Jan 22, 2020

16 Posts

The Batch: Algorithm Designs Living Machines, AI Interviews Job Applicants, Recommender Spreads Misinformation, Researchers
Jan 22, 2020

The Batch: Algorithm Designs Living Machines, AI Interviews Job Applicants, Recommender Spreads Misinformation, Researchers

Last week brought reports that the European Union is considering a three- to five-year moratorium on face recognition in public places. Face recognition is a problematic technology with significant potential for misuse, and I celebrate the EU’s effort to...

11 min read
HR’s Robot Helper: Colleges prepare students for AI hiring interviews.
Jan 22, 2020

HR’s Robot Helper: Colleges prepare students for AI hiring interviews.

For some college graduates, landing a first job means making a good impression on a chatbot. University guidance counselors around the U.S. are preparing students for interviews with AI-powered screening algorithms.

1 min read
Bad Recommendations: Activists say YouTube's algorithm spreads climate disinformation.
Jan 22, 2020

Bad Recommendations: Activists say YouTube's algorithm spreads climate disinformation.

YouTube is a great place to learn about new ideas — including some that have been thoroughly discredited. YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is helping spread misinformation about climate change, according to research by Avaaz, a self-funded activist group.

2 min read
Upgrading Softmax: Mixtape is a faster way to avoid the softmax bottleneck.
Jan 22, 2020

Upgrading Softmax: Mixtape is a faster way to avoid the softmax bottleneck.

Softmax commonly computes probabilities in a classifier’s output layer. But softmax isn’t always accurate in complex tasks — say, in a natural-language task, when the length of word vectors is much smaller than the number of words in the vocabulary.

2 min read
Steal Your Face: How Clearview AI's face recognition system works
Jan 22, 2020

Steal Your Face: How Clearview AI's face recognition system works

What if you could identify just about anyone from a photo? A controversial startup is making this possible. Hundreds of U.S. law enforcement agencies are using a face ID service that matches photos against a database of billions of images.

1 min read
HR’s Robot Helper: Colleges prepare students for AI hiring interviews.
Jan 22, 2020

HR’s Robot Helper: Colleges prepare students for AI hiring interviews.

For some college graduates, landing a first job means making a good impression on a chatbot. University guidance counselors around the U.S. are preparing students for interviews with AI-powered screening algorithms.

1 min read
Better Than Backprop: Greedy InfoMax trains AI without end-to-end backpropagation.
Jan 22, 2020

Better Than Backprop: Greedy InfoMax trains AI without end-to-end backpropagation.

End-to-end backpropagation and labeled data are the peanut butter and chocolate of deep learning. However, recent work suggests that neither is necessary to train effective neural networks to represent complex data.

2 min read
The Problem With the EU’s Moratorium on Face Recognition
Jan 22, 2020

The Problem With the EU’s Moratorium on Face Recognition

Last week brought reports that the European Union is considering a three- to five-year moratorium on face recognition in public places. Face recognition is a problematic technology with significant potential for misuse, and I celebrate the...

1 min read
Bad Recommendations: Activists say YouTube's algorithm spreads climate disinformation.
Jan 22, 2020

Bad Recommendations: Activists say YouTube's algorithm spreads climate disinformation.

YouTube is a great place to learn about new ideas — including some that have been thoroughly discredited. YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is helping spread misinformation about climate change, according to research by Avaaz, a self-funded activist group.

2 min read
Virtual Creatures Come to Life: Researchers programmed AI to design living machines
Jan 22, 2020

Virtual Creatures Come to Life: Researchers programmed AI to design living machines

When artificial intelligence meets biology, even the simplest life forms can be mind-blowing. Researchers at Tufts and the University of Vermont programmed an evolutionary algorithm to design virtual organisms with specific capabilities.

1 min read
Upgrading Softmax: Mixtape is a faster way to avoid the softmax bottleneck.
Jan 22, 2020

Upgrading Softmax: Mixtape is a faster way to avoid the softmax bottleneck.

Softmax commonly computes probabilities in a classifier’s output layer. But softmax isn’t always accurate in complex tasks — say, in a natural-language task, when the length of word vectors is much smaller than the number of words in the vocabulary.

2 min read
Steal Your Face: How Clearview AI's face recognition system works
Jan 22, 2020

Steal Your Face: How Clearview AI's face recognition system works

What if you could identify just about anyone from a photo? A controversial startup is making this possible. Hundreds of U.S. law enforcement agencies are using a face ID service that matches photos against a database of billions of images.

1 min read
Virtual Creatures Come to Life: Researchers programmed AI to design living machines
Jan 22, 2020

Virtual Creatures Come to Life: Researchers programmed AI to design living machines

When artificial intelligence meets biology, even the simplest life forms can be mind-blowing. Researchers at Tufts and the University of Vermont programmed an evolutionary algorithm to design virtual organisms with specific capabilities.

1 min read
The Problem With the EU’s Moratorium on Face Recognition
Jan 22, 2020

The Problem With the EU’s Moratorium on Face Recognition

Last week brought reports that the European Union is considering a three- to five-year moratorium on face recognition in public places. Face recognition is a problematic technology with significant potential for misuse, and I celebrate the...

1 min read
Better Than Backprop: Greedy InfoMax trains AI without end-to-end backpropagation.
Jan 22, 2020

Better Than Backprop: Greedy InfoMax trains AI without end-to-end backpropagation.

End-to-end backpropagation and labeled data are the peanut butter and chocolate of deep learning. However, recent work suggests that neither is necessary to train effective neural networks to represent complex data.

2 min read

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