industryterm:technology news

  • 10 Reasons to Learn #python in 2018
    https://hackernoon.com/10-reasons-to-learn-python-in-2018-f473dc35e2ee?source=rss----3a8144eabf

    Who wants to become a Python Programmer?If you follow my blog regularly then you may be wondering that why am I writing an article to tell people to learn Python? Didn’t I asked you to prefer Java over Python a couple of years ago?Well, things have changed a lot since then. In 2016, Python replaced Java as the most popular language in colleges and Universities and since then it has never looked back.Python is growing and growing big time. If you read #programming and technology news or blog post then you might have noticed the rise of Python as many popular developer communities including StackOverFlow and CodeAcademy has mentioned the rise of Python as a major programming language. But, the biggest question is why should a programmer learn Python? Python is growing Ok, that’s great, but (...)

    #learn-python #machine-learning #web-development

  • The ’creepy Facebook AI’ story that captivated the media - BBC News
    http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40790258

    Where did the story come from?

    Way back in June, Facebook published a blog post about interesting research on chatbot programs - which have short, text-based conversations with humans or other bots. The story was covered by New Scientist and others at the time.

    Facebook had been experimenting with bots that negotiated with each other over the ownership of virtual items.

    It was an effort to understand how linguistics played a role in the way such discussions played out for negotiating parties, and crucially the bots were programmed to experiment with language in order to see how that affected their dominance in the discussion.

    A few days later, some coverage picked up on the fact that in a few cases the exchanges had become - at first glance - nonsensical:

    Bob: “I can can I I everything else”
    Alice: “Balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to”

    Although some reports insinuate that the bots had at this point invented a new language in order to elude their human masters, a better explanation is that the neural networks were simply trying to modify human language for the purposes of more successful interactions - whether their approach worked or not was another matter.

    As technology news site Gizmodo said: “In their attempts to learn from each other, the bots thus began chatting back and forth in a derived shorthand - but while it might look creepy, that’s all it was.”

    AIs that rework English as we know it in order to better compute a task are not new.

    Google reported that its translation software had done this during development. “The network must be encoding something about the semantics of the sentence” Google said in a blog.

    And earlier this year, Wired reported on a researcher at OpenAI who is working on a system in which AIs invent their own language, improving their ability to process information quickly and therefore tackle difficult problems more effectively.

    The story seems to have had a second wind in recent days, perhaps because of a verbal scrap over the potential dangers of AI between Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and technology entrepreneur Elon Musk.

    Robo-fear

    But the way the story has been reported says more about cultural fears and representations of machines than it does about the facts of this particular case.

    Plus, let’s face it, robots just make for great villains on the big screen.

    In the real world, though, AI is a huge area of research at the moment and the systems currently being designed and tested are increasingly complicated.

  • Amazon might become ISP in Europe, but laws make US launch unlikely

    [EN] Amazon hasn’t commented publicly on the topic, which was raised today in a report by The Information (subscription required). The technology news site quotes “a person briefed on the discussion” as saying that Amazon is considering whether to offer Internet service over the networks of existing providers. Since Amazon reportedly doesn’t want to build its own network, it would have to purchase wholesale access, which isn’t available everywhere.

    [FR] Apparemment, Amazon lorgne le marché européen des FAI grand public. Est-ce qu’Orange accepterait de fournir le même type de services que pour, disons, Free ?

    http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/amazon-might-become-isp-in-europe-but-laws-make-us-launch-unlikely