Welcome to the August 2023 SIGCHI edition of ACM TechNews.

ACM TechNews - SIGCHI Edition is a sponsored special edition of the ACM TechNews news-briefing service focused on issues in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). This service serves as a resource for ACM-SIGCHI Members to keep abreast of the latest news in areas related to HCI and is distributed to all ACM SIGCHI members the first Tuesday of every month. ACM TechNews is a benefit of ACM membership and is distributed three times per week on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays to over 100,000 ACM members from over 100 countries around the world. ACM TechNews provides timely coverage of established and emerging areas of computer science, the latest trends in information technology, and related science, society, and technology news. For more information on ACM TechNews and joining the ACM, please click. The Interactions mobile app is available for free on iOS, Android, and Kindle platforms. Download it today and flip through the full-color magazine pages on your tablet or view it in a simplified low-bandwidth text mode on your phone. And be sure to check out the Interactions website, where you can access current and past articles and read the latest entries in our ever-expanding collection of blogs.

New Tech Enables Paralyzed Man to Move, Feel Again
Time
Jamie Ducharme
July 28, 2023

Scientists at Northwell Health's Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York enabled paralyzed man Keith Thomas to partially move and feel again via a double neural bypass. Neurosurgeon Ashesh Mehta implanted five electrode arrays in regions of Thomas' brain governing motion and feeling in his right hand and fingers. When Thomas thinks about moving, the arrays send electrical signals to an amplifier on his skull, which an HDMI cable routes to a gaming computer that stimulates his muscles through skin electrodes to move. When he touches something, skin sensors transmit signals to the computer, which engages with the implanted arrays to generate tactile sensations.

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A Faster Way to Teach a Robot
MIT News
Adam Zewe
July 18, 2023

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, and the University of California, Berkeley have developed a method that allows people to train robots to perform desired tasks with minimal effort. When a robot fails, the system algorithmically produces counterfactual explanations describing changes needed to complete its task, soliciting and collecting human feedback to generate new data for fine-tuning the robot. Simulations showed the framework could train robots more efficiently than other methods, and robots taught with this technique performed better while consuming less time for humans. The framework could clear a path toward the development of general-purpose robots by helping robots learn faster in new environments without requiring users to be technically savvy.

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Russia Takes Its Ukraine Information War into Video Games
The New York Times
Steven Lee Myers; Kellen Browning
July 30, 2023

Microsoft's Minecraft, the gaming platform Roblox, and discussion sites like Discord and Steam are seeing an influx of Russian propaganda. Russian players used Minecraft to reenact the battle for Soledar, Ukraine, for instance, and a concert was staged on the platform in June to celebrate Russia Day. Players on these gaming platforms are using the letter Z to symbolize the Russian troops that invaded Ukraine last year. Pro-Kremlin propaganda also has appeared on the Russian versions of World of Tanks and World of Warships, Fly Corp, Armored Warfare, and War Thunder. Joseph Brown at Canada's Thompson Rivers University said Russia's use of video games is "another piece of this whole puzzle of constant propaganda, all the time."

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App Makes Navigating Subway Stations Easier for People with Blindness, Low Vision
NYU Tandon School of Engineering
July 7, 2023

Researchers at New York University and New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority developed the Commute Booster trip-planning application to help vision-impaired commuters navigate subway stations. The researchers designed the app to address the "middle mile" of public transit by automatically determining which signs travelers will encounter along the way to a specific subway platform, then recognizing and directing users to follow relevant signs via the smartphone's camera. Commute Booster incorporates the general transit feed specification dataset, as well as optical character recognition, to provide users real-time feedback concerning relevant navigation signage. When testing Commute Booster in three NYC subway stations, the researchers found the app identified relevant signs with 97% accuracy.

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Humans Detect Deepfake Speech 73% of the Time
The Guardian (U.K.)
Hibaq Farah
August 2, 2023

Scientists at the U.K.'s University College London (UCL) found humans can identify artificially generated speech only 73% of the time. The researchers generated 50 deepfake speech samples in English and Mandarin using a text-to-speech algorithm trained on publicly available datasets. They played the samples for 529 participants, who detected fake speech with just 73% accuracy; training to identify aspects of deepfake speech raised their score slightly. UCL's Kimberly Mai said the research indicated "that training people to detect deepfakes is not necessarily a reliable way to help them to get better at it," while also demonstrating automated speech detectors' limitations in identifying deepfakes.

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Bionic Hand Allows Users to Control Each Finger with Unprecedented Accuracy
EuroNews
Camille Bello
July 14, 2023

A bionic hand built by researchers in Sweden allows users with arm amputations to operate each finger naturally. The researchers enabled the bionic hand's users to perform more intricate finger movements by rewiring nerves in the residual limb to control different muscles, “so when the patient tries to do movements with his missing hand, those new muscular structures get activated,” explained Max Ortiz Catalan, professor of bionics at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. “Then we put electrodes inside them so we can extract that information, use an artificial intelligence algorithm to look at those electrical pulses that come from all the different sources, and learn what is the patient trying to do. And once it's learned, which happens very quickly, then you can tell the prosthesis what to do.”

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Art Integrating Data Visualizations Can Help Bridge U.S. Political Divide Over Climate Change
University of Wisconsin-Madison News
Elise Mahon
July 7, 2023

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and sustainable agriculture nonprofit EcoAgriculture Partners assessed whether artworks integrated with data visualizations can help nonspecialist audiences engage with climate change while overcoming a polarized political landscape. The painting portrays red, orange, and blue motifs of wildfires and melting glaciers overlapping with maps that seem to drip over a graph of worldwide atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The researchers showed four different iterations of the painting and its data to 671 participants from across the U.S. Those shown the artwork expressed stronger positive emotions than those shown just the graphs.

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Stressed for a Bit? Then Don't Click It, Cybersecurity Experts Advise
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Tom Rickey
July 5, 2023

A specific type of strain makes workers more vulnerable to phishing attacks, according to researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The researchers gauged the interplay between stress and response to a simulated phishing email among 153 participants. They found people were more likely to click on the email's link when they reported high levels of work-related stress. This probability increased by 15% for every one-point increase in self-reported distress. PNNL's Dustin Arendt said combining the three common phishing methods of urgency, threat, and authority was less likely to coax targets to follow the email link, suggesting that using too many tactics makes the ruse obvious.

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Robot Assisted Surgery: Four Arms Are Better Than Two
EPFL (Switzerland)
July 7, 2023

Roboticists at the Swiss Federal School of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL) have advanced laparoscopic surgery with a robotic platform that enables procedures involving four arms. The system allows surgeons to complement their two natural arms with two robotic appendages using haptic foot interfaces with five degrees of freedom. Each robot hand operates a manipulative tool, while one foot controls an endoscope/camera and the other pilots an actuated gripper. The system framework facilitates shared control between the surgeon and robot within a concurrent workspace while fulfilling precision and safety parameters. EPFL's Aude Billard explained, "The robots actively assist the surgeon by coordinating their movements with the surgeon's through active prediction of the surgeon's intent and adaptive visual tracking of laparoscopic instruments with the camera."

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Foreigners Get High-Tech Help in Tokyo's Baffling Shinjuku Rail Hub
Reuters
Tom Bateman; Rocky Swift
August 1, 2023

An automated translation window has been deployed by Japan's Seibu Railway to help tourists navigate the Seibu-Shinjuku station in Tokyo. Printing company Toppan's VoiceBiz device facilitates conversations between foreigners and station attendants, who speak through microphones and see their words translated into Japanese and 11 other languages on a semi-transparent screen between them. Seibu Railway's Ayano Yajima said, "Our goal in introducing this was to improve the smoothness of communication by letting people look at each other's faces." Toppan also has tested VoiceBiz at Kansai International Airport, and plans to sell the technology to businesses and government offices throughout Japan.

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Vibrating Vests Translate Music for Deaf Concertgoers
Yahoo! News
Maggy Donaldson
July 26, 2023

Wireless haptic suits developed at Not Impossible Labs' Music: Not Impossible unit aim to help concertgoers who are deaf or hard of hearing experience live music performances. The haptic vests, paired with bands at the wrists or ankles, translate the music using 24 points of vibration. Music: Not Impossible's Patrick Hanlon said the system "engages the body," calling it a "[three-dimensional] sound experience through vibrations." Lincoln Center on New York's Upper West Side recently offered 75 such vests for concertgoer use during an outdoor concert featuring Korean folk music and Mozart's Concerto No. 2; users praised the immersive experience.

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UNESCO Says AI-Driven 'Neurotechnology on Steroids' Needs Regulation
Financial Times
Clive Cookson
July 12, 2023

The U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) told a conference of scientific and political leaders it would start developing a "universal ethical framework" to prevent artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced neurotechnology from endangering human rights. UNESCO's Mariagrazia Squicciarini said the addition of AI creates "neurotechnology on steroids" by enabling the reading of minds and the storage of neural data. Columbia University's Rafael Yuste cited four studies published in the past year showing advanced AI models non-invasively decoded speech and images from the brains of humans, "which makes the protection of mental privacy all the more urgent."

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Modified VR Tech Measures Brain Activity
UT News
August 3, 2023

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) used a commercial virtual reality (VR) headset to measure wearers’ brain activity and reactions to external stimuli. The researchers said a noninvasive electroencephalogram (EEG) sensor installed in a Meta VR headset is less uncomfortable for users than other sensors, lengthening potential wearing time and unlocking additional applications. They developed a driving-simulation game in which users press a button in response to turn commands while the EEG measures their brain activity. The researchers will incorporate the headsets into a robot delivery network to study human-robot interactions.

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