NEWS
►Biden orders every US agency to appoint a chief AI officer. The White House has announced the "first government-wide policy to mitigate risks of artificial intelligence (AI) and harness its benefits". To coordinate these efforts, every federal agency must appoint a chief AI officer with "significant expertise in AI."
► Apple Exploring 'Mobile Robot' That 'Follows Users Around Their Homes'. Apple is exploring various "personal robotics" projects in an effort to create its "next big thing," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. One of these projects is described as a "mobile robot" that would "follow users around their homes". Apple's home robot could compete with the likes of Amazon's Astro, which serves as a mobile virtual assistant and provides home security monitoring.
►Meta Now Requires Mandatory Age Confirmation on Quest Headsets. Meta announced it’s adding an obligatory age confirmation feature on the Quest platform, which in addition to asking you for your real birthday, could also put up a hard barrier on younger users accessing apps that aren’t age appropriate. Within the next few days users will be prompted in-headset to confirm their age by re-entering their birthdate, which essentially divides users according to three specific age groups: adults, teens and preteens.
►Apple deepens immersion on Vision Pro with introduction of spatial Personas. Apple has recently unveiled enhancements to its Vision Pro headset, introducing a new method of mixed reality (MR) collaboration and entertainment through its advanced ‘spatial Personas’ feature. Spatial Personas operate by projecting a Vision Pro user’s ‘Persona’ – a digital representation of the user designed to replicate a user’s facial expressions and hand gestures whilst in mixed reality experiences – as a three-dimensional avatar into a shared virtual space, utilizing the Vison Pro’s advanced MR technology.
►Robot that can replicate a person’s smile. Columbia University’s ‘Columbia engineers’ build Emo, a silicon-clad robotic face that makes eye contact and uses two AI models to anticipate and replicate a person’s smile before the person actually smiles -- a major advance in robots predicting human facial expressions accurately, improving interactions, and building trust between humans and robots.
►BNSF Railway implements Virtual Reality into its mechanical training programs. North American railway company BNSF Railway has recently announced that it is currently implementing immersive technology into its mechanical training programs to keep workers safe, utilizing virtual, augmented and mixed reality (VR/AR/MR) to enhance safety strategies and improve role readiness amongst the mechanical workforce.
►Red 6 and AERALIS sign MOU to integrate AR pilot training into modular defense aircraft. Red 6, an augmented reality (AR) technology firm that provides applications for military air combat training, has recently announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with AERALIS, a developer of a modular aircraft system. The two companies announced the collaboration to jointly define the future of pilot training at the world’s premier Military Flight Training conference in London, with Red 6 stating that it is confident that the initiative will help to enhance the capabilities and readiness of military personnel.
► Can AI Identify Unsolvable Problems? This study introduces a novel and significant challenge for Vision Language Models (VLMs), termed Unsolvable Problem Detection (UPD). UPD examines the VLM's ability to withhold answers when faced with unsolvable problems in the context of Visual Question Answering (VQA) tasks.
►Scientists create AI models that can talk to each other and pass on skills with limited human input. Scientists modelled human-like communication skills and the transfer of knowledge between AIs — so they can teach each other to perform tasks without a huge amount of training data. Scientists have modelled an AI network capable of learning and carrying out tasks solely on the basis of written instructions. This AI then described what it learned to a “sister” AI, which performed the same task despite having no prior training or experience in doing it.
PERSPECTIVE
► 10 Years After Facebook Bought Oculus, What's Next for Meta's VR Plans? Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth talks about the past and future of VR, AR and AI.
►How to make an Augmented Virtuality app for Quest in Unity. A few days ago, I posted this video on my social media channels where I poured some biscuits from a real-world biscuit box into my VR kitchen to have some breakfast. Since I’m always favorable about sharing knowledge, let me tell you the secrets behind this application, so that you can do your augmented virtuality application for your Quest, too!
