Week 7 [11-17.12.2017] Online confession

Dear All,

Christmas is coming, so I decided to egg you on small talk about confession. Don’t be afraid, no traditional one, what I mean is doing it through Internet…

http://catholicexchange.com/can-i-go-to-confession-online

… and all the issues using IT tools in this respect. For example, there are some helpful apps:

http://www.littleiapps.com/confession/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.web4uonline.confession

As long as online form is not appropriate according to particular church authorities, there is no serious issue in serious discussion. But, to be honest, I can’t see the reasons, why it couldn’t be acceptable – after all traditional confession assumes priest being only substitute of God, who is the real Party forgiving the sins. So, what do you think about it? – this is my question no.1.

Question no.2: Do you think online confessions should be acceptable by church authorities as valid ones? Answer assuming two options: 1) confessions through internet, but with person (priest) engaged, 2) confessions with AI system, using the proper church rules. Please explain your attitude.

And, the last issue. As we know, there is no church authorities’ acceptance of such solution. In my opinion, however, this is a matter of human mind’s limit, and this is about to change very soon, as fast as the IT tools used in everyday life are more and more popular. It is not possible the technology revolution could avoid any field, the “religious” ones in particular. Do you agree, or not, and why? – here we’ve come to the question no.3.

In the end I would like to wish you all MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Kind regards,

Marta

Week 7 [11-17.12.2017] The Frightful Five vs. Startups

Hi everyone!
I'd like to share this with you.

"The Onion" is not the most reliable source of news, but I found the linked article both interesting and frightening.

1. Do you think this article is really written by one of the richest people on the planet (probably the richest one)? Why/why not?
2. What do you think about big companies from The Frightful Five (a.k.a. FAAAM) acquiring startups?
3. If you were CEO and founder of the successful startup, would you sell it to one of the big players having such a chance?
4. What do you think about Instagram Stories, which are a direct copy of the core Snapchat functionality? Note: they were added to Instagram after Snapchat's CEO rejected $3 billion offer to be acquired by Facebook. Does it affect your answer for the previous question?

Week 7 [11-17.12.2017] Real-time reenactment

Hello!

I'd like to share an interesting paper, https://graphics.stanford.edu/~niessner/papers/2016/1facetoface/thies2016face.pdf.

It presents a method for fusing two videos in real-time: "target" video of a person, "source" video of another actor into resulting video of target person performing moves of source person. 

The video accompanying the paper ( Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment of RGB Videos (CVPR 2016 Oral) ) shows sample results of such reenactment.

The method presented in this paper is not perfect, authors state that beards or long hairs can present a problem, but we can expect further developments. 

1. Do you think it's the end of truth in news? If any statement or interview can be synthesized, how can we believe anything we see?
2. How important is "real-time" aspect? Is possibility to e.g. synthesize Princess Leia in new Star Wars that much different?
3. Is there any "good" usage of such technique in Your opinion?

Week 7 [11-17.12.2017] Obscuring information is your ally.

Hello everyone!
Do you ever wondered what information the search engine stores? When we want to solve the problem we start looking for a solution in the search engine. This is normal becouse if you can't find something on the internet, most probably you are looking for a bad phrase.
Now, try to look from another side. You get information about health state, typical work salary, favourite restaurant and the best price for fly to another country for holidays from milions people around the world... Despite you don't know this people personally you can deduce unique profile all of them. What you will do with all this information? Don't you see any danger?
We have a choice for obfuscation information about us. If you are interested in this subject and privacy is important for you check it out!

https://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/resources/trackmenot2009.pdf

It's quite long but very important for all of us...no one likes it when someone enters into his private life.

I wanted you to reflect on these questions and answer in comment below:
1)  Are you ready to share sensitive data about yourself to improve the quality of services (e.g. getting an insurance offer when you regularly search for information about a serious illness despite of you haven't thought about it yet)?

2) Do you think that obfuscation of information about yourself is a sufficient safeguard? Do you have any idea for other solution?

3)  Do you think that obfuscation the results is ethical? Give one argument for and against.

Week 7 [11-18.12.2017] Internet Filtering in China

From foundation of human civilization two ideologies are fighting: conservative and liberal. One of approach is to separate and reduce exposure of content for example: religion, sexual, hate and many others. You should be aware that similar censorship is practiced in many countries like Australia and New Zeeland. In this article authors focused on China Internet filtering. I ask you to read this article and answer questions below.

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9696319/zittrain_internetfilteringinchina.pdf?sequence=1

1.       What is your opinion about Internet censorship?

2.       Do you know any local censorship practice in Europe or World for security reasons for example?

3.       Is censorship inevitable?

Week 6 [04-10.12.2017] Case study: hackaton with elderly people

Hello everyone!

I want to present you an interesting study held by the Social Computer Science team from our university: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321262540_Older_adults_and_hackathons_a_qualitative_study . This study is very interesting from various perspectives. Firstly, it indicates necessity for novel and unique approaches in designing technologies for elderly people. Secondly, it emphasizes what I have personally met during my career in software development. That developers and product designers often stick to their IDEA of a user (and focus on developing products for those fantasy-users), rather than checking how do REAL people from their group of interest look and feel.

This is quite a long paper, so I recommend reading only first and fifth chapter where objectives and conclusions of the study have been included. After you do, I want you to discuss some of the following questions:

1. Do you think that for elderly people the resistance for new technologies (e.g. smartphones) would be smaller if interfaces were designed differently -  uniquely for them?
2. Have you ever done usability study before starting product development? How did the research look like?
3. Whenever you develop or design a system, do you have rather fuzzy or very specific idea of your end user?

Week 6 [04-10.12.2017] Shared space with Augmented reality

All of us know tools like google hangout, Skype and other platforms that allows for video conference. We also know gdrive, google docs, outlook online that allow us to collaborate with each other in real time. We can combine those tools. I'm currently doing research about a single platform that will allow to create a single session to collaborate in real time on virtual 3D objects set in our world.
Read the article: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221266488_Mixing_Realities_in_Shared_Space_An_Augmented_Reality_Interface_for_Collaborative_Computing


It is an old article but it is one of the first steps toward this goal. It shows perfectly the vision, problems and methodology.


1. What do you think about such tool ?
2. What branches of industry can benefit from it ?
3. Does it has sense from your point of view ?

Week 6 [04-10.12.2017] Malaria Likelihood Prediction Using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Hello everyone,
I would like to propose a discussion about possibilities offered by Deep Learning in fighting epidemics. This week I would like to present the following article: Malaria Likelihood Prediction By Effectively Surveying Households Using Deep Reinforcement Learning. This is an example of a quite simple application of an algorithm which benefited in a real life.
Authors built a deep reinforcement learning (RL) agent which is capable of predicting the likelihood of an individual testing positive for malaria by questioning about their household.
The agent learnt which survey question should be asked next and when to stop to make a prediction.

It was possible to make a prediction with a high accuracy. Authors proved that adaptive survey can significantly reduce the number of questions needed to attain the high accuracy. As a result a large-scale and cost-effective monitoring of malaria was enabled through SMS surveys.
My questions:
1. Do you recall any other examples of application of Deep Learning approaches/research in fighting epidemics and disasters?
2. Are we capable of preventing such outbreaks as malaria effectively with Deep Learning?
3. What are the other possible Deep Learning approaches which may be helpful in fighting such occurrence?

Week 6 [04-10.12.17] Three Gorges Dam ‒ Architectural Wonder or Chinese Wall of Shame?

Hello everyone!

Recently when surfing on the Internet I've found interesting articles on one of the most impressive constructions in the modern world ‒ Three Gorges Dam in China. It's not that I am a building and construction freak, but this is the largest electric dam on Earth and one of the most controversial human creations. Not only did it cause significant and already visible environmental changes, but though not many people are aware of this fact, it changed the rotation of our planet. Well, the possibly goods news is that this side effect is fairly insignificant. NASA scientists calculated that this slight shift increased the length of day by 0.06 microseconds and made Earth only very slightly more round in the middle and  flat on the top. Do you feel relief? If specialists claim we have nothing to worry about, then I guess we shouldn't worry. Then why am I worried? Why don't I feel relief? People are messing with our planet and to be honest I'm not sure if it's possible to predict the long-term consequences of such interference.

I hope you'll enjoy the texts and that we'll have an interesting discussion. I'm very interested in your opinion with regards to this topic.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinas-three-gorges-dam-disaster/

http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/files/three_gorges_dam.pdf

1. What do you think about intervening in the world of nature? Do human beings have the right to do that?

2. Do you know any other constructions/creations that caused some significant climate/environmental changes? What kind of changes did it cause?

3. Do you think that scientists are really able to predict the consequences of interference when it comes to Earth rotation or environment?

4. Does one country have the right to decide about the future of other countries, other people? The dam itself is not only harmful for the Chinese and their country, but also for other countries, nations, people.

Week 6 [04-10.12.17] Computers have personality too!

Hi,  I would like to present something kind of entertaining, especially for introverts. Here is the paper you can refer to:
https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs224n/reports/2761115.pdf
The authors managed to train a sequence to sequence model to reflect personalities of characters from famous, American TV shows.

Although methods used to create chatbots hugely advanced from initial, rule-based solutions, they're still far from the concept of the general artificial intelligence. Answers given by chatbots are based on a probability calculated from a dataset used for training. Chatbots fail miserably when you ask them a question that is too different than anything they saw during a training phase. 

However, I find it encouraging that authors succeed in encoding personality-specific features into their network and managed to fool human judges to believe that some answers given by chatbots were answers made by given character from a TV show.

You can play with the chatbot yourself here (it requires flash player): http://www.mitsuku.com/

1. It's difficult to measure the accuracy of a chatbot as a single question can have many good answers. How well in your opinion can modern chatbots fake a real conversation?
2. Assuming that a chatbot is accurate, do you think you could become emotionally attached to it?
3. Do you think that natural language is a better way to interact with a computer than a limited set of commands? Why?

Week 5 [27.11-03.12.17] Electric and/or autonomous cars - are we in a bubble?

The electric automotive vehicle is now a reality. The keywords for the new wave of enthusiasm (subjectively designated as 'hype') are: electric, driverless, shared, AI. They have replaced the keywords of lately: social, mobile, cloud, crowdsourcing and numerous others.

What we want to discuss today, however, is not the social psychology of innovations and inventions, but the financial events that accompany some of the new technologies at times of their introduction.

To use a classic example - the Panama Canal. It followed the successful construction of the Suez Canal (193 km long), which was a great economic improvement. The crossing required only 77 kilometers of waterway, and it could be even more beneficial than the other passage, giving access to the American west coast and the Pacific without the dangerous Cape Horn passage on the way from the Atlantic. However, it was initially a financial black hole: Panama scandals

A more recent example is the famous Internet/Dotcom Bubble of 1999. I has not stopped the development of the Web, and many companies emerged during or shortly after it (Google, Facebook). However, it brought about a huge reallocation of wealth.

The most recent economic bubble was not related to new technology, so the investors can be all the less careful about investments into what is arguably 'the future'.

The reference article for today:
http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/07/investing/peak-oil-electric-cars-tesla/index.html

Some videos, representing a different perspective:
The Case against Tesla
and
Tesla, Is the Dream of Elon Musk at Risk?

Questions:
1. Do you believe in the "Peak Oil" hypothesis? Could it be a demand peak rather than a supply one?
2. Would you invest in Tesla? Why?
3. Do you have an electric car? Or know a person who does? Under what conditions would you buy one, and when could this predictably happen (which year)?