DARPA head on AI dangers: ‘It’s not one of those things that keeps me up at night’ | Washington Post

For a timely and multifaceted AI reality check, consider the book Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it (review in The Verge; author synopsis)

"During a Q&A with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius on Thursday, DARPA Director Steven H. Walker said AI is still “a very fragile capability,” one that has little capacity for acting independently.

“At least in the Defense Department today, we don’t see machines doing anything by themselves,” he said, noting that agency researchers are intensely focused on building “human-machine” partnerships. “I think we’re a long way off from a generalized AI, even in the third wave in what we’re pursuing.”

"It’s not one of those things that keeps me up at night,” he added, referring to dangers posed by AI."

DARPA head on AI dangers: ‘It’s not one of those things that keeps me up at night’ | Washington Post

HCL picks up Notes, spanks total of $1.8bn at Honest John's IBM software sale | The Register

I assume IBM will continue to sell Notes/Domino and Connections to enterprise customers, just as it does, e.g., Microsoft products... The official spin: HCL Technologies to Acquire Select IBM Software Products for $1.8B | IBM News Room; from IBM sells software portfolio including Notes and Domino to HCL for $1.8b | ZDNet: ""We believe the time is right to divest these select collaboration, marketing, and commerce software assets, which are increasingly delivered as stand-alone products," [IBM senior vice president of cognitive solution and research John] Kelly said."

"Indian software outfit HCL Technologies is snapping up $1.8bn worth of IBM's software in a deal expected to close by the middle of 2019.

The acquisition, worth just under 5 per cent of a RedHat in IBM parlance, will see the Uttar Pradesh-based company absorb secure app platform Appscan and device manager BigFix. On-premises marketing automation will come courtesy of Unica, eCommerce from Commerce and a Portal digital experience is also included. Connections (for workstream collaboration) is also being handed over.

It is quite a stuffed shopping basket, and is rounded out by everyone's favourite unexpected item in the bagging area, Notes and Domino."

HCL picks up Notes, spanks total of $1.8bn at Honest John's IBM software sale | The Register

DeepMind Achieves Holy Grail: An AI That Can Master Games Like Chess and Go Without Human Help | IEEE Spectrum

For details, see A general reinforcement learning algorithm that masters chess, shogi, and Go through self-play | Science

"DeepMind, the London-based subsidiary of Alphabet, has created a system that can quickly master any game in the class that includes chess, Go, and Shogi, and do so without human guidance.

The system, called AlphaZero, began its life last year by beating a DeepMind system that had been specialized just for Go. That earlier system had itself made history by beating one of the world’s best Go players, but it needed human help to get through a months-long course of improvement. AlphaZero trained itself—in just 3 days."

DeepMind Achieves Holy Grail: An AI That Can Master Games Like Chess and Go Without Human Help | IEEE Spectrum

Microsoft is rebuilding its Edge browser on Chrome and bringing it to the Mac | The Verge

For the PR spin take, see Microsoft Edge: Making the web better through more open source collaboration | Windows Blog; for the Mozilla take, see Goodbye, EdgeHTML | Mozilla blog (lead paragraph: "Microsoft is officially giving up on an independent shared platform for the internet. By adopting Chromium, Microsoft hands over control of even more of online life to Google.").

"Microsoft is announcing some significant changes to its Edge browser today. The software giant is beginning to rebuild Microsoft Edge to run on Chromium, the same open-source web rendering engine that powers Google’s Chrome browser. This means Edge will soon be powered by Blink and the V8 JavaScript engines. It’s a big move that means Microsoft is joining the open-source community in a much bigger way for the web.

“Ultimately, we want to make the web-experience better for many different audiences,” explains Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Windows. “People using Microsoft Edge (and potentially other browsers) will experience improved compatibility with all web sites, while getting the best-possible battery life and hardware integration on all kinds of Windows devices.”"

Microsoft is rebuilding its Edge browser on Chrome and bringing it to the Mac | The Verge

Crypto Market Crash Leaving Bankrupt Startups in its Wake | Bloomberg

Bitcoin is at ~$3,380 this morning, after hitting a new yearly low of $3,310; on a related note, see This Is What Happens When Bitcoin Miners Take Over Your Town | Politico Magazine

"The plunge in the cryptocurrency market is weighing on the software-development community that spawned over 1,000 digital coins amid dreams of independence from traditional financial systems and instant wealth.
[...]
Many of the companies are suffering because they kept a portion of their funds in digital assets, whether in tokens they sold through initial coin offerings or in Bitcoin and Ether, which served as the preferred means of exchange in the crypto world. As prices collapsed this year by more than 90 percent in some cases, and their so-called digital wallets thinned out, many developers found they couldn’t raise additional funding."

Crypto Market Crash Leaving Bankrupt Startups in its Wake | Bloomberg

Apple’s holiday deals: a sign of weakness, or a clever move to boost revenue? | Boston Globe

From a timely Apple reality check

"Like Microsoft, Apple is moving into the cloud. Apple’s online businesses, such as Apple Music, the Apple Pay payment system, iCloud data storage, and the App Store, are huge and booming. In fiscal 2018, they brought in $37 billion, up more than 54 percent from 2016. Anyone who owns an iPhone is a potential customer. You may not be able to afford an iPhone XS, but you can probably purchase an occasional game app or a subscription to Apple Music for your refurbished iPhone 7.

Apple’s trade-in program is intended to amp up sales, but not just iPhone sales. If it creates 5 or 10 million new iPhone users, it will pay off for years to come by creating new customers for the company’s cloud-based services. And once they’re plugged into Apple Music or iCloud, many will remain paying customers for life.

There’s no way Apple can sell iPhones as fast as it once did. But if it can follow Microsoft’s lead and grow its services business, it won’t matter."

Apple’s holiday deals: a sign of weakness, or a clever move to boost revenue? | Boston Globe

SpaceX’s Failed Landing Still Ended With a Clean Plop | Wired

See the full article for videos of the descent and "water landing"

"SPACEX LAUNCHED ITS 20th rocket of the year just two days after lofting a record 64 satellites into orbit. On this flight, a brand-new Falcon 9 hoisted a Dragon spacecraft into orbit, bound for the International Space Station. But unlike Monday’s textbook touchdown, today’s landing didn’t quite go as planned.

The Falcon’s first stage, the largest and most expensive portion of the rocket, was expected to navigate itself back to land after launching the Dragon spacecraft. But instead of gently touching down in the middle of SpaceX’s designated landing pad, the booster made an unscheduled plop into the Atlantic Ocean, just off the Florida coast. Video footage shared shortly after the incident shows the booster spinning out of control as it headed towards land."

SpaceX’s Failed Landing Still Ended With a Clean Plop | Wired

FAIR turns five: What we’ve accomplished and where we’re headed | Facebook Code

Check the source for several FAIR project overviews; on a related note, see Facebook's top AI scientist says it's 'dust' without artificial intelligence | CNN

"Five years ago, we created the Facebook AI Research (FAIR) group to advance the state of the art of AI through open research for the benefit of all — it’s an effort to understand the nature of intelligence so that we might create intelligent machines. Since then, FAIR has learned a lot and grown into an international research organization with labs in Menlo Park, New York, Paris, Montreal, Tel Aviv, Seattle, Pittsburgh, and London. AI has become so central to Facebook that FAIR is now part of a larger Facebook AI organization that works on all aspects of AI R&D, from fundamental research to applied research and technology development.

FAIR has applied an open model to all aspects of our work, collaborating broadly with the community. Our teams publish cutting-edge research early and often, and open-source our research code, data sets, and tools like PyTorch, fastText, FAISS, and Detectron where possible. The approach has been successful for advancing the state of AI research. This year, FAIR’s researchers have won recognition, including Best Paper awards, at ACL, EMNLP, CVPR, and ECCV, and Test of Time awards at ECCV, ICML, and NeurIPS. We know working in the open allows everyone to make faster progress on AI.

Making machines truly intelligent is a scientific challenge as well as a technological and product engineering challenge. A significant part of FAIR’s research focuses on fundamental questions about the keys to reasoning, prediction, planning, and unsupervised learning. And in turn, these areas of investigation require better theoretical understanding in fields such as generative models, causality, high-dimensional stochastic optimization, and game theory. These long-term research explorations are required to unlock the full future potential of artificial intelligence. Of all the projects we’ve tackled over the past five years, we’ve picked a handful that show how FAIR has approached its mission, contributed to our field, and made an impact on the world."

FAIR turns five: What we’ve accomplished and where we’re headed | Facebook Code

Global Stocks Plunge, Suggesting a Grim Day on Wall Street | NYT

Also see Arrest Shakes Huawei as Global Skepticism of Its Business Grows | NYT

"Global stock markets fell sharply on Thursday and Wall Street was poised for another sell-off after cautious hopes for a lasting trade truce between the United States and China were jolted anew by the arrest of a prominent Chinese technology executive.

Investors’ anxiety over the fragile peace between the world’s two largest economies mounted after the chief financial officer of Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Canada at the request of the United States.

Ms. Meng was arrested in Vancouver on Saturday, the same night that President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China dined together in Buenos Aires and agreed to a 90-day pause in their  countries’ trade war. The move was expected to renew tensions."

Global Stocks Plunge, Suggesting a Grim Day on Wall Street | NYT

Facebook Emails Show Its Real Mission: Making Money and Crushing Competition | NYT

Moved fast and broke things; also see Facebook’s Very Bad Month Just Got Worse | New Yorker and Response to Six4Three Documents | Facebook Newsroom

"It should not come as a surprise that Facebook — a giant, for-profit company whose early employees reportedly ended staff meetings by chanting “domination!” — would act in its own interests.

But the internal emails, a rare glimpse into Facebook’s inner workings, show that the image the company promoted for years — as an idealistic enterprise more dedicated to “bringing the world closer together” than increasing its own bottom line — was a carefully cultivated smoke screen.

These emails reveal that in the formative years of Facebook’s growth, the company’s executives were ruthless and unsparing in their ambition to collect more data from users, extract concessions from developers and stamp out possible competitors."

Facebook Emails Show Its Real Mission: Making Money and Crushing Competition | NYT

Bose Actually Turned Its Funky Sunglasses Headphones Concept Into a Real Gadget | Gizmodo

See this Bose press release for details

"Now called Frames, Bose bills it sunglasses as a device with the convenience of built-in wireless headphones and support for what it claims is the world’s first audio augmented reality platform. The use of audio before AR is an important differentiation because unlike head-mounted devices like Google Glass or the Vuzix Blades, the Bose Frames don’t come with an embedded display or screen.

Instead, the Frames use sensors to know where you are and what direction you’re facing so it can add audios cues to draw attention to specific locations, provide bits a trivia, or add effects as part of a game. That said, the whole idea of a sound-based AR platform remains somewhat theoretical as Bose says its AR experiences are still in development and is waiting until SXSW in March 2019 to more about the platform."

Bose Actually Turned Its Funky Sunglasses Headphones Concept Into a Real Gadget | Gizmodo

Digital Divide Is Wider Than We Think, Study Says | NYT

Another Microsoft press release brought to you by the NYT...

"A new study by Microsoft researchers casts a light on the actual use of high-speed internet across the country, and the picture it presents is very different from the F.C.C. numbers. Their analysis, presented at a Microsoft event on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., suggests that the speedy access is much more limited than the F.C.C. data shows.

Over all, Microsoft concluded that 162.8 million people do not use the internet at broadband speeds, while the F.C.C. says broadband is not available to 24.7 million Americans. The discrepancy is particularly stark in rural areas. In Ferry County, for example, Microsoft estimates that only 2 percent of people use broadband service, versus the 100 percent the federal government says have access to the service.
[...]
Expanding broadband also benefits Microsoft and other tech companies because it enlarges the market for their products and services. And like others, Microsoft is promoting a potential solution."

Digital Divide Is Wider Than We Think, Study Says | NYT

Walmart’s latest hire: Robotic janitors that clean floors and collect data | Washington Post

Integration with Google indoor maps tbd...

"The floor scrubbers use sensors that can perceive the surrounding environment. Before the scrubbers can be set free, a Walmart employee is required for an initial “training ride” that creates a map of different routes the machine can follow inside the store, the company said. Once the robot is in use, the machine can scan its surroundings for people and obstacles, the company said, noting that the machines can operate in crowded environments.

The robots look fairly one-dimensional in nature, but their onboard sensors allow them to collect useful analytical data, the company said. The data may prove useful, providing the company with information about peak shopping hours or “which shelves are empty,” as a Walmart spokesman told NBC News."

Walmart’s latest hire: Robotic janitors that clean floors and collect data | Washington Post

Rudy Giuliani’s typo became an anti-Trump message. He blamed Twitter, but this Atlanta man pranked him. | Washington Post

Moral of the g-20.in story: be sure your tweeting lawyer is a good typist. In other Trump internet memes, see Trump called himself “Tariff Man.” The internet did the rest. | Vox

"While it appeared Giuliani was unaware for several days that one of his tweets was being used to insult the president, that changed Tuesday.

“Twitter allowed someone to invade my text with a disgusting anti-President message,” Giuliani tweeted, adding that the “same thing-period no space-occurred later and it didn’t happen.” (Giuliani was likely referencing part of the Nov. 30 tweet that read “Helsinki.Either,” which is not a valid domain.)

He continued: “Don’t tell me they are not committed cardcarrying anti-Trumpers. . . . FAIRNESS PLEASE.”"

Rudy Giuliani’s typo became an anti-Trump message. He blamed Twitter, but this Atlanta man pranked him. | Washington Post

How Ring's Neighbors app is making home security a social thing | CNET

See this (Amazon) Ring page for more details

"There are videos of folks appearing to walk up to front doors and stealing packages. Another video shows an alleged vandalism of an outside light, and yet another is of an attempted car break-in. There's the lighter stuff, too, like kids stealing whole bowls of Halloween candy -- yes, including the bowl itself -- and a handful of fox sightings.

I'm getting this feed through Neighbors, an app launched by Ring, Amazon's smart-doorbell company. It's free to download and use, and lets people share, view and comment on crime and security information in their communities. Most of the posts are video clips shot by Ring video doorbells and security cameras.

Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff said in an interview last month that he sees Neighbors as a major part of his company's development, using the app to help more people work together to reduce crime in their communities. The app, which launched in the US in May, has over a million active users sharing information on alleged crimes and suspicious behavior, Siminoff said."

How Ring's Neighbors app is making home security a social thing | CNET

Microsoft is building its own Chrome browser to replace Edge | The Verge

Losing its Edge

"Microsoft is building its own Chromium browser to replace the default on Windows 10. The software giant first introduced its Edge browser three years ago, with a redesign to replace Internet Explorer and modernize the default browsing experience to compete with Chrome and others. While the modern look and feel has paid off for Edge, the underlying browser engine (EdgeHTML) has struggled to keep up with Chromium. Microsoft is finally giving up and moving its default Windows 10 browser to Chromium.

The Verge understands Microsoft will announce its plans for a Chromium browser as soon as this week, in an effort to improve web compatibility for Windows. Windows Central first reported on these plans, which are codenamed Anaheim internally. We understand there has been a growing frustration inside Microsoft at Edge’s web compatibility issues, and businesses and consumers have been pushing the company to improve things."

Microsoft is building its own Chrome browser to replace Edge | The Verge

Quora, the Q. and A. Site, Says Data Breach Affected 100 Million Users | NYT

Breach of the day (so far...)

"Users of Quora, the question-and-answer site, are asking today:

Did my personal data just get stolen?

The social platform said late Monday that the account information and private messages of around 100 million users may have been exposed when its computer systems were compromised by “a malicious third party.” Quora discovered the data breach on Friday, the company’s chief executive, Adam D’Angelo, wrote in a blog post, and it is still investigating how it happened."

Quora, the Q. and A. Site, Says Data Breach Affected 100 Million Users | NYT

Geoeconomics: the Chinese Strategy of Technological Advancement and Cybersecurity | Lawfare

Final paragraph below; on a related note, see The Race Is On to Protect Data From the Next Leap in Computers. And China Has the Lead. | NYT

"When it comes to artificial intelligence, public-private collaboration and coordination is reportedly pervasive, and China has recruited big Chinese tech firms as part of the “AI national team.” Western commentators often portray the success of Chinese technology firms as the result of unfair practices, like theft of intellectual property and the provision of state subsidies. But, as Kai-Fu Lee notes, this also stems from China’s ability to endorse particular objectives and set the tone for private capital choices, as it has done in seeking to foster the development of artificial intelligence. China likewise leads the way in providing infrastructure to support these technological developments, such as building cities and highways with built-in sensors designed to facilitate the use of driverless cars. The Chinese government views its state capitalist model as a national strength that does not contradict international trade rules, which that it needs to secure against U.S. attempts to halt or reverse China’s rise. A key question for the future of international economic law is whether these different economic models will be able to coexist under the same legal framework."

Geoeconomics: the Chinese Strategy of Technological Advancement and Cybersecurity | Lawfare

The Friendship That Made Google Huge | The New Yorker

From an extensive profile of Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat

"Today, Google’s engineers exist in a Great Chain of Being that begins at Level 1. At the bottom are the I.T. support staff. Level 2s are fresh out of college; Level 3s often have master’s degrees. Getting to Level 4 takes several years, or a Ph.D. Most progression stops at Level 5. Level 6 engineers—the top ten per cent—are so capable that they could be said to be the reason a project succeeds; Level 7s are Level 6s with a long track record. Principal Engineers, the Level 8s, are associated with a major product or piece of infrastructure. Distinguished Engineers, the Level 9s, are spoken of with reverence. To become a Google Fellow, a Level 10, is to win an honor that will follow you for life. Google Fellows are usually the world’s leading experts in their fields. Jeff and Sanjay are Google Senior Fellows—the company’s first and only Level 11s."

The Friendship That Made Google Huge | The New Yorker

Philippines journalist Maria Ressa vows to challenge tax fraud charges after arrest | Guardian

A case Trump will no doubt watch closely (assuming Fox News covers it...). For a recent Kara Swisher interview with Maria Ressa, see Memo from a ‘Facebook nation’ to Mark Zuckerberg: You moved fast and broke our country. | Recode

"The move to arrest Ressa is the latest in what many have seen as a direct attack by Duterte’s regime on news organisations that have been critical of his government, in particular his war on drugs which has taken an estimated tens of thousands of lives over the past two years.

Rappler was among the main news organisations challenging the extrajudicial killings by the police and subsequently has been the subject of seven government investigations, with their political reporter also banned from the presidential palace.

The National Union of Journalists in the Philippines issued a statement damning the warrant issued for Ressa’s arrest. They stated: “Arresting Maria will send a clear signal that the country’s democracy is fast receding under a feckless administration that cannot abide criticism and free expression and will go to ridiculous lengths to muzzle all those it does not agree with.”"

Philippines journalist Maria Ressa vows to challenge tax fraud charges after arrest | Guardian