Welcome to the January 9, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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'Consciousness' in Robots Was Once Taboo. Now It's the Last Word
The New York Times
Oliver Whang
January 6, 2023
The concept of artificial consciousness has evolved from an unmentionable word to the premiere focus of the robotics community, as experts like Columbia University's Hod Lipson aim to create conscious robots. The first challenge is defining what consciousness is. Lipson and Duke University's Boyuan Chen have created a self-aware two-jointed arm fixed to a table, which used cameras to observe itself as it moved, and learned to distinguish itself via a deep learning algorithm and a probability model. The University of California, Riverside's Eric Schwitzgeber said a lack of certainty about what consciousness is could present difficulties if an apparently conscious robot can be created.
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ChatGPT Is Enabling Script Kiddies to Write Functional Malware
Ars Technica
Dan Goodin
January 6, 2023
Participants in cybercrime forums, some with little or no coding experience, are using ChatGPT, an artificial-intelligent (AI) chatbot launched in November in beta form, to write potential malware, according to a report from security firm Check Point Research. One participant, for example, credited ChatGPT with providing a “nice [helping] hand” to what was claimed to be the first script that person had written. The script, Check Point researchers found, could "easily be modified to encrypt someone's machine completely without any user interaction." Check Point researchers themselves developed malware with full infection flow with the help of ChatGPT; they wrote, "The hard work was done by the AIs, and all that's left for us to do is to execute the attack."
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Research Team Detects Additive Manufacturing Defects in Real Time
University of Virginia Engineering
January 6, 2023
A research team led by the University of Virginia's Tao Sun employed machine learning to detect defects in additive manufacturing (also known as three-dimensional printing) in real time. The research focused on the formation of keyhole pores, one of the major defects in laser powder bed fusion, which uses metal powder and lasers to three-dimensionally print metal parts. Said Sun, "By integrating operando synchrotron x-ray imaging, near-infrared imaging, and machine learning, our approach can capture the unique thermal signature associated with keyhole pore generation with sub-millisecond temporal resolution and 100% prediction rate.” Sun said the approach “provides a viable solution for high-fidelity, high-resolution detection of keyhole pore generation that can be readily applied in many additive manufacturing scenarios."
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The Oven Won't Talk to the Fridge: 'Smart' Homes Struggle
Yahoo! News
Julie Jammot
January 6, 2023
The push by startups and multinationals alike to expand smart-home technologies is hindered by a lack of fluent communication between devices, especially between different brands. Said analyst Avi Greengart, “Sometimes they can do incredibly useful things, but if they're not connected to the wider info system, information dies alone." Companies including Amazon, Google, and Samsung have organized device ecosystems around voice assistants like Alexa or Siri, but Greengart said a lack of user growth has led those systems to stagnate. Last year, the biggest companies settled on the "Matter" protocol to standardize connected home products and address the interoperability problem. Accenture's Jeff Wang said the biggest challenge now facing the sector is the creation of a shareable application model.
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Deep Learning Algorithm Can Hear Alcohol in Voice
La Trobe University (Australia)
January 6, 2023
Researchers at Australia's La Trobe University have developed an algorithm that can instantly determine whether a person has exceeded the legal alcohol limit based on a 12-second recording of that person's voice. The Audio-based Deep Learning Algorithm to Identify Alcohol Inebriation (ADLAIA) was developed with, and tested against, a dataset of 12,360 audio clips of inebriated and sober speakers. ADLAIA was able to identify inebriated speakers having a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.05% or higher with an accuracy of nearly 70%, which climbed to 76% for speakers with a BAC of more than 0.12%. Said La Trobe's Abraham Albert Bonela, "Upon further improvement in its overall performance, ADLAIA could be integrated into mobile applications and used as a preliminary tool for identifying alcohol-inebriated individuals."
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Hackers Can Trick Wi-Fi Devices into Draining Their Batteries
New Scientist
Matthew Sparkes
January 9, 2023
Security experts at Stanford University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Canada's University of Waterloo found hackers can fool Wi-Fi-using devices into draining their own batteries by exploiting a unique aspect of wireless network operations. The exploit targets "polite Wi-Fi," in which devices acknowledge and reply to messages from any other wireless devices, even those lacking passwords or permission to be on the same network. The researchers found a $10 device can transmit fake data packets to continuously ping battery-operated Wi-Fi devices and keep them from entering sleep mode, draining their power. Tests on 5,000 devices from 186 manufacturers revealed they were all vulnerable to this exploit.
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Quantum Computing Architecture Could Connect Large-Scale Devices
MIT News
Adam Zewe
January 5, 2023
A new quantum computing architecture developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists can facilitate extensible, high-fidelity communication between superconducting quantum chips. The architecture can be used to thread multiple processing modules along one waveguide; MIT's Bharath Kannan said the same module can function as both transmitter and receiver. The researchers have demonstrated the deterministic emission of single photons in a user-specified direction with more than 96% fidelity. Said Kannan, "The ability to communicate between smaller subsystems will enable a modular architecture for quantum processors, and this may be a simpler way of scaling to larger system sizes compared to the brute-force approach of using a single large and complicated chip."
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Deere to Allow Farmers to Repair Their Own Equipment
The Wall Street Journal
Patience Haggin
January 9, 2023
Amid accusations that machinery manufacturers are using proprietary software on their equipment to restrict repair work to their own dealers, Deere & Co. signed a memorandum of understanding with the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) to enable farmers to repair their own farm equipment or take it to independent repair shops. The agreement addresses a debate that has grown as the farm industry increasingly uses software, sensors, and other technologies in machinery like tractors and harvesters to boost harvests and speed sowing. It creates a mechanism to provide farms with access to resources needed to repair their own equipment, such as diagnostic and repair codes, manuals, and product guides.
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Thermal Drones Locating Elusive Koalas in Area Scorched by Bushfires
ABC North Coast (Australia)
Bronwyn Herbert
January 6, 2023
Thermal drones are being used by ecologists searching for koala populations in New South Wales, Australia. Drones used in a survey of the bushfire and flood-hit Ngunya Jargoon Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) over the past six months revealed a population of 32 koalas. Imagery captured by the drones clearly shows koala movements in the forest’s trees and picks up the heat signature of their droppings. Veterinarian Romane Cristescu said the traditional method of walking through the bush looking in trees for koalas and at the ground for their droppings misses up to 75% of koalas, while drones allowed researchers to cover a much bigger area as they "fly quicker than we can walk. They don't care about the terrain, but also they are much more accurate than the human sight."
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Startups Aim to Reduce Global Food Waste
Associated Press
Brittany Peterson
January 6, 2023
Startups showcased technologies to reduce food waste at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2023). Dutch startup OneThird unveiled an avocado scanner that interprets ripeness with optical sensing and artificial intelligence and displays on a screen whether it is ready to eat. The company is testing the scanner at a supermarket in Canada. Meanwhile, Dutch entrepreneur Olaf van der Veen's Orbisk solution scans garbage cans to classify food that restaurants throw out, which can help establishments define disposal patterns to save money and reduce waste. The Orbisk is already in use in commercial kitchens in about 10 European countries.
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Supercomputer Simulations Transform Coal-Like Material to Amorphous Graphite, Nanotubes
Ohio University
January 1, 2023
Researchers at Ohio University (OU) and the U.K.'s universities of Cambridge and Oxford simulated coal-like materials on the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center's Bridges-2 supercomputer to explore their conversion into useful substances like amorphous graphite. The researchers modeled a simplified "coal" composed of only carbon atoms, then computationally applied pressure and heat (about 3,000 degrees Kelvin/nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit). OU's Chinonso Ugwumadu said OU's computers take about two weeks to simulate 160 atoms, while the Bridges-2 can model 400 atoms in about a week using density functional theory. The researchers then moved their calculations to machine learning Gaussian approximation potential software; the resulting molecular simulations yielded nested amorphous carbon nanotubes.
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