Friday, 27 April 2018

Week 4 [23.04-29.04.2018] You Only Look Once version 3

Today I want to present a noncontroversial topic by a possibly controversial person:
https://pjreddie.com/media/files/papers/YOLOv3.pdf

A while back, J. Redmon and co-authors published their first object detection architecture, YOLO. The second iteration offered a significant improvement in both speed and accuracy. The current version presents itself as an incremental improvement, but there are other opinions about it, namely:
https://mc.ai/yolo3-a-huge-improvement/

Questions:
1. Do you think such great networks, not using capsules or GANs have future?
2. What's your opinion about the article style?
3. What are your ideas of possible applications of YOLO?

Tuesday, 24 April 2018

Week 4 [23.04-29.04.2018] Google’s new AI algorithm predicts heart disease by looking at your eyes.

Hi!

In February, The Verge posted an article that describes the findings in the paper published in the "Nature" journal "Biomedical Engineering".

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/19/17027902/google-verily-ai-algorithm-eye-scan-heart-disease-cardiovascular-risk

As we may observe, the direction of development diagnostic procedures is right now strictly related to new findings in the field of computer vision and deep learning analysis. The idea seems to be promising and it is developing dynamically.

However, if we take into consideration the report posted in 2013 (Frey C. B., Osborne M, A.: "The Future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerisation?", it could be searched easily if someone is interested) we can see that researchers at the University of Oxford were predicting that by 2050, nearly 50% of current professions will disappear as a result of broadly understood computerization, but this will affect most jobs that require automated, repetitive tasks rather than advanced thinking, intuition and problem solving.

Do you think that findings from this report are still actual? Or maybe it is now a little bit expired if we take into consideration that this prediction was made in the time when "deep learning revolution" in the October 2012 just begun? Going further: do you think that programming profession could be replaced, at least on some level, by the AI? I'm asking about that because sometimes we can meet the perception of a programmer being a craftsman and not an artist.

And finally, are you interested in the field of machine learning and/or computer vision? If you are using them in your professional or scientific activity, share with us your favourite toolchain. In particular, I'm interested in the languages/libraries, along with some information about why you chose the components you did and how they all fit together into your workflow.

Cheers,
Artur

Monday, 23 April 2018

Week 4 [23.04-29.04.2018] Autonomous vehicle

We know that Tesla, Google, Uber, Nvidia, as well as Chinese Baidu, Honda, Toyota and several other companies are working on autonomous cars. There are also plans for autonomous trucks to automate the transport of goods. The potential benefits of autonomous cars include reduced mobility and infrastructure costs, increased safety, increased mobility, increased customer satisfaction and reduced crime. In particular, a significant reduction in the number of road accidents and the resulting injuries, thereby reducing the need for insurance. Unfortunately, many ethical issues arise during the design of such systems. The recent accident with the Uber autonomous vehicle was widely reported in the public media. Companies such as Uber, Nvidia and Toyota suspended testing their autonomous cars. However, I believe that cars driven by artificial intelligence are the future of transport.

Please read articles and answer questions:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/uber-robocar-kills-pedestrian-despite-presence-of-safety-driver

https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/transportation/self-driving/jensen-huang-on-the-uber-tragedy-and-why-nvidia-suspended-testing

1. Do you think that such cars should be tested on the streets?
2. Can virtual reality tests completely replace those performed in the real world?
3. Do you think that in the future all vehicles will be driven by Artificial Intelligence?

Monday, 16 April 2018

Week 3 [16.04-22.04.2018] Pseudo-random sequence

Hello;
Always in my professional and scientific work I was wondering where to get a random sequence. A string with which I will be able to secure my data. Everyone knows methods of breaking passwords or just random sequences (all connected with IT, of course).

I started probably like most of you from the random function in excel, but it was not the fulfillment of my dreams.

This week, the article https://www.livescience.com/62271-random-numbers-quantum-mechanics.html was published, which describes a new method of generating random sequences. In my opinion, generating 1024 random sequences in 10 minutes is really a success.

If you take into account, for example, a pseudo-random sequence of 180 years, you are able to emulate, for example, in 20 minutes instead of a year ... unless it makes a difference.

1) Do you use pseudo-random sequences in your professional work?
2) If so, what length of strings do you use and what generators do you use?
3) Do you think that pseudorandom sequences are able to secure our data well?
4) Is white noise not the best pseudo-random sequence?
5)  ... Maybe you want to ask something ??

Sunday, 15 April 2018

Week 3 [16.04-22.04.2018] Political Ideology Detection Using Recursive Neural Networks

Dear All,

Today I wish to present you an article about automatic detection of political ideology using recursive neural networks. In recent days there were discussed problems of privacy and influence of social media on political views. In this article the authors use neural networks, which are very efficient in solving many problems, to identify political views based on spoken and written language features.

http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P14-1105

1. In the article authors use US congressional floor debate transcripts and ideological books. Could you think of any other kind of data that this method may work for?
2. Do you think that such tools are safe for our society and freedom of opinion?
3. Could it be used for good purposes?

Saturday, 14 April 2018

Week 2 [ 09.04-15.04.2018], Facebook & Cambridge Analytica

Hi everyone!

The whole world is looking at Facebook and Cambridge Analytica case. I'm sure that everyone heard about it. This article is only short summary:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/facebook-cambridge-analytica-a-timeline-of-the-data-hijacking-scandal.html

I have some questions for you:
1) Do you think that sending personalized ads has had a big impact on Trump voters?
2) What do you think about similar activity in Poland? That is possible or we are less susceptible to suggestions and ads?
3) Do you see any other threats related to access to all private Facebook users information?
4) Do you see any other possibility how to avoid similar impact than don't using Facebook?

Monday, 9 April 2018

Week 2 [ 09.04-15.04.2018] Pigeons (Columba livia) as Trainable Observers of Pathology and Radiology Breast Cancer Images

Hi everybody,
today I would like to present you not so fresh medical article, but still very interesting. Today will be about pigeons and their remarkable ability to distinguish benign from malignant human breast histopathology after training with differential food reinforcement. I know that it may sound scary but it is not :-).

 Ariticle:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141357


Questions:
  1. What do you think about using animals in this way?
  2. What do you think about authors experiment in context of today's technology like medical imaging? Can animals may be better then humans?
  3. Do you know any other way animals can help in discovering cancer or any other disease (I am not thinking about experiments on animals)?
Cheers
Tomek

Week 2 [ 09.04-15.04.2018] Online Shopping Values and Purchase Behaviour

Dear all,

This week I would like to present my thoughts on something that became inevitable part of our lives - online shopping. We are all familiar with that subject and probably almost everyday we shop or purchase online either tickets, food or something else.

In recent years there have been an increase in the number of researches on factors that influence customers behaviour and check the intentions as well as values that we are looking for in online shopping. It is not a secret that many psychologists, analysts and specialists in field of online marketing are working very hard to explore and analyse new methods of attracting our attention to the product. From customer’s perspective we face problems like financial risk, non-delivery risk, return policy inconsistencies, customer service problems and many more. There is no doubt that we want to be sure that what we paid for will be delivered, it will be as described and will meet our expectations. I present few links to scientific articles on developments made in last few years.

Sources:




Questions to answer:
  1. Have you ever purchased online a product that was inconsistent with the description provided by seller?
  2. Is online shopping in your opinion secure? Have you encountered problems that you could have avoided if you bought in a stationary store?
  3. Is law regulating online sales in a sufficient way? 
  4. Do you have any ideas to improve law regulations, so that online shopping is more comfortable and safe for customers?

Best regards,
Cezary