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Exclusive: Lyft CEO Lays Out His Vision of the Driverless Future
Lyft, the nation's second-largest ride-hailing service, expects autonomous vehicles to account for a majority of its rides within five years, CEO John Zimmer told TIME in an exclusive interview. Days after its chief rival Uber's self-driving cars began ferrying passengers in Pittsburgh, Zimmer also said he expects car ownership will "all but end" in major U.S. cities in less than 10 years. "There are already specific trips--whether it's just on this street or just at this time in this perfect weather condition--that an autonomous vehicle could do today," Zimmer tells TIME. And he believes that this is how the self-driving revolution will come to the masses: not by consumers swapping out their old cars for fully autonomous personal vehicles but by consumers paying for rides in self-driving cars they don't own, with the type of trip restricted heavily at first and then growing more complicated as technology and regulations advance. That is also the logic on which his five-year prediction is built.
Yann LeCun Quora Session Overview
On Thursday July 28, 2016, Yann LeCun took part in a Quora Session, a Q&A session hosted by Quora roughly analogous to Reddit's AMA format. LeCun was posed numerous questions, and provided insightful answers to many. What follows are a few excerpts from the session, including questions posed and partial LeCun answers. What are some recent and potentially upcoming breakthroughs in deep learning? The most important one, in my opinion, is adversarial training (also called GAN for Generative Adversarial Networks).
Is it ok to speak ill of the dead?
To the editor: Ann Friedman's opinion piece touched home. While I didn't know it at the time, I was a second-wave feminist in 1962 attending Pasadena City College. When I learned I had to participate in the Rose Queen process as part of my physical education class, I adamantly refused. My instructor was stunned; I had to write an essay about sports instead, which I was happy to do. I'd never heard the word feminism at that point, but my goodness, when Phyllis Schlafly started her campaign to keep women at home, I was outraged.
@Future Leaders: Get ready for artificial intelligence! Today!
Every organization becomes involved in the transition to the new cognitive computing technology epoch soon. This begs the question: "Does artificial intelligence need leadership?" We talked about future challenges in leadership and business with Udo Hornfeck, Vice President at LEONI, a tier-1-supplier in the automotive industry with approximately 70.000 employees worldwide and located in Kitzingen, Germany. Mr Hornfeck leads the Global Research & Development departments. Mark McGregor Leadership Center: Mr Hornfeck, how do you define leadership?
Tech billionaire Mike Lynch: 'You're seeing the beginning of a new age'
This Wednesday, the tech billionaire investor announced an investment in Luminance, a newly launched startup that uses artificial technology to read contracts in order help law firms with the arduous process of due diligence for mergers and acquisitions (M&A). It's not a "sexy" piece of technology, Lynch argues -- but one that has huge implications for the way we live our lives, and is indicative of a quiet revolution in artificial intelligence. What this is is probably an example of what's going to be changing a lot of things. If you can get machine technology to be reading contracts, it's going to be changing a lot of the world around us ... you're seeing the beginning of a new age." He has since founded venture capital firm Invoke Capital -- the vehicle through which the investment in Luminance was made. This week, Business Insider sat down with the investor to discuss Luminance, Brexit, his augmented reality plans, and why he likes having an "unfair advantage." Mike Lynch is an investor in Luminance -- but was also instrumental in helping create it. "The bit that makes it possible is the machine learning, and that was being done by some research people at Cambridge, and I actually have a connection because my PhD a long, long time ago was in machine learning," Lynch said. "I was introduced to them, and what they were doing looked great, but I said to them'look, you gotta go and meet some real world people.' "So they started getting real data and they met up with [law firm] Slaughter and May, and basically the machine learnt from Slaughter and May how to do these thing and at that point they made a little company. They got a CEO who is a lady who'd actually been involved in a lot of M&A deals over their career and we funded it, and it's been developing the product, and today it comes out into the bright lights of day."
Donald Trump again suggests Clinton's Secret Service bodyguards disarm: 'Let's see what happens'
Donald Trump invoked the possibility of a violent assault on Hillary Clinton once again on Saturday, a day after he suggested that her Secret Service bodyguards disarm and "let's see what happens." In a post Saturday morning on Twitter, Trump falsely accused Clinton of trying to take away Americans' 2nd Amendment rights, just as he did Friday night at a Miami rally where he said her Secret Service agents should "drop all weapons." "Will guns be taken from her heavily armed Secret Service detail? Trump said Friday night that Clinton's Secret Service detail should disarm because she supports gun control. "What do you think, yes?" he asked the crowd. Let's see what happens to her. Take their guns away, OK? It would be very dangerous."
Trump again suggests Clinton's Secret Service bodyguards disarm: 'Let's see what happens'
Donald Trump invoked the possibility of a violent assault on Hillary Clinton once again on Saturday, a day after he suggested that her Secret Service bodyguards disarm and "let's see what happens." In a post Saturday morning on Twitter, Trump falsely accused Clinton of trying to take away Americans' 2nd Amendment rights, just as he did Friday night at a Miami rally where he said her Secret Service agents should "drop all weapons." "Will guns be taken from her heavily armed Secret Service detail? Trump said Friday night that Clinton's Secret Service detail should disarm because she supports gun control. "What do you think, yes?" he asked the crowd. Let's see what happens to her. Take their guns away, OK? It would be very dangerous."
Our Inevitable Future: A Conversation With Kevin Kelly About VR, Digital Socialism, And His New Book
If you're a virtual reality enthusiast, you probably read Kevin Kelly's April Wired cover story on Magic Leap, "The World's Most Secretive Startup." Kelly is one of the few people who've seen the much-hyped mixed reality technology being produced by the Fort Lauderdale company and was suitably impressed by it. "While Magic Leap has yet to achieve the immersion of The Void," he wrote (referring to the Utah-based immersive experience company), "it is still, by far, the most impressive on the visual front -- the best at creating the illusion that virtual objects truly exist." As the co-founder of Wired, publisher of the Cool Tools website, and former publisher and editor of The Whole Earth Review, Kelly has always been prescient about these things. In his new book, The Inevitable: Understanding 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, he compellingly outlines a set of behaviors and trends that will change the way we live. We recently spoke with Kelly about the themes of the book, and of course, the latest developments in VR. There Is Only R: The first question I have to ask: what do you think of the Pokemon Go phenomenon? Given what you've written about the VR and AR, what's your take on it? Kevin Kelly: I think it's just wonderfully thrilling to see -- I think perhaps the only unexpected thing about it is its apparent suddenness.
Gabriele Amorth, prominent Roman Catholic exorcist, dies at 91
Father Gabriele Amorth, a prominent Roman Catholic exorcist, has died after a long illness, an Italian care facility said Saturday. Santa Lucia Foundation, a Rome rehabilitation center, said Saturday that Amorth died a day earlier in another Rome hospital, where he was recently transferred after his health worsened. Foundation officials said he had suffered from various respiratory and circulatory problems. Exorcism in the Catholic Church received more attention after Pope John Paul II repeatedly sought to convince skeptics the devil was very much active in the world. During his papacy, the Vatican issued guidelines for driving out devils and stressed the power of evil.
Racing family stunned after 'Baja' Bob Gordon and his wife are found dead in apparent murder-suicide
Ryan Hunter-Reay said this week has brought a full range of emotions, with the birth of his third son coming only hours before he learned that his father-in-law was dead in an apparent murder-suicide. The former Indianapolis 500 winner is married to Beccy Gordon, and the couple welcomed son Rhodes Maverick Hunter-Reay on Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Not long afterward, they were informed that her father, former racer "Baja" Bob Gordon, had been found dead alongside his wife in their Orange home. Police said Bob Gordon died of a gunshot wound and Sharon Gordon was strangled. Hunter-Reay said the Gordon family wanted him to proceed to Sonoma Raceway in Northern California, where IndyCar concludes its season Sunday.