Hoffbot (for film: It’s No Game)

“An AI wrote all of David Hasselhoff’s lines in this bizarre short film,” Ars Technica (April 25, 2017):

“Last year, director Oscar Sharp and AI researcher Ross Goodwin released the stunningly weird short film Sunspring. It was a sci-fi tale written entirely by an algorithm that eventually named itself Benjamin. Now the two humans have teamed up with Benjamin again to create a follow-up movie, It’s No Game, about what happens when AI gets mixed up in an impending Hollywood writers’ strike. Ars is excited to debut the movie here, so go ahead and watch. We also talked to the film cast and creators about what it’s like to work with an AI…”

On FBI facial recognition database

From Olivia Solomon, “Facial recognition database used by FBI is out of control, House committee hears,” Guardian (March 27, 2017):

“Approximately half of adult Americans’ photographs are stored in facial recognition databases that can be accessed by the FBI, without their knowledge or consent, in the hunt for suspected criminals. About 80% of photos in the FBI’s network are non-criminal entries, including pictures from driver’s licenses and passports. The algorithms used to identify matches are inaccurate about 15% of the time, and are more likely to misidentify black people than white people. These are just some of the damning facts presented at last week’s House oversight committee hearing, where politicians and privacy campaigners criticized the FBI and called for stricter regulation of facial recognition technology at a time when it is creeping into law enforcement and business.”

Bots and Automation over Twitter during the U.S. Election

Bence Kollanyi, Philip N. Howard, and Samuel C. Woolley on Twitter bots and the 2016 election:

“We find that that political bot activity reached an all-time high for the 2016 campaign. (1) Not only did the pace of highly automated pro-Trump activity increase over time, but the gap between highly automated pro-Trump and pro-Clinton activity widened from 4:1 during the first debate to 5:1 by election day. (2) The use of automated accounts was deliberate and strategic throughout the election, most clearly with pro-Trump campaigners and programmers who carefully adjusted the timing of content production during the debates, strategically colonized pro-Clinton hashtags, and then disabled activities after Election Day.”

Robot War and the Future of Perceptual Deception

Post to BLDGBLOG by Geoff Manaugh (July 5, 2016):

“…if, today, a truck can blend-in with the Florida sky, and thus fatally disable a self-driving machine, what might we learn from this event in terms of how to deliberately confuse robotic military systems of the future?….what is anti-robot architectural design, or anti-robot urban planning, and how could it be strategically deployed as a defensive tactic in war?”

CITS lecture on robotization (Thursday)

“Robot Technology Use: Threat or Treasure? The Impact of Robotization on Employee Well-Being”

Thursday, December 1| 3:00 PM | SSMS 2135

In this talk, Dr. Clara ter Hoeven (University of Amsterdam) presents a model that integrates the advantages and challenges of the increasing use of  robot technology for employee well-being.  Academic and public commentary about the effects of robot technologies on the labor market typically present opposing scenarios ranging from enriched work experiences to job loss for most of the workforce. On the one hand, some studies show that working with robots can have benefits for employees, such as alleviating physical and/or administrative tasks and enhancing efficiency and control. On the other hand, studies demonstrate that the use of robots at work can cause job insecurity, feelings of alienation, and intensification of work. Thus, it seems paradoxically that robot technology use can restructure work and work roles such that it both enhances and diminishes employee well-being. However, no previous studies have evaluated the effects of robot technology use on employee well-being. In this presentation, a model is proposed to evaluate how the concomitant advantages and challenges of robot technology use explain the relationship with employee well-being, considering different occupational groups and job levels.

On automated grading of Common Core essays

Valerie Strauss, “Should you trust a computer to grade your child’s writing on Common Core tests?” Washington Post (May 5, 2016):

“Education activists are increasingly becoming concerned about the computer grading of written portions of new Common Core tests. Can a computer really grade written work as well as a human being? Here’s a piece on the issue by Leonie Haimson, a co-founder of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, a national alliance of parents and advocates defending the rights of parents and students to protect their data.”