CIS Focal Issue

The self-flying drone is able to swiftly navigate obstacles

algorithm that allows the drone's software to build a map of the surrounding area in real time

Everyone is building drones these days, but nobody knows how to get them to stop running into things

Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR), the division within the company dedicated to AI

some are new, like a working unsupervised learning model

The company has made substantial investment in artificial intelligence in the last few years

When we launched ads two years ago, ads were available in just eight countries. In September, we opened for business in around 200 countries

Facebook’s global sales team was beginning to push Instagram’s advertising to small businesses, providing them with the ability to target marketing at particular users

that international expansion was a priority, with 75 per cent of its more than 400m users based outside the US

Mattel unveiled its new, $300 3D Printer, the “ThingMaker,” which will allow children to print their own toys at home

While there are affordably priced 3D printers available today, the software that works with them can sometimes have a learning curve that can hinder adoption. With the new application, live now on iOS and Android, the goal was to make it easy enough for anyone to design their own toys – even younger children

The idea isn’t just to print an object and be done, however – instead, kids will print parts that can be assembled to form larger creations, like dolls, robots, dinosaurs, scorpions, skeletons, bracelets or necklaces, for example

Российский премьер-министр Дмитрий Медведев предварительно одобрил идею введения налоговых льгот для российских компаний, которые создают мультфильмы

Мультипликационные компании очень похожи по своей сути на разработчиков программного обеспечения

По словам Попова, идея с налоговыми льготами для мультипликаторов в целом и с возможной пропиской в «Сколково» в частности предварительно обсуждалась на совещании в Минэкономразвития, чиновники которого идею поддержали

Amazon is working on plans to open hundreds of brick-and-mortar bookstores

Amazon already has one physical store that opened back in November.

Physical bookstores quickly turned into showroom floors where people would browse and then go buy books for cheap at Amazon.

Tesla founder Elon Musk, big-name venture capitalist Peter Thiel, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and several other notable tech names have launched a new artificial intelligence startup called OpenAI,

OpenAI has the talent to compete with the industry’s top artificial intelligence outfits, including Google and Facebook—but the company has been setup as a non-profit.

The apparent aim is to build systems based on deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence that has proven extremely adept in recent years at identifying images, recognizing spoken words, translating from one language to another, and, to a certain extent, understanding the natural way that we humans talk.

unable to separate reality (or as "real" as the online world can be, cartoon or otherwise) and the fictional world of advertising.

Dr. Domingos' recent article in the Wall Street Journal paints a utopian scenario where consumers are able to wrest control of the personal information stolen by big business and use it to create "digital models".

we really need to ask if creating millions of digital models to remove us even further from face-to-face interaction is the right thing to do.

my attention monopolized at that moment by an electronic screen.

offers endlessly updating possibilities.

for many children growing up today, digital reality is the only reality.

Frequent use of digital devices is causing memory loss among Hongkongers

brain health experts have even coined a name for the condition: digital dementia.

correlation between more frequent usage of digital devices and self-reported memory loss in daily life and at work.

MoviePass, which opens up to 75,000 wait-listed users today, is an invite-only subscription-based service that lets you pay between $19.99 and $34.99 a month to watch up to one in-theater movie per day

Unlike Netflix viewership, theatrical attendance tends to heavily peak twice a year, during Oscars season and the summer blockbusters.

Spikes says this demographic is also more likely to drive post-theater purchases, such as DVDs, soundtracks, and branded merchandise. To that end, he says MoviePass will be exploring options to offer these items through its service in the future

The team used 140,000 horror stories from the subreddit r/nosleep to teach the AI how to tell a horror story that a human would find intelligible, compelling and scary. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Shelley, though, is her reliance on human interaction to facilitate her storytelling.

AI can write surprisingly scary and creative horror stories

The average American driver spends 51 minutes a day in the car

On future screens, local restaurants, doctors’ offices and other services could target ads based on typical driving routes

“We see this as the battle for the fourth screen,”

“will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure.

There are all these different kinds of utilities for basically all the different things that you would want to do with everyone you know. And we basically built this whole platform around the town square

If you want to message someone on Instagram, you have to use Direct, if you want to message someone on WhatsApp you have to use WhatsApp. But I think people tend to have one of the messaging apps that they prefer the most. So giving people the choice to say, “Hey, I want to use WhatsApp because I prefer that as my service where I can not only message people on WhatsApp but I can message people on Facebook or Instagram as well and have those services connect …” I think that that will unlock a lot more convenient and seamless experiences. So connecting the services in that way I think will be valuable.

Consumers have more digital media options than ever, and most are finding what they want. But many are becoming frustrated by the complexity and effort piecing together their entertainment experience requires.

While consumers appreciate the freedom to customize their entertainment experiences, they don’t enjoy the friction—the hassles, responsibilities, and even vulnerabilities—that can result from choosing options à la carte.

The service will let you play all manner of computer games streamed from Google‘s data centers to your devices running the Chrome browser or ChromeOS platform, or even your TV with a Chromecast Ultra plugged in. You won’t need any additional hardware to run Stadia, and you won’t need to install anything to play games. As Google VP Phil Harrison noted in an interview with Eurogamer, “Anywhere where YouTube runs well, Stadia can run.”

Rather than treat Stadia as an entirely standalone service, Google sees people using it from and with YouTube. That means your starting point with Stadia could be a game trailer on the video platform, or a live stream of a tournament; you could simply hit Play on either video stream and start playing – solo or with others – within a few seconds.