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BP oil spill funds used for turtle friendly beach lights – Pensacola News Journal

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

Melissa Nelson Gabriel , mnelsongab@pnj.com Published 3:08 p.m. CT Feb. 6, 2017 | Updated 7 hours ago

File image of baby sea turtles hatching.(Photo: Special to the Pensacola News Journal)Buy Photo

An environmental group is workingto bring turtle-friendly lighting to Panhandle beaches using millions of dollars in restitution money paid by oil giant BP in the aftermath of the 2010 Gulf Coast oil spill.

The Gainesville-based Sea Turtle Conservancy previously used money from the Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund to replace traditional lighting on beaches in Gulf, Franklin and Walton countieswith amber LED lights, which do not distract from natural moonlight used by nesting turtles and their hatchlings for orientation.

Stacey Marquis, a spokeswoman for the Sea Turtle Conservancy, said the program has worked well in those areas and the organization hopes to see similar success on beaches in Santa Rosa and Escambia counties.

Palm Beach can’t regulate shark fishing, state says – Palm Beach Daily News

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

Palm Beachs efforts to ban shark fishing near town beaches were in vain.

Code Enforcement Manager Ben Alma told the Ordinances, Rules and Standards Committee on Thursday that state law preempts regulations the town had hoped to adopt.

The (Florida) Fish and Wildlife (Conservation Commission) said we cannot use it, Alma said ofa previously recommended ordinance. We cant stop anybody from fishing. We should table this indefinitely.

The committee recommended an ordinance last September that would have banned shark fishing within 300 feet north and south of town beaches and within 300 feet of public beach access points. The ordinance also would have banned baiting or chumming and the use of shark lures and rigs within the same boundaries. The Town Council approved a first reading of the ordinance in October but tabled it in November for further review by the committee.

Bobbie Lindsay, committee chairwoman, saidshark fishing has been a problem particularly for residents on the North End of the island. The town has received complaints from residents concerned about fishermen camping on the beaches and chumming the water.

Chum is bait consisting of bloody fish parts used to lure animals, particularly sharks. Residents have said the practice endangers recreational beachgoers, especially children, and litters the shore.

The committee tabled the topic last week, but Lindsay encouraged Alma to be a little more aggressive and proactive in discussing chummingregulations with the state.

This chumming is a real issue, she said. Im a diver and a boater and where theres chumming, there are sharks, and often for hours after they chum. I really think that lack of regulation is presenting danger for our swimmers.

Alma saidthe town does regulate beach access, hours and parking. The council also adopted an ordinance two years ago that bans sleeping and camping on public beaches.

Weve also set up pro-active patrols, he said.

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Palm Beach can't regulate shark fishing, state says - Palm Beach Daily News

A supermassive black hole spent more than a decade consuming a star – Astronomy Magazine

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

A supermassive black hole has been tearing apart and eating a star for so long it set a new record.

According to researchers, this tidal disruption event was 10 times longer than any other stars death, which either means the black hole was destroying an incredibly large star or it thoroughly torn apart a smaller star.

The team of researchers began observing the TDE that destroyed the too close star in July 2005, using NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory and Swift satellite and ESAs WMM-Newton.

We have witnessed a stars spectacular and prolonged demise, Dacheng Lin from the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire, who led the study, said in a press release. Dozens of tidal disruption events have been detected since the 1990s, but none that remained bright for nearly as long as this one.

This black hole, known as XJ1500+0154, is at the center of a host galaxy about 1.8 billion light-years from Earth. It reached peak brightness in June 2008, and has been on researchers radars ever since.

For most of the time weve been looking at this object, it has been growing rapidly, James Guillochon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. and co-author of the study said. This tells us something unusual like a star twice as heavy as our Sun is being fed into the black hole.

Finding this drawn out death of a star by black hole shows not only that supermassive black holes can grow, but it also gives researchers more information about advanced black holes and how they came to be.

According to the researchers, the star that the black hole is feeding on will diminish in the next several years, and will therefore cause the brightness of XJ1500+0154 to fade as well.

Continued here:

A supermassive black hole spent more than a decade consuming a star - Astronomy Magazine

A fireball blazed over the midwest last night – Astronomy Magazine

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

A giant fireball lit up the skies over portions of the midwest last night, with more than 200 witnesses reporting seeing the real fireworks of last night.

The National Weather Service detected the meteor around 1:29 a.m. It flew over Lake Michigan between Sheboygan and Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The meteor was spotted as far south as Kentucky and as far east as New York.

Due to a visible explosion, its likely a bolide, a larger meteor that enters with enough force to explode as it enters the Earths atmosphere. Most bolides are larger than one meter. A 20-meter bolide caused an explosion in Russia in 2013 that injured thousands and damaged more than 7,000 buildings. That event, the Chelyabinsk meteor, wasnt even the biggest in Russias history. The 1908 Tunguska event levelled trees in Siberia when it exploded with the force of 10-30 megatons of TNT.

NASA-JPL keeps a running list of bolide reports here, though this latest entry has not, as of yet, been added.

Source: Washington Post

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A fireball blazed over the midwest last night - Astronomy Magazine

Black hole meal sets record for duration and size – Astronomy Now Online

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

This artists illustration depicts what astronomers call a tidal disruption event, or TDE. This is when an object, such as a star, wanders too close to a black hole and is destroyed by tidal forces generated from the black holes intense gravitational forces. During a TDE, some of the stellar debris is flung outward at high speeds, while the rest (shown as the red material in the illustration) becomes hotter as it falls toward the black hole, generating a distinct X-ray flare. A wind blowing away from this infalling material is shown in blue. X-ray: NASA/CXC/UNH/D.Lin et al, Optical: CFHT, Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

A giant black hole ripped apart a star and then gorged on its remains for about a decade, according to astronomers. This is more than 10 times longer than any observed episode of a stars death by black hole.

Researchers made this discovery using data from NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory and Swift satellite as well as ESAs XMM-Newton.

The trio of orbiting X-ray telescopes found evidence for a tidal disruption event (TDE), wherein the tidal forces due to the intense gravity from a black hole can destroy an object such as a star that wanders too close. During a TDE, some of the stellar debris is flung outward at high speeds, while the rest falls toward the black hole. As it travels inwards to be ingested by the black hole, the material becomes heats up to millions of degrees and generates a distinct X-ray flare.

We have witnessed a stars spectacular and prolonged demise, said Dacheng Lin from the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire, who led the study. Dozens of tidal disruption events have been detected since the 1990s, but none that remained bright for nearly as long as this one.

The extraordinary long bright phase of this event spanning over 10 years means that among observed TDEs this was either the most massive star ever to be completely torn apart during one of these events, or the first where a smaller star was completely torn apart.

The X-ray source containing this force-fed black hole, known by its abbreviated name of XJ1500+0154, is located in a small galaxy about 1.8 billion light-years from Earth.

The source was not detected in a Chandra observation on April 2, 2005, but was detected in an XMM-Newton observation on July 23, 2005, and reached peak brightness in a Chandra observation on June 5, 2008. These observations show that the source became at least 100 times brighter in X-rays. Since then, Chandra, Swift, and XMM-Newton have observed it multiple times.

The sharp X-ray vision of Chandra data shows that XJ1500+0154 is located at the center of its host galaxy, the expected location for a supermassive black hole.

The X-ray data also indicate that radiation from material surrounding this black hole has consistently surpassed the so-called Eddington limit, defined by a balance between the outward pressure of radiation from the hot gas and the inward pull of the gravity of the black hole.

For most of the time weve been looking at this object, it has been growing rapidly, said co-author James Guillochon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. This tells us something unusual like a star twice as heavy as our Sun is being fed into the black hole.

The conclusion that supermassive black holes can grow, from TDEs and perhaps other means, at rates above those corresponding to the Eddington limit has important implications. Such rapid growth may help explain how supermassive black holes were able to reach masses about a billion times higher than the Sun when the universe was only about a billion years old.

This event shows that black holes really can grow at extraordinarily high rates, said co-author Stefanie Komossa of QianNan Normal University for Nationalities in Duyun City, China. This may help understand how precocious black holes came to be.

Based on the modeling by the researchers the black holes feeding supply should be significantly reduced in the next decade. This would result in XJ1500+0154 fading in X-ray brightness over the next several years.

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Black hole meal sets record for duration and size - Astronomy Now Online

The passions of Aboriginal astronomy guide, Willy Stevens – Cosmos

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

Willy Stevens: Aboriginal astronomy guide.

Supplied

Willy Stevens grew up knowing little about his ancestral Australian Aboriginal culture. Born a Muruwari man in New South Wales, he was adopted into a Kamilaroi family.

But when at the age of 17 he met his biological mother, she regaled him with traditional stories, many featuring the stars.

Today, the 28-year-olds passions lie in sharing those stories of Aboriginal astronomy, passed down through millennia, with students and the wider community.

While working as a tour guide in the Sydney suburb of The Rocks, he was recruited into a new Dreamtime Astronomy program at the nearby Sydney Observatory.

As the observatorys first Indigenous Australian presenter, he quickly became the face of the program, appearing on numerous radio and TV shows, including a French documentary called Between Heaven and Earth.

Given this, it might seem curious that Stevens doesnt actually hold much interest in astronomy as an academic discipline.

For me, its about teaching culture, he explains. I love to share my knowledge with my community.

But as a tour guide and university guest lecturer, he continues to develop new ways of sharing culture, especially traditions relating to the sun, moon, and stars.

His passion is palpable as he explains to undergraduate students the importance of the sky-world in Aboriginal cultures, and how this informs kinship, ceremony, and survival practices.

He notes, for instance, how the star cluster called the Pleiades in Western discourse is known to the Muruwari as Gambu Gambu a group of girls.

Some of the girls were shy and tried to hide, making them difficult to see. The ability to identify the fainter stars was used to test a persons eyesight. Their appearance in the early morning sky signalled the start of winter and the arrival of morning frost.

An optical image of the Pleiades star cluster, around 440 light-years from Earth otherwise known as Gambu Gambu.

RUSSELL CROMAN / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty Images

For Stevens, its the effect his work has on Aboriginal people that most inspires him. Because of the devastating effects of ongoing colonisation, many Indigenous Australians have limited knowledge of their heritage or culture. When they attend his talks, he sees it an opportunity to share knowledge.

I feel very humbled when Aboriginal people thank me after coming on my tour and discovering things about their culture they had never known, he says. Learning these stories gave them a sense of pride and made them want to learn more.

His passion also inspires indigenous people from other cultures: I was once given a gift by a Native American lady and her granddaughter who came to one of my tours. Its a seashell necklace worn by men.

But the most important thing for him is teaching his community about history, morals and traditions. When visiting family in Narrabri and Lightning Ridge, he instructs his younger brothers about making age-old tools and learning from elders.

Stevens recently developed a potential higher education course on Aboriginal astronomy, geared toward Indigenous Australian students. He hopes participants will develop skills to work as guides and rangers across Australia, sharing more ancient stories of the stars.

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The passions of Aboriginal astronomy guide, Willy Stevens - Cosmos

The Calabash clash – Astronomy Now Online

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

6 February 2017 Stephen Clark

The Calabash Nebula, pictured here which has the technical name OH 231.8+04.2 is a spectacular example of the death of a low-mass star like the Sun.

This image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the star going through a rapid transformation from a red giant to a planetary nebula, during which it blows its outer layers of gas and dust out into the surrounding space. The recently ejected material is spat out in opposite directions with immense speed the gas shown in yellow is moving close to a million kilometres an hour.

Astronomers rarely capture a star in this phase of its evolution because it occurs within the blink of an eye in astronomical terms. Over the next thousand years the nebula is expected to evolve into a fully fledged planetary nebula.

The nebula is also known as the Rotten Egg Nebula because it contains a lot of sulphur, an element that, when combined with other elements, smells like a rotten egg but luckily, it resides over 5000 light-years away in the constellation of Puppis (The Poop deck).

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The Calabash clash - Astronomy Now Online

How Groundhogs Day and astronomy intersect – Astronomy Magazine

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

Among lifes many mysteries, the answer to the question "how much wood would a woodchuck chuck" has to rank pretty low. Higher on my list: Why are woodchucks also called groundhogs? After all, wood and ground are hardly synonymous, and a chuck has nothing to do with a hog.

But the biggest question about woodchucks and groundhogs has to be why these furry rodents became associated with weather forecasting. Today is Groundhog Day, and tradition holds that if the groundhog sticks his head out of his burrow and sees his shadow, well have 6 more weeks of winter. But if the weather is cloudy, it means spring is right around the corner. The tradition was brought to America long ago by German immigrants, although the hedgehog seemed to be the animal of choice in the old country.

What does any of this have to do with astronomy? It turns out the origin of Groundhog Day is connected to the Suns movement across the sky. Groundhog Day is one of the four so-called cross-quarter days, which mark the midpoints between the solstices and equinoxes. Groundhog Day comes approximately midway between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. Other cross-quarter days fall near May Day and Halloween.

If you pull out a calendar and count the number of days between solstices and equinoxes, youll find the cross-quarter days dont fall precisely on the days we celebrate them, but rather a few days later. And the origins of this discrepancy also come from astronomy. The holidays were fixed in our calendars relatively recently, long after the traditions sprang up. And the precession of the equinoxes caused by the Suns and Moons gravitational pull on Earths equatorial bulge has pushed the holidays earlier than the cross-quarter days. Its something to think about when your local newscasters breathlessly report groundhog behavior this Thursday.

This story is adapted from a 2007 blog post by the author. Wisconsin has had a relatively mild winter, unlike the post back then.

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How Groundhogs Day and astronomy intersect - Astronomy Magazine

How Harvard’s vast collection of glass plates still shapes astronomy – Astronomy Magazine

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

There are two types of plates. The majority are photographic: clear glass sheets scattered with dark specks of stars. Today, these plates draw the most interest from scientists. But about one in five is a spectrographic plate, with each star depicted as a grey smear (representing the rainbow of visible light) perhaps a quarter inch long. In the early days of the collection, these spectra were the cutting edge of astronomy.

The first major developments to come out of the Harvard plate collection were systems that classified stars based on the tiny white lines slicing the spectrums grey rainbow. Its almost incomprehensible that this was all done visually by examining the plates under magnifying glasses, said Josh Grindlay, an astronomer at Harvard. Thank heavens they did because it was not something that just immediately popped out, what this spectral classification system was.

The first system was designed by Williamina Fleming, whom Pickering originally hired as a housemaid only to discover her astronomical potential. Flemings system, published in 1890, sorted more than 10,000 spectra into an alphabetical sequence of 15 letters. A second, independent systemcomplicated and criticized for its complexitywas created by Antonia Maury and used 22 letters, with further subclasses denoting how wide or narrow certain spectral lines were. (Years later, astronomers realized some of these characteristics identify binary stars and supergiants.).

These two systems were expanded and reconciled by Annie Jump Cannon, whom Grindlay calls a wonder woman. Over her career, Cannon classified 340,000 spectra on the Harvard plates, sometimes managing a hundred in one day. She was an extraordinary woman who did one thing extremely well all her life, said Hearnshaw. In her free time, she also spotted 300 variable stars and five novae Cannon built on Flemings and Maurys work to create the O, B, A, F, G, K, M sequence that still underlies stellar classification.

Nevertheless, other astronomers likely could have tackled the classification problem. This would have been done, but not in the concerted way that it was done here, Grindlay said. Hearnshaw agreed, pointing particularly to observatories in California and Germany. Harvard was a pioneer, but they had other people chasing on their tails, and of course thats good for science.

The spectrographic plates had another secret hidden among their streaks: the recipe for stars, deciphered by Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. Scientists elsewhere had tied specific elements and their charged varieties to the wavelengths of light they absorb, which match the white lines chopping through a spectrum; Payne-Gaposchkin applied this work to translate the Harvard spectra into elemental ingredients.

What she found was that the stars all seemed enormously uniform in composition, Gingerich said. The spectra looked very different, but that was because of the temperature difference of the stars. Hot hydrogen and very hot hydrogen have very different spectra, but both are hydrogen. That was a very important finding, he added. Payne-Gaposchkins work also proved that the vast majority of the universe is hydrogen and helium.

Even while the spectra were still unveiling their secrets, the photographic plates were beginning to shine, thanks to what is widely recognized as the single most important discovery to come out of the Harvard plates.

Astronomers wanted to sort out how bright different stars were but theres usually no way to determine whether a star looks bright because its nearby or because its genuinely a bright star. Harvard astronomer Henrietta Leavitt looked at the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds and saw clusters of stars.

She could see there was this big clump of what looked like a gazillion stars, said Grindlay. It was clearly one thing. Stars clumped together must all be about the same distance from Earthwhich in turn meant the ones that appeared brighter really were brighter. By studying a specific type of variable star, called Cepheids, in the Magellanic Clouds, Leavitt realized that brighter Cepheids took longer to dim and brighten, establishing a relationship between intrinsic luminosity and period.

That relationship meant astronomers could reverse the process: Measuring how quickly a Cepheid brightens and dims would reveal how many watts were in the lightbulb, said Grindlay, and from there, out pops the distance. That conversion required other techniques to pin down how far away specific Cepheids were, Gingerich added. But Edwin Hubble was still able to use Leavitts work to prove the Milky Way and Andromeda were two separate galaxies.

The collections full-sky scope was crucial for Leavitt, since the clouds are only visible from the often-ignored southern hemisphere. Other galaxies could have yielded the same realization, but they were too far away for the small telescopes of the time to truly see into them. It would have been very difficult and I would say essentially impossible without having the Magellanic Clouds, Grindlay said.

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How Harvard's vast collection of glass plates still shapes astronomy - Astronomy Magazine

The case of Ceres’ disappearing volcanoes – Astronomy Magazine

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

In 2015, NASAs Dawn spacecraft discovered a lone 4-km (2.5-mile) high mountain on the dwarf planet Ceres. Identified as a cryovolcano, which erupts ice and other volatiles instead of lava like a traditional volcano, Ahuna Mons was magnificent but alone on Ceres surface. Now, however, scientists say that Ceres may have been home to many more such cryovolcanoes in the past, which could have slowly disappeared and left Ahuna Mons as the only remaining feature of recent geologic activity.

Michael Sori of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson is the lead author of a new paper accepted for publication in the American Geophysical Unions journal, Geophysical Research Letters. In recent a press release, Sori explains why Ahuna Mons is such a mystery, saying, Imagine if there was just one volcano on all of Earth. That would be puzzling. But Soris team has now proposed a possible solution to this exact puzzle, a process called viscous relaxation. If this process is truly at work on Ceres, then, We think we have a very good case that there have been lots of cryovolcanoes on Ceres but they have deformed, Sori says.

Viscous relaxation refers to the flow of solids over time. On Earth, the best example of this process is the flow of glaciers, which are solid ice but move and flow slowly, given enough time. While viscous relaxation doesnt apply to Earths volcanoes, which are made of rock, it could apply to cryovolcanoes, which are made of ice, just like glaciers. Soris team speculates that older cryovolcanoes have undergone such viscous relaxation over the past few millions or billions of years, possibly aided by Ceres close orbit to the sun. This would leave only the younger Ahuna Mons clearly visible on Ceres surface. Based on computer models of this process, and assuming that Ahuna Mons is composed of at least 40 percent water, Soris team estimates that this feature would flatten out at a rate of 10-50 meters (30-160 feet) every million years. But because Ahuna Mons is only 200 million years old at most, it just hasnt had time to deform, Sori explains.

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The case of Ceres' disappearing volcanoes - Astronomy Magazine

Artificial Intelligence Is Coming Whether You Like It Or Not – Mother Jones

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

SIPA Asia via ZUMA Wire

Atrios today:

Self-Checkouts

Those still a thing? I mean, I know they are, but around me the 3 major supermarkets within walking distance got rid of them....Anyway, I know they still exist, but I do think our robot future is not quite as inevitable as people think. Worrying about the impact of future automation on jobs seems to be a cool tech away of ignoring the current fucked and bullshit jobs situation. And, yes, automation has been going on for decades, which is actually my point. There's nothing new about it, and I don't know why people think there will be this sudden automation discontinuity. The robots have been here for awhile, and they aren't really going away, but that doesn't mean the sci-fi dystopian workless future is just around the corner. Shit is fucked up and bullshit enough without worrying about things which haven't happened yet, and likely won't.

It really doesn't matter if artificial intelligence is distracting us from whatever you think the "real" problem is. It's coming anyway. The speed of the AI revolution depends solely on fundamental factors (mostly continued reductions in the cost of parallel computing power) and the level of interest in AI software development. The fundamental factors are obviously still barreling ahead, and it sure looks like the free market has a ton of interest too:

Besides, AI is the real problem. As we all know (don't we?), the decline of manufacturing in the US has far more to do with automation than with trade or globalization. That decline set up the conditions for an angry working class in three Midwestern states that finally decided it had found a savior in a guy who claimed it was all the fault of a bunch of foreigners. So now Donald Trump is president. How much more real can you get?

And that was just old-fashioned dumb automation. Smart automation is going to have a far bigger and far faster effect. We're not very far off from the first real destruction of an industry (probably long-haul trucking) thanks to smart automation, and after that it's going to come thick and fast.

So what are we going to do? Will our future be in the hands of demagogues who gain power by lashing out at scapegoats while they work hard to make sure that rich people get all the benefits of AI? Or will it be in the hands of people who actually give a damn about the working class and understand that a world of increasing automation requires a dramatic rethink of basic economics? I would sure like it to be the latter.

Unfortunately, like global warming, the effects of AI are slow and invisibleon a human timescale anyway. So it's easy to pretendno matter how idiotic this isthat AI is just a rerun of the Industrial Revolution. It's easy to pretend that each new advance isn't really a step toward true AI. It's easy to pretend that each individual industry to fall is just a special case. It's easy to pretend that something else is always more important.

Is AI coming soon? I find this question too boring to spend much time on anymore. Of course it's coming soon. The only question I'm interested in is what we're going to do about it. I keep pondering this, and I keep failing to come up with any likely answers that are very optimistic in the medium term. Maybe I'm not thinking outside the box enough. But it sure looks like we're determined to keep our collective heads in the sand for a long time. At best, the result is going to be a grim future of plutocracy for some and the dole for everyone else. At worst, it's going to be a future of global genocide (do you think there's enough aid in the world to keep Bangladesh afloat when there's no longer any work there?).

Eventually everything will work out, probably after a lot of suffering and a popular revolt. But wouldn't it be nice to avoid all that?

Oh, and those self-checkout machines? I don't know about Philly, but there's hardly a supermarket within ten miles of me that doesn't have them. Not only are they still a thing, but they're only going to get better. So sorry about all those nice union jobs as checkers and baggers.

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Artificial Intelligence Is Coming Whether You Like It Or Not - Mother Jones

Swarm AI correctly predicted the outcome of Super Bowl LI, right down to the final score – Digital Trends

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

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Swarm AI correctly predicted the outcome of Super Bowl LI, right down to the final score - Digital Trends

Why C-Levels Need To Think About eLearning And Artificial Intelligence – Forbes

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

Forbes

Why C-Levels Need To Think About eLearning And Artificial Intelligence
Forbes
... proprietary Artificial Intelligence to analyze each learner's behavior, cognition, engagement and performance to predict learning and future performance, optimize learning content and to create a deep personalized individual and social learning ...

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Why C-Levels Need To Think About eLearning And Artificial Intelligence - Forbes

Montreal sees its future in smart sensors, artificial intelligence (with … – Computerworld

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

The Quebecois city of Montreal has long been known as a hotbed of creativity -- home of Cirque du Soleil and a hub for companies in the online gaming and special effects industries, not to mention its place as a financial and trade capital.

Creativity played a key role when the city of 2 million (with 4 million regionally) competed against other municipalities globally to win the 2016 title of Intelligent Community of the Year.

And now that commitment to creativity is spurring the city to explore a range of unique new smartphone apps and other startup-generated initiatives that leverage sensors, data collection and analysis, and machine learning to deal with snow removal, ever-increasing traffic and other municipal challenges.

Public Wi-Fi, smart mobility and digital public services are just some of the 70 municipal projects detailed in the city's Smart and Digital City Action Plan, begun in 2015. More than half of the projects are expected to be finished by 2018, though some will take longer.

"Montreal is known as the place 'where Shakespeare meets Moliere.' It's a creativity hub," says Harout Chitilian, the elected official in charge of the city's smart city initiatives and technology. "All these things meshing together make Montreal one of the greatest startup digital ecosystems."

By intent, the government has made that startup ecosystem a key compontent of its smart city push, says Chitilian, who serves as vice president of the city's executive committee, the executive branch of the municipal government that includes Mayor Denis Coderre.

Of the dozens of initiatives currently underway in Montreal, several involve partnerships with the private sector in which the city, Quebec Province and businesses share costs. Those projects range from a high-speed, fiber-optic Scientific Information Network to eight different smart mobility and parking projects.

The principal driver of this partnership is InnoCit MTL, an independent, non-profit tech accelerator that receives both city and business financial support. Housed in the historic Notman House in downtown Montreal, InnoCit MTL has already fostered more than 15 startups in just over a year.

Notman House was alive with activity when Computerworld visited during a cold snap in mid-December, 2016 as part of a three-day tour of this smart city. Here's what we found.

The city government, along with the Province of Quebec and members of the academic community, have put special focus on artificial intelligence. Those efforts meld well with private sector startups that likewise are tapping the power of AI.

One such startup is Infra.AI, which intends to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to scan high resolution images of the city's streets and buildings."The benefits of AI are numerous," says co-founder Franois Maillet. "The fact that Montreal is serious about smart city and investing in it, there's a direct and positive impact in the startup community and the R&D. For the city itself, it provides better services to the citizens."

LIDAR images can help municipalities like Montreal monitor city infrastructure to identify such changes in status as detoriating bridges, broken windows or building code violations.

With digital image information from satellites, low-flying planes and LIDAR-equipped city vehicles, technology under development at Infra.AI will make it possible for Montreal and other cities to provide almost-real-time data on street conditions or the safety of roads and bridges.

That data can be combined with information from traffic video sensors and sensors on buildings, says Maillet, who also co-founded a related startup, MLDB.AI, that is working on a machine-learning database.

The potential applications are far-ranging. A firetruck speeding to a fire might be automatically advised that there's an obstruction in the roadway, allowing it to take another pathway. Or a pothole larger than a foot could be spotted, automatically dispatching a road crew to patch it. AI can even help identify a sagging highway bridge span, noticing a small drop when compared with the previous scans from days or weeks earlier.

Montreal-based Infra.AI is employing pattern recognition intelligence to distinguish a group of pedestrians from vehicles. The software could be used to identify problem locations and develop systems for improved pedestrian safety.

Infra.AI is currently piloting a program that helps identify ailing trees on city streets, a problem plaguing Montreal right now. When the startup's AI system is shown images of healthy trees, it can compare those with recent imagery to identify less-healthy trees with patches and browning leaves that need to be maintained or replaced.

"When you think of the kind of data [already] coming in from LIDAR and cameras, it's huge. The applications are now becoming possible with AI," says Jean-Franois Gagn, CEO of Element AI, a Montreal-based incubator dedicated to matching AI startups with larger companies and with government agencies.

Through its Canada First Research Excellence Fund, the Canadian government last year provided about $200 (US) million to three Montreal-based universities for research that Gagn believes will yield sophisticated AI spinoff companies in 2017.

In addtion, both Google and Microsoft have recently made investments in Montreal-based AI.

On a more personal level, another InnoCit MTL startup, Key2Access, is getting ready to test an app to make it safer for disabled people to cross city streets, according to CEO Sophie Aladas. Key2Access's tech is already being piloted in Ottawa, and has been successfully tested there by Richard Marsolais, a man with a vision impairment who is a specialist in independent living for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.

Marsolais and his guide dog, Ashland, along with Motaz Aladas, head engineer for Key2Access (and CEO Sophie's father), demonstrated for Computerworld at a Montreal intersection how a small handheld device or a smartphone could be used to activate a Bluetooth-enabled crosswalk signal, making it safe for a vision-impaired or disabled person to cross. (See Smart Cities: Montreal for video footage of that demonstration.)

Marsolais says it would be helpful to have a handheld activation device to change the signal, instead of relying only on his guide dog or an audible crossing signal, which isn't always easy to hear. In addition, it isn't always clear in which direction it's safe to cross; Key2Access aims to solve that problem by using audible commands or vibrations to direct the user onto the crosswalk in the proper direction.

For Key2Access to function, traffic engineers in Montreal will need to install a receiver at each intersection to receive the wireless signal from the handheld device, Aladas says. The cost will be comparable to enabling a traditional crosswalk button on a pole, Sophie Aladas says. The city is expected to install the gear on at least one intersection in the spring as part of the testing phase.

A number of initiatives are in the works to help reduce traffic in Montreal in the next two years, including a tripling of the number of intelligent traffic signals to reach 2,200 units.

Data from the 700 existing smart signals installed over the last two years and from 500 surveillance cameras and Bluetooth sensors already helps prioritize buses traveling the streets to lessen commute times by 15% to 20%, the city's Chitilian says, with more improvements expected. Montreal is also in partnership with Waze, Google's crowdsourcing traffic app, to help syphon off driver data for greater intelligence.

In addition to its efforts to lessen traffic congestion and improve the efficiency of public transportation, Montreal heavily promotes bicycle riding. It's not uncommon to see bicyclists pedaling through downtown streets even in the dead of winter.

Bixi, a bike-sharing system, got its start in Montreal in 2009; as of 2015, there were 3.5 million Bixi rides each year in the city, and the service has grown to 45,000 bikes in 15 cities. The Bixi mobile apps for iOS and Android, along with other Bixi add-ins developed by Montreal startups, allow everything from online payments to personal fitness tracking for the bikes.

Separately, Montreal startup SmartHalo is testing technology to turn any bike into a smart bike using a rider's smartphone and its GPS connection.

"We know for a fact that adding preferential lights and dedicated bus lanes increases the speed of going from point A to B and makes the service much more efficient. You can have the same amount of buses and workable hours with better service," Chitilian says.

Sensor data from traffic signals is already being sent to a recently created central command post -- a "decision center," Chitilian calls it -- where technicians pore over dozens of desktop monitors and large wall displays. "The center gives us the ability to have an overall view" of the city, helping if there is an accident or other public safety need, he says.

Montreal also has designated $76 million US to replace 100,000 streetlights in the next five years with more efficient LED lighting that will be equipped with sensor and communications technology to expand the city's ability to manage congestion, pedestrian crowds, accidents and more, according to Chitilian.

With its combination of AI-focused startup innovation, sensor-driven traffic-improvement initiatives and data-driven apps for citizen empowerment, Montreal seems well on its way to furthering its designation as an intelligent city.

"We are trying to build a smart city from the ground up, and are putting in the pillars to do it," Chitilian says. "As politicians, we have to show immediate results, but some of our decisions will have lasting impact beyond our political mandates," he muses.

"We have to make decisions that will look good down the road," Chitilian says. "What we have in Montreal is more than optimism. It is a generational transformation."

Montreal and the Quebec Province have committed to sharingpublicly available data, which private enterpreneurs have put to innovative use via smartphone apps. Here are a few of locals' favorites:

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Montreal sees its future in smart sensors, artificial intelligence (with ... - Computerworld

RealDoll Creating Artificial Intelligence System, Robotic Sex Dolls – Breitbart News

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

Harmony AI, which is set to be released on April 15, will be a smartphone app andis reported tofeature a range of traits for customers to choose fortheir sex dolls,while the dolls will also be able to learn about their ownersand respond in different ways accordingly.

We are developing the Harmony AI system to add a new layer to the relationships people can have with a RealDoll, said CEO Matt McMullen to Digital Trends. Many of our clients rely on their imaginations to a great degree to impose imagined personalities on their dolls. With the Harmony AI, they will be able to actually create these personalities instead of having to imagine them.

They will be able to talk to their dolls, and the AI will learn about them over time through these interactions, thus creating an alternative form of relationship, he continued. The scope of conversations possible with the AI is quite diverse, and not limited to sexual subject matter. We feel that this system, and this technology, will appeal to a segment of the population that struggles with forming intimate connections with other people, whether by choice or circumstance. Furthermore, it will likely attract those who seek to explore uncharted and new territory where relationships and sex are concerned.

Harmony AI will be the first product in a range of next-generation technologies coming from RealDoll over the next few years.

Other planned releases include robotic head systems, which are set to be released by the end of the year, followed by a virtual reality platform in 2018.

RealDoll isnt the first company to recognize the potential connection between sex and AI. This happens because people are lonely and bored It is a symptom of our society, said Robin Labs chief executive Ilya Eckstein, who claims that his companys virtual assistant Robin is used by teenagers and truckers without girlfriends for up to 300 conversations a day.

As well as the people who want to talk dirty, there are men who want a deeper sort of relationship or companionship, hecontinued, adding that some people wanted to talk for no particular reason and were just lonely or bored.

In an interview with Breitbart Tech last year, Futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson also predicted that sex with robots would be fully emotional in the future, addingthat people will eventually spendabout the same as they do today on a decent family-size car.

Artificial intelligence is reaching human levels and also becoming emotional as well, claimed Dr. Pearson. So people will actually have quite strong emotional relationships with their own robots. In many cases that will develop into a sexual one because theyll already think that the appearance of the robot matches their preference anyway, so if it looks nice and it has a superb personality too its inevitable that people will form very strong emotional bonds with their robots and in many cases that will lead to sex.

Charlie Nash is a reporterforBreitbart Tech. You can follow himon Twitter@MrNashingtonorlike his page at Facebook.

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RealDoll Creating Artificial Intelligence System, Robotic Sex Dolls - Breitbart News

Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes On Wall Street With AI Trader – Bloomberg

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

Babak Hodjat believes humans are too emotional for thestock market. So he's started one of the first hedge funds run completely by artificial intelligence.

"Humans have bias and sensitivities, conscious and unconscious," says Hodjat, a computer scientist who helped laythe groundwork for Apple's Siri. "It's well documented we humans make mistakes. For me, it's scarier to be relying on those human-based intuitions and justifications than relying on purely what the data and statistics are telling you."

Babak Hodjat

Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Hodjat, with 21 patents to his name, is co-founder and top scientist of Sentient Technologies Inc., a startup that has spent nearly a decadelargely in secrettraining an AI system that can scour billions of pieces of data, spot trends, adapt as it learns and make money trading stocks. The team of technology-industry vets is betting that softwareresponsible forteaching computers to drive cars, beat the world's best poker players and translate languages will give their hedge fund an edge on Wall Street pros.

The walls of Sentient's San Francisco office are dotted with posters for robots-come-alive movies such as "Terminator." Inside a small windowless trading room, the only light emanates fromcomputer screens and a virtual fire on a big-screen TV. Two guys are quietly monitoring the machine's tradesjust in case the system needs to be shut down.

If all hell breaks loose," Hodjat says, "there is a red button."

Sentient won't disclose its performance or many details about the technology, and the jury is out on the wisdom of handing off trading to a machine. While traditional hedge funds including Bridgewater Associates, Point72 and Renaissance Technologies have poured money into advanced technology, many use artificial intelligence to generate ideasnot to control their entire trading operations.

All the same, Sentient, which currently trades only its own money, is being closely watched by the finance and AIcommunities. The venture capital firm owned by Hong Kong's richest man, Li Ka-shing, and India's biggest conglomerate, Tata Group, are among backers who have given the company $143 million. (Beyond trading, Sentient's AI system is being applied to a separate e-commerce product.)

Trading is "one of the top 10 places that AI can make a difference," says Nello Cristianini, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Bristol who has been advising Sentient. "A trading algorithm can look at the data, make a decision, act and repeatyou can have full autonomy."

Sentient's team includes veterans of Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies. They're part of a small group in Silicon Valley using expertise in data science and the field of artificial intelligence known as machine learning to try and disrupt financial markets.

AI scientists typically have no interest in working for a hedge fund, says Richard Craib, who started the AI hedge fund Numerai. "But they may want to mess around with data sets." Numerai's system makes trades by aggregating trading algorithms submitted by anonymous contributors who participate in a weekly tournament where prizes are awarded in Bitcoin. It recently raised $6 million from investors including Howard Morgan, the co-founder of the quant investment management firm Renaissance Technologies. "It's entirely a data science problem," Craib says.

Another company, called Emma, started a hedge fund last year based on an artificial intelligence system that can write news articles.

Employees of Sentient Technologies in San Francisco.

Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Hodjat of Sentient spent much of his career focused on the language-detection technology behind smartphone digital assistants. Several employees from his previous company, Dejima, went on to create Apple's Siri. Rather than join, he chose to focus on advances in artificial intelligence. His career goals didn't include finance, but he sees markets as one of the most promising applications for the technology. The vast amounts of publicly available data, along with stronger computers to analyse it for patterns, make the field an ideal fit. "That is the fuel for AI," he says.

Sentient's system is inspired by evolution. According to patents, Sentient has thousands of machines running simultaneously around the world, algorithmically creating what are essentially trillions of virtual traders that it calls "genes." These genes are tested by giving them hypothetical sums of money to trade in simulated situations created from historical data. The genes that are unsuccessful die off, while those that make money are spliced together with others to create the next generation. Thanks to increases in computing power, Sentient can squeeze 1,800 simulated trading days into a few minutes.

An acceptable trading gene takes a few days and then is used inlive trading. Employees set goals such as returns to achieve, risk level and time horizon, and then let the machines go to work. The AI system evolves autonomously as it gains more experiences.

Sentient typically owns a wide-ranging batch of U.S. stocks, trading hundreds of times per day and holding positions for days or weeks. "We didn't impose that on the system," says Jeff Holman, the company's chief investment officer. "The artificial intelligence seems to agree with what you get from human intelligence that it's better to spread your bets and have a more diversified portfolio."

As impressive as Sentient's technology appears, it's hard to know if it works. The company says the AI system is beating internal benchmarks, but won't disclose what those are. It shares little about the data used for the AI's decision-makingand isn't profitable. The company plans to bring in outside investors later this year. Holman, a Wall Street veteran who joined last year, said thecompany is limited on what it can say by U.S. Securities Exchange Commission rules restricting marketing by hedge funds that are raising money. "The platform is solid," he says. "It doesn't look like any other strategy I've seen."

Anthony Ledford, the chief scientist at the $19 billion hedge fund Man AHL in London, warns of putting too much faith in this branch of artificial intelligence without more evidence. Man AHL uses machine learning for a portion of its clients money, and Ledford is encouraged by the results. While the company is exploring a standalone machine-learning strategy, he says it's too early to declare success."There's a lot of hype and promise," Ledford says. "But when you actually ask people how many hundreds of millions dollars they are trading, many of them don't come back with much at all."

Little performance data is available about AI-focused hedge funds. One index that tracks 12 pools that utilize AI as part of its core strategies, called Eurekahedge AI Hedge Fund Index, returned 5 percent last year. That's slightly better than the average hedge fund, but trailed the S&P 500.

Tristan Fletcher, who wrote his doctoral thesis on machine learning in financial markets and works for a hedge fund, says investors may be reluctant to turn over their money completely to a machine. "I know how conservative investors are and I know of no one who would put their money in asystem that's fully systematic," says Fletcher. "Machine learning isn't a panacea for everything. You need people who have literal thinking."

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Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes On Wall Street With AI Trader - Bloomberg

How Powerful AI Technology Can Lead to Unforeseen Disasters – Fortune

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

Photograph by Mehau Kulyk/SPL Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF

Self-driving cars and robots that can zoom on their own around warehouses are just some of what's possible because of artificial intelligence. But expect unforeseen consequences if researchers ignore the inherent ethical dilemmas in the emerging technology.

Thats one of the takeaways from a panel about AI ethics and education in San Francisco that was hosted by the Future of Life Institute , a research group focused on preventing societal problems created by the technology.

Although humans typically program AI-powered robots to accomplish a particular goal, these robots will typically make decisions on their own to reach the goal, explained Benjamin Kuipers, a computer science professor and AI researcher at the University of Michigan.

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Its these smaller decisions that robots make on their own that can cause trouble because human programmers may fail to take all of a robot's possible choices into account, Kuipers said.

This is not the robot apocalypse, said Kuipers. What were seeing here are robots pursuing human-generated goals in unconstrained ways.

Kuipers did not cite a specific example of a robot making a harmful decision that its human programmers overlooked. Instead, he cited the Disney animated film Fantasia as an example of what technologists need to take into account when building their robots.

In Fantasia , Mickey Mouse, as a young wizard apprentice, magically commands a broom to fill a cauldron with water. When Mickey falls asleep, however, the broom ends up flooding the room because the untrained wizard failed to take in account that the broom would continue to fill the cauldron even after it was full.

Illah Nourbakhsh, a robotics professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said that educators need to teach computer science and robotics students a basic understanding of ethics, because the technologies they are creating are so powerful that they are actually changing society. He cited the examples of drones being used in warfare and AI technologies being used in advertising as ways cutting-edge technology is being used on a global scale and changing consumer behavior.

Having a basic understanding of ethics can help technologists better understand the potential ramifications of the AI-powered software and robotics they are creating, he explained. One ethical dilemma he cited is how robotics can increase factory productivity; while this may lead to a boost in a nation's GDP, it can also increase the wage gap between the poor and the rich.

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Nourbakhsh does not believe that technology is neutral, and that it is ultimately up to other people to determine how it should be used, for better or worse.

Technologists should think about how their creations will impact society and even the choice of words they use to describe them. For example, calling the technology that powers self-driving cars either a safety-enhancing system or a labor-saving system has big consequences for how society perceives the technology, he explained.

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How Powerful AI Technology Can Lead to Unforeseen Disasters - Fortune

Artificial Intelligence Tops Humans in Poker Battle What’s the Big Deal? – PokerNews.com

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

HomeNewsPokerNews Op-Ed

Deep Blue was one hell of a chess player.

It was February 1996 and the machine developed by IBM was locked in battle with Gary Kasparov. Chess was big news as the computer system project originally begun in 1985 at Carnegie Mellon University attempted to do something other chess-playing devices had been unable to do beat a reigning world champion.

Even those with only a passing interest in chess like myself were intrigued by the matchup. Deep Blues designer said the machine could evaluate 200 million positions per second, and at the time, it was the fastest computer to match up with a world chess champion. Reports on the days progress were published in newspapers all across the globe.

Ultimately, the first match of six games was a victory for humanitywith Kasparov notching a 4-2 victory. However, in May the following year, and after some additional re-engineering, it was Deep Blue coming out on top.

The Deep Blue phenomenon has been in my head for the last couple weeks as four top poker players (Jason Les, Daniel McAulay, Jimmy Chou and Dong Kim) squared off against artificial intelligence software at the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh.

This time the AI came out on top.

As Reuters noted, Libratus [Latin for balance], an AI built by Carnegie Mellon University racked up over $1.7 million worth of chips against four of the top professional poker players in the world in a 20-day marathon poker tournament that ended on Tuesday.

Headlines have trumpeted Libratus accomplishment around the world. Here are just a few examples:

Machine beats humans for the first time in poker (Reuters) Computer manages to beat 4 of world's best poker players (FOX News) A Computer Just Clobbered Four Pros At Poker (FiveThirtyEight) A Mystery AI Just Crushed the Best Human Players at Poker (Wired magazine) Artificial Intelligence Goes All-in on Texas Holdem (Wall Street Journal)

Developers compared the victory to that of Deep Blue 20 years ago. The team certainly faced a challenge in engineering their AI to adjust to betting differences, imperfect information, unorthodox play, and that unique aspect of poker that differs it from most other games,bluffing.

Players were given a certain amount of play money and Libratus would go on to notch a computer's first victory in the no limit variety of Texas Hold'em (a previous computer had already mastered Limit Hold'em).

Yes, poker is just a game," University of Michigan professor Michael Wellman, who specializes in game theory and closely follows AI poker, said to Wired magazine. "But the game theory exhibited by Libratus could help with everything from financial trading to political negotiations to auctions.

Some have hailed the entire spectacle as great for the game of poker and no doubt there is some nice PR benefit that comes with it. But from a simple poker-playing perspective and in regards to its relevance among poker fans, the whole thing seems a bit too much. As a massive fan of the game of poker, this whole spectacle lacks the impact of Deep Blues win.

To me, this matchup of man versus droid/computer/software/techno-gizmo lacks the one aspect of poker that makes it so unique:risk. Its the reason that playing poker online for free or playing with your grandmother for matchsticks (or cheerios or whatever) is so lame;there is no risk of losing ones own money.

Chess is a game with merely risk of losing one individual match itself. The two combatants may have some kind of extrinsic monetary motivation, such as tournament payouts, appearance fees, etc., but there is not an inherent expected loss of ones own personal earnings.

In poker, players must square off against each other with their (usually) hard-earned money and that risk of ones own cash is a huge part of pokers appeal. Financial risk is inherently about losing money, and if youre not playing with risk in the game, youre not really playing poker.

If youre afraid to lose your money, you cant play to win, said Johnny Moss, a Texas poker legend and winner of the first two WSOP Main Events.

That attitude is something inherently flawed in making so much hoopla about Libratus' accomplishment;a machine/software/robot has no real inherent sense of loss or risk.

And when it comes to the art of the bluff, it seems engineering a machine to make these kinds of moves misses the key component of the risk involved in doing this: the pulse-racing feel of having all your chips in on a pot when you know your hand is squadoosh as ESPN WSOP analyst Norman Chad likes to put it. A highly-engineered AI topped four poker sharks with no real money on the line.

As a poker fan, this whole event doesnt even seem like real poker and just left me asking: So what? Poker is a game that is extremely dependent on human emotion and temperament.

Artificial intelligence has no fears about losing the mortgage payment in a pot.

Artificial intelligence has no fears about losing the mortgage payment in a pot or being down to that last bit of the poker bankroll and having to look for a real job to build it back.

Another aspect of this matchup with Libratus that is really missing for me, and I think for many poker fans, is that the self-reliant, mano-a-mano, battle of minds that takes place at the poker table. Sure I can concede a machine can get the better of humans in this type of setup, but pokers appeal for me is seeing players squaring off against each other and matching skills.

A battle against a computer lacks the panache of seeing real-life humans battling it out for their own cash. Libratus may have massive amounts of computing power, but it lacks the humanity that makes poker great and now watchable on television.

Many poker insiders and those with deep roots in the game may forget that, to casual fans, seeing thousands of dollars won and lost on a single game of cards is extremely bizarre yet extremely appealing. That appeal, along with the games unique characters and history, is the reason poker has grown into the international game it is today.

Poker is great because the human aspect is so important to excelling; it is not simply a series of moves on a game board or your old Commodore 64. Players who master the game can read other players and keep their own emotions in check.

They must master the subtleties and games within the game to excel. They benefit themselves by timing their actions correctly based on other players tendencies, outlooks and general gameplay. Players like Jason Mercier and Daniel Negreanu have mastered these nuances.

Dont read my hand wrong here, I am not a poker pessimist who thinks the game is moving in the wrong direction. Quite the contrary: I think the game is moving in the right direction in general after massive growth in the 2000s.

Libratus is not the next Big Blue and these four players were not Gary Kasparov.

Actual growth of the game depends on continuing presentations of the game in its real context on the felt and focusing on the players.

Some of those include: continued growth of the WSOP and live ESPN broadcasts; the World Poker Tours continued success and international growth; great broadcasts like Poker Centrals Super High Roller Bowl (with great commentary catering to fans and hard-core players alike); progress (thought slow) of state-by-state legalized online poker; the growth of the game by appealing younger players via Twitch; and the success of middle-tier tours catering to average Joe poker players (which are still needed to grow the game) like the Heartland Poker Tour and Mid-States Poker Tour.

The AI win seems like a minute footnote in comparison. Libratus may have won the battle against mankind, but was there ever really a war? Im not sure this is a battle that means a whole lot in the big picture of modern poker.

Libratus may have won the battle against mankind, but was there ever really a war?

Libratus is not the next Big Blue and these four players were not Gary Kasparov. It may have been an interesting technological endeavor, but Im sure these players in the "Brains vs. Artificial Intelligence, as the event came to be known, would much rather bring home a WSOP gold bracelet or WPT title if they had to pick. That hardware (not software) would be tangible and real and it would certainly be a nice real-life check to cash.

Sean Chaffin is a freelance writer in Crandall, Texas, and writes frequently about gambling and poker. If you have any story ideas, please email him at seanchaffin@sbcglobal.net or follow him @PokerTraditions. His poker book is RAISING THE STAKES: True Tales of Gambling, Wagering & Poker Faces and available on amazon.com.

The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions PokerNews

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Artificial Intelligence Tops Humans in Poker Battle What's the Big Deal? - PokerNews.com

The Observer view on artificial intelligence | Observer editorial … – The Guardian

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

An artificial intelligence called Libratus beats four of the worlds best poker players in Pittsburgh last week. Photograph: Carnegie Mellon University

First it was checkers (draughts to you and me), then chess, then Jeopardy!, then Go and now poker. One after another, these games, all of which require significant amounts of intelligence and expertise if they are to be played well, have fallen to the technology we call artificial intelligence (AI). And as each of these milestones is passed, speculation about the prospect of superintelligence (the attainment by machines of human-level capabilities) reaches a new high before the media caravan moves on to its next obsession du jour. Never mind that most leaders in the field regard the prospect of being supplanted by super-machines as exceedingly distant (one has famously observed that he is more concerned about the dangers of overpopulation on Mars): the solipsism of human nature means that even the most distant or implausible threat to our uniqueness as a species bothers us.

The public obsession with the existential risks of artificial superintelligence is, however, useful to the tech industry because it distracts attention from the type of AI that is now part of its core business. This is weak AI and is a combination of big data and machine-learning algorithms that ingest huge volumes of data and extract patterns and actionable predictions from them. This technology is already ubiquitous in the search engines and apps we all use every day. And the trend is accelerating: the near-term strategy of every major technology company can currently be summarised as AI Everywhere.

The big data/machine-learning combination is powerful and enticing. It can and often does lead to the development of more useful products and services search engines that can make intelligent guesses about what the user is trying to find, movies or products that might be of interest, sources of information that one might sample, connections that one might make and so on. It also enables corporations and organisations to improve efficiency, performance and services by learning from the huge troves of data that they routinely collect but until recently rarely analysed.

Human freedoms and options are increasingly influenced by opaque, inscrutable algorithms

Theres no question that this is a powerful and important new technology and it has triggered a gadarene stampede of venture and corporate capital. We are moving into what one distinguished legal scholar calls the black box society, a world in which human freedoms and options are increasingly influenced by opaque, inscrutable algorithms. Whose names appear on no-fly lists? Who gets a loan or a mortgage? Which prisoners get considered for parole? Which categories of fake news appear in your news feed? What price does Ryanair quote you for that particular flight? Why has your credit rating suddenly and inexplicably worsened?

In many cases, it may be that these decisions are rational and/or defensible. The trouble is that we have no way of knowing. And yet the black boxes that yield such outcomes are not inscrutable to everyone just to those who are affected by them. They are perfectly intelligible to the corporations that created and operate them. This means that the move towards an algorithmically driven society also represents a radical power-shift, away from citizens and consumers and towards a smallish number of powerful, pathologically secretive technology companies, whose governing philosophy seems to be that they should know everything about us, but that we should know as little as possible about their operations.

Whats even more remarkable is that these corporations are now among the worlds largest and most valuable enterprises. Yet, on the whole, they dont receive the critical scrutiny their global importance warrants. On the contrary, they get an easier ride from the media than comparable companies in other industries. If the CEO of an oil company, a car manufacturer or a mining corporation were to declare, for example, that his motto was Dont Be Evil, even the most somnolent journalist might raise a sceptical eyebrow. But when some designer-stubbled CEO in a hoodie proclaims his belief in the fundamental goodness of humanity, the media yawn tolerantly and omit to notice his companys marked talent for tax avoidance. This has to stop: transparency is a two-way process.

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The Observer view on artificial intelligence | Observer editorial ... - The Guardian

Aerospace Museum Hosts Leonardo da Vinci Exhibit, ‘Machines in Motion’ – FOX40

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Danzig

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In collaboration with the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in Florence, Italy, the Aerospace Museum, alongwith international scientists and visionaries, has created "meticulously constructed" displays of da Vinci's 15th and 16th century innovations.

The four sections of the museum center around the natural operating powers of each machine: earth, water, air and fire.

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Children can enjoy the "PlayZone" and create their own works of movement, just like the artist and inventor.

Museum admission starts at $12 for children ages 6 to 17 as well as seniors and teachers. Adult's can get in for $15 and can bring a child aged 5 and under for free.

The Aerospace Museum is located at 3200 Freedom Park Dr. at McClellan Park. The museum is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and weekends from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Aerospace Museum Hosts Leonardo da Vinci Exhibit, 'Machines in Motion' - FOX40

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