Projects
A lot of the projects that I get pulled into are fairly stealth. Here are some of the more public ones.
QuantaCorp
I founded the first incarnation of this machine vision company as Poikos back in 2011. This original, patented (US8842906) technology enables fast and simple 3D body measurement from only two planes (front and side), using a 2D camera, or 3D sensor.
This data powers accurate and timely personalization services in health, mass customization, and retail.
USPs:
• Dematerializes body scanning, enabling ingress on any device
• Increases customer retention and discovery
• Generates large amounts of anonymizable biological data, geolocated and stratified.
The technology applies Convolutional Neural Network technologies, as discussed in my video coursebook for O'Reilly Media.
EthicsNet
EthicsNet.org follows the examples of WordNet and ImageNet to create a dataset of ethics for machine intelligence. EthicsNet is founded on the principle that ethics and morality are measurable, definable and computable, across cultures, time, and geography. We believe that the future of a thriving humanity in an artificially intelligent world is predicated on the ability to create moral and ethical machines.
Cultural Peace
Social media is transforming our global society in powerful ways. The perception of increased social density has created a crucible of conflict where social interactions happen at vastly accelerated pace and scale.
The CulturalPeace.org project aims to make and collect suggestions on how we can make fair, just, and impartial rules above conflict to preserve good faith and societal cohesion, and to help support a future détente between a multitude of memetic tribes.
IEEE P7000 Series & ECPAIS
I have been working with the IEEE on safety mechanisms for AI and Autonomous Systems since 2016. I currently serve as Vice Chair of the IEEE P7001 committee on Transparency. This standard describes measurable, testable levels of transparency, so that autonomous systems can be objectively assessed and levels of compliance determined.
I also serve as Chair of the IEEE ECPAIS Transparency Experts Focus Group, working to distill standards down into criterion that can be be applied to vet and verify the safety of various autonomous systems.
PACHA
Pacha.org aims to lead a conversation on the prospect of Automated Externality Accounting – the efficient and procedural detection, calculation, and prosecution of economic spillover effects such as pollution. From an analysis made by reasoning from first principles, I believe that this technology is an essential missing link in enabling a sustainable future for our planet.
Endocrine Disrupting Chemical Hazard Symbol
Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals are enormously disruptive to human health, by messing up people hormones, creating a range of congenital damage in foetuses, and devastating male and female fertility.
However, there is a gap in awareness of which products contain EDCs, and the number and quantity of EDCs for industry, and particularly for consumers. Thus, I have developed a unique hazard symbol for this specific, insidious danger, and to advocate for its inclusion in a wide range of products and business processes.
Slana
Entheogenic medicines can loosen up emotional trauma in the brain and enable it to heal. They can undo conditioning that causes people to (re)act to perceived threats in an overly strong manner. They can also increase people’s awareness and openness to understanding new perspectives, and to better understanding other people. Slana outlines the recent discoveries in this area, and posits these therapies as being particularly important for present and former conflict zones, such as Northern Ireland.
X-Prize
I serve as a judge of the $10 Million ANA Avatar XPRIZE competition, and a designer of the competition guidelines and criteria. This involves personally testing and scoring dozens of different teleoperation devices with varying technical capabilities.
BOUNDER
An open-source offshoot of the EthicsNet project, Bounder aims to enable a physical safety mechanism for autonomous systems such as drones. A small GSM-based tracking module can be attached to drones, so that they can be tracked in real time via web/app to ensure that they stay out of prohibited areas (or within bounds). The suite includes various pathfinding, maintenance, and mapping modules.
SCRY
Scry was a prototype machine-driven health project launched during my study at SU that aimed to collect ophthalmological data from non-smart instruments using mobile phone cameras, and then pre-process it using cloud-based Deep Learning / Convolutional Neural Networks, in order to pinpoint dozens of potential major health risks in moments.
It became sadly defunct due to distributed team inertia at the time, however these techniques are now being applied by Enlitic and DeepMind.