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11 | W aterloo C hronicle | T hursday,F ebruary 20,2020 w aterloochronicle.ca Crossword & SudokuAnswers NOTICE OF PUBLIC INFORMATION CENTRE YOUNG STREET RECONSTRUCTION (KING STREET TO PEPPLER STREET) The City ofWaterloo is proceeding with reconstruction works on Young Street from King Street to Peppler Street. The scheduled work includes the replacement of sanitary sewers, storm sewers and watermains, as well as road reconstruction for the full extent of the project. This is subject to City of Waterloo Council approval.Weather permitting and pending Council approval, construction will be starting in the spring of 2020, with substantial completion expected by fall 2020. More information about the Young Street reconstruction project will be shared at an upcoming Public Information Centre. Date: Thursday February 27th, 2020 Time: Drop-in anytime between 5:30 pm and 7:30 pm Place: Room 200, Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex, 101 Father David Bauer Drive If you have any questions or concerns about the project, please contact: Darren Scott, P.Eng. Engineering Services, Integrated Planning & Public Works, City of Waterloo Telephone: 519-747-8545 Email: darren.scott@waterloo.ca We encourage you to check our website for regular updates regarding this project at www.waterloo.ca/en/closures/closures.aspx P. 519-886-1550 TTY. 1-866-786-3941waterloo.ca Discover the best in active living, leisure and sporting opportunities within the region. SPRING REGISTRATION STARTS MARCH 4 waterloo.ca/activewaterloo SPRING EDITION delivered February 26 DarwinAI is a leader in developing smaller and more efficient neural net- works, which are virtual models that sim- ulate how the human brain makes deci- sions. The company's technology also helps explains how and why artificial intelli- gence software makes its decisions, and that advantage could position DarwinAI ahead of other AI firms in the charge to spot fake news, Fernandez said. "The idea is if you give the engineers and developers the tools to understand the network, they can create more robust ones, and you can serve that to the end us- er in a way that makes sense to them," he said. "We can say, 'This is why we think it's fake' ... and hopefully they begin to under- stand." DarwinAI's technology has commercial applications for companies in the automo- tive, consumer electronics and financial sectors. In September, the company an- nounced a partnership with German car manufacturer Audi for autonomous vehi- cle research. Once researchers get a better grasp of stance detection, the next step is to develop a so-called "reputation assessment" to help determine the trustworthiness of an arti- cle based on linguistics and its source. Artificial intelligence is poised to be- come an important tool in the fight against the widespread proliferation of fake news in recent years, especially on social media, where bots or fake accounts can flood the system with fake or misleading news. "Where AI and deep learning excels is dealing with a tremendous amount of da- ta," Fernandez said. Last year, Communitech launched a $1 million prize in partnership with the Schulich Foundation for a team of Canadi- an researchers who use AI to combat fake news. The list of the Top 10 finalists was re- leased in January and included a team from Waterloo. Despite advances in artificial intelli- gence there will still be a need for humans to assess the news, Fernandez said. AI struggles to understand satire, he noted, or in deciphering the sometimes disorga- nized or roundabout manner in which peo- ple speak. "You still need a human with context and wisdom to make the final determina- tion," he said. And none of this technology will ad- dress the problem of people seeking out in- formation that only confirms their pre-ex- isting worldview and who aren't interest- ed in learning about why their news source is unreliable. He envisions the technology could evolve into a web browser extension that would inform users about how trustwor- thy a site may be. All researchers can do is try to provide enough information to readers and hope that they can come to their own conclu- sions, Fernandez said. "It's a human problem, not a technology problem," he said. LOCAL Continued from page 10 Sheldon Fernandez, CEO of DarwinAI, says his company's artificial intelligence technology is now being used by researchers in the fight against fake news. David Bebee, Waterloo Region Record