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Welcome to our class A.I. blog!

Here you will find non-artificially intelligent commentary about recent developments in artificial intelligence, by the students from CSC 320: Principles of Artificial Intelligence, from Spring Semester 2021-22 at Augustana College.

Popular posts from this blog

The Short Lived Life of Way of the Future, the First Church of AI

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When it comes to new and innovative ideas about artificial intelligence (or AI for short), the prospect of religion and the role of the church is most definitely not the first image that comes to mind for the general populace. Religion and AI have not seen much interaction or collaborative development outside of the usual virtual zoom mass during the pandemic. However, back in 2017, a man by the name of Anthony Levandowski wanted to change that. There was a clear and extremely long gap between religion and AI that never would see the light of day of crossing paths, although Levandowski desired to close the gap between the two, and blurred the lines of what it meant for the two to have such clear distinctions. Before diving into this novel idea, first some context is needed as to who Anthony Levandowski is. Levandowski was a rising star when it came to autonomous technology, specializing in self-driving cars. He was an extremely talented engineer with a stellar education at the Universi...
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PeopleLens: How Artificial Intelligence Can Enhance the Experience of People With Visual Impairment

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      Artificial intelligence has been shown to provide opportunities to improve various aspects of the human experience, from efficiency to safety. Another way AI can help people is through improving the lives of those with disabilities. One example of this is the PeopleLens , a new piece of technology being developed by Microsoft. PeopleLens is a device that will help people with visual impairments or blindness to better understand their surroundings and communicate with those around them. How it works:      The device is a combination of a phone app and glasses with augmented reality technology used for the purposes of tracking people’s locations, names, and where they are looking. PeopleLens gives different cues based on distance . Within 10 meters, a registered person will prompt a percussive bump. When within 4 meters, if the perceived person is registered their name will also be emitted. One caveat here is that their ears need to be noticed as w...
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AI (Hopefully) Will Be Able to Diagnose ASD Soon

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     For those of you who aren't aware of what ASD (or Autism) is, it's a developmental condition that affects a person's social skills, communication, and relationships . And as of today the way to diagnose ASD is to take a series of tests that involve testing the areas that ASD affects. Every clinician tests kids differently, though there are some more standardized tests, and the process is long and arduous for both parents and kids. Representation of ASD     However, a new Stanford AI has shown progress in what could be a new way of diagnosing ASD in a definitive manner. The AI uses fMRI scans can detect the ASD "fingerprint" in the brain. The initial study had a sample size of about 1,100 brain scans and from them, the AI was able to correctly identify the scans that were people who were clinically diagnosed with ASD with about 82% accuracy . This is one of the first points of evidence for a definitive biomarker for ASD and which once acquired will allow fo...
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