Airbnb is an online popular marketplace for short-term rentals, where people list or rent their apartment, houses or even spare rooms they have in their houses. The company makes money from charging commission to both the host and the guest. It was founded in 2008 and has around three million lodging listings in 165,000 cities and 191 countries.
Racial Profiling:
It all started in 2015 with a twitter hashtag called #AirbnbWhileBlack, where African-American users shared their rejection stories while using Airbnb. In january 2016, a study done by Harvard Business School concluded that applications with distinctively African-American names were 16% less likely to be accepted relatively to applications with distinctively white names. The study was done by sending out 6,400 booking requests from fake Airbnb account without pictures, and 50% of the time white-sounding names were booked successfully compared to 42% for African-American names.
Airbnb Reactions:
Implementing policies that play down the use of photos of hosts and guests, while emphasizing trip details, reviews, and user verification.
Pushing a new policy, where hosts agree to treat everyone with respect regardless of race, religion, national origin or ethnicity and violators will be banned from the site.
Increasing instant bookings so the guest does not have to wait for host pre-approval.
Hiring a permanent full time team to fight bias and promote diversity.
Open door service which ensures renters who experience discrimination find a place to stay even if it is not through Airbnb.
My question is: Do you think those solutions will be enough for Airbnb to weed out discrimination among its platform?
When we think of artificial intelligence, the first thing that comes to mind for many people are sentient robots that we created that exist alongside us, sometimes peacefully and sometimes not so peacefully depending on your viewpoint on robots. But we are a far ways away from that becoming a reality. In reality, what we have accomplished so far with artificial intelligence is still nothing short of remarkable. Researchers have divided artificial intelligence into four different categories, Type 1 to Type 4. As it currently stands based on these categories we are only partially thru type 2 and we are still some ways out from reaching the criteria that defines a Type 3 Artificial Intelligence.
Type 1 Artificial Intelligence
Type 1 artificial intelligence is defined as reactive machines. How these work is they take inputs and cues from data they are given or data that is gathered based upon what the computer can perceive. Some real-world examples of this that many of us have probably heard of are IBM’s Watson and Google’s DeepMind/AlphaGo. These operate on a form of artificial intelligence called neural networks. These are essentially computer “brains” that form from a program executing a variety of different scenarios until it eventually forms “neurons” that it remembers produces a certain result. Below is a video of one of these neural networks in action.
Type 2 Artificial Intelligence
Type 2 artificial intelligence is defined as machines with limited memory. While Type 1 AI operates by looking at things at that current moment, Type 2 AI is capable of referencing things that it has stored as well as look at current things happen to decide what action is the best action to take. The best example of this that is out there today is self-driving cars. Tesla has been able to take this concept and figure out a way to make it work in the real world with fantastic results. However, there is still difficulty in trying to figure out to make these machines remember what they’ve learned for any prolonged period of time which is the sticking point with getting us thru Type 2 AI and into Type 3 AI.
Type 3 Artificial Intelligence
Type 3 artificial intelligence is defined as theory of mind. This type of AI deals technically with machines and technology that hasn’t been built quite yet. In psychological terms, theory of mind is how thoughts and emotions can play as a determinant as what a person, animal, or object behaves after the fact. If in the future, for example, if robots with AI are to interact and be in an environment with people, they’ll have to be able to study and understand human behavior, and be capable to adjust their thought process as to how to treat that specific behavior or action. It’s essentially like giving a brain to the machine, so it can have its own thought process.
Type 4 Artificial Intelligence
Type 4 artificial intelligence is defined as Self-awareness. This type is somewhat an extension of type 3’s “theory of mind”. It’s all about building a system that is aware of itself and has a conscious. The system is smart enough and has enough internal thought to be able to know what state it is in and being to predict the feelings and emotions of people. For example, if we see someone smile, it’s most likely because they are happy. We know this because we smile when we are happy too. A very elementary fact, but that is the basis for being self-aware. It’s like the same thing when Arizona Basketball loses, and we see people not speaking and heavy hearted because they’re sad. We know how they feel because we feel the same way. An important step towards creating systems that are self aware is being able to retain and learn from memory, essentially basing decision or action on what has happened in past experience.
“AlphaGo is a narrow AI (Artificial Intelligence), a computer program developed by Alphabet Inc.'s Google DeepMind in London to play the board game Go.” In October 2015, the team claimed that AlphaGo had beaten its human rival and won by five games to zero. This is the first time that a computer program has beaten a human professional Go player on a full-sized 19x19 board without handicaps. From then on, the program starts to play thousands of games between its neural networks to make evolutions. It uses a technique called trial-and-error process which is also known as reinforcement learning.
Why Go?
Go is a board game which is believed to be invented in ancient China over 2500 years ago. It is regarded as the oldest board game, and people still play it today. Go is played on a grid of black lines (usually 19×19). Game pieces, which called stones, has two different colors – black and white, and are played on the lines' intersections. Unlike cheese, each move of Go has about 200 possibilities. As a result, there is so many possible configurations on the board – even more than there are atoms in the universe. Go is too complexity for computer programs to play. Before AlphaGo, there is no program can beat human professional players. Therefore, Google’s DeepMind team believes that it is an excellent opportunity for them to generate an AI to beat human players in the Go, in order to make further study and progression in the AI field. The ultimate goal of the team is to use AI techniques solve real-world problems, such as climate change, healthcare, starvation, and so on.
Competition
In March 2016, Google invested $1 million in a five-game Go match, to set up a contest between AlphaGo and 18-time world champion Lee Sedol. Before the game, most of the professional Go players did not believe that a computer program can beat human on the Go board. On the other hand, most of the AI developers declared that they thought there was a great chance for the AlphaGo to win the game. Especially that some of the Google engineers said that they believe there was no possibility that Lee Sedol could win the game. When the time came to March 15th, 2016, the last game had ended, AlphaGo had won 4 out of 5 of the match, and gained $1 million rewards. It became the first computer program ever beat a 9-dan professional human player without handicaps. Google donated all the money prizes to charities. The Korea Baduk Association also awarded AlphaGo an honorary 9-dan after this competition. During the rivalry, Lee and the team found that AlphaGo had a longer respond time when it is playing the black. AlphaGo had also made a mistake on the 79th move in game four which resulted it in losing the game. However, the DeepMind team claims that they have already fixed these problems on June 29th.
“Master”
On December 29th, 2016, there was a mysterious player called “Magist” had appeared on the Tygem server – one of the online Go game’s website. On December 30th, the account shifted its name to “Master”, then moved to the FoxGo server on January 1st in 2017. As of January the 5th, AlphaGo won all of the 60 games, which included three victories over Ke Jie, the top-ranked Go professional players in the world. “Master” was suspected to be an AI player as it had little to no quiet time between games. And on 4th January, the Google’s team admitted that both “Magist” and “Master” were played by the advanced version of AlphaGo. "Its adversaries included many world champions such as Ke Jie, Park Jeong-hwan, Yuta Iyama, Tuo Jiaxi, Mi Yuting, Shi Yue, Chen Yaoye, Li Qincheng, Gu Li, Chang Hao, Tang Weixing, Fan Tingyu, Zhou Ruiyang, Jiang Weijie, Chou Chun-hsun, Kim Ji-seok, Kang Dong-yun, Park Yeong-hun, and Won Seong-jin; national champions or world championship runners-up such as Lian Xiao, Tan Xiao, Meng Tailing, Dang Yifei, Huang Yunsong, Yang Dingxin, Gu Zihao, Shin Jinseo, Cho Han-seung, and An Sungjoon." All60 games except one were fast paced games with three 20 or 30 seconds byo-yomi. AlphaGo team extend one minute when playing with Nie WeiPing due to his old age. After finished the game, the “Master” even typed “Thank you professor Nie!” in Chinese to show its respect to Nie. One of the professional players Gu Li even offered a 100,000 yuan (14,400 USD) reward to the first human player that can defeat the “Master”.
Nonetheless, it is believed that human players tend to make more mistakes in fast-paced games, as they have less thinking time. We still don’t know if AlphaGo can make it as successful as in a slow-paced game (tournaments).
In the Future
On April 10th in 2017, the China Go Association, Google Corporation, and Zhejiang Provincial Sports Bureau held a news release conference in China Qiyuan jointly. They announced that AlphaGo would compete to several Chinese professional Go Players who are led by Ke Jie -- the world number 1 Go player. The competition will be held on May 23rd – 27th on Wuzhen Future of Go Summit, which includes:
·A best of 3 matches versus world number 1, Ke Jie
·AlphaGo versus a collaborating team of top Chinese professionals
·Pair Go: human plus AlphaGo versus human plus AlphaGo
The whole Go community is looking forward to this competition. Some of the Go experts believe that it is very likely for human players will use AI technology as training in the future.
The first VR head mounted display and motion tracking HMD
were created in the early 1960’s, it wasn’t actually virtual reality yet, but
the display was made so that head movements would move a remote camera and the
user would be able to see their entire environment. VR has been around for a
long time and has been used for various industries, military, film and
entertainment and video games. Now VR has moved into the social media realm and
it is changing the business entirely.
Facebook and Oculus Rift
On March 2014, Mark Zuckerberg announced the acquisition of
Oculus Rift VR for $2 billion, this was a firm confirmation as to where social
media is going next, with Facebook being the largest social media company in the
world. Zuckerberg stated that the acquisition would allow users to “share
unbounded spaces and experiences with people in your life.” At the most recent F8 conference in San Francisco, Facebook presented its vision for the future of VR. It showed a group of avatars that people will be able to create and wear like masks, a toy box where people can draw on the image they are looking at to create accessories and props and a way to share images through virtual post boxes. They also allow users to step into a photo and have a 360-degree view by clicking on it, they even added selfie sticks to take pictures with other people’s avatars.
Other Social Media VR Since then other platforms like Youtube and snapchat have introduced new VR systems that are changing the way users share their experiences. Youtube presented a the 360-degree video support and spatial audio, which gives an immersive experience that people can share like any other video. Snapchat has also added products into the virtual reality
fold, the Snapchat lenses. These lenses add augmented reality elements to
any picture or scene. Users can walk around the 3D objects with the smartphone
camera. The World lenses actually follow around the 3D environment, they move
and rotate according to where the camera moves. Pokemon Go was the first to try
something like augmented reality, but it did not incorporate the social media
aspect, instead focusing on just the gaming experience.
Facebook VR vs. Other Platform VR
The industry is using VR in different ways, Facebook for
example and other platforms like vTime create virtual spaces that people can go
in and out of and invite friends. The platforms require users to have an avatar
and are designed to interact with people in these virtual spaces. While other
platforms like snapchat augment what the user is already seeing by adding 3D
objects to the ‘actual’ world. Platforms like Youtube allow the user to also experience the actual world in a 3D setting through 360-degree video. Most VR effects are in their infancy stage but
we can expect that VR will be changing all social media platforms in the coming
years.
Facebook, Oculus Rift v Zenimax Media Lawsuit
Zenimax Media, a private video game company, filed a lawsuit
against Oculus Rift in May 2014. Zenimax claimed that an ex-employee, John
Carmack’s, contributions to Facebook or Oculus Rift were the intellectual
property of ZeniMax. They stated that ‘ZeniMax provided necessary VR technology
and other valuable assistance to Oculus employees in 2012 and 2013 to make the
Oculus Rift a viable VR product, superior to other VR market offerings.’ Oculus’
response was that ZeniMax falsely took ownership to take advantage of the
Facebook acquisition and that they never shared a single line of code or
technology with ZeniMax’s code or technology. In February 2017, a Texas jury
awarded ZeniMax $500 million in their lawsuit. The court found that oculus
violated ZeniMax’s copyrights and trademark and had violated a nondisclosure agreement.
"Microsoft HoloLens is the first self-contained, holographic computer, enabling you to engage with your digital content and interact with holograms in the world around you." (Microsoft.com, 2017) The HoloLens is similar to virtual reality headsets such as the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive. A big difference is that instead of needing to rely on a computer or smartphone, The HoloLens is its own Windows 10 PC. This is impressive in itself. Starting from its early days a year ago, there was actually a mini pc that the user would need to wear around their neck. That is not the case anymore.
Microsoft describes the HoloLens as a mixed reality headset more than a virtual reality headset. A virtual reality headset puts you in a completely different environment to make you feel immersed. Mixed reality is described as mixing elements of virtual reality with the real world around you. One of the biggest ways this is shown is through the video game component. In 2014, Microsoft bought one of the highest selling video games of all time, Minecraft a few years ago for 2.5 billion dollars. For those that don't know, the best way to describe Minecraft is a sandbox open world video game version of Lego Building Blocks. You can play the traditional way which is from a 1st or 3rd person view of a character you play, moving and interacting with the world around you if you play with a controller. However, with the HoloLens you can drop the controller and enter a sort of god mode to control huge landscapes by using your voice and hand gestures right on your coffee table.
A huge part of the way the HoloLens' works, is its depth effect cameras. The HoloLens has a camera facing the same way your view does that is similar to the Kinect camera. That camera measures the items around, how far they are from you, and the gestures you do with your body. Then the headset projects the images as holograms to your eyes that are based on the area around you. This means that the application you are currently working with will interact based on your surroundings. There is also a camera that records what the user is looking at, so you can record your view and others can see what you are looking at.
This sort of technology seems obvious to gaming, but there are some other real world applications that the HoloLens plans to relate to. One is the ability to create 3D art models which can bring any art made to life. Another application is a way to give step by step directions for projects such as home improvement. Imagine having it feel like a person is helping you fix your sink except just from wearing a headset. Another application is a heads up GPS. This is a cool idea except I am not sure if it is okay to drive a car with the headset on.
Overall, the HoloLens is a great view into the future of reality and how we perform daily tasks. As of right now there is a way to purchase the HoloLens for around $3000. So if anyone is interested we can pool our money together to get one.
Link C3 Flight Simulator
The first tech-based Virtual Reality concept was designed in the 1920's and was meant to serve as a flight simulator for novice pilots. Since then, we've dramatically redesigned the hardware involved and have made strides to making Virtual Reality a revolutionary experience. However, not only until recently have we actually noticed any significant advancements in Virtual Reality applications. Currently, firms are betting heavily on the odds of VR actually becoming a standard in areas such as gaming,medical training, and national defense training. However, rather than turning a point in history we've mostly become consistently disappointing and have flooded and overwhelmed the VR market. One of the major issues surrounding the acceptance of VR in the tech community is the real lack of comfort and safety issues involved regarding a user's experience. Consequently, these two negative binding forces have not allowed VR to grow to its true potential.
Lack of Comfort
Although we have come a long way since the Link C3 Flight Trainer we're still miles away from developing mainstream-ready hardware. Currently, the industry relies heavily on clumpy head-gear with large fields of view that may cause an individual to experience VR motion related sickness. The motion sickness experienced in VR causes the brain significant issues with the movement the eyes are seeing when immersed and the lack of motion the body is feeling. Because of this, many users experience a lack of comfort and will stop using the system completely due to fear of simply getting sick. Consequently, this display technology may cause individuals to trip and fall- making for some entertaining videos.
Health and Saftey Issues
It is not possible to accurately tell what the long term effects of VR immersion are- one can only speculate from current indications. First, the most obvious safety issue regarding VR immersion is the strain on your eyes it causes from looking at a screen so close to your face. According to scientific trials conducted on rats, this strain on the eyes and lack of physical awareness caused by ordinary VR hardware has been shown a drastic shut down of 60% of neurons in the brain (CNBC). This major shut down in brain activity has the potential to damage our mapping of our physical location of space, memory, learning, and dreaming (livescience). Although the true long-term damages of VR technology are still unknown it is important to understand them in order to develop hardware and software that can mitigate the risk involved. Understanding the health and safety issues regarding VR will be detrimental to the success of VR technology becoming a successful standard.
So, What Can Be Done?
Essentially, we don't know yet. Mostly because we're still trying to understand the true effects of the system and what we can do to allow the brain to act and react normally when immersed. We don't know how negative the effects of long-term VR can be on the brain- we can just speculate. Nevertheless, some of the steps that can be taken in order to increase the level of comfort and improve long-term safety issues concerning VR are:
1. Reduce hardware barriers- create slicker, lighter, and friendlier headgear 2. Increase the number of gaze sensors in head gear 3. Creating a more organic experience 4. Restricting the field of view to reduce motion sickness 5. Focus on human-machine interference. How do we process information?
Uber is currently operating in 570 citiesworld wide
According to the WSJ, Uber has 160,000 drivers in the US (source: @Uber Touts Its Employment Opportunities)
In the year of 2015, Uber completed its 1 billionth ride
In October 2016, it was reported that 40 million riders used the service in a single month and that each rider spent approximately $50 per month on the service.
How Uber protect Rider safety
Before the trip
Getting a safe ride
Safe pickups
The Uber app automatically finds your location to provide door-to-door service. That means you stay safe and comfortable wherever you are until your driver arrives.
Open to everyone, everywhere
All ride requests are blindly matched with the closest available driver. So there is no discrimination based on race, gender, or destination.
Driver profiles
When you’re matched with a driver, you’ll see their name, license plate number, photo, and rating—so you know who’s picking you up ahead of time. And even after the trip, you’re able to contact your driver if you left something behind.
On Trip
Anonymous feedback
After every trip, you can rate the driver and provide anonymous feedback about your ride. We review all feedback because our goal is to make every ride a great experience.
24/7 support
Our support team is always ready to respond to any questions you may have about your trip and help you retrieve lost items.
Rapid response
Our specially-trained incident response teams are available around the clock to handle any urgent concerns that arise.
How Uber protect Driver safety
Before the Trip
Picking up passengers
No anonymous pickups
All riders must create an account and provide their name, email address, and phone number before they can request a ride. So when you accept a request, you’ll know who you’re picking up and so will we.
Substitute phone numbers
In many locations around the world, Uber uses technology that anonymizes phone numbers to keep contact details confidential. So when you and your rider need to contact each other, your personal information stays private.
On Trip
Getting to the destination
In-app navigation
When riders enter their destination, you will automatically receive turn-by-turn directions in the app—so you can focus on getting there safely.
Always on the map
GPS data is logged for every trip so we know who you’re driving and where you’re going, which promotes accountability and encourages good behavior.
After the Trip
Always improving the Uber experience
No change, no hassle
Fares automatically charge the rider’s payment method on file, so for most trips you can avoid using cash altogether. But if a rider pays in cash, the app automatically issues credit so you’ll never have to make change.
Driver feedback
You rate your rider after every trip. We review those ratings to ensure that everyone you pick up is as respectful as you are. Riders reported to violate our terms of service may be prevented from using Uber.
24/7 support
Our support team is always ready to respond to any questions you may have about your driving experience.
Additional Video
Reference
https://www.uber.com/ride/safety/
https://www.uber.com/drive/safety/
Kokalitcheva, K. (2016, October 20). Uber Now Has 40 Million Monthly Riders Worldwide. Retrieved April 10, 2017, from http://fortune.com/2016/10/20/uber-app-riders/
MacMillan, D. (2015, January 25). Uber Touts Its Employment Opportunities. Retrieved April 10, 2017, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-touts-its-employment-opportunities-1422229862
