Welcome to the November 1, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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U.N. Secretary-General Launches High-Level Advisory Body on AI
United Nations Secretary-General
October 26, 2023
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres launched an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advisory Body on risks, opportunities, and international governance of AI. By the end of the year, the body is expected to make preliminary recommendations, which will guide preparations for the Summit of the Future next September, and specifically into negotiations around the proposed Global Digital Compact. The board will include ACM Fellow, former ACM President, and current co-chair of the ACM Publications Board Dame Wendy Hall. Said Hall, "As new AI technologies and capabilities emerge, it is so important that we harness them for good, while ensuring they don’t evolve in ways that would be harmful to society. It is very exciting to be part of the global discussions on the best way to manage this."
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Computer Science Courses on the Rise; Girls are Half as Likely to Take Them
Education Week
Alyson Klein
November 1, 2023
Code.org's annual report on the state of computer science (CS) education found wide gaps in course enrollment persist despite expanded availability. This year, the percentage of foundational CS course-offering U.S. high schools rose 4.5% over last year to total 57.5%, the largest jump since 2018. Yet just 5.8% of high school students are taking those courses in the 35 states where data is available, a level similar to that seen a year ago. Code.org learned males are twice as likely to take foundational CS courses as females, with the number of course-enrolled high school girls hovering around 31% for the last three years. Code.org proposes making CS a graduation requirement, which eight states have done so far, to help narrow the gap.
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Most Websites Do Not Publish Privacy Policies
Penn State News
Mary Fetzer
October 25, 2023
Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) researchers reviewing millions of English-language websites found as many as two-thirds do not post privacy policies. The researchers estimated failure-mode frequencies and the general unavailability of privacy policies to determine most sites are non-compliant with mandates like the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation or the California Privacy Rights Act in the U.S. Said Penn State's Mukund Srinath, "For a user landing on a random website, there is only a 34% chance that a privacy policy exists. Among them, there is a 2% to 3% chance that the link is broken. And 5% of the links that do work will lead to a page that contains irrelevant information, such as placeholder text or documents in a language that doesn't match the website's landing page."
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Robotics Secure 80% of Rice Harvest in 5% of the Time
The Asahi Shimbun (Japan)
Yasuaki Oshika
October 26, 2023
Robots deployed in rice paddies in Nobeoka, Japan, planted rice more quickly than human farmers while yielding a comparable harvest. Through a partnership with the city, robotics firm Tmsuk Co. used a drone to scatter seeds directly on the rice paddies, while remotely monitoring field conditions. A dozen employees harvested a 1,000-square-meter test site by hand, yielding almost 400 kilograms of rice. The robots reduced cultivation time by 95%, from 529 hours by hand to 29 hours, with output close to 80% of the 500 kilograms typically harvested using conventional methods. Tmsuk's Yoichi Takamoto said the rice, which is intended for use in rice flour, "tastes good enough if cooked for human consumption."
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Making Genetic Prediction Models More Inclusive
MIT News
Anne Trafton
October 26, 2023
Computer scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created a more inclusive and more accurate genetic prediction model by using computational and statistical techniques to study individuals' unique genetic profiles. The model used UK Biobank genetic data on more than 280,000 people and another dataset of around 81,000 held-out individuals, and was evaluated across 60 traits. This allowed the researchers to include people of admixed ancestry, who accounted for close to 10% of the UK Biobank dataset. The model improved predictions by an average of 61% for people of African ancestry, 18% for people of admixed ancestry, 11% for people of South Asian ancestry, and 5% for white British individuals. Said MIT's Yosuke Tanigawa, "When you bring all the individuals together in the training set, everybody contributes to the training of the polygenic score modeling on equal footing."
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Researchers Simplify Switching for Quantum Electronics
IEEE Spectrum
Edd Gent
October 30, 2023
Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) researchers controlled the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect by switching the direction of edge currents electrically rather than magnetically. The researchers sandwiched a layer of undoped topological insulator between two magnetically doped layers, then etched this into a rectangular structure less than 10 micrometers in length via electron-beam lithography. They demonstrated the ability to switch edge currents by applying a five-millisecond current pulse. Said Penn State's Cui-Zu Chang, "Electric devices based on the QAH effect have the potential to overcome the limitations imposed by Moore's Law and mitigate heat generation in compact devices."
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3D-Printed Reactor Core Makes Solar-Fuel Production More Efficient
ETH Zurich (Switzerland)
Peter Rüegg
October 27, 2023
Researchers at Switzerland's ETH Zurich have three-dimensionally (3D)-printed porous ceramic structures for a reactor core capable of boosting solar-fuel production. The researchers applied an extrusion-based 3D printing method using a low-viscosity and ceria-particle-heavy ink to fabricate hierarchical structures with channels and pores open at the surface that narrow toward the back of the reactor. This configuration enables full-volume absorption of incident concentrated solar radiation, ensuring the porous structure reaches the reaction temperature of 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,732 degrees Fahrenheit). Said ETH's Aldo Steinfeld, “This technology has the potential to boost the solar reactor’s energy efficiency and thus to significantly improve the economic viability of sustainable aviation fuels."
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Norfolk Southern Investing in More Automated Railroad Inspection Systems
Associated Press
Josh Funk
October 26, 2023
The Norfolk Southern railroad is installing the first of more than a dozen automated inspection portals on tracks in Leetonia, OH. Developed in collaboration with the Georgia Institute of Technology, the portals feature high-speed cameras that will capture photos of passing locomotives and rail cars from all sides for analysis by artificial intelligence. Said the University of Tennessee's David Clarke, "The proposed system can 'see' the entirety of the passing vehicle and, through image processing, is probably able to find conditions not obvious to the human viewer along the track." Norfolk Southern's John Fleps said the system will record 700 images for each rail car, even while they are traveling at 60 miles per hour. The railroad said the system is superior to its seven current automated inspection stations in spotting defects, with few false positives.
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Clear Holographic Imaging in Turbulent Environments
SPIE
October 27, 2023
Researchers at China's Zhejiang University developed a method to restore the quality of holographic images in the midst of light-wave distortions, which cause blurriness and noise. The new method, called TWC-Swin (train-with-coherence swin transformer), uses spatial coherence as physical prior information to guide the training of a deep neural network based on the Swin transformer architecture. The researchers created a light processing system that generates holographic images based on natural objects under different spatial coherence and turbulence conditions, using the images to train and test data for the neural network. They found that even in situations involving low spatial coherence and arbitrary turbulence, TWC-Swin outperformed traditional convolutional network-based methods in restoring holographic images.
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NSF Invests $10.9 Million in Development of Safe AI Technologies
National Science Foundation
October 31, 2023
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) said it will invest $10.9 million in research for the development of user-safe artificial intelligence (AI) through the Safe Learning-Enabled Systems program. NSF, the Open Philanthropy research and grantmaking foundation, and the Good Ventures philanthropic foundation partnered on the initiative to cultivate basic research leading to the design and deployment of safe and resilient computerized learning-enabled systems, including AI. NSF director Sethuraman Panchanathan said, "NSF's commitment to studying how we can guarantee the safety of AI systems sends a clear message to the AI research community: we consider safety paramount to the responsible expansion and evolution of AI."
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UBC Engineers Develop 'Robot Skin' with Honda Researchers
UBC News (Canada)
Lou Corpuz-Bosshart
October 26, 2023
Engineers at Canada's University of British Columbia (UBC) collaborated with scientists at Japanese automaker Honda's Frontier Robotics research institute to develop a smart soft sensor for enhancing human-robot interaction. The stretchable sensor skin can imbue prosthetic arms or robotic limbs with tactile sensitivity and dexterity, facilitating tasks like picking up fragile objects and boosting the safety of human interactions. UBC's John Madden said, "Our sensor uses weak electric fields to sense objects, even at a distance, much as touchscreens do. But unlike touchscreens, this sensor is supple and can detect forces into and along its surface." The researchers designed the mostly silicone rubber-based sensor to buckle and wrinkle like human skin. They said the sensor can be easily manufactured, enabling the coverage of large surface areas and mass production.
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Online Games Use Dark Designs to Collect Player Data
Aalto University (Finland)
October 26, 2023
Scientists at Finland's Aalto University discovered online gaming providers are engaged in potentially dubious data-collection practices, while players harbor misconceptions and issues about privacy. The researchers highlighted cases of games using dark design, interface decisions that manipulate players into taking actions they would usually avoid. These could enable data gathering and persuade players to integrate their social media accounts or share data with third parties. The researchers learned participants often did not know their chat-based conversations might be reported to third parties, nor did the games alert them to data sharing during play. Aalto's Amel Bourdoucen said players use mitigation strategies like choosing text rather than voice chats for discussion. Proposed solutions include more transparent data-collection practices, and a commitment by games and gaming platforms to safeguarding all players.
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Monitoring Nuclear Weapons Stockpiles with Radio Waves
Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany)
Julia Weiler
October 30, 2023
A team of researchers in Germany and the U.S. proposed a new approach to monitoring nuclear weapons stockpiles remotely using radio waves. The system records a storage room's "radio fingerprint" using two antennas, one that emits a radio signal that is reflected off walls and objects while the other captures the signal. Even minimal movement of objects in the room would notably alter the resulting radio fingerprint, enabling detection of changes like the removal of nuclear warheads. Said Christian Zenger of Germany's Ruhr University Bochum, “The technology combines cyber-physical security assessments, previously only possible on data and security chips, with cross-system physics in a completely new way. This enables new levels of trust, especially for the Internet of Things."
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