Technology

A wide-ranging new poll yields some useful insight into how worried the average American feels about election threats as the countrybarrels toward midterms.

The survey, conducted by NPR and researchers with Marist College, polled 949 adult U.S. residents in early September across regions of the country, contacting participants through both landlines and mobile devices. The results are a significant glimpse into current attitudes around the likelihood of foreign election interference, election security measures and how well social media companies have rebounded in the public eye.

Attitudes toward Facebook and Twitter

As the most recent dust settles around revelations that Russia ran influence campaigns targeting Americans on social media platforms, just how much do U.S. voters trust that Facebook and Twitter have cleaned up their acts Well, they&re not convinced yet.

In response to a question asking about how much those companies had done since 2016 &to make sure there is no interference from a foreign country& in the U.S. midterm elections, 24 percent of respondents believed that Facebook had done either &a great deal& or &a good amount,& while 62 percent believed the company had done ¬ very much& or ¬hing at all.&

When asked the same question about Twitter, only 19 percent thought that the company had made significant efforts, while 57 percent didn&t think the company had done much. Unlike nearly every other question in the broad-ranging survey, answers to this set of questions didn&t show a divide between Republicans and Democrats, making it clear that in 2018, disdain for social media companies is a rare bipartisan position.

When it comes to believing what they read on Facebook, only 12 percent of voters had &a great deal& or &quite a lot& of confidence that content on the platform is true, while 79 percent expressed ¬ very much confidence& or none at all. Still, those numbers have perked up slightly from polling in 2018 that saw only 4 percent of those polled stating that they were confident in the veracity of content they encountered on Facebook.

Midterm perspectives

In response to the question &Do you think the U.S. is very prepared, prepared, not very prepared or not prepared at all to keep this fallmidterm elections safe and secure,& 53 percent of respondents felt that the U.S. is prepared while 39 percent believed that it is ¬ very prepared& or not prepared at all. Predictably, this question broke down along party lines, with 36 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of Republicans falling into the &prepared& camp (51 percent of independents felt the U.S. is prepared).

An impressive 69 percent of voters believed that it was either very likely or likely that Russia would continue to &use social media to spread false information about candidates running for office& during the midterm elections, suggested that voters are moving into election season with a very skeptical eye turned toward the platforms they once trusted.

When it came to hacking proper, 41 percent of respondents believed that it was very likely or likely that &a foreign country will hack into voter lists to cause confusion& over who can vote during midterm elections, while 55 percent of respondents said that hacked voter lists would be not very likely or not at all likely. A smaller but still quite significant 30 percent of those polled believed that it was likely or very likely that a foreign country would &tamper with the votes cast to change the results& of midterm elections.

Election security pop-quiz

Political divides were surprisingly absent from some other questions around specific election security practices. Democrats, Republicans and independent voters all indicated that they had greater confidence in state and local officials to &protect the actual results& of the elections and trusted federal officials less, even as the Department of Homeland Security takes a more active role in providing resources to protect state and local elections.

A few of the questions had a right answer, and happily most respondents did get a big one right. Overall, 55 percent of voters polled said that electronic voting systems made U.S. elections less safe from &interference or fraud& — a position largely backed by election security experts who advocate for low-tech options and paper trails over vulnerable digital systems. Only 31 percent of Democrats wrongly believed that electronic systems were safer, though 49 percent of Republicans trusted electronic systems more.

When the question was framed a different (and clearer) way, the results were overwhelmingly in favor of paper ballots — a solution that experts widely agree would significantly secure elections. Indeed, 68 percent of voters thought that paper ballots would make elections &more safe& — an attitude that both Republican and Democratic Americans could get behind. Unfortunately, legislation urging states nationwide to adopt paper ballots has continued to face political obstacles in contrast to the wide support observed in the present poll.

On one last election security competence question, respondents again weighed in with the right answer. A whopping 89 percent of those polled correctly believed that online voting would be a death knell for U.S. election security — only 8 percent said, incorrectly, that connecting elections to the internet would make them more safe.

For a much more granular look at these attitudes and many others, you can peruse the pollfull results here. For one, theremore interesting stuff in there. For another, confidence — or the lack thereof — in U.S. voting systems could have a massive impact on voter turnout in one of the most consequential non-presidential elections the nation has ever faced.

WHILL, the startup known for creating sleek, high-tech personal mobility devices, announced today that it has closed a $45 million Series C. The funding will be used for expanding into new international markets, as well as developing new products for large venues, including airports and &last-mile& sidewalk transportation. The roundlead investors were SBI Investment, Daiwa Securities Group and WHIZ Partners, with participation from returning investors INCJ, Eight Road Ventures, MSIVC, Nippon Venture Capital, DG Incubation and Mizuho Capital.

This brings WHILL total funding so far to about $80 million. Founded in Tokyo in 2012, WHILL plans to open a branch in the European Union and enter 10 new European countries. It also plans to start working with partners on developing autonomous capabilities for its mobility devices, senior marketing manager Jeff Yoshioka told TechCrunch. The company will build its own sensors and cameras to use in its &mobility as a service& program, which allows users to control vehicles and call customer service through a mobile app.

One of WHILLbiggest projects is developing an autonomous personal mobility device system for airports. Yoshioka says that an estimated 20 million people request wheelchairs in U.S. airports each year. This means they need to wait for an airline employee to bring a wheelchair to them and then push them from check-in to their gates. At the same time, it doesn&t give users a lot of flexibility.

The system that WHILL has in mind, on the other hand, would allow individuals to use an app to summon a mobility device over to them. Then they can go wherever they want — coffee shops, restrooms, shops — before heading to the gate without an assistant. Once they are done with the device, it will return to a docking station on its own. WHILL has already begun testing a similar program at Tokyo International Airport in partnership with Panasonic.

Yoshioka says WHILL will most likely pursue distribution partnerships with U.S. airlines, which are responsible for supplying and maintaining the wheelchair systems in American airports, and airports to build the necessary infrastructure.

Along with airports, WHILL wants to bring its technology to other large venues, including shopping malls and sports arenas, as well as create a system for last-mile transportation. Yoshioka notes that &there are already a lot of companies out there like LimeBike and MoBike that offer bikes and electric scooters, but therenothing out there for people with disabilities who can&t use those devices.&

Instead, many rely on Ubers or public transportation even for short distances. Like the airport system, WHILLlast-mile sidewalk system will use autonomous electric vehicles that can be called to users with an app. It faces unique challenges, however, because WHILLdevices are larger and more expensive than bikes or electric scooters, so the company needs to find safe places to dock them that are still accessible to people with limited mobility. Yoshioka says WHILL likely will focus on partnering with commercial properties to create indoor docking stations.

WHILLlargest market is still Japan, where it has between 4,000 to 5,000 resellers. In its home market, WHILLdevices are subsidized by the government and also available for rent. In the U.S., however, many customers need to purchase devices out-of-pocket. To make their products more accessible,WHILLlaunched the less expensive Model Ci (called the Model C in Europe and Japan) earlier this year. While there is still plenty of room for innovation in the wheelchair market, the Model Ci and other WHILL products compete with devices like the iBot, which can climb stairs, and the Trackchair, designed for off-road use. WHILLcurrent products can&t climb stairs, but they do have the advantage of being designed for both indoor and outdoor use, giving users more flexibility, says Yoshioka.

The company also expects demand for its products to grow thanks to a rapidly aging world population, citing statistics that show there are expected to be more than 2.1 billion people over the age of 60 by 2050, up from about 900 million last year.

&We don&t necessarily see [the other companies] as direct competitors. They definitely do impact sales, because people might want something that climbs stairs instead of having better outdoor capabilities, but I think overall itvery beneficial for the industry,& Yoshioka adds. &As a company thattrying to disrupt the industry, itnice to have them around because it pushes the industry forward and opens eyes for other manufacturers.&

A fascinating project called Amadeus Code promises to out-Tay-Tay Tay Tay and out-Bon Bon Iver. The AI-based system uses data from previous musical hits to create entirely new compositions on the fly — and darn if these crazy robot-songs aren&t pretty good.

The app, which is available from the iTunes Store but doesn&t seem to be working properly, creates song sketches in minutes, freeing you up to create beautiful lyrics and a bit of accordion accompaniment.

The video above is a MIDI version of an AI-produced song and the video below shows the song full-produced using non-AI human musicians. The results, while a little odd, are very impressive.

Jun Inoue, Gyo Kitagawa and Taishi Fukuyama created Amadeus Code and all have experience in music and music production. Inoue is a renowned Japanese music producer and he has sold 10 million singles. Fukuyama worked at Echo Next and launched the first Music Hack Day in Tokyo. Fukuyama is the director of the Hit Song Research Lab and went to Berklee College of Music.

&We have analyzed decades of contemporary songs and classical music, songs of economic and/or social impact, and have created a proprietary songwriting technology that is specialized to create top line melodies of songs. We have recently released Harmony Library, which gives users direct access to the songs that power the songwriting AI for Amadeus Code,& said Inoue. &We uniquely specialize in creating top line melodies for songs that can be a source of high-quality inspiration for music professionals. We also do have plans that may overlap with other music AI companies in the market today in terms of offering hobbyists a service to quickly create completed audio tracks.&

When asked if AI will ever replace his favorite musicians, folks like Michael and Janet Jackson or George Gershwin, Inoue laughed.

&Absolutely not. This AI will not tell you about its struggles and illuminate your inner worlds through real human storytelling, which is ultimately what makes music so intimate and compelling. Similarly to how the sampler, drum machine, multitrack recorder and many other creative technologies have done in the past, we see AI to be a creative tool for artists to push the boundaries of popular music. When these AI tools eventually find their place in the right creative hands, it will have the potential to create a new entire economy of opportunities,& he said.