This Week's Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through April 16)

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Neural Networks: What Are They, and Why Is the Tech Industry Obsessed With Them? John Brownlee Fast Company "Combine them with conversational interfaces, and neural networks can make true artificial intelligence finally possible--a revolution that would have a knock-on effect in the way we pretty much do everything. Designers in the future won't just use neural networks; neural networks may very well be designers themselves." COMPUTING: Why a Chip That's Bad at Math Can Help Computers Tackle Harder Problems Tom Simonite MIT Technology Review "In a simulated test using software that tracks objects such as cars in video, Singular's approach was capable of processing frames almost 100 times faster than a conventional processor restricted to doing correct math--while using less than 2 percent as much power." CULTURE & TECHNOLOGY: How Early Computer Games Influenced Internet Culture Adrienne LaFrance The Atlantic "Games also shaped people's understanding of what computers are for--and what humankind's relationship with such machines could be like...Gaming is the first form of computational technology most of us ever handled…Games taught us principles of interaction and screen responsiveness, about coordination between hand and eye, how to type, how to sit, how to look at a screen."