The task of image captioning aims to generate captions directly from images via the automatically learned cross-modal generator. To build a well-performing generator, existing approaches usually need a large number of described images, which requires a huge effects on manual labeling. However, in real-world applications, a more general scenario is that we only have limited amount of described images and a large number of undescribed images. Therefore, a resulting challenge is how to effectively combine the undescribed images into the learning of cross-modal generator. To solve this problem, we propose a novel image captioning method by exploiting the Cross-modal Prediction and Relation Consistency (CPRC), which aims to utilize the raw image input to constrain the generated sentence in the commonly semantic space. In detail, considering that the heterogeneous gap between modalities always leads to the supervision difficulty of using the global embedding directly, CPRC turns to transform both the raw image and corresponding generated sentence into the shared semantic space, and measure the generated sentence from two aspects: 1) Prediction consistency. CPRC utilizes the prediction of raw image as soft label to distill useful supervision for the generated sentence, rather than employing the traditional pseudo labeling; 2) Relation consistency. CPRC develops a novel relation consistency between augmented images and corresponding generated sentences to retain the important relational knowledge. In result, CPRC supervises the generated sentence from both the informativeness and representativeness perspectives, and can reasonably use the undescribed images to learn a more effective generator under the semi-supervised scenario.

As exciting as all this might seem, this decision seems to be more of an aberration than the rule. Before it was finally granted a patent in South Africa, the DABUS application had been rejected by patent offices in the US, Europe and the UK. The European Patent Office (EPO), justifying its decision to reject the patent application, pointed out that the law designates a natural person as the inventor of a work in order to preserve her moral right over the invention as well as to secure for her the economic rights made available by the patent. In order to be entitled to these benefits, an inventor needs to have actually "performed the creative act of invention". While artificial intelligence algorithms today are capable of perform complex computational functions that are often way beyond the capability of humans, the EPO pointed out that in all these instances, the programs are doing little more than just following the broad instructions of the humans who designed them.

As scientists laid the foundations of artificial intelligence, Pamela McCorduck was there. McCorduck, an author who wrote some of the first novels and histories about AI and was a generous friend of CMU, died Oct. 18. McCorduck described herself as an eyewitness to the birth and growth of AI. She was possibly best known for her 1979 book, "Machines Who Think," which chronicles the history of AI from the dreams and nightmares of ancient poets and prophets to the scientific discoveries of the 20th century. The novel contains the famous quote, "Artificial intelligence began with the ancient wish to forge the gods."

At a recent conference on the challenges of artificial intelligence, Christof Koch made clear in his remarks that the stakes were high: "By mid-century, humanity will be surrounded by ubiquitous, flexible, highly intelligent autonomous agents, and this will profoundly affect our future--including whether we have any." Dr. Koch--who is the chief scientist of the Mindscope Program at the Allen Institute for brain science in Seattle--was speaking to a group of roughly a hundred academics, diplomats and journalists. The conference was hosted by the Vatican at the Cancelleria, a 15th-century Renaissance palace in Rome, and centered around the theme of "the challenge of artificial intelligence for human society and the idea of the human person." This was the second event at the Vatican to focus on artificial intelligence, commonly abbreviated as A.I. Just before Italy entered into a nationwide lockdown last year, the Pontifical Academy for Life held a workshop on A.I. in February 2020. This workshop ultimately produced a "Call for AI Ethics," which was signed by Microsoft, IBM, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and the Italian government, in addition to the Academy.

I don't know much about whales. I have never seen a whale in my life,

In the coming years, mobility solutions--or how we get from point A to point B--will bridge the gap between ground and air transportation--yes, that means flying cars. Technological advancements are transforming mobility for people and, leading to unprecedented change. Nand Kochhar, vice president of automotive and transportation for Siemens Software says this transformation extends beyond transportation to society in general. "The future of mobility is going to be multimodal to meet consumer demands, to offer a holistic experience in a frictionless way, which offers comfort, convenience, and safety to the end consumer." Thinking about transportation differently is part of a bigger trend, Kochhar notes: "Look at few other trends like sustainability and emissions, which are not just a challenge for the automotive industry but to society as a whole." The advances in technology will have benefits beyond shipping and commute improvements--these technological advancements, Kochhar argues, are poised to drive an infrastructure paradigm shift that will bring newfound autonomy to those who, today, aren't able to get around by themselves. Kochhar explains, "Just imagine people in our own families who are in that stage where they're not able to drive today. Now, you're able to provide them freedom." Laurel Ruma: From Technology Review, I'm Laurel Ruma, and this is Business Lab, the show that helps business leaders make sense of new technologies coming out of the lab and into the marketplace. Our topic today is the future of mobility. In 2011, Marc Andreessen famously said, "Software is eating the world."

Hearing "No" at a job interview can be quite a demotivating experience. Applying for a data science job involves a lot of stages, while the interview stage can be crucial to gauge if an applicant will fit the job role and the company culture. Often, applicants get rejected for mistakes they commit that can easily be avoided. There is a huge hype around using words like deep learning, machine learning, and neural networks in a CV while applying for data science roles. An applicant should mention such skills in their CVs or during the interview only if one has worked on real-life projects previously in a job or internship.

Adobe is one of those companies that I don't think we pay enough attention to -- it's been around since 1982, and the entire creative economy runs through its software. You don't just edit a photo, you Photoshop it. Premiere Pro and After Effects are industry-standard video production tools. Pro photographers all depend on Lightroom. We spend a lot of time on Decoder talking about the creator economy, but creators themselves spend all their time working in Adobe's tools. Adobe is in the middle of announcing new features for all those tools this week -- at its annual conference, Adobe Max. On this episode, I'm talking to Scott Belsky, chief product officer at Adobe, about the new features coming to Adobe's products, many of which focus on collaboration, and about creativity broadly -- who gets to be a creative, where they might work, and how they get paid. Scott is a big proponent of NFTs -- non-fungible tokens. You've probably heard about NFTs, but the quick version is that they allow people to buy and sell digital artwork and keep records of that ownership in a public blockchain. The idea is to create scarcity for digital goods, just like physical products -- to definitively say you own a digital piece of art, just like you own a physical piece of art. Of course, the internet is a giant copy machine, so it's a little more complicated than that -- but a lot of people, including Scott, think it's a revolution. In fact, Photoshop itself will be able to prepare an image to be an NFT very soon. I'm a little more skeptical -- so we got into it. Scott and I talk about all that. And we squeezed it into just about an hour. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. It's been a while since we've talked, I've always enjoyed our conversations. We have a lot to talk about. This episode of the podcast is coming out alongside Adobe Max, your big conference, and you're announcing a ton of new products there, including big features for Creative Cloud on the web. You're very bullish on NFTs, which I really want to talk to you about, and I have some big questions about the future of computing. I was looking at these topics and I was like, "Man, I need like two hours." But we're going to try to get it all in. Let's do it, a power hour. But I want to start with what I have come to think of as the Decoder questions; the basics of how Adobe as a company works. I think Adobe, as a company, we take for granted in the best way. The products are ubiquitous, they're famous, entire industries depend on them. But I feel like it's a company we don't know a lot about.

With ODSC West 2021 just around the corner, we couldn't be more excited to announce our lineup of keynote and featured speakers. Collectively these speakers have founded companies, won numerous awards, and published hundreds of articles. Before becoming a Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, Carlos Guestrin's roles included the Amazon Professor of Machine Learning at the Computer Science & Engineering Department of the University of Washington, the Finmeccanica Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and the Senior Director of Machine Learning and AI at Apple. He is also the co-founder of Turi, Inc, which developed a platform for developers and data scientists to build and deploy intelligent applications. Lama Nachman's research at Intel Labs is focused on creating contextually aware experiences that understand users through sensing and sense-making, anticipate their needs, and act on their behalf.

Recruiters nowadays are checking your online presence before contacting you about an interview. They will look for your LinkedIn profile, GitHub, and Kaggle to figure out what value you will bring to their company. The hiring manager will also look for the latest blogs or projects you have worked on in the past to prepare interview questions so that they can test your intelligence (catherinescareercorner). Other than that, working on real-world projects will give you the required experience for the job, and with a few projects in your portfolio, you will make a good impression on the recruiter (data-flair). We will be learning new ways to crack your interviews and how creating a strong portfolio has helped me aced multiple interviews.