AAI: Artificial Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Art for $10K as Appreciable Asset, a Post Li-Ion Future, Donating Unused GPU Power to Fight Covid-19

Welcome to the fourth edition of The Antidisciplinarian, a weekly curation with the latest articles exploring the intersection of science, art, design, and technology. 

On Wednesday I had the pleasure to have a long conversation with Andrew Hessel about synthetic biology. He was part of a panel on Human 2.0 that I should have hosted at SXSW. 

Andrew is a microbiologist, geneticist, and co-founder and Chairman of the Genome Project-write, the international scientific effort working to engineer large genomes, including the human genome and his goal is to help people better understand and use living systems to meet the needs of humanity. The conversation was fascinating and confirmed that there is a coming big wave of innovation triggered by synbio (and supported by AI and quantum algorithms). It started with a “we are at war, it is only that we are not fighting another country, we are fighting an invisible alien…” and concluded talking about molecular electronics and biology being the most advanced form of manufacturing. Expect a post on synthetic biology soon…. 

Some highlights from this week's edition include:

●      Why are we still thinking of AI as independent machines? Wired suggests we adopt a human-centric perspective and start thinking of the tech as collections of people labeling data.

●      Modularization is the cornerstone of modern online businesses - but it's also a double-edged sword. MIT Sloan Management Review explores the ethical pitfalls that open up when leaders distance themselves from their business components.

●      Artist KAWS, who is selling his augmented reality Companion figures for $10,000, demonstrates that even virtual art can be an appreciable asset.

●      A professor of pharmaceutics and her team have developed a thin, inexpensive film that can act as a vaccine delivery system. If it goes public, it could greatly reduce the ecological footprint of traditional immunization campaigns.

●      What comes after the lithium battery? CNBC profiles several companies looking to produce cheaper, more efficient forms of energy storage.

●      Around 20M rural Americans stuck with a poor internet connection. SpaceX's network of Starlink satellites may provide the low latency solution.

...along with a number of other enlightening reads. 

Human and Machine

AI Is an Ideology, Not a Technology

"'AI' might be a threat to the human future, as is often imagined in science fiction, or it might be a way of thinking about technology that makes it harder to design technology so it can be used effectively and responsibly."

Sometimes, global misconceptions boil down to semantics. Bill Fischer, co-director at IMD/MIT-Sloan's Driving Strategic Innovation program, demonstrated how resistance to change can be mitigated by thinking of innovation as a verb. Similarly, Wired asks us focus on the people present in AI systems - as opposed to an intelligent machine operating on its own accord.

Instead of a machine that can "see" cats and dogs, you can talk about people labeling a myriad of training examples. This matters because the "AI way of thinking can distract from the responsibility of humans."

This human-centric vantage point has the benefit of clearing up misunderstandings around China's edge in AI. While some see the lack of privacy and government backing as stepping stones for more intelligent machines, "recent reporting has shown China's greatest advantage in AI is less surveillance than a vast shadow workforce actively labeling data fed into algorithms."

A Crisis of Ethics in Technology Innovation

"If you're the executive who happens to decouple consumer protection from mortgage lending, all the positive intentions in the world won't protect you from the unavoidable backlash."

As technology continues to evolve and restructure, we're going to see a lot more ethical dilemmas. But like the Cambridge Analytica disaster, these won't be bugs that surface user details - they'll be decisions made by leaders "acting in the best interest of markets and consumers... who unintentionally [or intentionally] sidestep the ethical protections that underpin society."

MIT Sloan Management Review focuses on the ethical pitfalls stemming from the double-edged sword of modularization - a cornerstone of modern online business that has the potential to be a regulatory minefield. Sloan gives a few examples:

●      Lyft: "When the company went public in March 2019, its filings recognized the risk that it relied on critical third parties for payments, financing, web infrastructure, background checks, and other significant technology components." This "virtual à la carte menu" approach distances company leaders from ethical responsibilities."

●      3D Printing: "Unfortunately, putting a modular manufacturing device in every household drives the same type of value-chain disruption that Facebook enabled with its publishing API. Customers are no longer beholden to the large companies that also were responsible for producing and distributing products.... what if your driving-age teen puts a faulty home-printed part in your car? Even worse, consider firearms."

Creativity

Large Augmented-Reality Figures Hover Over Times Square

KAWS - the prominent contemporary artist who got his start animating for Disney films - recently ported his popular Companion figure to AR. KAWS partnered with XR art company Acute Art to create an app (which you can download on the Acute site) that lets users view Companions in 12 major locations around the world.

What got our attention was the monetization aspect. KAWS and Acute are selling 25 limited edition AR Companions for $10k, putting the work up there with The Fabricant's $9.5k dress, Obvious' Belamy portrait, and the hardware CryptoKitty. Collectors are seeing virtual art as an appreciable asset, which spells interesting things for future XR artists.

An Art Exhibition That Questions What It Means to Be Human

Surface explores some of the surreal digital works and installations shown at the fascinating Uncanny Valley exhibit at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, including AIDOL, a tragicomedy about a "failing pop star [that] enlists an entrepreneurial AI satellite to write her swan-song halftime show at the upcoming E-Sports Olympics;" and A.A.I. 10–15, "a series of neon-colored termite colonies made by feeding the insects brightly colored sand, gold, and crystals."

AAI stands for Artificial Artificial Intelligence, a term supposedly coined by Amazon to describe the labor "that can be performed more efficiently by humans than current AI systems."

Life Sciences

Vaccines Without Needles – New Shelf-Stable Film Could Revolutionize How Medicines Are Distributed Worldwide

Professor of Pharmaceutics at University of Texas at Austin Maria Croyle and her team have developed an inexpensive, rapidly dissolving film that can act as a vaccine. The film takes up much less space that its vial counterpart (see the image below), and is much easier to distribute given its flat shape. Over the course of a year, Croyle and her team made 450 attempts to create an amber-like substance to preserve vaccines before finding the right formulation.

If Croyle's film gets to see mass distribution, it would greatly minimize the ecological footprint left behind by immunization campaigns: "The 2004 Philippine Measles Elimination Campaign, which immunized 18 million children in one month, generated 19.5 million syringes, or 143 tons of sharps waste and nearly 80 tons of nonhazardous waste."

Spaces

Meet the Man Behind China's Talking Drones: Inside China's Startups

KrAsia interviewed Lu Zhihui, a DJI co-founder who left the company in 2008 to build MicroMultiCopter, which produced some of China's "talking drones." Lu is a deep believer in the widespread use of drones for public service, and MMC has developed them for "aerial photography, electric power line inspection, land monitoring, city planning, disaster relief," and other use cases.

MMC's drones have recently been used to help contain the COVID-19 pandemic, spraying disinfectant, employing aerial thermal sensing, and even helping control traffic.

Google's New Shoe Insole Analyzes Your Soccer Moves

In 2017 Google and Levi released a jacket featuring intelligent fibers powered by the company's Jacquard technology. The phone-controlling smart jacket didn't lead to a wave of smart clothing, but the researchers behind the project eventually released the smaller Jacquard 2.0. The device can now be installed in the insoles of any soccer shoes to track "kicking, running, stopping, and accelerating again."

How does it meld with the physical world? "It all ties into EA Sports' FIFA Mobile app on Android and iOS. To improve the rating of your virtual FIFA Mobile Ultimate Team, your options are to play the videogame, spend actual money on in-game boosts, or now, play in the real world while using the GMR insole and Tag."

Is SpaceX Starlink Low Latency? The Answer Could Unlock Billions in Funding

Something like 20M rural Americans live without reliable internet connectivity. Companies that help these internet-starved regions can receive large federal subsidies - if their connection is considered low latency. Satellite broadband firms don't qualify as low latency, since land-based networks tend to be faster.

But SpaceX is arguing that its Starlink satellites do respond quickly enough to reach rural Americans, and is nudging the FCC to allow it to compete for federal funding. If Starlink proves its latency is low enough, SpaceX could get up to $16B in federal subsidies.

Materials

The Future of Energy Storage Beyond Lithium Ion

Lithium batteries are powering our laptops, electric homes, and electric vehicles, among numerous other applications. But they have their shortcomings, from posing a fire hazard to insubstantial battery life - which is why entrepreneurs are devising potentially promising forms of energy storage such as liquid batteries and thermal energy storage. CNBC overviews several companies working on potentially revolutionary energy storage methods.

Processors

Nvidia's Calling on Gaming PC Owners to Put Their Systems to Work Fighting COVID-19

Nvidia asked PC power users to lend their GPU power in the fight against COVID-19. Anyone with a decent GPU can download the Folding@home application to donate unused GPU compute, which can help researchers better understand the virus. F@h is a distributed computing project that "simulates protein folding, computational drug design, and other types of molecular dynamics," and was founded in 2000.

Interfaces

10 Remote Collaboration Apps for HoloLens, Magic Leap, & Mobile That Can Substitute for In-Person Meetings

With the US government declaring a national emergency over the COVID-19 pandemic, discussion continues around the future of remote work. Next Reality's Tommy Palladino tests various AR collaboration products like Spatial, Magic Leap's Avatar Chat, enterprise MR software Arvizio, and AR painting platform Satiate. Road To VR also released a list of 26 VR Apps for Remote Work, Education, Training, Design Review, and More.

What Are My Photos Revealing About Me?

A photo reveals a thousand personal data points... as the saying goes. Besides time and location information, peripheral data can be extracted from shared photos using open source intelligence (OSINT) techniques - regardless if you masked your metadata or not. The Markup suggests a few things to keep in mind before posting that photo up:

●      Uploading an image with a face on Yandex reveals similar faces. The search engine uses a "powerful face-matching technology" that works differently than Google's Reverse Image Search - see the image below.

●      Obscuring geolocation isn't a foolproof way to hide your whereabouts. "Buildings, trees, bridges, utility poles, antennas.... license plates, store and street signs, billboards, even T-shirts" give clues to your location. Google uses CV to autotag locations and software like PeakVisor can automatically detect certain locations.

●      Meteorological data can reveal when a photo was taken: "WolframAlpha provides detailed historical meteorological data for any weather station (think zip code level)... that could help confirm the time and date that a photo was taken."