The machine translation of sign languages has been possible, albeit in a limited fashion, since 1977. When a research project successfully matched English letters from a keyboard to ASL manual alphabet letters which were simulated on a robotic hand. These technologies translate signed languages into written or spoken language, and written or spoken language to sign language, without the use of a human interpreter. Sign languages possess different phonological features than spoken languages, which has created obstacles for developers. Developers use computer vision and machine learning to recognize specific phonological parameters and epentheses unique to sign languages, and speech recognition and natural language processing allow interactive communication between hearing and deaf people. == Limitations == Sign language translation technologies are limited in the same way as spoken language translation. None can translate with 100% accuracy. In fact, sign language translation technologies are far behind their spoken language counterparts. This is, in no trivial way, due to the fact that signed languages have multiple articulators. Where spoken languages are articulated through the vocal tract, signed languages are articulated through the hands, arms, head, shoulders, torso, and parts of the face. This multi-channel articulation makes translating sign languages very difficult. An additional challenge for sign language MT is the fact that there is no formal written format for signed languages. There are notations systems but no writing system has been adopted widely enough, by the international Deaf community, that it could be considered the 'written form' of a given sign language. Sign Languages then are recorded in various video formats. There is no gold standard parallel corpus that is large enough for SMT, for example. == History == The history of automatic sign language translation started with the development of hardware such as finger-spelling robotic hands. In 1977, a finger-spelling hand project called RALPH (short for "Robotic Alphabet") created a robotic hand that can translate alphabets into finger-spellings. Later, the use of gloves with motion sensors became the mainstream, and some projects such as the CyberGlove and VPL Data Glove were born. The wearable hardware made it possible to capture the signers' hand shapes and movements with the help of the computer software. However, with the development of computer vision, wearable devices were replaced by cameras due to their efficiency and fewer physical restrictions on signers. To process the data collected through the devices, researchers implemented neural networks such as the Stuttgart Neural Network Simulator for pattern recognition in projects such as the CyberGlove. Researchers also use many other approaches for sign recognition. For example, Hidden Markov Models are used to analyze data statistically, and GRASP and other machine learning programs use training sets to improve the accuracy of sign recognition. Fusion of non-wearable technologies such as cameras and Leap Motion controllers have shown to increase the ability of automatic sign language recognition and translation software. == Technologies == === VISICAST === http://www.visicast.cmp.uea.ac.uk/Visicast_index.html === eSIGN project === http://www.visicast.cmp.uea.ac.uk/eSIGN/index.html === The American Sign Language Avatar Project at DePaul University === http://asl.cs.depaul.edu/ === Spanish to LSE === López-Ludeña, Verónica; San-Segundo, Rubén; González, Carlos; López, Juan Carlos; Pardo, José M. (2012), Methodology for developing a Speech into Sign Language Translation System in a New Semantic Domain (PDF), CiteSeerX 10.1.1.1065.5265, S2CID 2724186 === SignAloud === SignAloud is a technology that incorporates a pair of gloves made by a group of students at University of Washington that transliterate American Sign Language (ASL) into English. In February 2015 Thomas Pryor, a hearing student from the University of Washington, created the first prototype for this device at Hack Arizona, a hackathon at the University of Arizona. Pryor continued to develop the invention and in October 2015, Pryor brought Navid Azodi onto the SignAloud project for marketing and help with public relations. Azodi has a rich background and involvement in business administration, while Pryor has a wealth of experience in engineering. In May 2016, the duo told NPR that they are working more closely with people who use ASL so that they can better understand their audience and tailor their product to the needs of these people rather than the assumed needs. However, no further versions have been released since then. The invention was one of seven to win the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, which seeks to award and applaud young inventors. Their invention fell under the "Use it!" category of the award which includes technological advances to existing products. They were awarded $10,000. The gloves have sensors that track the users hand movements and then send the data to a computer system via Bluetooth. The computer system analyzes the data and matches it to English words, which are then spoken aloud by a digital voice. The gloves do not have capability for written English input to glove movement output or the ability to hear language and then sign it to a deaf person, which means they do not provide reciprocal communication. The device also does not incorporate facial expressions and other nonmanual markers of sign languages, which may alter the actual interpretation from ASL. === ProDeaf === ProDeaf (WebLibras) is a computer software that can translate both text and voice into Portuguese Libras (Portuguese Sign Language) "with the goal of improving communication between the deaf and hearing." There is currently a beta edition in production for American Sign Language as well. The original team began the project in 2010 with a combination of experts including linguists, designers, programmers, and translators, both hearing and deaf. The team originated at Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) from a group of students involved in a computer science project. The group had a deaf team member who had difficulty communicating with the rest of the group. In order to complete the project and help the teammate communicate, the group created Proativa Soluções and have been moving forward ever since. The current beta version in American Sign Language is very limited. For example, there is a dictionary section and the only word under the letter 'j' is 'jump'. If the device has not been programmed with the word, then the digital avatar must fingerspell the word. The last update of the app was in June 2016, but ProDeaf has been featured in over 400 stories across the country's most popular media outlets. The application cannot read sign language and turn it into word or text, so it only serves as a one-way communication. Additionally, the user cannot sign to the app and receive an English translation in any form, as English is still in the beta edition. === Kinect Sign Language Translator === Since 2012, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and specialists of deaf education from Beijing Union University in China have been collaborating with Microsoft Research Asian team to create Kinect Sign Language Translator. The translator consists of two modes: translator mode and communication mode. The translator mode is capable of translating single words from sign into written words and vice versa. The communication mode can translate full sentences and the conversation can be automatically translated with the use of the 3D avatar. The translator mode can also detect the postures and hand shapes of a signer as well as the movement trajectory using the technologies of machine learning, pattern recognition, and computer vision. The device also allows for reciprocal communication because the speech recognition technology allows the spoken language to be translated into the sign language and the 3D modeling avatar can sign back to the deaf people. The original project was started in China based on translating Chinese Sign Language. In 2013, the project was presented at Microsoft Research Faculty Summit and Microsoft company meeting. Currently, this project is also being worked by researchers in the United States to implement American Sign Language translation. As of now, the device is still a prototype, and the accuracy of translation in the communication mode is still not perfect. === SignAll === SignAll is an automatic sign language translation system provided by Dolphio Technologies in Hungary. The team is "pioneering the first automated sign language translation solution, based on computer vision and natural language processing (NLP), to enable everyday communication between individuals with hearing who use spoken English and deaf or hard of hearing individuals who use ASL." The system of SignAll uses Kinect from Microsoft and other web camera
Vanish (computer science)
Vanish was a project to "give users control over the lifetime of personal data stored on the web." It was led by Roxana Geambasu at the University of Washington. The project proposed to allow a user to enter information to send across the internet, thereby relinquishing control of it. However, the user can include an "expiration date," after which the information is no longer usable by anyone who may have a copy of it, even the creator. The Vanish approach was found to be vulnerable to a Sybil attack and thus insecure by a team called Unvanish from the University of Texas, University of Michigan, and Princeton. == Theory == Vanish acts by automating the encryption of information entered by the user with an encryption key that is unknown to the user. Along with the information the user enters, the user also enters metadata concerning how long the information should remain available. The system then encrypts the information but does not store either the encryption key or the original information. Instead, it breaks up the decryption key into smaller components that are disseminated across distributed hash tables, or DHTs, via the Internet. The DHTs refresh information within their nodes on a set schedule unless configured to make the information persistent. The time delay entered by the user in the metadata controls how long the DHTs should allow the information to persist, but once that time period is over, the DHTs will reuse those nodes, making the information about the decryption stored irretrievable. As long as the decryption key may be reassembled from the DHTs, the information is retrievable. However, once the period entered by the user has lapsed, the information is no longer recoverable, as the user never possessed the decryption key. == Implementation == Vanish currently exists as a Firefox plug-in which allows a user to enter text into either a standard Gmail email or Facebook message and choose to send the message via Vanish. The message is then encrypted and sent via the normal networking pathways through the cloud to the recipient. The recipient must have the same Firefox plug-in to decrypt the message. The plugin accesses BitTorrent DHTs, which have 8-hour lifespans. This means the user may select an expiration date for the message in increments of 8 hours. After the expiration of the user-defined time span, the information in the DHT is overwritten, thereby eliminating the key. While both the user and recipient may have copies of the original encrypted message, the key used to turn it back into plain text is now gone. Although this particular instance of the data has become inaccessible, it's important to note that the information can always be saved by other means before expiration (copied or even via screen shots) and published again.
AlphaGo
AlphaGo is a computer program that plays the board game Go. It was developed by the London-based DeepMind Technologies, an acquired subsidiary of Google. Subsequent versions of AlphaGo became increasingly powerful, including a version that competed under the name Master. After retiring from competitive play, AlphaGo Master was succeeded by an even more powerful version known as AlphaGo Zero, which was completely self-taught without learning from human games. AlphaGo Zero was then generalized into a program known as AlphaZero, which played additional games, including chess and shogi. AlphaZero has in turn been succeeded by a program known as MuZero which learns without being taught the rules. AlphaGo and its successors use a Monte Carlo tree search algorithm to find its moves based on knowledge previously acquired by machine learning, specifically by an artificial neural network (a deep learning method) by extensive training, both from human and computer play. A neural network is trained to identify the best moves and the winning percentages of these moves. This neural network improves the strength of the tree search, resulting in stronger move selection in the next iteration. In October 2015, in a match against Fan Hui, the original AlphaGo became the first computer Go program to beat a human professional Go player without handicap on a full-sized 19×19 board. In March 2016, it beat Lee Sedol in a five-game match, the first time a computer Go program has beaten a 9-dan professional without handicap. Although it lost to Lee Sedol in the fourth game, Lee resigned in the final game, giving a final score of 4 games to 1 in favour of AlphaGo. In recognition of the victory, AlphaGo was awarded an honorary 9-dan by the Korea Baduk Association. The lead up and the challenge match with Lee Sedol were documented in a documentary film also titled AlphaGo, directed by Greg Kohs. The win by AlphaGo was chosen by Science as one of the Breakthrough of the Year runners-up on 22 December 2016. At the 2017 Future of Go Summit, the Master version of AlphaGo beat Ke Jie, the number one ranked player in the world at the time, in a three-game match, after which AlphaGo was awarded professional 9-dan by the Chinese Weiqi Association. After the match between AlphaGo and Ke Jie, DeepMind retired AlphaGo, while continuing AI research in other areas. The self-taught AlphaGo Zero achieved a 100–0 victory against the early competitive version of AlphaGo, and its successor AlphaZero was perceived as the world's top player in Go by the end of the 2010s. == History == Go is considered much more difficult for computers to win than other games such as chess, because its strategic and aesthetic nature makes it hard to directly construct an evaluation function, and its much larger branching factor makes it prohibitively difficult to use traditional AI methods such as alpha–beta pruning, tree traversal and heuristic search. Almost two decades after IBM's computer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in the 1997 match, the strongest Go programs using artificial intelligence techniques only reached about amateur 5-dan level, and still could not beat a professional Go player without a handicap. In 2012, the software program Zen, running on a four PC cluster, beat Masaki Takemiya (9p) twice at five- and four-stone handicaps. In 2013, Crazy Stone beat Yoshio Ishida (9p) at a four-stone handicap. According to DeepMind's David Silver, the AlphaGo research project was formed around 2014 to test how well a neural network using deep learning can compete at Go. AlphaGo represents a significant improvement over previous Go programs. In 500 games against other available Go programs, including Crazy Stone and Zen, AlphaGo running on a single computer won all but one. In a similar matchup, AlphaGo running on multiple computers won all 500 games played against other Go programs, and 77% of games played against AlphaGo running on a single computer. The distributed version in October 2015 was using 1,202 CPUs and 176 GPUs. === Match against Fan Hui === In October 2015, the distributed version of AlphaGo defeated the European Go champion Fan Hui, a 2-dan (out of 9 dan possible) professional, five to zero. This was the first time a computer Go program had beaten a professional human player on a full-sized board without handicap. The announcement of the news was delayed until 27 January 2016 to coincide with the publication of a paper in the journal Nature describing the algorithms used. === Match against Lee Sedol === AlphaGo played South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol, ranked 9-dan, one of the best players at Go, with five games taking place at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul, South Korea on 9, 10, 12, 13, and 15 March 2016, which were video-streamed live. Out of five games, AlphaGo won four games and Lee won the fourth game which made him recorded as the only human player who beat AlphaGo in all of its 74 official games. AlphaGo ran on Google's cloud computing with its servers located in the United States. The match used Chinese rules with a 7.5-point komi, and each side had two hours of thinking time plus three 60-second byoyomi periods. The version of AlphaGo playing against Lee used a similar amount of computing power as was used in the Fan Hui match. The Economist reported that it used 1,920 CPUs and 280 GPUs. At the time of play, Lee Sedol had the second-highest number of Go international championship victories in the world after South Korean player Lee Chang-ho who kept the world championship title for 16 years. Since there is no single official method of ranking in international Go, the rankings may vary among the sources. While he was ranked top sometimes, some sources ranked Lee Sedol as the fourth-best player in the world at the time. AlphaGo was not specifically trained to face Lee nor was designed to compete with any specific human players. The first three games were won by AlphaGo following resignations by Lee. However, Lee beat AlphaGo in the fourth game, winning by resignation at move 180. AlphaGo then continued to achieve a fourth win, winning the fifth game by resignation. The prize was US$1 million. Since AlphaGo won four out of five and thus the series, the prize will be donated to charities, including UNICEF. Lee Sedol received $150,000 for participating in all five games and an additional $20,000 for his win in Game 4. In June 2016, at a presentation held at a university in the Netherlands, Aja Huang, one of the Deep Mind team, revealed that they had patched the logical weakness that occurred during the 4th game of the match between AlphaGo and Lee, and that after move 78 (which was dubbed the "divine move" by many professionals), it would play as intended and maintain Black's advantage. Before move 78, AlphaGo was leading throughout the game, but Lee's move caused the program's computing powers to be diverted and confused. Huang explained that AlphaGo's policy network of finding the most accurate move order and continuation did not precisely guide AlphaGo to make the correct continuation after move 78, since its value network did not determine Lee's 78th move as being the most likely, and therefore when the move was made AlphaGo could not make the right adjustment to the logical continuation. === Sixty online games === On 29 December 2016, a new account on the Tygem server named "Magister" (shown as 'Magist' at the server's Chinese version) from South Korea began to play games with professional players. It changed its account name to "Master" on 30 December, then moved to the FoxGo server on 1 January 2017. On 4 January, DeepMind confirmed that the "Magister" and the "Master" were both played by an updated version of AlphaGo, called AlphaGo Master. As of 5 January 2017, AlphaGo Master's online record was 60 wins and 0 losses, including three victories over Go's top-ranked player, Ke Jie, who had been quietly briefed in advance that Master was a version of AlphaGo. After losing to Master, Gu Li offered a bounty of 100,000 yuan (US$14,400) to the first human player who could defeat Master. Master played at the pace of 10 games per day. Many quickly suspected it to be an AI player due to little or no resting between games. Its adversaries included many world champions such as Ke Jie, Park Jeong-hwan, Yuta Iyama, Tuo Jiaxi, Mi Yuting, Shi Yue, Chen Yaoye, Li Qincheng, Gu Li, Chang Hao, Tang Weixing, Fan Tingyu, Zhou Ruiyang, Jiang Weijie, Chou Chun-hsun, Kim Ji-seok, Kang Dong-yun, Park Yeong-hun, and Won Seong-jin; national champions or world championship runners-up such as Lian Xiao, Tan Xiao, Meng Tailing, Dang Yifei, Huang Yunsong, Yang Dingxin, Gu Zihao, Shin Jinseo, Cho Han-seung, and An Sungjoon. All 60 games except one were fast-paced games with three 20 or 30 seconds byo-yomi. Master offered to extend the byo-yomi to one minute when playing with Nie Weiping in consideration of his age. After winning its 59th game Master revealed itse
Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act
The Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act is a piece of legislation introduced by California Representative Adam Schiff in the United States Congress on April 9, 2024. It concerns the transparency of companies regarding their use of copyrighted work to train their generative artificial intelligence (AI) models. The legislation requires the submission of a notice regarding the identity and the uniform resource locator (URL) address of the copyrighted works used in the training data to the Register of Copyrights at least 30 days before the public release of the new or updated version of the AI model; it does not ban the use of copyrighted works for AI training. The bill's requirements would apply retroactively to prior AI models. Violation penalties would start at US$5,000. The legislation does not have a maximum penalty assessment that can be charged. The bill by Schiff was introduced a few days after The New York Times published an article regarding the business activities of major tech firms, including Google and Meta, in the training of their generative AI platforms on April 6, 2024. The legislation is supported by the Professional Photographers of America (PPA), SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guild of America, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and others.
Philosophy of information
The philosophy of information (PI) is a branch of philosophy that studies topics relevant to information processing, representational system and consciousness, cognitive science, computer science, information science and information technology. It includes: the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation and sciences the elaboration and application of information-theoretic and computational methodologies to philosophical problems. == History == The philosophy of information (PI) has evolved from the philosophy of artificial intelligence, logic of information, cybernetics, social theory, ethics and the study of language and information. === Logic of information === The logic of information, also known as the logical theory of information, considers the information content of logical signs and expressions along the lines initially developed by Charles Sanders Peirce. === Study of language and information === Later contributions to the field were made by Fred Dretske, Jon Barwise, Brian Cantwell Smith, and others. The Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) was founded at Stanford University in 1983 by philosophers, computer scientists, linguists, and psychologists, under the direction of John Perry and Jon Barwise. === P.I. === More recently this field has become known as the philosophy of information. The expression was coined in the 1990s by Luciano Floridi, who has published prolifically in this area with the intention of elaborating a unified and coherent, conceptual frame for the whole subject. == Definitions of "information" == The concept information has been defined by several theorists. Charles S. Peirce's theory of information was embedded in his wider theory of symbolic communication he called the semiotic, now a major part of semiotics. For Peirce, information integrates the aspects of signs and expressions separately covered by the concepts of denotation and extension, on the one hand, and by connotation and comprehension on the other. Donald M. MacKay says that information is a distinction that makes a difference. According to Luciano Floridi, four kinds of mutually compatible phenomena are commonly referred to as "information": Information about something (e.g. a train timetable) Information as something (e.g. DNA, or fingerprints) Information for something (e.g. algorithms or instructions) Information in something (e.g. a pattern or a constraint). == Philosophical directions == === Computing and philosophy === Recent creative advances and efforts in computing, such as semantic web, ontology engineering, knowledge engineering, and modern artificial intelligence provide philosophy with fertile ideas, new and evolving subject matters, methodologies, and models for philosophical inquiry. While computer science brings new opportunities and challenges to traditional philosophical studies, and changes the ways philosophers understand foundational concepts in philosophy, further major progress in computer science would only be feasible when philosophy provides sound foundations for areas such as bioinformatics, software engineering, knowledge engineering, and ontologies. Classical topics in philosophy, namely, mind, consciousness, experience, reasoning, knowledge, truth, morality and creativity are rapidly becoming common concerns and foci of investigation in computer science, e.g., in areas such as agent computing, software agents, and intelligent mobile agent technologies. According to Luciano Floridi " one can think of several ways for applying computational methods towards philosophical matters: Conceptual experiments in silico: As an innovative extension of an ancient tradition of thought experiment, a trend has begun in philosophy to apply computational modeling schemes to questions in logic, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of mind, and so on. Pancomputationalism: On this view, computational and informational concepts are considered to be so powerful that given the right level of abstraction, anything in the world could be modeled and represented as a computational system, and any process could be simulated computationally. Then, however, pancomputationalists have the hard task of providing credible answers to the following two questions: how can one avoid blurring all differences among systems? what would it mean for the system under investigation not to be an informational system (or a computational system, if computation is the same as information processing)?
Principle of rationality
The principle of rationality (or rationality principle) was coined by Karl R. Popper in his Harvard Lecture of 1963, and published in his book Myth of Framework. It is related to what he called the 'logic of the situation' in an Economica article of 1944/1945, published later in his book The Poverty of Historicism. According to Popper's rationality principle, agents act in the most adequate way according to the objective situation. It is an idealized conception of human behavior which he used to drive his model of situational analysis. Cognitive scientist Allen Newell elaborated on the principle in his account of knowledge level modeling. == Popper == Popper called for social science to be grounded in what he called situational analysis or situational logic. This requires building models of social situations which include individual actors and their relationship to social institutions, e.g. markets, legal codes, bureaucracies, etc. These models attribute certain aims and information to the actors. This forms the 'logic of the situation', the result of reconstructing meticulously all circumstances of an historical event. The 'principle of rationality' is the assumption that people are instrumental in trying to reach their goals, and this is what drives the model. Popper believed that this model could be continuously refined to approach the objective truth. Popper called his principle of rationality nearly empty (a technical term meaning without empirical content) and strictly speaking false, but nonetheless tremendously useful. These remarks earned him a lot of criticism because seemingly he had swerved from his famous Logic of Scientific Discovery. Among the many philosophers having discussed Popper's principle of rationality from the 1960s up to now are Noretta Koertge, R. Nadeau, Viktor J. Vanberg, Hans Albert, E. Matzner, Ian C. Jarvie, Mark A. Notturno, John Wettersten, Ian C. Böhm. == Newell == In the context of knowledge-based systems, Newell (in 1982) proposed the following principle of rationality: "If an agent has knowledge that one of its actions will lead to one of its goals, then the agent will select that action." This principle is employed by agents at the knowledge level to move closer to a desired goal. An important philosophical difference between Newell and Popper is that Newell argued that the knowledge level is real in the sense that it exists in nature and is not made up. This allowed Newell to treat the rationality principle as a way of understanding nature and avoid the problems Popper ran into by treating knowledge as non physical and therefore non empirical.
Conflict resolution strategy
Conflict resolution strategies are used in production systems in artificial intelligence, such as in rule-based expert systems, to help in choosing which production rule to fire. The need for such a strategy arises when the conditions of two or more rules are satisfied by the currently known facts. == Categories == Conflict resolution strategies fall into several main categories. They each have advantages which form their rationales. Specificity - If all of the conditions of two or more rules are satisfied, choose the rule according to how specific its conditions are. It is possible to favor either the more general or the more specific case. The most specific may be identified roughly as the one having the greatest number of preconditions. This usefully catches exceptions and other special cases before firing the more general (default) rules. Recency - When two or more rules could be chosen, favor the one that matches the most recently added facts, as these are most likely to describe the current situation. Not previously used - If a rule's conditions are satisfied, but previously the same rule has been satisfied by the same facts, ignore the rule. This helps to prevent the system from entering infinite loops. Order - Pick the first applicable rule in order of presentation. This is the strategy that Prolog interpreters use by default, but any strategy may be implemented by building suitable rules in a Prolog system. Arbitrary choice - Pick a rule at random. This has the merit of being simple to compute.