(Daily News Scan - DNS English) Virtual Humans: Samsung NEON Programme
For the past few years, technology has seen a huge amount of development especially in the domain of Artificial Intelligence. World’s first artificial humans –NEONs, is the most discussed concept at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. They look and behave like humans. They are the virtual humans. This concept was showcased by India born scientist Pranav Mistry's Star Labs at the CES event. The creators believe, that virtual humans can ultimately be fully autonomous 'friends, collaborators, and companions.'
In this DNS we will know about the NEON’s or the artificial humans
The first project of Samsung’s Star Labs, NEONs are being called the world’s first artificial humans. They look and behave like humans and expectations are there that their memories and emotions can be developed.
NEONs are computationally created virtual humans. The word NEON is derived from NEO (new) + humaN. For the time being, the virtual humans can show their emotions only when controlled by their creators. At CES, the idea was to showcase the concept to the world. In this event 6 avatars of the NEON were showcased. They are not AI assistants but more like real people. They are virtual living beings which can show emotions and learn from experiences. Neons understand Hindi, Spanish and other languages. They will have different looks according to the requirements and will be unique with its personality.
Pranav Mistry started working on NEON by trying to replicate his friend. At first there were errors while the models were trained but they got better. Behind the virtual humans there are two technologies.
The first is the CORE R3 which stands for REALITY, REALTIME and RESPONSIVE, behind NEONs. CORE R3 is “extensively trained” on how humans look, behave and interact. CORE R3 can also connect to other domain-specific and value-added services like language kits. CORE R3 takes less than few milliseconds to respond.
The second part is the SPECTRA. It is still in development and is not expected before NEONWORLD 2020 later this year. Spectra will complement CORE R3 with spectrum of intelligence, learning, emotions and memory. The spectrum of emotions and knowledge will come only when the NEONs are in the field. CORE R3 is able to give real expressions as well.
Neons will not replace human jobs but rather enhance the customer service experience. From the security perspective CORE R3 secures data by using state of the art security protocols and NEON will also never share private data without permission. NEON will take some time to become reality. In the meanwhile, Star labs are planning to introduce a Beta version of NEON later this year.
How NEON is different from Virtual Assistant
Virtual Assistants learn from all the data they are plugged into. Neons will be limited to what they know and learn. Their leaning will be limited to the person they are catering to, and maybe her friends — but not the entire Internet. NEONs will be a friend to speak to and share experiences with. CORE R3 does not manipulate any scene, videos, or sequence, and instead creates unique behaviors and interactions in real time.
In the future, the company will plan to collaborate with companies like Google, Facebook, and Baidu that have done work in similar fields. In the coming times NEONs could be found on airport screens or bank lobbies soon.
Now let us know few points bout Artificial Intelligence and India’s development in this field.
- India was ranked 13 among 200 nations in Artificial intelligence development.
- AI is expected to boost India’s growth by 1.3% by 2035
- In the year 2017 – 4% of India’s GDP came from leaps made by digital products services created using AI and IOT.
- Cloud computing platform AIRAWAT is being setup. Besides this AI labs are also being setup Indian Telecom companies.
- AI has made several advancements like self-driving cars on the roads. The application of this technology is aimed at helping the disabled. Ai can take on dangerous job. AI includes both machine learning and deep learning. Research is going on to develop new software applications that use AI to help doctors diagnose and treat patients.
- The government believes that AI in its various forms will help India achieve its target in the next five years. AI also has a potential to provide incremental value in terms economy and societal needs.
