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Team uses artificial intelligence to crowdsource interactive fiction

#artificialintelligence

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a new artificially intelligent system that crowdsources plots for interactive stories, which are popular in video games and let players choose different branching story options. With potentially limitless crowdsourced plot points, the system could allow for more creative stories and an easier method for interactive narrative generation. Current AI models for games have a limited number of scenarios, no matter what a player chooses. They depend on a dataset already programmed into a model by experts. Using the Georgia Tech approach, one might imagine a Star Wars game using online fan fiction to let the AI system generate countless paths for a player to take.


Cognex (CGNX) Robert J. Willett on Q1 2016 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

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Currently at this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct the question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. Also, as a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host to Richard Morin. Thank you, and good evening, everyone. Earlier today, we issued a news release announcing Cognex's earnings for the first quarter of 2016, and we've also filed our quarterly report on Form 10-Q. For those of you who have not yet seen these materials, both are available on our website at www.cognex.com. They contain highly detailed information about our financial results. During tonight's call, we may use a non-GAAP financial measure, if we believe it is useful to investors, or if we believe it will help investors better understand our results or business trends. For your reference, you can see a reconciliation of certain items from GAAP to non-GAAP in Exhibit 2 of the earnings release. I'd like to emphasize that any forward-looking statements we made in the earnings release or any that we may make during this call are based upon information that we believe to be true as of today. Things often change and actual results may differ materially from those projected or anticipated. You should refer to the company's SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10-K, for a detailed list of these risk factors. Now, I'll turn the call over to Cognex's Chairman, Dr. Bob Shillman.


Flipagram, Stance socks, Honor and Headspace are among the week's L.A. tech highlights

Los Angeles Times

With venture capitalists more guarded about where to put their cash amid a global economic slowdown, many technology start-ups are having to shed costs and generate profits sooner than expected. "If you want to become profitable at all costs, you're leaving users and growth on the table," said Farhad Mohit, chief executive of the image-sharing app. His Los Angeles company raised 70 million from investors about a year ago, a big haul that's still fueling the business today. The app enables people to create a slideshow from photos and videos, place samples of popular music in the background, add effects and share it with friends. Flipagram can get a small cut of sales if users buy a full song.


AI-powered drone to click photos, make videos

#artificialintelligence

If you love aerial photography and videography, here comes an artificial-intelligence (AI)-powered drone that can take 13MP photos and make 4K video. A Beijing-based startup Zero Zero Robotics has developed a protoype of "Hover Camera" with 32GB storage. SEE ALSO: 7 affordable gadgets to make your home the best party place! You just need to simply toss the 238-gram "Hover Camera" into the air and it starts flying. Using AI-face tracking, it automatically locks onto a face and body for a perfect selfie.


This documentarian is fighting back against gay culture's 'No Fats, No Femmes' mantra

Los Angeles Times

Nobody wants to be fat and men don't often want to be seen as effeminate, but for those in the gay community who live at the intersection of such identities, life can be like the worst case of double jeopardy. For Jamal Lewis however, who is also black and gender deviant, being fat and effeminate is a source of power, and a subject worthy of exploration in a documentary titled "No Fats, No Femmes." "For me, I'm just interested in the spaces that people are afraid to occupy," said Lewis, who uses "he-she" as a gender pronoun. "I think there is something to be learned from what we are most afraid of and so, if that's what I was taught to be afraid of, well [forget] that. I am the Fat Femme." Jamal Lewis, director of "No Fats, No Femmes," poses for a portrait on Third Street and Broadway in Los Angeles, Calif.


'No Fats, No Femmes' documentary to explore the 'politics of desirability'

Los Angeles Times

Being overweight carries with it a social stigma, as does being a man who embraces the feminine, but for those in the gay community who live at the intersection of such identities, life can be like the worst case of double jeopardy. To Jamal Lewis, however, who is also black and who identifies as "gender deviant," being fat and effeminate is a source of power and a subject worthy of exploration in a documentary titled "No Fats, No Femmes." "For me, I'm just interested in the spaces that people are afraid to occupy," said Lewis, who uses "he-she" as a gender pronoun. "I think there is something to be learned from what we are most afraid of, and so, if that's what I was taught to be afraid of, well [forget] that. I am the Fat Femme."


Fearless Frenchman breaks hoverboard record, sets sights on the clouds

Christian Science Monitor | Science

A fearless Frenchman, Franky Zapata, thinks one day people will be able to ride his hoverboard to pick up bread in the morning (it's a French thing). The jet ski champion on Saturday set a new Guinness World Record for the farthest hoverboard flight – yes, just like in the movies – off the coast of Sausset-les-Pins in the south of France. Mr. Zapata rode the 1,000 horsepower drone, standing on top of it, for 7,388 feet, or more than a mile. He hovered 165 feet above the surface of the water, "trailed by a fleet of boats and jet skis," as Guinness reports. His feat shattered the previous hoverboard travel record of 905 feet and 2 inches, set last year by Canadian inventor Catalin Alexandru Duru.


The web boss who went from rugs to riches

BBC News

When teenage carpet salesman Lee Biggins decided to set up a jobseekers website, he wasn't going to let the fact he didn't have any computer skills hold him back. This was back in 1999, and the then 19-year-old had big ambitions for his business idea. So he went out and spent 899 on a computer, and an internet how-to book. Mr Biggins, who had left school at 15 "with some terrible grades - Es, Fs, and Gs", also enrolled on a computer literacy course in his hometown of Fleet, in Hampshire, 45 miles south west of London. But realising he could still do with some technical assistance, he says he went down his local pub one evening, and asked everyone: "Does anyone know someone who can build a website?"


Planet Mu's Newest Star Makes Club Music Imagined by Artificial Intelligence Thump

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Antwood is the alias of Tristan Douglas, a producer, microbiologist, and all-around deep thinker hailing from Nanaimo, British Columbia. Some might remember his EP Work Focus from last year, an under-the-radar gem put out by net label B.YRSLF Division. It's a slice of footwork that's been pummeled and fractured into something that's neither here nor there, which is probably why it grabbed the attention of Planet Mu boss Mike Paradinas. Around that time, Douglas was still recording under the name Margaret Antwood, an admittedly lazy spoonerism on internationally-celebrated poet and novelist Margaret Atwood. "I thought it'd be funny to take some figure that's barely known in the public consciousness and do like a really crappy pun of her name," he says.


Future A.I. Will Be Able to Generate Photos We Need Out of Nothing

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What will we do with all the data we accumulate from photos? On a daily basis, Internet juggernauts like Google, Yahoo, Facebook or Microsoft use highly sophisticated deep learning engines to better understand the content of billions of images uploaded, liked and shared. For now, it is to better serve advertising, but what else can be done? For one, we could generate custom-made photos. Automated photo generating A.I. using all the knowledge acquired about photography -- including which image types helps sell more products, which dominant colors appeal to viewers, and which composition is the most effective -- would build a perfect photo according to your needs.