications of Artificial Intelligence. The adoption of these principles follows recommendations provided by the Defense Innovation Board, which resulted from 15 months of deliberation with leading AI experts in the commercial industry, government, academia, and the American public.

The recent adoption of these AI ethical principles closely aligns with the Department of Defense’s AI strategy objective directing the U.S military to consider AI ethics and the lawful use of AI systems. These ethical principles address new challenges faced in the digital era and build upon the U.S. military’s existing ethical framework based on documents such as the Constitution, and existing international norms and treaties.

The Department of Defense recognized the need to “accelerate the adoption of AI and lead in its national security applications to maintain [the United States’ strategic position, prevail on future battlefields, and safeguard the rules-based international order.” Despite this, the adoption of AI ethical principles was still considered necessary. According to the Department of Defense, “AI technology will change much about the battlefield of the future, but nothing will change America’s steadfast commitment to responsible and lawful behavior.”

These ethical principles will apply to both combat and non-combat functions and assist the U.S military in upholding legal, ethical, and policy commitments in the field of AI.

The Department of Defenses’ AI ethical principles encompass five main areas:

  1. Responsible – Department of Defense personnel will exercise appropriate levels of judgment and care, while remaining responsible for the development, deployment, and use of AI capabilities. 
  2. Equitable – The Department will take deliberate steps to minimize unintended bias in AI capabilities.
  3. Traceable – The Department’s capabilities will be developed and deployed such that relevant personnel possess an appropriate understanding of the technology, development processes, and operational methods applicable to AI capabilities, including with transparent and auditable methodologies, data sources, and design procedure and documentation.
  4. Reliable – The Department’s AI capabilities will have explicit, well-defined uses, and the safety, security and effectiveness of such capabilities will be subject to testing and assurance within those defined uses across their entire life-cycles. 
  5. Governable – The Department will design and engineer AI capabilities to fulfill their intended functions while possessing the ability to detect and avoid unintended consequences, and the ability to disengage or deactivate deployed systems that demonstrate unintended behaviour. 

 

Introducing the Tinder of Dining: Chicago-based Sugr matches you with food places you’ll love

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If you live in a metropolitan area, picking the next best place to have lunch or dinner can be rather difficult. Do you want spicy or sweet? Are you looking to eat earlier in the day or later? Do you prefer to have a reservation when you walk in? Chicago-based startup Sugr wants to make dining experiences a little less indecisive and more tailored to your preferences.

“The incredible access to information that we have today sometimes makes the simplest decisions take way too long,” said Ruben Flores-Martinez, CEO and founder of Sugr. The discovery service uses machine learning to give users tailored results. The app also takes into consideration where people within your network are eating. “It’s basically a very simple neural network. The more you use it, the better it gets at predicting what you’ll like.”

Sugr has an array of neat features. Once a venue has been selected, you will have the option to hail an Uber. You can invite friends and family to the venue you’re planning to visit, should you wish to be in company. An option is also available to pay via Apple Pay, subject to if the venue has enrolled in this payment method. The app also doesn’t publish written reviews, a design feature that was intentional. “The power of online reviews leads to a lot of negativity. Instead, we want to validate preferences based on what your peers are doing. What my wife thinks is a lot more important than what a random stranger on the internet thinks. So we weigh recommendations based on what people in your networks are doing,” Flores-Martinez added. “We wanted to create a very smart product that could easily understand your personality, the things you like and connect with, and help you make those decisions better and faster.”

The service is pro-small business, as Sugr does not include major chains in its recommendations. However, its founder said “we want to create incentives that are sponsored by major brands, but are redeemable at local businesses.”

Working on an app that encompasses AI solutions and makes life a bit easier? Did you know that you can receive up to 14% back on your research expenses with the R&D Tax Credit? To find out more, please contact a Swanson Reed R&D Specialist today or check out our free online eligibility test.

Who We Are:

Swanson Reed is a Specialist R&D tax advisory firm, offering tax credibility assessments, claim preparation, and advisory services. We manage all facets of the R&D tax credit program in Illinois, from claim prep & audit compliance to claim disputes. 

Swanson Reed regularly hosts free webinars and provides free IRS CE and CPE credits for CPA’s.  For more information please visit us at www.swansonreed.com/webinars or contact your usual Swanson Reed representative.

An Unmanned Future: Austin-based SparkCognition creates UTM solutions

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If you have ever wondered about (or even feared) how unmanned airplanes, air taxis and drones will not crash into each other when on a flight path, wonder no more. Boeing Co., the aerospace manufacturing giant, will partner with Austin-based SparkCognition Inc. to create unmanned traffic management (UTM) solutions. To achieve this, Boeing will use SparkCognition’s AI and blockchain technologies to track and create unmanned traffic routes to ensure safe travel conditions for unmanned air transportation.

“We partner with the world’s largest organizations that power, finance, and defend our society to uncover their highest potential through the application of AI technologies,” mentioned a blurb on the SparkCognition website. Solutions developed by the company are “agile” and can “streamline operations of any size, making it easier to accomplish goals and meet objectives in an expedited manner. These solutions can be seamlessly delivered via the cloud or on devices, and can also run on top of a client’s interface of choice.” It’s also worth mentioning that SparkCognition’s AI solutions lowered the cost of maitenance and improved available for a major aviation operator by 35%.

The company’s AI solutions can also warn of aircraft and asset failures before they occur, thus maximising fleet availability, minimizing unscheduled maitenance, and extending asset life. The company also provides simulated environments in which a user can train and control algorithms and evolve swarm tactics using reinforcement learning.

This promising partnership will also bring about a standardized programming interface to support package delivery, industrial inspection and other commercial applications. SparkCognition has its focus on a number of industries, such as cyber security, manufacturing, financial services, maritime, oil & gas, utilities, defence, and of course, aviation. “The world’s number one aviation leader partnering with the world’s most innovative industrial AI company means that unparalleled experience in safety, innovation, scale, and reliability will be brought to bear to address this monumental opportunity,” Husain said.

For more information on SparkCognition, please click here. For information on this innovative project, please see the video below.

Are you developing UTM solutions? Did you know that you can receive up to 14% back on your research expenses with the R&D Tax Credit? To find out more, please contact a Swanson Reed R&D Specialist today or check out our free online eligibility test.

Who We Are:

Swanson Reed is a Specialist R&D tax advisory firm, offering tax credibility assessments, claim preparation, and advisory services. We manage all facets of the R&D tax credit program in Texas, from claim prep & audit compliance to claim disputes. 

Swanson Reed regularly hosts free webinars and provides free IRS CE and CPE credits for CPA’s.  For more information please visit us at www.swansonreed.com/webinars or contact your usual Swanson Reed representative.

(Virtual) Assistant In a Lab Coat: Atlanta-based HelixAI develops lab companion to complement Amazon’s Alexa

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HelixAI is working to bring scientists a hands-free virtual assistant in the lab. The Helix voice assistant can help scientists to increase efficiency, improve lab safety, and gain visibility, according to the company website. The startup was created by husband-and-wife duo James and DeLacy Rhodes.

“James actually came to me and asked, what would you think about making a digital lab assistant, something that runs off Alexa devices but helps out in the lab,” DeLacy said. “Our goal was to get feedback from scientists and see if this was actually something they were interested in using in their laboratory spaces,” James said.

As a scientist, your hands will likely be occupied when conducting an experiment with chemicals and the like. Helix can access scientific reference information by a simple voice command. Key information, whether public, private, general or specific can also be customized to fit any specific needs, such as those of an individual lab or institution.

Scientific processes also normally require a protocol or repetition when conducting experiments. To avoid creating any new variables in the experimentation process, the testing from yesterday must be repeated in the exact same way. Helix can keep track of and add any protocols, SOPs, and solution recipes, thus helping to avoid any unwanted variables in an experiment. The program can also start where you last ended, even if it has been an extended period of time.

Timers and notifications can be set and sent to a mobile device–never experience an overflowing beaker again. “We work very closely with organizations to talk about their needs and identify the kind of content they would like to get through a digital assistant. Then we build up private skills that only those in their organization can get access to,” DeLacy said.

Helix may also be used to keep track of inventory, record notes during experiments, and manage various areas where custom content can be inserted.

Are you developing a virtual assistant extension? Did you know that you can receive up to 14% back on your research expenses with the R&D Tax Credit? To find out more, please contact a Swanson Reed R&D Specialist today or check out our free online eligibility test.

Who We Are:

Swanson Reed is a Specialist R&D tax advisory firm, offering tax credibility assessments, claim preparation, and advisory services. We manage all facets of the R&D tax credit program in Georgia, from claim prep & audit compliance to claim disputes. 

Swanson Reed regularly hosts free webinars and provides free IRS CE and CPE credits for CPA’s.  For more information please visit us at www.swansonreed.com/webinars or contact your usual Swanson Reed representative.

 


 

Finding the Vulnerable with Biometrics, Artificial Intelligence: Atlanta’s Trust Stamp to aid in locating those lost to human trafficking

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Artificial intelligence may put an end to a long-running industry: human trafficking.

The average age a minor enters the sex trade in the U.S. is 12 to 14 years old–many of the victims being runaway girls who were sexually abused. According to dosomething.org, trafficking involves various forms of exploitation, such as forcing victims into prostitution, subjecting victims to slavery or involuntary servitude and compelling victims to commit sex acts for the purpose of creating pornography. Thankfully, Attorney Generals in the U.S. and Mexico are planning to implement a new system that will help to locate victims of human trafficking.

Trust Stamp, an Atlanta-based startup, will be providing the ‘meat and potatoes’ of the life-saving technology. According to the company website, “[Trust Stamp] creates proprietary artificial intelligence solutions; researching and leveraging facial biometric science and wide-scale data mining to deliver insightful identity & trust predictions while identifying and defending against fraudulent identity attacks.”

“We authenticate … by applying multiple proof-of-liveness/attack detection techniques to a still image of video (“secure selfie”),” the company website said. Artificial intelligence then compares the secure selfie to a photo ID and/or images that were taken from social media (“pattern matching”)—this is to verify an identity. “The secure selfie is then converted to a 3-D mask and a biometric hash that is stored on a server and/or Blockchain. The hash can be used for subsequent authentications or to attach and access relevant data.” Having been implemented within banking platforms to increase security, how does this technology apply to the sex trade?

To summarize, a similar system will use facial recognition data that is pulled from photos that families of missing individuals have submitted to build a shared database network. In return, a probable match will then alert lawmakers if said individual is caught on a security or other public camera. By separating biometric data into 128 individual measures, it can then be converted to a non-reversible identifying sequence, otherwise known as a ‘hash’. The hash is not considered to be personal identifier information and can be shared or stored across public or private databases.

To keep the AI solutions up to par, the company utilizes GPU processing and neural-networks to process data faster than has ever been previously possible. In return, this recognition technology will help to locate missing children and other people in the sex trade by relying on superiorly quick and accurate recognition techniques.

For more information on Trust Stamp, please visit the company website by clicking here. You may also view the video below.

Are you developing a way to save lives with AI? Did you know that you can receive up to 14% back on your research expenses with the R&D Tax Credit? To find out more, please contact a Swanson Reed R&D Specialist today or check out our free online eligibility test.

Who We Are:

Swanson Reed is a Specialist R&D tax advisory firm, offering tax credibility assessments, claim preparation, and advisory services to the state of Georgia. We manage all facets of the R&D tax credit program in Georgia, from claim prep & audit compliance to claim disputes. 

Swanson Reed regularly hosts free webinars and provides free IRS CE and CPE credits for CPAs.  For more information please visit us at www.swansonreed.com/webinars or contact your usual Swanson Reed representative.