If we want to understand an event in depth, from multiple perspectives, we need to aggregate multiple sources and understand the relations between them. However, current news aggregators do not offer this kind of functionality. As a step toward a solution, we propose DiversiNews, a real-time news aggregation and exploration platfom whose main feature is a novel set of controls that allow users to contrast reports of a selected event based on topical emphases, sentiment differences, and/or publisher geolocation. News events are presented in the form of a ranked list of articles pertaining to the event and an automatically generated summary. Both the ranking and the summary are interactive and respond in real time to user's change of controls.

AI technology was employed to present the right information efficiently to each reader and to reduce radically the workload of curators. The system went through three implementation cycles and processed more than 20 million news stories from about 12,000 Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds on more than 8000 topics organized by 160 curators for more than 600 registered readers. This article describes the approach, engineering, and AI technology of the system. It is hard to keep up on what matters. The limiting factor is not the amount of information available but our available attention (Simon 1971).

One of the world's most valuable start-ups got that way by using artificial intelligence to satisfy Chinese internet users' voracious appetite for news and entertainment. Every day, its smartphone app feeds 120 million people personalized streams of buzzy news stories, videos of dogs frolicking in snow, GIFs of traffic mishaps and listicles such as "The World's Ugliest Celebrities." Now the company is discovering the risks involved, under China's censorship regime, in giving the people exactly what they want. The makers of the popular news app Jinri Toutiao unveiled moves this week to allay rising concerns from the authorities. Last week, the Beijing bureau of China's top internet regulator accused Toutiao of "spreading pornographic and vulgar information" and "causing a negative impact on public opinion online," and it ordered that updates to several popular sections of the app be halted for 24 hours.

We give a brief outline of key issues and a summary of the various different approaches taken by participants in the research field. The outlook is optimistic: a lot has been achieved in 10 years. When heckled, professional comedians frequently lament that "everyone's a comedian!" It's easy to see why: professional comedians don't possess different kinds of brains from others or engage in radically different kinds of behaviors from others, and moreover, the success of their acts is predicated on others' shared ability to understand and reason about comic situations they describe. The difference between comedians and their audience is a matter not of kind, but of degree, a difference that is reflected in the vocational emphasis they place on humor.

That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There were things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth." I haven't even gotten my reading light adjusted, and already I am stuck in the conundrum that is present on every page of David Lodge's generous novel. More importantly, whom should I believe? Mark Twain" disguised as Huck?

"As if the debate over immigration and guest worker programs wasn't complicated enough, now a couple of robots are rolling into the middle of it. Vision Robotics, a San Diego company, is working on a pair of robots that would trundle through orchards plucking oranges, apples or other fruit from the trees. In a few years, troops of these machines could perform the tedious and labor-intensive task of fruit picking that currently employs thousands of migrant workers each season. The robotic work has been funded entirely by agricultural associations, and pushed forward by the uncertainty surrounding the migrant labor force. Farmers are'very, very nervous about the availability and cost of labor in the near future,' says Vision Robotics CEO Derek Morikawa."

"[iRobot Chairman Helen] Greiner believes the movie may influence a new generation to become interested in robotics much like the Star Wars movies influenced her. She said the R2D2 robot's humanlike characteristics in Star Wars had an impact on her when she saw the movie as a schoolgirl on Long Island. She went on to MIT where she earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science. 'It takes all three (disciplines) and they must all come together in robotics,' she said...." DARPA Tech Chief Envisions the Future --Sci-fi Inspires Brachman to Use Computers in Creative Ways. "Ron Brachman's curiosity about robots programmed to think on their own dates back to his childhood in New Jersey.

This book looks at some of the results of this synergy among AI, cognitive science, and education. Examples include virtual students whose misconceptions force students to reflect on their own knowledge, intelligent tutoring systems, and speech recognition technology that helps students learn to read. Some of the systems described are already used in classrooms and have been evaluated; a few are still laboratory efforts. The book also addresses cultural and political issues involved in the deployment of new educational technologies. ISBN 0-0-262-56141-7 To order call 800-405-1619.

In this article, we first survey the three major types of computer music systems based on AI techniques: (1) compositional, (2) improvisational, and (3) performance systems. Representative examples of each type are briefly described. Then, we look in more detail at the problem of endowing the resulting performances with the expressiveness that characterizes human-generated music. This is one of the most challenging aspects of computer music that has been addressed just recently. The main problem in modeling expressiveness is to grasp the performer's "touch," that is, the knowledge applied when performing a score.

Computer Corporatiorz of America, Technology Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 Abstract Tsukuba Expo '85 is huge, interesting, and fun. The Japanese pavilions are plush and well-organized, and contain some impressive artificial intelligence demonstrations. The U.S. pavilion is an embarrassment. Tsukuba Expo '85 opened on March 17,1985, to enormous publicity. The New York Times reported that "the budget for the fair is more than $2 billion, and individual companies have spent large sums.