Data Science Insider: July 30th, 2021

In This Week’s SuperDataScience Newsletter: AI-Controlled Drone Beats Human Pilots for The First Time. What Protein Folding Breakthrough Teaches Us About Open Data. AI Listed as an Inventor for the First Time. Grieving Man Uses AI to ‘Chat’ with Dead Girlfriend. Mandalorian Deepfake Video Lands YouTuber Top Job at Lucasfilm. Cheers, - The SuperDataScience Team P.S. Have friends and colleagues who could benefit from these weekly updates? Send them to [this link]( to subscribe to the Data Science Insider. --------------------------------------------------------------- [AI-Controlled Drone Beats Human Pilots for The First Time]( brief: Unlike self-driving cars, autonomous drones can generally get from A to B safely, but could they beat a human pilot in a drone race? So far, the answer has been a resounding ‘no,’ but researchers from the University of Zurich (UZH) have now created an algorithm that allowed an AI-powered drone to beat two human pilots on an experimental race track. In the past, researchers have built simplified models of quadrotor systems or flight paths to calculate the optimum trajectory. This time, however, they fully accounted for the drone's limitations. For the AI versus human race, researchers let the human pilots train on the circuit so the comparison would be fair. They set up external cameras to send the drone's exact position to the algorithm in real time. Once both humans and AI were trained, the algorithm beat the humans on every lap and had more consistent performance. Why this is important: The research could lead to quicker drones for real-world applications, even in complex environments with multiple waypoints. The next step is to make the system less computationally demanding and allow it work with onboard, rather than external cameras. [Click here to find out!]( [What Protein Folding Breakthrough Teaches Us About Open Data]( brief: In last week’s SuperDataScience newsletter we examined how Google's DeepMind has used AI to predict the 3D structure of nearly every protein produced by the human body, and how it has chosen to share the results with the world for free, rather than monetising the project. This week Nature - the leading international weekly journal of science – has published an in-depth article which analyses the news and explores what role AI is likely to play in the future of structural biology. Ultimately, the article concludes that ML is transforming the field and that the new understanding of protein folding that we now have, would have been impossible without it, quoting in support a research leader who claims: “I didn’t think we would get to this point in my lifetime.” The article then goes on to stress the significance of the open nature of the data. Why this is important: Nature puts forward a compelling argument that with: “the data and the methodology openly available to all, DeepMind now sets a benchmark that will make it harder for other corporations in this space, such as Facebook and Microsoft, to continue arguing for proprietary data. [Click here to read on!]( [AI Listed as an Inventor for the First Time]( In brief: Intellectual property officials in South Africa have become the first in the world to award a patent that names an AI as the inventor of a product. The moment is a triumph for Ryan Abbott, professor at the University of Surrey, who has for years led a battle for patent offices to recognise AIs as inventors. The patent is for a food container based on fractal geometry. This container was designed and created by an AI called DABUS ("device for the autonomous bootstrapping of unified sentience"). Historically, an "inventor" of a patent had to be a human being, although the ownership of that patent is commonly given to the company that employs the inventor. While patent law in many jurisdictions is very specific in how it defines an inventor, the DABUS team is arguing that the status quo is not fit for purpose in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Why this is important: As AI plays an ever-increasing role in the design of ideas, the DABUS case could have significant repercussions on intellectual property law. The DABUS team has similar cases moving through UK, European, US and other court systems. [Click here to discover more!]( [Grieving Man Uses AI to ‘Chat’ with Dead Girlfriend]( In brief: A grieving Canadian man has used AI software to have life-like online ‘chats’ with his girlfriend — eight years after she died. In this San Francisco Chronicle article, Joshua Barbeau speaks about how he paid $5 to use a beta test of GPT-3, AI software first developed by a research group co-founded by Elon Musk. Still overwhelmed by grief after losing 23-year-old girlfriend Jessica Pereira in 2012, Barbeau said he used her old text messages and Facebook posts to help the chatbot mimic his late lover’s writing voice. With the software set to only last a specific number of hours, Barbeau said he used it sparingly over the following few months whenever he felt he needed support. Barbeau called the software he accessed through the Project December beta website “unprecedented” and anonymously shared some of the details to Reddit last year, saying that it might “help depressed survivors find some closure. Why this is important: The posts caught the attention of Jason Rohrer, the creator of the Project December GPT-3 site Barbeau used, who wrote that he was now “kinda scared of the possibilities.” “I mean, the possibilities of using this in my own life… I’m crying thinking about it,” he wrote. Rohrer told The Chronicle that the GPT-3 bots created on his website “kind of feels like it’s the first machine with a soul. [Click here to see the full picture!]( [Mandalorian Deepfake Video Lands YouTuber Top Job at Lucasfilm]( In brief: Lucasfilm has officially hired YouTuber ‘Shamook’ after he went viral with a deepfake video about The Mandalorian. The Star Wars production company confirmed that Shamook would be joining their Industrial Light and Magic team, as a ‘Senior Facial Capture Artist’ - focusing on visual effects. “[Industrial Light and Magic is] always on the lookout for talented artists and have in fact hired the artist that goes by the online persona ‘Shamook,’” a Lucasfilm representative said. ‘Shamook’ confirmed the news that he would now be working with Lucasfilm in the comments section of one of his recent videos. The YouTuber scored the job after posting a Mandalorian video which improves the VFX used in the season 2 finale to de-age Luke Skywalker. It currently has over two million views with many claiming that his work was superior to that of Industrial Light and Magic. Why this is important: The world of employment is changing, and many people are honing their skills at home and using social media to share their talents. This story is an inspirational one about how by developing your knowledge using online resources, such as those available by SuperDataScience can ultimately result in paid for employment at prestigious and cutting-edge firms. [Click here to find out more!]( [Super Data Science podcast]( In this week's [Super Data Science Podcast](, Veerle van Leemput joins us to make the case for using R in production from data acquisition, cleaning, exporting, modeling, app creation, API implementation, and more! --------------------------------------------------------------- What is the Data Science Insider? This email is a briefing of the week's most disruptive, interesting, and useful resources curated by the SuperDataScience team for Data Scientists who want to take their careers to the next level. Want more conversations like this? Last week we held DSGO Virtual Conferences, where more than 1,000 data scientists gathered to learn, grow, and connect! 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