Tag: Reddit

MIT Researchers Use Reddit To Create An AI That Only Thinks About Murder

Artificial Intelligence is one of those terms that induces a polarising reaction from different people. Some believe it’ll make our lives easier and others believe we will soon be an episode of Black Mirror thanks to AI. For tech companies, however, Artificial Intelligence is their new favourite phrase. Google, for example, probably set the world record for using the phrase “AI” the most number of times in an hour at Google I/O 2018. Ever since the Pixel 2 devices were launched, Google has not shied away from using this term in almost everything it does.

While AI assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant do make our lives easier to a certain extent, nobody wants a psychopath AI in their lives. Anyone who has watched Altered Carbon can imagine how creepy and intrusive AI can be if we keep making advancements in the field without keeping a check on it. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) unveiled their new creation, a disturbed AI named Norman. Yes, this AI is named after the “lovable” character from the 1960 film, Psycho. The researchers write:

Norman is an AI that is trained to perform image captioning, a popular deep learning method of generating a textual description of an image. We trained Norman on image captions from an infamous subreddit (the name is redacted due to its graphic content) that is dedicated to document and observe the disturbing reality of death. Then, we compared Norman’s responses with a standard image captioning neural network (trained on MSCOCO dataset) on Rorschach inkblots; a test that is used to detect underlying thought disorders.

Essentially, this AI has very disturbed responses when compared to a general AI. While the Rorschach test has its own doubters whether it is a valid way to measure a person’s psychological state, Norman’s responses don’t need a test to be labelled creepy. The image below captures the level of effect that Reddit thread had on Norman’s ability to perceive images.

The researchers have said that the aim of the experiment was to show how easy it is to bias any AI if you train it on biased data. This experiment raises some telling points about AI and its rapid advancements. Google recently came under scrutiny after it demoed the Google Assistant fooling human beings in a telephonic conversation. Google has since conceded that when this feature rolls out, the Google Assistant will inform the person on call that they’re talking to Google Assistant.

June 8, 2018
Google Answers Questions Regarding the Nexus Devices on Reddit

Just a couple of days ago, Google officially launched the Nexus 5X and the Nexus 6P devices. The initial response to the devices have been mixed, to say the least. There have been some strong criticism directed towards the Nexus 5X, in particular. Google has come out with a few answers to questions posed by Redditors.

Some of the main issues revolved around the lack of a Qi wireless charging support (a first since the Nexus 4) and a limited 2 GB RAM and 16 GB internal storage as the baseline. Google answered the former by stating that they felt the USB Type-C charge was good enough and a wireless charge seemed unnecessary, and would have also added to the thickness of the device. “With this year’s Nexii, we support USB Type-C which has a reversible connector so there’s no more guessing. AND it charges incredibly swiftly: 1% to 100% in 97 mins on the 6P for example (the first ~45 mins of charging is especially fast). Meanwhile, wireless charging adds z (thickness),” the Nexus team said in an AMA on Reddit.

As for the latter question regarding the 2 GB RAM and 16 GB storage, which was offered two years ago with the Nexus range, the company stated that what they wanted to offer with the Nexus 5X is good value for money. “We like to think we’re striking a strong balance between premium features/experiences and affordability,” said Krishna Kumar, the product manager Google put in charge of the Nexus 5X team.

The team also answered a frequently asked question on the site as to whether the cameras on the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P were identical. Kumar replied saying yes.

Both devices have the same camera – a 12.3MP camera, with large 1.55um pixels, which works great in all conditions – especially low light. And both have LDAF for fast auto-focus.” Dave Burke later adds, “[they have the] same sensor (IMX377) and F/2.0 optics. But 6P has more CPU/GPU horsepower so has a few additional features like 240fps slomo (vs 120fps on 5X), Smartburst, and EIS.”

And finally, regarding the naming of the devices as X and P, the Nexus team stated, “X for the core of the Nexus brand (plus it sounds cool!), P for premium.”

October 1, 2015
OnePlus Defends OnePlus 2 and for Making People ‘Settle’

It is a known fact that the OnePlus 2 doesn’t include the NFC, however users and potential customers have been unhappy about this. Therefore, today on a Reddit – Ask Me Anything, four employees of the company fielded questions on everything, such as the voice-over-LTE, the lack of NFC and other such matters. For those who aren’t aware of the term, NFC or Near Field Communication is a short range wireless RFID technology, that can be used for touch-based payments or wireless charging.

Apart from this, OnePlus has been faced with some very serious questions about their taglines and not being able to match up to them. For example, their tagline that says “innovations from the future,” or “Never Settle” and claiming to follow a philosophy that essentially warrants them to create a device without gimmicks, bloatware or compromises; have all been under the radar recently.

A Redditor asked that “with such a powerful mantra like that, wouldn’t it be ironic to settle without quick-charging or wireless charging if I choose your phone?” Here is what OnePlus said:

We’ve always said that never settle is true for us too. That means, if you’re not happy with the product you shouldn’t settle for ours either. With the OnePlus 2, we made the set of choices that we think delivers the best user experience, but because users are not the same they won’t all feel the same. That’s fine – we’ll work hard to make each iteration better than the last.

Adding to this, an employee also mentioned the power of the new Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 technology, as being able to charge a phone from 0% to 100% in approximately 2 hours. Despite this, there have been comparisons with the Nexus 6, that is said to charge enough for the entire day in just one hour. Another aspect that has been criticized, is the inability of the OnePlus 2 to take advantage of the NFC-based Android Pay.

Last but not the least, OnePlus was asked about a recent interview given by Carl Pei at USA Today, speaking about the release of a third device; to which an employee confirmed that there will most definitely be another OnePlus smartphone, however it won’t be called the OnePlus 3 or OnePlus 2S.

Do you think OnePlus has responded adequately to the queries of its users?

For more information: [tw-button size=”medium” background=”#07ABE2″ color=”” target=”_blank” link=”https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/3fmkb5/oneplus_ama_postlaunch_edition/”]Reddit.com[/tw-button]

August 4, 2015