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WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFNS) -- ' + '' + ' '; } else { caption += $(this).find('figcaption').html() + getDetailsURL($(this).parent()) + getDownloadURL($(this).parent()) + showFBShare(); } } return caption; }, afterLoad: function (instance, current) { //initial desktop view if (isMobile()) $(".fancybox-caption__body").addClass("mobile"); }, afterShow: function (instance, current) { var $currentSlide = $(".fancybox-slide.fancybox-slide--current.fancybox-slide--image").parent().parent(); if (isMobile()) $currentSlide.find(".fancy-detail-link").on("touchstart", function() { captionToggle(); }); }, afterClose: function () { } })); let debounceTimer; $(window).on("resize", function (event) { if (isMobile()) return; if ($(".af3-caption-body").length > 0 && $(".af3-caption-body").css("height") != undefined) { event.stopImmediatePropagation(); $(".fancybox-caption__body").removeClass("half"); isDesktopInit = false; captionToggle(); debounceTimer = setTimeout(function () { clearTimeout(debounceTimer); 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} return isMobile; } });The Air Force Rapid Sustainment Offices Predictive Analytics and Decision Assistant leverages artificial intelligence software to transform logistics data into actionable predictive maintenance alerts. The Air Force has designated PANDA as the System of Record for Condition Based Maintenance Plus and predictive maintenance, the first such designation for the RSO.

CBM+ is a collaborative Department of Defense readiness initiative focused on data analysis to improve availability and lifecycle cost. CBM+ requires advanced tools and technologies for analysis to formulate evidence of need to perform maintenance.

Developed by the RSO and partner, C3.ai, PANDA is an artificial intelligence software toolkit that delivers integrated and interoperable tools, technologies, and information infrastructures to facilitate CBM+ collaboration across multiple functional and organizational boundaries. It maximizes the use of common equipment and technologies to capture, store, analyze, and forward CBM+ predictive maintenance data. PANDA has rapidly expanded to the maintenance operations of 16 aircraft platform communities across all nine Air Force major commands. PANDA routinely generates over 30,000 predictive maintenance recommendations and sensor-based alerts detecting impending component failure.

PANDA being designated as the Air Forces system of record for CBM+ is a monumental achievement for the RSO and Air Force CBM+ enterprise, said Chris Damani, RSO CBM+ Program Office chief. Alignment to one technology solution unites the sustainment enterprise to one tool and brings focus, dedication, and prioritization of resources to PANDA allowing for further expansion, optimization, and impact to mission readiness.

The RSO CBM+ Program Office is the Air Forces CBM+ Center of Excellence leading the implementation and execution of CBM+ across the Air Force. The office will now lead and manage all Air Force CBM+ initiatives interested in integration into the PANDA platform, which is expandable to all Air Force materiel categories, including aircraft, missiles, and support equipment and vehicles.

The future of Air Force predictive maintenance is now, and PANDA is the Air Force System of Record helping to lead the way.

Learn more about PANDA:

Read more here:
Rapid Sustainment Office's CBM+ artificial intelligence toolkit earns ... - Air Force Link

It feels like stories about AI have dominated photography news over the last year.Part of me keeps ignoring the headlines as an irrelevance, but chirping away in the background, the other part of me keeps asking: what does it all mean? What's AI capable of? Will it really be a revolution? And perhaps the biggest question of them all: are photographers at risk of becoming obsolete because of AI?

Only in certain circumstances and only if we let it, according to this video by Lucy Lumen.In a thoughtful and interesting discussion, Lumen outlines her thoughts on this contentious topic and ways that we can counter the rise of AI. She even goes as far as saying that it could save photography.

Her first piece of advice for photographers is to lean into the human element of photography. AI represents the antithesis of mistakes and happy accidents, and often, this human element in the image-making process creates beautiful, memorable, or even career-changing images.

Secondly, she suggests that now is the perfect time for photographers to reflect and think about what makes them unique and how they can add value for clients.

This is a fantastic way of looking at the issue. AI might gain a significant share in the stock photography market, but it's doubtful that clients will be looking to buy AI-generated wedding photos or magazine editors will be buying AI-generated documentary or travel images. In these fields, authenticity is key. Photographers should look at what makes them special and articulate that to their market.

As for her thoughts on how AI can save photography, you'll have to watch the video and find out for yourself.

Read this article:
Is Artificial Intelligence the End of 'Real' Photography? - Fstoppers

Yuval Noah Harari, a historian, philosopher, and lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has an interesting article on AI in The Economist (Yuval Noah Harari Argues that AI Has Hacked the Operating System of Human Civilization, April 28, 2023). He presents a more sophisticated argument on the danger of AI than the usual Luddite scare. A few excerpts:

Forget about school essays. Think of the next American presidential race in 2024, and try to imagine the impact of AI tools that can be made to mass-produce political content, fake-news stories and scriptures for new cults.

While to the best of our knowledge all previous [QAnons] drops were composed by humans, and bots merely helped disseminate them, in future we might see the first cults in history whose revered texts were written by a non-human intelligence.

It is utterly pointless for us to spend time trying to change the declared opinions of an AI bot, while the AI could hone its messages so precisely that it stands a good chance of influencing us.

Through its mastery of language, AI could even form intimate relationships with people, and use the power of intimacy to change our opinions and worldviews.

What will happen to the course of history when AI takes over culture, and begins producing stories, melodies, laws and religions?

If we are not careful, we might be trapped behind a curtain of illusions, which we could not tear awayor even realise is there.

Just as a pharmaceutical company cannot release new drugs before testing both their short-term and long-term side-effects, so tech companies shouldnt release new AI tools before they are made safe. We need an equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration for new technology.

The last bit is certainly not his most interesting point: it looks to me like the feared AI-bot propaganda. Such a trust in the state reminds me of what New-Dealer Rexford Guy Tugwell wrote in a 1932 American Economic Review article:

New industries will not just happen as the automobile industry did; they will have to be foreseen, to be argued for, to seem probably desirable features of the whole economy before they can be entered upon.

We dont know how close AI will come to human intelligence. Friedrich Hayek, whom Harari may never have heard of, argued that mind and culture developed concurrently and not successively (from the epilogue of his Law, Legislation, and Liberty; his underlines). The process took a few hundred thousand years, and it is unlikely that artificial minds can advance in Trump time, as Peter Navarro would say. Enormous resources will be needed to improve AI as we know it. Training of ChatGPT-4 may have cost $100 million, consuming a lot of computing power and a lot of electricity. And the cost increases proportionately faster than the intelligence. (See Large, Creative AI Models Will Transform Lives and Labour Markets, The Economist, April 22, 2023.) I think it is doubtful that an artificial mind will ever say like Descartes, I think, therefore I am (cogito, ergo sum), except by plagiarizing the French philosopher.

Here is what I would retain of, or deduct from, Hararis argument. One can view the intellectual history of mankind as a race to discover the secrets of the universe, including recently to create something similar to intelligence, concurrent with an education race so that the mass of individuals do not to fall prey to snake-oil peddlers and tyrants. To the extent that AI does come close to human intelligence or discourse, the question is whether or not humans will by then be intellectually streetwise enough not to be swindled and dominated by robots or by the tyrants who would use them. If the first race is won before the second, the future of mankind would be bleak indeed.

Some 15% of American voters see solid evidence that the 2020 election was stolen, although that proportion seems to be decreasing. All over the developed world, even more believe in social justice, not to speak of the rest of the world, in the grip of more primitive tribalism. Hararis idea that humans may fall for AI bots like gobblers fall for hen decoys is intriguing.

The slow but continuous dismissal of classical liberalism over the past century or so, the intellectual darkness that seems to be descending on the 21st century, and the rise of populist leaders, the kings of democracy, suggest that the race to create new gods has been gaining more momentum than the race to general education, knowledge, and wisdom. If that is true, a real problem is looming, as Harari fears. However, his apparent solution, to let the state (and its strongmen) control AI, is based on the tragic illusion that the it will protect people against the robots, instead of unleashing the robots against disobedient individuals. The risk is certainly much lower if AI is left free and can be shared among individuals, corporations, (decentralized) governments, and other institutions.

Go here to see the original:
Harari and the Danger of Artificial Intelligence - Econlib

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So, this whole generative artificial intelligence (AI) thing is generating a lot of hoopla. Indeed, Goldman Sachs says 300 million jobs will be affected by it.

And like most people, I only care about one of those jobs: my own. I'm an architect, interior designer, and business owner. Here are three ways I believe AI to a gamechanger in my field- and one way the game remains the same.

Gamechanger #1: Architects are more vulnerable than most

Goldman Sachs analysed a whole range of jobs, to assess how much of a threat AI posed. The good news is that we're better off than lawyers, but the bad news is that we're worse off than most.

To be precise, they evaluated what they call "current work tasks that could be automated by AI." For lawyers, it's 44%; for architects. it's 37%. (The average across all jobs is 25%.)

One possible solution: we could switch from designing buildings to getting our hands dirty and actually building the things. You see, just 1% of construction and maintenance jobs could be automated, according to Goldman Sachs.

Gamechanger #2: Floor plans, goodbye..?

To find out which bits of our jobs fall into that 37% category, we asked ChatGPT, the poster child of generative AI. "Artificial intelligence can significantly improve design efficiency by automating repetitive tasks such as creating floor plans, three-dimensional models, and rendering images," it told us.

Take a software like maket.ai. For US$30 a month, it promises to generate multiple floor plans, and export them in a drawing exchange format (.dxf) format. They talk a good game about "revolutionizing architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) too- of course, some of it is just hype; I doubt it would have done as good a job as Frank Gehry on the Guggenheim in Bilbao, or Sean Killa's Museum of the Future in Dubai. But there's definitely something in it. Autodesk has an AI lab and is working with universities including Stanford and

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It'd take a brave designer to bet against these powerhouses.

AI is also very good at the boring but important stuff in fields such as safety and sustainability. Whether it's a new build or a retrofit, we can install of bunch of (relatively) cheap sensors, and let AI do the rest. It generates fascinating insights on human issues such as air quality and desk utilization rates, to vital structural problems such as concrete cracks.

Gamechanger #3: Sales gets a boost

As a business owner, sales is a massive part of my job. But not in the way you'd think. Sure, I have to constantly focus on business development to generate the cash to pay the rent, taxes, and salaries.

But more importantly, even after we've won the contract, we're constantly selling our ideas and our designs to existing clients. I always remember a great quote from the graphic designer Paula Scher on the Netflix documentary Abstract. She said that she spends 10% of her time designing, but 90% of her time convincing clients that the designs are good. That's probably a slight exaggeration, but the point is well made.

AI can and does help here. Like most interior design and architecture firms, we have a big team that does nothing but create 3D visuals, either static or fly-throughs. They are time-consuming and expensive. But we need them at every stage of the design process. At the pitch, at pre-concept, at concept design, at detail design, for the client's marketing campaign- the list is endless.

Open AI the ChatGPT guys have launched a 3D generator called Point-E. It's still in beta mode, but the potential is there. There's little doubt that AI will be hugely powerful in generating virtual reality content.

But despite all this, the game remains -fundamentally- the same

I was born in 1981, the year John Walker and 12 programmers in San Francisco created AutoCAD. Computed aided design was touted at the time as the death of architecture. Turns out it wasn't. Around the same time, calculators and spreadsheets were prompting doom and gloom headlines about the death of accountancy as a profession. Nope.

Even the guys at maket.ai recognize that you still need humans: "We empower architects, designers, builders, contractors, and developers." The key word being empower, not replace.

Bottom line: as a business owner, if I could fire my 30-strong workforce tomorrow and replace them with an algorithm, my profit margin would go through the roof. But I cannot. Nor can I send a computer to a client pitch, or a site meeting with project managers and engineers over a tricky construction challenge. Generative AI will help us be more efficient, and maybe even be more creative, but it will not replace us.

Related: Five Things A Metaverse Sceptic Learned By Buying Real Estate In A Virtual Universe

Read more:
Three Ways Generative Artificial Intelligence Is A Gamechanger For ... - Entrepreneur

When we talk about artificial intelligence, we rely on metaphor, as we always do when dealing with something new and unfamiliar. Metaphors are, by their nature, imperfect, but we still need to choose them carefully, because bad ones can lead us astray. For example, its become very common to compare powerful A.I.s to genies in fairy tales. The metaphor is meant to highlight the difficulty of making powerful entities obey your commands; the computer scientist Stuart Russell has cited the parable of King Midas, who demanded that everything he touched turn into gold, to illustrate the dangers of an A.I. doing what you tell it to do instead of what you want it to do. There are multiple problems with this metaphor, but one of them is that it derives the wrong lessons from the tale to which it refers. The point of the Midas parable is that greed will destroy you, and that the pursuit of wealth will cost you everything that is truly important. If your reading of the parable is that, when you are granted a wish by the gods, you should phrase your wish very, very carefully, then you have missed the point.

So, I would like to propose another metaphor for the risks of artificial intelligence. I suggest that we think about A.I. as a management-consulting firm, along the lines of McKinsey & Company. Firms like McKinsey are hired for a wide variety of reasons, and A.I. systems are used for many reasons, too. But the similarities between McKinseya consulting firm that works with ninety per cent of the Fortune 100and A.I. are also clear. Social-media companies use machine learning to keep users glued to their feeds. In a similar way, Purdue Pharma used McKinsey to figure out how to turbocharge sales of OxyContin during the opioid epidemic. Just as A.I. promises to offer managers a cheap replacement for human workers, so McKinsey and similar firms helped normalize the practice of mass layoffs as a way of increasing stock prices and executive compensation, contributing to the destruction of the middle class in America.

A former McKinsey employee has described the company as capitals willing executioners: if you want something done but dont want to get your hands dirty, McKinsey will do it for you. That escape from accountability is one of the most valuable services that management consultancies provide. Bosses have certain goals, but dont want to be blamed for doing whats necessary to achieve those goals; by hiring consultants, management can say that they were just following independent, expert advice. Even in its current rudimentary form, A.I. has become a way for a company to evade responsibility by saying that its just doing what the algorithm says, even though it was the company that commissioned the algorithm in the first place.

The question we should be asking is: as A.I. becomes more powerful and flexible, is there any way to keep it from being another version of McKinsey? The question is worth considering across different meanings of the term A.I. If you think of A.I. as a broad set of technologies being marketed to companies to help them cut their costs, the question becomes: how do we keep those technologies from working as capitals willing executioners? Alternatively, if you imagine A.I. as a semi-autonomous software program that solves problems that humans ask it to solve, the question is then: how do we prevent that software from assisting corporations in ways that make peoples lives worse? Suppose youve built a semi-autonomous A.I. thats entirely obedient to humansone that repeatedly checks to make sure it hasnt misinterpreted the instructions it has received. This is the dream of many A.I. researchers. Yet such software could easily still cause as much harm as McKinsey has.

Note that you cannot simply say that you will build A.I. that only offers pro-social solutions to the problems you ask it to solve. Thats the equivalent of saying that you can defuse the threat of McKinsey by starting a consulting firm that only offers such solutions. The reality is that Fortune 100 companies will hire McKinsey instead of your pro-social firm, because McKinseys solutions will increase shareholder value more than your firms solutions will. It will always be possible to build A.I. that pursues shareholder value above all else, and most companies will prefer to use that A.I. instead of one constrained by your principles.

Is there a way for A.I. to do something other than sharpen the knife blade of capitalism? Just to be clear, when I refer to capitalism, Im not talking about the exchange of goods or services for prices determined by a market, which is a property of many economic systems. When I refer to capitalism, Im talking about a specific relationship between capital and labor, in which private individuals who have money are able to profit off the effort of others. So, in the context of this discussion, whenever I criticize capitalism, Im not criticizing the idea of selling things; Im criticizing the idea that people who have lots of money get to wield power over people who actually work. And, more specifically, Im criticizing the ever-growing concentration of wealth among an ever-smaller number of people, which may or may not be an intrinsic property of capitalism but which absolutely characterizes capitalism as it is practiced today.

As it is currently deployed, A.I. often amounts to an effort to analyze a task that human beings perform and figure out a way to replace the human being. Coincidentally, this is exactly the type of problem that management wants solved. As a result, A.I. assists capital at the expense of labor. There isnt really anything like a labor-consulting firm that furthers the interests of workers. Is it possible for A.I. to take on that role? Can A.I. do anything to assist workers instead of management?

Some might say that its not the job of A.I. to oppose capitalism. That may be true, but its not the job of A.I. to strengthen capitalism, either. Yet that is what it currently does. If we cannot come up with ways for A.I. to reduce the concentration of wealth, then Id say its hard to argue that A.I. is a neutral technology, let alone a beneficial one.

Many people think that A.I. will create more unemployment, and bring up universal basic income, or U.B.I., as a solution to that problem. In general, I like the idea of universal basic income; however, over time, Ive become skeptical about the way that people who work in A.I. suggest U.B.I. as a response to A.I.-driven unemployment. It would be different if we already had universal basic income, but we dont, so expressing support for it seems like a way for the people developing A.I. to pass the buck to the government. In effect, they are intensifying the problems that capitalism creates with the expectation that, when those problems become bad enough, the government will have no choice but to step in. As a strategy for making the world a better place, this seems dubious.

You may remember that, in the run-up to the 2016 election, the actress Susan Sarandonwho was a fervent supporter of Bernie Sanderssaid that voting for Donald Trump would be better than voting for Hillary Clinton because it would bring about the revolution more quickly. I dont know how deeply Sarandon had thought this through, but the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj iek said the same thing, and Im pretty sure he had given a lot of thought to the matter. He argued that Trumps election would be such a shock to the system that it would bring about change.

What iek advocated for is an example of an idea in political philosophy known as accelerationism. There are a lot of different versions of accelerationism, but the common thread uniting left-wing accelerationists is the notion that the only way to make things better is to make things worse. Accelerationism says that its futile to try to oppose or reform capitalism; instead, we have to exacerbate capitalisms worst tendencies until the entire system breaks down. The only way to move beyond capitalism is to stomp on the gas pedal of neoliberalism until the engine explodes.

I suppose this is one way to bring about a better world, but, if its the approach that the A.I. industry is adopting, I want to make sure everyone is clear about what theyre working toward. By building A.I. to do jobs previously performed by people, A.I. researchers are increasing the concentration of wealth to such extreme levels that the only way to avoid societal collapse is for the government to step in. Intentionally or not, this is very similar to voting for Trump with the goal of bringing about a better world. And the rise of Trump illustrates the risks of pursuing accelerationism as a strategy: things can get very bad, and stay very bad for a long time, before they get better. In fact, you have no idea of how long it will take for things to get better; all you can be sure of is that there will be significant pain and suffering in the short and medium term.

Im not very convinced by claims that A.I. poses a danger to humanity because it might develop goals of its own and prevent us from turning it off. However, I do think that A.I. is dangerous inasmuch as it increases the power of capitalism. The doomsday scenario is not a manufacturing A.I. transforming the entire planet into paper clips, as one famous thought experiment has imagined. Its A.I.-supercharged corporations destroying the environment and the working class in their pursuit of shareholder value. Capitalism is the machine that will do whatever it takes to prevent us from turning it off, and the most successful weapon in its arsenal has been its campaign to prevent us from considering any alternatives.

People who criticize new technologies are sometimes called Luddites, but its helpful to clarify what the Luddites actually wanted. The main thing they were protesting was the fact that their wages were falling at the same time that factory owners profits were increasing, along with food prices. They were also protesting unsafe working conditions, the use of child labor, and the sale of shoddy goods that discredited the entire textile industry. The Luddites did not indiscriminately destroy machines; if a machines owner paid his workers well, they left it alone. The Luddites were not anti-technology; what they wanted was economic justice. They destroyed machinery as a way to get factory owners attention. The fact that the word Luddite is now used as an insult, a way of calling someone irrational and ignorant, is a result of a smear campaign by the forces of capital.

Whenever anyone accuses anyone else of being a Luddite, its worth asking, is the person being accused actually against technology? Or are they in favor of economic justice? And is the person making the accusation actually in favor of improving peoples lives? Or are they just trying to increase the private accumulation of capital?

Today, we find ourselves in a situation in which technology has become conflated with capitalism, which has in turn become conflated with the very notion of progress. If you try to criticize capitalism, you are accused of opposing both technology and progress. But what does progress even mean, if it doesnt include better lives for people who work? What is the point of greater efficiency, if the money being saved isnt going anywhere except into shareholders bank accounts? We should all strive to be Luddites, because we should all be more concerned with economic justice than with increasing the private accumulation of capital. We need to be able to criticize harmful uses of technologyand those include uses that benefit shareholders over workerswithout being described as opponents of technology.

Excerpt from:
Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey? - The New Yorker