CategoryMachine Learning
7: Computers can develop creative solutions on their own!
AI help, not hype, with Robert J. Marks: Programmers may be surprised by which solution, from a range they built in, comes out on top
9: Will That Army Robot Squid Ever Be “Self-Aware”?
AI help, not hype: What would it take for a robot to be self-aware?
Google Search: Its Secret of Success Revealed
The secret is not the Big Data pile. No, Google found a way to harness YOUR wants and needsGoogle is one of the most widely misunderstood success stories of our time. Many of us equate Google with “Big Data,” that is, amassing huge quantities of data and then finding useful statistical patterns. But is that how it succeeded? In Life after Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy, George Gilder criticizes Google primarily on two fronts: First, it is a “walled garden,” a great platform, but inherently isolated and closed. That is a point worth exploring, but not the focus here. The second point, the one I want to touch on, is that Big Data’s day has come and gone. Because Google is a Big Data company, its brightest days are behind it. Read More ›
Be Choosy About What You Automate!
Having automated many processes, I can assure you that that is the First Rule of Automation
Study Shows Eating Raisins Causes Plantar Warts
Sure. Because, if you torture a Big Data enough, it will confess to anything
No, Twitter Is Not the New Awful
It’s the Old Awful back for more. It’s the Town Without Pity we all tried to get away from
If Computers Thought Like Fruit Flies, They Could Do More
But even with more sophisticated buzz, there remain "non-computable" things that a computer cannot be programmed to thinkRecently, researchers discovered that fruit flies use a filter similar to a computer algorithm to assess the odors that help them find fruit, only the flies’ tools are more sophisticated: When a fly smells an odor, the fly needs to quickly figure out if it has smelled the odor before, to determine if the odor is new and something it should pay attention to,” says Saket Navlakha, an assistant professor in Salk’s Integrative Biology Laboratory. “In computer science, this is an important task called novelty detection. Computers use a Bloom filter for that, Navlakha, an integrative biologist, explains: When a search engine such as Google crawls the Web, it needs to know whether a website it comes across has previously Read More ›
Can Big Data Help Make Your Book a Best Seller?
It’s more likely to help you picture your odds more clearly and clarify your goals
That Plant Is Not a Cyborg
Or a robot. The MIT researcher's underlying idea is a good one but let’s not “plant” mistaken ideas
Quantity vs Quality: Can AI Help Scientists Produce Better Papers?
What happens when scientists simply can't read all their peers' papers and still find time for original research?
AI Winter Is Coming
Roughly every decade since the late 1960s has experienced a promising wave of AI that later crashed on real-world problems, leading to collapses in research funding.
Facial Recognition Aids Persecution of Chinese Christians, Muslims
Western companies still seek business ties with an increasingly authoritarian regimeThe crackdown on religion is said to stem from Xi Jinping, who became President in 2012. After he got term limits removed in March 2018, some have begun to privately call him “Emperor Xi.”
Read More ›
AI, it turns out, can solve any problem
As long as we are not too persnickety about what we consider a solution
If a Robot Read the News, Would You Notice a Difference?
The Chinese government thinks not. Is this the way of the future?
The “superintelligent AI myth”
The problem that even the skeptical Deep Learning researcher left out
Who Needs Wisdom? We’ve Got Algorithms!
On a decision about a TV series, the Algorithm offered a narrow view (ratings) while Hollywood offered a “big picture” view. Who was right?
Brains are not billions of little computers
Despite the hype. Also, life forms are not machines and neurons are not neural networks
Can Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, save it from humanity?
Berners-Lee has launched a global campaign for a Magna Carta to “protect people’s rights online from threats such as fake news, prejudice and hate”
Canada demands intimate banking data from a half million citizens
The goal of the program, recently uncovered by media, is to develop a “new institutional personal information bank” for government use.A Canadian TV station recently provided a dramatic insight into how far Western governments are prepared to go, using advanced data gathering techniques, to surveil the lives of citizens: Statistics Canada is asking banks across the country for financial transaction data and personal information of 500,000 Canadians without their knowledge. Global News has learned. Documents obtained by Global News show the national statistical agency plans to collect “individual-level financial transactions data” and sensitive information, like social insurance numbers (SIN), from Canadian financial institutions to develop a “new institutional personal information bank.” Andrew Russell and David Akin, “EXCLUSIVE: Stats Canada requesting banking information of 500,000 Canadians without their knowledge” at Global News Further investigation showed that the government agency has already Read More ›