Monthly Archives: June 2017

World War II

conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during the years 193945. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers Germany, Italy, and Japan and the Allies France, Great Britain, the...

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10 Deadly Animals that Fit in a Breadbox

Everybody knows that big animals can be deadly. Lions, for instance, have sharp teeth and claws and are good at chasing down their prey. Shark Week always comes around and reminds us that although shark...

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Syrian Civil War

In March 2011 Syrias government, led by Pres. Bashar al-Assad, faced an unprecedented challenge to its authority when pro- democracy protests erupted throughout the country. Protesters demanded an end...

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September 11 attacks

series of airline hijackings and suicide attacks committed by 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda against targets in the United States, the deadliest terrorist attacks on...

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The Middle East: Fact or Fiction?

Take this Geography True or False Quiz at Encyclopedia Britannica to test your knowledge of Syria, Iraq, and other countries within the Middle East.

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10 Places to Visit in the Solar System

Having a tough time deciding where to go on vacation? Do you want to go someplace with startling natural beauty that isnt overrun with tourists? Do you want to go somewhere where you wont need to take...

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7 Drugs that Changed the World

People have swallowed elixirs, inhaled vapors, and applied ointments in the name of healing for millennia. But only a small number of substances can be said to have fundamentally revolutionized medicine....

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World Tour

Take this geography quiz at Encyclopedia Britannica and test your knowledge of popular destinations.

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American Civil War

four-year war (186165) between the United States and 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. Prelude to war The secession of the Southern states (in...

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Geography 101: Fact or Fiction?

Take this Geography True or False Quiz at Encyclopedia Britannica to test your knowledge of various places across the globe.

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Vietnam War

(195475), a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal...

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World War I

an international conflict that in 191418 embroiled most of the nations of Europe along with Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and other regions. The war pitted the Central Powers mainly Germany,...

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Ai | ancient city, Canaan | Britannica.com

For example, Adobe's Experience Cloud, which helps brands manage customer interactions and advertising, processes 100 trillion transactions every year.

Narayen said the data gathered from those transactions will in turn feed into Adobe Sensei, which will do things like transform paper documents into editable digital files, create predictive models, and change expressions in photographs with a few clicks.

"It's a way to really bring creativity to the masses. And it's a way to enable everybody to be a creator," Narayen said. "We partner with great companies like Nvidia who are able to process this in real time, but it's all the magic that's created by our product folks."

All this ties in to what Narayen dubbed Adobe's two tailwinds that helped the software giant deliver better-than-expected earnings on Tuesday: individual creativity and a changing business landscape.

"People want to create and businesses want to transform, and we are mission-critical to both of them. We are driving tremendous innovation and executing," Narayen said.

And whether that execution is proven by 49 percent growth in Adobe's Premiere Pro video editing platform or an 86 percent jump in recurring revenues, Narayen said knowing what creators want is the key to Adobe's success.

"I think using the right lens and unleashing innovation on our product development, that's how we do it," the CEO said. "If you're a creative professional, we're just as mission-critical as a Bloomberg terminal might be for somebody in the financial community. And on the enterprise side, when small and medium businesses want to create an online digital presence, and they want to have commerce as part of their future, they use us to enable themselves to have this online presence."

When Cramer asked whether Narayen communicated these sentiments to President Donald Trump at Monday's technology council meeting at the White House, the CEO responded diplomatically.

"Design and aesthetics have never been more important, and I think as it relates to modernizing government, all businesses are transforming so that the customer experience is front and center. There's no reason why the government shouldn't do exactly the same," Narayen said.

The Adobe chief added that when it came to the meeting's central topics, modernizing the government and enhancing the skills of the U.S. workforce, he emphasized STEAM over STEM, the well known acronym for the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics, adding arts to the mix as an equally important skill set to master.

With regards to job creation, Narayen issued somewhat of a warning to the country's leaders, urging them to remain focused on the matter.

"If you're not careful, I think it impacts the competitiveness of our country vis--vis some of these other countries," the CEO said.

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Adobe CEO: Microsoft partnership will automate sales, marketing with AI - CNBC

Tesla Inc. has hired a Stanford University computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence and deep learning to lead its efforts around driverless cars.

Andrej Karpathy, previously a research scientist at OpenAI, was named director of AI and Autopilot Vision, reporting directly to Chief Executive Elon Musk, a Tesla spokesperson said.

Karpathy is one of the worlds leading experts in computer vision and deep learning, the spokesperson said. He will work closely with Jim Keller, who is responsible for Autopilot hardware and software.

Autopilot is Teslas suite of advanced driver assistance systems, which relies on an onboard Nvidia Corp NVDA, +1.52% supercomputer to make sense of data from numerous sensors in and around Tesla vehicles and the companys software.

Several Silicon Valley companies, from titans such as Apple Inc. AAPL, +0.59% to startups, as well as traditional car makers, software companies, and others elsewhere, are vying to make driverless cars a common sight on roads.

Apples CEO Tim Cook recently confirmed the companys efforts around what he called autonomous systems, and called driverless cars the mother of all AI projects.

See also: We still dont know what Apple is up to with driverless cars

Musk is co-chair of OpenAI, a nonprofit focused on AI research and on a path to safe artificial general intelligence.

The hire comes as Teslas lead of Autopilot software, Chris Lattner, earlier this week announced he was leaving the company after six months on the job.

Lattner worked for more than an decade at Apple Inc.

The Tesla spokesperson said Lattner just wasnt the right fit for Tesla, and weve decided to make a change.

The company is weeks away from starting production of the Model 3, the $35,000 all-electric sedan it hopes to sell to the masses. Tesla is expected to sell the car by the end of the year.

Musk has said that several new vehicles, including a compact SUV and an electric commercial freight truck, are coming to Teslas lineup as the company aims to produce vehicles at a rate of half a million by the end of 2018.

The stock has gained more than 74% so far this year, after a string of record highs in the past two months. That contrasts with gains of 9% for the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.06%

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Tesla hires AI expert to help lead team in charge of self-driving software - MarketWatch

Alibaba Group Holding Limited (BABA) chairman Jack Ma is preparing for the Third World War. Or at least it would seem that way from his comments to television network CNBC during an interview. According to Ma, advances in technology have caused world wars. "The first technology revolution caused World War I. The second technology revolution caused World War II. This is the third technology revolution," he said. But he did not outline the possible causes for this war.

Ma's interview was wide ranging and covered disparate topics that ranged from the future of humanity to the difference between wisdom and intelligence. He sketched the contours of a future world disrupted by artificial intelligence (AI) trends. According to Ma, the next 30 years will be marked by "very painful" changes for humanity as it enters an age defined by data and artificial intelligence. Ma said that humans will win in a war with machines. This is because machines do not possess wisdom, which comes from the heart. (See also: Alibaba's Ma: We're Not Looking to Invade US.)

That said, the age of machines will witness far-reaching changes. As machines take over labor-intensive tasks, the working week will diminish to 16 hours, Ma predicted. The extra leisure time will create a mobile population that will work across borders and put a stop to the backlash against globalization. "The only thing is how can we make trade more inclusive, knowledge more inclusive, and this is how we can deal with the instability of the world (that machines will create)," he said. Governments will have to make "hard choices," Ma added. (See also: Jack Ma: Success Story.)

Among those choices will the decision to open up borders to enable cross-border e-commerce. According to current rules, it is difficult for small businesses to trade across borders using e-commerce sites due to a phalanx of customs and duty provisions. Ma's e-commerce juggernaut is leading the charge for international e-commerce and already has a thriving business in Tmall, its cross-border e-commerce site that sells overseas goods in China. (See also: Special Delivery: Alibaba Wants Faster Traffic to Europe.)

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AI Could Start Third World War: Alibaba's Jack Ma (BABA) - Investopedia

Many workers at brick kilns like this one near Hyderabad have no hope of paying off their debt

Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty

By Matt Reynolds

Online volunteers are helping to track slavery from space. A new crowdsourcing project aims to identify South Asian brick kilns frequently the site of forced labour in satellite images.

This data will then be used to train machine learning algorithms to automatically recognise brick kilns in satellite imagery. If computers can pinpoint the location of possible slavery sites, then the coordinates could be passed to local non-governmental organisations to investigate, says Kevin Bales, who is leading the project at the University of Nottingham in the UK.

South Asian brick kilns are notorious sites of modern-day slavery. Nearly 70 per cent of the estimated 5 million brick kiln workers in South Asia are thought to be working there under force, often to pay off debts.

But no one is quite sure how many kilns there are in the so called Brick Belt that stretches across parts of Pakistan, India and Nepal. Some estimates put the figure at 20,000, but it may be as high as 50,000.

Bales is hoping that his machine learning approach will produce a more accurate number and help organisations on the ground know where to direct their anti-slavery efforts.

Google Earth

Its great to have an objective tool to identify possible slavery sites, says Sasha Jesperson at St Marys University in London. But it is just start to really find out how many people are being enslaved in the brick kiln industry you still need to visit every site and work out exactly whats going on there, she says.

So far, over 9000 potential slavery sites have been identified by volunteers taking part in the project. The volunteers are presented with a series of satellite images taken from Google Earth and they have to click on the parts of images that contain brick kilns.

As soon as 15 volunteers identify each of the nearly 400 images in the data set, Bales plans on teaching the machine learning algorithm to recognise the kilns automatically.

Hes already working on the next stage of the project, which will use a similar approach to help identify open pit mines in countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are also often sites of forced labour.

Google Earth

But Bales thinks that his machine learning algorithms might have a trickier time categorising open pit mines than brick kilns. The kilns are usually a distinctive shape and colour, but the mines, which often look like big holes in the ground, can be harder to spot.

A lot of slavery is visible from space, says Bales but image recognition could also be a useful tool for helping track slavery where satellites cant reach. TraffickCam, a project set up by the social action group Exchange Initiative, uses image recognition to identify sex trafficking in hotel rooms.

Visitors to hotels can use TraffickCam to upload an image of the inside of their hotel room to the websites database. These photographs can then be compared with photos of sex workers that traffickers often post online. Because those photos are often taken in hotel rooms, investigators may be able use the TraffickCam database to pinpoint the location of a particular photograph. More than 150,000 hotel rooms have been documented in this way.

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Volunteers teach AI to spot slavery sites from satellite images - New Scientist