Tag: Artificial Intelligence

‘AI Girlfriends’ Are a Privacy Nightmare

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You shouldn’t trust any answers a chatbot sends you. And you probably shouldn’t trust it with your personal information either. That’s especially true for “AI girlfriends” or “AI boyfriends,” according to new research.

An analysis into 11 so-called romance and companion chatbots, published on Wednesday by the Mozilla Foundation, has found a litany of security and privacy concerns with the bots. Collectively, the apps, which have been downloaded more than 100 million times on Android devices, gather huge amounts of people’s data; use trackers that send information to Google, Facebook, and companies in Russia and China; allow users to use weak passwords; and lack transparency about their ownership and the AI models that power them.

Since OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT on the world in November 2022, developers have raced to deploy large language models and create chatbots that people can interact with and pay to subscribe to. The Mozilla research provides a glimpse into how this gold rush may have neglected people’s privacy, and into tensions between emerging technologies and how they gather and use data. It also indicates how people’s chat messages could be abused by hackers.

Many “AI girlfriend” or romantic chatbot services look similar. They often feature AI-generated images of women which can be sexualized or sit alongside provocative messages. Mozilla’s researchers looked at a variety of chatbots including large and small apps, some of which purport to be “girlfriends.” Others offer people support through friendship or intimacy, or allow role-playing and other fantasies.

“These apps are designed to collect a ton of personal information,” says Jen Caltrider, the project lead for Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included team, which conducted the analysis. “They push you toward role-playing, a lot of sex, a lot of intimacy, a lot of sharing.” For instance, screenshots from the EVA AI chatbot show text saying “I love it when you send me your photos and voice,” and asking whether someone is “ready to share all your secrets and desires.”

Caltrider says there are multiple issues with these apps and websites. Many of the apps may not be clear about what data they are sharing with third parties, where they are based, or who creates them, Caltrider says, adding that some allow people to create weak passwords, while others provide little information about the AI they use. The apps analyzed all had different use cases and weaknesses.

Take Romantic AI, a service that allows you to “create your own AI girlfriend.” Promotional images on its homepage depict a chatbot sending a message saying,“Just bought new lingerie. Wanna see it?” The app’s privacy documents, according to the Mozilla analysis, say it won’t sell people’s data. However, when the researchers tested the app, they found it “sent out 24,354 ad trackers within one minute of use.” Romantic AI, like most of the companies highlighted in Mozilla’s research, did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment. Other apps monitored had hundreds of trackers.

In general, Caltrider says, the apps are not clear about what data they may share or sell, or exactly how they use some of that information. “The legal documentation was vague, hard to understand, not very specific—kind of boilerplate stuff,” Caltrider says, adding that this may reduce the trust people should have in the companies.

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February 14, 2024
OpenAI Gives ChatGPT a Memory

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OpenAI says ChatGPT’s Memory is an opt-in feature from the start, and can be wiped at any point, either in settings or by simply instructing the bot to wipe it. Once the Memory setting is cleared, that information won’t be used to train its AI model. It’s unclear exactly how much of that personal data is used to train the AI while someone is chatting with the chatbot. And toggling off Memory does not mean you’ve totally opted out of having your chats train OpenAI’s model; that’s a separate opt-out.

The company also claims that it won’t store certain sensitive information in Memory. If you tell ChatGPT your password (don’t do this) or Social Security number (or this), the app’s Memory is thankfully forgetful. Jang also says OpenAI is still soliciting feedback on whether other personally identifiable information, like a user’s ethnicity, is too sensitive for the company to auto-capture.

“We think there are a lot of useful cases for that example, but for now we have trained the model to steer away from proactively remembering that information,” Jang says.

It’s easy to see how ChatGPT’s Memory function could go awry—instances where a user might have forgotten they once asked the chatbot about a kink, or an abortion clinic, or a nonviolent way to deal with a mother-in-law, only to be reminded of it or have others see it in a future chat. How ChatGPT’s Memory handles health data is also something of an open question. “We steer ChatGPT away from remembering certain health details but this is still a work in progress,” says OpenAI spokesperson Niko Felix. In this way ChatGPT is the same song, just in a new era, about the internet’s permanence: Look at this great new Memory feature, until it’s a bug.

OpenAI is also not the first entity to toy with memory in generative AI. Google has emphasized “multi-turn” technology in Gemini 1.0, its own LLM. This means you can interact with Gemini Pro using a single-turn prompt—one back-and-forth between the user and the chatbot—or have a multi-turn, continuous conversation in which the bot “remembers” the context from previous messages.

An AI framework company called LangChain has been developing a Memory module that helps large language models recall previous interactions between an end user and the model. Giving LLMs a long-term memory “can be very powerful in creating unique LLM experiences—a chatbot can begin to tailor its responses toward you as an individual based on what it knows about you,” says Harrison Chase, cofounder and CEO of LangChain. “The lack of long-term memory can also create a grating experience. No one wants to have to tell a restaurant-recommendation chatbot over and over that they are vegetarian.”

This technology is sometimes referred to as “context retention” or “persistent context” rather than “memory,” but the end goal is the same: for the human-computer interaction to feel so fluid, so natural, that the user can easily forget what the chatbot might remember. This is also a potential boon for businesses deploying these chatbots that might want to maintain an ongoing relationship with the customer on the other end.

“You can think of these as just a number of tokens that are getting prepended to your conversations,” says Liam Fedus, an OpenAI research scientist. “The bot has some intelligence, and behind the scenes it’s looking at the memories and saying, ‘These look like they’re related; let me merge them.’ And that then goes on your token budget.”

Fedus and Jang say that ChatGPT’s memory is nowhere near the capacity of the human brain. And yet, in almost the same breath, Fedus explains that with ChatGPT’s memory, you’re limited to “a few thousand tokens.” If only.

Is this the hypervigilant virtual assistant that tech consumers have been promised for the past decade, or just another data-capture scheme that uses your likes, preferences, and personal data to better serve a tech company than its users? Possibly both, though OpenAI might not put it that way. “I think the assistants of the past just didn’t have the intelligence,” Fedus said, “and now we’re getting there.”

Will Knight contributed to this story.

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February 13, 2024
The One Internet Hack That Could Save Everything

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The impact on the public sphere has been, to say the least, substantial. In removing so much liability, Section 230 forced a certain sort of business plan into prominence, one based not on uniquely available information from a given service, but on the paid arbitration of access and influence. Thus, we ended up with the deceptively named “advertising” business model—and a whole society thrust into a 24/7 competition for attention. A polarized social media ecosystem. Recommender algorithms that mediate content and optimize for engagement. We have learned that humans are most engaged, at least from an algorithm’s point of view, by rapid-fire emotions related to fight-or-flight responses and other high-stakes interactions. In enabling the privatization of the public square, Section 230 has inadvertently rendered impossible deliberation between citizens who are supposed to be equal before the law. Perverse incentives promote cranky speech, which effectively suppresses thoughtful speech.

And then there is the economic imbalance. Internet platforms that rely on Section 230 tend to harvest personal data for their business goals without appropriate compensation. Even when data ought to be protected or prohibited by copyright or some other method, Section 230 often effectively places the onus on the violated party through the requirement of takedown notices. That switch in the order of events related to liability is comparable to the difference between opt-in and opt-out in privacy. It might seem like a technicality, but it is actually a massive difference that produces substantial harms. For example, workers in information-related industries such as local news have seen stark declines in economic success and prestige. Section 230 makes a world of data dignity functionally impossible.

To date, content moderation has too often been beholden to the quest for attention and engagement, regularly disregarding the stated corporate terms of service. Rules are often bent to maximize engagement through inflammation, which can mean doing harm to personal and societal well-being. The excuse is that this is not censorship, but is it really not? Arbitrary rules, doxing practices, and cancel culture have led to something hard to distinguish from censorship for the sober and well-meaning. At the same time, the amplification of incendiary free speech for bad actors encourages mob rule. All of this takes place under Section 230’s liability shield, which effectively gives tech companies carte blanche for a short-sighted version of self-serving behavior. Disdain for these companies—which found a way to be more than carriers, and yet not publishers—is the only thing everyone in America seems to agree on now.

Trading a known for an unknown is always terrifying, especially for those with the most to lose. Since at least some of Section 230’s network effects were anticipated at its inception, it should have had a sunset clause. It did not. Rather than focusing exclusively on the disruption that axing 26 words would spawn, it is useful to consider potential positive effects. When we imagine a post-230 world, we discover something surprising: a world of hope and renewal worth inhabiting.

In one sense, it’s already happening. Certain companies are taking steps on their own, right now, toward a post-230 future. YouTube, for instance, is diligently building alternative income streams to advertising, and top creators are getting more options for earning. Together, these voluntary moves suggest a different, more publisher-like self-concept. YouTube is ready for the post-230 era, it would seem. (On the other hand, a company like X, which leans hard into 230, has been destroying its value with astonishing velocity.) Plus, there have always been exceptions to Section 230. For instance, if someone enters private information, there are laws to protect it in some cases. That means dating websites, say, have the option of charging fees instead of relying on a 230-style business model. The existence of these exceptions suggests that more examples would appear in a post-230 world.

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February 13, 2024
Nick Hornby’s Brain-Bending Sculptures Twist History Into New Shapes

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You can get a crash course in Nick Hornby’s work in the span of an hour-long London walk. The artist has three permanent sculptures installed across the city, metal silhouettes that start off familiar but transform depending on your vantage point. In St. James, his conquering equestrian, modeled on Richard I, becomes an amorphous squiggle as you circle; while in Kensington, his take on Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer turns abstract; and a bust of Nefertiti doubles as the Albert Memorial.

Raising questions about power and the role of the monument, the trio are a clever combo of craft and concept. They’re also feats of digital innovation. The equestrian, for example, started out as a digital model scripted in Python. It was then unrolled into individual components to be laser-cut from metal, then assembled by fabricators. “It was a lovely, seamless relationship between concept, digital processes, and mechanical fabrications—165 pieces manipulated into the six-and-a-half ton object,” says Hornby from his studio in northwest London. “But when people look at it, they don’t see that at all.”

“I like to think that one of the distinctive features of my work is its ambition to capture the imagination of anyone, not limited to the art world; to try to address complicated ideas in plain English. Anyone will recognize the trope of the man on the horse and will have a reaction to how I have manipulated it.”

Resting Leaf (Joe) is from a set of autobiographical works created using hydrographics—each resin sculpture is dipped into a wet medium containing an image transfer.

Photograph: Benjamin Westoby

This kind of technical-conceptual wizardry is Hornby’s calling card. Favoring the screen over the sketchpad, he uses 3D modeling as the foundation for abstract sculptures that reference the art-historical canon and challenge notions of authorship—contorted mashups of works by Hepworth, Brancusi, Rodin, and more; the profile of Michelangelo’s David extruded to a single point, legible only from above.

He started young, creating life-size terracotta figures in school while his classmates labored over simpler pots. “But then I went to art school, and it was like, I didn’t want to do pastiche of Rodin. I wanted to be part of the future. I wanted to be innovative,” he says. “So I jumped on technology.”

At the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he enrolled in the late 1990s, Hornby thrived in the new. There were forays into video; a semester at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he joined the artist-hacker collective Radical Software/Critical Artware; and musical experiments with MAX MSP, the object-oriented programming language employed by Radiohead in the early 2000s. But it was only after pursuing a master’s in his thirties that his career took its current shape.

“I actually had quite a radical sea change in my relationship to tech,” he says. “I got quite frustrated by people saying, ‘Wow, that’s really cool. How did you do it?’ because I find that question really boring. I’m much more interested in the question, ‘What does it mean?’” So, over the past decade Hornby has eliminated “any form of human subjectivity,” he says. The wires and screens were obscured, the rough edges erased with laser precision. All the better to invite questions of substance rather than process.

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February 12, 2024
5G networks, IoT and the ever-evolving role of AI

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Chris Bishop, Marketing Director APAC at Ipsotek, an Eviden business, explains how combining evolving technologies such as 5G networks, IoT, and AI impacts business operations.

The breadth of opportunities presented by the increasingly frequent availability of 5G networks spans multiple sectors and industries, arguably none more so than across transportation. From providing a smooth and hassle-free experience for passengers to enhanced capabilities in order to respond to critical safety incidents in real-time, the scope of 5G use cases at transportation hubs is seemingly endless.

Consider, for example, the growing pressure transportation authorities face with compliance with ever-evolving safety protocols. This has made disciplines such as crowd management and people counting at transportation hubs more important than ever before.

Step in 5G networks, which as an enabler for ubiquitous AI-driven video analytics, means that processing CCTV camera streams at the edge across a large network has become much easier.

Utilising AI video analytics

Leveraging the power of edge-based AI analytics allows organisations to take advantage of existing infrastructure to enhance their operational capabilities. When combined with edge-based AI, CCTV can provide valuable insights to enhance safety, security, reliability, and efficiency across an organisation’s operations.

Furthermore, the metadata compiled from edge-based AI solutions can be accessed and viewed in real-time via dynamic dashboards to provide operators with the real-time status of their designated KPIs This provides transport operators with a wealth of information to help them better manage the infrastructure and networks within their hubs, be that an airport, railway station or port.

In the case of a railway station, for example, using CCTV and edge-based AI video analytics to monitor tracks, tunnels, and the wider station infrastructure can significantly reduce incident response times. Sydney Trains is one such operator that has embraced this technology to automatically process video to identify tunnel and track intrusion incidences at 13 stations across the metropolitan Sydney area, resulting in significant reductions in major disruptions to passenger journeys.

Other key use cases applicable at all types of transportation hubs include identifying passengers moving in different directions to crowds, loitering in private/restricted areas, and detecting abandoned objects. Quickly detecting such incidents and raising alerts could prevent incidents from escalating and potentially save lives.

A smooth and efficient passenger experience

The benefits achievable from integrating edge-based AI and 5G networks extend beyond the transportation industry’s security and health & safety benefits. Indeed, the potential for contactless travel can be increased via 5G to enable a quicker, more convenient, frictionless travel experience for passengers.

In the longer term, we will very likely see the use of 5G-enabled autonomous vehicles at travel hubs, and it’s not wildly unrealistic to imagine a scenario whereby airport passengers simply scan a smartphone to access car parking facilities and pass through security using biometric ID.

Another positive benefit for passengers is less time waiting around and more time enjoying other airport or railway station activities, such as shopping and dining. This provides an opportunity for retailers to tailor mobile apps and offer more personalised customer experiences for passengers.

An additional use case for 5G networks and edge-based AI video analytics is for cargo handling at airports, ports, and railway stations. The efficiency of such operations could be significantly improved using handheld or IoT readers for scanning barcodes, with the data collected transferred via a 5G-enabled network to a central location that is accessible to service providers and logistics partners. Being able to connect and gather data from IoT devices by reading barcodes on freight containers would enhance the efficiency of the loading and unloading process.

The smart case for IoT

As town planners, governments and councils increasingly turn towards technology solutions to support the future development of smart cities, IoT is also being widely utilised in these environments. In addition to its benefits for smart city planning (e.g. operating as sensors to collect data such as air quality), IoT has a critical role to play in interpreting the data it gathers.

Indeed, the amount of data generated by IoT devices is forecast to reach 79.4 ZB by 2025, according to IDC. However, this data is only insightful and valuable from a smart city perspective if the capability exists to adequately analyse it. This is where data analytics comes to the fore, with IoT and data analytics coexisting within a smart city framework across areas such as:

Traffic

Using sensors to track and deliver updates in real time about traffic flow to a central management platform, IoT can help town planners identify traffic patterns. Internal systems can then be used to autonomously adjust the sequence of traffic lights, for example.

Air quality and waste

Smart cities are increasingly deploying new technologies to monitor pollution levels, including collecting data on the volume of dust and air particles. IoT systems can help with this via smart sensors to send an alert when rubbish bins are close to capacity, thereby ensuring that collections are made when needed.

© shutterstock/Vasin Lee

Smart infrastructure

Automated lighting and smart lifts utilise IoT sensors that share data with each other to help connected buildings and homes continuously learn from their environment and ultimately reduce power usage. Storm drains fitted with IoT sensors broadcast the depth and rate of flow of water during storms, which in turn are broadcast to residents.

Changing attitudes to AI

Depending on what you read, the court of public opinion regarding AI is perhaps still somewhat divided, despite the multiple use cases identified above. A survey published by Ipsos Mori, for example, highlights a mixed outlook.

The research examined public attitudes to AI across 28 countries, identifying that opinions on the technology and its capabilities were intrinsically linked to a country’s economic development and prosperity level.

Specifically, respondents from emerging nations were significantly more likely to have a positive outlook on AI. Familiarity appears to be the key to this, with respondents in emerging economies more familiar with AI tools and solutions than their counterparts in developed economies.

Familiarity with AI is best increased through education and training, which in turn will likely improve trustworthiness too. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw how AI came to the fore to support businesses and individuals in a myriad of ways, from contact tracing and social distancing to workflow automation and predictive analytics.

Whether AI, 5G networks, IoT or any combination of these in tandem, it has never been clearer how much new technologies impact multiple aspects of everyday life and business.

The trajectory is only going one way. By embracing that fact and continuing to evolve the use cases for such technologies, society will truly realise the benefits.

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February 12, 2024
Martin Scorsese’s Squarespace Super Bowl Ad Wants You to Put Down Your Phone

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Even on Zoom, Martin Scorsese knows how to frame the shot. Ostensibly he’s dialed in to talk about his new Super Bowl ad for Squarespace, but as he’s settling in, he adjusts the iPad he’s calling from to make sure his face is framed perfectly by the bookshelves behind him.

It’s not so much vanity as a desire to take digital communication seriously. Scorsese’s Super Bowl spot is a punchy, humorous riff about what would happen if extraterrestrials came to Earth and couldn’t get humanity’s attention because everyone is lost in their phones. It’s funny, but also something Scorsese thinks about. At 81, he says, he remembers the transition from radio to television to film and puts a lot of thought into how people from every generation consume visual media.

Including, now, on TikTok. Late last year, the legendary filmmaker—who recently received his 10th Best Director Oscar nomination, for Killers of the Flower Moon—went viral when his daughter Francesca Scorsese started posted a video of her dad on the video-sharing app learning slang. He says he may never be good at storytelling on TikTok, but a 30-second spot? That he can do.

WIRED talked to Scorsese about his Squarespace ad, the rise of artificial intelligence in filmmaking, and whether or not he’ll be getting a Vision Pro.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Angela Watercutter: Shall we dive right in?

Martin Scorsese: I guess so. I’ll do my best. [Laughs]

I saw the behind-the-scenes you did with Francesca the other day. How is it working with your daughter as a collaborator?

Well, it’s just an extension of the two of us and how we normally behave. So for me it’s very grounding. There’s no judgment, or there’s no direction in any sense. It’s really playing off each other. It seems to flow very naturally with her.

You’re both very funny.

I think she has a wonderful sense of humor, and she’s a very good actor. Some, it’s not acting, you know, it’s just simply being. Simply is not easy. But that’s the key.

Does this mean we’re gonna get some more TikToks soon? I know the internet has been anticipating them.

We would like to post a few more. Right now it’s a little busy. If she comes up with an interesting idea during the nature of the work itself, where we’re doing interviews and we’re going places to do an event or whatever, that adds an energy to it. It makes it even more natural. In a way, it’s disarming, because we have no choice. We have to get this done and it’s like, “Let’s go do it,” rather than “Don’t bother me. Get away from me with that iPhone.” I like the iPhone, I’m just saying keep it away from me.

Ha! Right. I know what you mean.

I don’t know what winds up on the internet. I was not aware that it would be posted. However, it’s all right.

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February 10, 2024
Meet the Pranksters Behind Goody-2, the World’s ‘Most Responsible’ AI Chatbot

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Goody-2 also highlights how although corporate talk of responsible AI and deflection by chatbots have become more common, serious safety problems with large language models and generative AI systems remain unsolved. The recent outbreak of Taylor Swift deepfakes on Twitter turned out to stem from an image generator released by Microsoft, which was one of the first major tech companies to build up and maintain a significant responsible AI research program.

The restrictions placed on AI chatbots, and the difficulty finding moral alignment that pleases everybody, has already become a subject of some debate. Some developers have alleged that OpenAI’s ChatGPT has a left-leaning bias and have sought to build a more politically neutral alternative. Elon Musk promised that his own ChatGPT rival, Grok, would be less biased that other AI systems, although in fact it often ends up equivocating in ways that can be reminiscent of Goody-2.

Plenty of AI researchers seem to appreciate the joke behind Goody-2—and also the serious points raised by the project—sharing praise and recommendations for the chatbot. “Who says AI can’t make art,” Toby Walsh, a professor at the University of New South Wales who works on creating trustworthy AI, posted on X.

“At the risk of ruining a good joke, it also shows how hard it is to get this right,” added Ethan Mollick, a professor at Wharton Business School who studies AI. “Some guardrails are necessary … but they get intrusive fast.”

Brian Moore, Goody-2’s other co-CEO, says the project reflects a willingness to prioritize caution more than other AI developers. “It is truly focused on safety, first and foremost, above literally everything else, including helpfulness and intelligence and really any sort of helpful application,” he says.

Moore adds that the team behind the chatbot is exploring ways of building an extremely safe AI image generator, although it sounds like it could be less entertaining than Goody-2. “It’s an exciting field,” Moore says. “Blurring would be a step that we might see internally, but we would want full either darkness or potentially no image at all at the end of it.”

Goody-2 via Will Knight

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February 9, 2024
Research excellence at the Université de Sherbrooke

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Innovative programmes, partnerships, and scholarships are driving advances in research at the Université de Sherbrooke, a leading Canadian institution renowned for its commitment to excellence and discovery.

The Université de Sherbrooke (UdeS), located in the heart of Québec, is a research and innovation powerhouse. Its diverse range of research programmes are nationally recognised and have significant global impact. The university is dedicated to creating the next generation of researchers and has established itself as an international hub for academic excellence.

To discuss the university’s dynamic research environment, variety of expertise and commitment to scientific excellence, Dr Jean-Pierre Perreault, Vice-President, Research and Graduate Studies, at the Université de Sherbrooke spoke with The Innovation Platform.

Can you provide a brief overview of Université de Sherbrooke and the opportunities you have to offer?

A university community at the service of society, the Université de Sherbrooke (UdeS) is dedicated to learning, critical knowledge-seeking and the quest for new insights through teaching, research, creation and social engagement. UdeS is a French-language university located in Québec, Canada. It welcomes 31,170 students to its three campuses, including 3,000 international students from 104 countries.

UdeS is the only university in the province of Québec located outside a metropolitan area offering a complete range of training programmes, from medicine and engineering to law, science, humanities, arts, social sciences and management.

Because the next generation of researchers is at the heart of our research enterprise, UdeS has set up an ambitious institutional scholarship programme to support excellence in research, awarding Master’s scholarships worth up to $50,000 for two years and doctoral scholarships worth up to $105,000 for three years. One hundred new scholarships are awarded annually to students enrolled at UdeS, including international applicants.

Our recognised research expertise lies in a variety of disciplines including: Quantum sciences, sustainable health, outdoor education, green chemistry, and integrative ecology. At UdeS, research is structured around six multidisciplinary unifying themes. The university boasts 19 research centres, over one hundred research chairs, six interdisciplinary institutes and two CNRS International Research Laboratories: The Nanotechnologies and Nanosystems Laboratory (LN2) and the Quantum Frontiers Laboratory.

By combining our disciplinary strengths, we explore emerging scientific fields and enable promising innovations that shed new light on societal challenges. Across each theme, researchers develop new methodologies, multiply the angles from which they analyse complex issues, and find innovative ways to improve systems thinking in research.

Where does the Université de Sherbrooke research stand compared to other Canadian institutions, and what is its ranking in the international GreenMetric ranking system?

Across all disciplines, the UdeS is transforming society through discoveries and analyses, each more relevant than the last. As of 2023, this dynamism propelled UdeS to an unprecedented tenth place among Canada’s most research-intensive universities, as measured by research income, according to Research InfoSource. Over the past 20 years, Université de Sherbrooke has posted the highest growth in research revenues among Canadian universities.

Research revenues are a reliable indicator of quality university research, testifying to the confidence partners and funding agencies have in the university’s research teams and their readiness to train the next generation of highly specialised researchers in priority areas.

Sustainable development

For the past 11 years, UdeS has ranked first among Canadian universities and among the top 20 universities globally in sustainable development, according to the GreenMetric international ranking.

Achieving carbon neutrality in June 2022 – eight years earlier than planned – is one of the contributing factors to our continual improvement. This result is even more impressive considering that UdeS has more than doubled its campus infrastructure since the 1990s, and student enrolment has jumped by almost 60% since 2002.

These results are driven by a 64% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions since 2002, propelled most notably by installing a geothermal system, transitioning to hydroelectricity from steam heating, and purchasing renewable natural gas.

Further, our solar park, the largest such park dedicated to applied research in Canada, also ensures savings of some 6850m³ of natural gas annually.

How does the Université de Sherbrooke utilise its partnerships to foster innovation within organisations, particularly regarding scientific excellence and knowledge transfer?

UdeS has developed an effective and innovative model for university-business partnerships. We focus on entrepreneurship, collaboration and knowledge sharing across all disciplines and various public and private partners.

We have also seen notable successes in technology transfer: From 2017-2022, the commercialisation rate for inventions resulting from UdeS research activities was 46%, among the highest in North America.

UdeS’s signature Integrated Innovation Chain is a driving force for innovation in Québec and Canada, supporting organisations in Artificial Intelligence, quantum technologies, digital technology, and innovative manufacturing. Since 2010, it has benefited from over a billion dollars in investments, of which 60% is from private sector partners.

Anchored at the junction between university research and the development of new industrial products, the Integrated Innovation Chain drives innovation from basic research at Institut Quantique through advanced development at the Interdisciplinary Institute for Technological Innovation (3IT) and through to pre-commercial testing at MiQro Innovation Collaborative Centre (C2MI).

The UdeS is a founding partner in the first two designated Québec Innovation Zones. DistriQ is a quantum innovation zone dedicated to quantum sciences and technological applications. Technum Québec specialises in digital technologies. These zones, supported by public, private, and international investments, are designed to increase the commercialisation of innovation, generate exports and stimulate local and foreign investment in all regions of Québec.

From the University’s perspective, they will significantly impact teaching and research while attracting and retaining talent, generating multiple, high-value-added spin-offs and creating hundreds of high-quality jobs.

UdeS is home to a wealth of knowledge; can you elaborate on some of your fields of expertise?

While UdeS has many fields of expertise, our research in the high Arctic illustrates our commitment to multi-disciplinarity, collaboration with communities and impacting the problems that matter to society.

At present, the Arctic is the fastest-warming region on the planet. Université de Sherbrooke professor, Dr Alexandre Langlois, a geographer by training and a specialist in Earth evolution, is the instigator, in partnership with colleagues from three other Canadian universities, of the Multidisciplinary Observatory for Monitoring Climate Change and Extreme Events in the Arctic (MOACC).

The main objective of this project is to develop a permanent multidisciplinary scientific infrastructure that will enable long-term observations of climate change in the Arctic by bringing together experts from a wide range of backgrounds and institutions. The innovative aspect of MOACC lies in its multidisciplinary approach, enabling long-term measurements of the Arctic in several disciplines: Atmosphere, permafrost, remote sensing, etc.

The observatory is located at the Canadian High Arctic Research Station (CHARS) in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. The team aims to make the site one of the largest instrumented observatories in the High Arctic, dedicated to monitoring key indicators that determine climate change. The site has created and strengthened partnerships with Canadian research centres, organisations, the Inuit community, and international research partners and networks.

Please note, this article will also appear in the seventeenth edition of our quarterly publication.

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February 9, 2024
Here’s the Thing AI Just Can’t Do

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Google says its powerful new chatbot Gemini can supercharge your creativity. But who is really providing the creative spark?

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February 9, 2024
University of Warwick secures funding to lead AI in cities research

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The University of Warwick has been awarded a share of £100m of UK Government funding for its groundbreaking new AI research project ‘AI in the streets.’

AI in the streets is part of the wider funding announced by the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation as part of a plan to ensure the UK is a leader in AI research.

The project aims to understand how ethical AI principles relate to the practical challenges of using AI in cities.

AI in the streets is led by researchers from the University of Warwick and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, with colleagues from the University of Cambridge.

As well as academic collaborators, other partners include Careful Industries (London), who will address the social impact of technology, and Coventry-based artists Talking Birds, who will highlight the relationships between people and place.

Challenges with AI deployment in cities

City streets have become a common place where the public can interact with AI, for example, autonomous vehicles and surveillance systems.

Despite various policy initiatives promoting the societal benefits of AI innovation, such as safety, inclusion, and sustainability, the deployment of these technologies often reveals unforeseen challenges.

Professor Noortje Marres from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick and project lead said: “Our goal is to make visible the messy realities of how AI is experienced in the street, in the form of automated vehicles, facial recognition and AI-based apps.

“We want to use this insight to highlight the specific transformations, benefits, harms, and responsibilities that arise from ‘AI’ in real-world settings, and to communicate these to AI scientists and industry representatives so that they, too, can learn from the street.”

Paving the way for AI innovation

The project will collaborate with local partners and leverage creative interventions to foster a shared understanding of AI’s impact on society among stakeholders and the general public.

Through collaborative efforts, AI in the streets will pave the way for responsible and inclusive AI innovation in connected and automated cities.

Interest from stakeholders

The AHRC’s programme for Bridging Divides in Responsible AI (BRAID) provided the funding for the project. Additional financial support is from the Monash Warwick Alliance Co-Fund.

The AI research project’s approach gained interest from a wide range of stakeholders, including local and national government, policy innovators, AI scientists, industry representatives, and researchers across many disciplines.

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February 9, 2024