Protecting sensitive metadata so it can’t be used for surveillance

MIT researchers have designed a scalable system that secures the metadata — such as who’s corresponding and when — of millions of users in communications networks, to help protect the information against possible state-level surveillance. Data encryption schemes that protect the content of online communications are prevalent today. Apps like WhatsApp, for instance, use “end-to-end encryption” (E2EE), a scheme that ensures third-party eavesdroppers can’t read messages sent by end users. But most of those schemes overlook metadata, which contains information about who’s talking, when the messages are sent, the size of message, and other information. Many times, that’s all a government or other hacker needs to know to track an individual. This can be especially dangerous for, say, a government whistleblower or people living in oppressive regimes talking with journalists. Systems that fully protect user metadata with cryptographic privacy are complex, and they suffer scalability and speed issues that have Continue reading Protecting sensitive metadata so it can’t be used for surveillance

MIT Solve announces 2020 global challenges

On Feb. 25, MIT Solve launched its 2020 Global Challenges: Good Jobs and Inclusive Entrepreneurship, Learning for Girls and Women, Maternal and Newborn Health, and Sustainable Food Systems, with over $1 million in prize funding available across the challenges. Solve seeks tech-based solutions from social entrepreneurs around the world that address these four challenges. Anyone, anywhere can apply by the June 18 deadline. This year, to guide applicants, Solve created a course with MITx entitled “Business and Impact Planning for Social Enterprises,” which introduces core business-model and theory-of-change concepts to early-stage entrepreneurs. Finalists will be invited to attend Solve Challenge Finals on Sept. 20 in New York City during U.N. General Assembly week. At the event, they will pitch their solutions to Solve’s Challenge Leadership Groups, judging panels comprised of industry leaders and MIT faculty. The judges will select the most promising solutions as Solver teams. “Based all over the world, our Continue reading MIT Solve announces 2020 global challenges

Build a Rover, Send It to the Moon, Sell the Movie Rights: 30 Years of iRobot

This article was originally published on LinkedIn. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. Build a rover, send it to the Moon, sell the movie rights. That was our first business model at iRobot. Way back in 1990. We thought it would be how we’d first change the world. It’s ironic, of course, that through that model, changing the world meant sending a robot to another one. Sadly, that business model failed. And it wouldn’t be our last failed business model. Not by a long shot. Photo: iRobot Why? Because changing the world through robots, it turns out, is no easy task. Perhaps the biggest challenge back when we started in 1990 was that there existed no rule book on how to do it. There weren’t many robots, let alone robot companies, let alone any kind of robot industry. Continue reading Build a Rover, Send It to the Moon, Sell the Movie Rights: 30 Years of iRobot

Bringing deep learning to life

Gaby Ecanow loves listening to music, but never considered writing her own until taking 6.S191 (Introduction to Deep Learning). By her second class, the second-year MIT student had composed an original Irish folk song with the help of a recurrent neural network, and was considering how to adapt the model to create her own Louis the Child-inspired dance beats. “It was cool,” she says. “It didn’t sound at all like a machine had made it.”  This year, 6.S191 kicked off as usual, with students spilling into the aisles of Stata Center’s Kirsch Auditorium during Independent Activities Period (IAP). But the opening lecture featured a twist: a recorded welcome from former President Barack Obama. The video was quickly revealed to be an AI-generated fabrication, one of many twists that Alexander Amini ’17 and Ava Soleimany ’16 introduce throughout their for-credit course to make the equations and code come alive.  As hundreds of their peers look on, Amini and Continue reading Bringing deep learning to life

AI Deception: When Your Artificial Intelligence Learns to Lie

This piece was written as part of the Artificial Intelligence and International Stability Project at the Center for a New American Security, an independent, nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. Funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York, the project promotes thinking and analysis on AI and international stability. Given the likely importance that advances in artificial intelligence could play in shaping our future, it is critical to begin a discussion about ways to take advantage of the benefits of AI and autonomous systems, while mitigating the risks. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. In artificial intelligence circles, we hear a lot about adversarial attacks, especially ones that attempt to “deceive” an AI into believing, or to be more accurate, classifying, something incorrectly. Self-driving cars being fooled into “thinking” stop signs are speed limit signs, pandas being identified as gibbons, or even Continue reading AI Deception: When Your Artificial Intelligence Learns to Lie

Soft robot fingers gently grasp deep-sea jellyfish

Marine biologists have adopted ”soft robotic linguine fingers” as tools to conduct their undersea research. Scientists found that jellyfish held by ultra-soft robotic fingers expressed significantly fewer stress-related genes than when braced by traditional submersible grippers. Shaped like the famous noodles, this new robotic technology allows for the collection of ecological data in a gentler, less invasive manner. More details

Video Friday: Africa’s Lake Kivu Drone Challenge

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here’s what we have so far (send us your events!): DARPA SubT Urban Circuit – February 18-27, 2020 – Olympia, Wash., USA HRI 2020 – March 23-26, 2020 – Cambridge, U.K. ICARSC 2020 – April 15-17, 2020 – Ponta Delgada, Azores ICRA 2020 – May 31-4, 2020 – Paris, France ICUAS 2020 – June 9-12, 2020 – Athens, Greece CLAWAR 2020 – August 24-26, 2020 – Moscow, Russia Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.