Jonathan Mayer has been named the Justice Department’s first chief science and technology advisor and will also hold the title chief artificial intelligence officer, another first. The announcement was made by Attorney General Merrick Garland, who said “the Justice Department must keep pace with rapidly evolving scientific and technological developments in order to fulfill our mission to uphold the rule of law, keep our country safe, and protect civil rights.” Mayer will advise Garland and department leaders and collaborate with other departments “on complex issues requiring technical expertise,” including cybersecurity, AI and other areas of emerging technology. Continue reading Justice Department Appoints Jonathan Mayer Chief AI Officer

AI copyright infringement tool Nightshade generated 250,000 downloads shortly after its January release, exceeding the expectations of its creators in the computer science department at the University of Chicago. Nightshade allows artists to thwart AI models from scraping and training on their work without consent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows more than 2.67 million artists working in the U.S., but social media feedback indicates the downloads have been worldwide. One of the coders says cloud mirror links had to be added so as not to overwhelm the University of Chicago’s web servers. Continue reading AI Poison Pill App Nightshade Has 250K Downloads in 5 Days

OpenAI’s Codex, an AI system that translates natural language into code, was released via an API in private beta. Codex, trained on billions of lines of public code, can turn plain English commands into 12+ programming languages and also powers GitHub service Copilot that suggests whole lines of code within Microsoft Visual Studio and other development environments. OpenAI explained that Codex will be offered for free during an “initial period,” and invites “businesses and developers to build on top of it through the API.”

Continue reading OpenAI Debuts Tool to Translate Natural Language into Code

USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things (CCI) is hosting the second International Symposium on Foundations and Applications of Blockchain (FAB 2019). The event will take place on Friday, April 5, 7:00 am – 8:00 pm at USC. This one-day symposium builds on the previous success of FAB 2018, attended by close to a hundred participants and featuring presentations by distinguished speakers from academia and industry. To register, visit the symposium’s Eventbrite page. Continue reading USC Will Host Full-Day Blockchain Symposium This Friday

OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research group backed by Elon Musk, stated that its software can beat “teams of five skilled human players” in Valve’s video game “Dota 2.” If verified, the achievement would be a milestone in computer science and a leap beyond other AI researchers working on mastering complex games. IBM’s software mastered chess in the late 1990s, and Alphabet’s DeepMind created software that dominated “Go” in 2016. “Dota 2” is a multiplayer sci-fi fantasy game where teams advance through exploration. Continue reading OpenAI Beats Human-Player Team at Complex Video Game

Hanson Robotics — which develops robot products and artificial intelligence technology to serve consumer, medical and entertainment markets — is currently looking to fill two positions: robotics product manager and software product manager. The company is seeking a robotics product manager to lead product development and manage hardware, arts and software teams. The company’s software product manager will lead software development in collaboration with the hardware, arts and executive teams. Details and contact information for each position are available on ETCentric. Continue reading Hanson Robotics Is Seeking Experienced Product Managers

A new series of high performance chips, dubbed Tofino, run at a rate of 6.5 terabits per second, twice as fast as any other on the market, and can be programmed to change functionality. Developed by Palo Alto-based computer networking company Barefoot Networks, they are designed so that it won’t take a hardware specialist to code the chips. Due out later this year, the chips will reside inside networking switches, which direct traffic across the Internet. For companies such as Google and Facebook, the ability to program a chip opens up tremendous opportunities.

Continue reading Chips From Barefoot to Offer Blazing Speed, Programmability