<h2>Bye, Watson</h2>
On Thursday, STAT published <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2019/04/18/ibm-halting-sales-of-watson-for-drug-discovery/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a story</a> claiming that IBM is halting sales of Watson for Drug Discovery — a service that uses the company&#8217;s Watson AI to analyze connections between genes, drugs, and diseases on the hunt for useful new medications — citing as its source a person familiar with IBM&#8217;s internal decision-making.
&#8220;We are focusing our resources within Watson Health to double down on the adjacent field of clinical development where we see an even greater market need for our data and AI capabilities,&#8221; an IBM spokesperson told STAT — a sign that eight years after launching Watson Health, IBM still isn&#8217;t quite sure how AI should factor into the future of healthcare.
<h2>Overpromised, Underdelivered</h2>
The STAT source cited a &#8220;lackluster financial performance&#8221; as IBM&#8217;s reason for no longer developing and selling Watson for Drug Discovery. That mirrors the &#8220;<a href="https://www.statnews.com/2018/06/15/ibm-watson-health-scale-back-hospital-business/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lack of demand</a>&#8221; reasoning IBM gave for scaling back the part of Watson Health dedicated to helping hospitals manage certain contracts in June 2018.
It&#8217;s hard to imagine why the systems would be in high demand, though — several healthcare experts <a href="https://futurism.com/doctors-ibm-watson-ai" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told IEEE Spectrum</a> earlier in April that IBM had &#8220;overpromised and underdelivered&#8221; with Watson Health.
&#8220;Merely proving that you have powerful technology is not sufficient,&#8221; healthcare data strategist Martin Kohn <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/diagnostics/how-ibm-watson-overpromised-and-underdelivered-on-ai-health-care?fbclid=IwAR3jPskgx-CApl6KmVV12tV8EIKuP_jjkWUgHD7XerFgz9gVKNDXMLk5bSU" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told the publication</a>. &#8220;Prove to me that it will actually do something useful — that it will make my life better, and my patients’ lives better.&#8221;
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2019/04/18/ibm-halting-sales-of-watson-for-drug-discovery/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">IBM halting sales of Watson AI tool for drug discovery amid sluggish growth</a> [STAT]
More on Watson Health: <a href="https://futurism.com/doctors-ibm-watson-ai" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Doctors Are Losing Faith in IBM Watson’s AI Doctor</a>

The program is reportedly ending due to "lackluster financial performance."

IBM pulls the plug on drug-discovering Watson AI

Doctor Dud

IBM is halting development and sales of its Watson AI designed to find promising new medications, according to a new STAT story.

IBM Pulls the Plug on Drug-Discovering Watson AI

It's starting to look like IBM's high hopes for Watson Health were misplaced.

<h2>Death Metal</h2>
In a project called &#8220;Relentless Doppelganger,&#8221; a neural network is grinding out the blast beats, super-distorted guitars, and bellowing vocals of death metal.
The best part of all: it&#8217;s streaming its brutal creations 24 hours a day on YouTube — an intriguing and public example of AI that&#8217;s now able to generate convincing imitations of human art.
<iframe width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CNNmBtNcccE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<h2>Dadabots</h2>
The neural network is the work of Dadabots, a research duo that experiments with creating music using artificial intelligence tools.
The death metal project, which they trained using tracks by death metal band Archspire, is the first that they&#8217;ve livestreamed instead of releasing as an album, and the change in format had everything to do with the quality of the neural network&#8217;s output.
In Dadabots&#8217; previous experiments, which dabbled in <a href="https://theoutline.com/post/2556/this-frostbitten-black-metal-album-was-created-by-an-artificial-intelligence?zd=1&amp;zi=6gnzy5cu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">black metal and Beatles-inspired tracks</a>, only about 5 percent of the AI-generated tracks were usable, co-creator CJ Carr told Futurism, and the programmers had to curate it.
&#8220;The remarkable part is the high quality-to-shit ratio,&#8221; Carr told Futurism of this new project. &#8220;Here, we livestream 100 percent of it,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Zero curation necessary.&#8221;
<h2>Black Metal</h2>
Part of the success of &#8220;Relentless Doppelganger,&#8221; Carr suspects, is the relentless speed of Archspire&#8217;s songs.
&#8220;It seems the faster the blast beats, the more stable the music,&#8221; he told Futurism. &#8220;Archspire is insanely fast.&#8221;
READ MORE: <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwnzm7/this-youtube-channel-streams-ai-generated-black-metal-247" target="_blank" rel="noopener">This YouTube Channel Streams AI-Generated Death Metal 24/7</a> [Motherboard]
More on AI-generated music: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-generated-music-legal-clusterfuck" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Expert: AI-Generated Music Is A “Total Legal Clusterf*ck”</a>

"The remarkable part is the high-quality-to-shit ratio."

Listen to brutal death metal made by a neural network

Horns Up

A neural network is grinding out the blast beats, super-distorted guitars, and bellowing vocals of death metal — and livestreaming it.

Listen to Brutal Death Metal Made by a Neural Network

This is the finest death metal that AI can dream up.

<h2>AI-Generated Music</h2>
If you train a music-generating artificial intelligence exclusively on tracks by Beyoncé, do you owe the pop star a cut of any resulting songs&#8217; profits? And is it even legal to use copyrighted songs to train an AI in the first place?
Those are just a couple of the questions The Verge poses in a fascinating <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/17/18299563/ai-algorithm-music-law-copyright-human">new story</a> about AI-generated music published Wednesday. And while the publication consulted numerous experts from the music, tech, and legal industries for the story, the input of one person in particular — Jonathan Bailey, CTO of audio tech company iZotope — seemed to most concisely sum up the issue.
&#8220;I won’t mince words,&#8221; he told The Verge. &#8220;This is a total legal clusterfuck.&#8221;
<h2>Imitation Game</h2>
Despite the U.S. Copyright Office bringing up the potential problems that could arise from computer songwriters <a href="https://www.copyright.gov/reports/annual/archive/ar-1965.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">way back in 1965</a>, U.S. copyright law has yet to nail down exactly who owns what when a computer is involved in the creative process, according to The Verge.
As it stands, the Beyoncé-trained AI could crank out an entire album of &#8220;Lemonade&#8221;-esque tracks, and as long as none of them sounded too much like any specific Beyoncé song, the AI-generated music wouldn&#8217;t be infringing on her copyrights — and the AI&#8217;s creator wouldn&#8217;t legally owe the artist a penny, lawyer Meredith Rose told The Verge.
Less clear is the use of copyrighted songs to train an AI. Several of The Verge&#8217;s sources said there isn&#8217;t a straightforward answer as to whether buying a song grants a person the right to then use it to train a machine learning system.
<h2>Clock&#8217;s Ticking</h2>
Of course, programmers <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvq54v/why-is-ai-generated-music-still-so-bad" target="_blank" rel="noopener">have yet to come anywhere near</a> creating AIs capable of autonomously churning out hit songs in the key of Bey — or anyone else for that matter — but that doesn&#8217;t mean they won&#8217;t be able to one day.
&#8220;It’s like the future of self-driving cars,&#8221; media-focused venture capitalist Leonard Brody <a href="http://fortune.com/2018/10/25/artificial-intelligence-music/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Fortune in October</a>. &#8220;Level 1 is an artist using a machine to assist them. Level 2 is where the music is crafted by a machine but performed by a human. Level 3 is where the whole thing is machines.&#8221;
We&#8217;ve already seen several examples of those first two levels — tech-forward songstress Taryn Southern shared songwriting credits with AI on her <a href="https://www.prweb.com/releases/taryn_southern_is_first_artist_to_compose_pop_album_with_ai/prweb15792349.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;I AM AI&#8221; album</a>, released in September, and that same month, Iranian composer Ash Koosha <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/musician-ai-songs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">released an album</a> on which he sang songs composed by AI-powered software.
If Brody&#8217;s prediction is correct, the next step will be AIs creating music by themselves — and if we&#8217;re already in the midst of a &#8220;legal clusterfuck,&#8221; who knows what sort of legislative nightmare that will be?
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/17/18299563/ai-algorithm-music-law-copyright-human" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WE’VE BEEN WARNED ABOUT AI AND MUSIC FOR OVER 50 YEARS, BUT NO ONE’S PREPARED</a> [The Verge]
More on AI songwriters: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/musician-ai-songs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">This Musician Created an AI to Write Songs for Him, and They’re Pretty Strange</a>

Time is running out for the laws to catch up with the tech.

Expert: AI-generated music is a "total legal clusterf*ck"

Hot Mess

The legal industry isn't ready for AI-generated music, leading to all sorts of new questions about copyrights in the age of creative machines.

Expert: AI-Generated Music Is A “Total Legal Clusterf*ck”

What happens when an AI is trained to mimic just one artist's style?

<h2>Retro Rewind</h2>
Your favorite classic video games are getting a killer makeover. But it&#8217;s not big-name game developers making the improvements: it&#8217;s independent modders.
Most game updates require teams of designers and coders working for months or even years, according to a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/18/18311287/ai-upscaling-algorithms-video-games-mods-modding-esrgan-gigapixel">fascinating new feature</a> in The Verge, but now many are using machine learning to expedite the process — allowing a single highly-motivated modder to refurbish a game in just a few weeks.
<h2>Pixel Perfect</h2>
One extraordinary example: In March, Reddit user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/BearborgOne">BearborgOne</a> used a program called <a href="https://github.com/xinntao/ESRGAN">ESRGAN</a> (which stands for Enhanced Super-Resolution Generative Adversarial Networks) to retexture the beloved GameCube classic Metroid Prime 2 into a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39xrl9z2ZZs">4k masterpiece.</a>
ESRGAN plucks the textures from the original base game, analyzes them, and fills the gaps in the low resolution graphics, effectively smoothing and sharpening the game while preserving the original design. After applying AI upscaling, blurry clouds of pixels become detailed buildings or trees — much like an art restorationist reviving the lost faces of a neglected painting.
<h2>Takes a Village</h2>
It might sound like the AI does all the work, but it&#8217;s not that simple. According to The Verge, some games can take hundreds of hours to tweak the algorithm and clean the final images by hand. Just one monster could take between five and 15 hours, depending on the complexity game&#8217;s animation.
Still, AI is a powerful tool. Daniel Trolie, a teacher and student from Norway, <a href="https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/46221">updated</a> The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, an RPG classic from 2002.
&#8220;It was like witchcraft,&#8221; he <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/18/18311287/ai-upscaling-algorithms-video-games-mods-modding-esrgan-gigapixel">told The Verge</a>. &#8220;It looked like I just downloaded a hi-res texture pack from Bethesda themselves.&#8221;
<h2>DIY Attitude</h2>
Communities of modders gather on the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/GameUpscale/">r/GameUpscale reddit</a> and <a href="https://discordapp.com/invite/jkFHzGD">Discord channel</a> to share technique and technology if you want to revive your favorite out of date classic yourself.
Still, it&#8217;s understandable if you&#8217;re a pixel purist. Nostalgia for old games might be fueling the movement, but there&#8217;s something wonderful about enjoying vintage graphics. Anyone who played Ocarina of Time on Gamecube, after all, knows that the scare of a giant spider dropping on your head wouldn&#8217;t be the same without the gangly pixelated legs.
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/18/18311287/ai-upscaling-algorithms-video-games-mods-modding-esrgan-gigapixel">Artificial Intelligence is Helping Old Video Games Look Like New</a> [The Verge]
More on video games: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/schools-varsity-video-game-teams">Schools in Eight States Now Have Varsity Video Game Teams.</a>

The AI works "like witchcraft" to revitalize old games.

Machine learning is giving retro games cutting-edge graphics

Game On

By using machine learning technology, video game modders are reviving classic old games by giving their graphics a major update.

Machine Learning Is Giving Retro Games Cutting-Edge Graphics

Your favorite classic video game is getting a makeover.

<h2>Diversity Crisis</h2>
If you can think of a problem, there&#8217;s likely a researcher somewhere trying to develop an <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/02/5-global-problems-that-ai-could-help-us-solve/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">artificial intelligence to solve it</a>. But while AIs themselves have grown more diverse in recent years, the researchers creating the systems haven&#8217;t.
According to a new <a href="https://ainowinstitute.org/discriminatingsystems.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> out of New York University&#8217;s AI Now Institute, the AI industry is still dominated by white men — and this &#8220;diversity crisis&#8221; is partially to blame for the biased AIs we&#8217;re <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/biased-self-driving-cars-darker-skin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">seeing</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/human-rights-discriminatory-artificial-intelligence" target="_blank" rel="noopener">crop up</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/amazons-face-rekognition-race-gender" target="_blank" rel="noopener">around the globe</a>.
&#8220;To date, the diversity problems of the AI industry and the issues of bias in the systems it builds have tended to be considered separately,&#8221; the researchers wrote. &#8220;But we suggest that these are two versions of the same problem: issues of discrimination in the workforce and in system building are deeply intertwined.&#8221;
<h2>By the Numbers</h2>
The AI Now team found that men comprise 82 percent of the authors at leading AI conferences and more than 80 percent of AI professors. The numbers don&#8217;t get better when you leave academia, either: women make up just 15 and 10 percent of Facebook and Google&#8217;s AI research staffs, respectively.
Black people appear to be even less represented in the AI industry — machine vision researcher Timnit Gebru told the AI Now team she was one of just six black people at a 2016 machine learning conference attended by 8,500 people.
That lack of gender and racial diversity isn&#8217;t just a problem for those trying to work in the AI industry, either — it&#8217;s also a problem for society as a whole.
&#8220;The urgency behind this issue is increasing as AI becomes increasingly integrated into society,&#8221; Stanford researcher Danaë Metaxa, who wasn&#8217;t involved with the report, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/16/artificial-intelligence-lack-diversity-new-york-university-study" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told The Guardian</a>. &#8220;Essentially, the lack of diversity in AI is concentrating an increasingly large amount of power and capital in the hands of a select subset of people.&#8221;
<h2>Shifting Gears</h2>
The AI Now team&#8217;s report includes several suggestions for how AI companies can improve workplace diversity. These include the creation of incentives for hiring underrepresented groups and the publication of detailed compensation reports broken down by race and gender.
The team also shared recommendations for addressing biased AIs themselves, such as having the systems audited by independent parties and increasing transparency as to where the AIs are used.
&#8220;Every day that goes by it gets more difficult to solve the problem,&#8221; Tess Posner, CEO of AI4ALL, a nonprofit focused on AI diversity, told The Guardian. &#8220;Right now we are in an exciting moment where we can make a difference before we see how much more complicated it can get later.&#8221;
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/16/artificial-intelligence-lack-diversity-new-york-university-study" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8216;Disastrous&#8217; lack of diversity in AI industry perpetuates bias, study finds</a> [The Guardian]
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/human-rights-discriminatory-artificial-intelligence" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stop Using Discriminatory AI, Human Rights Groups Say</a>

It seems if you aren't white or male, the AI industry doesn't want you right now.

Experts: To Solve AI’s Bias Problem, Hire Fewer White Men

AI-firmative Action

The creation of biased AIs is linked to the tech industry's overwhelmingly white, male workforce, according to a new report.

The industry's "diversity crisis" is partially to blame for its racist, sexist AIs.

<h2>Wake Up, Neo</h2>
In an interview with MIT researcher Lex Fridman, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reiterated his belief that we&#8217;re all living inside a simulation.
When Fridman <a href="https://youtu.be/dEv99vxKjVI">asked him</a> what his first question would be for the first-ever artificial general intelligence system, Musk replied: &#8220;What&#8217;s outside the simulation?&#8221;
<h2>Pong of my People</h2>
Musk has floated the possibility that we&#8217;re all living in a &#8220;The Matrix&#8221; style simulation for several years. During a 2016 interview at a tech conference, <a href="https://futurism.com/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation-elon-musk-thinks-so">Musk asserted that</a> there&#8217;s &#8220;a one in billions chance we’re in base reality.&#8221;
The argument: video games have evolved from a &#8220;Pong, two rectangles and a dot&#8221; he told audiences at the 2016 conference, to &#8220;photorealistic 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously.&#8221; Given enough time, those games would become &#8220;indistinguishable from reality.&#8221;
<h2>Next Level</h2>
For Musk, human reality amounts to a computer simulation created by greater forces — the extent to which he actually prescribes to this theory is hard to tell. But he has voiced concern about all-powerful AI. He has even <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/13/elon-musk-at-sxsw-a-i-is-more-dangerous-than-nuclear-weapons.html">argued</a> that AI is &#8220;far more dangerous than nukes&#8221; at a different tech conference in 2018.
&#8220;The singularity for this level of the simulation is coming soon,&#8221; Musk replied to a tweet by the official Twitter account of the television show <a href="http://www.adultswim.com/videos/rick-and-morty/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rick and Morty</a> in 2017. &#8220;I wonder what the levels above us look like.&#8221;
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.inverse.com/article/54900-elon-musk-reveals-the-one-question-he-would-ask-a-human-level-a-i">Elon Musk Reveals the One Question He Would Ask a Human-Level A.I.</a> [Inverse] 

More on the simulation hypothesis: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/mit-living-simulation-hypothesis">MIT Prof: It&#8217;s More Likely We&#8217;re Living in a Simulation Than Not</a>

"I wonder what the levels above us look like."

Elon Musk's question for super-smart AI: what’s outside the simulation?

I'm In

In an interview with MIT researchers Lex Fridman, Tesla CEO and visionary Elon Musk reiterated his belief that we're all living inside a simulation.

Elon Musk’s Question for Super-Smart AI: What’s Outside the Simulation?

Elon Musk chooses the red pill.

<h2>Dumb and Dangerous</h2>
On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/walmart-is-rolling-out-the-robots-11554782460?mod=e2tw&amp;ns=prod/accounts-wsj&amp;ns=prod/accounts-wsj" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that Walmart planned to add <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/walmart-floor-cleaning-robots">thousands more</a> autonomous robots to its workforce.
&#8220;With automation we are able to take away some of the tasks that associates don’t enjoy doing,&#8221; Mark Propes, Walmart U.S.&#8217;s senior director of central operations, told the WSJ. &#8220;At the same time we continue to open up new jobs in other things in the store.&#8221;
But one employee is complaining that all the Walmart robots are doing is giving him a new, even more tedious task — babysitting a robot, essentially — while also potentially putting customers in harm&#8217;s way.
<h2>Babysitting Bots</h2>
A person who identified themselves as a Walmart worker named Mark from Niagara Falls, N.Y. recently <a href="https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/04/11/cleaning-robots-grocery-stores-walmart">called in</a> to the NPR program &#8220;On Point.&#8221; He told the hosts that the autonomous robot scrubbers have only added to his workload.
&#8220;You hook it up to your cellphone, and it sends you text messages when it needs help,&#8221; Mark said. &#8220;The other night it needed help at 11:07, 11:10, 11:20, 11:23, 11:25&#8230; The time I take babysitting it, I could scrub rings around it with a Tenant T7 auto-scrubber.&#8221;
When the Walmart robots do work autonomously, they can only handle &#8220;the easy stuff,&#8221; according to Mark, who explained that associates will instruct the machines to &#8220;scrub the same alley&#8230;over and over again all night&#8221; just to keep them occupied.
<h2>Hijacking In Progress</h2>
Mark also noted that the scrubbers have a design flaw that he believes makes the machines &#8220;dangerous.&#8221;
He told &#8220;On Point&#8221; that he&#8217;s required to enter a PIN to set a robot off to autonomously clean a route, but he doesn&#8217;t have to enter one to operate the machine manually. When the robot finishes scrubbing one route, it just waits for an employee to assign it another.
&#8220;It&#8217;s sitting there unattended, fully energized, where anybody can get up on it, and if they hit the accelerator, it will move,&#8221; he said.
<h2 data-reactid="288">Clean Slate</h2>
Given Mark&#8217;s experience with the Walmart robots, his answer when asked whether he&#8217;s worried about losing his job to one isn&#8217;t exactly surprising.
&#8220;I&#8217;m old enough to retire, and I&#8217;m really not, one way or the other,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But I think the bozos who make and sell this will be looking for something else to do before auto-scrubber operators will.&#8221;
Still, Walmart&#8217;s robots are barely out of the testing phase and will likely improve as the company is able to collect more data on them. Perhaps then they&#8217;ll free associates from tedious tasks — or, despite Mark&#8217;s skepticism, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/04/walmarts-future-workforce-robots-and-freelancers/557063/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">their jobs altogether</a>.
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/04/11/cleaning-robots-grocery-stores-walmart" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8216;I Could Scrub Rings Around It&#8217;: Walmart Employee Slams Grocery Store Robots</a> [On Point]
More on Walmart&#8217;s robots: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/walmart-floor-cleaning-robots" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Walmart Is Rolling out Floor-Cleaning Robots in 1,500 Stores</a>

This grouchy employee hates Walmart's new floor-scrubbing robots

No Scrubs

An employee shares his experience working with Walmart robots, which are supposed to make his job easier but instead add to his workload.

This Grouchy Employee Hates Walmart’s New Floor-Scrubbing Robots

This worker alleges that the bots need constant babysitting — and have a "dangerous" design flaw.

<h2>BookBot</h2>
Scientific publisher Springer Nature just released its first book written entirely by a machine learning algorithm.
The title of the book, <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-16800-1">Lithium-Ion Batteries: A Machine-Generated Summary of Current Research</a> cuts straight to the point: 247 pages of prominent research into lithium-ion batteries and AI-written summaries of the field. The book shows how AI can help scientists stay on top of the latest research — but also algorithms are now able to review vast bodies of literature and select the most important details on their own.
<h2>Ghost Writer</h2>
The author of the book is listed as Beta Writer, an algorithm built by scientists at Germany&#8217;s Goethe University.
To write the book, Beta Writer perused an endless pile of articles on lithium ion batteries published in <a href="https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence-journal-boycot-open-access">Springer-owned academic journals</a> and pulled out the most relevant information, <a href="https://gizmodo.com/the-first-machine-generated-book-by-a-scholarly-publish-1833914900">according to Gizmodo</a>.
<h2>First Of Many</h2>
Springer Nature writes that it plans to use Beta Writer to tackle other fields of research in the future, reusing the basic technology but aiming it at different kinds of science for upcoming books.
&#8220;Our goal is to initiate a broad discussion,&#8221; Sprinter wrote on the book&#8217;s page, &#8220;together with the research community and domain experts, about the future opportunities, challenges and limitations of this technology.&#8221;
READ MORE: <a href="https://gizmodo.com/the-first-machine-generated-book-by-a-scholarly-publish-1833914900">The First Machine-Generated Book by a Scholarly Publisher Is a Boring Read</a> [Gizmodo]
More on books: <a href="https://futurism.com/people-reading-publishers-gamifying-books">This Ebook Company Is Trying to Make Reading More Like Videogames</a>

The AI author, Beta Writer, could be adding more books to its resume soon.

A prominent publisher used machine learning to write a textbook

SparkNotes

The academic publisher Springer Nature just released a book summarizing lithium-ion battery research that was written by an AI algorithm.

A Prominent Publisher Used Machine Learning to Write a Textbook

Is this going to be on the test?

<h2>Call Hating</h2>
Robocalls are <a href="https://futurism.com/robocalls-arms-race" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on the rise</a>, with <a href="https://firstorion.com/nearly-50-of-u-s-mobile-traffic-will-be-scam-calls-by-2019/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">nearly a third</a> of all phone calls now made by automated dialing machines programmed to play a prerecorded message if someone answers.
Now, experts are <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/06/tech/robocalls-scam-voice/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">predicting</a> that the annoying calls are destined for a high-tech — and highly disturbing — next level of evolution: scammers using <a href="https://futurism.com/baidu-clone-voices-seconds" target="_blank" rel="noopener">voice-mimicking AIs</a> to make their pre-recorded messages sound like your friends and family.
<h2>Who&#8217;s This?</h2>
In a <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/06/tech/robocalls-scam-voice/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">story</a> published on Saturday, academic Tarun Wadhwa told CNN that scammers could one day use the swaths of data available online to find out who a person is close to and then use that information to create robocall messages that sound like someone the target knows.
&#8220;It&#8217;s going to be like Photoshop — something so easy, widespread, and well known that we stop tracking how it&#8217;s being used against people personally and don&#8217;t find it surprising,&#8221; Wadhwa said, adding that he could &#8220;easily imagine situations in which these sorts of voice-mimicry technologies are used to sow confusion, extort people, and make fraud and scams far more precise.&#8221;
<h2>The Hang Up</h2>
According to Alex Quilici, CEO of robocall-prevention app YouMailIf, we thankfully don&#8217;t have to worry about robocallers pretending to be our grandmothers just yet.
&#8220;Building a fake computer voice right now is a decent amount of work,&#8221; he told CNN. &#8220;If I wanted to build one that sounded like you, for example, I&#8217;d need to get a ton of samples of you saying specific phonemes, and train a computer model on that.&#8221;
READ MORE: <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/06/tech/robocalls-scam-voice/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The frightening future of robocalls: Numbers and voices you know</a> [CNN]
More on robocalls: <a href="https://futurism.com/robocalls-arms-race" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rise of the Robocallers: Here’s How We’ll Avoid a Future of Scammers</a>

The next level of scamming could involve voice-mimicking tech.

Prepare for Robocall Hell, where scam bots pretend to be your mom

Say What?

Experts tell CNN they envision a future in which scammers use voice-mimicking technology to make robocalls sound like someone a target knows personally.

Prepare for Robocall Hell, Where Scam Bots Pretend to Be Your Mom

Future robocallers might sound just like your friends and family.

<h2>Mixed Messages</h2>
A New York City trial to determine whether <a href="https://futurism.com/amazons-face-rekognition-race-gender" target="_blank" rel="noopener">facial recognition tech</a> could identify drivers as they entered or exited the city via the Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Bridge appears to be a complete failure that successfully identified zero percent of travelers — but that isn&#8217;t stopping the city from moving forward with the program.
In a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/mtas-initial-foray-into-facial-recognition-at-high-speed-is-a-bust-11554642000?ns=prod/accounts-wsj" target="_blank" rel="noopener">story</a> published Monday, The Wall Street Journal says it reviewed an email sent by a Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) official to a senior official in NY governor Andrew Cuomo&#8217;s administration on Nov. 29.
According to the WSJ, the MTA official wrote that the &#8220;initial period for the proof of concept testing at the RFK for facial recognition has been completed and failed with no faces (0%) being detected within acceptable parameters.&#8221;
The official also wrote, puzzlingly, that the MTA was procuring additional cameras to expand the project to other locations.
<h2>Safety Vs. Privacy</h2>
When questioned about the WSJ&#8217;s story, a Cuomo administration official <a href="https://gizmodo.com/new-yorks-creepy-plan-to-scan-faces-at-toll-booths-has-1833885611" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Gizmodo</a> that &#8220;the governor’s number one priority is the safety and security of New Yorkers.&#8221;
Daniel Schwarz, privacy and technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union, disagrees.
&#8220;This latest news validates our concerns that this technology is invasive and inaccurate—and the government has no justification for using it to undermine the privacy of our daily commutes,&#8221; he told Gizmodo. &#8220;Facial recognition technology vastly expands the government’s capacity for intrusive, real-time surveillance.&#8221;
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/mtas-initial-foray-into-facial-recognition-at-high-speed-is-a-bust-11554642000?ns=prod/accounts-wsj" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MTA’s Initial Foray Into Facial Recognition at High Speed Is a Bust</a> [The Wall Street Journal]
More on facial recognition: <a href="https://futurism.com/amazons-face-rekognition-race-gender" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Amazon’s Facial Recognition Struggles With Darker Skin</a>

But that isn't stopping the city from expanding the program.

New York’s facial recognition trial was a complete failure

Scan Scam

A facial recognition trial focused on New York's Robert F. Kennedy Bridge didn't correctly identify a single person's face.

/Artificial Intelligence