Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for January 19, 2020

IEEE Spectrum's weekly selection of awesome robot videos; A discussion of the impact of fake personas on political discourse and democracy; An AI system that can measure student engagement; WWII pilot remains recovered and identified from a D-Day crash site; and a Steem post with an embedded video recording of wild monkeys in South Africa

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Fresh and Informative Content Daily: Welcome to my little corner of the blockchain

Straight from my RSS feed

Whatever gets my attention

Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

First posted on my Steem blog: SteemIt, SteemPeak^*, StemGeeks.

1. Video Friday: This Japanese Robot Can Conduct a Human Orchestra and Sing Opera - This week's IEEE Spectrum's weekly selection of awesome robot videos doesn't disappoint. It includes the following topics: The state of the art of legged robots (bipeds, quadrupeds, even a one-legged hopping robot); A hack that let's Pepper join in karaoke duets; A humanoid robot that conducts an orchestra and sings opera; A robot that anticipates peoples' intent by tracking their eye gaze; A five minute film that explores humanoid and social robotics; A demonstration of different levels of autonomy with a robotic arm for assisted feeding; Mid-air docking of robotic drones; A pressure-sensitive robotic hand that can grasp fragile objects; and more...
   
   Here is Alter 3 conducting an orchestra
   


2. Bots Are Destroying Political Discourse As We Know It - This article explores the intersection of politics, democracy, and online dialog. It runs through a long list of examples demonstrating why fake personas are expected to continue increasing their involvement in public discourse at the same time as becoming harder to identify as inorganic. Fake personas have already submitted comments to policy makers and spread misinformation online, and they are becoming increasingly human-like in their behavior. Additionally, they have reached a level of sophistication that enables them to fool most people most of the time. Eventually, the essay suggests that the online sphere will be dominated by noise from fake personas promoting their own variety of propaganda on behalf of most politicians, corporations, and nation-state actors. Making the problem more difficult, anonymous speech is critical for people who are marginalized and disenfranchised, and there is no known authentication system that protects privacy at scale. In the end, the outcome of this massive social experiment remains unknowable, but the ultimate solutions - if they exist - appear to be non-technical, including things like recognizing the limitations of online debate and prioritizing face-to-face interaction above virtual dialog. -h/t Bruce Schneier


3. Are Your Students Bored? This AI Could Tell You - A paper in this month's IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics describes an AI system that uses recordings of students' facial expressions to analyze their emotions during a classroom lecture. One of the authors, Huamin Qu says the system can provide a quick and easy measurement of students' engagement level in class, and in turn that knowledge can be used by an instructor to improve their own teaching. The system was tested on a classroom of toddlers in Japan and a class of university students in Hong Kong. It was observed that the system did a good job of recognizing enjoyment, but often mislabeled concentration as anger or sadness. Other researchers note that this so-called "focus frown" is a challenge for many people who are working in the field. The article envisions a future time where, under the supervision of a human coach, a squad of more capable AI systems like this one work one-on-one with students. On the other hand, it also points out that there are privacy issues associated with putting cameras in the classroom, and there could also be unanticipated negative consequences. -h/t Communications of the ACM: Artificial Intelligence


4. Remains of World War II pilot from western Minnesota, killed on D-Day, are identified - His name was U.S. Army Air Forces 2nd Lt. William J. McGowan. He died at the age of 23 when his P-47 Thunderbolt crashed during a mission near the city of Saint-Lô, France on June 6, 1944, during the D-Day invasion. The crash site was first investigated in 1947, but no human remains were recovered at that time. In July and August of 2018, a new excavation project was able to find and identify the pilot's remains. The airman's body will now be laid to rest at the Normandy American Cemetery in France. -h/t archaeology.org


5. STEEM Indigenous Monkeys in the wild near the tourist resort town of Wilderness, South Africa - In this post, @julianhorack shows us a video of wild and indigenous vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus Aethiops) while they are exploring a back-yard compost pit near a tourist resort in South Africa. According to the description, this sort of monkey is friendly and normally lives in troops of sizes from 10-50. @julianhorack describes a love/hate relationship between the locals and the monkeys, in part because the mischievous monkeys have a habit of digging up buried compost, and in part because the people don't want the animals to become too dependent on help from humans.
   
   Here is the video, but click through for the full description and to give @julianhorack an upvote:

   (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @julianhorack.)

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