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UPS testing drones for use in its package delivery system

U.S. News

Newly revised federal aviation regulations don't permit commercial drones to fly over people not involved in their operations and require them to remain within line of sight of their operators, effectively rendering commercial deliveries impossible. Drone-makers are working with regulators to tweak existing rules.


Find porn stars who look like people you know using facial recognition The Memo

#artificialintelligence

Porn companies have long been early adopters of new technology; embracing videos, DVDs, internet streaming and live web chat when these mediums were in their infancy. Now, they're using facial recognition technology to create even more'personalised' experiences, but not everyone will be happy. You can now use AI to find porn stars who look like people you know. This week Megacams, a free cam site, released a new feature on it's live sex search engine called'facial recognition'. This means visitors are able to upload an image of any celebrity, or a person they know, and find a supposedly'doppelganger' performer.


Elon Musk tells us about his predictions for the future of AI

#artificialintelligence

Let's be honest, stupid humans are too smart sometimes for their own good and Skynet is going to happen, at least that's what Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk think, but what do they know? In 2014, Stephen Hawking wrote: "Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history, – Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks. In the near term, world militaries are considering autonomous-weapon systems that can choose and eliminate targets." In a separate interview in the same year, he warned: "humans, limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and would be superseded by A.I." In a Reddit Q&A Session in January 2015 Gates said: "I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned."


'Mr. Robot' Creator Sam Esmail Confirms 'Tyrell Loves Elliot,' Teases Season 3 Details

International Business Times

Robot" Season 2 finally gave fans the answer they have been waiting for: Tyrell (Martin Wallstrom) is alive. He has been hiding all this time while working with Elliot (Rami Malek) and the Dark Army to prepare for Stage Two of their plan to take down E Corp. The relationship between Tyrell and Elliot, as revealed in the finale of the second season, has grown deeper despite Elliot not remembering anything. It came as a surprise then that Tyrell would shoot Elliot because he got in the way of their plan. The former E Corp executive also told Angela (Portia Doubleday), whom he called after what happened, that he loves Elliot. The connection seems a bit confusing, but series creator Sam Esmail assures fans that it's real. Speaking to Variety, the writer-director confirmed: "Tyrell loves Elliot." Esmail also said that they had set up the special connection between the two the moment the characters were introduced to each other. "When he shot him, he was literally in tears," Esmail added. "That conversation when he tells Angela that he loves him, it's true.


Mark Cuban: Why they fail

FOX News

When Mark Cuban returns for the eighth season of "Shark Tank" on Friday night, he will be looking for new businesses and products in which to invest his billions of dollars. But he doesn't go after every deal he's pitched -- even if he thinks it's a good idea. He says he knows what he's good at, and he sticks to that. "The idea is the easy part," says Cuban, who joined ABC's "Shark Tank" in its second season as a guest "Shark" and became a series regular in Season 3. "We've all had ideas; everybody you know has had an idea. They get all excited about it. They think that nobody's ever done it because it's not on Google. Then rather than saying, 'Okay, let me see if I can sell any,' they think, 'Okay, can I raise money?'"


'Seven Samurai' is the film gift that keeps on giving

Los Angeles Times

The plot of director Akira Kurosawa's 1954 classic, "Seven Samurai," can be summed up in one sentence: Mercenaries are hired to protect a farming village from marauding bandits. Yet within that simple framework is a rich tale involving self-sacrifice, honor, male bonding and sympathy for the underdog. And that's why Kurosawa's masterpiece continues to inspire filmmakers and other artists. "It's classic mythology, it's the hero's journey, and it's about the best of us coming together for one cause, to do the right thing," says Antoine Fuqua, director of the recently opened "The Magnificent Seven," the latest screen version of the "Samurai" tale. Fuqua's film stars Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt as gunmen leading a gang of mercenaries -- a multiracial group that includes a Mexican, Asian and Native American -- against a rapacious mine owner (Peter Sarsgaard) terrorizing a Western town.


Adding Art to STEM

Communications of the ACM

I grew up an artsy nerdy kid, singing in choir, playing in band, as comfortable with a soldering iron, with fixing or hacking an old radio or electronic organ, as with chord progressions or improvising harmonies on the fly. In high school, I sang in every choir, played in every band, and did theater and speech. I also kept a keen and interested eye toward technology, especially music technology. My original goal in going to conservatory in 1973 was to become a band/choir teacher, double-majoring in trombone and voice, with education and techniques courses for choir and band certification. But something fateful happened; I discovered my music school had an electronic music and recording studio.



4 Examples of AI's Rise in Journalism (And What it Means for Journalists) - MediaShift

#artificialintelligence

The rise of artificial intelligence and automation in journalism has been front and center in the news lately, from Narrative Science co-founder Kris Hammond's prediction that "a machine will win a Pulitzer one day" to Facebook's decision to automate its Trending Topics feed. Algorithms seem certain to play a growing role in the production and curation of news, but it remains unclear what exactly this trend will mean for journalism -- or for the human journalists who currently produce it. Celebrants argue that algorithms will simply take over journalism's most menial tasks, freeing up human journalists to tackle more advanced work. Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, for example, called automation "crucial to the future of journalism," and New York magazine writer Kevin Roose described the introduction of automated reporting as "the best thing to happen to journalists in a long time." However, skeptics fear that robots may end up replacing journalists instead of helping them.


A.I. Doesn't Get Black Twitter

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Approximately 8 of the 319 million people in the United States read the Wall Street Journal, good for 2 percent of the population. If you look at the language -- standardized English -- being fed into many natural language processing units, it's based on the language of that 2 percent. And many machines literally use the venerable, business-focused newspaper to better understand English language. It might seem like an obvious choice. Standardized English is taught in schools, it's used in legal documents, and it sets the basis for formal society.