A "lazy animator" has given a glimpse of what futuristic films might look like if artificial intelligence takes over the job of filmmaker. Digital animator Julius Horsthuis created a fantasy science fiction film using fractals--infinitely complex patterns that are created using an ongoing feedback loop. His latest short film Fraktaal used fractal patterns to automatically generate an alien civilization and landscape. The alien worlds generated by artificial intelligence are made using fractals. "I borrowed the aesthetic from science fiction films, and isolated that into something that I hope will stimulate the imagination into its own spacefaring journey," said Horsthuis.

Star Wars provides us with a perfect example of a science fiction floating city: Cloud City. Cloud City has an atypical backstory. Floating above the surface of the planet Bespin, the city was specifically designed to harvest tibanna gas rather than to house a displaced population. Tibanna gas is used in all kinds of technology in the Star Wars galaxy, including, but not limited to, blasters and repulsorlifts. Being one of the few sources of the gas, Cloud City enjoys financial success from its mining operations.

If you are a data scientist, a software developer, or in the social and human sciences with interest in digital humanities, then you're no stranger to the ongoing discussions on how algorithms embed biases, and discrimination and the call for critical and ethical engagement. I have keenly been following such discussion for a while and this post is an attempt to put together the articles, books, book reviews, videos, interviews, twitter threads and so on., that I've come across in one place so it can be used as a resource. This list is by no means exhaustive and as more and more awareness is being raised, there are more pieces/articles/journal papers being written on a daily basis. I plan to update these lists regularly. Also, if you think there are relevant material that I have not included, please leave them as a comment and I will add them.

THE set-up in an episode of the TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is nearly always the same. There is a body, some forensic evidence and one question: who did it? But the formula is gripping because the answer is rarely obvious. Cracking the case before the big reveal not only requires an ability to pay attention to the clues, but also to navigate plot twists and red herrings. It is even harder for a computer to solve.

Amazon's Echo, Plus and Dot speakers will finally be available in Japan starting next week. To prepare for the devices' arrival in the island nation, the e-retail giant taught the voice assistant how to understand and respond in the Japanese language. Alexa SVP Tom Taylor said the company designed an all-new experience "from the ground up for Japanese customers, including a new Japanese voice, local knowledge and over 250 skills from Japanese developers." Users in the country can issue typical Alexa voice commands in their native tongue. They can, say, listen to news from Japanese media companies like NHK, TBS TV, TV TOKYO, Asahi Newspaper and Mainichi Newspaper.

We are awash with text, from books, papers, blogs, tweets, news, and increasingly text from spoken utterances. Working with text is hard as it requires drawing upon knowledge from diverse domains such as linguistics, machine learning, statistical methods, and these days, deep learning. Deep learning methods are starting to out-compete the classical and statistical methods on some challenging natural language processing problems with singular and simpler models. In this crash course, you will discover how you can get started and confidently develop deep learning for natural language processing problems using Python in 7 days. This is a big and important post. You might want to bookmark it.

The Internet is dying from fake news and propaganda, who will save it? New types of data Cryptocurrenies on the Blockchain will be numbered in the thousands. By Nikhil Jain 4 years ago I was traveling on business when my wife called me. The failure of Microsoft's chatbot Tay proves that the danger of artificial intelligence lies in humanity, n… Your curated selection of the most recent startup industry news and trends is hot off the press! Artificial Intelligence has become an integral part of modern society.

Video games company Telltale Games has let go of 25 percent of its workforce. Still, the San Rafael, California-headquartered publisher maintains that the layoffs won't affect any of its previously announced projects. According to Telltale, the move to lay off 90 employees is part of its restructuring, which is expected to pave the way for the better. In doing so, the company believes that it will become "more competitive" in delivering "groundbreaking story-driven gaming experiences with an emphasis on high quality in the years ahead." The company is currently working on "Minecraft: Story Mode – Season Two," "Batman: The Enemy Within" and the upcoming "The Walking Dead Collection," which is scheduled for release early December. Telltale has just finished Episode 5 of its "Guardians of the Galaxy – The Telltale Series."

Sheep have been notoriously associated with the "herd mentality" insult. In fact, the Miriam-Webster dictionary, included into its list of recognized words this April, the word "sheeple," -- which is a derogatory term directed at "people who are docile, compliant, or easily influenced," or just plain simple-minded. But a major study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, has now debunked the stupidity that we have come to associate with sheep. Researchers from the University of Cambridge have trained sheep to identify the pictures of celebrities including Emma Watson, Jake Gyllenhaal, journalist Fiona Bruce and Barack Obama. The team was astonished to find that the animals are able to recognize familiar faces from just 2-D images.

As an entrepreneur and AI guru, Trevor O'Brien is deeply engrained in the digital start-up community. He is founder at the innovative design and prototyping studio, theexperiment.io, and has been crucial in a number of ground-breaking start-up initiatives, including thegrid.ai Throughout his career, Trevor has lead sprawling multidisciplinary teams, created award-winning digital campaigns, and proven that technology paves endless paths for communicating and doing business, through the success of his clients. We caught up with our latest scholar to find out more about his thoughts on the role of AI in our future – from minimizing food-waste, to terrible self-creating music! Julie Hough: Contagious are global supporters of brave creative thinking and innovation, especially in the face of daunting new technologies.