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Who needs governments? AI prompts the question already on the minds of many
By Naseem Javed | May 10, 2024
The world is seriously underachieving, and countries everywhere must now redouble their efforts to attract FDI, make full use of their entrepreneurs and other talents, and take advantage of the opportunities AI provides. Naseem Javed, an expert on new ways of thinking, weighs in.
Warren Buffett strikes a gloomy note over AI at his company’s annual confab
Warren Buffett, the éminence grise of investment, took the occasion of his company shareholders’ meeting to air his views on AI - part upbeat and part desponding. Though concededly no AI maven, Buffet’s remarks made waves nonetheless as he voiced his hopes and fears for the tech.
Data, infrastructure barriers hamper AI's cure of Africa's healthcare woes
Africa will gain the most from AI’s activation in healthcare, but the road to fulfilling this vision is a rocky one. Fulbright Scholar Ahmed Zahlan, who is pursuing his PhD in AI healthcare startups, charts the path the second most populous continent must take to reach this goal.
Air Canvas using Python libraries reveals much about art in the digital age
In the current digital age of advanced tech, the boundaries between art, science, and technology are increasingly blurring. Researcher Parisa Naraei describes a project exploring the concept of computer vision and its workings, with various intriguing applications.
Lessons learned from AI chatbots will encourage their responsible use
Chatbots are widespread forms of AI and, while they handle many routine tasks effectively, too often they are left to deal with problems for which they are ill-equipped, prompting scandals and bad experiences. AI and legal expert Prof Eran Kahana cites an illustrative case study.
Stay tuned for The Yuan’s brain science themed webinar this July!
The Yuan recently ran a three-week series of articles from April 1 to April 19, with topics examining the intersection of neuroscience and AI. The series was a great success and will be followed up in July by a webinar featuring some of the series’ outstanding contributors.
Rapid rise of CRISPR gene editing is revolutionizing a myriad of fieldsCRISPR is a keen gene editing and engineering tool that won its discoverers the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. While undoubtedly upending this field, its uses do not stop there. Academy of Applied Pharmaceutical Sciences researcher Shipra Asthana gives an overview of its applications.
Market power is permanent even with intense technological competitionContrary to what one might think, the competition and ceaseless innovation that are hallmarks of today’s globalized, digital, hyperconnected world are actually increasing and entrenching market power for large, established players, argues Stanford economics prof Mordecai Kurz.
Can AI deliver long-awaited breakthroughs in assessing stroke risk?
Medical professionals toil hard to gauge stroke risk among aging populations earlier and more accurately. Incremental improvements have come, but big breakthroughs remain elusive as lack of access to care and AI jitters thwart efforts, as Harvard Med Fellow Rohit Agrawal, MD, MPH explains.
5G-driven AI, ML forecast traffic snarls within an ever-expanding range
AI, ML, and 5G are allying to achieve breakthroughs in traffic pattern management, easing congestion, and making highways everywhere safer, smarter, and more efficient. Purva Joshi, a PhD candidate in Healthtech at the University of Pisa, gives the green light to future mobility.
AI is advancing preventive medicine, promoting better health
AI draws much attention for transforming areas of healthcare such as cancer treatments and surgery, but its greatest impact lies in keeping more people healthy so they do not need such intervention, argues Ahmed Zahlan, a Fulbright Scholar doing his PhD on AI healthcare startups.
The Yuan favorites
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Lessons learned from AI chatbots will encourage their responsible use
Chatbots are widespread forms of AI and, while they handle many routine tasks effectively, too often they are left to deal with problems for which they are ill-equipped, prompting scandals and bad experiences. AI and legal expert Prof Eran Kahana cites an illustrative case study.
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India’s DPDP Act is poised to enforce a strong, data-responsible ecosystem
As the world’s most populous country, India’s healthcare system faces high hurdles. The government’s newly enacted data privacy law sets rigorous requirements and levies hefty penalties on violations. AI expert and technical writer Priya Dialani breaks down the details.
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Scouring the seat of ease: AI toilets revolutionize India’s sanitation
The northeastern Indian state of Bihar, the country’s neediest, has long been synonymous with poor sanitation and public health. AI expert Disha Ganguli recently paid a visit to inspect conditions there. AI is beginning to rinse away unpleasant practices, her research reveals.
Generic
Will 2024 be the year of responsible AI, or just more controversy?
Algorithms are not alone in their tendency toward AI bias. Building a responsible AI this year will demand a global class of regulators drawn from diverse backgrounds and greater receptiveness to minority input in the sector, two Patrick J. McGovern Foundation scholars explain.
New era
Air Canvas using Python libraries reveals much about art in the digital age
In the current digital age of advanced tech, the boundaries between art, science, and technology are increasingly blurring. Researcher Parisa Naraei describes a project exploring the concept of computer vision and its workings, with various intriguing applications.
New era
Humanity must navigate a future of freedom versus control in the age of AI
As the AI epoch advances, humans face a stark choice and must seek to strike the right balance between freedom and control by the entrenched Big Tech elites, counsels Bart de Witte, an expert on digital transformation in healthcare and founder of Berlin-based non-profit HIPPO AI.
New era
Far from being amazing, Sora seems unable to handle the truth
Sora, a text-to-video and text-to-image AI model from OpenAI, is known for creating realistic scenes. A closer look, however, reveals that many of these are not real and should not be mistaken for such, warns Gary Marcus, a best-selling AI author, entrepreneur, and professor.
New era
Meta’s massive AI course correction follows The Yuan’s sage advice
In a once in a blue moon event, Meta, name notwithstanding, seems to have bowed down to The Yuan’s urgings, turned its back on the Metaverse, and set its front towards AI, as the firm strategically re-orients itself. Award-winning tech columnist Satyen K. Bordoloi has the skinny.
Metaverse
Has the concept of the metaverse failed, or is it still too early to tell?
This, the fourth in an article series titled Life and Crime in the Metaverse, examines the metaverse today and the question of whether it will ever reach its potential. Some already view it as a failure, but it could just be a steppingstone to something bigger and better.
Metaverse
The Yuan raises the red flag, wards off incursions by GAI chatbots
As GAIs such as ChatGPT find ever-wider use, this exciting development also risks obsoleting many human functions. ‘Singularitarians’ may hail this step, but The Yuan is committed to keeping humans in the loop, and so offers this cautionary tale for our contributors’ edification.
Metaverse
Life and crime in the metaverse: Trust, trustless, and zero trust
This, the third in an article series titled Life and Crime in the Metaverse, examines the idea of trust, how to engage in online transactions and other interactions in its absence, and what this signifies in the metaverse context.
Metaverse
Metaverse healthcare system applications are based on the discovery layer
In the second part of his series of articles on the Metaverse, AI engineer Douglas Amante takes a look at what the discovery layer of the Metaverse is and how healthcare-related applications fit in as they become an increasingly integral part of people’s lives.
Brain science
Stay tuned for The Yuan’s brain science themed webinar this July!
The Yuan recently ran a three-week series of articles from April 1 to April 19, with topics examining the intersection of neuroscience and AI. The series was a great success and will be followed up in July by a webinar featuring some of the series’ outstanding contributors.
Brain science
Neurosymbolic AI injects symbolic reasoning to give DL ‘the human touch’
Neurosymbolic AI is a novel method that empowers DL to reason symbolically, while also bolstering its already renowned ability to ingest and digest reams of data. SEO content creator Ava Addams maps a new route toward more intuitive AI, and forecasts a sea change in the offing.
Brain science
Advantis Medical Imaging fuels innovation to redefine healthcare with AI
The Yuan recently spoke with Zoi Giavri, co-founder, president and chief product officer of leading medical software developer Advantis Medical Imaging to talk advances in healthcare. Eleni Natsi, a journalist focused on the transformative impact of AI, lets us in on their tête-à-tête.
Brain science
GenAI offers a peek into the future of empathetic care in neuropsychiatry
Neuropsychiatric disorders are often difficult to treat because each patient’s case is unique and there are few, if any, other comparable cases to use as references. Fortunately, GenAI, a new tech, is now changing this outlook, argues Harvard Med Fellow Rohitashva Agrawal, MD,MPH.
Optimization
Data, infrastructure barriers hamper AI's cure of Africa's healthcare woes
Africa will gain the most from AI’s activation in healthcare, but the road to fulfilling this vision is a rocky one. Fulbright Scholar Ahmed Zahlan, who is pursuing his PhD in AI healthcare startups, charts the path the second most populous continent must take to reach this goal.
Optimization
AI’s impact on the music business is great, but greatly underappreciated
Many people are au courant with the transformative effect AI is having on the healthcare, banking, and robotics industries, but far fewer are aware of its splash in the realm of music. AI expert Snigdha Bose probes this stealth phenomenon and signals its future import.
Optimization
Google shelved its Gemini AI image app after it tried to rewrite history
Google put the brakes on its Gemini AI image tool for generating “inaccurate images of historical figures.” An attempt to avoid reproducing toxic stereotypes - a common issue with image generation tools - led Gemini to commit the even worse offense of writing revisionist history.
Optimization
Brazilian AI takes up eyeglass prescription prediction to boost vision care
Nearsightedness and other vision impairments afflict victims everywhere and their early detection is paramount. A new Brazilian AI bids fair to succor via tele-eye exams those who lack access to care. Medical executive and radiologist Gustavo Meirelles makes it all crystal clear.
Governance
How a public-private consortium could lead to democratic global AI governance
An open and democratic public-private consortium for AI would sustain growth, transparency, and competition, while averting an over-concentration of power and AI safety risks, argues Trustless Computing Association founder and President Rufo Guerreschi.
Governance
There is a strong case to be made for regulating GenAI through common law
Arguments over whose regulations are best regarding AI, LLMs, and other advance tech overlook the possibility that common law, with its case-by-case approach, offers the best solution for crafting sensible regulatory frameworks, argue profs S. Alex Yang and Angela Huyue Zhang.
Governance
UK and US AI regulatory frameworks precede AI safety summit, impact healthcare
Both the UK and US governments published AI regulatory frameworks ahead of the first-ever AI Safety Summit hosted at Bletchley Park in November 2023. The two frameworks are both organized by five similar principles, and by comparing them AI developers will be better equipped to create AI tools designed for use in both UK and US settings.
Governance
AI tops the charts at Davos 2024 as The Yuan makes its grand entrance
The WEF now underway in Davos, Switzerland is bringing together household names from business, tech, government, and academia, with AI clearly in the ascendant for the first time. Three of The Yuan’s top contributors are also showing our flag at this year’s gala event.
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Special reports
Human-machine relationship needs shared understanding to thrive
The Yuan’s voyage of intelligent discovery lands back in London to end on day 18. The capital of the largest empire ever was once dubbed ‘The Smoke’ due to the notorious ‘pea-soup’ smog from its coal-burning furnaces and hearths. A new Industrial Revolution is now underway in this cradle of the first one, and Ivana Bartoletti, chief privacy officer at IT business consultancy Wipro, advises how to better close the damper on its adverse effects.
‘AI ethics’ are doomed to failure - Part 1
As efforts to improve AI governance and devise rules governing its use gain momentum, ‘ethics’ is a buzzword that often pops up in talks of how to make AI more benign. The problem, however, is that the concept of AI ethics lacks substance and thus risks becoming meaningless. How to resolve this seeming paradox? Emmanuel R. Goffi, co-founder and co-director of the Paris-based Global AI Ethics Institute, weighs in.
The synergy of humans and AI: Nurturing humanity in the age of innovation
Crossing from the Old World that launched the Age of Exploration to the New World that bore its brunt, our voyage of intelligent discovery lands on day five on the shores of Brazil, named for a tree yielding a dye as red as embers (brasas) so precious Portugal’s bandeirantes eagerly shed the equally carmine blood of the area’s indigenes to obtain the colorant, before these bannermen mixed their own with them and others to produce Brazil’s largely Pardo people. On day five of our quest, radiologist Gustavo Meirelles takes the helm in the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest city to relate how other historic advancements that aroused dire fears at the start were ultimately also fully incorporated into human society.
Can ‘AI’ outsmart humans? That depends on how one defines ‘smart’
Whether machines will ever outsmart humans is a question of the use of language and the inadequacy of programming because, on their own, machines are not clever, says Nigel Morris-Cotterill, author of The Yuan’s ‘Imaginary Friends’ series, on day 14 of The Yuan’s voyage of intelligent discovery.
Digital longevity will mean retiring to the Cloud to live forever
Humans’ physical bodies wear out and break down over time. Many ongoing studies seek to slow or even reverse aging, and while these may eventually bear fruit, preserving one’s digital self might be more easily achievable, writes Phil Newman, CEO and founder of Longevity Technology.
What will be the outcome when AI 'outsmarts' humans?
Views on AI diverge. Some see a savior bestowing immortality on and whisking humanity off to the stars. Others descry a false prophet encompassing the ruin of humankind. The Yuan is cordially inviting our contributors to read their auguries and divine a time when AI ‘outsmarts’ us in this new series.
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