Brooklyn Futurist Meetup at Brooklyn Law School - Jan 6 2016 At our first meetup of 2016 Robin Hanson previewed The Age of Em - his upcoming book and research unveil a world run by robots. Not a science fiction novel, he envisions every aspect of our lives influenced by the spread of robots from the workplace and life extension to personal relationships. His insights on employment challenges are especially noteworthy.

Relatives and tribal elders in southeastern Afghanistan are demanding an investigation into the killing of 17 people by US drones this week, claiming the air strikes hit civilians - not members of armed groups. US army officials said on Thursday two air strikes in Paktika province, near the Pakistani border, had only targeted fighters, without any evidence of civilian casualties. Afghan officials confirmed to Al Jazeera that 17 people had been killed in Wednesday's strikes in Gomal district, but added they all had links to the Taliban. Yet, local leaders and relatives insisted on Saturday all of those killed were innocent civilians. "We demand an investigation into the brutal killings of these innocent people," Nimatullah Baburi, a deputy of the Paktika provincial council, told Al Jazeera.

Provalis Research announces today the release of a new version of its powerful text analytics software, WordStat 7.1. The software release includes a geographic information system (GIS) mapping and data editing module, allowing businesses to obtain insightful geospatial intelligence. This innovative module provides users with the ability to create a wide range of maps out of pure text data. The analysis of unstructured text data with geographic affinity poses some challenges when an organization is seeking to obtain insightful results. "The implementation of tools currently on the market is a complex process that usually requires in-depth geographic information science (GIS) knowledge," says Normand Péladeau, Provalis Research's CEO.

Recently, an AI from Deep Mind called Alpha Go beat the 5th ranked Go player in the world, a feat that most thought was about a decade off. That's the way things are going these days in the world of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Deep Mind is a cutting edge AI company recently bought by Google and now owned by Alphabet, the holding company created by Google shortly after this purchase. It's one of many companies these days at the forefront of trying to teach computers how to think like humans. The learning that goes into teaching a computer how to win at Go isn't directly translatable into practical, day-to-day tasks like writing blog posts, but that doesn't mean that smart startups aren't learning from the big guys how to apply machine learning to solve many of the problems we face in our working lives… Not that writing blog posts is ever a problem, per se, but with the sheer amount of content being produced set to increase by 500% by 2020, there is a bit of a problem in the demand side of things.

I do have opinions about the now infamous e-mail server (which will no doubt come out here), but when the WSJ folks made it possible to search the Clinton email releases I though it would be fun to get the data into R to show how well the igraph and ggnetwork packages could work together, and also show how to use svgPanZoom to make it a bit easier to poke around the resulting hairball network. NOTE: There are a couple "Assignment" blocks in here. My Elements of Data Science students are no doubt following the blog by now so those are meant for you:-) Other intrepid readers can ignore them. It's not advertised, but it's not hidden either. They were kind enough to actually make this resource available to the public to help them make up their minds as to whether this was a horrible, awful, terrible, inexcusable breach of national security through conceit, hubris and naïvety (see, I have opines:-) – or not – and we really shouldn't constantly hit their API just because we want to work with the data on our own.

About these poems: Self Published Amazon Poems By Marco Essomba (@marcoessomba) a Network and Security Expert, Self Confessed Geek, CTO/Cofounder of AMPS Intl, a leading UK based Application Delivery Infrastructures (ADI) Solutions Provider with niche expertise in the world's most advanced ADCs (www.amps-global.com). This poem is part of a collection of encrypted poems for which only the author has the keys. But for those who are brave, a long journey to attempt to decrypt the new digital transformation and information technology related topics based on the author real life experience in the network and security field and career spanning more than 10 years. In the spirit of open source poetry, all feedback (including bad ones) will be much appreciated. Keep reading those poems, for you may learn something about life on earth.

The Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing are three technologies that are converging to disrupt nearly every industry. IoT refers to a connected network of objects embedded with technology that enables the collection and exchange of data. Cloud computing is the storing and retrieval of data, and accessing application programs via the Internet. Artificial Intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence by machines. We are currently in the midst of the rise of the first wave of this technological convergence.

As I learned from my work in flight dynamics, to keep an airplane flying safely, you have to predict the likelihood of equipment failure. And today we do that by combining various data sets with real-world knowledge, such as the laws of physics. Integrating these two sets of information -- data and human knowledge -- automatically is a relatively new idea and practice. It involves combining human knowledge with a multitude of data sets via data analytics and artificial intelligence to potentially answer critical questions (such as how to cure a specific type of cancer). As a systems scientist who has worked in areas such as robotics and distributed autonomous systems, I see how this integration has changed many industries.

Graphics chipmaker Nvidia handily beat fourth quarter earnings targets Wednesday thanks to strong customer interest in its deep learning technology. The company reported a net income of 297 million, or 35 cents per share (statement). Non-GAAP earnings were 52 cents per share on a revenue of 1.4 billion, up 12 percent year-over-year. Wall Street was looking for earnings of 32 cents per share with 1.31 billion in revenue. For the year, Nvidia brought in 5.01 billion in revenue, a 7 percent increase from fiscal 2015, with earnings of 1.67 per share.

Scientists agree that machines will begin to think for themselves in the near future. What's not clear is how they'll feel about us when they do. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have recently seen computers beat humans at games like chess and pass IQ tests set for humans . And plenty of experts have cautioned against the rising intelligence of machines. Physics professor Stephen Hawking and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk are some of the names that have spoken about the dangers of robots turning on humanity.