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Machine Learnings

Awesome, not awesome.

#Awesome
"Asymptomatic people who are infected with Covid-19 exhibit, by definition, no discernible physical symptoms of the disease. They are thus less likely to seek out testing for the virus, and could unknowingly spread the infection to others. But it seems those who are asymptomatic may not be entirely free of changes wrought by the virus. MIT researchers have now found that people who are asymptomatic may differ from healthy individuals in the way that they cough. These differences are not decipherable to the human ear. But it turns out that they can be picked up by artificial intelligence. In a paper published recently in the IEEE Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology, the team reports on an AI model that distinguishes asymptomatic people from healthy individuals through forced-cough recordings, which people voluntarily submitted through web browsers and devices such as cellphones and laptops." - Jennifer Chu Learn More from MIT News >

#Not Awesome
"A surveillance startup in Silicon Valley is being accused of sexism and discrimination after a sales director used the company’s facial recognition system to harass female workers. Verkada, which was valued in January at $1.6 billion, equips its office with its own security cameras. Last year, the sales director accessed these cameras to take photos of female workers, then posted them in a Slack channel called #RawVerkadawgz alongside sexually explicit jokes" - Zoe Schiffer Learn More from The Verge >

What we're reading.

1/ Rather than look for technical solutions to reduce bias in AI, we may just need to hire more diverse teams. Learn More from Harvard Business Review >

2/ It's incredibly difficult and computationally intensive to make accurate weather predictions on a global scale today, but new deep learning techniques are showing promise as speeding up the process. Learn More from MIT Technology Review >

3/ A new paper from John Hopkins shows how quickly a robot can be learned when praised for good behavior rather than punished when it does something wrong Learn More from TechCrunch >

4/ AI tools will only be able useful for us in endeavors like developing a smash hit pop song once they become easier to collaborate with. Learn More from MIT Technology Review >

5/ Uber used an algorithm to automatically detect "fraudulent" driver behavior and fire them without sharing any of the purported evidence. Learn More from TechCrunch >

6/ A new startup uses machine learning to detect plant nutrients in foods that scientists aren't currently aware of, and hopefully help to "cultivate compounds in foods for specific health value." Learn More from Axios >

7/ AI tools may be able to mimic the human spirit at some point in the future, but they've already gotten really good at pissing people off on Twitter. Learn More from The New York Times >

Links from the community.

"AI-Expert-Roadmap" submitted by Samiur Rahman (@samiur1204). Learn More from GitHub >

"Great essays delivered to your inbox. Chosen specifically for you with machine learning." submitted by Avi Eisenberger (@aeisenberger). Learn More from Findka >

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01/11/20 View this email in your browser
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