Google retreats from military AI project
Apple to debut phone-to-phone augmented reality
SAN FRANCISCO, June 3, (Agencies): Google workers on Friday got word that the internet titan will retreat from a deal to help the US military use artificial intelligence to analyze drone video following an outcry from staff, according to reports.
The collaboration with the US Department of Defense was said to have sparked rebellion inside the Californiabased company.
An internal petition calling for Google to stay out of “the business of war” garnered thousands of signatures, and some workers reportedly quit to protest a collaboration with the military.
The New York Times and tech news website Gizmodo cited unnamed sources as saying that a Google’s cloud team executive announced told employees on Friday that the company would not seek to renew the controversial contract after it expires next year.
The contract was reported to be worth less than $10 million to Google, but was thought to have potential to lead to more lucrative technology collaborations with the military.
Google did not respond to a request for comment.
Google has remained mum about Project Maven, which reportedly uses machine learning and engineering talent to distinguish people and objects in drone videos for the Defense Department.
“We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” the employee petition reads, according to copies posted online.
“Therefore, we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor
an intact sarcophagus with two skeletons bedecked with gold and silver adornments. Ilija Mikic, an anthropologist at the site, said the skeletons were of a tall, middleaged man and a slim younger woman. its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an internet rights group, and the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) were among those who have weighed in with support.
“As military commanders come to see the object recognition algorithms as reliable, it will be tempting to attenuate or even remove human review and oversight for these systems,” ICRAC said in an open letter.
“We are then just a short step away from authorizing autonomous drones to kill automatically, without human supervision or meaningful human control.”
Google has gone on the record saying that its work to improve machines’ ability to recognize objects is not for offensive uses.
The EFF and others stressed the need for moral and ethical frameworks regarding the use of artificial intelligence in weaponry.
“The use of AI in weapons systems is a crucially important topic and one that deserves an international public discussion and likely some international agreements to ensure global safety,” the EFF said in a blog post on the topic.
Apple Inc next week will debut tools to let two iPhone users share augmented reality while limiting the personal data sent to its servers, two people familiar with the matter said this week.
Augmented reality (AR) allows viewers to see virtual structures superimposed on their surroundings via their smartphones or other devices. It is the technology used in mobile game Pokemon Go, and by industry, such as
In addition to three delicate glass perfume bottles, the woman had golden earrings, a necklace, a silver mirror and several expensive hair pins, while a silver belt buckle and remains of shoes were factories seeking to map new assembly lines. Apple and rival Google are racing to release AR tools to attract software developers to their platforms.
Both are seeking to allow two people to share data so they can see the same virtual object in the same space via their individual devices. But that has sparked privacy concerns — if AR apps become commonplace, people will be scanning their homes and other personal spaces routinely, developers say.
Apple designed its two-player system to work phone-to-phone in part because of those privacy concerns, one of the people familiar with the matter said. The approach, which has not been previously reported, differs from Google’s, which requires scans of a player’s environment to be sent to, and stored in, the cloud.
Apple declined to comment. Bloomberg previously reported that Apple would announce multiplayer AR at its developer conference, which begins on Monday.
AR has become a major focus at both companies. Apple CEO Tim Cook has called it “big and profound,” and the company released its first tools to let software developers make AR apps last year.
With that release, Apple made AR possible on many phones without any modifications. The move spurred Google to abandon an AR effort that required phones to have special sensors and instead build tools for AR on conventional phones.
The race between the two has heated up since then. At its own developer conference in May, Google rolled out tools for making multiplayer AR games.
found lying around the man.
“According to grave goods ... we can conclude that these two people surely belonged to a higher social class,” Mikic said.
The Viminacium site, near the town of Kostolac, around 70 km east of Belgrade, was a military camp and the capital of the Roman province of Moesia Superior, dating back to the 1st century AD. It had a hippodrome, fortifications, a forum, palace, temples, amphitheatre, aqueducts, baths and workshops. (RTRS)
Blue whale sighted in Red Sea:
A rare blue whale, the largest animal on Earth, has been sighted in the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba for the first time, Egypt’s environment ministry said Thursday.
It said on its Facebook page that Environment Minister Khaled Fahmy has instructed observation teams to track the whale and try to photograph it.
The blue whale, which can grow up to 30 metres (100 feet) in length, is listed as “endangered” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. It was brought “to the brink of extinction” in the 1960s by intensive hunting, according to IUCN.
Hunting has been prohibited by the International Whaling Commission, but the blue whale is threatened by “the declining availability of krill, its primary food source”. (AFP)