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You wouldn't have GPS if it weren't for this algorithm

#artificialintelligence

Many of the inventors who fueled the digital revolution have become household names. Innovators such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg all contributed mightily to the technologies that have transformed our daily lives and society. If you're not an engineer, however, you have probably never heard of the brilliant inventor Rudolf Kálmán, a Budapest-born engineer and mathematician who died on July 2 in Gainesville, Florida, at age 86. His fundamental contribution, an algorithm called the Kalman filter, made possible many essential technological achievements of the last 50 years. These include aerospace systems such as the computers that landed Apollo astronauts on the moon, robotic vehicles that explore our world from the deep sea to the outer planets, and nearly any endeavor that needs to estimate the state of the world from noisy data. Someone once described the entire GPS system--an Earth-girdling constellation of satellites, ground stations, and computers as "one enormous Kalman filter."


The Artificial 'Artificial Intelligence' Bubble and the Future of Cybersecurity.

#artificialintelligence

I think the recent article in the New York Times about the boom in'artificial intelligence' in Silicon Valley made many people think hard about the future of cybersecurity – both the near and distant future. Sometimes when I hang around with A.I. enthusiasts here in the valley, I feel like an atheist at a convention of evangelicals. What's going on now in the field of'AI' resembles a soap bubble. And we all know what happens to soap bubbles eventually if they keep getting blown up by the circus clowns (no pun intended!): Now, of course, without bold steps and risky investments a fantastical future will never become a reality.


Hacking Mr. Robot, Week 9

Slate

In this episode of Hacking Mr. Robot, Fred and Lily discuss Episode 10. They're joined by special guest Richard Clarke, who served in a variety of roles as a top adviser to the White House on cybersecurity and counterterrorism.


OSIRIS-REx embarks on cosmic treasure hunt

Christian Science Monitor | Science

On the day that marked half a century since the first "Star Trek" episode aired on TV, a NASA space probe boldly took off toward an asteroid called Bennu on Thursday, to dig up and bring back some cosmic dust that could hold clues to the birth of our solar system. It's another example of NASA "turning science fiction into science fact," said NASA's chief scientist Ellen Stofan from the launch location in Cape Canaveral, Fla., where thousands had gathered for the sendoff. A robotic hunter that resembles a bird with solar-panel wings outstretched, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was launched into space before sunset atop an Atlas V rocket on Thursday. The SUV-sized robot is expected to travel for two years to reach its destination: a huge rock that's orbiting the sun at a slightly wider orbit than Earth. Bennu is about a third of a mile wide and taller than the Empire State Building.


Legendary physicist Freeman Dyson talks about math, nuclear rockets, and astounding things about the universe

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Mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson has had a career as varied as it has been successful. A former professor of physics at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, he has worked on the unification of the three versions of quantum electrodynamics invented by Richard Feynman, nuclear reactors, solid-state physics, ferromagnetism, astrophysics, biology, and the application of useful and elegant math problems. One of his ideas, the Dyson Sphere, was featured in a "Star Trek" episode. Today, Dyson frequently writes about science and technology's relationship to ethics and social issues. Business Insider sat down with him and talked about math, war, the human brain, the education system, and the Orion Project. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Elena Holodny: Who has most inspired you in either math or science? Dick Feynman ... he has now become famous, to my great joy, because when I knew him he was completely unknown. But I recognized him as being something special. He was only for a short time at Cornell when I was a student and he was a young professor. So I didn't work with him, but I just sat at his feet, literally, and listened to him talk. He was a clown, of course, and also a genius. It was a good combination.


Analytics Brief: Winning the cyber war with AI and cognitive computing

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Cyber criminals are quite adept at stealing data, money and privacy. No network is off limits as they exploit any point of weakness they find in businesses, homes, institutions, automobiles, utility networks and other portals. And their tactics evolve faster than security professionals can manage them. The question is, can we leverage technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive computing to win the war against cyber criminals? Cybersecurity experts shared their thoughts on this topic.


Donald Trump's emotional intelligence deficit

Al Jazeera

Last month, 50 former national security officials who had served at high levels in Republican administrations from Richard Nixon to George W Bush published a letter saying that they would not vote for their party's presidential nominee, Donald Trump. In their words, "a president must be disciplined, control emotions, and act only after reflection and careful deliberation". Simply put, "Trump lacks the temperament to be president". In the terminology of modern leadership theory, Trump is deficient in emotional intelligence - the self-mastery, discipline and empathic capacity that allows leaders to channel their personal passions and attract others. Contrary to the view that feelings interfere with thinking, emotional intelligence - which includes two major components, mastery of the self and outreach to others - suggests that the ability to understand and regulate emotions can make overall thinking more effective.


Nasa Osiris-Rex spacecraft sent to asteroid to try and stop humanity getting wiped out

The Independent - Tech

Nasa has sent a spacecraft chasing after an unexplored asteroid, in the hope that it might one day keep us from being destroyed. The Osiris-Rex robotic hunter has blasted off to the asteroid Bennu. When it gets there it will scoop up bits of ancient space rock – which could eventually tell us not just about where we came from but whether there is life elsewhere as well. But before it helps us find aliens, the craft might help us save ourselves. From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater.


DEAL FOR DELETING? Justice Department reportedly granted Clinton email scrubber immunity

FOX News

The Department of Justice reportedly gave immunity to a computer expert who deleted Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's emails during its investigation into her private email server despite being ordered by Congress to keep them. The New York Times reported Thursday that the Justice Department's immunity deal with Paul Combetta likely means that Republican lawmakers' calls for federal authorities to investigate his deletions will go unheard. The top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, had asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Clinton, her lawyers or Combetta obstructed justice when the emails were deleted in March 2015. The FBI said when Clinton's team called Platte River Networks – the Denver-based IT company where Combetta worked – in March 2015, Combetta said he realized he didn't follow a December 2014 directive from Clinton's lawyers to have the emails deleted. He then used BleachBit to delete the messages in the days after the meeting with her lawyers.


Why we may elect our new AI overlords – Pirate dot London

#artificialintelligence

Whilst I can't fully refute either scenario, I can speculate on the potential for near-future political applications of AI which have the potential to be both disruptive and unintuitively desirable. Automatic, near-instant, ubiquitous fact checking UK fact-checking organisation Full Fact recently released a report that covered the state of various fact checking technologies in use and in development. It covered areas like overall existing semantic data standards in use and their challenges, and trends seem to be that natural language and contextual language recognition is going from strength to strength. The techniques in play include quickly responding to previously debunked claims, data mining statistics on demand and drawing confidence-based correlations from less reliable but plentiful data like news and social media reports. The convergent goal of these various projects appears to be moving fact checking from a post-hoc arm-chair analyst world, to a force that for example, in the middle of a debate or news report, is avalible to instantly challenge, rate or question any given factual statement within seconds of it being said.