Hey, you know that I'm big supporter of women in tech. I'm actually partnering with Women Who Tech for the 4th Women Startup Challenge at Google and focused on women-led ventures in artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR). Note: if you haven't applied you have until December 12th to get your applications in. The winner will receive $50,000 as a cash grant, and $15,000 in probono legal services by global law firm Paul Hastings, LLP. All finalists will join join Samsung for a special startup showcase and reception featuring the 10 finalists.

New artificial intelligence software designed to spot new child sexual abuse media online could help police catch child abusers. The toolkit, described in a paper published in Digital Investigation, automatically detects new child sexual abuse photos and videos in online peer-to-peer networks. The research behind this technology was conducted in the international research project iCOP - Identifying and Catching Originators in P2P Networks - founded by the European Commission Safer Internet Program by researchers at Lancaster University, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), and University College Cork, Ireland. There are hundreds of searches for child abuse images every second worldwide, resulting in hundreds of thousands of child sexual abuse images and videos being shared every year. The people who produce child sexual abuse media are often abusers themselves - the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found that 16 percent of the people who possess such media had directly and physically abused children.

Uber released a new set of rules for passengers on Thursday, banning vandalism, "vomiting due to excessive alcohol consumption" and flirting. It is the first time Uber has published specific guidelines for passengers. The rules set out specific examples of unacceptable behaviour, and people flouting the rules could be permanently banned from the service. "Most riders show drivers the respect they deserve," the company said in a statement. "But some don't – whether it's leaving trash in the car, throwing up in the back seat after too much alcohol or asking a driver to break the speed limit so they can get to their appointment on time. Some of the guidelines relate to sexual misconduct. There have been a number of cases where Uber drivers have been accused of rape and sexual assault since its inception. While setting out rules for passenger-driver interactions, some of the guidelines appear to be aimed at people using UberPool – the money-saving service where separate passengers are collected and dropped off at different locations in the same car. "Don't touch or flirt with other people in the car," the rules state. Drivers are also banned from flirting. "As a reminder, Uber has a no sex rule.

The first AI World Conference and Expo, an event specializing in artificial intelligence, kicked off in San Francisco in early November. This niche conference included demonstrations of language mapping and image tagging technologies, natural language processing applications, and, of course, bots. Presentations and exhibits were not focused on the front-end applications such as speech recognition or connected devices that are typically discussed as part of enterprise communications. AI, the technology itself, is more about the back end. There is a tremendous synergy between artificial intelligence and speech recognition technology and the Internet of Things, but at AI World such subjects are viewed as the data collection endpoints.

Despite the best efforts of movies like Ex Machina, Morgan and Avengers: Age of Ultron, a new survey found that people from around the world largely see artificial intelligence having a more positive than negative impact on their lives and society in general. Communications firm Weber Shandwick has just published its "AI-Ready or Not: Artificial Intelligence Here We Come!" report, conducted with KRC Research, for marketers, surveying 2,100 consumers across five global markets on AI, its many uses, how they see it evolving, and how comfortable they are with that development. But don't go tearing up your plans for an unconnected cabin in the woods just yet, because even though consumer survey respondents were seven times more likely to see the sunny side of AI, a full one-third of respondents also admitted to knowing nothing about AI at all. The survey also interviewed 150 marketing executives (primarily CMOs) in the U.S., the U.K., and China responsible for the oversight and execution of marketing or branding activities at their organizations. On the consumer side, 77% of respondents would like AI's development to accelerate or remain at its current pace, two-thirds or more trust AI with handling medication reminders, travel directions, entertainment, targeted news, and manual labor and mechanics.

Most successful information extraction systems operate with access to a large collection of documents. In this work, we explore the task of acquiring and incorporating external evidence to improve extraction accuracy in domains where the amount of training data is scarce. This process entails issuing search queries, extraction from new sources and reconciliation of extracted values, which are repeated until sufficient evidence is collected. We approach the problem using a reinforcement learning framework where our model learns to select optimal actions based on contextual information. We employ a deep Qnetwork, trained to optimize a reward function that reflects extraction accuracy while penalizing extra effort. Our experiments on two databases – of shooting incidents, and food adulteration cases – demonstrate that our system significantly outperforms traditional extractors and a competitive meta-classifier baseline.

Gartner recently announced its top technology trends for 2017 – and for business leaders who are looking ahead, these trends provide a lens through which to view how the right technology tools and services can support growth. Some of the major trends for businesses include increased digital scope, efficiency through artificial intelligence, and a diminishing line separating the digital and physical world. Mid-sized businesses, particularly those within the legal field, are finding opportunities in technology to expand their offerings and increase revenue. Gartner emphasizes the importance of intelligent apps, which are helping workers across fields find the right data faster, become more efficient and increase productivity. An intelligent application is a software platform that uses artificial intelligence or machine learning to increase the productivity of its user.

If you asked the average person what they know about artificial intelligence (AI), they would probably launch into stories about intelligent computers taking over the world and rebellious robots running amok. While the misconception the movies have created may be wildly wide of the mark, AI is an area of technological development having a massive impact in all corners of our lives for generations to come. That's why Stanford University has launched a long-term project to study the impact of AI on society. A study that's not necessarily going to offer solutions, but will promote a dialogue about AI to guide us through the ethical, legal, and technological challenges machine intelligence might bring. I think that's a pretty cool undertaking.

For decades Hollywood has treated computers as magic boxes from which endless plot points could be conjured, in denial of all common sense. TV and movies depicted data centers accessible only through undersea intake valves, cryptography that can be cracked through a universal key, and e-mails whose text arrives one letter at a time, all in caps. "Hollywood hacker bullshit," as a character named Romero says in an early episode of Mr. Robot, now in its second season on the USA Network. "I've been in this game 27 years. Not once have I come across an animated singing virus."

The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the broad reach of insider trading laws, ruling that family and friends of corporate insiders can be prosecuted for profiting on secret stock tips even if they don't pay money or other compensation for the information. The unanimous decision affirmed the conviction of a Chicago man who made $1.5 million in stock profits by trading on confidential tips that originated from his brother-in-law, an investment banker in California. The justices rejected claims of defense lawyers who argued that there was no crime because no money exchanged hands between the insider and the stock trader. Instead, the court said exchanges within a family are like gifts and have value, even if no dollars are paid. The decision, the high court's first on insider trading in nearly two decades, is a major victory for federal prosecutors who have sought to bring insider-trading charges against a wider network of people who profit from confidential tips, including those who are not insiders themselves or have not paid to obtain the valuable information.