PATENT DROP: Meta runs interference

Plus: Nvidia’s autonomous ambitions; JP Morgan’s ML for all

Happy Tuesday after a long weekend. Welcome back to Patent Drop! 

Today, we’re checking out Meta’s plan to pry teenagers’ eyes away from their phones. Plus, Nvidia’s continuing its autonomous vehicle quest; and JPMorgan wants to make machine learning so easy that even the least tech-inclined of finance bros can handle it. 

Let’s check it out. 

#1. Meta’s screen break 

Meta wants you to break away from the blue light. 

The company is seeking to patent a system for “encouraging time away from social media.”  The system implements what Meta calls a “social media network virtual assistant” to track in-app user activity and, essentially, nag users to get off their phone after they’ve been on it too long. Meta said if at least one “time” and “condition” are satisfied, such as it being a certain time a day, at least some part of the app will be rendered temporarily inoperable. 

Meta laid out a few ways this could work. User’s can pick an option called “Choose Your Days Off,” which encourages users to take “social media free days” and suggests activities based on their interests, such as hiking trails for the outdoorsy user or DIY projects for crafters. 

Another concept is adding an in-app “do-not-disturb” mode. This keeps track of notifications while the user is communing with nature and creates a “digest for a user to catch up on” when they get back. If a user can’t break away from Instagram entirely, users can also “tune an algorithm” to limit certain content during certain hours, which Meta calls “‘need-to-know’ content and ‘want-to-know’ content.” Then, they can get a digest of that content when those hours are up. 

These digests, Meta noted, could come in the form of voice or text summary, as well as potentially presenting this summary in AR headsets. (Because of course. This is Meta we’re talking about.) 

Meta claims this tech aims to solve the issue of the endless, dead-eyed scroll by making it’s solution rooted in the social media platform itself, and “facilitating technology engagement with a more present and embodied social life” 

“In contemporary times, humans tend to engage with online resources including socialization via handheld mobile devices, which often results in isolated behavior with users staring at their screens and scrolling,” Meta said in its filing.

Flowchart via the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Meta’s no stranger to allegations that it creates addictive platforms. The company notoriously came under fire in October 2021 after whistleblower Francis Haugen disclosed thousands of documents revealing that, despite knowing about the harmful effects of its platforms, the company chose boosting profits over user safety. 

Since then, the company has been slapped with a number of lawsuits alleging its platforms are harmful. In June 2022, the company was hit with eight lawsuits in different states alleging the company "exploits young people for profit” and intentionally employed “addictive psychological tactics” to boost user engagement. Since the start of 2023, school districts in California, Washington, Florida and Arizona have filed lawsuits against the company, alleging its platforms are contributing to a youth mental health crisis. 

State and federal officials have also raised concerns of social media’s impact. In California, Meta’s home state, a sweeping bill is making its way through the legislature which aims to hold social media companies accountable for “addicting young users to their platforms.” And last week, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released an advisory warning that the U.S. is “in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis — one that we must urgently address.”

The most recent iteration of this patent is relatively recent, filed at the end of October. Amid the uproar, this tech could be a part of the company’s plan to atone. That said, the system still requires in-app engagement. Basically, Meta’s argument is that this tech avoids the need for the cold-turkey method for quitting social media, relying on the app itself to help users cut down on social media use. 

But even if user’s aren’t mindlessly staring at videos of cats or DIY life hacks or influencer travel blogs all day long, the tech presents a unique opportunity for Meta: The company can say it’s putting an effort to limit social media addiction, but at the end of the day, engagement is still engagement. 

#2. Nvidia gets on the road

Nvidia is revving up to take the driver out of the driver’s seat. 

The company is seeking to patent tech that uses neural networks to “perform fault detection” in autonomous driving applications. Fault detection is exactly as the name implies: being able to find issues with the AI that’s driving the car. Faults include hardware issues, such as problems with the processing unit executing these deep neural networks, or software faults embedded in the underlying AI itself. 

“Software and/or hardware used to execute these (deep neural networks) may be compromised by a variety of sources—resulting in transient faults and/or permanent faults—that may lead to inaccurate predictions that may potentially compromise the effectiveness,” Nvidia noted in its filing. 

Nvidia’s tech implements a “built-in self-test” system for autonomous vehicles to sniff out these faults. This tests the accuracy of predictions or detections made by the car’s neural network, as well as the corresponding actions taken by the vehicle. When accuracy is below a certain threshold or the outputs don’t match up, the system determines that there is a fault. Then, the neural network software or hardware is shut down, with “redundant systems” taking their place. 

Nvidia said that the ability to find faults is vital for safely operating autonomous vehicles and making critical and corrective decisions in real-time. But conventional systems tend to rely on running two or more neural networks at once and comparing the output, which takes up excess memory, processing power and hardware. Nvidia’s system, meanwhile, relieves that “computational burden.” 

Photo via the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Nvidia has a self-driving vehicle technology unit, offering hardware, software and infrastructure. But since AI technology is an integral part of autonomous vehicle development, Nvidia’s major industry advantage comes from the astronomical market share it holds in the AI chip space, said Bob Bilbruck, tech analyst and CEO of consulting firm Captjur. 

“Most of the chipsets are in the autonomous cars, and even the infotainment systems, are Nvidia chips — they kind of dominate that space,” said Bilbruck. 

If you’ve paid any attention to tech news in recent days, you already know that Nvidia just had a killer week. The company crushed Wall Street’s earning expectations by more than 50%, saw an almost 26% spike in its share price and tacked on $170 billion to its market value in one day. Nvidia’s AI work was a major force behind its growth. And as AI excitement spreads, so does Nvidia’s prospects, said Bilbruck.

What separates Nvidia from its competitors is that the company bet on implementing AI into the right sectors from the jump, said Bilbruck. Its AI development is sprinkled throughout several different business units, like gaming, data centers and autonomous vehicles. Now, “every business sector is growing like a weed,” he said. Just looking at its automotive business: Nvidia raked in $296 million in the first quarter, up 114% from the same time a year ago. 

But a rising tide lifts all boats, Bilbruck said. Though Nvidia has a big lead, “AMD, Intel and all the other guys that are major players are also now going to see that growth.” 

All this said, it’s not all sunshine, rainbows and neural networks. While the demand is certainly present, meeting it is going to be tough, said Bilbruck, considering last year’s supply chain turmoil and the sheer cost of building chip fabrication plants. 

#3. AI for the tech layman

Machine learning may seem like an intangible concept if you’re not an engineer. JPMorgan Chase is working on AI tools that anyone can figure out. 

The financial institution wants to patent a method for adding “no-code machine learning” and AI capabilities into its intelligence tools. This system is essentially like build-a-bear for AI models: A user feeds the processor whatever data they have, and selects what information they’d like to ascertain from it. For example, users can ask the system to make predictions, categorize, or find important aspects of the data. 

The system then automatically creates an “executable custom code” based on that data and the user’s specifications. 

After running the code on the backend, the system then spits out “the desired data model based on the processed received data and the selected set of attributes data.” The firm said that this system can create several kinds of models, including classification-based, regression-based, clustering-based and anomaly detection-based models. 

While enterprises often collect vast amounts of data, extracting actionable value from it is often difficult, the company noted. JPMorgan said that there isn’t a tool on the market “that can allow users who are not machine learning experts to access appropriate data, utilize flexible and elastic compute resources, and build their own models in order to extract value from existing vast amount of data in an accurate and timely manner.”

Photo via the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

If you look at JPMorgan’s patent track record, development like this isn’t too surprising. The company recently filed patent applications for tech that could automate jobs in several departments, including an AI recruiting tool and a matchmaker for investors and companies. The company also made headlines in September with plans to hire 2,000 engineers by the end of 2022. 

Given the bank’s investment in tech talent, what’s interesting about this patent is its potential to take the engineer out of the machine learning equation all together. The company’s goal with this patent is seemingly to increase accessibility to AI’s potential in business intelligence, and help companies better understand the massive piles of data they often sit on. 

JPMorgan’s patent reflects a wider trend in tech: low-code and no-code development tools that require little to no tech expertise to create websites and applications. In December, Gartner predicted the market for these tools would hit nearly $27 billion by the end of 2023, up 20% from the year before. 

“The high cost of tech talent and a growing hybrid or borderless workforce will contribute to low-code technology adoption,” Jason Wong, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner, noted in the report. 

While the tech in JPMorgan’s patent could be put to use within its own institution, the bank could also license the platform to any client interested in high-level business intelligence, using engineer-free AI as the hook. 

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Extra Drops

Still here? We’ve got a few more for you. 

• Apple wants to make sure you wash your hands. The company is seeking to patent tech that detects “individual health related events (e.g., handwashing events)” based on Apple Watch motion data.

• Lego is plugging away at its kid-friendly metaverse. The company is seeking to patent a method for the construction of “interactive virtual objects,” or basically just online Legos. 

• Microsoft wants to stop cyberbullying. The company wants to patent a method for detecting “abusive sequences of user activity in an online network,” which relies on deep learning to track user behavior, and takes action when events are repeatedly occurring. 

What else is new? 

• Qualcomm SVP Alex Katouzian said the company is transitioning into an “intelligent edge computing” firm, betting that AI will suck up more power than the cloud can offer.

• Elizabeth Holmes is expected to report to prison today by 2 p.m. in Bryan, Texas to begin her 11-year sentence.

• iRecorder, a popular Android screen recording app, has been spying on its users, including stealing recordings and documents, a cybersecurity firm found.

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