Google just announced an AI bot that could change teaching & learning…. consequences are both exciting & terrifying…

Bot reversal

Revealed during a Google conference, Google Duplex stole the show. They stunned the audience with two telephone conversations, to real businesses, initiated and competed by a bot. If anything, the real people in the businesses sounded more confused than the bot. The bots were from Google Assistant and delivered by Google Duplex. Note that this reverses the usual person speaks to bot. In fact, it’s hard to tell which one is real. Here, the bot is speaking to real people. We are about to see a whole range of things done by humans replaced by bots in customer service.

Lessons in learning

This reversal is interesting in education and training, as it supports the idea of a bot as a tutor, teacher, trainer or mentor. I've already written about how bots can be used in learning. The learners remain real but the teaching could be, to a degree, automated. Most of the time we talk to each other through dialogue. This is how things get done in the real world, it is also how many of us learn. Good teachers engage learners in dialogue. But suppose that bots become so good that they can perform one half of this dialogue?

This is a tough call for software. There’s the speech recognition itself. It also has to sound natural, but natural is a bit messy. I can say ‘A meal for four, at four’ – that’s tricky. On top of this, we go fast, pause, change direction, interrupt but also expect fast responses. This is what Google have tackled head-on with neural networks and trained bots.

Domain specific

Google Duplex does not pretend to understands general conversations. It is domain-specific – which is why its first deployment will be customer service over the phone. You need to train it in a specific domain, like hairdressing or doctor appointments, then encapsulate lots of tricks to make it work. But in domain specific areas, we can see how subject-specific teaching bots could do well here. Bots, on say maths or biology or language learning, are sure to benefit from this tech. There is no way the tech is anywhere near ‘replacing teachers but they can certainly augment, enhance, whatever you want to call it, the teacher’s role.

Conclusion

We’re not far off from bots like these being as common as automated check-outs and ATMs. I’ve been working on bots like these for some time and we were quick to realise that this ‘reversal’ is exactly what ‘teaching’ bots needed. There are some real issues around their use, such as our right to know that it is a bot on the other end of the line. And their use in spam calls. But if it makes our lives easier and takes the pain away from dealing with Doctor’s receptionists and call centres – that’s a win for me. If you’re interested in doing something ‘real’ with bots in corporate learning, contact me here….

Flipped reading – 7 reasons why reading just got super-fast

Education often slows down learning. One reason I’m not for the current orthodoxy in social constructivism is the fact that it slows down many types of learning for many people. My efficiencies in learning over the years have come from the fact that my learning is digital by default, asynchronous by default, available to anyone, anywhere at anytime. So imagine being able to read five or more times faster. Typical experienced reading rates are between 200-400 words per minute. Can this be increased to 1000 words per minute, adding not subtracting attention and comprehension? Try it.

1. Reading shaped by old inefficient tech

We may not realise it but papyrus, parchment and paper are technologies, wasteful technologies at that, especially paper with its polluting, deforestation and landfill problems. Remember that a book is not the physical object but the text. Fact is, most of us do most of our reading online these days. That’s solved these problems but it may also solve another – speed. Reading has been shaped by papyrus, parchment and paper. They remain fixed, while your eyes have to do all the work. Now, along comes a technology that literally flips that model. The words move, not your eyes.

2. Much faster reading

Speed reading software from Spritz works because they’ve looked carefully at what actually happens when we read. We all have an optimal attention point when reading words, which is just left of centre of each word. This is the point (Optimal Recognition Point) at which the brain centres then registers the meaning of the word. The software knows this recognition point for words and presents that letter in red at exactly the same point on the screen. Your eyes don’t have to move so time and effort is saved. Try it – it’s remarkably effective.

3. Text-based learning

One basic skill is still primary in learning – reading. Let’s face it, much of our learning, even communication and collaboration is still through text. Google, Wikipedia, e-books, texting, Facebook, Twitter, email are all still fundamentally text media. Increasing this mode of learning is therefore a significant productivity win.

4. Quicker & better comprehension

They even claim quicker and increased comprehension and I can see why. The effortless focus means you can attend to meaning rather than the effort of physical reading from a page.

5. More psychological attention

The fact that you are having to do less physical work means that psychological attention is focussed. Attention is a necessary condition for learning. It wanes in lectures and wanes when reading. This massively extends your ability to sustain that attention.
6. Language learning
I could see this work well with language learning in terms of quickening up vocabulary and sentence acquisition. It should also work with Arabic if the same rules about Optimal Recognition Point apply (interesting question). It could even be used to increase early reading skills by accelerating reading and vocabulary acquisition.

7. Power up with wearables

The fact that it can be delivered on small mobile screens, Google Glass and watches. You have no scrolling, paging, contracting and expanding. In fact, it has been announced as a feature of the Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Gear 2. Now imagine it being delivered on an Oculus Rift for total psychological attention and no distractions.

Conclusion

Breakthroughs often come by flipping or reversing models. These ‘Copernican’ revolutions have changed the world forever. Thomas Khun saw this as the key driver in scientific progress but it has also been noted that it works on a smaller scale with technology. One could argue that it works particularly well in learning. The flipped classroom is just one example, flipped reading may be another.

Kinect from Mr Kinect himself at Microsoft

Man or mouse?

Are you a man or mouse? You can now be both, as Kinect gives your body control of the computer. Screens are 2D but the world is 3D, that’s why there’s a mismatch. Computers are poor on real world space, and so we have to tell them who we are and what we want them to do through keyboards, mice, joysticks and touchscreens. But with Kinect, the real world, with you in it, is now an operating environment. Kinect-like interfaces allow 3D interaction without all of those helmets, gloves and body sensors. It’s virtual reality without the hassle of gadget armour. It allows the real person to operate within the computer and within environments generated by the computer. Just step up and off you go.

You as interface

How does it do this? Well, I lucked out this week as I had two sessions with the guy who heads up the Kinect technical team. It was like speaking to someone from the far future. A true ‘Me-interface’ has to recognise you as a body, along with your voice and what you say. This ain’t easy. In Kinectables, you can stroke, feed and train animals. You stroke your chosen pet, and see it respond, then give it a name by saying it out loud. You can toss a ball to your cub and he’ll nod it back and use voice commands, such as ‘play dead’ and he’ll drop.

Your body

The first problem with body position is size: we’re fat, thin, tall, short. On top of this we come in lots of different shapes. Then there’s appearance, in terms of hair, clothes, glasses etc.. Now add in the clutter of a background. How do you pick bodies out? Kinect’s cameras peel you away from your background. Note that 2D doesn’t do it for this task, you need 3D as depth images allow you to recognise body parts.

To understand how Kinect works, you need to see it as a database with over 1 million body positions that is rapidly compared with the output of the depth cameras (infrared plus monochrome). The infrared laser projects a grid of 50,000 dots and the RBG camera picks up the depth difference between these dots through parallax differences. The body is then reduced to around 30 body parts based on joint positions i.e. reduced to angles and positions. It is interrogated and position inferred. In that respect it’s more Deep Blue than a pure rules set. But the software also learns and this is the key to its success. It can track six people but only cope with two serious game players at a time. 1.2-3.5 metres and the tilting motor adjusts the sensor by up to 27 degrees. The Kinect software takes up around 190Mb and is a compromise, as the games guys want most of the available space for their games software.

Your voice

This is not as clever as the Peter Molyneux video suggests as it’s limited to commands, and is currently quite poor on natural language recognition. Just imagine the technical problems of isolating the sound from the background noise during a loud game and tracking different voices in a 3D environment. It does, however, have an array microphone, making it directional, so it can distinguish and isolate several different moving sound sources. You can use this for audio and video chat through Xbox Live.

Looking to the future, natural language processing is notoriously difficult but affordable software such as Dragon is around. Once this reaches a consumer price point and efficacy that allows it to be embedded in games consoles and other mobile devices, another step will have been taken in terms of the ‘Me-interface’. Google Translate for Android has just been updated to include a live conversation translator. You click on the microphone, speak, and it reads aloud the translated text.

Kinect 2….

The development kits have not been released, except for current developers and a few universities. Indeed, there’s a debate going on within Microsoft about open v closed development. My money’s on ‘closed’ as it’s in the Microsoft DNA. The hacked MIT open source release is only the for the depth camera, so there’s no body configuration stuff and that’s what really matters. So what’s in the pipeline?

They bought Primesense, bought for their camera technology along with a couple of other advanced camera companies, one is Canesta, and that tells you what’s coming. The next version with increase all dimensions by 4. Remember that increasing a current 50-60,000 number along each axis gives you a quantum leap in fidelity. It will easily resolve fingers and other smaller objects (at the moment it recognises your hands only). Even more astounding is the fact that within two years the ‘parallax’ sensing of the current Kinect will be replaced with ‘speed of light’ Canesta sensing, where differentials in the speed of light determine position. Now that’s not a step change it’s a dimensional leap that gives us accuracy.

Future apps?

Knowing where someone is in terms of body position and gesture has huge possibilities. A hugely accurate and high-fidelity system could replicate you elsewhere either as a hologram or robot, that mimics your every movement. This transportation can replace travel. Here’s a quick Kinect hack with Kinect as a robot (Kinectbot), where it moves around and recognises objects and people, along with gesture control. To give you some idea of the creativity unleashed by Kinect see these 12 favourite Kinect hacks. It can know what you’re doing when driving, so that it could warn you when you’re using a mobile or nodding off. It can take gesture commands, rather than reaching out to buttons on your radio or satnav. Surgeons in operating theatre can use gestures to get up X-rays or MRi scans during operations as they can’t touch possibly infected keyboards or touchscreens.

Incidentally, Steve Ballmer has also announced that there’ll be a PC version.

Virtual Reality 'Game of Thrones' on Vive's stunning rival to Oculus

VR is a amazing medium not a mere gadget. I’ve been playing around with the Oculus Rift Development Kit 1 then Development Kit 2 for over a year, helped get some learning applications funded and see it playing a real role in ‘learning by doing’. Having demoed it to hundreds of people across Europe and in Africa, all I can say is that the most common reaction is ‘Awesome!”. What we’re all waiting on is the consumer launch.

Learning potential

In learning we all yearn for something that can really hold sustained attention, induce intense emotion, allow learning by doing, provide relevant context, enable transfer, increase retention, provide cognitive swap and above all, allow you to do things that are impossible in the real world. These are just seven principles in learning that suggest it has huge potential. Here's a brief selection.

Consumer tech

But what makes technology based learning fly is its cultural acceptance. The technology is always ahead of the more sluggish sociology. We’re all now comfortable with search on the internet, Wikipedia, hyperlinked content, learning from YouTube, TED and Khan videos, contributing within a network of professionals on social media. Whenever a sustained, irreversible, global, consumer base develops, learning applications follow.

This is why the Facebook purchase of Oculus Rift was sosignificant. They were first to get on their racing bike but there’s a peloton forming and the race constantly changes as new challengers emerge from the pack. Since that $2.3 billion dollar announcement, the other industry giants have gone goggle-eyed and pushed their R&D teams to get something to market soon. Samsung, Microsoft and others know that this shift from 2D to 3D may be a huge opportunity, as a new medium emerges. That doesn’t happen very often – paper print, radio, film, TV, 2d web…… what’s next?

Valve’s top ten features

Now another big consortium has emerged as pacemaker – Valve & HTC. This is big news for the following 10 reasons:

1. HTC are making the screen

2. Two 1200x1080 displays

3. Refresh rate of 90 frames a second

4. Great field of view

5. Stem VR base station for avatar control (within 15x15 ft room)

6. Wireless HTC controllers for each hand (gloves?)

7. Controller’s positions tracked

8. Headset is very light

9. Google, HBO on  board

10. Release promised in 2015

This is a big step up from the Oculus Rift DK2 with a significant technology difference. The Valve headset contains cameras that track your movement, rather than the Oculus’s cameras tracking the headset. It’s the Oculus tracking in reverse, although it still has the accelerometer and gyroscope.

There’s a pre-release video, that’s not so great, but the launch is this week (2-5 March) at the Game Developer’s Conference. Their promise – developer’s kit this Spring, then release ‘holiday 2015’, by which I take to be Christmas.

Entertainment

One thing most vendors realise is that this is just about gaming. The games market is huge and can drive this forward but the entertainment, education and health markets are bigger. This is not a gadget – it’s a new medium, applicable in almost every domain you can imagine. HBO are in on the Valve act, NBA in on Oculus - so expect some Game of Thrones VR and court-side viewing on launch. TV and film may never be the same again.

Conclusion

This is great news, but let’s not get too carried away. This is a long race, not a velodrome sprint. Competition has driven this forward. Consumer VR will be here, as I thought, this year. It all comes down to marketing, price and quality of the product. As HTC CEO Peter Chou announced when showing the Vive for the first time on stage “We believe virtual reality will totally transform the way we interact with the world. It will become a mainstream experience for general consumers. The possibilities are limitless.”

PS

Some videos showing VR in education:

VR and 'presence'

Teach history with VR

Teach physics with VR

Teach biology with VR

Amazing reaction on Oculus

AI on land, sea, air (space) & cyberspace – it’s truly terrifying

Vladamir Putin, announced, to an audience of one million online, that, “Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind…  It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world… If we become leaders in this area, we will share this know-how with entire world, the same way we share our nuclear technologies today.” Elon Musk, tweeted a reply, “China, Russia, soon all countries w strong computer science. Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3 imo”, then, “May be initiated not by the country leaders, but one of the AI's, if it decides that a pre-emptive strike is most probable path to victory.”

That pretty much sums up the problem. Large and even small nations, even terrorist groups or lone wolves may soon have the ability to use ‘smart’, autonomous, AI-driven tech in warfare. To be honest, it doesn’t have to be that smart. A mobile device, a drone and explosives are all that one needs to deliver a lethal device from a distance. You may even have left the country when it takes off and delivers its deadly payload. Here’s the rub – sharing may be the last thing we want to do. The problem with sharing, is that anyone can benefit. As soom as machines have the power to decide wholives or dies, we are in uncharted moral territory.

In truth, AI has long been part of the war game. Turing, the father of AI, used it to crack German codes, and thankfully contributed to ending the second World War and let’s not imagine that it has been dormant for the last half a century. The landmine, essentially, a dormant robot that acts autonomously, has been in use since the 17^th century. One way to imagine the future is to extend the concept of the landmine. What we now face are smart, active, autonomous landmines, armed with deadly force on land, sea, air, space and cyberspace. AI exists in all war zones, on all fronts – land, sea, air (space) and cyberspace. 

AI on land

Robot soldiers are with us. You can watch Boston Analytics videos on YouTube and see machines that match humans in some, not all, aspects of carrying, shooting and fighting. The era of the AI-driven robot soldier is here. We have to be careful here, as the cognitive side of soldiering is very far from being achieved. That is one of the problems, as dumb, cognitively stupid robot soldiers bring their own problems.

In the DMZ between South and North Korea, robot guards are armed and will shoot on sight. Known as a Lethal Autonomous Weapons System (LAWS) it will shoot on sight, and by sight we mean infrared detection and laser identification and tracking of a target. It has an AI-driven voice recognition system, asks for identification, and can shoot autonomously. You can see why these sentry or rapid response systems have become autonomous. Humans are far too slow in detecting in-coming attacks or targeting with enough accuracy. Many guns are now targeted automatically with sensors and systems way beyond the capabilities of any human.

Uran-9, a Russian unmanned drone tank, gets to places autonomously and can be under human control or not. It’s hard to believe that the autonomous software for such vehicles has not been developed, as it has for self-driving cars. When such vehicles can set off and complete missions, it is hard to see how the risk of human casualties would be seen as an option.

AI at sea

Lethal Autonomous Weapons can already operate on or beneath the sea. Naval mines (let’s call them autonomous robots) have been in operation for centuries. Unmanned submarines have been around for decades and have been used for purposes good and bad, for example, the deliver of drugs using autonomous GPS navigation, as well as finding aircraft that have downed in mid-ocean. In military terms, large submarines capable of travelling thousands of miles, sensor-rich, with payloads, are already in play. Russian drone submarines have already been detected, code-named Kanyon by the Pentagon, they are thought to have a range of up to 6,200 miles with speeds up to 56 knots. They can also deliver nucear payloads. Boeing and many others have also been developng such unmanned subs.

AI in the air

When you fly, the pilot of the 757 switches to autopilot at 1000 feet and you are then technically flying in a robot for the rest of the flight, albeit being supervised by the pilots – fuel consumption, weather and so on. They could have landed using autoland but most pilots still prefer to land the aircraft themselves. The bottom line is that software does most flying better than humans and will soon outclass them on all tasks. Flying is safe precisely because it is highly regulated and smart software is used to ensure safety.

Drones are the most obvious example, largely controlled from the ground, often at huge distances, they are now AI-driven, operate from aircraft carriers, can defend themselves against other aircraft and deliver deadly missiles to selected targets. The days of the fighter plane may be numbered, as drones, free from the problem of seating and coping with a human pilot, is cheaper and can be produced in larger numbers.

This is Taranis, named after the God of Thunder, an unmanned BAE drone that has been tested in Australia on autonomous missions. The tech that has been developed for self-driving cars can be used for autonomous vehicles on land and air. They spot the enemy, rather than friendly pedestrians.

Worringly, there is evidence  that Israle's HARAP system, which is actually an autonomous bomb that literally dive bombs radar installations and self-destructs, has already been used.

Swarm drones have already been tested by the US, to surround and overwhelm a target. Each drone acts independently but also as a group.

Nanoweapons
A terrifying range of nanoweapons, mosquito-like robots and mini-nukes have entered the vocabulary. Nanoweapons: A Growing Threat to Humanity by Louis A. Del Monte is a terrifying account of how nanoweapons may change the whole nature of warfare, making other forms almost redundant. It is the miniaturisation of weaponry that also makes this more of a lethal threat. This world of small weaponry is worrying. Small payloads on small drones, with amazing manoeuvrability are already possible. Stuart Russell has already warned against this one aspect of AI in weaponry in evidence for the UN, which seems, at last, to be moving towards international regulation in the area, just like chemical weapons.

AI in cyberspace

War used to be fought on land, sea and air, with the services -  army, navy and airforce – representing those three theatres of war. It is thought that a brand new front has opened up on the internet but this is not entirely true, as the information and communications war has always been the fourth front. The Persians did it, the Romans were masters of it and it has featured in all modern conflicts. Whenever a new form of communications technology is invented, from clay tablets, paper, printing, broadcast media and the internet, it has been used as a weapon of war.

However, the internet offers a much wider, deeper and difficult arena, as it is global and encrypted. Russia, China, US are the major players, with autonomous bots and viral campaigns in action. China wages a war against freedom of expression within its own country with its infamous Great Firewall of China. Russia has banned LinkedIn and Putin has been explicit in seeing this as the new battlefield. The US is no different, with explicit lies about the surveillance of its own citizens. But it is the smaller state actors that have had real wins – ISIS, North Korea and others. With limited resources they see this theatre as somewhere they can compete and outwit the big boys.

AI as weapon of peace

When you land at advanced airports, you walk through a gate that scans your passport. In a chip on your passport is an image of your face and face recognition software, along with other checks, identifies you as being able to enter the country. You needn't speak to any human on you entire trip. You will soon be able to walk through borders using a mobile phone only. Restricting the movement of criminals and terrorists is being achieved through the use of many types of AI. The war on terror is being fought using AI. It is AI that is identifying and taking down ISIS propaganda. What is required, is a determined effort to use AI to police AI. All robots may have to have black boxes, like aircraft, so that rogue behaviour can be forensically examined. AI may be our best defence against offensive (in both senses of the word) AI.

Conclusion

A University, KAIST, the MIT of S Korea, has just backed down from doing military research with AI after a seriousl letter from some major AI researchers, with Global reputations, threatening a boycott. Google staff lambasted the CEO when they found that Goggle's Tensorflow was being used in wide range imaging from military drones. It is heartening that this is coming from within hte AI and tech community. There are already UN meetings with multilateral support to discuss and decide desirable international laws, such as those covering chemical weapons, landlines and laser blinding technology. The two main goals at the moment are 1) Target selection and 2) the application of violent force. But it's hard seeing this stick. The US, Russia and Chna have been lukewarm on further regulation, seeing existing laws as adequate. Some aspects of AI remain opaque. For example, the mosre siophisticated machine learning andneural netwrors become, the less we know about what is actually happening within AI.
What is worrying, however, is that while many of the above examples are known, you can bet that this is merely the tip of a chilling iceberg, as most of these weapons and systems are being developed in deep secrecy. Musk and many others, especially the AI research and development community, are screaming out for regulation at an international level on this front. Our politicians seem ill-equipped to deal with these developments, so it is up to the AI community and those in the 'know' to press this home. This is an arms race that is far more dangerous than the nuclear race, where only large nations and humans have been in control and calls for a declaration of war on AI weaponry. We are facing a future where even small nations, rogue states and actors within states could get hold of this technology. That is a terrifying prospect.