Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
Science

Submission + - Jeopardy-Playing Supercomputer Beats Humans (discovermagazine.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Ok, this was just a practice round. But in short a demonstration today IBM's Jeopardy-playing supercomputer, a whiz by the name of Watson, thoroughly bested two talented human contestants. IBM has been working on this artificial intelligence project for years to prove that a computer can be programmed to understand conversational speech and wordplay. In today's demo, Watson seems to have proved the point: it started out on a roll in the category "Chicks Dig Me," about women and archaeology. The real man versus machine face-off (in which the same contestants compete for a $1 million prize) will be taped tomorrow, and aired in February.

Comment Re:To everyone under 30 (Score 1) 171

Let me arm everyone with some basic facts: This is not "spy" satellite imagery. Digital Globe is a commercial satellite imagery provider. Is everyone going to start calling Bing maps and Google maps "spy" satellite imagery? The National Reconnaissance Office only launches the (actual) spy satellites, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) "drives" them (dictates what they image). NGA is not allowed to image US soil without a "proper use memorandum" from DHS or the president's office. This is usually done for things like natural disasters in America (hurricanes, etc).
Google

Google Preparing To Launch G-Town 251

theodp writes "The Mercury News reports that Google's aggressive online growth increasingly has a counterpart in bricks and mortar, with the company's Mountain View HQ mushrooming in the past four years to occupy more than 4 million square feet. And that's just for starters. On Silicon Valley's NASA Ames base, Google is preparing to build a new corporate campus with fitness and day care facilities and — in a first in the valley — employee housing, adding 1.2 million sqare feet to Google's real estate holdings. 'I don't want to say it's the new company town,' said commercial real estate VP Gregory M. Davies of Google's role, 'but it's not far from it.' Presumably, no anti-suicide nets will be needed for this one."

Comment Re:Way to prove their point! (Score 1) 738

Membership in the WTO and IMF is largely irrelevant. First off, another country has to bring a case before the WTO (it won't do anything on it's own). Then the cases take years to adjudicate. Finally, if the irked country "wins" they simply win the right to impose specific, WTO-delegated, retaliatory tariffs. oh and btw/ in the overwhelming majority of cases the "winning" country doesn't even actually exercise their WTO-given right to institute the retaliatory tariffs.

Comment Re:Babies think everything that moves is sentient (Score 1) 159

Those 3-9 month-olds were also implying intention on the blocks. Regardless of shape/size/color the babies essentially assigned sentience to the blocks and always preferred the "helpful" block... which in this case was the one that helped a block (and didn't impede) to get up a small incline. One other key factor was the blocks needed to have glue-on, wobbly "eyes" or the babies would not assign intention/sentience to the blocks. So in essence it doesn't take a terribly complex robot, or adult miming, babies will assume something is sentient, has intentions, and make a value judgment even if something is a red wooden triangle with stuck-on eyes.
Robotics

Study Shows Babies Think Friendly Robots Are Sentient 159

seanonymous writes "A study from University of Washington claims that babies think robots are human, so long as the robots are friendly. No word on what evil robots are thought to be. From the article: 'At 18 months old, babies have begun to make conscious delineations between sentient beings and inanimate objects. But as robots get more and more advanced, those decisions may become harder to make. What causes a baby to decide a robot is more than bits of metal? As it turns out, it takes more than humanoid looks — babies rely on social interaction to make that call.'"

Slashdot Top Deals

My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells down by the seashore.

Working...