Government use of facial recognition and AI at Google

In this episode, Chris and Daniel discuss the latest news, including an article about Google’s AI principles, and they highlight some useful resources to help you level up. Sponsors: Hired https://hired.com/practicalai – Salary and benefits upfront? Yes please. Our listeners get a double hiring bonus of $600! Or, refer a friend and get a check for $1,337 when they accept a job. On Hired companies send you offers with salary, benefits, and even equity upfront. You are in full control of the process. Learn more at hired.com/practicalai https://hired.com/practicalai. Fastly https://www.fastly.com/?utm_source=changelog&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=changelog-sponsorship – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com https://www.fastly.com/?utm_source=changelog&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=changelog-sponsorship. Linode https://linode.com/changelog – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2018. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog https://linode.com/changelogRollbar https://rollbar.com/changelog – We catch our errors before our users do because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes, and deploy your code with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog https://rollbar.com/changelog. Featuring: Chris Benson – Website https://chrisbenson.com, GitHub https://github.com/chrisbenson, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisbenson, X https://x.com/chrisbensonDaniel Whitenack – Website https://www.datadan.io/, GitHub https://github.com/dwhitena, X https://x.com/dwhitenaShow Notes: ACLU calls for a moratorium on government use of facial recognition technologies – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/aclu-calls-for-a-moratorium-on-government-use-of-facial-recognition-technologies/Doing good data science - O’Reilly Media https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/doing-good-data-scienceAn Overview of National AI Strategies – Politics + AI – Medium https://medium.com/politics-ai/an-overview-of-national-ai-strategies-2a70ec6edfdMeet CIMON, the 1st Robot with Artificial Intelligence to Fly in Space https://www.space.com/41041-artificial-intelligence-cimon-space-exploration.htmlAI at Google: our principles https://blog.google/technology/ai/ai-principles/Foundations of Machine Learning https://bloomberg.github.io/foml/#homeMachine Learning Crash Course | Google Developers https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/crash-course/Best Laptop for Machine Learning - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtFZrFKMiPIUpcoming Events: Register for upcoming webinars here https://practicalai.fm/webinars!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:38Speaker 00

  Welcome to Practical AI, a weekly podcast about making artificial intelligence practical, productive, and accessible to everyone. This is where conversations around AI, machine learning, and data science happen. Join the community and slack with us around various topics of the show at change.com slash community. Follow us on Twitter, we're at Practical AI FM. And now onto the show.

• 2:04Daniel Whitenack?

  So this is Daniel and I have Chris, my co-host here with me, who is an AI expert and specializing in deep learning. How's your deep learning been going, Chris?

• 2:14Chris Benson?

  It has been going 100 miles an hour. This field is moving so fast and so many new things are happening that trying to keep moving forward and keep my head above water. How about you, Daniel?

• 2:25Daniel Whitenack?

  Awesome. Yeah, it's been crazy. It's been good. I've been doing a lot of data munging and cleaning this last week, which has been fun and working a little bit with graph databases. So maybe at some point we'll bring that into the show. But I'm glad that you mentioned that there's a lot going on. This is for our new listeners, this is one of two different formats that we're doing in the show where we're going to just kind of give some news and updates that we've seen in the community and also provide some resources for those starting out in AI or wanting to level up in AI, some learning resources that we found out there. So yeah, I'm excited to talk about what's

• 3:09Daniel Whitenack?

  going on in the community. What did you see going on this week, Chris?

• 3:13Chris Benson?

  So there are so many news stories that we're getting hit each week and just picking a few is really kind of the hardest part of this. But I get asked all the time about kind of where AI is going in the global scale, you know, in terms of different countries. And everyone always asks about the US and China and how Russia fits in. And so I came across a Medium post this past week called Artificial Intelligence Strategies. And it's actually, it kind of maps out what the known strategies are for a bunch of different countries out there and kind of puts them on a timeline. And we'll share the link in the show notes, but it's really cool and it has some great

• 3:56Chris Benson?

  graphical stuff, but it kind of starts off with an overview of national AI strategies and it gives you a table of contents, which is a couple of dozen countries. And then each of those kind of has a one or two paragraph. blurb about what those countries are doing and I it's just a great single point to go to and say, you know, hey, what is China doing? What have they announced? What are they interested in? And you can you can go down to China and find out. But then there's many others as well, such as right below China is Denmark. And so I'll leave it to our listeners to go explore that through the show notes. But it was a great starting point if you want to understand how AI is being seen at the nation state strategic level. How about yourself?

• 4:41Daniel Whitenack?

  Well, I mean, I'll tell you what what China is doing with AI. They're identifying all those people at their their pop concerts with facial recognition. They're people with I forget, have you seen those stories?

• 4:55Chris Benson?

  I have.

• 4:56Daniel Whitenack?

  It's like at the the one I forget the singer's name, but they've like nabbed I forget how many at this point, but at his at his concerts for like, whatever it is outstanding warrants or that they're, you know, they're looking for them or however that works in China. But that's, that's what I know China is doing with AI.

• 5:17Chris Benson?

  You know, it creates it creates this huge issue of the ethics of how to use these technologies. And, you know, China is approaching that in that way, which I certainly am not comfortable with. But and then, you know, more recently, Amazon, you know, with with some of the stuff in the US about facial recognition with with law enforcement. And there was a big uproar a week or so about that. And so I think you were seeing the populations of all these different countries having to react to this this rapid onslaught of this new technology and how each of these governments is is choosing to use it with or without oversight.

• 6:02Chris Benson?

  It's a fascinating time in terms of understanding how we're moving forward from an ethical standpoint. And I think that's certainly going to be a show coming up where we're going to where we're going to talk about that in some great depth.

• 6:14Daniel Whitenack?

  Yeah, for sure. And you know, to go along with that, one of the things I saw was that the ACLU called for a moratorium on government use of facial recognition technologies.

• 6:28Chris Benson?

  Yes.

• 6:29Daniel Whitenack?

  Which goes right along with what you're saying. And I just think it's interesting that, and I think one of the, actually, the guests on the Change Log podcast was talking about this, how there's kind of this, this spectrum of how people perceive AI on, on one side, you know, they, they think that it's kind of so amazing that it can do everything. And that's, you know, a really awesome thing that's going to solve all our problems and automate everything. And then on the other side, people, you know, think it can do more than it can and just creates a lot of creepiness out of, out of that. Where in both respects, it needs to be, you know, those expectations need to be tailored back somewhat. But I

• 7:12Daniel Whitenack?

  think there is this kind of problem of, of setting expectations for even what AI is capable of. But then certainly, once technologies like this come out, there's definitely a lot of conversations that need to happen around, around the use of them, especially by government entities.

• 7:29Chris Benson?

  I agree. I mean, and unlike the highly educated listeners of our podcast, because they're here learning about this kind of stuff, as are we, I think the vast majority of people out there are hearing this in the news every day, but they don't have any basis upon which to evaluate that. And there's so much education that needs to happen, even while this field is just racing forward at light speed. We, it's, it's really creating a lot of social, cultural and, and economic turmoil in terms of, of our lives changing so fast. So it's, it's definitely something we need to, we need to dig down into on, on an upcoming episode. For sure.

• 8:08Chris Benson?

  So another article that I saw that came from space.com was that the actual, the first robot that is using AI flew in space recently and it is Interesting. It is called, I'm assuming I'm pronouncing it right, Simon or it's C-I-M-O-N, Simon? Okay. Simon? Simon? So we'll say, we'll say Simon or Simone to, to make things not awkward. There you, there you go. Somebody, somebody can tweet us or hop onto our Slack and, and correct us in terms of what that is. But you know, my first reaction when I saw this was really? This was the first? I would have expected it a long time ago that, you know,

• 8:52Chris Benson?

  maybe some, some deep learning, you know, from a CNN standpoint might've been used, but apparently, you know, as of the morning of June 29th, which is, you know, not, not too far back, couple of weeks back as we record this, it was a small, it says a small robot endowed with artificial intelligence, launched a two-day trip to the International Space Station. So apparently What does it do? Does it just wake them up? What, what is it? Is it like a assistant? It's a, it's a small flying sphere and it has a kind of a cartoon-like face on the front of it, but I think it is Yeah, that's super creepy. It is, it is pretty creepy actually, in the pictures of it. And apparently it is

• 9:34Chris Benson?

  able to propel itself around in the ISS and through little puffs of air and interacts with the astronauts. And so, you know, we've finally gotten to that, that moment of 2001 futurism is, is there now. So I imagine this is going to be, you know, just pervasive in space missions going forward in this, not only this one particular robot, but probably many, many to come.

• 10:01Daniel Whitenack?

  Yeah, well, it might be the first thing that has motivated me not to go into space. So I don't have to stare at that face for like months on end.

• 10:11Chris Benson?

  But you can just be up there with an entire crew of of semen robots. It's just you and the spacecraft and and all you do for the next six months is interact with them.

• 10:20Daniel Whitenack?

  Yeah, I'll I'll pass on that one. But I don't know if that falls into this category. And and speaking of kind of governments and nations' strategy around AI. I saw that DJ Patel, who was the first chief data scientist of the US. I'm not entirely sure what what he's up to now, but him along with Hillary Mason and and and a couple others came out with an article about doing good data science. And I think it's a good read for for everyone. It doesn't, you know, it brings up a lot of good things and and talks about basically that the ethical, we need to have the space and and the time to address the ethical questions

• 11:05Daniel Whitenack?

  that are coming up in in data science and AI work. And, you know, share those at conferences and and be open about that that side of the work. So if that's something you're interested in, it's it's definitely a good read and and by some of the some of the leaders in the field for sure.

• 11:22Chris Benson?

  Definitely. I'm I'm very, you know, we keep talking about ethics in AI. So far, is is more of a an ancillary topic in our episodes. And I know we're going to have it as a as a primary topic coming up. But I I ran across that that Google CEO posted an article called AI at Google are principles, which I was I was happy to see because I think this is something that most companies need to be framing in terms of how they're approaching using these technologies from an ethical standpoint and their objectives and and such. And I thought I'd take two seconds and and run through what he put a kind of highlight. The article is longer and people can go read it.

• 12:04Chris Benson?

  But he said, under objectives for AI applications, to be socially beneficial, avoid creating or reinforcing. Unfair bias, be built and tested for safety, be accountable to people, incorporate privacy design principles, uphold high standards of scientific excellence. And he finished with be made available for uses that accord with these principles. And he also goes on and lists some things that they would not do and talks about their long-term approach. But I was just, I was just happy to see that they were actually thinking their way through it and publishing it. So that so many other organizations can kind of follow suit and put forward their own objectives. And, and, and hopefully put them out there so people can see what they are.

• 12:47Chris Benson?

  And we can continue to have this conversation so that AI can continue to be used for wonderful things like feeding people in Africa, which was a previous episode of ours.

• 12:57Daniel Whitenack?

  Yeah, for sure. And it definitely fits into the same spirit of that other article about doing good data science and publishing those, those thoughts in blog posts and other things. And definitely, definitely a good read. So the other thing that, that we for sure want to do in, in these news and updates episodes is to share some learning resources with people. Maybe you're starting out in, in AI or you just, you know, want to keep yourself fresh or, or learn new things. We want to definitely give you and, and help expose some of those resources. And the first one that, that I found recently was that Bloomberg published this free online course

• 13:41Daniel Whitenack?

  in machine learning fundamentals. So you can view it, I think, as a, as a series of lectures on YouTube. But they kind of have their own site now that, that you can go to and, and kind of run through these episodes in, in order. And they have extra resources and things there. I haven't been through it, but it, it seems really useful and people seem positive about it.

• 14:05Chris Benson?

  That sounds like a great one. And likewise, you know, Google has their machine learning crash course that uses TensorFlow APIs. And that is freely available, one that they have with, like these others, we can put the link in the show notes. And they describe it as a self study guide for aspiring machine learning practitioners. And so that's also one of many great free resources out there where people can can get their hands dirty on these. And then, one of the, on a slightly different tangent, I have a lot of conversations with people that are, you know, trying to figure out how they're going to do the computation

• 14:46Chris Benson?

  side. And, you know, we use cloud services, obviously, from the major providers. And in some cases, maybe we're lucky and we can afford some, some pretty good deep learning oriented hardware with GPUs or TPUs or whatever. But there is an article, I'm sorry, a YouTube video by Siraj Raval, if I'm pronouncing his name correctly, who is kind of one of the, the better known luminaries in the deep learning space. He does a lot of YouTube videos and courses, and he's fairly well known by those, but he did a best laptop for deep learning video. And it was a good thing that if you're on a budget, it was a great way of kind of saying, okay, how could I get into this? And if I'm going to

• 15:29Chris Benson?

  build a lap, if I'm going to build a, you know, a system, or if I'm going to buy one, what are those trade offs? And it was just a good basic thing. I suspect that on the hardware side, we're going to see a lot more of those types of recommendations as people get more and more into this, as this space becomes more accessible to people.

• 15:47Daniel Whitenack?

  Yeah, that, that's great. I have always, you know, thinking about what laptop is next for me. I can watch those videos all day. I definitely, you know, after seeing, seeing Kelsey Hightower demo from Pixelbook, I've, I've got my, my eyes set on those, although you're probably not going to train too many neural networks on them. But, but yeah, that's always, always a fun one to watch. So keep, keep your eyes out for more episodes. Like this where we share some things going on in the community. If you have suggestions for things you would like to talk about, or maybe links that you think are relevant. Join our community. You can go to changelog.com/community.

• 16:29Daniel Whitenack?

  You can ping us on Twitter or Slack. All of those links are there. There's people already discussing things in our Slack channel. And so join, join the community. We'd love to talk to you. Stick around for, for next week, actually on the topic of, of learning. We're going to have Jared Lander with us, who is, is really big in the, in the R community. And he's going to talk a little bit about that, but even more. We've kind of asked him to give us a little bit of an overview of the landscape of AI techniques. And how certain things like deep learning fit into that. So I think that'll be, that'll be great to hear from, from one of the experts in the field. So, uh, thanks for, uh, thanks for finding some, some interesting stuff and I'll talk to you next week, Chris.

• 17:14Daniel Whitenack?

  Yeah, talk to you later, Daniel. Have a good one.

• 17:18Speaker 00

  All right. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Practical AI. If you enjoyed this show, do us a favor, go on iTunes and give us a rating. Go in your podcast app and favorite it. If you are on Twitter or a social network, share a link with a friend. Whatever you gotta do, share the show with a friend if you enjoyed it. And bandwidth for change log is provided by Fastly. Learn more at fastly.com. And we catch our airs before our users do here at change law because of roll bar. Check them out at rollbar.com/changelog. And we're hosted on Leno cloud servers. Head to leno.com/changelog. Check them out. Support this show. This episode is hosted by Daniel Whitenack and Chris Benson. Editing is done by Tim Smith. The music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. And you can find more shows just like this at changelog.com. When you go there, pop in your email address.

• 18:02Speaker 00

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