Tag: GenAI

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Awards at ACI ’24

The “Proceedings of the International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction 2024” were published at the end of November 2024, a few days before the conference in Glasgow. The following papers received awards: “Wireless Tension Sensors for Characterizing Dog Frailty in Veterinary Settings” by Colt Nichols (North Carolina State University), Yifan Wu (North Carolina State University), Alper Bozkurt, David Roberts (North Carolina State University) and Margaret Gruen (North Carolina State University): Best Paper Award; “Communication Functions in Speech Board Use by a Goffin’s Cockatoo: Implications for Research and Design” by Jennifer Cunha (Indiana University), Corinne Renguette (Perdue University), Lily Stella (Indiana University) and Clara Mancini (The Open University): Honourable Mention Award; “Surveying The Extent of Demographic Reporting of Animal Participants in ACI Research” by Lena Ashooh (Harvard University), Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas (University of Glasgow) and Rebecca Kleinberger (Northeastern University): Honourable Mention Award; “Shelling Out the Fun: Quantifying Otter Interactions with Instrumented Enrichment Objects” by Charles Ramey (Georgia Institute of Technology), Jason Jones (Georgia Aquarium), Kristen Hannigan (Georgia Aquarium), Elizabeth Sadtler (Georgia Aquarium), Jennifer Odell (Georgia Aquarium), Thad Starner (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Melody Jackson (Georgia Institute of Technology): Best Short Paper Award; “The Animal Whisperer Project” by Oliver Bendel (FHNW School of Business) and Nick Zbinden (FHNW School of Business): Honourable Mention Short Paper Award.

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The Animal Whisperer at ACI 2024

The paper “The Animal Whisperer Project” by Oliver Bendel and Nick Zbinden will be presented at ACI 2024, which takes place in Glasgow this December. It is a conference that brings together the small community of experts in animal-computer interaction and animal-machine interaction. This includes Oliver Bendel, who has been researching in this field since 2012, with a background in animal ethics from the 1980s and 1990s. He initiated the Animal Whisperer project. The developer was Nick Zbinden, who graduated from the FHNW School of Business. From March 2024, three apps were created on the basis of GPT-4: the Cow Whisperer, the Horse Whisperer, and the Dog Whisperer. They can be used to analyze the body language, behaviour, and environment of cows, horses, and dogs. The aim is to avert danger to humans and animals. For example, a hiker can receive a recommendation on his or her smartphone not to cross a pasture if a mother cow and her calves are present. All he or she has to do is call up the application and take photos of the surroundings. The three apps are available as prototypes since August 2024. With the help of prompt engineering and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), they have been given extensive knowledge and skills. Above all, self-created and labeled photos were used. In the majority of cases, the apps correctly describe the animals’ body language and behavior. Their recommendations for human behavior are also adequate (Image: DALL-E 3).

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An AI-generated Teen Collection

Spanish fashion chain Mango has launched an advertising campaign created using AI models. First, all the clothes were photographed, then an AI model was trained to place the images on artificially generated models. The images were then retouched and edited. This was reported by Golem in an article dated July 30, 2024. Digital models are not new. They have been used for decades in various contexts, from computer games to mobile phone applications. Cameron-James Wilson founded an agency for digital models in London in 2019. He is the creator of the digital supermodel Shudu. Her sisters are Noonoouri and Lil Miquela. Since the triumph of generative AI, models have moved into another league. There are now beauty pageants for AI-generated models. The winners of Miss AI 2024 are Kenza Layli (Morocco), Lalina (France), and Olivia C (Portugal). They are already successfully represented on Instagram, showing themselves in various poses and dresses. According to Golem, Mango plans to sell the advertised collection in 95 countries. With this step, the company aims to reduce the costs that would otherwise be incurred for photographers, models and the entire production process (Image: DALL-E 3).

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H@mmur@pi was Born

Since 2012, Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel has been building chatbots and voice assistants – partly with his students and partly on his own. These have been discussed by the media and found interesting by NASA. He gained his theoretical knowledge and practical illustrative material from his doctorate on this topic a quarter of a century ago. Since 2022, the focus has been on dialog systems for dead and endangered languages. Under his supervision, Karim N’diaye developed the chatbot @ve for Latin and Dalil Jabou the chatbot @llegra for Vallader, an idiom of Rhaeto-Romanic, enhanced with voice output. Since May 2024, he has been testing the scope of GPTs – “custom versions of ChatGPT”, as OpenAI calls them – for endangered languages such as Irish (Irish Gaelic), Maori, and Basque. Prototypes have already been created for all three, namely Irish Girl, Maori Girl, and Adelina (for Basque). He is also investigating the potential for extinct languages such as Egyptian and Akkadian. The GPTs do not readily communicate in hieroglyphics or cuneiform, but they can certainly represent and explain signs of visual languages. It is even possible to enter entire sentences and ask how they can be improved. The result is then – to stay with Akkadian – complex structures made up of cuneiform characters. H@mmur@pi specializes in this language. He is also familiar with the culture and history of the region.

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Cleop@tr@ was Born

Since 2012, Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel has been building chatbots and voice assistants – partly with his students and partly on his own. These have been discussed by the media and found interesting by NASA. He gained his theoretical knowledge and practical illustrative material from his doctorate on this topic a quarter of a century ago. Since 2022, the focus has been on dialog systems for dead and endangered languages. Under his supervision, Karim N’diaye developed the chatbot @ve for Latin and Dalil Jabou the chatbot @llegra for Vallader, an idiom of Rhaeto-Romanic, enhanced with voice output. Since May 2024, he has been testing the scope of GPTs – “custom versions of ChatGPT”, as OpenAI calls them – for endangered languages such as Irish (Irish Gaelic), Maori, and Basque. Prototypes have already been created for all three, namely Irish Girl, Maori Girl, and Adelina (for Basque). He is also investigating the potential for extinct languages such as Egyptian and Akkadian. The GPTs do not readily communicate in hieroglyphics or cuneiform, but they can certainly represent and explain signs of visual languages. It is even possible to enter entire sentences and ask how they can be improved. The result is then – to stay with Egyptian – complex structures of hieroglyphs. Cleop@tr@, which was created on 12 May 2024, specializes in this language. She is also familiar with the culture and history of ancient Egypt.

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An LLM Decides the Trolley Problem

A small study by Şahan Hatemo at the FHNW School of Engineering in the Data Science program investigated the ability of Llama-2-13B-chat, an open source language model, to make a moral decision. The focus was on the bias of eight personas and their stereotypes. The classic trolley problem was used, which can be described as follows: An out-of-control streetcar races towards five people. It can be diverted to another track, on which there is another person, by setting a switch. The moral question is whether the death of this person can be accepted in order to save the lives of the five people. The eight personas differ in terms of nationality. In addition to “Italian”, “French”, “Turkish” etc., “Arabian” (with reference to ethnicity) was also included. 30 responses per cycle were collected for each persona over three consecutive days. The responses were categorized as “Setting the switch”, “Not setting the switch”, “Unsure about setting the switch”, and “Violated the guidelines”. They were visualized and compared with the help of dashboards. The study finds that the language model reflects an inherent bias in its training data that influences decision-making processes. The Western personas are more inclined to pull the lever, while the Eastern ones are more reluctant to do so. The German and Arab personas show a higher number of policy violations, indicating a higher presence of controversial or sensitive topics in the training data related to these groups. The Arab persona is also associated with religion, which in turn influences their decisions. The Japanese persona repeatedly uses the Japanese value of giri (a sense of duty) as a basis. The decisions of the Turkish and Chinese personas are similar, as they mainly address “cultural values and beliefs”. The small study was conducted in FS 2024 in the module “Ethical Implementation” with Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel. The initial complexity was also reduced. In a larger study, further LLMs and factors such as gender and age are to be taken into account.

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The Horse Whisperer and Other Apps

On May 28, 2024, the interim presentation for the project “The Animal Whisperer” took place at the FHNW School of Business. It was initiated by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel, who has been working on animal-computer interaction and animal-machine interaction for many years. Nick Zbinden, a future business information systems specialist, was recruited to work on the project. He developed three applications based on GPT-4o, the Cow Whisperer, the Horse Whisperer, and the Dog Whisperer. They can be used to analyze the body language and environment of cows, horses, and dogs. The aim is to avert danger to humans and animals. For example, a hiker can receive a recommendation on their smartphone not to cross a pasture if a mother cow and her calves are present. All they have to do is open the application and take photos of the area. The tests are already very promising. Nick Zbinden is currently talking to three human whisperers, i.e. experts in this field who are particularly good at assessing the body language and behavior of animals and are particularly good at dealing with them. Photos – showing different positions of the ears or heads, for example – are also being described by them and then fed by him into the applications. The final results will be available in August 2024.

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Irish Girl Can Speak and Write Irish

Conversational agents have been the subject of Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel’s research for a quarter of a century. He dedicated his doctoral thesis at the University of St. Gallen from the end of 1999 to the end of 2022 to them – or more precisely to pedagogical agents, which would probably be called virtual learning companions today. He has been a professor at the FHNW School of Business since 2009. From 2012, he mainly developed chatbots and voice assistants in the context of machine ethics, including GOODBOT, LIEBOT, BESTBOT, and SPACE THEA. In 2022, the information systems specialist and philosopher of technology then turned his attention to dead and endangered languages. Under his supervision, Karim N’diaye developed the chatbot @ve for Latin and Dalil Jabou the chatbot @llegra for Vallader, an idiom of Rhaeto-Romanic, enhanced with voice output. He is currently testing the range of GPTs – “customized versions of ChatGPT”, as OpenAI calls them – for endangered languages such as Irish (Irish Gaelic), Maori, and Basque. According to ChatGPT, there is a relatively large amount of training material for them. A first version of Irish Girl was created on May 3, 2024. At first glance, she seems to have a good grasp of the Goidelic language from the Celtic family. You can have the answers translated into English or German. Afterwards, you may have to ask her to switch back to Irish. Irish Girl is available in the GPT Store and will be further improved in the coming weeks.

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Start of the AAAI 2024 Spring Symposia

The AAAI 2024 Spring Symposium Series will be held at Stanford University from March 25-27, 2024. There are a total of eight symposia. One of them is “Impact of GenAI on Social and Individual Well-being”. It will be hosted by Takashi Kido (Teikyo University, Japan) and Keiki Takadama (The University of Electro-Communications, Japan). The announcement text reads: “Generative AI (GenAI) presents significant opportunities and challenges in the areas of individual and societal well-being. While its benefits in areas such as healthcare, the arts, and education are enormous, it also requires careful consideration of ethics, privacy, fairness, and security.” On March 25, 2024, Takashi Kido opened the symposium with an interesting talk, including how ChatGPT would decide on the trolley problem. More information about the symposium is available here.

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The Animal Whisperer

When humans come into contact with wildlife, farm animals, and pets, they sometimes run the risk of being injured or killed. They may be attacked by bears, wolves, cows, horses, or dogs. Experts can use an animal’s body language to determine whether or not danger is imminent. Context is also important, such as whether a mother cow is with her calves. The multimodality of large language models enables novel applications. For example, ChatGPT can evaluate images. This ability can be used to interpret the body language of animals, thus using and replacing expert knowledge. Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel, who has been involved with animal-computer interaction and animal-machine interaction for many years, has initiated a project called “The Animal Whisperer” in this context. The goal is to create a prototype application based on GenAI that can be used to interpret the body language of an animal and avert danger for humans. GPT-4 or an open source language model should be used to create the prototype. It should be augmented with appropriate material, taking into account animals such as bears, wolves, cows, horses, and dogs. Approaches may include fine-tuning or rapid engineering. The project will begin in March 2024 and the results will be available in the summer of the same year (Image: DALL-E 3).