Author: The Conversation

There’s a scene in the 2008 film Iron Man that offers a glimpse of future interactions between human and artificial intelligence assistants. In it, Tony Stark’s virtual assistant J.A.R.V.I.S. responds with sarcasm and humour to Stark’s commands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZaAFADoF1M&feature=emb_logo Tony Stark and his AI assistant J.A.R.V.I.S. work on a project. Contemporary voice assistants like Siri and Alexa are yet to offer such natural, nuanced social chatter. To that end, our team of computer science researchers at the University of British Columbia investigated what might be missing. We found that voice interface designers dealt with an interesting dilemma: the tension between offering social…

Have you ever thought about all the ways social media is woven within your everyday life? This has been especially true over the past year, where social media has proven itself as a valuable communication tool to connect with family and friends, provide social support through online community groups and get a quick response to a burning question from a peer. Globally, prior to the pandemic, an estimated 3.4 billion people used social media and this number continues to rise annually. Yet the ways in which we use social media may determine whether it has a positive or potentially negative impact on our lives.…

When Apple announced in a 2019 blog post that it had patched a security vulnerability in its iOS operating system, the company sought to reassure its customers. The attack that had exploited the vulnerability, Apple said, was “narrowly focused” on websites featuring content related to the Uyghur community. It has since emerged that the vulnerability in question was discovered at China’s principal hacking competition, the Tianfu Cup, where a professional hacker won a prize for his work in uncovering it. The normal protocol would be to inform Apple of the vulnerability. But it’s alleged that, instead, the breach was kept secret, with the Chinese…

NASA has selected two missions, dubbed DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, to study the “lost habitable” world of Venus. Each mission will receive approximately US$500 million for development and both are expected to launch between 2028 and 2030. It had long been thought there was no life on Venus, due to its extremely high temperatures. But late last year, scientists studying the planet’s atmosphere announced the surprising (and somewhat controversial) discovery of phosphine. On Earth, this chemical is produced primarily by living organisms. The news sparked renewed interest in Earth’s “twin”, prompting NASA to plan state-of-the-art missions to look more closely at the planetary environment…

Unless you’re blind or know someone who is, you might not know that blind people use the same smartphones as sighted people. In fact, many blind people use touch-screen smartphones every day. The secret is that smartphones have a screen reader, a tool that allows blind people to use a mix of gestures and taps, along with vibrations or audio feedback, to use their apps. Screen readers work on desktop computers as well as mobile devices. You can usually find the screen reader in settings under accessibility. On iPhones the screen reader is VoiceOver. It provides a verbal description of what’s…

Most of us benefit every day from the fact computers can now “understand” us when we speak or write, thanks to machine learning. Yet few of us have paused to consider the potentially damaging ways this same technology may be shaping our culture. Human language is full of ambiguity and double meanings. For instance, consider the potential meaning of this phrase: “I went to project class”. Without context, it’s an ambiguous statement. Computer scientists and linguists have spent decades trying to program computers to understand the nuances of human language. And in certain ways, computers are fast approaching humans’ ability…

The manufacturing world is facing one of its greatest challenges in years — a global shortage of semiconductors — and there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight any time soon. According to Acer, one of the world’s largest laptop manufacturers, companies will still be affected by this shortage until at least the first half of 2022. Semiconductors are an essential component of electronic devices, found in everything from cars and factory machinery to dishwashers and mobile phones. They harness the conducting properties of semiconductor materials (such as silicon), through the use of electric or magnetic fields, light, heat or…

Digital video surveillance systems can’t just identify who someone is. They can also work out how someone is feeling and what kind of personality they have. They can even tell how they might behave in the future. And the key to unlocking this information about a person is the movement of their head. That is the claim made by the company behind the VibraImage artificial intelligence (AI) system. (The term “AI” is used here in a broad sense to refer to digital systems that use algorithms and tools such as automated biometrics and computer vision). You may never have heard of it,…

Graphene is a material made of carbon atoms one layer thick, arranged in a honeycomb structure. It has been used to make materials stronger, create ultra-high frequency components for communications, boost battery performance and even used to make COVID-19 tests. It’s the archetypal two-dimensional (2D) material – but there’s much more to 2D materials than graphene. Since graphene was first isolated in 2004, research has expanded to the creation of other, non-carbon 2D materials. Now there are many tens of these, and they’re hailed to make an impact where graphene is less suited, such as in novel transistors and next-generation optoelectronic…

You have probably seen satellite images of the planet through applications like Google Earth. These provide a fascinating view of the surface of the planet from a unique vantage point and can be both beautiful to look at and useful aids for planning. But satellite observations can provide far more insights than that. In fact, they are essential for understanding how our planet is changing and responding to global heating and can do so much more than just “taking pictures”. It really is rocket science and the kind of information we can now obtain from what are called Earth observation…