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The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, explained with a simple diagram

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There is a complicated web of relationships that explains how the Trump campaign, via the help of a political consulting firm, was able to harvest raw data from 50 million Facebook profiles to direct its messaging.

The consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, is tangled up in several scandals, as my colleague Andrew Prokop explains in this excellent piece. But it’s hard to keep track of how all the pieces fit together.

So we decided to diagram the scandal to help make sense of it all.

1) Here’s the very simple version of the story

Facebook exposed data on 50 million Facebook users to a researcher who worked at Cambridge Analytica, which worked for the Trump campaign.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.vox.com
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Rainforest Connection is using Google’s TensorFlow to curb illegal deforestation

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TensorFlow is Google’s open source framework for machine learning. Rainforest Connection is using this framework to protect the rainforests, such as the Amazon. The method is ingenious and representative of a utilitarian society that we should all be lurching towards.

It’s pretty much impossible to expect investments in human guards across the entirety of the Amazon rainforest. So what’s the next best thing? The people living in the rainforest themselves. Collaborating with local tribes in the Amazon, such as the Tembé tribe from central Amazon, Rainforest Connection has come up with a solution that combines the best of the old world with the new.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.tapscape.com
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Chinese Police Add Facial Recognition Glasses to Their Surveillance Arsenal

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You’ve probably heard of Transitions lenses that can adapt to changing light conditions. Now, get ready for facial recognition lenses.

Police officers in Zhengzhou, China have been spotted wearing sunglasses equipped with facial recognition software that allows them to identify individuals in a crowd. These surveillance sunglasses were actually rolled out last year, but a recent report from China’s QQ published a series of photos of the glasses in action.

China has consistently been ahead of the curve in terms of utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) for surveillance. The country’s CCTV system tracked down a BBC reporter in just seven minutes during a demonstration in 2017. But this new technology, developed by LLVision, takes China’s surveillance efforts to a whole new level. Not just in theory, either — reports from the official People’s Daily newspaper seem to indicate that it’s improving police work.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: futurism.com
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Morality algorithm lets machines cooperate and compromise better than humans

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Over the past year, it’s become pretty clear that machines can now beat us in many straightforward zero-sum games. A new study from an international team of computer scientists set out to develop a new type of game-playing algorithm – one that can play games that rely on traits like cooperation and compromise – and the researchers have found that machines can already deploy those characteristics better than humans.

Chess, Go and Poker are all adversarial games where two or more players are in conflict with each other. Games such as these offer clear milestones to gauge the progress of AI development, allowing humans to be pitted against computers with a tangible winner. But many real-world scenarios that AI will ultimately operate in require more complex, cooperative long term relationships between humans and machines.

“The end goal is that we understand the mathematics behind cooperation with people and what attributes artificial intelligence needs to develop social skills,” says lead author on the new study Jacob Crandall. “AI needs to be able to respond to us and articulate what it’s doing. It has to be able to interact with other people.”

Sourced through Scoop.it from: newatlas.com