“For the past two years, I’ve worked as a machine learning design researcher. Machine learning is programming that learns from user inputs and adapts and improves over time. It’s my humble belief that machine learning and artificial intelligence is going to radically change product design.”
Read: Caroline Sinders on Ethical Product Design for Machine Learning
“Google is giving thousands of contractors who normally evaluate search results a new, additional task: help the company downrank blatantly upsetting, offensive, and false content. Search Engine Land has a thorough explainer on the updated guidelines used by Google’s quality raters.”
Read: Google is teaching search algorithms to better spot offensive, factually incorrect results
“Midnight, January 8, 2016. High above the snow-covered tundra of arctic Sweden, a Canadair CRJ-200 cargo jet made a beeline through the -76 degree air. Inside the cockpit, the pilot in command studied the approach information for Tromsø, Norway.”
“There’s a rising chorus of concern about how quickly robots are taking away human jobs. Jobs are vanishing much faster than anyone ever imagined.”
Read: A warning from Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking
“Google’s Jigsaw unit, as part of a larger effort to battle online trolling, said earlier today that it was releasing a new tool called Perspective, software that uses machine learning to detect harassment and abuse online.”
Read: Google just made its troll-detecting software available to developers
“Amazon has filed a motion to dismiss a search warrant for recordings from an Echo owned by a suspected murderer. Amazon argues that both its users’ requests to Alexa and the response the company produces are protected under the First Amendment.”
Read: Amazon says Alexa’s speech is protected by the First Amendment
“Before coming to the Media Lab, Buolamwini earned a BS in computer science as a Stamps President’s Scholar at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a master’s in learning and technology as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, England.”
Read: Media Lab student wins national award for fighting bias in machine learning – MIT Media Lab
“Today begins week three of the poker tournament between Libratus, an AI system built by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, and four of the world’s top pros. While the humans plan to soldier on, a gallows humor has taken hold.”
Read: The poker-playing AI is getting smarter and the humans are getting tired
“Facial recognition technology is known to struggle to recognize black faces. The underlying reason for this shortcoming runs deeper than you might expect, according to researchers at MIT.”
Read: Most engineers are white — and so are the faces they use to train software
“Police in Bentonville, Arkansas are turning to Amazon to help prosecute a suspected murderer. The case, which was first spotted by The Information and goes back to 2015, shines a light on how smart home devices might start playing a larger role in future criminal investigations.”
Read: Police want an Echo’s data to prove a murder case, but how much does it really know?