- Predicting screen touches accurately has many potential uses, but one is to help pilots select a fast-moving target
- Lead scientist in Google’s artificial intelligence team revealed to be taking part in research by Chinese institute
Google has denied contributing expertise to the Chinese military after taking part in research that could be used to sharpen the accuracy of China’s new stealth fighter jet.A lead scientist from Google took part in a research programme in Beijing with applications that include military, medicine and education, according to China’s largest government science institute.The research paper, about the development of new computer-human interaction technology, focuses on a smart target-selection assistant that can speed up on-screen mobile target selection by more than 50 per cent and improve accuracy by nearly 80 per cent, the government institute said.A fighter jet pilot or anti-air missile operator could therefore select fast-moving targets on a touch screen with unprecedented speed and accuracy, according to two mainland researchers informed about the study.
This makes China’s stealth fighter J-20 a candidate to use the system, said the two researchers, who declined to be named.
Shumin Zhai, a lead scientist in Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) team, was named on Friday as one of the authors of the research paper.Google confirmed its involvement but denied a link to the military. “This paper addresses a very general research question in user experience design of how people interact with moving items on a touch screen,” said a Google spokesperson on Wednesday. “This paper is simply not about military applications.
“There is nothing in this paper that refers to a military application. Research like this is key to improving finger or stylus-based navigation in any app.”...
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Apps eh. Will the AI stop the young'uns from swiping right in error?
