This Week's Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through September 17th)

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Video Games Are So Realistic That They Can Teach AI What the World Looks Like Jordan Pearson Motherboard "Games these days are so realistic, in fact, that artificial intelligence researchers are using them to teach computers how to recognize objects in real life. Not only that, but commercial video games could kick artificial intelligence research into high gear by dramatically lessening the time and money required to train AI." GENETICS: This New Gene Technology Could Wipe out Entire Species--to Save Others Chelsea Harvey The Washington Post "Scientists from around the world are currently gathered in Hawaii for an international conservation congress... One topic on the table is a form of genetic editing called'gene drive' technology, which can be used to alter--or even wipe out--entire species... Gene drives are a naturally occurring phenomenon--they're found in all kinds of species in nature. But it wasn't until recently, with the advent of new genetic engineering tools, that scientists realized they could be harnessed by humans." FUTURE OF LEARNING: Teaching Me Softly Alan S. Brown Nautilus "Vapnik is one of a growing body of artificial intelligence (AI) researchers discovering something that teachers have long known--or at least, believed--to be true: There is a special, valuable communication that occurs between teacher and student, which goes beyond what can be found in any textbook or raw data stream. By bringing the tools of computation and machine intuition to the table, AI researchers are giving us a more complete picture of how we learn."