🖼️ Mental images

🧵 In today's edition:

• 🎟️ How will AI impact the US elections?

• 🕵️ Gun Detection

• 🖼️ Mental images

• 🤑 AI Fundraising News

• 🗞️ AI Quick-Bytes

• 🐦 Tweet Post of the Day

🎟️ How will AI impact the US elections?

AI is poised to play a vital role in the upcoming elections, with presidential candidates increasingly harnessing its power for campaign strategies. 

While justified concerns about the negative aspects of AI persist, there's a compelling case for its positive impact on politics. 

AI facilitates hyper-personalized campaigns and enhances information accessibility, revolutionizing voter engagement, as campaign communication expert Kevin Pérez-Allen emphasized.

However, despite AI's role in data analysis, message crafting, and social media analysis, the absence of regulations is concerning. 

Pérez-Allen cautions against unchecked AI influence, while Sinclair Schuller, co-founder of AI implementation firm Nuvalence, raises the alarm on deepfake threats, advocating for robust detection mechanisms. 

Overall: Skepticism looms over Congress's ability to address technology issues, which is evident in their historical inaction on topics like social media regulation. 

Pérez-Allen further cautions against hasty AI integration into elections, foreseeing a potential crisis akin to mail-in voting controversies.

Implementing Biden's executive order faces challenges, too, emphasizing the urgent need for changes in budgets, culture, and practices.

Looking ahead, the next nine months leading to the elections are pivotal. The call for heightened regulations is clear, demanding the government's proactive role in effectively managing and overseeing AI use in politics. 

Read more: CNBC

🕵️ Gun Detection

Gun violence in schools is a serious issue in the United States. 

According to new federal data, the 2021-22 school year saw 188 fatal shootings at public and private elementary schools. 

To help enhance school safety, Iterate.ai, known for its enterprise AI platform, is offering a free, open-source AI system that can detect weapons. 

CTO Brian Sathianathan spearheaded the initiative, leveraging years of development to create a tool that accurately scans for guns and visible knives.

The company gathered insights from 20,000 internet data sets and collaborated with former law enforcement, supplementing the model with 40,000 AI-generated data sets. 

Compatible with existing surveillance cameras, the system can be integrated with simple Python code, can scan for weapons & can send instant alerts via text, email, or other notifications.

The technology is quite robust as well - it identifies handguns, semi-automatics, visible knives over six inches, and even partially visible guns.

Overall: Iterate.ai's aim is pretty straightforward: to empower schools and universities in the fight against gun violence. 

A very noble cause that hopefully yields outsized impact 🙏

Read more: USA Today

🖼️ Mental images

Imagine creating images of a leopard or an airplane by tapping into human brain activity… sounds unbelievable, right? 

Well, as Ted Lasso puts it, it might be time to believe 🌟 

Japanese scientists from the National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology have reportedly developed the world's first mental images of objects and landscapes from human brain activity using 'brain decoding' AI. 

Participants in the study were shown 1,200 images, with their brain signals analyzed through functional MRI. The AI learned to generate rough, recognizable images of a leopard with distinct features and an airplane adorned with red lights on its wings.

Termed a breakthrough in 'brain decoding,' this technology holds immense potential for medical and welfare applications. 

But that's not all—think communication devices, unraveling the mysteries of dreams, and understanding hallucinations.

Kei Majima, a researcher at QST, expressed the significance of this innovation, highlighting that while humanity has explored the unseen through microscopes, this is the first time we've stepped into the realm of another person's mind.

Unreal.

Read more: Japan Times

🤑 AI Fundraising News

• Neurophos raises $7.2M in Seed funding to deliver AI computation solutions that combine optical metasurfaces and silicon photonics to create fast, energy-efficient, metamaterial-based optical AI chips for data centers.

• Redactable raises $5.5M in Seed funding to develop a web-based platform that uses proprietary software that leverages Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning technology to auto-detect sensitive information in documents and deliver secure redaction, document scrubbing, and AI-driven workflows.

🗞️ AI Quick-Bytes

What else is going on?

• AI plushie Grok, voiced by Grimes, was trademarked before Elon Musk’s Grok.

• Researchers say Bing made up facts about European elections.

• Your devices might actually be listening: Ad company claims to use 'active listening' tool.

• When it comes to generative AI in the enterprise, CIOs are taking it slow.

• H&R Block now has an AI chatbot that answers confusing tax questions.

• Google's Pixel 9 could arrive with a sophisticated 'Pixie' AI assistant.
  

🐦 Tweet Post of the Day

🤔 Hmmmm, very interesting! What are your thoughts on this?