Welcome to the February 1, 2019 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Apple Exerts Power as Privacy Protector
The Wall Street Journal
Tripp Mickle
January 31, 2019
Apple has penalized Google and Facebook for violating its developer policies controlling personal data by suspending internal apps used by both companies. The apps include one used by Google employees on Apple's iOS mobile operating system, after Google parent Alphabet admitted it had used one such app to collect data on Internet use by consumers who volunteered in return for gift cards. Apple also barred Facebook's use of a research app for similar data collection on teens and young adults. The temporary prohibitions emphasize Apple's heightened campaign to validate its claimed safeguards for user privacy, with CEO Tim Cook promoting Apple's business model as better than competitors' because it sells devices instead of advertising. Critics countered that Apple's strategy is less about protecting user data than expanding its already sizable market presence.
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Huge Surge in AI Patent Applications in Past 5 Years
Financial Times
Clive Cookson
January 31, 2019
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has estimated that the past five years witnessed a major boom in artificial intelligence (AI), with more than 50% of all patents filed since 2013. From 2013 and 2017, global AI-related patent applications surged from 18,995 to 55,660; IBM and Microsoft owned the biggest AI patent portfolios, with 8,290 and 5,930 patents, respectively. According to WIPO director-general Francis Gurry, the patent explosion "means we can expect a very significant number of new AI-based products, applications, and techniques that will alter our daily lives—and also shape future human interaction with the machines we created." Meanwhile, the proportion of scientific papers to inventions declined from 8:1 in 2010 to 3:1 in 2016, suggesting theoretical research has been overtaken by commercial AI use. Machine learning is the most frequently disclosed AI technique in patents, and computer vision is the most popular functional application.
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Do Data Scientists Need Certification?
IEEE Spectrum
Tekla S. Perry
January 30, 2019
The vagueness of the term "data scientist" complicates the hiring of such professionals in today's market; the Open Group information technology consortium has announced the establishment of a data scientist certification program to address the shortage of data scientists. IBM's Martin Fleming said such certification requires being knowledgeable in fields that include statistics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and business communications, and demonstrating that knowledge via projects. The Open Group will offer three levels of certification—certified data scientist, master certified data scientist, and distinguished certified data scientist. Applicants can be reviewed by peers through the Open Group or within their own organizations, as long as their companies receive Open Group accreditation to do so. According to Fleming, certification will "help [employees] improve their skills...and provide clarity around kinds of skills that are required for the profession."
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IBM Facial Recognition Dataset Aims to Remove Gender, Skin Bias
Computer Business Review
Conor Reynolds
January 29, 2019
IBM will provide a new million-image dataset to the global research community, to help developers eliminate gender and skin-type biases from facial-recognition software. The Diversity in Faces dataset uses publicly available images from the YFCC-100M Creative Commons dataset, annotated using 10 facial coding schemes, as well as human-labeled gender and age notes. The coding schemes include facial symmetry, facial contrast, pose, and craniofacial (bone structure) areas, in conjunction with conventional age, gender, and skin-tone schemes. IBM's John R. Smith said, "The [artificial intelligence] systems learn what they're taught, and if they are not taught with robust and diverse datasets, accuracy and fairness could be at risk." The researchers said the new dataset is designed so facial recognition “performance should not vary for different individuals or different populations."
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Fleet of Robots to Park Cars at Gatwick Airport
London Daily Express (U.K.)
Joe Duggan
January 30, 2019
Gatwick Airport in the U.K. is working with Stanley Robotics to test a fleet of robot valets to park cars for arriving travelers. The system could increase the amount of parking space available at the airport, because robotically parked cars do not need space for drivers to get in and out. Stanley Robotics previously rolled out the robots, called "Stan," at Lyon Airport in France. When a Stan robot detects a vehicle, it slides under the vehicle, lifts it gently by the wheels, and moves it to a storage area. The robot also logs the traveler's itinerary details so the vehicle will be ready for pickup when they return. Gatwick Airport officials hope 8,500 robot-parked cars will fit into the current 6,000 self-park spots.
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Amazon to Fund Computer Science Classes in NYC Ahead of New HQ2 Campus
CNet
Marrian Zhou
January 29, 2019
Amazon has unveiled a plan to fund introductory and advanced placement computer science courses at more than 130 high schools in the New York City area, supported by the company's Amazon Future Engineer program. This plan was announced as Amazon prepares to build a new headquarters campus called HQ2 in Queens’ Long Island City neighborhood. Amazon’s Jeff Wilke said, "We want to help make sure more children across New York City gain the coding skills necessary to have successful careers in many fields. We will continue to invest in bringing these classes to more schools in New York City and across the U.S." A Quinnipiac University survey last month showed 57% of New Yorkers approved of Amazon's campus plan, while many others harbored mixed feelings about the incentives used to draw Amazon to Queens.
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Expanding 3D Printing Network Aims to Improve U.S. Veterans' Healthcare
Forbes
Robin Seaton Jefferson
January 31, 2019
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) expanded its national integrated virtual three-dimensional (3D) printing network from three hospitals in early 2017 to 20 at the end of last year. The network enables VA healthcare staff to exchange ideas, solve problems, and pool resources on best-practice 3D printing applications to improve veterans' care. The Veterans Health Administration said innovators at those 20 sites are using 3D printing to solve a wide range of issues, “from presurgical planning to manufacturing hand and foot orthotics." VA radiologists said they will be able to make use of GE Healthcare’s advanced visualization workstations with 3D printing software "to produce models of normal and pathological anatomy using automation techniques that will speed up the pre-3D printing preparation work and the diagnostic process." The VA said scientists also are "working with collaborators to create a bioprinting program that uses 3D printing to fabricate replacement tissues that are customized to an individual patient."
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Google Algorithms, Human Psychology: How Jigsaw Rescues Teens From ISIS Recruiters
Fast Company
Lydia Dishman
January 28, 2019
The Google Jigsaw technology incubator's director of research and development, Yasmin Green, is committed to helping prevent youngsters being radicalized online by terrorist groups via the Redirect Method, a targeted advertising and video campaign. Green said the campaign began by taking Google's "pretty effective algorithms" for its targeted ad tech, and supplying relevant content designed to counter ISIS' online recruitment content. To make the content more effective, Green's team worked with external groups Moonshot CVE and Quantum Communications, which vet and update English and Arabic keywords. Jigsaw's videos were then reviewed by a council of experts that included theologians and law enforcement. Green said these experiences should inform artificial intelligence developers of the persistent importance of humans' role in tech's evolution, for good and ill.
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GAO Expands, Elevates Tech Assessment
Federal Computer Week
Adam Mazmanian
January 29, 2019
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) aims to elevate and expand its role as Capitol Hill's in-house expert technology agency by launching a new office, in response to lawmakers' demand for more transparent tech assessment. Sources said the new office of Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics (STAA) will double its 70-staffer headcount over the next two or three years. Early areas of concentration will include distributed ledger technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, and 5G wireless. GAO chief scientist Tim Persons said the agency expects to adopt a "more foresight-oriented posture" under which STAA will prepare for questions on upcoming hearings or oversight activities from congressional members and committees. STAA also will review federal science and tech programs, function as a resource for best practices in engineering, develop a laboratory to study and pilot advanced analytics, and innovate on GAO's current auditing toolkit.
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A Netflix for Video Games? Why Longtime Dream Is Closer Than Ever to Coming True
The Washington Post
Brian Fung
January 28, 2019
Major companies are probing how to replace video game downloads with Internet-based services, allowing future games to be streamed from a data center with most computation and image rendering handled by remote servers before being routed to players' systems. Unlike passive forms of media, online gaming calls for highly responsive technology that can interpret a player’s actions from afar, process them within milliseconds, and relay the results back to players and their opponents instantaneously. Experimentation with cloud-based gaming includes Google's Project Stream, which recently concluded a beta test that let testers play "Assassin's Creed Odyssey" online for free. Tester Chris Cantrell said Google did well in highlighting its servers' faithful reproduction of a single-player game's high-fidelity graphics. However, ensuring a seamless competitive multiplayer experience is a tougher challenge.
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Ontario Startup Aims to Turn Consumer Electronic Devices Into Supercomputer
The Globe and Mail
Johnny C.Y. Lam
January 30, 2019
Ontario, Canada-based startup Distributed Compute Labs has launched an online platform to digitally access virtually any type of personal computer, smartphone, or Internet-connected appliance, with the goal of networking these various gadgets into a supercomputer to assist scientific research. Participants can opt to have their computers or devices harnessed for sophisticated research projects, earning digital tokens in return. The startup ultimately envisions the tokens carrying a cash value that can be traded on an exchange. According to company founder Dan Desjardins, the platform could be a significant tool for large-scale corporate users of computer resources around the world.
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Internet Experiment Goes Wrong, Takes Down Bunch of Linux Routers
ZDNet
Catalin Cimpanu
January 24, 2019
An array of Linux-based Internet routers crashed last month, the result of an academic experiment to examine the effects of newly released Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) security features going awry. The BGP Route Origin Validation is a new standard component of a three-pronged security package for the BGP standard, along with BGP Resource Public Key Infrastructure and BGP Path Validation. Initially, the researchers were to announce a BGP route "with a valid standards-compliant unassigned BGP attribute" from a network they controlled, then study how the route definition propagated across networks of other Internet service providers. The researchers learned the BGP attribute they used induced software crashes in routers running FRRouting (FRR), an Internet Protocol routing suite for Linux and Unix. A second experiment, conducted following issuance of a patch for the first defect from FRR developers, caused other problems, because the trial was only announced on the mailing list of the North American Network Operators Group.
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