Metaheuristics have been developed to provide general purpose approaches for solving hard combinatorial problems. While these frameworks often serve as the starting point for the development of problem-specific search procedures, they very rarely work efficiently in their default state. We combine the ideas of reactive search, which adjusts key parameters during search, and algorithm configuration, which fine-tunes algorithm parameters for a given set of problem instances, for the automatic compilation of a portfolio of highly reactive dialectic search heuristics for MaxSAT. Even though the dialectic search metaheuristic knows nothing more about MaxSAT than how to evaluate the cost of a truth assignment, our automatically generated solver defines a new state of the art for random weighted partial MaxSAT instances. Moreover, when combined with an industrial MaxSAT solver, the self-assembled reactive portfolio was able to win four out of nine gold medals at the recent 2016 MaxSAT Evaluation on random, crafted, and industrial partial and weighted-partial MaxSAT instances.

Do you think you can tell a piece of music composed by artificial intelligence (AI) from one created by a human composer? Before you read any further, let's find out. The following audio consists of two fragments, one written by AI, the other by a human. TNW Conference won best European Event 2016 for our festival vibe. See what's in store for 2017.

Do you think you can tell a piece of music composed by artificial intelligence (AI) from one created by a human composer? Before you read any further, let's find out. The following audio consists of two fragments, one written by AI, the other by a human. Last year, Facebook's VP of Design thought the TNW Conference main stage was the best she'd ever been on. If you didn't get it right the first time, no worries--we'll have a couple more mini-quizzes like this below.

Five minutes prior to the start of a speed-dating program called "Drawn to You" at the El Segundo Museum of Art, organizer Chelsea Hogan confides that no men have RSVP'd. It is a January evening, Friday the 13th -- a nightmare dating scenario. Eight women mill about the museum lobby, carefully dressed and nervously snacking on a cheese and veggie platter laid out beside bottles of Champagne and wine. The clock ticks 10 minutes past 6:30 p.m. as the awkward truth of the situation dawns on the women. A few men walk past the picture window on Main Street, but none turns and enters.

This is the full interview that David Joyner, Course Developer at Udacity, has conducted with Rob High, IBM Fellow, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, IBM Watson. This is the full interview that David Joyner, Course Developer at Udacity, has conducted with Rob High, IBM Fellow, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, IBM Watson. Excerpts of this interview are included in https://www.udacity.com/course/... more

Politics Trump and Abe hit the fairways -- largely out of public view -- at a Trump golf club in Florida Post Politics John Wagner and Philip Rucker'Saturday Night Live' is the newest, hottest place to punk -- and persuade -- President Trump The Fix Callum Borchers Are the countries that Americans think are friendly to the U.S. actually friendly to the U.S.? The Monkey Cage Erik Voeten Of course Oregon hipsters are cultivating a craft cannabis industry GovBeat Kathryn Boyd-Batstone, News21 and Nick Swyter and News21 Are actions of a dozen officials in various agencies void because court says they are ineligible for office? The Federal Eye Joe Davidson Trump insists he can bring the cost of $21.6 billion border wall'way down' PowerPost Philip Rucker Opinions Local Sports National Republican green-card holder who voted illegally in Texas gets 8 years in prison Post Nation Amy B Wang Yale renames Calhoun College because of historic ties to white supremacy and slavery Grade Point Monica ...

Poll Do you support Trump Immigration Ban (Executive Order 13769 'Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States' aka'A Muslim Ban') Strongly support Somewhat support Not sure Somewhat against Strongly against Current Results Latest Poll Results: The Surprising Ethics of Humans and Self-Driving Cars The Most Popular Language For Machine Learning and Data Science Is... The 10 Algorithms Machine Learning Engineers Need to Know 5 Machine Learning Projects You Can No Longer Overlook, January Pandas Cheat Sheet: Data Science and Data Wrangling in Python 50 Data Science, Machine Learning Cheat Sheets, updated Big Data and the Internet of Things don't make business smarter, Analytics and Data Science do The Most Popular Language For Machine Learning and Data Science Is... Big Data and the Internet of Things don't make business smarter, Analytics and Data Science do The Most Popular Language For Machine Learning and Data Science Is... Big Data and the Internet of Things don't make business smarter, Analytics and Data Science do 6 areas of AI and Machine Learning to watch closely Deep Learning Research Review: Natural Language Processing Deep Learning Can be Applied to Natural Language Processing Exclusive: Interview with Jeremy Howard on Deep Learning, Kaggle, Data Science, and more The Most Popular Language For Machine Learning and Data Science Is... Big Data and the Internet of Things don't make business smarter, Analytics and Data Science do

Gordon Bell will never forget what I look like. He'll never forget what I sound like, either. Actually, he'll never forget a single detail about me. That's because when I first met the affable 72-year-old computer scientist at the offices of Microsoft Research Labs, in Redmond, Washington, he was carefully recording my every move. He had a tiny bug-eyed camera around his neck, and a small audio recorder at his elbow. As we chatted about various topics--Australian jazz musicians, his futuristic cell phone, the Seattle area's gorgeous weather--Bell's gear quietly logged my every gesture and all my blathering small talk, snapping a picture every 60 seconds. Back at his office, his computer had carefully archived every document related to me: all the email I'd sent him, copies of my articles he'd read, pages he'd surfed on my blog. "Oh, I've got everything," Bell said cheerily. And when I saw him the next day, down in his cramped personal office in San Francisco, he offered to give me a glimpse of the memories he'd collected. He plunked down in front of his computer, pulled up a browser, typed in "Clive Fast Company," and there they were: Hundreds of pictures of the meeting scrolled by on his screen, and the sound of our day-old conversation filled the room. It was a deeply strange feeling. My random chitchat is being preserved? He nodded, pointing to a mundane Dell computer parked beneath his desk. Because I'm not the only thing Gordon Bell will never forget. His goal is never to forget anything.

NEW YORK, June 6 Ray Bradbury, a giant of American literature who helped popularize science fiction with poetic, cerebral works such as "The Martian Chronicles," died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. Bradbury brought not only futuristic vision but literary sensibilities to his more than 500 works published including "Fahrenheit 451," a classic dystopian novel about book censorship in a future society, and other favorites such as "The Illustrated Man" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes." Bradbury died peacefully, last night, in Los Angeles, after a long illness," said a spokesman for his publisher, HarperCollins, on Wednesday. As a science fiction writer, Bradbury said he did not want to predict the future -- but sometimes wanted to prevent it. Such was the case with "Fahrenheit 451," a book published in 1953 about a totalitarian, anti-intellectual society where banned books are burned by "firemen." The title refers to the temperature at which paper ignites. The novel, which Bradbury wrote on a rented typewriter at the UCLA library, featured a world that might sound familiar to 21st century readers -- wall-sized interactive televisions, earpiece communication systems, omnipresent advertising and political correctness. "In science fiction, we dream," he told The New York Times. "In order to colonize in space, to rebuild our cities ... to tackle any number of problems, we must imagine the future, including the new technologies that are required ... "Science fiction is also a great way to pretend you are writing about the future when in reality you are attacking the recent past and the present."

Machine ethics offers an alternative solution for artificial intelligence (AI) safety governance. In order to mitigate risks in human-robot interactions, robots will have to comply with humanity's ethical and legal norms, once they've merged into our daily life with highly autonomous capability. In terms of technical challenges, there are still many open questions in machine ethics. For example, what is deontic logic and how can it be used for improving AI safety? How do we fashion the knowledge representation for ethical robots? These are all significant questions for us to investigate. In this interview, we invite Prof. Ronald C. Arkin to share his insights on robot ethics, with a focus on its technical aspects.