Welcome to the April 5, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
ACM TechNews mobile apps are available for Android phones and tablets (click here) and for iPhones (click here) and iPads (click here).
To view "Headlines At A Glance," hit the link labeled "Click here to view this online" found at the top of the page in the html version.
The online version now has a button at the top labeled "Show Headlines."
|
|
|
Biden Says Tech Companies Must Ensure AI Products Are Safe
Associated Press
Zeke Miller
April 5, 2023
U.S. President Biden said Tuesday that technology companies must guarantee their artificial intelligence (AI) products' safety prior to public release. Biden told a meeting of his President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology that AI "has to address the potential risks to our society, to our economy, to our national security." Rebecca Finley with the industry-supported Partnership on AI said Biden's warning reflects the advent of AI tools that can produce manipulative material and authentic-seeming simulations known as deepfakes. The White House said Biden used the meeting to "discuss the importance of protecting rights and safety to ensure responsible innovation and appropriate safeguards," while urging Congress to approve laws to protect children and halt data collection by technology companies.
|
Purdue Researchers Uncover Vulnerabilities in Smart TVs
Purdue University Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
March 31, 2023
Purdue University researchers have found bugs in Smart TVs through which attackers can hijack the devices using a phone as a remote. Purdue's Saurabh Bagchi and colleagues found the bug in the Wi-Fi remote protocol of Smart TV, demonstrating the exploit targets four of the most popular Over The Top digital streaming platforms. They created malware called Spook bundled in an Android smartphone to commandeer an Android TV, then designed and deployed defensive measures using ARM TrustZone to ensure a human is initiating the pairing between the phone and the TV. Google has acknowledged and addressed the vulnerability in the Android TV platform through software modification.
|
Barcode Unlocks Indonesia's Billion-Dollar Informal Economy
Bloomberg
Claire Jiao; Grace Sihombing
April 2, 2023
The increasingly ubiquitous quick response (QR) code is energizing Indonesia's informal economy by allowing consumers to make transactions with mobile phones, driving down the use of cash. More than 22 million Indonesian merchants have signed up for QR payments, a number that could reach 45 million this year. Such sellers are easing the country's push to incorporate small businesses into the formal economy, making such transactions taxable. Boston Consulting Group's Davids Tjhin said Indonesia was one the few nations to require a unified QR payment system, which made QR more convenient for consumers and more affordable for merchants. Indonesia leads Southeast Asia in terms of e-wallet and QR payment adoption, which reigns in major cities due to the young population and widespread cellphone use.
*May Require Paid Registration
|
'BioArm' Portable 3D Bioprinter Joining Fight Against Cancer
University of Cambridge Department of Engineering (U.K.)
March 31, 2023
Scientists at the U.K.'s University of Cambridge and King's College London have built the portable "BioArm" three-dimensional (3D) bioprinter for cancer research. BioArm can manufacture complex tumoroids in about 90 seconds on average, using a customized printhead and a navigable robotic arm. As the arm moves, the printhead extrudes bioink into the desired 3D soft material structures on a petri dish. The researchers reconstructed tumoroids to analyze interaction between immune cells and the growths of cancer-associated fibroblasts, then modeled immunotherapy treatment. Cambridge's Yaqi Sheng said BioArm "can readily adapt to different working environments, while preserving relatively high accuracy. Its adaptability, customization flexibility, and biological relevance has not yet been shown by existing low-cost and open source bioprinters."
|
Computer Made of DNA Works Out Prime Factors of 6 and 15
New Scientist
Karmela Padavic-Callaghan
March 31, 2023
Researchers at China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University developed a simple computer using molecules comprised of folded DNA that was able to split the numbers 6 and 15 into their prime factors. The researchers mixed differently shaped DNA molecules in a test tube, and when two different edges joined through a chemical reaction, this was deemed equivalent to a mathematical operation. The resulting shapes were counted to determine the computer's calculations. The molecules were designed so the computer could combine the numbers 2 and 3 to split 6 into primes, and the numbers 2, 3, 5, and 7 to split 15 into primes. When factoring 6, around 63% of the molecules ended in shapes that could be made only through reactions corresponding to 2 times 3.
*May Require Paid Registration
|
Method for Designing Neural Networks Optimally Suited for Certain Tasks
MIT News
Adam Zewe
March 30, 2023
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers discovered optimal building blocks, called activation functions, that can be used to build neural networks that improve performance on any dataset, even when neural networks significantly expand in size. Activation functions enable neural networks to learn complex patterns in the input data by applying a transformation to the output of one layer before the data is sent to the next layer. In an analysis of an infinitely deep and wide neural network, the researchers found classifying a new input based on a weighted average of all the training data points that are similar to it is the only method that leads to optimal performance. They identified a set of activation functions that always use this optimal classification method.
|
Experiment 'Translates' Quantum Information Between Technologies
Chicago Quantum Exchange
March 23, 2023
An experiment led by researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) "translated" quantum information between quantum technologies. The researchers exploited two gaps in rubidium atoms' energy levels, which respectively equal the energy of a microwave photon and the energy of an optical photon. The method applies lasers to shift the atom's electron energies up and down, enabling the absorption of a microwave photon with quantum information, then the emission of an optical photon containing that information. This transduction process converts the information between different quantum formats. Said UIUC's Aishwarya Kumar, “One of the things that we’re really excited about is the ability of this platform to generate really efficient entanglement. Entanglement is central to almost everything quantum that we care about, from computing to simulations."
|
Forgive or Forget: What Happens When Robots Lie?
Georgia Institute of Technology
Catherine Barzler
March 30, 2023
Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) researchers aimed to determine whether a robot could apologize after lying to rebuild trust. The study involved 341 online and 20 in-person participants in a game-like simulation in which they were tasked with driving a robot-assisted car to rush their friend to the hospital. The robot assistant warned that there were police ahead and to stay under the speed limit, but after arriving at the hospital, participants were informed that there had been no police. The robot assistant then randomly provided one of five responses, three of which admitted to deception and two that did not. Forty-five percent of in-person participants did not speed, mainly because they believed the robot knew more about the situation. The researchers found that apologizing without admitting deception outperformed the other apologies, but when told about the deception, the apology most effective in repairing trust involved an explanation.
|
Structural Collapses Detected Remotely in Real Time, Thanks to LED Sensors
Interesting Engineering
Sade Agard
March 31, 2023
Researchers at the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT) have developed a smart sensor and real-time remote monitoring system to detect ground movement and structural collapses. The sensor can identify slope variations as small as 0.03 degrees and uses an algorithm to assess the risk of collapse based on the data to prevent false alarms. The sensor activates an LED light visible from 100 meters away. It also features optical transmission lens technology, can operate for nearly a year without replacing the battery, and is half the cost of current sensors. Moreover, it can withstand temperatures up to 80 degrees Celsius (176 degrees Fahrenheit). KICT's Baek Yong said, "This new sensor technology will greatly reduce the time to take action and, therefore, do a great deal to help prevent and respond to collapses."
|
Listen Up, Material!
IDW (Germany)
Birte Vierjahn
March 27, 2023
Theoretical physicists at Germany's University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) and Belgium's Ghent University have developed a material that can recognize spoken patterns. The researchers analyzed the type and intensity of frequencies in audio recordings of spoken numbers ranging from 0 to 9, rendered as voltage signals and applied to a thin magnetic film containing magnetic whirls known as skyrmions. The skyrmions deform in response to the voltage, forming unique patterns in the film for each spoken number that can be translated linearly. The material platform correctly recognized 97.4% of the numbers, which increased to 98.5% when analyzing female voices only. "This shows the best performance ever reported for in-material reservoir computers," UDE's Karin Everschor-Sitte said. "Our material system can solve machine learning problems without building a system of millions of interconnected neurons."
|
AI is Teaching Us New, Surprising Things About the Human Mind
The Wall Street Journal
Christopher Mims
April 1, 2023
Scientists are gaining new insights into the human mind though artificial intelligence (AI), including the mechanism of communication between neurons, and the roots of cognition. The University of California, Berkeley's Celeste Kidd and colleagues used a clustering model to find people's opinions tend to diverge about even the most fundamental properties of things. Researchers led by Princeton University's Tatiana Engel used artificial neurons to interpret hundreds of neurons' electrical impulses in animals' brains simultaneously, then trained them to perform identical tasks. These networks self-organize into reasonable approximations of those in animals, indicating that dynamic electrical activity forms the substance of thought, according to Engel.
*May Require Paid Registration
|
Fetal Heart Disease Now Visible on Real-Time MRI Scan for Expectant Mothers
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Amy Blumenthal
March 29, 2023
Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) and Children's Hospital of Los Angeles detected congenital fetal heart disease in expectant mothers using a tailored algorithm and a low-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. The device's field strength is three to six times lower than conventional MRI scanners, enabling real-time imaging of areas that are traditionally difficult to visualize. USC's John Wood said, "The low-field magnet excels at real-time [moving] imaging, which is critical because fetuses are constantly moving in utero." The researchers say the new method can be deployed safely, and it can be useful when imaging via ultrasound scans proves suboptimal.
|
Seagull Algorithms Could Hide Secret to Greener Cloud Computing
Fast Company
Connie Lin
April 3, 2023
British, Chinese, and Austrian researchers say that more sustainable cloud computing systems can be achieved by algorithmically mimicking seagulls' hunting and migration behavior. The researchers contend a "seagull optimization algorithm" can slash cloud computing's power consumption by 5.5% and its network traffic by 70%. They said the meta-heuristic algorithm would determine the best locations for virtual machines within a server communications network to optimize network traffic efficiency. This would mirror the seagulls' ability to stalk and plot a route to prey without colliding with each other. The researchers believe seagull-based algorithms could reduce the total number of physical supercomputers worldwide, while also cutting the machine-to-machine communications network's power consumption by 80%.
|
|
