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Why Nissan's CEO says the human brain still trumps artificial intelligence
The leader of one of the world's largest automobile producers expects that cars will soon drive themselves and sync to the world around them -- but don't count out the human behind the wheel just yet. Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive and chairman of an alliance that includes Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi, said Thursday that humans will remain involved in the operation of vehicles for the foreseeable future, even as cars with self-driving technology enter the market in the next five years. You will push a button to activate the car's autonomous driving feature, he said, but it will encounter everyday scenarios it cannot compute and that require human assistance. "Artificial intelligence is still way below the creativity of the human brain," Ghosn said. Imagine a self-driving car coming upon a broken-down vehicle in the road, but there is a solid line to either side of it, Ghosn said.
Webscraping the WSJ
There are many newspapers available in the New York City area that cater to different segments of the population. This project focuses on the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), an international newspaper with a high circulation in the New York area. For this project, I scraped details of articles over a three-week period in order to analyze some basic metrics of the newspaper as well as some of the topics that the WSJ focuses on. In total, the project encompassed a total of 4,126 articles from three consecutive weeks in August 2016. As a result of collecting these metrics, several interesting findings emerged.
The ability to predict earthquakes in the lab raises the possibility that the same thing will be possible for real earthquakes, too
Geologists have long been able to work out the approximate risk of an earthquake. Their approach is to work out when the fault moved in the past and use any periodicity to predict the future. The most famous example involves the Parkfield segment of the San Andreas Fault in California, one of the most carefully studied faults on the planet. Earthquakes occurred here in 1857, 1881, 1901, 1922, 1934, and 1966, suggesting a pattern in which quakes occur every 22 years give or take a few years. Geologists therefore predicted that a quake would occur between 1988 and 1993, but they had to wait until 2004 for their temblor.
AI continued its world domination at Mobile World Congress
When it comes to the intersection of smartphones and AI, Motorola had the most surprising news at the show. In case you missed it, Motorola is working with Amazon (and Harman Kardon, most likely) to build a Moto Mod that will make use of Alexa. Even to me, someone who cooled on the Mods concept after an initial wave of interesting accessories slowed to a trickle, this seems like a slam dunk. Even better, Motorola product chief Dan Dery described what the company ultimately wanted to achieve: a way to get assistants like Alexa to integrate more closely with the personal data we keep on our smartphones. In his mind, for instance, it would be ideal to ask an AI make a reservation at a restaurant mentioned in an email a day earlier.
Trump steps up airstrikes against al-Qaida in Yemen; more ground raids could follow
More than two years after a multi-sided civil war erupted inside Yemen that allowed Al Qaeda's local franchise to amass power and seize territory, President Trump has directed the Pentagon to embark on a complicated counter-terrorism campaign. Trump's decision, just six weeks into his presidency, intends to reverse the largely unchecked expansion across southern Yemen of the group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The willingness to expand counter-terrorism operations inside war-torn Yemen was the latest signal that Trump is more willing to defer to military commanders on national security policy than President Obama, who was criticized publicly by three of his four Defense secretaries and privately by uniformed officers for micromanaging the military. Over two days this week, armed drones and warplanes conducted more than 30 airstrikes against suspected Al Qaeda positions in three Yemeni provinces, marking the first U.S. attacks in the country since an ill-fated Navy SEAL raid in January that killed two dozen civilians, including women and children, Al Qaeda militants and Chief Petty Officer William "Ryan" Owens. The aerial bombardment is expected to continue into the coming week.
Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business
Tune in April 7 and find out how to provide stellar customer care with social media in our free webinar. Chatbots are the new rage as more top brands are advancing the technology and integrating it into their chat systems. Big names such as Facebook and Telegram have already made moves in this arena by creating their own chatbots and chatbot platforms. Over the past couple months, I've been trying to implement chatbots into my company Due. For many, chatbot marketing can sound overwhelmingly complicated, but a chatbot, not so much.
Fukushima News: Deadly Nuclear Radiation Levels Baffle Scientists Trying To Build Robot To Survive Reactor
The company in charge of the ruined Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant revealed Thursday it needed new ideas to design robots capable of surviving the high levels of radiation inside the site's reactors, which were damaged in a 2011 earthquake and its resulting tsunami. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) has hit a new obstacle since being tasked with cleaning up the worst nuclear incident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union. The exploratory robot, specially designed to navigate the underwater sections of the reactor, died last month after being exposed to "unimaginable" levels of radiation nearly nine times more potent than the previous highest dose recorded. Naohiro Masuda, president of Tepco's Fukushima Daiichi Decommissioning project, told reporters that the company had to rethink its methods in order to examine and extract the hazardous material stuck in the plant's second reactor. "We should think out of the box so we can examine the bottom of the core and how melted fuel debris spread out," Masuda said, according to the Japan Times.
Thank Goodness Nukes Are So Expensive and Complicated
Imagine you're an evil genius in the style of a James Bond villain. You've got a hundred million dollars or so burning a hole in your pocket, and you're looking to cause some destruction. You want to know your options. Greg Allen (@Gregory_C_Allen) is a George Leadership Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. He previously worked on space and robotics issues at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Robots can be hacked, exploit to kill people, spy on military secrets: Researchers
There are a lot of conspiracy theories about robots taking over our jobs or killing the humanity. In fact, famous physicist Professor Stephan Hawking agrees with researchers who claim AI robots will leave humanity ''Utterly Defenceless.'' Now, researchers at IOActive, a cyber security company has revealed that [Pdf] programs which "bring them (robots) to life" carry critical vulnerabilities which can be used by threat actors for negative purposes. The development of artificial intelligence (AI) robots is on the rise. Last year, IBM developed Ross – World's first AI lawyer and plans are to license it for being utilized in domains like bankruptcy, restructuring and creditors' rights team.
[session] Cloud with #ArtificialIntelligence @CloudExpo @ZeroStackInc #AI
Businesses and business units of all sizes can benefit from cloud computing, but many don't want the cost, performance and security concerns of public cloud nor the complexity of building their own private clouds. Today, some cloud vendors are using artificial intelligence (AI) to simplify cloud deployment and management. In his session at 20th Cloud Expo, Ajay Gulati, Co-founder and CEO of ZeroStack, will discuss how AI can simplify cloud operations. He leads ZeroStack's innovative team and corporate strategy. He was a senior architect and R&D lead at VMware where he designed flagship products including Storage I/O control, Storage DRS and DRS.