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Hasnain says:

I thought JPS was the fastest pathfinding algorithm out there (at least for the cases relevant to games); looks like I was wrong.

Time to pick up more game AI books

Posted on 2015-08-16T18:43:10+0000

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The U.S. Government Is Putting Americans on Its No-Fly List on a Hunch

In the movie Minority Report, Hollywood depicts a future Washington, D.C., in which people are arrested by a special police force called Precrime, based on predictions that they will commit murders in the future. These predictions are not based on science, but on near-infallible psychics. Precrime a…

Click to view the original at www.slate.com

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We should host the Olympics in the same place every time

The Olympics are bad for cities. So why do we keep asking new places to invest billions of dollars in state-of-the-art stadiums they’ll never use again?

Click to view the original at www.washingtonpost.com

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Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace

The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions.

Click to view the original at mobile.nytimes.com

Hasnain says:

"One ex-employee’s fiancé became so concerned about her nonstop working night after night that he would drive to the Amazon campus at 10 p.m. and dial her cellphone until she agreed to come home. When they took a vacation to Florida, she spent every day at Starbucks using the wireless connection to get work done."

Long and really enlightening

Posted on 2015-08-15T18:32:25+0000

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Facial Recognition Software Moves From Overseas Wars to Local Police

Dozens of police departments have begun using facial recognition technology to pursue conventional criminal suspects like drug dealers and prostitutes.

Click to view the original at mobile.nytimes.com

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I spent a weekend at Google talking with nerds about charity. I came away … worried.

Many were more excited about battling malevolent artificial intelligence than about helping the poor.

Click to view the original at www.vox.com

Hasnain says:

"The common response I got to this was, "Yes, sure, but even if there's a very, very, very small likelihood of us decreasing AI risk, that still trumps global poverty, because infinitesimally increasing the odds that 10^52 people in the future exist saves way more lives than poverty reduction ever could.""

Was the speaker aware of how insensitive it sounds to argue for more AI research when we have people suffering in poverty this very instant?

Posted on 2015-08-12T20:14:26+0000

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How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus

College students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education.

Click to view the original at theatlantic.com

Hasnain says:

"For instance, last year administrators at Bergen Community College, in New Jersey, suspended Francis Schmidt, a professor, after he posted a picture of his daughter on his Google+ account. The photo showed her in a yoga pose, wearing a T-shirt that read I will take what is mine with fire & blood, a quote from the HBO show Game of Thrones. Schmidt had filed a grievance against the school about two months earlier after being passed over for a sabbatical. The quote was interpreted as a threat by a campus administrator, who received a notification after Schmidt posted the picture; it had been sent, automatically, to a whole group of contacts. According to Schmidt, a Bergen security official present at a subsequent meeting between administrators and Schmidt thought the word fire could refer to AK-47s."

Posted on 2015-08-12T18:54:58+0000

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