DataDownload: Zuck’s lost notebooks… 5G at the Oscars
DataDownload: Zuck’s lost notebooks… 5G at the Oscars A weekly summary of all things Media, Data, Emerging Tech View this email in your browser
So this week’s newsletter is chock-full of interesting developments. Steve Levy’s piece in Wired is a must-read. Verizon’s 5G photo rig is a real-world example of what 5G is going to bring out of the labs. And a huge shoutout to our friends at NYU’s Integrated Digital Media program — and fantastic summer program for high school kids that I wish I’d been able to go to.
And as we start to organize our thoughts around how AI could be used for good in Local News… here’s our first video from the NewsLab’20 event organized
As always — please read, comment, and send along your thoughts about how we can work together, Steve@NYCMediaLab.org. Always excited to hear from you.
Cheers,
Steven Rosenbaum
Managing Director
The NYC Media Lab Must-Read Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Lost Notebook
Wired editor-at-large Steven Levy will be releasing his Facebook tell-all later this month — we’re getting a big peak at some of the content in this Wired feature.
The piece focuses on Levy’s early meeting with Zuckerburg in 2006, when the young CEO was still laying out the social network’s world-dominating plans — many of which were executed — in a series of notebooks. Since destroyed by the CEO himself, the notebooks offered a look into Zuckerburg’s philosophy.
30 min read
Read More Can AI Ever Rival Human Creativity? Here’s What the Science Says Can AI officially be an inventor? According to the European Patent Office, not really: the Office recently denied a patent for a food container because it was created by a “machine inventor.” Fast Company explores how machines generate new material and why current AI systems cannot compete with human inventors on the creativity front. Instead, machines are more useful at creative augmentation rather than supplementation:
“Even if machines cannot replace humans in the creative domain, they are great help to complement human creativity. For example, we can ask new questions or identify new problems that we solve in combination with machine learning.”
5 min read Read More For the Media Using a New Rig We Developed, and a Verizon 5G Network Installed for the Event, This Shot and 1000s of Others Are Traveling in Near Real-Time From LA to Our Newsroom.
The NY Times put together a Verizon 5G rig to send real-time photos from the Oscars, transferring images from shutter to newsroom in an average of five seconds. The thread focuses on the tech the Times’ R&D lab used, the advantage of speed, and their “network-on-wheels” project.
See Tweet Reuters Creates Prototype Automated Video Match Report Led by AI Sports Presenter Similar to Xinhua’s AI newscasters, Reuters created an AI sports presenter to read out match summaries, requiring “no scripting, editing or production.”
Nick Cohen, global head of product for news services at Reuters, said that “this kind of prototyping is helping us to understand how AI and synthetic media can be combined with our real-time feeds of photography and reporting to create whole new kinds of products and services.”
2 min read Read More Summer High School Tech at IDM
New in 2020, summer courses at Integrated Digital Media offer three tracks to immerse high school students in emerging media technologies in areas that interest them, like VR, wearables, and game design.
Students will spend 2 weeks at NYU Tandon in June, July, or August learning how to make innovative experiences in wearable tech, game design, or virtual reality. Programs are open to residential and day students, and no prior engineering or programming experience is required.
Prospective students can learn more and apply here.
Read More What We’re Watching NewsLab’20 — Complicating Questions, Ethics and Artificial Intelligence
Ethics and AI: “We need to understand the value of diversity of thought within the organization and make sure that we’re not collecting data in a microcosm or vacuum,” said Noelle Silver VP of Digital at NPR at the NewsLab’20 event Here’s the first video from #newslab20 @nycmedialab @knightfdn — produced in conjunction with the Knight Foundation. Turns out — Ethics are at the center of everything.
3 min watch
Watch Now Jobs & Events Event: Future of Sports
Date: February 18th, 6PM-8:30PM
Join Entre as they build a community of startup enthusiasts in the NYC area and have a conversation on the future of sports, featuring Collette V. Smith, founder and president at Believe N You Inc and NFL’s first African American female coach. Register Here.
Event: Black Excellence in Tech — Panel
Date: February 20, 6:30PM-8:30PM
Join Lisa Godwin, Senior Consultant and Creative Technologist at The New York Times, Daniel Adeyanju, Innovation & Inclusion Strategist, and John Daniel, Data Scientist at I&CO, in a panel on black excellence in tech. Register Here
Event: Her Product Lab
Date: March 26th
Her Product Lab — the first full-day summits for women in product management. Our launch will be on March 26 at Betaworks Studios packed with presenters from Charity: Water, The Knot, Betterment, Google, Etsy, and more. NYCML readers get a 10% discount with promo code MediaLab10. Register Here. A Deeper Look Using ‘Radioactive Data’ to Detect if a Data Set Was Used for Training
Facebook AI published a new report on a technique that can help researchers keep track of what datasets were used to train a model. Similar to how doctors use barium sulphate to better spot damaged areas via CT scan or x-ray, “radioactive” data adds a “small perturbation in the feature space that is consistent within images of the same class.”
This allows for later detection without impacting performance. Facebook says this can be helpful in detecting potential dataset bias and misuse.
3 min read
Read More Trump Proposes a Cut in Research Spending, but a Boost for AI President Trump recently proposed research spend cuts in all but key areas like AI and quantum tech. In fact, the budget “goes all-in on AI and quantum” with double the funding for these areas.
The focus on globally competitive tech has led researchers — including those in the AI field — to view the proposal as a “mixed blessing,” as cutting funding in other areas may have a “knock-on effect on AI,” since progress in the area has often stemmed from other fields.
5 min read Read More Transactions & Announcements Deep Instinct Nabs $43M for a Deep-Learning Cybersecurity Solution That Can Suss an Attack Before It Happens
Intuition Robotics Raises $36M to Bring AI Companions to Everyone
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