Hello, World!
It’s Tuesday! You know what that means, right?
The 29th edition of Hold the Code is currently in your inbox! Today we bring you a range of topics from discussing new applications of AI in farming to the pros and cons of deepfake technology. Our weekly feature discusses Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard and what this may mean for the future of the metaverse.
Happy reading!
When Farming Fronts Innovation
The automation of traditionally accessible jobs has been a steadily increasing phenomena, starting with the replacement of human calculators in the 1900s. Now, there are Amazon warehouses that function entirely without living staff. But as this process continues to encapsulate every sector, it begs the question, where do humans fit in in all of this?
Trading Manpower for Tractor-power
Of course, this automation process doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. Proponents point out that in many cases, automated labor processes can save significant amounts of money while simultaneously increasing production output. It is for this exact reasoning that John Deere has announced their new, fully autonomous tractor, the 8R.
The 8R promises AI navigation aided by six pairs of 3D cameras (called stereo cameras) and fully automated plowing and planting. Coming at a steep price (one not yet announced but suspected to be over $800,000), this tractor could help farmers expedite their work while saving both time and money during the current agricultural labor shortage.
How does it work?
There are many different kinds of artificial intelligence. The 8R tractor uses one of the most novel methods of AI called deep learning, where a computer is given overwhelming amounts of data and told to use pattern recognition to figure out its own rules for making sense of it.
So what’s the problem?
The shift into fully automated tractors comes amongst divided opinions. Deere’s tractor promises not only increased productivity, otherwise freeing up time for farmers, but also provides soil data analysis that improves overall farm performance. On the other hand, farmer advocates worry that this shift will create a much larger reliance on John Deere. With the company controlling the AI and the data, John Deere could charge extra to access it in the future. This increasingly complex technology also limits the ability of farmers to repair their own equipment and have control over their own farming operations. Furthermore, the combination of automation and assisting data could put competing farms — and ultimately all man-powered farming — out of business, creating an industry that runs solely on John Deere.
While there’s no saying for certain what will happen in the future, the 8R is coming, and with it new insights on how automation will continue to shape our previously human world.
The Deal with Deepfaking
What if we told you that person doesn’t exist?
When you press the “Refresh Image” button on this-person-does-not-exist.com, your computer will buffer for a second before presenting you with an image of someone. As the title of the website suggests, that someone isn’t an actual person. The picture, as real as it seems, is a computer lying to your brain, an AI-generated image that showcases the impressive capabilities of deepfaking.
Deepfaking is something that is becoming more and more important in our online world, and it is a tool that many professionals have found useful — for good and evil. In the film industry, it has been used to spruce up old reels. In banking, hackers have used deepfakes to trick banks into transferring large sums of money. And, while the technology of deepfaking is nowhere near perfect at this moment in time, it isn’t a reach to expect that near-perfection in the future.
What does this mean?
As technology improves and AI becomes more and more adept at recreating speech patterns, movement, and faces, deepfaking could pose problems for certain industries. To adapt to these challenges, the tech industry has had to change the way it detects harmful deepfakes. For example, they have started putting more of an emphasis on the circumstances surrounding potentially fraudulent phone calls that may be deepfaked. Instead of trying to sort out whether a computer can hold a conversation, they rely more on data such as whether this phone call came from a computer at 4 AM or a cell phone at 4 PM.
One thing is for sure, though: deepfaking is something that is here to stay. In the wide new interconnected world, it can be both a blessing and a curse to have the ability to press a button on a screen and be presented with a completely different, completely random non-person.
Weekly Feature: Microsoft in the Metaverse
Microsoft recently bought the company, Activision Blizzard, for $68.7 billion dollars. Their motivation? To invest in the future of the metaverse. However, will this purchase produce the returns Microsoft is looking for? Or will this attempt to catch up with other companies in the race to the metaverse fall short of the finish line?
Metaverse? I don’t know her…
If you’ve seen Ready Player One, you probably have a good idea of what the metaverse could eventually look like. The metaverse would be a place where people can interact with others and their surroundings through their virtual avatars. The metaverse has long been hailed by technologists who imagine a future where our parallel virtual life is just as important as our life in the real world.
How to Build the Metaverse
In the future, the metaverse may rely heavily on VR (virtual reality -- think Oculus headsets) and AR (augmented reality -- think holograms) technology to create this virtual reality. VR and AR currently have the largest connection to the gaming industry, with many companies like Meta and Sony releasing VR headsets to enhance the gaming experience.
However, the metaverse relies on more than just VR and AR. It requires a way for users to interact with each other and with their environment, a concept that also has roots in gaming. The game, Second Life, also users to create a persona that can socialize with others in a virtual space, and it’s been around for nearly two decades. Newer games like Fortnite also allow players to interact with each other by battling and altering their virtual environment.
Microsoft’s (Acti)Vision
Microsoft seems to be hoping Activsion Blizzard can give them a boost as the conversation around the metaverse picks up. While the company has seem success in some metaverse-adjacent games (like World of Warcraft), they have not forayed into VR or AR technology yet, sticking mainly to developing PC games and game consoles.
In comparison to other companies, Microsoft may be feeling more pressure to catch up on the metaverse buzz (I mean…after Facebook became Meta, what can you do to top that). Microsoft has worked on the HoloLens, an AR headset that allows users to see holograms, but their own gaming system, the Xbox, has been absent from the VR/AR space. The tech giant may be hoping their new acquisition can add to their portfolio of metaverse-related projects. But will this investment pay off or will Microsoft be feeling $68.7 billion dollars worth of buyers remorse?
Written by Arielle Michelman, Hope McKnight, and Molly Pribble
Edited by Molly Pribble