Future technologies, especially those portrayed in post-apocalyptic sci-fi, the source of all my fears about the world, are often extremely dangerous. It is as if the writers joyfully turn to the Earth and imagine how our fragile ecosystem, economy and society would respond to some future threat. Some notable examples are: alien invasion, super-virus, alien super-virus, meteor, nuclear war and artificial intelligence.
AI is cause for concern. It is a future technology which walks to the heights of life’s complexity, on a road never previously travelled. And while AI may be disastrous in the future, as Elon Musk and others predict, here and now AI is innovative and profitable.
A Melbourne based private enterprise has essentially used artificial intelligence to cure blindness.
Aipoly is at the forefront of implementing practical AI technology. They have developed an app using machine learning to identify objects in the world using a smartphone’s camera, and then tell the user what these objects are by saying them out loud. Aipoly is now able to identify over 5,000 objects. Here's how it works:
The app uses algorithmic processes in what is known as a convolutional neural network. This network is inspired by the biological visual cortex, so in a sense this app is acting almost exactly like another set of eyes. This neural cortex, much like our own, is trained with over 300,000 images until it ‘learns’ what each object is called. Which I personally think is freaking amazing.
The official description of Aipoly is as follows: “Aipoly is an object and colour recogniser that helps the blind, visually impaired, and colour blind understand their surroundings.”
But as with all new technologies, new opportunities present themselves in unexpected ways. The company has noticed that many of its app sales come from Japan, where they have found people using their application to learn English. As a student who had to drop Chinese in order to survive another year at university, I would pay extensively for a tool such as this.
This technology has possibly hundreds more uses we don’t know about yet.
And Aipoly is providing this all, for free.
Initially I thought this was a little strange, this technology could so easily be monetised. Even if the app costs 50 cents, thousands, or possibly millions of dollars would come their way, with little inconvenience for the customer. I decided to look up their Australian business number, because articles allude to this company being Australian based. And I found nothing.
I searched further, and it seemed that out of the cofounders: Australian entrepreneur Marita Cheng, Swedish developer Simon Edwardsson and Italian entrepreneur Alberto Rizzoli, one of them may have registered the company elsewhere. But the Italian, Swedish and even the American registries yielded nothing. Singularity University, the place where development is taking place, would surely have answers about business structure. But alas, I could not find it.
This situation is very interesting to me. This new and innovative technology, so easily profitable is being given away for free by a company with no official record (as far as I know). From this it could be deduced that Aipoly is a marketing front, for the real but secretive business.
Selling their technology to other companies.
Yes, the conspiracy is alive and well with this particular company. It is known that large conglomerates like Apple and Alphabet love to buy new technologies, and monetise them.
Just recently I was looking at an app designed by a British student that summarised news articles called Summly. I was even going to write a blog on it, but I quickly found out that his technology was bought by Yahoo for $30 million in March of 2013.
Which leads me to an interesting thought.
If the goal of your enterprise is not to develop a product, but simply to rise into the echelons of the upper class, then climbing up the ladder may not seem appealing to you. Instead, if you create a valuable technology, the giant deities of the corporate world will name you their champion and pull you up into paradise. No climbing needed.
They are corporate deities indeed, here is one example on a channel just full of them:
This could be completely wrong. There is every chance that Marita Cheng, Simon Edwardsson and Alberto Rizzoli are developing this app for free out of the kindness of their hearts. And the apparently vague and mysterious business structure is simply due to my own incompetence.
But then again, being kind does not put food on your plate, or buy you that new car.
At least, not in this capitalist meritocracy.
I think the co-founders of Aipoly know this, and are just waiting to be pulled up into the clouds. They are spreading their app across the world and proving its value. I think it wont be long before a conglomerate such as Alphabet comes knocking. But only time will tell.
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