When you ask Siri what she thinks of Microsoft’s personal assistant Cortana, her answers range from “I really have no opinion” to “I’d rather not say.” To any unsuspecting human, those might seem like reasonable answers, but in a girl’s world, the world of passive aggression, those are some fighting words. And that might only … continue reading
Oct. 21, 1985. That was the year young Marty McFly hopped into a DeLorean equipped for time travel to save his future family on the same date 30 years later. That date—Oct. 21, 2015—was a couple of weeks ago. McFly encountered such things videogames played without controllers, drones and biometric identification (all of which we … continue reading
Last time, I wrote of my conversation with Grady Booch, a legendary thinker who first made his mark in the mid-1990s (as co-inventor of the Unified Modeling Language and contributor to the Rational Unified Process). He continues to be on the cutting edge of development in his role as IBM Fellow. He spoke of a … continue reading
Android 6.0 Marshmallow is publicly available to users, and Android’s developers have been adding new features for developers along the way. This week, they are releasing Asymmetric Fingerprint Dialog, a new sample demonstrating how to securely integrate with compatible fingerprint readers in a client/server environment, according to its blog. The Android Fingerprint API protects users’ … continue reading
A new artificial intelligence system is using new methods to tackle chess. About 20 years ago, IBM’s Deep Blue chess-playing supercomputer was used to beat reigning world champion Garry Kasparov. At the time, IBM’s supercomputer was using brute force to play against its human opponents. Today, the MIT Technology Review reported that Matthew Lai, a … continue reading
Google wants to help developers build better apps with the introduction of new runtime permissions. The new permissions will be replacing the existing install-time permissions model in the company’s upcoming operating system, Android 6.0 Marshmallow. “Runtime permissions give your app the ability to control when and with what context you’ll ask for permissions,” wrote Ian … continue reading
The Future of Life Institute is continuing its quest to save the human race from artificial intelligence. In an open letter published by the organization, top leaders are teaming up to ask for a ban on autonomous weapons. The letter already has hundreds of signatures, including prominent names such as Steven Hawking, Elon Musk, Steve … continue reading
Accenture is teaming up with Worksoft to provide artificial intelligence automation capabilities to its application development and testing solutions. Through the alliance, Accenture will be able to take advantage of Worksoft Certify, a service that eliminates manual quality assurance steps, and Worksoft Analyze, a solution that uses artificial intelligence to automate business process discovery. “IT … continue reading
Those who fear our world being overturned by computers once artificial intelligence reaches its full potential are out of their minds, according to Linus Torvalds, founder of Linux. “The whole ‘singularity’ kind of event? Yeah, it’s science fiction, and not very good sci-fi at that, in my opinion. Unending exponential growth? What drugs are those people on? … continue reading
A researcher from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has developed a new artificial intelligent user interface designed to simplify the detection and analysis of images. While computer vision technology for images has been popping up more recently, this new UI allows users to visualize, navigate and manipulate visual media. The system was created … continue reading
IBM is introducing new cognitive services for IBM Watson. The company announced IBM Watson Language Translation, IBM Speech to Text and IBM Text to Speech. “These cognitive speech and language services are open to anyone, enabling application developers and IBM’s growing ecosystem to develop and commercialize new cognitive computing solutions,” Jerome Pesenti, VP of Watson … continue reading
The Future of Life Institute’s (FLI) mission is to protect mankind from artificial intelligence, and it is recruiting research teams to do so. The Elon Musk-backed program announced it has chosen 37 research teams worldwide to investigate the possible advantages and disadvantages of AI. The 37 teams will be awarded about US$7 million from Musk … continue reading
