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Affectiva raises 14 million to bring apps, robots emotional intelligence

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Affectiva, a startup developing "emotion recognition technology" that can read people's moods from their facial expressions captured in digital videos, raised 14 million in a Series D round of funding led by Fenox Venture Capital. According to co-founder Rana el Kaliouby, the Waltham, Mass.-based company wants its technology to become the de facto means of adding emotional intelligence and empathy to any interactive product, and the best way for organizations to attain unvarnished insights about customers, patients or constituents. She explained that Affectiva uses computer vision and deep learning technology to analyze facial expressions or non-verbal cues in visual content online, but not the language or conversations in a video. The company's technology ingests digital images--including video in chat applications, live-streamed or recorded videos, or even GIFs--through simple web cams typically. Its system first categorizes then maps the facial expressions to a number of emotional states, like happy, sad, nervous, interested or surprised.


ITWeb News: Artificial Intelligence in South Africa - itweb.co.za

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Held at VodaWorld in Midrand, ITWeb's annual Security Summit provided a platform for both local and international industry experts and analysts to share their experiences and strategies to safeguard their organisation against a cyber-attack.


Sky of the Beholder

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Golan Levin, an associate professor of art at Carnegie Mellon University, suggested. I was looking at a satellite image of the school's campus in Pittsburgh, embedded in the home page of Levin's latest online project, Terrapattern. "What you should immediately see are all the most tennis-court-ish patches of Allegheny County," he said. With gratifying speed, the right-hand side of my screen filled with dozens and dozens of tennis courts--solo or in pairs or in clusters of six, white on green, purple on green, green on red. A confusingly painted parking lot ended up in the mix, too.


Leading scientists address dangers of Artificial Intelligence before United Nations

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Recently esteemed M I T physicist, Max Tegmark, and science philosophy professor, from Oxford university, Nick Bostrom, joined forces to address the United Nations. They were there with the sole purpose of addressing their concerns over the dangers of Artificial Intelligence.


Affectiva raises 14 million to bring apps, robots emotional intelligence

#artificialintelligence

Affectiva, a startup developing "emotion recognition technology" that can read people's moods from their facial expressions captured in digital videos, raised 14 million in a Series D round of funding led by Fenox Venture Capital. According to cofounder Rana el Kaliouby, the Waltham, Mass.-based company, wants its technology to become the de facto means of adding emotional intelligence and empathy to any interactive product, and the best way for organizations to attain unvarnished insights about customers, patients or constituents. She explained that Affectiva uses computer vision and deep learning technology to analyze facial expressions or non-verbal cues in visual content online, but not the content or conversations in a video. The company's technology ingests digital images--including video in chat applications, livestreamed or recorded videos, or even GIFs--through typically the simplest web cams. Its system first categorizes then maps the facial expressions to a number of emotional states, like happy, sad, nervous, interested or surprised.


If robots are the future of work, where do humans fit in? Zoe Williams

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Robin Hanson thinks the robot takeover, when it comes, will be in the form of emulations. In his new book, The Age of Em, the economist explains: you take the best and brightest 200 human beings on the planet, you scan their brains and you get robots that to all intents and purposes are indivisible from the humans on which they are based, except a thousand times faster and better. Related: The Guardian view on artificial intelligence: look out, it's ahead of you Editorial For some reason, conversationally, Hanson repeatedly calls these 200 human prototypes "the billionaires", even though having a billion in any currency would be strong evidence against your being the brightest, since you have no sense of how much is enough. But that's just a natural difference of opinion between an economist and a mediocre person who is now afraid of the future. These Ems, being superior at everything and having no material needs that couldn't be satisfied virtually, will undercut humans in the labour market, and render us totally unnecessary.


Shadow of the smart machine: Would it be wise to create an 'Intelligent Gun'?

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Learning machines are capable of working ever more autonomously on ever more complex tasks. In this blog, Muz Janoowalla explores whether it would be smart for humankind to develop an'intelligent gun'. There are an estimated 875 million civilian, law-enforcement, and military firearms in the world, of which 650 million are in the hands of civilians, either legally or illegally. Given the plethora of high-profile gun attacks in recent months and years – particularly in the US, but also in France, Norway, Pakistan and Tunisia, to name but a few – it is disturbingly easy to imagine gunmen on the loose in a school or at a public event, shooting indiscriminately and leaving casualties in their wake. Imagine how different things could be if a gun had artificial intelligence built into it, turning it into an intelligent gun.


If robots are the future of work, where do humans fit in? Zoe Williams

#artificialintelligence

Robin Hanson thinks the robot takeover, when it comes, will be in the form of emulations. In his new book, The Age of Em, the economist explains: you take the best and brightest 200 human beings on the planet, you scan their brains and you get robots that to all intents and purposes are indivisible from the humans on which they are based, except a thousand times faster and better. Related: The Guardian view on artificial intelligence: look out, it's ahead of you Editorial For some reason, conversationally, Hanson repeatedly calls these 200 human prototypes "the billionaires", even though having a billion in any currency would be strong evidence against your being the brightest, since you have no sense of how much is enough. But that's just a natural difference of opinion between an economist and a mediocre person who is now afraid of the future. These Ems, being superior at everything and having no material needs that couldn't be satisfied virtually, will undercut humans in the labour market, and render us totally unnecessary.


White House adviser says Obama ended 'two wars' – despite new battles, strikes - President Obama dines in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain

FOX News

Senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett is still listing "ending two wars" as one of the major accomplishments of the Obama administration, despite deepening U.S. involvement overseas – including the recent U.S. drone strike that took out Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour. Jarrett, one of President Obama's closest aides, made the remarks in an interview aired Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes." Asked whatever happened to the president's call for "hope and change," she cited a slew of changes during Obama's two terms: "Just look at what's happened in the last seven years. While the interview may have been conducted before the official Pentagon announcement, her comments coincided with the news that a drone strike had taken out Taliban leader Mansour in the Pakistan province of Baluchistan – the latest sign of the prolonged fight in the Middle East and South Asia. Even before those comments, the administration was taking criticism for efforts to downplay U.S. military actions against terror and insurgent groups.


Pakistani Researcher Solves One of the Most Important Maths Problems of 20th Century

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Earlier this year, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering's (IEEE) published "AI's 10 to Watch" – a list of 10 people who are doing phenomenal work in the field of artificial intelligence. A Pakistani researcher Haris Aziz, who had graduated from LUMS, had his name published in this prestigious list for his work in the field related to computational social choice, an intersection between artificial intelligence and economics. Its seems that was just the beginning of the road for Haris Aziz, who is now back in the news for solving an'unsolvable' mathematical situation. Who will get the larger share of the profit from a business? Shall it be equally allocated or otherwise? Perhaps its your child's birthday and its time to cut and divide the cake in a way that none of the children gets sad by his/her share?