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Turing's Red Flag

Communications of the ACM

The 19th-century U.K. Locomotive Act, also known as the Red Flag Act, required motorized vehicles to be preceded by a person waving a red flag to signal the oncoming danger. Movies can be a good place to see what the future looks like. According to Robert Wallace, a retired director of the CIA's Office of Technical Service: "... When a new James Bond movie was released, we always got calls asking, 'Do you have one of those?' If I answered'no', the next question was, 'How long will it take you to make it?' Folks didn't care about the laws of physics or that Q was an actor in a fictional series--his character and inventiveness pushed our imagination ..."3 As an example, the CIA successfully copied the shoe-mounted spring-loaded and poison-tipped knife in From Russia With Love. It's interesting to speculate on what else Bond movies may have led to being invented. For this reason, I have been considering what movies predict about the future of artificial intelligence (AI). One theme that emerges in several science fiction movies is that of an AI mistaken for human.


Twitter Bot Gives Celebrity Photos Nightmarish Grins

Popular Science

Today in "terrifying things you can't look away from" is smilevector, a Twitter bot that uses a neural network to take photos from the internet and add or remove smiles. Smilevector was created this month by Tom White, a lecturer at the Victoria University of Wellington School of Design in Wellington, New Zealand. The bot is based on generative neural networks, which means it was trained by looking at lots of smiles, and has now learned to add or remove them to other photos. You must obey your smile overlord.


Death by GPS: are satnavs changing our brains?

The Guardian

One early morning in March 2011, Albert Chretien and his wife, Rita, loaded their Chevrolet Astro van and drove away from their home in Penticton, British Columbia. Their destination was Las Vegas, where Albert planned to attend a trade show. Rather than stick to the most direct route, they decided to take a scenic road less travelled, Idaho State Highway 51. The Chretiens figured there had to be a turnoff from Idaho 51 that would lead them east to US Route 93 all the way to Vegas. Albert and Rita had known each other since high school. During their 38 years of marriage, they had rarely been apart. They worked together, managing their own small excavation business.


Can robots solve gender woes?

#artificialintelligence

The fact that Catherine - who's learned that her ex-husband Theodore has taken up with Samantha, a honey-voiced Operating System who screens his emails, entertains his fantasies and sends his writing off to publishers - comes off as judgmental is testament to Jonze's filmmaking skills. But it's also proof of how deeply we've internalised the notion that artificial intelligence is an extension of male desires and that, really, few things may be hotter than the hard-to-nail promise of female servitude. As Laurie Penny writes in an April 2016 article in The New Statesman, the issue of whether or not robots are slaves designed to serve their masters or sentient beings with inner lives and autonomous instincts has long paralleled the questions we ask of women in the world. READ MORE: * New Zealand could become first country to use Domino's pizza delivery robot * Drones, self-drive cars and'car butler' in our near future * Professor hopes robots will take over the rehabilitation world * Robots could threaten up to half New Zealand's jobs in next 20 years * Robots fooling humans they love something that can't love them back: AI expert * Self-learning robot escapes Russian facility, disrupts traffic * New robot from Google shows off human-like qualities Robots may take on domestic tasks and give working mothers more time. From Metropolis, the 1927 Fritz Lang classic in which Maria, a cyborg whose sultry ways plunge the city and its workers into chaos (she's later burned at a stake) to Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, the hit 1997 spy film whose comely fembots are programmed to ensnare the bumbling Powers with his own libido, female robots are often cast as temptresses or destroyers, coincidentally enough, the same roles reserved for flesh-and-blood women.


India's participation in Machine Learning conferences in 2015

#artificialintelligence

CIKM is a top-tier ACM conference in the areas of information retrieval, knowledge management and databases. Since 1992, it has successfully brought together leading researchers and developers from the three communities, with the purpose of identifying challenging problems facing the development of advanced knowledge and information systems, and shaping future research directions through the publication of high quality, applied and theoretical research findings. The infographic below describes India's participation at CIKM 2015. Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD), a premier interdisciplinary conference, brings together researchers and practitioners from data science, data mining, knowledge discovery, large-scale data analytics, and big data. It was held at Sydney, Australia in 2015.


NIIT Launches Course in Web App Development with MEAN Stack under Digital Transformation Series

#artificialintelligence

NIIT, a global leader in skills and talent development, today launched a course in Web App Development with MEAN Stack under the DigiNxt Series. The company has recently ventured into Digital Transformation to offer pioneering programs to young aspirants wishing to enter the digital services industry, as well as to IT professionals wishing to reskill themselves for the new digital world. The cutting-edge program will use the student-centred pedagogy of project-based learning to help them carve a successful career in the emerging digital era. Some of the famous web applications like LinkedIn, Netflix, Uber, Paypal, etc. have been built using MEAN Stack. AngularJS, Node.js (MEAN) represents a group of open source technologies which are known to synergize well together, thereby empowering students to launch their own web and mobile apps.


FAQ: All about the new Google RankBrain algorithm

#artificialintelligence

NOTE: This story has been revised from when it was originally published in October 2015 to reflect the latest information. Yesterday, news emerged that Google was using a machine-learning artificial intelligence system called "RankBrain" to help sort through its search results. Wondering how that works and fits in with Google's overall ranking system? Here's what we know about RankBrain. The information covered below comes from three original sources and has been updated over time, with notes where updates have happened.


The problem with too many men in artificial intelligence

#artificialintelligence

Adele's record-breaking album 25 is coming to Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services tomorrow (or right now if you happen to reading from New Zealand or Australia). While there are other artists who are absent from most music subscription services--Prince and Neil Young come to mind--Adele's 25 is a unique for two reasons: First, it's the best-selling album since 2001, when music sales began their epic collapse. Secondly, 25 has not been made available on any streaming service until now. Other big name recent albums have either limited their release to certain services (Tidal, more often than not) or delayed their streaming debut all together, but these windows and exclusives typically don't last seven months. While the subscription services are undoubtedly thrilled to finally offer Adele's latest, the stunning success she achieved without their help doesn't bode well for the streaming music model.


Bayesian reasoning implicated in some mental disorders

#artificialintelligence

From within the dark confines of the skull, the brain builds its own version of reality. By weaving together expectations and information gleaned from the senses, the brain creates a story about the outside world. For most of us, the brain is a skilled storyteller, but to spin a sensible yarn, it has to fill in some details itself. "The brain is a guessing machine, trying at each moment of time to guess what is out there," says computational neuroscientist Peggy Seriès. Guesses just slightly off -- like mistaking a smile for a smirk -- rarely cause harm.


Fact Not Fiction: Ipswitch's Independent Research Reveals How IT Teams Are Preparing Today For The Rise Of Intelligent Machines

#artificialintelligence

WIRE)--Ipswitch, the leader in easy to try, buy and use IT management software, today announced the findings of an independent global study, carried out by analyst firm Freeform Dynamics. The survey examines the attitudes and readiness of IT decision makers with regard to intelligent machines and business systems (machines with decision making and learning capabilities). Exploring the fast-paced adoption of these systems, the report looks at the positive impacts already being observed in the commercial world and the potential barriers to even further mainstream adoption over the next decade. According to the research, investment in intelligent business systems and automation is well underway across the globe. Top current application deployment areas cited by respondents include digital customer engagement systems (55 percent), process automation and workflow systems (52 percent) and automated risk monitoring and management solutions (50 percent).