With the recent launch of the Find X8 Series in China, OPPO is introducing some interesting new features aimed at elevating smartphone photography. The Find X8 packs a mix of advanced camera hardware and AI-enhanced tools, combining a dual periscope lens

OPPO is gearing up for the global release of its Find X8 series and the latest ColorOS 15 update on November 21, 2024, in Bali. Here's a closer look at what's coming. A Sleek Design Without the Bulk OPPO has clearly put

Oppo's Reno 13 series is shaping up for a debut, with reliable reports pointing to a tentative November 25 release in China. According to details from Digital Chat Station, this new lineup is expected to include two models: the Oppo Reno

The OPPO Reno 13 series is rumoured to make its debut in China later this month. It will follow the release of the OPPO Find X8 and Find X8 Pro in India and globally on November 21. However, unlike the Find

OPPO India has announced the winners of its inaugural imagineIF Photography Awards 2024. With over 34,000 submissions from across the country, the competition aimed to push the boundaries of smartphone photography and encourage photographers to tell their unique stories through the

Dream of Working at Google? If you're a final-year student with a passion for software engineering, Google's Software Engineering Winter Internship for 2025 could be your gateway to a remarkable career! Aimed at students in their last year of

The University Grants Commission (UGC) is making an exciting change to its National Eligibility Test (NET) with the addition of Ayurveda Biology as a subject, starting from December 2024. This decision, made during the UGC's 581st meeting on June

India will commence their Paris 2024 Olympics campaign on July 27, when they take on New Zealand in their first pool B match

Lack of sustained marketing and promotion, adequate infrastructure, besides administrative shortcomings are among the reasons pointed out for tourism in Karnataka not taking off the way it has in other popular States

FinMin officials say issue raised by the Trade Unions is politically motivated

'You suddenly realise that in this entire big scheme of things, you're just one speck.'

The Government may have tightened gold import norms, making it difficult for investors to invest in the yellow metal. But if you are one who is willing to take risks, then there is a door that is wide open to help you take advantage of the current situation.

Reddy said that his aim is to make Telangana a “Trillion Dollar” economy

In conversation with Ajoy Chawla, CEO, Tanishq, the jewellery division of Titan Co Ltd 

Social Marketing Predictions for 2020-2025

Valerya Tregubenko, a psychologist who works privately and for public health provider Clalit, and who has also been providing therapy to Ukrainians in Israel, says that seeking out help is far from a priority for the majority of those who have fled war. Local women working nearby exchanged wary looks when asked about the hotel. […]

Oppo is preparing to create a stir in India once again with its new flip phone. The company is going to launch Oppo Find N3 Flip. Oppo will present it to Indian fans on October 12. This smartphone was announced by the company in China in the month of August. This flip phone of Oppo […]

The post Oppo Find N3 Flip to launch tomorrow appeared first on TIMES OF ASSAM by S Kumar Deka.

Talent shortage, cybersecurity vulnerabilities are key concerns

In reading Joe Dolson’s recent piece on the intersection of AI and accessibility, I absolutely appreciated the skepticism that he has for AI in general as well as for the ways that many have been using it. In fact, I’m very skeptical of AI myself, despite my role at Microsoft as an accessibility innovation strategist who helps run the AI for Accessibility grant program. As with any tool, AI can be used in very constructive, inclusive, and accessible ways; and it can also be used in destructive, exclusive, and harmful ones. And there are a ton of uses somewhere in the mediocre middle as well.

I’d like you to consider this a “yes… and” piece to complement Joe’s post. I’m not trying to refute any of what he’s saying but rather provide some visibility to projects and opportunities where AI can make meaningful differences for people with disabilities. To be clear, I’m not saying that there aren’t real risks or pressing issues with AI that need to be addressed—there are, and we’ve needed to address them, like, yesterday—but I want to take a little time to talk about what’s possible in hopes that we’ll get there one day.

Alternative text

Joe’s piece spends a lot of time talking about computer-vision models generating alternative text. He highlights a ton of valid issues with the current state of things. And while computer-vision models continue to improve in the quality and richness of detail in their descriptions, their results aren’t great. As he rightly points out, the current state of image analysis is pretty poor—especially for certain image types—in large part because current AI systems examine images in isolation rather than within the contexts that they’re in (which is a consequence of having separate “foundation” models for text analysis and image analysis). Today’s models aren’t trained to distinguish between images that are contextually relevant (that should probably have descriptions) and those that are purely decorative (which might not need a description) either. Still, I still think there’s potential in this space.

As Joe mentions, human-in-the-loop authoring of alt text should absolutely be a thing. And if AI can pop in to offer a starting point for alt text—even if that starting point might be a prompt saying What is this BS? That’s not right at all… Let me try to offer a starting point—I think that’s a win.

Taking things a step further, if we can specifically train a model to analyze image usage in context, it could help us more quickly identify which images are likely to be decorative and which ones likely require a description. That will help reinforce which contexts call for image descriptions and it’ll improve authors’ efficiency toward making their pages more accessible.

While complex images—like graphs and charts—are challenging to describe in any sort of succinct way (even for humans), the image example shared in the GPT4 announcement points to an interesting opportunity as well. Let’s suppose that you came across a chart whose description was simply the title of the chart and the kind of visualization it was, such as: Pie chart comparing smartphone usage to feature phone usage among US households making under $30,000 a year. (That would be a pretty awful alt text for a chart since that would tend to leave many questions about the data unanswered, but then again, let’s suppose that that was the description that was in place.) If your browser knew that that image was a pie chart (because an onboard model concluded this), imagine a world where users could ask questions like these about the graphic:

• Do more people use smartphones or feature phones?
• How many more?
• Is there a group of people that don’t fall into either of these buckets?
• How many is that?

Setting aside the realities of large language model (LLM) hallucinations—where a model just makes up plausible-sounding “facts”—for a moment, the opportunity to learn more about images and data in this way could be revolutionary for blind and low-vision folks as well as for people with various forms of color blindness, cognitive disabilities, and so on. It could also be useful in educational contexts to help people who can see these charts, as is, to understand the data in the charts.

Taking things a step further: What if you could ask your browser to simplify a complex chart? What if you could ask it to isolate a single line on a line graph? What if you could ask your browser to transpose the colors of the different lines to work better for form of color blindness you have? What if you could ask it to swap colors for patterns? Given these tools’ chat-based interfaces and our existing ability to manipulate images in today’s AI tools, that seems like a possibility.

Now imagine a purpose-built model that could extract the information from that chart and convert it to another format. For example, perhaps it could turn that pie chart (or better yet, a series of pie charts) into more accessible (and useful) formats, like spreadsheets. That would be amazing!

Matching algorithms

Safiya Umoja Noble absolutely hit the nail on the head when she titled her book Algorithms of Oppression. While her book was focused on the ways that search engines reinforce racism, I think that it’s equally true that all computer models have the potential to amplify conflict, bias, and intolerance. Whether it’s Twitter always showing you the latest tweet from a bored billionaire, YouTube sending us into a Q-hole, or Instagram warping our ideas of what natural bodies look like, we know that poorly authored and maintained algorithms are incredibly harmful. A lot of this stems from a lack of diversity among the people who shape and build them. When these platforms are built with inclusively baked in, however, there’s real potential for algorithm development to help people with disabilities.

Take Mentra, for example. They are an employment network for neurodivergent people. They use an algorithm to match job seekers with potential employers based on over 75 data points. On the job-seeker side of things, it considers each candidate’s strengths, their necessary and preferred workplace accommodations, environmental sensitivities, and so on. On the employer side, it considers each work environment, communication factors related to each job, and the like. As a company run by neurodivergent folks, Mentra made the decision to flip the script when it came to typical employment sites. They use their algorithm to propose available candidates to companies, who can then connect with job seekers that they are interested in; reducing the emotional and physical labor on the job-seeker side of things.

When more people with disabilities are involved in the creation of algorithms, that can reduce the chances that these algorithms will inflict harm on their communities. That’s why diverse teams are so important.

Imagine that a social media company’s recommendation engine was tuned to analyze who you’re following and if it was tuned to prioritize follow recommendations for people who talked about similar things but who were different in some key ways from your existing sphere of influence. For example, if you were to follow a bunch of nondisabled white male academics who talk about AI, it could suggest that you follow academics who are disabled or aren’t white or aren’t male who also talk about AI. If you took its recommendations, perhaps you’d get a more holistic and nuanced understanding of what’s happening in the AI field. These same systems should also use their understanding of biases about particular communities—including, for instance, the disability community—to make sure that they aren’t recommending any of their users follow accounts that perpetuate biases against (or, worse, spewing hate toward) those groups.

Other ways that AI can helps people with disabilities

If I weren’t trying to put this together between other tasks, I’m sure that I could go on and on, providing all kinds of examples of how AI could be used to help people with disabilities, but I’m going to make this last section into a bit of a lightning round. In no particular order:

• Voice preservation. You may have seen the VALL-E paper or Apple’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day announcement or you may be familiar with the voice-preservation offerings from Microsoft, Acapela, or others. It’s possible to train an AI model to replicate your voice, which can be a tremendous boon for people who have ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) or motor-neuron disease or other medical conditions that can lead to an inability to talk. This is, of course, the same tech that can also be used to create audio deepfakes, so it’s something that we need to approach responsibly, but the tech has truly transformative potential.
• Voice recognition. Researchers like those in the Speech Accessibility Project are paying people with disabilities for their help in collecting recordings of people with atypical speech. As I type, they are actively recruiting people with Parkinson’s and related conditions, and they have plans to expand this to other conditions as the project progresses. This research will result in more inclusive data sets that will let more people with disabilities use voice assistants, dictation software, and voice-response services as well as control their computers and other devices more easily, using only their voice.
• Text transformation. The current generation of LLMs is quite capable of adjusting existing text content without injecting hallucinations. This is hugely empowering for people with cognitive disabilities who may benefit from text summaries or simplified versions of text or even text that’s prepped for Bionic Reading.

The importance of diverse teams and data

We need to recognize that our differences matter. Our lived experiences are influenced by the intersections of the identities that we exist in. These lived experiences—with all their complexities (and joys and pain)—are valuable inputs to the software, services, and societies that we shape. Our differences need to be represented in the data that we use to train new models, and the folks who contribute that valuable information need to be compensated for sharing it with us. Inclusive data sets yield more robust models that foster more equitable outcomes.

Want a model that doesn’t demean or patronize or objectify people with disabilities? Make sure that you have content about disabilities that’s authored by people with a range of disabilities, and make sure that that’s well represented in the training data.

Want a model that doesn’t use ableist language? You may be able to use existing data sets to build a filter that can intercept and remediate ableist language before it reaches readers. That being said, when it comes to sensitivity reading, AI models won’t be replacing human copy editors anytime soon. 

Want a coding copilot that gives you accessible recommendations from the jump? Train it on code that you know to be accessible.

I have no doubt that AI can and will harm people… today, tomorrow, and well into the future. But I also believe that we can acknowledge that and, with an eye towards accessibility (and, more broadly, inclusion), make thoughtful, considerate, and intentional changes in our approaches to AI that will reduce harm over time as well. Today, tomorrow, and well into the future.

Many thanks to Kartik Sawhney for helping me with the development of this piece, Ashley Bischoff for her invaluable editorial assistance, and, of course, Joe Dolson for the prompt.

Stepping on the court less than 15 hours after Djokovic's loss to Alexei Popyrin, and two days after Alcaraz's loss to Botic van de Zandschulp, Sinner was as dominant as can be in every facet of the sport

"Before her visit to India, Theresa May must come clean about the role played by the UK in the attack on the Golden Temple in 1984 and subsequent events," Mr. Watson said

UDF-led Oppn. boycotts event; senior citizens in 75 wards trained to use mobile phones, internet, says Mayor

Senate and Syndicate members raise data manipulation concerns and lack of transparency in project partnership with Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Ltd.

National Bureau of Economic Research

National Bureau of Economic Research

Colombia calls for review of TRIPS Agreement implementation, highlighting need for evidence-based IP law and policy

Asia Tea Alliance plans to expand tea market in Africa to increase global consumption, focusing on sustainability and quality

The recently-launched fund, open till August 12, is a high risk and unknown rewards scenario

Liquid ETFs, trading on both NSE and BSE, predominantly invest in TREPS, which ensures daily returns, very low volatility, no interest or credit risk.

Emphasising the increased responsibility following a significant electoral victory, Modi promised to work harder and achieve greater outcomes 

Centre asserts that there is no interference in the rights of the States as disaster management is the first responsibility of the States.

Calling it a struggle between neo-capitalists and the poor, Mr. Reddy said the commencement of the construction of housing plots in the R-5 Zone was a historic win for the pro-poor government

Party dismisses speculation about joining ruling NDA; says it is preparing to contest 12 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh

The State has been hit by violence since the notification for the three-tier panchayat polls was issued on June 8

Will continue to attend JPC meetings, says Opposition after submitting memorandum to Birla