Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

Artificial Intelligence Outperforms Human Intel Analysts In a Key Area BY PATRICK TUCKER TECHNOLOGY EDITOR APRIL 29, 2020 A Defense Intelligence Agency experiment shows AI and humans have different risk tolerances when data is scarce. In the 1983 movie  WarGames , the world is brought to the edge of nuclear destruction when a military computer using artificial intelligence interprets false data as an imminent Soviet missile strike. Its human overseers in the Defense Department, unsure whether the data is real, can’t convince the  AI  that it may be wrong. A recent finding from the Defense Intelligence Agency, or  DIA , suggests that in a real situation where humans and  AI  were looking at enemy activity, those positions would be reversed. Artificial intelligence can actually be more cautious than humans about its conclusions in situations when data is limited. While the results are preliminary, they offer an important ...

AMC Theaters Drop Universal Films as ‘Trolls’ Fight Explodes Kelly Gilblom April 29, 2020 (Bloomberg) -- It’s a fight worthy of the big screen. AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the largest U.S. cinema chain and a subsidiary of Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin’s Dalian Wanda Group Co., will no longer show movies from Universal Pictures, arguing that the studio is “breaking the business model” that has sustained the companies for decades. In an open letter to Universal Studios Chairman Donna Langley, the theater chain said the ban was in reaction to the film company vowing to make more films available online the same day they’re released in theaters. Universal’s decision followed the success of “Trolls World Tour,” which was sent to home video this month after theaters were shuttered because of the pandemic. “As soon as theaters reopen, we expect to release movies on both formats,” Jeff Shell, the head of Universal Pictures parent NBCUniversal, told the Wall Street Journal. AMC Chief Ex...

The Coming Greater Depression of the 2020s Apr 28, 2020 NOURIEL ROUBINI While there is never a good time for a pandemic, the COVID-19 crisis has arrived at a particularly bad moment for the global economy. The world has long been drifting into a perfect storm of financial, political, socioeconomic, and environmental risks, all of which are now growing even more acute. NEW YORK – After the 2007-09 financial crisis, the imbalances and risks pervading the global economy were exacerbated by policy mistakes. So, rather than address the structural problems that the financial collapse and ensuing recession revealed, governments mostly kicked the can down the road, creating major  downside risks  that made another crisis inevitable. And now that it has arrived, the risks are growing even more acute. Unfortunately, even if the Greater Recession leads to a lackluster U-shaped recovery this year, an L-shaped “ Greater Depression ” will follow later in this decade, owing to ten ...

Germany flips on smartphone contact tracing, backs Apple and Google By Douglas Busvine Sunday, 26 April 2020 07:46 GMT BERLIN, April 26 (Reuters) - Germany changed course on Sunday over which type of smartphone technology it wanted to use to trace coronavirus infections, backing an approach supported by Apple and Google along with a growing number of other European countries. Chancellery Minister Helge Braun and Health Minister Jens Spahn told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that Berlin would adopt a 'decentralised' approach to digital contact tracing, in so doing abandoning a home-grown alternative. Nations are rushing to develop apps to assess at scale the risk of catching COVID-19, where the chain of infection is proving hard to break because the flu-like disease can be spread by those showing no symptoms. In Europe, most countries have chosen short-range Bluetooth 'handshakes' between devices as the best approach, but have differed over whether to log such...

Twitter CEO Unveils Feature To "Editorialize" Trump's Tweets As Election Looms by  Tyler Durden Sat, 04/25/2020 - 23:00 Authored by Cindy Harper via ReclaimTheNet.org, A handful of companies are controlling the majority of the world’s conversations, subtly introducing rules to close the gap of what ideas they find acceptable and slowly edging out those they don’t. One of the most prominent ways that tech companies have been doing that, of late, is the result of realizing that they get ample media support and can stay in the good graces of legacy media outlets when they censor content for being “misinformation.” The guise of protecting the world from “misinformation” is fast becoming the easiest justification for censorship online right now. Twitter has been one of those companies most accused of negatively impacting the public conversation and pushing for censorship. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey talked about this in a  livestream  with Showtime hosts Desus N...

Zoom Tumbles After Facebook Launches Free Video Calling For Up To 50 People by  Tyler Durden Fri, 04/24/2020 - 14:34 Facebook stock has jumped to session highs and Zoom slumped negative, after an announcement from the world's biggest social network that it is directly taking on the video chat market dominated by Zoom, and is launching a slew of new video-calling features including Messenger Rooms, which allows users to host video calls of up to 50 people. As  CNBC reports , Messenger Rooms poses an immediate threat to Zoom and Houseparty, two video-calling products that have seen their usage skyrocket over the past month as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The new video features arrive as more users turn to Facebook apps to socialize with their friends and family while remaining in quarantine as a result of the pandemic. Messenger Rooms is the flagship of Facebook’s new video-calling services. The free feature will allow Facebook and Messenger users to creat...

Israeli Startup Can Predict the Spread of Coronavirus The COVID360 system uses predictive analytics and artificial intelligence, providing a “heat map” where corona infections are most prevalent. By Brian Blum,  ISRAEL21c April 23, 2020 Israelis receiving daily coronavirus check-ins via text message can thank local startup Diagnostic Robotics for developing the cutting-edge questionnaire that is tracking the spread of the virus with uncanny precision – and generating actionable recommendations. “Last Saturday night, we saw worrying data coming from Migdal HaEmek, Tiberias and Ashkelon,” Kira Radinsky, the company’s cofounder and chief technology officer, tells ISRAEL21c. “On Monday morning, the government issued a lockdown order in those cities.” Diagnostic Robotics has sent its questionnaire to millions of Israelis, including some 2,000  Covid-19 patients . Some 80 percent of recipients answer it. “People understand the importance of accurate data for Covid-19 ...

Google Scientists Are Creating an Artificial Intelligence That Evolves on Its Own The algorithms mimic principles of Darwinian evolution, namely "survival of the fittest." By  Jake Anderson  |  Creative Commons  |  TheMindUn l e ashed.com APR 21, 2020 AT 5:17 PM . ( TMU )  — One of the biggest global players in artificial intelligence (AI) is Google and their high-tech Brain division has been pushing the envelope for years. Now scientists working for their AutoML project have a new paper in which they claim to be developing algorithms that can evolve on their own without human input. Even more stunning is their claim that they can induce “mutations” into new generations of algorithms, which mimics principles of Darwinian evolution, namely “survival of the fittest.” The team started with one of the most basic ideas in modern AI: machine learning. Machine learning tools allow us to use algorithms to search through massive troves of data and quickl...

An ESPN Commercial Hints at Advertising’s Deepfake Future April 22, 2020   Unable to film new commercials during the coronavirus pandemic, advertising agencies are turning to technologies that can seamlessly alter old footage, sometimes putting viewers in a position of doubting what they are seeing. During Sunday’s episodes of “ The Last Dance ,” the ESPN documentary series about Michael Jordan and  the Chicago Bulls , State Farm  ran a commercial  featuring expertly doctored footage of the longtime “SportsCenter” anchor Kenny Mayne. In the ad, a much younger Mr. Mayne is seated at the “SportsCenter” desk in 1998. He reports on the Bulls’ sixth championship title — before taking a turn toward the prophetic. “This is the kind of stuff that ESPN will eventually make a documentary about,” Mr. Mayne says. “They’ll call it something like ‘The Last Dance.’ They’ll make it a 10-part series and release it in the year 2020. It’s going to be lit. You don’t even k...