Google aims AI at whales, words and well-being

Yahoo – AFP, January 28, 2020

Google said it was developing ways to use artificial in tracking whales as
part of efforts to protect endangered species (AFP Photo/Olivier MORIN)

San Francisco (AFP) - Google on Tuesday provided a look at efforts to put artificial intelligence to use for good, from protecting whales to breaking language barriers.

The internet giant unveiled projects on AI work teams a week after Google chief executive Sundar Pichai urged a "proportional approach" to regulating the technology.

Among demonstrations on Tuesday was a "bioacoustics" project using AI to help scientists, governments and nonprofit groups track endangered species.

Two years ago, Google partnered with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration to track humpback whales by using AI recognize the sound of whales in audio captured by underwater microphones.

Google on Tuesday announced an alliance with environmental groups to track critically endangered killer whales in the Salish Sea using AI.

"We trained a deep neural network that automatically and immediately detects orcas and sends alerts to Canadian harbor managers," Google said.

Another AI team showed how Google translation software that already lets smartphones serve as interpreters is being enhanced to power a new feature to transcribe what is being said in real time and provide the results in text.

"With this, your Android mobile phone will effectively turn into an almost real time translator device for long-form speech," Google said.

Google's AI endeavors include infusing cords, headphone cables, clothing drawstrings or other textiles with gesture-sensing capabilities that could allow electronic devices to be controlled with squeezes or twists.

Google engineers are also exploring using AI to help with medical diagnostics, such as detecting signs of cancer or eye disease in scans.

Pichai, also boss of Google's parent company Alphabet, argued before an audience at a Brussels think tank, Bruegel, that companies like his own -- an internet behemoth valued at $1 trillion -- need to be given a say as governments formulate AI regulatory policy.

AI is seen as an area where developments and applications risk outpacing regulatory measures unless authorities act swiftly.

"There is no question in my mind that artificial intelligence needs to be regulated," Pichai said, while stressing that Google wants "to offer our expertise, experience, and tools as we grapple with the inevitable tensions and trade-offs."

Tonga emerges from cyber darkness as internet restored

Yahoo – AFP, February 3, 2019

Cable repair ship Reliance restored the link on Saturday (AFP Photo/ANDER GILLENEA)

Tonga's two-week spell of virtual cyber darkness has ended, with authorities announcing Sunday that full internet services had been restored to the Pacific island kingdom.

"Welcome back to the internet #Tonga. We are happy to report fiber cut is repaired and #Tonga is back online," Network Atlas, which maps the world's submarine and terrestrial networks, tweeted.

The Pacific island nation of 110,000 people -- which relies heavily on the internet for daily supplies and vital tourist earnings -- was plunged into virtual cyber darkness when the sole cable providing a digital link to the outside world was severed.

For two weeks, until cable repair ship Reliance restored the link on Saturday, Tonga has survived on a small, locally operated satellite service to maintain limited international phone services and to process credit card payments.

Social media sites including Facebook and YouTube were blocked to allow essential services to continue.

"We woke up to pretty good news this morning," Tonga government spokesman Lopeti Senituli told Radio New Zealand.

"It's been two quiet weeks, so people are catching up on the gossip and the what-have-yous."

Chamber of Commerce president Paula Taumoepeau said businesses were hit hard by the blackout while banks were unable to process money transfers for families who rely on income from relatives working overseas.

"Some of the suppliers couldn't get their orders out in time, regular orders didn't happen. There was a lot of disruption and we're hoping things are back to normal on Monday," Taumoepeau said.

Although the cause of the blackout has not been established, officials are investigating the possibility that it was cut by a large ship dragging an anchor along the seabed.

Swimming with dolphins in virtual reality to aid disabled

Yahoo – AFP, Jo Biddle, November 19, 2017

A Dutch non-profit has developed virtual reality glasses to enable the
disabled to feel close to dolphins for therapeutic purposes

Swimming with wild dolphins is something most can only dream of, and jumping into pools with captive animals has become increasingly controversial with environmentalists condemning it as cruel.

But a Dutch non-profit believes it has found a way to bring people, especially the disabled, closer to such a joyful experience through the technological, immersive advances offered by virtual reality (VR).

The Dolphin Swim Club is the realisation of a more than two-decade journey by artist Marijke Sjollema, who had her first chance encounter with a dolphin in 1993 while snorkeling off the coast of Mexico.

"I saw this grey shadow under the water and my first thought was this is the end. I thought it was a shark," she told AFP.

She tried to stay calm "but this shadow was following me. And then there was this split second that I realised that it wasn't a shark. It was a dolphin."

"I didn't know anything about dolphins, but I instinctively knew, 'Oh a dolphin, I'm fine. This is a good thing'."

From that moment on, Sjollema's love of dolphins and all cetaceans was born.

"We know that there is something magical about dolphins. We think of joy, and playfulness and happiness and innocence when we meet dolphins. And this is even a healing quality," she told AFP.

She and her business consultant husband, Benno Brada, have devoted their spare time, energy and personal resources to their mission of enabling people to discover their own encounter with dolphins.

The VR dolphin therapy is designed as an alternative to dolphin-assisted 

therapies using dolphins in captivity

Healing qualities

Their first project using normal VR headsets playing a film of the dolphins launched in late 2015.

But last month they went a step further, unveiling waterproof VR glasses, which allow people to drift around a pool watching bottlenose and spinner dolphins playing around them in virtual reality.

This VR dolphin therapy in a pool, still at the trial stage, is thought to be a world first.

"The dream was to find an alternative to dolphin-assisted therapies using dolphins in captivity," Brada told therapists at a residential community for disabled people run by the 's Heeren Loo organisation who were testing out the waterproof goggles in the pool.

The centre has been using the land version of the VR glasses since 2016, and has seen noticeable benefits.

"Some 82 percent of our clients feel actually relaxed by seeing the films," said the organisation's policy advisor Johan Elbers.

"It takes them away from the world they are in, they enter a new world in another mindset, think differently, feel differently, see differently, and relax completely."

He recalled how one young woman, who had long had trouble sleeping, now watches a VR film of the dolphins swimming at night, and falls quietly asleep.

Another man is able to completely forget an agonising pain in his arm.

Dion, a 21-year-old resident of the community, said watching the film made him feel "peaceful."

"The dolphin noises and the water calms me down, that calms me from all the noises that there are, then you're zen," he said.

The VR glasses allow people to float around a pool watching dolphins playing 

around them in virtual reality, helping people relax and enter another world

Sharks next?

The pool-safe VR goggles, developed thanks to 50,000 euros ($59,000) grant from the Dutch government, consist of a waterproof Samsung smartphone in a waterproof backing mounted on a special 3D-printed rig made of recycled plastics.

"Stress is very important as a driver of all kinds of psychiatric problems," explains psychiatrist Wim Veling, from the University of Groningen.

"So we are trying in therapy to make people more relaxed," said Veling, who has been studying the use of VR to help people with mental health disorders.

"The power of virtual reality is in the immersion" into another world, he says on the Dolphin Swim Club site.

For Sjollema, the VR glasses offer huge advantages. Not only can they bring the dolphins to disabled people, who would not be able to travel to see them, but they also avoid the use of captive dolphins.

"Right from the beginning we wanted to make this an alternative for existing therapies with dolphins in captivity," she said.

The films were made during a 10-day shoot in December 2015 at the Red Sea, by a specialist VR team Viemr, using free divers capable of holding their breath for up to five minutes so as not to scare away the dolphins.

The dry version glasses are already being used in more than 150 universities, hospitals and community centres around the world.

And the hope is that the waterproof ones will prove equally beneficial. Sjollema and Brada are looking for a partner to launch their commercial production.

But Dion is ready for something a little more exhilarating.

He would like to watch "a film with sharks" or lions "where the animal is hunting a prey. It would be fun to see a little bit of action."

Dutch non-profit uses virtual reality to bring disabled people closer to a healing swim with wild dolphins https://t.co/Cp1AuBGqj7 pic.twitter.com/InmtnuRz7n

— AFP news agency (@AFP) November 20, 2017

Amsterdam to get world’s first robot boat in €25m project

DutchNews, September 19, 2016

An artists impression of a robot boat in action

One of America’s leading universities is putting €20m into developing robot boats which will be able to navigate the Amsterdam canals without a captain. 

The project, which will start trials next year, is a joint research programme between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions, together with teams from Delft and Wageningen universities. 

The total budget for the five year Roboat research project, which will be based in Amsterdam, is €25m.

‘Imagine a fleet of autonomous boats for the transportation of goods and people,’ MIT professor Carlo Ratti said in a statement. ‘But also think of dynamic and temporary floating infrastructure like on-demand bridges and stages, that can be assembled or disassembled in a matter of hours.’

Professor Arjan van Timmeren, the AMS Institute’s scientific director said: ‘We’ll also be exploring environmental sensing. We could for instance do further research on underwater robots that can detect diseases at an early stage or use Roboats to rid the canals from floating waste and find a more efficient way to handle the 12,000 bicycles that end up in the city’s canals each year.’ 

The first prototypes of Roboat will be tested on the Amsterdam canals in 2017.

DiCaprio unveils free technology to spy on global fishing

Yahoo - AFP, Kerry Sheridan, September 15, 2016

US actor and environmental campaigner Leonardo DiCaprio has turned his focus
 on illegal fishing, which accounts for up to 35 percent of the global wild marine
catch (AFP Photo/Kazuhiro Nogi)

Miami (AFP) - American movie star Leonardo DiCaprio unveiled Thursday a free technology that allows users to spy on global fishing practices, in a bid to curb illegal activity in the oceans and rebuild imperiled fish stocks.

The technology, known as Global Fishing Watch, was officially released to the public during the Our Oceans Conference hosted by US Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington on Thursday and Friday.

"Today, this unprecedented technology is available to everyone in the world. I encourage everyone to go check it out," DiCaprio told the conference.

"This platform will empower citizens across the globe to become powerful advocates for our oceans."

Available at GlobaFishingWatch.org, the technology aims to offer a crowd sourced solution to the problem of illegal fishing, which accounts for up to 35 percent of the global wild marine catch and causes yearly losses of $23.5 billion, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Overfishing is also a growing problem worldwide, with about two thirds of fish stocks in the high seas either over exploited or depleted, said the FAO.

Some of the planet's largest fish, including tuna and swordfish, are below 10 percent of their historical level.

Using satellite technology combined with radar aboard boats, the platform allows people to zero in on areas of interest around the world and trace the paths of 35,000 commercial fishing vessels.

"It gives the public an opportunity to see what is happening, even out in the middle of the ocean," said John Amos, president and founder of SkyTruth, one of three partners in the project along with Google and Oceana.

"We need the public to be engaged to convince governments and convince the seafood industry that they need to solve the problems of overfishing," Amos told AFP.

"If you can't see it and can't measure it, you are not going to care about it and it is not going to get solved."

Overfishing is a growing problem around the world, with about two-thirds of fish

stocks in the high seas either over exploited or depleted (AFP Photo/Fred Tanneau)

DiCaprio-funded

The project has cost $10.3 million over the past three years to build, with $6 million of those funds contributed by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation in January.

In order the make the data available for free, Oceana and its partners negotiated a deal with the satellite company Orbcomm to use its three-day old data, which is described as "near real-time," along with historical records.

Although the delay means that any criminals won't be nabbed instantaneously, advocates say the technology will open the world's waters to public watchdogs in a way that has never been done before.

"We think it is going to have a lot of impact, first of all just the deterrent effect of vessels knowing that we could see them if they are doing something they are not supposed to be doing," Savitz said.

"You can look at an area you are interested in, zoom in and see what data we have."

Possible uses

For instance, users could zero in on a marine protected area and see if any boat tracks have crossed into waters where they should not have been.

One could scan the map for any evidence that large vessels are fishing in areas that are reserved for small-scale fishermen.

Vessels can be tracked by name or by country, or by traffic inside exclusive economic zones.

The paths of ships are visible, including zigzag paths that could indicate vessels are avoiding shore to offload their catch on to other ships undetected, or that other illegal operations or human rights abuses may be under way.

GlobalFishingWatch.org allows people to trace the paths of commercial fishing

 vessels and make sure boats haven't strayed into marine protected areas 

(AFP Photo/Cris Bouroncle)

Savitz said some capacities may be beyond the ability of the average Internet user, but that experts are available via the website to help with specific questions.

Future versions of the technology may even include tagging data for marine animals, so that the paths of whales and sharks and other fish might be visible alongside the vessel activity, she said.

Currently, Global Fishing Watch does not include every vessel, only those that broadcast data from the Automatic Identification System, collected by satellite and terrestrial receivers and meant mainly as a safety mechanism to avoid collisions.

Many of the world's largest fishing vessels are required by the International Maritime Organization to use AIS.

AIS can be turned off if the boat operator is doing something illegal, but Savitz said that such an on-off action would likely be apparent by tracing the boat's appearing and disappearing tracks.

Already, the government of Kiribati has used Global Fishing Watch data to unmask illegal fishing in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, declared off-limits to commercial fishing on January 1, 2015.

The owners of the vessel had to pay a $1 million fine and also made a "goodwill" donation of another $1 million grant, Oceana said.

Related Articles:

Indonesia to Partner With Interpol in Tackling Illegal Fishing

Google joins fight against illegal fishing

Indonesia to Partner With Interpol in Tackling Illegal Fishing

Jakarta Globe, Mar 02, 2015

Susi Pudjiastuti, the minister for maritime affairs and fisheries, visiting a dock
 where impounded illegal foreign fishing vessels are kept, in Kubu Raya
 district, West Kalimantan. (Antara Photo/Jessica Helena Wuysang)

Jakarta. The Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry is eying a partnership with Interpol to better tackle illegal fishing in Indonesian waters.

“The ministry will partner with Interpol to catch poachers using fake taxpayer numbers, so the ministry will not be alone [in facing this challenge],” Minister Susi Pudjiastuti told reporters on Monday, as quoted by news portal Republika.co.id.

The initiative stems from the seizure of a ship named Kunlun by the Australian government, last week. The Kunlun, which had been operating under at least 10 different names and five flags since 2006, was one of three illegal fishing ships in the Southern Ocean that had been tracked down by Interpol, which facilitates international police cooperation.

Susi stressed that illegal fishing was an international crime. She also noted that the ministry had arrested boat crews that included underage workers and others without proper documentation.

“This kind of crime committed on the oceans can be used for human trafficking,” Susi said. “This is a subject for international investigation.”

Related Article:

Google joins fight against illegal fishing

Google joins fight against illegal fishing

Yahoo – AFP, 14 Nov 2014

One of the challenges in tackling illegal fishing has been the lack of jurisdiction

on the high seas (AFP Photo/Joel Nito)

Technology giant Google has taken the battle against illegal fishing online, with the company unveiling a tool in Australia on Friday that harnesses satellite data to track thousands of boats in real time.

A prototype interactive tool, which was developed in conjunction with environmental activists SkyTruth and marine advocacy group Oceana, was unveiled at the once-a-decade World Parks Congress in Sydney.

The tool is the latest salvo from environmentalists against illegal fishing, which is currently estimated by the Global Ocean Commission to cost the world economy up to US$23.5 billion a year.

An office worker checks out a map on 

Google's satellite image service, in Hong

 Kong, on October 18, 2005 (AFP Photo/

Laurent Fievet)

"While many of the environmental trends in the ocean can be sobering, the combination of cloud computing and massive data is enabling new tools to visualise, understand and potentially reverse these trends," Brian Sullivan of Google's Earth Outreach and Oceans section said.

The tool uses data points from the Automatic Identification System network, which picks up GPS broadcasts of a vessel's location to map movements.

The prototype has tracked just over 3,000 fishing vessels, with a public tool set to be released down the track.

SkyTruth said the system, which will only monitor fishing vessels, would make activities usually invisible to the wider public easily viewable.

"So much of what happens out on the high seas is invisible, and that has been a huge barrier to understanding and showing the world what's at stake for the ocean," SkyTruth's president and founder John Amos said.

"Satellite data is allowing us to make human interaction with the ocean more transparent than ever before."

The Global Ocean Commission, an independent panel launched in February 2013, said evidence showed seas have been fished to dangerously low levels, with 90 percent of the world's large fish stocks -- such as tuna and swordfish -- already gone.

The commission said one of the challenges in tackling illegal fishing was the lack of jurisdiction on the high seas.

While the high seas make up 64 percent of the ocean's total surface area, they fall beyond national jurisdictions and suffer from a lack of oversight, the organisation said.

The World Parks Congress, which is being held in Sydney until November 19, has drawn thousands of delegates and is set to lay out a global agenda for protected areas for the next decade.

Related Article:

Indonesia Declares War on Illegal Foreign Fishing Boats