Google rules out using artificial intelligence for weapons

SAN FRANCISCO – Google announced on Thursday it would not use artificial intelligence for weapons or to “cause or directly facilitate injury to people,” as it unveiled a set of principles for the technologies.

Chief executive Sundar Pichai, in a blog post outlining the company’s artificial intelligence policies, noted that even though Google would not use AI for weapons, “we will continue our work with governments and the military in many other areas” such as cybersecurity, training, or search and rescue.

The news comes with Google facing an uproar from employees and others over a contract with the United States military, which the California tech giant said last week would not be renewed.

Pichai set out seven principles for Google’s application of artificial intelligence, or advanced computing that can simulate intelligent human behavior.

He said Google is using AI “to help people tackle urgent problems” such as prediction of wildfires, helping farmers, diagnosing disease or preventing blindness.

“We recognize that such powerful technology raises equally powerful questions about its use,” Pichai said in the blog.

“How AI is developed and used will have a significant impact on society for many years to come. As a leader in AI, we feel a deep responsibility to get this right,” Pichai also wrote.

The chief executive said Google’s AI programs would be designed for applications that are “socially beneficial” and “avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias.”

He said the principles also called for AI applications to be “built and tested for safety,” to be “accountable to people” and to “incorporate privacy design principles.”

Google will avoid the use of any technologies “that cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” Pichai wrote.

That means steering clear of “weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people” and systems “that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.”


Google also will ban the use of any technologies “whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights,” Pichai said.

‘A good start’

Some initial reaction to the announcement was positive.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which had led opposition to Google’s Project Maven contract with the Pentagon, called the news “a big win for ethical AI principles.”

“Congratulations to the Googlers and others who have worked hard to persuade the company to cancel its work on Project Maven,” EFF said on Twitter.

Ryan Calo, a University of Washington law professor and fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet & Society, tweeted: “Google’s AI ethics principles owe more to (English philosopher Jeremy) Bentham and the positivists than (German philosopher) Kant. Nevertheless, a good start.”

Calo added, “The clear statement that they won’t facilitate violence or totalitarian surveillance is meaningful.”

The move comes amid growing concerns that automated or robotic systems could be misused and spin out of control, leading to chaos. At the same time, Google has faced criticism that it has drifted away from its original founders’ motto of “don’t be evil.”

Several technology firms have already agreed to the general principles of using artificial intelligence for good but Google appeared to offer a more precise set of standards.

The company, which is already a member of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence including dozens of tech firms committed to AI principles, had faced criticism for the contract with the Pentagon on Project Maven, which uses machine learning and engineering talent to distinguish people and objects in drone videos.

Faced with a petition signed by thousands of employees and criticism outside the company, Google indicated the $10 million contract would not be renewed, according to media reports.

But Google is believed to be competing against other tech giants such as Amazon and Microsoft for lucrative “cloud computing” contracts with the US government, including for military and intelligence agencies.                   /kga

source: technology.inquirer.net

NY Times teams with Google parent to tame comments

NEW YORK, United States — The New York Times said Tuesday it was teaming with Google parent Alphabet in an effort to help filter its online reader comments to maintain a “civil and thoughtful” atmosphere.

The newspaper said it would work with Jigsaw, a technology incubator at Alphabet, to improve and expand its comments section.

The move comes amid frustration at many media organizations which have been seeking to boost reader engagement without allowing abusive and offensive comments.

“Maintaining a civil and thoughtful comments section is no easy undertaking, as evidenced by the number of publishers who have shut down their comment capabilities in recent years,” said Kinsey Wilson, the editor for innovation and strategy at the Times.

“But the Times has been and will continue to be dedicated to providing our readers with a safe online community to discuss the most important issues.”

Currently, the prestigious daily employees a team of 14 moderators who manually review some 11,000 comments each day. Only about 10 percent of Times articles are open to comments because of the time required for review.

Jigsaw uses algorithms to help this process, based on the moderated comments in the newspaper’s archives. The open-source system will also be made available to other online publishers, according to the statement.

“We believe open sourcing nearly a decade of Times comment archives will benefit the entire journalism industry and potentially make it easier for other publishers to manage comments on their sites,” Wilson said.

The Times “hopes that the project will expand viewpoints, provide a safe platform for diverse communities to have diverse discussions and allow readers’ voices to be an integral part of nearly every piece of reporting,” according to a Times statement.

In 2014, The Washington Post and The New York Times agreed to work together on a project funded by the Knight Foundation to create open-source software that can be adapted for news websites to get a better handle on online discussions.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Google redeems spot as world’s most valuable company

Again, tech giant Google dethroned Apple as the ‘World’s Most Valuable Company’ by market capitalization.

Apple, Google’s competitor in the tech industry, experienced their shares sink below $90 (4,192 PHP) on Thursday, the first time since June 2014. As a result, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, overtook Apple on the same day.

Alphabet’s market valuation peaked at $498 billion (23.1 trillion PHP) , compared to Apple’s $494 billion (23 trillion PHP), CNN Money and Time noted.

Alphabet previously overtook Google last February.

For the past six months, Apple’s shares dropped nearly 20 percent due to the decline of iPhone-chip shipments, one of the company’s trademark products since 2007.

Other tech titans, Intel and Microsoft, also declared disappointing slump in sales this quarter. Reversely, social media giant Facebook and online shopping site Amazon bolstered higher earnings this quarter. Gianna Francesca Catolico

source: technology.inquirer.net

Google parent Alphabet may soon top Apple’s market value

SAN FRANCISCO— As the digital advertising market booms and demand for smartphones wanes, Alphabet Inc. could soon dethrone Apple as the world’s most valuable company.

If it happens, Alphabet will move to the head of the class just five months after Google reorganized itself under the holding company.

The Silicon Valley rivals could trade places as early as Friday, given how rapidly the financial gap between them is narrowing. At the end of trading on Thursday, Apple’s market value stood at $522 billion; Alphabet was worth $515 billion.

That’s a dramatic swing from where things stood just 13 months ago. Apple then boasted a market value of $643 billion, almost twice Google Inc.’s $361 billion.

Since then, investors have soured on Apple Inc. The company has struggled to come up with another trend-setting product amid slumping sales of its most important device — the nearly 9-year-old iPhone, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of Apple’s overall sales.

Apple has already acknowledged the iPhone will begin this year with its first quarterly sales decline since it debuted in 2007. The slowdown helped push down Apple’s stock price by 15 percent since the end of 2014.

In contrast, Google has maintained its leadership in the lucrative Internet search and ad market while building other popular products in video, mobile, web browsing, email and mapping. That bundle of Google services brings in most of Alphabet’s revenue, and is expected to deliver growth in the 15 percent to 20 percent range as marketers shift even more of their budgets to digital services.

Alphabet also has impressed investors by reining in its spending. Google hired a Wall Street veteran, Ruth Porat, as its chief financial officer last May.

In addition to reversing a long expansion of Google’s operating expenses, Porat also persuaded Alphabet’s board to spend $5 billion buying back its own stock. That move signaled a more shareholder-friendly approach to managing the company’s cash hoard.

Investors also have applauded the creation of Alphabet, which is structured to provide more information about the cost of the company’s experimental ventures into self-driving cars, Internet access services, health science and city management.

All of those factors have helped lift Alphabet’s stock — previously Google’s — by 41 percent since the end of 2014.

It’s a potentially big shift for Apple, which has held bragging rights as the world’s most valuable company for most of the past four-and-a-half years. (ExxonMobil seized the high ground for a brief time in 2013.)

Alphabet would become the 12th company to rise to the most valuable spot, according to Standard & Poor’s.

BGP Financial analyst Colin Gillis believes the potential changing of the guard reflects a wider recognition that Alphabet is fostering a “culture of innovation” while Apple has lost some of its magic since the October 2011 death of co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs. “I no longer see a sense of urgency at Apple,” Gillis said.

If Alphabet doesn’t surpass Apple’s market value on Friday, it could do so early next week after it releases fourth-quarter earnings on Monday. Investors expect a big quarter after Google’s closest competitor in digital ads, Facebook Inc., announced that its revenue soared 52 percent in the period.

Of course, Apple isn’t just rolling over. It’s reportedly working on new products such as self-driving cars, virtual reality and Internet TV that could conceivably re-ignite its revenue growth — as could any resurgence in the iPhone itself. Alphabet has shown no signs of letting up on Google’s grip in Internet search or its expansion into other markets.

Which means we could see Apple and Alphabet continue to trade places in the market-value rankings over the next few years, as both race to be the first company worth $1 trillion.

source: business.inquirer.net

YouTube to support virtual reality video on its Android app

SAN FRANCISCO - YouTube announced two new features Thursday for its Android app that expand the video site's use of virtual reality, giving the new technology its biggest platform yet.

The app now supports VR video - a format that gives viewers what the company says are more realistic 360-degree perspectives of films.

To view it, a user would call up a virtual reality video on the YouTube app, click a button on the video for VR mode, and place the phone in Alphabet Inc's "Cardboard" device, a handheld gadget made from the standard box material that creates a VR viewing experience.

Makers of virtual reality content can upload VR videos compatible with the Cardboard viewer directly to YouTube. YouTube said there are about a dozen VR videos, including one stemming from the "Hunger Games" movies.

YouTube also announced that viewers can see its vast library of videos with a more limited virtual reality experience, also using Cardboard. YouTube said that the videos will resemble what a viewer would see on an IMAX theater screen.

Neil Schneider, executive director of VR trade organization Immersive Technology Alliance, noted that YouTube introduced 3D video in 2009 and was also an early adopter of high-definition video.

"It's not surprising they would take the angle of adding virtual reality," he said.

Schneider said the public can expect to see an explosion of high quality content, but said amateur content might be more difficult to come by because the gear to create VR content is typically expensive.

But Jay Iorio, a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers who has created films for Cardboard and Facebook's Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, said he would not be surprised to see VR recording capabilities on smartphones.

"The equipment I have right now, people will probably have on their phones in a couple years," he said.

Oculus Rift is scheduled for release next near and is expected to cost between $300 to $350. Cardboard costs between $5 and $50.

The YouTube app with the updated Cardboard technology is currently only available for Android phones but an iOS version is set to be released "soon," according to YouTube.  — Reuters