News of the week selected by Impactscool – February 15th
15 February 2021 | Written by La redazione
Using deepfakes to fight pedophilia
Tackling pedophilia and online child pornography is a complex issue. To be able to enter the secret circles of the deep web where content concerning minors is exchanged, a terrible tribute in the form of photographic content is often required. When the police want to infiltrate these groups, they face a considerable ethical dilemma, that of circulating material representing child abuse in order to stop their trafficking later. German law enforcement agencies, thanks to a new law, could use images generated by deepfake systems for this purpose, in part bypassing the problem. The question, as we said, is complex: even if these new images show abuse and non-existent children, the databases used to train artificial intelligences to generate deepfakes must be of real images. Furthermore, even if what is shown is fictitious, the act itself is the representation of something real and terrible.
2021 is a busy year for Mars which will see in the coming days a succession of missions reach its orbit and its surface. The United Arab Emirates will see its orbiter, Amal, reach the red planet, just 24 hours later China will also bring the Tianwen-1 mission around the planet, finally, on February 18, the US will land on Mars with the Perseverance rover. The Chinese mission is now almost at its destination and delights us with a first image of the planet taken previously from 2 million km. Once Tianwen-1 is in orbit, it will be possible to move on to the second phase of the mission which involves landing on the surface of a lander and a rover, the first of the Chinese space agency to put wheels on the red planet.
From self driving cars to surgery
A startup is exploring how artificial intelligence that is used in self-driving cars can also be used in surgery. It’s called Theator and is developing an AI that helps surgeons make choices during operations. The startup’s platform provides lists of steps during procedures, visual content at “crossroads” for medical professionals to better decide which direction to take, recommendations on milestones for adhering to best practices, and more. But this is just the beginning, Theator aims to develop AI to make it capable of autonomously driving surgical operations, similar to autonomous driving: these, in fact, use videos and sensors to navigate the streets in in a secure manner and constantly improving, in the same way an AI could learn to carry out operations more and more efficiently.
The quantum computer that improves itself
Quantum computers are very susceptible to errors, a barrier to their progress. Q-CTRL announced that it has developed an automatic system, thanks to artificial intelligence, capable of optimizing quantum algorithms. “Just as some conventional computer software allows programmers to write algorithms without the need to understand how a transistor works, this tool makes it much easier for researchers to explore the potential of quantum computers,” said Michael J. Biercuk, founder and CEO of Q-CTRL. “We believe it will accelerate the development of quantum computer hardware and applications, pushing the industry closer to delivering real business value,” Biercuk added.
